scarlettina: (Furious)
scarlettina ([personal profile] scarlettina) wrote2014-07-16 10:25 pm
Entry tags:

Stop flinging dead people in my face

[ rant mode ]

Over the last three days, three people--two on Facebook and one in email--have insisted on posting graphic, horrifying images of war dead. I understand these people have points to make. I am aware that there's a nightmare's nightmare going on in Israel and Gaza. I know how privileged I am not to live in a war zone. And perhaps I'm a princess for asking this--so be it if I am--but, people, PLEASE! Stop flinging corpses in my face! Good freaking G-d!

I'm angry about what's happening over there. I don't need the random baby-with-its-brains-blown-out image to stoke my fury. I stopped being supportive of Israel a long time ago. The dream of the original settlers has been lost in what Israel has become--perhaps what it's been forced to become. I can't support the Palestinians, either. They've lived for the destruction of Israel since the very beginning. At this point, my feeling is "a plague on both their houses."

Anyone who posts an image like that in a public forum, though, is there to generate heat, not light. And as soon as you start to do that, you lose me. You lose me completely. Because it demonstrates that you're not interested in dialogue or enlightenment. You're interested in controversy, argument and ill-feeling, not the building of bridges and the binding of wounds. A plague on your house, too.

[/rant mode]
lagilman: coffee or die (stop that)

[personal profile] lagilman 2014-07-17 11:46 am (UTC)(link)
Amen.

I have radical Palestinian supporters on one side of my life and radical Israeli supporters on the other, and I've basically stopped reading anything they say right now because they've all utterly forgotten the cost in their need to be Right.

And then there are the people who just want to be Radical and haven't actually read any of the history beyond last week's social media headlines, and I want to lock them in a library and not let them come out until they've actually educated themselves on the tangled history of that region.

*ahem* Sorry. I'm kind of ranty this morning.

[identity profile] scarlettina.livejournal.com 2014-07-17 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
No need for apologies; none whatsoever. On this subject, feel free to rant. I did. The world is an unpleasant place, no question. To inflict that unpleasantness in a public because one has an agenda or an axe to grind is just not acceptable.