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I'm not sure this really belongs in the dunk tank and it's incredibly annoying to me when people post things that they haven't read/watched.
I'll start with the bad things about the video. He spends like a minute talking about a video of hamsters, but thankfully he didn't make any sexual jokes about the hamsters. He usually makes some joke which sexualizes animals or references furry porn in every video. He also talks about a bag that was removed from amazon because it said "Merry Ham-mas!", just like some shitty Christmas merchandise that was supposed to pair the words "Ham" and "Christmas", people confused it with Hamas.
He also explicitly says that he's not going into the history of the region. He says that he won't talk about the holocaust or the nakba or how Palestinians became displaced in Gaza and the west bank. I think this would have been important information for american liberals. He tells the audience to google it.
He mentions the 1200 Israelis who were killed on October 7 and he says that 11000 Palestinians were killed by Israel since October 7. It feels like he spends more time saying that Israeli citizens have suffered but then he says that Palestinians have suffered twice as much as Israelis have.
He makes the claim that neither Hamas or Netanyahu represent the interests of their civilian populations. He says that Hamas was elected in 2006 and that was before like 50% of Gazan civilians were even born. Then he says that 76% of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign according to some poll. He says that Netanyahu gave cash funding to Hamas in the past. He talks about How Netanyahu incited the assassination of his political opponent Rabin, to become elected. He says Netanyahu has always been "hard right" politically.
He then puts blame on the United States. He calls the US the 3rd party involved in the conflicts and says that the US gives the Israeli military almost $4 billion every year.
He talks about the inhumane living conditions forced on Gaza by Israel and plays clips of Israeli officials denying that the conditions are inhumane. He says that Israel is downplaying the suffering that they are inflicting. He plays interviews with Gazan children who have been victims of Israel attacks. This footage I think will be especially powerful to evoking some empathy out of liberals. Seeing the Gazan children suffering is really sad.
At the end of the video, he says that Biden and Trudeau are refusing to call for a ceasefire. He says that continuing the bombs will create more extremist. He says we need peace and ends the video by saying that Israelis and Palestinians have to talk out their differences.
I think overall it is not bad. It's mid. It's going to show his audience some of the many atrocities that Israel has committed. He does do somewhat do a "both sides" narrative, but he also says that Israel is twice as bad.
I think it would have been better if he went into the history of the Israel occupation. Historical analysis is always important.
My biggest criticism is that the ending of the video is very weak. Usually when John Oliver makes segments, he finishes them with like a big surprise ending. When he made a video about how companies would resell medical debt to debt collecting agencies, he announces that he bought a bunch of medical debt and then forgave it, pennies on the dollar. I would have expected John to tell his audience to donate to Palestinian relief fund or to pressure their government representatives to call for a ceasefire. He just says that Palestinians and Israelis just need to sit down and talk it out. This is really disgusting because in this conflict, Israel has all of the power and Palestine has nothing, Israel is clearly the aggressor. An oppressed people can not simply "talk it out" with their oppressors.
