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NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. |
On October 13 2023 18:15 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 15:42 maybenexttime wrote:On October 13 2023 08:38 WombaT wrote:On October 13 2023 08:32 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 02:24 Mohdoo wrote:On October 13 2023 01:58 Nebuchad wrote:
The framing of "we have to let Israel defend itself" contains the idea that Palestinians aren't people. Meaning any time the number of enemies killed exceeds the number of allies saved, the choice is unethical? You're saying it is fundamentally dehumanizing for anyone to decide to kill more for the sake of saving less? 10 terrorists holding someone hostage, killing those 10 terrorists to save the hostage is unethical? The correct decision is to let the hostage die to save the lives of the terrorists? Notice how none of your questions have any connexion with defending yourself. When deciding if something is self-defense you don't look at how many innocents were killed and whether a quota was met or not, that's not what defending yourself means. In non-fucked up countries you can also kill someone who was actually in the process of attacking you and that death might still not be self-defense, but my understanding is that the US needs a little more time to think about this one. In the future there will be more attacks by Hamas, and Israeli children are going to die. We're feeling bad about this, because it is wrong for innocent civilians to suffer and die. They're humanized. Then, in an attempt to stop this from happening, we are supposed to be absolutely okay with Palestinian children dying (as long as it doesn't go above some number, apparently). Those deaths are not in a hypothetical future we're trying to avoid, those deaths are right now. But those deaths are acceptable. The only way for this to make sense is if some lives have more value than others, and this is why you require Palestinians to not be people in this framing. This is sadly a common view, and it's the view of everyone with political power in Europe and in the US at the moment. This is why every other statement from a politician in the last few days reads "The killing of civilians is never acceptable and that's why we must stand with Israel as it drops appartment blocks on children." The ones from the UK are particularly interesting because unlike US journalists, UK journalists sometimes ask questions to UK politicians, such as "What's up with the civilians in Gaza", and we get answers like the one from that ghoul Cleverly who basically gave the green light for genocide and then said he felt bad for the victims. Also had a french example that I find worth mentioning, France had a row of debate around the 40 decapitated babies that ended up probably not being 40 decapitated babies. So you can find a bunch of tweets like, "Are we really having a debate around which method is used to assassinate babies?", and that's viewed as disgusting behavior, it doesn't matter how the babies are killed. One of the people who spent a lot of time talking about the inhumanity of killing babies is Raphael Enthoven, a clown thinker for clowns. Enthoven also believes that there is a massive difference between collateral damage and Hamas' terrorism. So he and his ilk hold both that it doesn't matter how you kill babies (you monster how dare you), and that collateral damage, which given the demographics of Gaza is guaranteed to kill babies, is okay. It is important to understand that those two views are not contradicting each other, because you have to be a human to be a baby, and Palestinians are not. So in this framing Palestinians aren't people, but I wouldn't be doing my job correctly if I didn't also mention that the framing is wrong. Israel is not just trying to defend itself. Israel is trying to eliminate Palestine and take that land for itself. If you analyze the violence of the Israel Palestine conflict systemically, there is the constant violence of the status quo, with Israel doing settlements, killing the occasional Palestinian, closing their water sources, annexing their land, and the blockade of Gaza on top of that. That violence doesn't even make the news most of the time, cause to the rest of the world it's just the natural state of Israel/Palestine. Then sometimes Palestine decides to do something in response to that unjust order of things. In 2019 it was something peaceful, today it was something violent. Either way it was met with repression. So we have violence 1 by Israel, in response of which violence 2 by Palestinians happen, and then retaliatory violence 3, more violent than violence 1, by Israel again. Violence 2 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 3, and violence 1 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 2. But the playing field is slanted because the goal of Israel is violence 1 (as opposed to no violence) and violence 3 helps achieving that goal (by accelerating the rate of the elimination of Palestinians). This is why you can find Netanyahu talking to Likud about how Hamas is good for them because it ensures Palestine can never credibly form a state (or something to that effect, I can't be bothered to look up the exact quote), for example. You can say that to Likud but of course you're not allowed to say that internationally, so instead you talk only of violence 2 and 3, and Israel is just defending itself, and then the international debate is about whether Israel's self-defense is proportionate or not. The argument happens on a flawed basis. Excellent fucking post sir. I was ‘pleased’ to see Keir Starmer roundly condemn Hamas atrocity the other day, but refuse to condemn Israeli counter action, with a lovely swerve into ‘as long as they don’t commit war crimes’ Which apparently cutting off supplies to the Gaza Strip doesn’t count as, real inspiring stuff from the current Labour leadership. Thank god they’ve excised those ‘anti Semites’ eh? No, it's not an excellent post. It's a bad faith argument. There is a clear difference between targeting civilians deliberately and targeting terrorists while accepting there will be civilian casualties in the process. You may think it is inhumane but nowhere does this reasoning deny the fact that Palestinians are people. Then the method that you use to kill babies absolutely does matter.
Yeah, it does. I think most people agree that there are differences, for example, between killing in cold blood, manslaughter and any version of the trolley problem you can think of. The people you cited, on the other hand, seem to argue that it doesn’t really matter if the 40 kids were beheaded or if half of them were stabbed and burned instead, which is a reasonable argument.
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On October 13 2023 19:01 Elroi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 18:15 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 15:42 maybenexttime wrote:On October 13 2023 08:38 WombaT wrote:On October 13 2023 08:32 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 02:24 Mohdoo wrote:On October 13 2023 01:58 Nebuchad wrote:
The framing of "we have to let Israel defend itself" contains the idea that Palestinians aren't people. Meaning any time the number of enemies killed exceeds the number of allies saved, the choice is unethical? You're saying it is fundamentally dehumanizing for anyone to decide to kill more for the sake of saving less? 10 terrorists holding someone hostage, killing those 10 terrorists to save the hostage is unethical? The correct decision is to let the hostage die to save the lives of the terrorists? Notice how none of your questions have any connexion with defending yourself. When deciding if something is self-defense you don't look at how many innocents were killed and whether a quota was met or not, that's not what defending yourself means. In non-fucked up countries you can also kill someone who was actually in the process of attacking you and that death might still not be self-defense, but my understanding is that the US needs a little more time to think about this one. In the future there will be more attacks by Hamas, and Israeli children are going to die. We're feeling bad about this, because it is wrong for innocent civilians to suffer and die. They're humanized. Then, in an attempt to stop this from happening, we are supposed to be absolutely okay with Palestinian children dying (as long as it doesn't go above some number, apparently). Those deaths are not in a hypothetical future we're trying to avoid, those deaths are right now. But those deaths are acceptable. The only way for this to make sense is if some lives have more value than others, and this is why you require Palestinians to not be people in this framing. This is sadly a common view, and it's the view of everyone with political power in Europe and in the US at the moment. This is why every other statement from a politician in the last few days reads "The killing of civilians is never acceptable and that's why we must stand with Israel as it drops appartment blocks on children." The ones from the UK are particularly interesting because unlike US journalists, UK journalists sometimes ask questions to UK politicians, such as "What's up with the civilians in Gaza", and we get answers like the one from that ghoul Cleverly who basically gave the green light for genocide and then said he felt bad for the victims. Also had a french example that I find worth mentioning, France had a row of debate around the 40 decapitated babies that ended up probably not being 40 decapitated babies. So you can find a bunch of tweets like, "Are we really having a debate around which method is used to assassinate babies?", and that's viewed as disgusting behavior, it doesn't matter how the babies are killed. One of the people who spent a lot of time talking about the inhumanity of killing babies is Raphael Enthoven, a clown thinker for clowns. Enthoven also believes that there is a massive difference between collateral damage and Hamas' terrorism. So he and his ilk hold both that it doesn't matter how you kill babies (you monster how dare you), and that collateral damage, which given the demographics of Gaza is guaranteed to kill babies, is okay. It is important to understand that those two views are not contradicting each other, because you have to be a human to be a baby, and Palestinians are not. So in this framing Palestinians aren't people, but I wouldn't be doing my job correctly if I didn't also mention that the framing is wrong. Israel is not just trying to defend itself. Israel is trying to eliminate Palestine and take that land for itself. If you analyze the violence of the Israel Palestine conflict systemically, there is the constant violence of the status quo, with Israel doing settlements, killing the occasional Palestinian, closing their water sources, annexing their land, and the blockade of Gaza on top of that. That violence doesn't even make the news most of the time, cause to the rest of the world it's just the natural state of Israel/Palestine. Then sometimes Palestine decides to do something in response to that unjust order of things. In 2019 it was something peaceful, today it was something violent. Either way it was met with repression. So we have violence 1 by Israel, in response of which violence 2 by Palestinians happen, and then retaliatory violence 3, more violent than violence 1, by Israel again. Violence 2 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 3, and violence 1 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 2. But the playing field is slanted because the goal of Israel is violence 1 (as opposed to no violence) and violence 3 helps achieving that goal (by accelerating the rate of the elimination of Palestinians). This is why you can find Netanyahu talking to Likud about how Hamas is good for them because it ensures Palestine can never credibly form a state (or something to that effect, I can't be bothered to look up the exact quote), for example. You can say that to Likud but of course you're not allowed to say that internationally, so instead you talk only of violence 2 and 3, and Israel is just defending itself, and then the international debate is about whether Israel's self-defense is proportionate or not. The argument happens on a flawed basis. Excellent fucking post sir. I was ‘pleased’ to see Keir Starmer roundly condemn Hamas atrocity the other day, but refuse to condemn Israeli counter action, with a lovely swerve into ‘as long as they don’t commit war crimes’ Which apparently cutting off supplies to the Gaza Strip doesn’t count as, real inspiring stuff from the current Labour leadership. Thank god they’ve excised those ‘anti Semites’ eh? No, it's not an excellent post. It's a bad faith argument. There is a clear difference between targeting civilians deliberately and targeting terrorists while accepting there will be civilian casualties in the process. You may think it is inhumane but nowhere does this reasoning deny the fact that Palestinians are people. Then the method that you use to kill babies absolutely does matter. Yeah, it does. I think most people agree that there are differences, for example, between killing in cold blood, manslaughter and any version of the trolley problem you can think of. The people you cited seem to argue that it doesn’t really matter if the 40 kids were beheaded or if half of them were stabbed and burned instead.
The notion that if Hamas had access to better weaponry and started targeting some military center in Tel-Aviv, causing civilian casualties, these people's reaction (and yours) would change because it's collateral damage, is absurd.
Collateral damage is nothing like manslaughter, which by the way is also a crime. Everyone involved in this decision has a functioning brain, we know how bombs work, we know that they kill people. We're not clumsily bombing and woopsie we happen to hit civilians, we're deliberately targeting civilian buildings, possibly with white phosphorous it turns out, while posting video of those buildings being destroyed for everyone to cheer, talking about how every building in Gaza will be leveled and the human animals that live there will have to live in tents.
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@Nebuchad
What would be your suggestion on how Israel should react to this recent attack?
Not going into history, just here and now. This attack happened, Israel needs to react/retaliate.
What would be a proper meaningful retaliation in your opinion?
Everyone agrees that this is terrible, few to no people suggested what exactly should be done instead.
"something but not this" doesn't count, of course.
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On October 13 2023 19:17 ZeroByte13 wrote:
@Nebuchad
What would be your suggestion on how Israel should react to this recent attack?
Not going into history, just here and now. This attack happened, Israel needs to react/retaliate.
What would be a proper meaningful retaliation in your opinion?
They should invade Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as possible, including in the West Bank. They should be careful to do so in the least obvious way possible so that the rest of the world can still look in the mirror when they say Israel is defending itself.
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I hope we all agree that there's a difference between thinking baby killing is a necessary evil vs thinking baby killing is an unnecessary good. I'd imagine that every war with explosive weapons has led to babies being killed, it's still useful to acknowledge the difference in wickedness between that and thinking "oh wonderful, a nursery with 40 babies we get to kill." Pretending it's a wash because babies die either way is disingenuous at best.
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On October 13 2023 19:20 Nebuchad wrote:
They should invade Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as possible, including in the West Bank. They should be careful to do so in the least obvious way possible so that the rest of the world can still look in the mirror when they say Israel is defending itself. But if you were serious, what do you think Israel should do right now after this attack?
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On October 13 2023 19:25 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:20 Nebuchad wrote:
They should invade Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as possible, including in the West Bank. They should be careful to do so in the least obvious way possible so that the rest of the world can still look in the mirror when they say Israel is defending itself. But if you're being serious? What do you think Israel should doright now after this attack?
I'm being serious, this is what Israel should do given their endgoal (and that's why they'll do it). It's not what I would do, but that's not how you worded your question.
Edit: actually no I think that's what I would do as well, probably, given the hypothetical you presented. Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers.
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On October 13 2023 19:13 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:01 Elroi wrote:On October 13 2023 18:15 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 15:42 maybenexttime wrote:On October 13 2023 08:38 WombaT wrote:On October 13 2023 08:32 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 02:24 Mohdoo wrote:On October 13 2023 01:58 Nebuchad wrote:
The framing of "we have to let Israel defend itself" contains the idea that Palestinians aren't people. Meaning any time the number of enemies killed exceeds the number of allies saved, the choice is unethical? You're saying it is fundamentally dehumanizing for anyone to decide to kill more for the sake of saving less? 10 terrorists holding someone hostage, killing those 10 terrorists to save the hostage is unethical? The correct decision is to let the hostage die to save the lives of the terrorists? Notice how none of your questions have any connexion with defending yourself. When deciding if something is self-defense you don't look at how many innocents were killed and whether a quota was met or not, that's not what defending yourself means. In non-fucked up countries you can also kill someone who was actually in the process of attacking you and that death might still not be self-defense, but my understanding is that the US needs a little more time to think about this one. In the future there will be more attacks by Hamas, and Israeli children are going to die. We're feeling bad about this, because it is wrong for innocent civilians to suffer and die. They're humanized. Then, in an attempt to stop this from happening, we are supposed to be absolutely okay with Palestinian children dying (as long as it doesn't go above some number, apparently). Those deaths are not in a hypothetical future we're trying to avoid, those deaths are right now. But those deaths are acceptable. The only way for this to make sense is if some lives have more value than others, and this is why you require Palestinians to not be people in this framing. This is sadly a common view, and it's the view of everyone with political power in Europe and in the US at the moment. This is why every other statement from a politician in the last few days reads "The killing of civilians is never acceptable and that's why we must stand with Israel as it drops appartment blocks on children." The ones from the UK are particularly interesting because unlike US journalists, UK journalists sometimes ask questions to UK politicians, such as "What's up with the civilians in Gaza", and we get answers like the one from that ghoul Cleverly who basically gave the green light for genocide and then said he felt bad for the victims. Also had a french example that I find worth mentioning, France had a row of debate around the 40 decapitated babies that ended up probably not being 40 decapitated babies. So you can find a bunch of tweets like, "Are we really having a debate around which method is used to assassinate babies?", and that's viewed as disgusting behavior, it doesn't matter how the babies are killed. One of the people who spent a lot of time talking about the inhumanity of killing babies is Raphael Enthoven, a clown thinker for clowns. Enthoven also believes that there is a massive difference between collateral damage and Hamas' terrorism. So he and his ilk hold both that it doesn't matter how you kill babies (you monster how dare you), and that collateral damage, which given the demographics of Gaza is guaranteed to kill babies, is okay. It is important to understand that those two views are not contradicting each other, because you have to be a human to be a baby, and Palestinians are not. So in this framing Palestinians aren't people, but I wouldn't be doing my job correctly if I didn't also mention that the framing is wrong. Israel is not just trying to defend itself. Israel is trying to eliminate Palestine and take that land for itself. If you analyze the violence of the Israel Palestine conflict systemically, there is the constant violence of the status quo, with Israel doing settlements, killing the occasional Palestinian, closing their water sources, annexing their land, and the blockade of Gaza on top of that. That violence doesn't even make the news most of the time, cause to the rest of the world it's just the natural state of Israel/Palestine. Then sometimes Palestine decides to do something in response to that unjust order of things. In 2019 it was something peaceful, today it was something violent. Either way it was met with repression. So we have violence 1 by Israel, in response of which violence 2 by Palestinians happen, and then retaliatory violence 3, more violent than violence 1, by Israel again. Violence 2 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 3, and violence 1 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 2. But the playing field is slanted because the goal of Israel is violence 1 (as opposed to no violence) and violence 3 helps achieving that goal (by accelerating the rate of the elimination of Palestinians). This is why you can find Netanyahu talking to Likud about how Hamas is good for them because it ensures Palestine can never credibly form a state (or something to that effect, I can't be bothered to look up the exact quote), for example. You can say that to Likud but of course you're not allowed to say that internationally, so instead you talk only of violence 2 and 3, and Israel is just defending itself, and then the international debate is about whether Israel's self-defense is proportionate or not. The argument happens on a flawed basis. Excellent fucking post sir. I was ‘pleased’ to see Keir Starmer roundly condemn Hamas atrocity the other day, but refuse to condemn Israeli counter action, with a lovely swerve into ‘as long as they don’t commit war crimes’ Which apparently cutting off supplies to the Gaza Strip doesn’t count as, real inspiring stuff from the current Labour leadership. Thank god they’ve excised those ‘anti Semites’ eh? No, it's not an excellent post. It's a bad faith argument. There is a clear difference between targeting civilians deliberately and targeting terrorists while accepting there will be civilian casualties in the process. You may think it is inhumane but nowhere does this reasoning deny the fact that Palestinians are people. Then the method that you use to kill babies absolutely does matter. Yeah, it does. I think most people agree that there are differences, for example, between killing in cold blood, manslaughter and any version of the trolley problem you can think of. The people you cited seem to argue that it doesn’t really matter if the 40 kids were beheaded or if half of them were stabbed and burned instead. The notion that if Hamas had access to better weaponry and started targeting some military center in Tel-Aviv, causing civilian casualties, these people's reaction (and yours) would change because it's collateral damage, is absurd.
I can only speak for myself and for me it would absolutely matter a lot. The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the post you responded to so I'm not going to comment on it.
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On October 13 2023 19:17 ZeroByte13 wrote:
@Nebuchad
What would be your suggestion on how Israel should react to this recent attack?
Not going into history, just here and now. This attack happened, Israel needs to react/retaliate.
What would be a proper meaningful retaliation in your opinion?
Everyone agrees that this is terrible, few to no people suggested what exactly should be done instead.
"something but not this" doesn't count, of course.
What Israel should do is infiltrate Hamas, find their leaders -- not the low rank grunts on the ground but the actual big boys procuring funding and making decisions -- and take them out. While at it, maybe start going after folks who cooperate with said Hamas leaders, too. Figure out ways to make bringing weapons into Gaza strip more difficult maybe, they won't be able to stop it entirely I'm sure but certainly can do a better job than has been done so far.
What they also should do, is figure out a way for people in the Gaza strip to find a better life. Invest into education, create some kind of immigration program for those willing to relocate and do meaningful work elsewhere. Give people some hope for their future and the future of their children.
What they absolutely should not be doing, is exacting blood for blood vengeance. What they are doing right now is not 'protecting' Israeli people, it's radicalizing way more folks than their bombs are killing and unless they are going to literally slaughter every single Palestinian, none of their actions so far have done anything to make Israel safer.
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On October 13 2023 19:44 Elroi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:13 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 19:01 Elroi wrote:On October 13 2023 18:15 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 15:42 maybenexttime wrote:On October 13 2023 08:38 WombaT wrote:On October 13 2023 08:32 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 02:24 Mohdoo wrote:On October 13 2023 01:58 Nebuchad wrote:
The framing of "we have to let Israel defend itself" contains the idea that Palestinians aren't people. Meaning any time the number of enemies killed exceeds the number of allies saved, the choice is unethical? You're saying it is fundamentally dehumanizing for anyone to decide to kill more for the sake of saving less? 10 terrorists holding someone hostage, killing those 10 terrorists to save the hostage is unethical? The correct decision is to let the hostage die to save the lives of the terrorists? Notice how none of your questions have any connexion with defending yourself. When deciding if something is self-defense you don't look at how many innocents were killed and whether a quota was met or not, that's not what defending yourself means. In non-fucked up countries you can also kill someone who was actually in the process of attacking you and that death might still not be self-defense, but my understanding is that the US needs a little more time to think about this one. In the future there will be more attacks by Hamas, and Israeli children are going to die. We're feeling bad about this, because it is wrong for innocent civilians to suffer and die. They're humanized. Then, in an attempt to stop this from happening, we are supposed to be absolutely okay with Palestinian children dying (as long as it doesn't go above some number, apparently). Those deaths are not in a hypothetical future we're trying to avoid, those deaths are right now. But those deaths are acceptable. The only way for this to make sense is if some lives have more value than others, and this is why you require Palestinians to not be people in this framing. This is sadly a common view, and it's the view of everyone with political power in Europe and in the US at the moment. This is why every other statement from a politician in the last few days reads "The killing of civilians is never acceptable and that's why we must stand with Israel as it drops appartment blocks on children." The ones from the UK are particularly interesting because unlike US journalists, UK journalists sometimes ask questions to UK politicians, such as "What's up with the civilians in Gaza", and we get answers like the one from that ghoul Cleverly who basically gave the green light for genocide and then said he felt bad for the victims. Also had a french example that I find worth mentioning, France had a row of debate around the 40 decapitated babies that ended up probably not being 40 decapitated babies. So you can find a bunch of tweets like, "Are we really having a debate around which method is used to assassinate babies?", and that's viewed as disgusting behavior, it doesn't matter how the babies are killed. One of the people who spent a lot of time talking about the inhumanity of killing babies is Raphael Enthoven, a clown thinker for clowns. Enthoven also believes that there is a massive difference between collateral damage and Hamas' terrorism. So he and his ilk hold both that it doesn't matter how you kill babies (you monster how dare you), and that collateral damage, which given the demographics of Gaza is guaranteed to kill babies, is okay. It is important to understand that those two views are not contradicting each other, because you have to be a human to be a baby, and Palestinians are not. So in this framing Palestinians aren't people, but I wouldn't be doing my job correctly if I didn't also mention that the framing is wrong. Israel is not just trying to defend itself. Israel is trying to eliminate Palestine and take that land for itself. If you analyze the violence of the Israel Palestine conflict systemically, there is the constant violence of the status quo, with Israel doing settlements, killing the occasional Palestinian, closing their water sources, annexing their land, and the blockade of Gaza on top of that. That violence doesn't even make the news most of the time, cause to the rest of the world it's just the natural state of Israel/Palestine. Then sometimes Palestine decides to do something in response to that unjust order of things. In 2019 it was something peaceful, today it was something violent. Either way it was met with repression. So we have violence 1 by Israel, in response of which violence 2 by Palestinians happen, and then retaliatory violence 3, more violent than violence 1, by Israel again. Violence 2 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 3, and violence 1 will always serve as a justification for the war crimes of violence 2. But the playing field is slanted because the goal of Israel is violence 1 (as opposed to no violence) and violence 3 helps achieving that goal (by accelerating the rate of the elimination of Palestinians). This is why you can find Netanyahu talking to Likud about how Hamas is good for them because it ensures Palestine can never credibly form a state (or something to that effect, I can't be bothered to look up the exact quote), for example. You can say that to Likud but of course you're not allowed to say that internationally, so instead you talk only of violence 2 and 3, and Israel is just defending itself, and then the international debate is about whether Israel's self-defense is proportionate or not. The argument happens on a flawed basis. Excellent fucking post sir. I was ‘pleased’ to see Keir Starmer roundly condemn Hamas atrocity the other day, but refuse to condemn Israeli counter action, with a lovely swerve into ‘as long as they don’t commit war crimes’ Which apparently cutting off supplies to the Gaza Strip doesn’t count as, real inspiring stuff from the current Labour leadership. Thank god they’ve excised those ‘anti Semites’ eh? No, it's not an excellent post. It's a bad faith argument. There is a clear difference between targeting civilians deliberately and targeting terrorists while accepting there will be civilian casualties in the process. You may think it is inhumane but nowhere does this reasoning deny the fact that Palestinians are people. Then the method that you use to kill babies absolutely does matter. Yeah, it does. I think most people agree that there are differences, for example, between killing in cold blood, manslaughter and any version of the trolley problem you can think of. The people you cited seem to argue that it doesn’t really matter if the 40 kids were beheaded or if half of them were stabbed and burned instead. The notion that if Hamas had access to better weaponry and started targeting some military center in Tel-Aviv, causing civilian casualties, these people's reaction (and yours) would change because it's collateral damage, is absurd. I can only speak for myself and for me it would absolutely matter a lot. The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the post you responded to so I'm not going to comment on it.
Well, I think you would be in an extremely small minority. If anything the reaction would be even worse in my opinion. There's a reason why celebs post images of civilian victims in rubble with "Pray for Israel" captions and then delete them when they find out that the victims are Palestinians, it's because the thought of humans having to endure these types of circumstances is, to most people, unbearable.
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On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible?
This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction.
What reaction would you/they prefer to see?
Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now, and not "how it should have been done 50-60-70 years ago"?
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On October 13 2023 20:22 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible? This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction. What reaction would you/they prefer to see? Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now? Its possible for all answers to be terrible.
Do nothing - terrible to leave such an attack unanswered.
End Hamas - terrible as its not possible without genocide.
proportion response - terrible as it still kills a ton of innocent civilians
Kill key personal - terrible as it likely involves protected individuals from other nations. Can't just go around killing Saudi princes
The way to prevent/solve this situation in a non-terrible way passed by several decades ago.
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Norway28600 Posts
On October 13 2023 20:22 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible? This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction. What reaction would you/they prefer to see? Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now, and not "how it should have been done 50-60-70 years ago"?
I mean, my honest suggestion would be to stop the cycle of violence and not retaliate. There was a two day period after the terrorist attack where support for Israel was at its peak - even leftist groups who have in the past been more critical of Israel than of Hamas were suddenly echoing 'Hamas are abhorrent terrorists' and 'Israel has the right to defend itself'. With a nonviolent response, they could have succeeded in actually cementing themselves as a force of good and made support of israel ubiquitous.
In the real world where hippies like myself yield no influence, they could retaliate without this much indiscriminate bombing, without using white phosporous, without blocking food water and electricity, without ordering 1.1 million people to flee their homes within a day or two.
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Northern Ireland24428 Posts
Saw this on the BBC live ticket earlier, but that’s always updating - Alternate link, unsure of source
This kind of stuff really does not inspire much confidence as to the direction of travel.
It’s one thing to shoot folks throwing stones dead, people don’t always keep their cool in such charged, threatening scenarios It’s another to quite openly admit that it is policy.
The Israeli police warned that any attempt to disturb public order or harm and cause injury during the ongoing combat operation in the southern region would be met with decisive actions and zero tolerance
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On October 13 2023 20:22 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible? This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction. What reaction would you/they prefer to see? Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now, and not "how it should have been done 50-60-70 years ago"?
The non-terrible question would have included the capacity to not be in the process of doing violence 1, and I would have not done that.
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So here we have Israel forcefully removing millions of Palestinians from Israel, meanwhile the EU a few months back imposed a Euro 20,000 per head fine on EU member states that refuse to host refugees.UK banning the showing of the Palestinian flag, France and Germany banning any 'Pro-Palestine' demonstrations.
All the above are contributing to Anti-Jewish sentiment in the west.Wouldn't be surprised to see more western Jews move to Israel, depending on how bad it gets.If you are a believer in the 'Greater Israel' project, it makes sense.
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On October 13 2023 21:27 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 20:22 ZeroByte13 wrote:On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible? This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction. What reaction would you/they prefer to see? Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now, and not "how it should have been done 50-60-70 years ago"? The non-terrible question would have included the capacity to not be in the process of doing violence 1, and I would have not done that.
It seemed pretty clear that the question implied a lack or minimisation of violence, you just chose to interpret the question in a bizarre way.
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On October 13 2023 22:42 Mikau wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 21:27 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 20:22 ZeroByte13 wrote:On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible? This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction. What reaction would you/they prefer to see? Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now, and not "how it should have been done 50-60-70 years ago"? The non-terrible question would have included the capacity to not be in the process of doing violence 1, and I would have not done that. It seemed pretty clear that the question implied a lack or minimisation of violence, you just chose to interpret the question in a bizarre way.
No the question explicitly stated that we start from violence 2 and we ignore the rest.
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On October 13 2023 22:42 Mikau wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2023 21:27 Nebuchad wrote:On October 13 2023 20:22 ZeroByte13 wrote:On October 13 2023 19:26 Nebuchad wrote:
Ask terrible questions and you'll get terrible answers. Why is the question "what Israel should do right now after this attack, what would be the right thing to do" terrible? This is the situation we have at hand, and people are understandably not happy with Israel's reaction. What reaction would you/they prefer to see? Or what would be a not-terrible question that concerns specifically this situation here and now, and not "how it should have been done 50-60-70 years ago"? The non-terrible question would have included the capacity to not be in the process of doing violence 1, and I would have not done that. It seemed pretty clear that the question implied a lack or minimisation of violence, you just chose to interpret the question in a bizarre way.
Maybe another way of phrasing the question is presented by Shashank Joshi (Defence editor at The Economist):
[replying to a Tweet about Israel having agency]
True, all have agency. But there is a larger (open) question. There's no real legal debate that Isr has right to use force under UN Charter. What military action would be proportionate to addressing demonstrated threat posed by Hamas which does not cause humanitarian catastrophe?
[replying to another Tweet]
The threat is not just to the hostages. Hamas have just massacred 1,000+ people & fired the largest rocket barrage in their history. Using necessary and proportional force to address that threat is legally permissible.
For folks that have been leaning on the phase “war crime” (including me) there’s an unanswered question, which is “what would the legal and/or ethical response have been?” It’s pretty clear a military intervention would be legal after the attacks, and obviously the population density in Gaza is such that collateral damage is inevitable.
The short answer is there would have been a lot of hard questions about what was an acceptable military target, and a lot of innocent people would still have died. My assumption over the weekend was that Israeli intelligence almost certainly maintains lists of people with suspected ties to Hamas and their whereabouts, and every one of those locations was going to get bombed. That’s already suspect, because intelligence services don’t have rules of evidence or burdens of proof; but instead of “bomb every location of someone with suspected Hamas ties,” they seemingly went with “bomb every location (full stop).”
A ground invasion theoretically could have been more targeted; you can hit a building without blowing it up and killing everyone inside, and you can arrest/detain instead of just killing everyone. On the other hand you’re putting soldiers in harm’s way, which often leads you to kill more people just trying to keep them alive. That gets especially ugly if the civilians determine you’re going to shoot them anyway, and decide fighting back is their only chance.
In theory, they could have executed a ground invasion while making clear they were going to do their best to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas would still shoot back, but civilians might conclude cooperating was their safest option. But it’s way too late for that now, the IDF has made it clear they intend to maximize civilian deaths.
Which gives all this kind of a theorycrafting/counterfactual feel, right? What’s the point in trying to imagine what an IDF that was trying to minimize collateral damage would have done? The actual IDF has made it abundantly clear they have no interest in that goal, so the rest is just an escapist make-pretend. If we’re just imagining worlds more pleasant to inhabit for fun, I bet we can do better.
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EPT
