In a shocking incident, horrific visuals are surfacing on the internet in which it can be seen that the Hamas militants are taking a semi-naked dead body of an Israeli woman on an open truck and parading in the city. It is said that the militants after attacking Israel are killing and taking the civilians as hostage. The militants took the dead bodies of the innocent civilians who were killed during the attack in open trucks and paraded them.
What Israel does is as you described. But can we please not use whataboutism to try and justify barbaric behavior? This is grotesque. Things done to Palestine are grotesque. Let’s just call evil things evil and not try and say “hey cause someone else did an evil this evil is okay.”
I mean I can't say I support murdering civilians, but Israel had this coming for a long time. It's not whataboutism, more just the natural consequence of Israeli policy the last 80 years.
Saying “this is almost as bad” establishes a comparison, and in the context establishes justification for this event because of the comparator. So your response to the barbarism here is a tacit justification by comparison, or taken in another view, a counter accusation. Which is definitive whataboutism: responding to an accusation with a counter accusation.
🤣. Oh look you're doing exactly what Wikipedia describes (parenthesis mine):
Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair (this is what I did), and behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be appropriate in a given geopolitical neighborhood (which is the circumstance here).[7]
(Here's where you come in):
Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism.[citation needed]
You even admit it yourself: "Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair (this is what I did)". I didn't say whether the whataboutism was fair or not, just that the definition was comparing two things. Which you've agreed with.