"quoting one of them who included in his apartheid accusation a forthright stipulation that what Hamas did on Oct. 7 was a crime against humanity"
Why must it be included in the same statement?
I didn't say it must be included in the same statement; people who say it can freely choose to include or not include whatever they please. But people's choices are evidence of their psychology. Someone including it in the same statement is what it would take to provide empirical evidence for ld's contention. Likewise, it must not be included in the same statement in order for the accusation to serve its apparent intended purpose, which is to propagate the misrepresentation that the relation of the Israelis to the Palestinians is the same as the relation of the Afrikaaners to the black South Africans -- i.e., a one-way oppressor-oppressed relation -- as opposed to the two-way mutual-oppression relation the Israelis and Palestinians in fact have with each other. Every time yet another person makes the accusation without the stipulation, it adds more empirical evidence to the already overflowing pile in favor of the hypothesis that the intended purpose is exactly what it appears to be.
What definition of the term 'oppression' do you use, and how do you decide who is oppressing whom?
You want to bandy words over technicalities about the definition of "oppression"? Seriously? Does it also depend on what the definition of "is" is? I define "oppression" by common usage and I decide who is oppressing whom by common sense.
I want to understand what you mean.
The term oppression is used to indicate an exercise of unjust and abusive power or authority by one person or group over another. It is not used to indicate mutual hostilities between parties.
I believe you are using it as an appeal to emotion but I recognize you might be saying something else.
So you tell me. If somebody raped you would you feel oppressed? If somebody kidnapped you would you feel oppressed? If somebody knifed you on a bus or wounded you with a roadside bomb would you feel oppressed? If over the course of your life somebody murdered half a dozen people you cared about would you feel oppressed? If somebody murdered you would you spend your last dying minutes thinking about what some third party had done to him that he felt you were a fitting revenge-by-proxy for, or would you spend them thinking about what he was doing to you?
If the person who raped or kidnapped me was an authority figure of some sort, like a police officer or county commissioner, and I had no recourse to justice as was the case for black women living in the South during the Jim Crow era, then yes, I would feel oppressed. Likewise, if people I loved were being threatened or murdered by authority figures like police officers or by vigilantes protected by authority figures (the KKK comes to mind, but the Oath Keepers run a close second), then I would feel oppressed. Once again, it would be people with some authority in society doing it which would make it oppression.
If the person(s) doing the raping, kidnapping, or murdering was some random asshole or I was not living under an unjust system that protected the abuser, then I would feel threatened, endangered, attacked, or something similar. Some Feminists of my generation argued that sexism in our society made all men oppressors but I never fully agreed with that stance even though I could see their reasons for saying so.
Warring states do not oppress each other.
The victors in a war might oppress the people they have defeated depending on how much control they want to have over their daily lives.
Terrorists are not oppressors unless they succeed in their cause and seize power and authority over their enemies, in which case they almost certainly will be oppressors.
Governments, especially the ones that have control over the lives of people they do not recognize as citizens or full members of society, can be very oppressive.
