The mother of a woman whose body was paraded through the streets by Hamas has pleaded for help finding her daughter.
A video showing German tattoo artist Shani Louk on the back of a pickup truck circulated on social media after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
Louk had been attending an outdoor “Festival for Peace” party near Kibbutz Urim when the area was targeted. First, rockets were launched, then gunmen and appeared and shot into the crowd, CNN reported. Party attendees told the outlet people immediately started to flee, passing dead bodies on the ground as they tried to escape the massacre.
The attack and resulting conflict has left hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians dead, with Israel’s prime minister declaring war.
A video of a young woman with dreadlocks on the back of a pickup truck and surrounded by Hamas soldiers started circulating on social media shortly after the attack. In it, she appears stripped to her underwear, and her legs are bent at unnatural angles, while one soldier grabs her hair. People are also seen spitting on her body.
“Both are evil” rhetoric is often used to justify or obfuscate one sides crimes, and because on the broader scale, Israel unfolds destruction and death at a higher scale, so there’s a lot of intense emotions from thise keyed into Palestinian struggle. That’s why so many want you to pick.
It is important to remember Hamas ≠ Palestinians, and Israeli government ≠ Israeli citizens. Yes, they live in a colonial state, but Hamas doesn’t care if they try to fight to change it or not, furthermore, most left leaning people are in colonial states or in former colonizing states so they are basically saying they think violence against them is justified too. Everyone should be aware of their privileges and work to dismantle the systems that create them, but that doesn’t mean they need be killed in order to realize that!
It’s ridiculous because you’re absolutely right too, Israeli calling them all “human animals” and doing a total blockade of Gaza is a war crime, but so is what happened to Shani Louk. In the world I am fighting for, the people responsible for both would be held accountable.
I can’t think of a single successful revolution that didn’t end up with significant civilian casualties. Revolutions only arise because of extreme discontent among a population about their socioeconomic position.
Remember the Reign of Terror in France? Washington’s campaign against the Iroquois in America? Revolution is bloody and revolution leads to civilian casualties, but at its core it’s caused by systematic oppression by the government and inaction on behalf of the population.
By the way, Gazans have tried peaceful protest. It got thousands of people shot.