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.
I find it’s usually best to just avoid any social media around major and divisive news events like this. Specifically where people are allowed to comment and express their opinions. Everyone just gets more extreme in their views, are convinced they are absolutely right, and there is never any room for nuance.
I get it, but it saddens me to think how many people might be around me both irl and online that would be alright with or even happy about the death of unarmed people of all ages and genders. Or that the people on the left in particular (since that’s my camp) suddenly don’t care about sexual violence if it’s being perpetrated against someone they’ve decided deserved it or was a legitimate target because of social grievances
I get that too, but I dont think social media is really a great place to get a representative idea of how people are truly feeling about things.
A lot of social media tends to evolve into echo chambers, so not great for wider views. As mentioned too, it’s not great for nuance. While I think most people are probably capable of getting the nuance of a situation, when “discussing” things online, having to type your thoughts out into a few small paragraphs, that all just seems to get completely lost, and only the bullet points, which are often the most extreme parts, remain.
Lemmy is also seemingly filled with tankies and people that seem like they want to be edgy just to be edgy or specifically to push certain viewpoints/ideologies. And considering that it’s not a widely adopted platform, I think it’s especially not representative of people as a whole.
And of course with the anonymity of the internet, people know they can say stuff just to get other people frustrated or angry with no consequences to their own personal lives.
There are a lot of people on the left who think that they oppose things by adopting the reverse of whatever Mainstream Media says or by unironically endorsing what the right wing fear mongers about.
For example, if the Mainstream media dehumanises Palestinians, then they should dehumanise Israelis back. Opposing Israeli apartheid is not only the same as supporting Hamas but not supporting Hamas means your don’t REALLY care about Palestinian liberation.
Another example being that liberals and conservatives fear monger about how Palestianians all want to kill Israelis and anyone who supports the settler state, and so some people on the left adopt that as their actual viewpoint in order to “oppose” the right.