The Iranians are very good at trolling - almost as good as the Russians!
I cannot go online these days without seeing some "meme" or other misleading posting that presents some obviously wrong data about the situation in Gaza. One "meme" totes up a "body count" of dead and wounded Palestinians (no source given, so you have to take their word on faith). Not mentioned is how many of these people are "civilians" and how many are Hamas fighters. But hey, that makes no difference, right?
Also not mentioned is the over 1,000 Israelis - many of whom were children or even infants - who were massacred. But hey, that was during the last news cycle, so that doesn't count, right? I mean, we've forgotten about that already, right? The narrative the Palestinians/Iranians are pushing is that Israel got up one morning and just decided to bomb Gaza for no reason whatsoever. It is like the last dustup where Hamas fired 4,000 rockets at Israel and yet Israel was the aggressor.
Sorry, no sale!
Another video purports to show plucky Palestinians making rockets from old water pipes. We are told they dug up their water pipes (yet Israel is the bad guy for shutting off the water?) and making them into rocket tubes. They then dived a sunken wreck of a warship for corroded old artillery shells. Wa-la! A rocket, ready-made! Like most YouTube click-bait videos, they cut to the "reveal" where buried pipe and corroded shells magically appear as shiny new rockets. No, no, these are not brand-new rockets smuggled in from Iran, nosiree! We made 'em! From old pipes!
Go sell nonsense somewhere else.
Even if we assume this is true, one wonders whether the efforts put into digging up old pipes and such might be better spent helping the average Gaza citizen. If they have enough time and money to make rockets, how can they claim to be oppressed? And the answer is simple - they get rockets from Iran, who wants to stir up trouble. They keep their own citizens in a state of privation, to use as props for the "Israel Bad, Hamas Good" trope. They also make good human shields, too!
Go sell insanity somewhere else!
The most laughable thing I saw was a posting (and a series of comments) that claimed that Palestinians and the Arab world in general was not only not anti-Gay, but the most Gay-friendly place on earth! No, I am not kidding about this - they claimed that Arab countries were overflowing with gay bars and gay pride celebrations and that Arab men all had sex with men as it was a cultural tradition. Another chimed in with the "helpful" comment that in Afghanistan, the warlords all engaged in "Boy Play" (Bacha Bazi) and thus Afghanis were gay-friendly!
Kindly go fuck yourself.
The problem with the latter argument is that it equates homosexuality with pedophilia, which the GOP has been trying to do for years now (even as some prominent members of the GOP are caught trying to have sex with minors of both genders). Just to be clear, the vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexuals - but again, the conservative far-right sees no issue with child marriage. "It's in the Bible, folks!"
The other problem is that all of it is false. Again, with regard to the last argument, the Taliban (and most of the Arab world) takes a pretty dim view of "boy play" as rightfully they should. But they don't condone adult same-sex relations, either. These alleged "gay bars" in the Arab world are only in the imagination of the trolls. Sure, there are closeted gay Arabs out there. I met a few when I was at Syracuse University (mostly Iranians, oddly enough). They felt as long as they were "on top" it wasn't gay. People compartmentalize these things, to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
The above map shows the reality of being gay in the Arab world. Not only is it illegal in most if not all Arab countries, in many it is punishable by death. "Oh, but they haven't beheaded anyone for being gay in a long time!" the trolls argue. Nice try. The reality is, you are one step away from a jail cell at all times, and two steps away from the beheading block.
Israel is a conservative country, to say the least, and while they have not legalized gay marriage within the country, they recognize "foreign" gay marriages. And it is not illegal to be gay. Contrast this to their neighbors who proscribe anything from years of imprisonment, to 100 lashes, to death. And by the way, 100 lashes isn't some BDSM fantasy, it is often deadly as flesh is flayed to the bone. These are not nice people, so stop pretending they are.
And no, Hamas is not gay-friendly. None of the Arab world is.
So why would Iranian trolls try to persuade us otherwise? Well, as I noted in my earlier posting, a lot of "liberals" latch onto causes such as the Dali Lama or the Palestinians. Conservatives (who ironically or not-so-ironically, are often very pro-Arab and pro-Iran, provided they sell us cheap oil!) are often befuddled by this. How can you be "liberal" and at the same time support causes that are very anti-gay? And in many cases, the gays themselves, align with these causes. The poor oppressed Muslims, having the largest religion in the world, so downtrodden! We must free them from Western oppression so they can slaughter us in peace!
I know which side my bread is buttered on. And I have this distinct allergy to people who want to kill me. So I don't vote Republican and I don't lose much sleep over the oppressed Muslim majority.
But like I said, it is all just trolling, and the purpose of the posting I saw was to assuage the concerns that no doubt some liberals - and gays in particular - would have, over supporting Hamas. They want to paper-over the fact that Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization which, if they had their way, would obliterate those same supporters in the United States - supporters who are, to them, no more than useful idiots.
I am not going to lose much sleep over the fate of Hamas. The people of Gaza voted these idiots into power in 2006. There are no innocent civilians, which terrorists will be the first to admit, as they blow up a disco, behead a baby, or fly an airplane into the World Trade Center. Speaking of which, by the time this entry is posted, I no doubt assume some sort of terrorist attack on the US will already have taken place - or will shortly.
We have to stop feeling sorry for odious and primitive peoples, whose very "cultural values" involve the extinction of the West and western liberal values. You cannot negotiate with terrorists or "understand their point of view." The paradox of tolerance kicks in - you cannot tolerate intolerance.
And yes, granted, most Muslims are not terrorists, nor do they advocate terrorism. But it is scary to see how many transplanted Muslims in the Western world are not only celebrating acts of terror against Israel, but committing acts of terror in their adopted home countries.
Religious extremists of all stripes are evil. Maybe it is high time we outlawed religion? Just kidding, but it seems sometimes that religion and belief are behind most of the troubles in the world, or that belief is being weaponized by people in power to manipulate the masses into doing things against their own self-interests.
Being a martyr is not some special treat! It is a waste of your own life, and that of others.
