I actually have an answer to why it was different. It was different because the Napalm Girl photograph did not actually end the war. A year before the photo was taken, a majority of Americans already believed it had been a mistake to send troops to Vietnam.
https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/654425/vietnam-war-napalm-girl-photo-free-speech-nick-ut
https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/654425/vietnam-war-napalm-girl-photo-free-speech-nick-ut
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Kindly share my latest post. We trust you.🍉
The Palestinians are much more thoroughly demonized and scapegoated.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157216
I think an actual halt to US weapons has been so off the table no one really knows the final effects
It’s very hard for me to believe that they can be absorbed w/o either passing on costs to civilians or changing how the IDF fights
Enough to stop it? You can commit genocide with swords so not necessarily
Fuck the US, nations world wide must start imposing sanctions on Israeli society.
As an Israeli - Americans, this will will be very effective, as Israelis are used to a high quality of life.
OTOH US troop levels were greatly reduced, starting in 1969, before that photo was taken.
People heard of PLO and Hamas but not so much about Gush Emunim and Kach or the ties of current Israeli government to far right settler terrorism.
Also why the US mostly just drops bombs now.
It was also far less one sided on the casualty front than the more recent conflicts.
but I still do not want a bunch of politicians gambling with my life
or telling me to fight in an evil stupid war for colonialism.
I was young, but I remember the visceral fear and anger over the numbers of young American men being sent to fight and - too often - die in Vietnam.
When people saw “Napalm Girl” it was a hook to hang strong, pre-existing outrage on. 🫤
Much of America is still able to ignore Gaza. 😑
But the United States isn't a belligerent in Gaza.
Another major difference is that the photos of Vietnam were published in national news. The images from Gaza really only circulate on social media. Corporate media is hiding them from the public.
In the case of Israel we are not getting tired of selling them weapons. Nor feeling a lot of sympathy for ideals of the pan islamist movement that's fighting them.
That history teacher was arrested 10 years later for threatening someone with one of his many guns that he talked about in class a lot
Thich Quang Duc.
And not posting the image. Anyone that knows, or has google can find it. Or anyone that was a RATM fan in the 1990s.
Other nations have more secular language around Israeli settlers in general.
Louis Theroux's BBC docs for instance: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/louis-theroux-the-settlers/
The question of why some photographs—a tiny minority of them—DO is the relevant one here, and it's not a simple question.