With Palestine and Israel, we were able to see it with our own eyes. I remember specifically watching TikToks of a teenage girl in Gaza posting about the evacuations, hearing the bombs in the background, etc. It felt "real" to us, which is a terrible way to put it, but I believe that is why the protests are much larger than other conflicts.
If we compare # of people in each country. 10/07 for Israel was like 15 9/11s (this is a quote from a President Biden speech).
So not only is it worth asking - how many Americans didnt want to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But how many would be against some sort of war like that, if tomorrow morning they woke up to a 9/11 sized attack in 15 of the biggest US cities, happening at the same time
Not only did the US go far from home to destroy Afghanistan, but the whole world joined them to do it together
Good question. 75 years of history those other two conflicts lack
A lot of people were upset about China and the Uyghurs as well, for a while, but not until after it became a thing influencers talked about. And then they stopped caring after social media moved on. Even on HN, where anti-China sentiment is rampant, people no longer seem to mention it.
They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence.
According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever.
Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please.
As an American it's embarrassing.
There are so many other conflicts going on with many more dead, but if it's not interracial then somehow it is not talked about.
> Iraq never attacked anyone
I am not sure Kuwait would agree.
We, as a world, are seeing civilian life and casualties during a war in near real-time. This is something that many of us have never experienced before.
I'd note the Ukranians worked very hard to draw attention to their war as well, and they were quite successful at that.
US foreign policy isn't nice or morally sound, but one thing it was not doing in the run-up to 9/11 and its subsequent invasion of Afghanistan was directly fucking up Afghani lives and killing Afghani children. Same can't be said for Israel in its relationship to the Palestinians.
However, criticizing our government as weak would require believing it cares about Palestinian lives in the first place, which is a highly questionable assumption at this point.
Now, remember - you are running Israel. And, most people on the right agree with you that there should just be one land, one humanity.
But, the folks in the camps - they don't want to surrender and accept citizenship to your "one land, one humanity" country.
- Jerusalem (and more globally Israel and Palestine) is holly for Jews, Muslims and Christians ; more than half of the word population and more than 90% of US population
- Israel is a key ally of the USA, and this is a topic important in US politics for long time - including for some evangelical voters for religious question
- Westerners have colonized (or inflicted violence to) most of the non western countries on this planet in "recent" history... Israel is seen by some as a Western country colonizing just another developing country, with support of other western countries... echoing recent history for many. It is as such a symbol for a long time.
- USA, France... have had some big Islamist attack, what happened in Israel echoed to this for some people... and echoes to the clash of civilization western word vs Muslim which is central in the ideology of a growing number of westerners
- It is easier to understand, more divisive, with more people or causes we can identify with, than in Syria (everybody hates ISIS) or Yemen (arabs fighting arabs fighting other arabs in a desert ?)... And we have more images
Answering more to the spirit of the question: I believe that the situation between Israel and Palestinians is broken and can't be fixed until something unexpected happens. Neither side has an acceptable way forward.
As a rule of thumb, people who talk about right and wrong don't want peace. Those concepts are far more useful for justifying wars than ending them. Peace is achieved by compromises that make both parties lose interest in the war. There was a genuine desire for peace in the 90s, but it failed, because nobody could find an acceptable compromise. The leaders of both parties realized that the sacrifices required to make the compromise acceptable to the other side were worse than status quo.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani...
But that said, I agree with your general point: The relationship between the US and Afghanistan is and was very different to the relationship between Israel and Palestine.
Indirectly, perhaps, but yeah, not directly and not with basically the purpose of fucking them up.
Or do something else, I don't care; at this point one has to try anything but this slow-motion ethnic cleansing and "two states" bantustans.
1. The extraordinary effective Hamas organization. Hamas has set itself up to benefit from atrocities committed upon the people of Gaza. Every civilian death is a point for Hamas, the more so the better publicized it is. A point for Hamas is obviously not a point for regular people in Gaza. And Hamas provoked Israel as much as it could manage, and continues to provoke Israel by engaging in military operations from civilian sites, leading to:
2. Israel doesn’t understand this, and is entirely willing to play right into Hamas’ hands, in the name of its own security. And it looks really, really bad.
There are Arabs who are full citizens of Israel, who have elected representatives in the Israeli parliament. There are also Arab judges in the Israeli supreme court. Oh, and the population of the muslim Arab citizens of Israel is much greater now than when Israel was formed. So, no ethnic cleansing there.
The Arab population in the Palestinian areas has also multiplied. So, no ethnic cleansing there either.
Israel is good at many things but it seems to be really bad at ethnic cleansing.
But they don't live in the occupied territories, duh. They are also second-class citizens de-facto, with a constant need to go through the courts to do everything they are technically entitled to but denied in practice. They are a fifth of the population but don't express anything near a fifth of the ruling classes - to pick the example you chose, 1 out of 15 supreme court judges is Arab.
It's very much like the condition of black people in the "separated but equal" era in the US, when theoretical legal equality was simply denied in the field.
> the population of the muslim Arab citizens of Israel is much greater now than when Israel was formed.
And this is the source of much public anguish in Israeli public discourse.
> The Arab population in the Palestinian areas has also multiplied.
But their land keeps shrinking. The land claimed by settlements is cleansed indeed.
> it seems to be really bad at ethnic cleansing.
Attempted murder is still a crime.