Rex Kerr
2 min readMar 4, 2024

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Your goal of wanting a ceasefire may align with terrorist goals to have a ceasefire.

If you want a ceasefire to save civilians, and they want a ceasefire to have time to re-arm and re-group to kill more Israeli civilians, you both want a ceasefire.

If some Zionist extremists don't want a ceasefire so that more Palestinian civilians will be murdered, and some members of Yesh Atid don't want a ceasefire so that Hamas will swiftly be eliminated as a threat to Israeli civilians, they both don't want a ceasefire.

The difference comes when you get to the next step. If you advocate for something that achieves your goals but also achieves terrorists' goals, the thing to do is advocate for something that thwarts terrorist goals while advancing yours. Every time, because online, people don't have much context.

For instance, a Yesh Atid member might call for no ceasefire, but an immediate cessation of aerial bombardment save in the most dire cases, and use of maximally precise targeting by ground forces, even if it slows progress and risks the lives of more IDF members. That would distinguish their position from the "kill them all and the land is ours!" position.

Saying "Just stop killing civilians!" isn't enough when two sides will kill civilians but only one might listen to you (by your own admission). What it really means, if that is as far as it goes, is "they can kill your civilians, but you can't kill theirs (even to stop them killing yours)".

So it's absolutely not the case that you're either "with Israel" or "with the terrorists", but if you don't verbalize a third way, it's entirely possible to be left saying things that do only go one way or the other.

(Not everything is of this sort. Criticizing Israel for not providing adequate food to feed the entire population of Gaza, without relying on Hamas' stores, is entirely appropriate, and is strongly anti-terrorist ("Hamas is so barbaric that it can't be counted on to feed their own starving people") and anti-current-Israeli-policy ("You're inflicting collective punishment for horrific acts of a few, and starving a civilian population, which is a crime against humanity.").)

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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