Professor Dave goes off on Destiny and Israel 🇮🇱

[ZeldaStar]

Leo's sharing some gold nuggets balanced perspective here. Whatever side you are on, if you wanna actually resolve the conflict, it sounds like you would be wise to learn more on the other side's perspective. You would literally have the same opinion as those people you argue with if you shared their experiences. 

Edited Sunday at 02:26 AM by ZeldaStar

[Karmadhi]

On 9/5/2026 at 7:49 AM, Heaven said:

@Leo Gura Can you explain why there is so much hate towards Israelis and not Russians?

I can give you my 2 cents from discussing with many people about it

1. Israel is fairly democratic while Russia is not. This means that when Russia government does bad actions, the population seems to be excluded, it is just the dicator fault. In a more democratic place, the citizens bear responsability a lot more because they do not seem to protest or do much to stop it

2. The sentiment and rhetoric coming out of normal Israelis in interviews is usually a lot more genocidal and disturbing. In the case of Russians, they usually say "it is bad but what can we do". Israelis seem to be supporting the killing of Palestinians a lot more. Polls in Israel show that and they are trusted more than Russian polls which can be viewed as government propaganda. I have been told for example by a Russian I met once that most young Russians oppose the war, same cannot be said for most young Israelis.

3. The footage of dead and injured civilians, especially kids coming out of Gaza is NR 1 reason for the outrage imo. There is simply not the same footage coming out of Ukraine, especially if you are not in very specialized telegram chats, meanwhile about Gaza it exploded in popular platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok

4. The numbers for Gaza are much worse. Over 21.000 childreen killed compared to 700 or so in Ukraine.

At least 50.000 civilians killed in Gaza when in Ukraine it is around 16.000. Note that Ukraine has a much higher population which means that proportionally, Gaza is way worse in terms of civilian losses.

I checked for example the life expectancy in Gaza has almost half since the conflict began while it has barely moved for Ukraine. Basically "Russians are bad but Israelis are way more inhuman" is the sentiment I heard from MANY people.

5. The conditions of life for civilans in Gaza is a lot worse.

Famine, no anesthesia in hospitals, no safe place to go. Hundreds getting shot to receive some basic aid.

In Ukraine life goes on.

A friend of mine told me once "I can go to Ukraine and have the best time of my life".

People still have fairly normal lives, go to school, party or go to work. And people evacuate when the war reaches their city. 

If you did a poll I am sure 99% of the voters would prefer to be a civilian in Ukraine than Gaza if they had to pick.

These are some reasons.

Now you may rightly say, "what would Russia have done if it was attacked the same way"

The thing is that, people do not go with those "what if" scenarios

They go with what has actually happened, they go with the current situation.

They see what happened to Gaza and Ukraine and compare with the outcome only.

Also, to be fair there was a gigantic bad terrorist attack in Moscow in 2024 killing close to 200 civilians in Russia and I did not see Russia go apeshit and start carpet bombing Uzbekistan or Syria or whoever was responsible for it. Even if you would say "they blamed Ukraine", it did not really change the strategy used. They did not suddendly become worse. They brushed it aside.

If a similar attack had happened in American soil, they would have went out for blood 100%.

Another counter-argument you may have is that "Ukraine overall has lost more people than Gaza"

That is true I would say.

However, you need to understand that people do not put the same value in life lost of soldiers compared to civilians, especially childreen.

Soldiers dying is seen as a tragedy of war and not avoidable

However, civilian deaths especially in the way Israel does it is seen as simple bruality and avoidable

Especially childreen

The number 1 insult that people give Israelis these days is "baby or child killer"

In Ukraine 90% of losses are soldiers, so such sentiment is not held

And it is the idea of killing kids which gives people the most outrage and anger.

Edited Monday at 12:45 PM by Karmadhi