Squeeky clean

Still better than Trump smearing the blood of dead Palestinian civilians all over his face as a cheap replacement for his normal clown makeup

Comparing the height of an ant to the width of a hair becomes rather meaningless when you're trying to get through the second-storey window of a burning building. What you have given is the lowest possible bar, as the person they're supposedly better than is actively suborning genocide.
- While the US directly supplies weapons, funding, and openly encourages escalation against Palestine, while we threaten and extort these countries from recognizing Palestinian statehood, you claim no discernable difference between these two stances. Maybe a timeless god would see things your way but here in this shitty reality this is about as stark as the contrast gets outside of the Middle East.
- That defeatist attitude is how Trump got reelected.
  Don't let perfect become the enemy of good enough, and don't let someone else's good enough become the enemy of "it's a start."
  In the political scene, recognizing statehood is the first step, because it becomes state vs state instead of state vs its own people. It doesn't erase the atrocities that happened, but it opens a door for reparations in the future.

I really don't see the point this is trying to make. Like, would it be better if they didn't recognize it at all?

Imagine if someone punched you over and over again in the face and said, "Sorry, I'll stop." You'd be happy that they'd stopped, but you wouldn't like them or forget, especially because their friend is still currently punching you in the face.
- UK, France, Canada and Australia are all in the ICC: this mean both Hamas and Netanyahu are wanted criminals if any of these put feet on the ground of these nations.
  Netanyahu would be reasonably safe in China, Russia, USA and Hungary tho.
- This, except their friend is actually shooting your starving children, then bombing the hospital they're being kept in.
- But between stopping or not I'd definitely prefer stopping
It is RATHER FUCKING LATE. Sure, let's put together anti-poaching laws for the White Rhino after it's already extinct in the wild! Now, let's find other ways to do precisely nothing of any meaningful value while being able to claim moral superiority and that "at least we eventually did something". Now that the complete obliteration of any meaningful civilisation in the vast majority of occupied Palestine has been completed, and after god-knows-how-many thousands have died of starvation or just being shot like rabid dogs while trying to take the mangled bodies of their children to a hospital, or daring to try to pick up food. Recognising a state which is in exile is precisely as useful to actual Palestinian people as just watching and shrugging your shoulders. It's just an attempt at performative retroactive unfucking.
- We all know it's fucking late, but it makes little sense to complain when someone is finally doing the right thing.
  Better late than never.
- Thaaaaat's the negative reinforcement that'll ensure they never change their stance next time.
  That is the goal, right?
It's saying that recognizing Palestine is how you begin to wash the blood off.
- I'm pretty sure its saying they're only recognizing Palesestine to make themselves look better.
That's because you are oversimplifying things. Yes, late is bad. Yes, better late than never. Yes, views have changed over time. Yes,many politicians are cynical fuckfaces. All of that is all true. The artist is not choosing just one thing, and neither should you.
That recognition does not remove culpability from past choices.
- Yep and it still is the right step in the right direction. You didn't expect someone to come in Hollywood Style and solve everything before bed time, did you?
You can see the water underneath their hands is red as if blood is being washed off. To me that indicates the message of the cartoon is this is how you start to clean your hands. Note they still aren't clean, but it's a start
They've recognised it and that's it. No behaviour has changed as far as I know. I'm pretty sure we (Canada) are still selling weapons to Israel. What does it matter if we officially recognise Palestine as a country if we are still sending weapons to destroy it?
Yes, that seems to be the point. Remember last year when the Palestine "supporters" were constantly spamming that the best way to end the genocide would be to let Trump be elected? A lot of the people who've latched onto the Palestinian cause don't actually want to help anyone, they just want an excuse to hurt even more people.
- Tha is a pretty shallow take. Every government for the last decades has supported the subjugation of the Palestinians. While the Democrats are not as open about their complicity and might even have shown some minor support at this point in the genocide i very much doubt that the U.S. would agree under any government to steps like sanctions.
  Blaming the election on Palestine supporters is a really american centric view of the whole conflict but that is to be expected from americans.
  Maybe stop blaming and instead take ANY action you can against the fascist apartheid regime that is Israel.

Politicians from those countries are under enormous Public Opinion pressure to "do something" to Stop Israel (for example, in Britain 500 THOUSAND people demonstrated against the Genocide).

So the politicians in power do the most innefective "something" imaginable.

The simplest most surperficial reading of this is: see, they did "something" and even if small "it's a step forward" - you see a lot of posters here doing that reading.

An analysis with even just the tiniest bit of depth yields the possibility that, by choosing to do the least effective thing they could do now, they're diffusing some of that Public Opinion pressure thus delaying the time when the pressure is so big they have to do something that actually hurts Israel, like Sanctions.

If that is the case, then this action is in fact negative rather than merely meaningless or "a small step forward", because it gives Israel more time to exterminate Palestinians and steal more of their land - it means more deaths rather than fewer and a worse future (as more of them get dispossessed) rather than a better one.

Given that all these countries are still sending weapons to Israel, and the UK - which was the initiator of all this - is even running surveillance flights over Gaza and giving the info to Israel, it seems to me that the "it's a delaying action to give room for Israel to take their Final Solution further" explanation is far more likely than the idea that this is being done with a genuine intent of helping Palestinians.

Exactly. As someone from the UK, I find it nothing more than placating to public pressure, but don’t get it twisted we are still selling them weapons and running recon flights for Israel to then murder people.
Can't they just nuke Israel?
That would count as doing something
- Unfortunately there are good people there, not just nazis. and I haven't heard of a bomb that discriminates yet

I think this is at least a good step 1, albeit insanely late, but it needs to be followed with sustained action and reparations. If they use this as a marketing tool like the pessimist in me is expecting, then it’s meaningless bullshit. No amount of recognition will wash the blood off of their hands.

Nothing will wash the blood off. The goal is to not get more on to them.
We need sanctions against Israel like yesterday. Their fascist government won't budge until there is real financial pressure.
You're making the positive assumption that the intentions behind thisare to start improving the situation of the Palestinians.
Another just a likely (maybe even more likely, given that all these countries still send weapons to Israel) possibility is that this is the lowest impact thing that they could do that woulf lessen the massive pressure of the Public Opinion in those countries to Stop Israel, thus delaying them having to enact effective measures. In other words, it's a delaying action so that Israel can exterminate more of the Palestinian population and steal more of their land before they actually have to stop.
Doing something pretty much purely performative to delay effective actions to stop Israel is actually a bad thing rather than a good thing.

They figure the job's close enough to done that they can flip to the "right side of history" without affecting the outcome

Clearly, it would be better if they didn't do anything, right?
- I get that this seems positive, and it could be, unless the thing they're doing is purely performative, actively distracting from any steps they are still taking to support the genocide, since this is nothing but words. There are many explanations already here about how there is no actual meaningful action here, and that at this juncture, this move is, at best, a net neutral with no meaningful effect on the genocide and, at worst, a net negative, serving only to distract and pacify welling criticism of these governments for their complicity in the continuing genocide while the band plays on.

Americans can shove their opinions after they let Nazis who openly declared they'd flatten Gaza to take power.

Power? No no no, they wanna build a hotel...or Vegas? Sin! they wanna build a monument to sin....on corpses
Edit: typo...fat fingers
- Not like they didn't build a whole country on it.

Why is France written in Comic Sans?

Because OOP intended these to be sets of 2 hands therefore 1 country per two. OP added France.

Some people will complain they're catching flak for doing the right thing. That's why nobody does it etc.

But that's the point. If you're really honest with yourself you take your licks and own up for what you did wrong. People are gonna give you a hard time for it.

The alternative is not doing it.

Seems like whether anyone does it or not, its all wrong.

It's setting the stage. It doesn't do much on it's own but if you recognize them as a state rather than just some people it gives leverage to use more diplomatic tools.

How much difference will it actually make? No idea.

You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Should they take no positive steps?

Imagine someone robs your house, causes untold damage, takes all your valuables and shoots your wife, your child, and your dog.
The robbers voluntarily give back the clock you had on the mantelpiece and $20, claiming they feel bad. You get nothing else but those things. The clock is blood-spattered and cracked. But hey, that $20 counts for something, right?
- Would you rather they kept it?
  This is frankly baffling. Nobody is saying this should be the only thing to be done. Just that it's a good thing. Is it not a good thing?

Better than refusing to recognize Palestine.

Not in the eyes of a lot of people on Lemmy.

Would people prefer no recognition?

They would prefer those recognized that Israel is committing genocide.
- Right but between recognizing Palestine or not recognizing Palestine, wouldn't recognizing it be better?
They would prefer an end to the genocide. Telling someone "they exist" doesn't stop their execution.
- So do you mean by that that no preference on whether Palestine is recognized?
Exactly it has to start somewhere, better than no action at all
The issue is that its the absolute minimum they could do, while still selling them weapons and running recon. I mean, its not that hard. We all know what genocide looks like. We have parades every year for the men and women who fought against those who would and did do genocide on others. But for reason we are sitting and watching it happen again, and again, and being like "nah, it'll be fine.". But 25000 dead kids later, and its not fine. Its pretty fucking far from fine.
And all of this for what? So some utter cunt in Israel and his nazi cronies can hold on to power? We are supposed to be better than that. We might not be perfect, we might have our own issues that need serious work. But propping up a fucking nazi regime, while actively does genocide in full view of the world?
Absolute zero balls on any world leaders today. There all absolute pussies, who cant even say the simple truth we all know. Disgusting.
I think people are glossing over the underlying act of defiance that this recognition also implies. These countries are also saying 'we are starting to break the lockstep with the US' and that is just as significant.
Let's recognize Mare Imbrium next, looks about the same now.

It's been clearly photoshopped. There was something else instead of France. You should really respect the original author's work

link to the original comic? OP clearly, badly, photoshop'd this one and it's clear OP is from the country they replaced with France.

The France hand looks like the counter part to Australia, the others also have two hand per country. So nothing was replaced, just added

"Out, damned spot! ... What, will these hands ne'er be clean?"

What's with the arm for France? It's clearly labeled in a different way than everything else in the picture.

Hmm, good point. Odd.

Recognition of a Palestinian state can only be meaningful if it includes a 2 state solution where Palestine and Israel swap their current claims to land and infrastructure.

Better than Denmark waiting for: All the hostages returned, Hamas completely out of power, and all weapons gone from Palestinians. I.e. for the genocide to be completed.

They are all corrupted by members of the new world Mafia. And all those that think they can participate in the false hopeful progressive government that exists for humanity is just naive and used... Because that never existed.