Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 95

On November 13 2023 01:17 Mohdoo wrote:



Israel is killing Hamas and destroying their hold on Gaza in pursuit of less Israelis dying. Killing more Hamas means less Israelis dying. That’s what Magic was focusing on. He was asking why not just focus on defense. He was saying there is not a benefit to Israel created by just killing Hamas. I am saying Israel has additional benefits provided to it by simply killing Hamas as well. The whole “yeah but Israel liked Hamas when it helped their long term land acquisition goals” is just a detour. The specific, zoomed in topic brought up by magic was: is there any additional reduction in Israeli deaths from Israel killing Hamas? I answered “yes”.

On November 13 2023 01:51 GreenHorizons wrote:


Are they? How many Hamas fighters has Israel killed in Gaza?

On November 13 2023 02:38 Mohdoo wrote:


What? My dude can you please just ditch the Cheshire Cat thing and engage like a person having a conversation

On November 13 2023 02:33 Nebuchad wrote:


Magic asked for arguments to justify the bombardments. Your answer is "Provided that we all agree that Israel's intent is to kill Hamas, here are the good things about Hamas not existing". But this is not true, Israel is not killing Hamas and destroying their hold on Gaza in pursuit of less Israelis dying. We can debate whether their "method to kill Hamas" is likely to succeed in killing Hamas and so on, but we shouldn't, because this is not their "method to kill Hamas".

If someone is asking for justifications for the Iraq war and you come up with a list of all the benefits that there would be to Saddam Hussein not obtaining WMDs, the correct answer is not to have a discussion on what would be good or not good about Saddam Hussein having WMDs, the correct answer is that we shouldn't get dragged into this conversation because the people who went to war knew that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs.

On November 13 2023 02:46 Mohdoo wrote:


Please feel free to provide your reason for why you think Israel is doing whatever you think they’re doing in Gaza. I am operating under the assumption that pushing out Hamas to prevent a government hostile to Israel occupying that land is considered a net benefit to the security of Israel. Whether israel has moral high ground in whatever context you’d like to frame this situation as being a component of, I feel like “Israel has benefits to Hamas not controlling land” is a safe assumption for anyone to make regardless of how you view the ethics of the conflict.

That’s why I was saying Magic was incorrectly asserting Israel can achieve an identical level of security by what he vaguely described as “securing their border”. They are clearly in an even better situation to go beyond that. It’s not one or the other. They can do both.

On November 13 2023 02:20 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
The end of the runway is in sight for Netanyahu when it comes to the US. The only silver lining would be for Israel to take the Al-Shifa hospital and restore power and deliver supplies to it while clearing any potential Hamas hideouts near or underneath it.

On November 13 2023 03:20 Magic Powers wrote:


That wasn't at all what I was aiming for. I didn't ask how Israel can protect Israelis. I don't think Israeli lives are more valuable than the lives of Palestinians, therefore my aim is to protect as many lives as possible, not just Israeli ones (and in a perfect world not just innocent lives either). If Israel has to account for all lives, especially all innocent lives, then their actions in Gaza are an atrocity. With that in mind I want to know how you can justify the bombardment of Gaza.

On November 13 2023 02:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


I agree with Neb, but I'm honestly curious.

On November 13 2023 03:48 Mohdoo wrote:


It’s not that you’re curious. It’s not that you want to know how many Hamas fighters Israel has killed and you view me as a good source of information to learn about it. It’s that you’re doing your usual Cheshire Cat thing where you aren’t having a good faith conversation.

I implore you to consider voicing your ideas more freely and less evasively. You have good ideas and my conversations with you as well as many others here on TL have had a big impact on how I view the world. I appreciate your moral compass and I enjoy the sensation of my views interacting with yours. I hope you’ll give me that opportunity more frequently. You are well-read, a good writer, and you have well developed ideas. Why not more fully utilize that? You clearly have a perspective on how many Hamas fighters have been killed, what Israel’s goals are, and other related dynamics. You could just say those things instead.

On November 13 2023 03:50 Magic Powers wrote:


I don't care if any country operates by my ethical standard or not. I hold them to that standard regardless as long as there's no ethical dilemma that would invalidate my standard. And in the case of Israel I don't see an ethical dilemma. They could very easily choose to stop bombarding Gaza and that would lead to the least harm overall. They instead choose to inflict more harm that overwhelmingly hurts civilians. This is an injustice that requires a far more compelling argument than just "it's meant to destroy Hamas".
For Israel to continue down this road, both the utilitarian and the moral argument must conclude that it's best to continue. I don't see this conclusion. The moral argument can only conclude that if first the utilitarian argument concludes it. According to the numbers, the utilitarian argument has already failed weeks ago, and it keeps failing every single day from this point forward. That means the conclusion is false. The continuation of the bombardment is wrong.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this: Israel has already stabilized its borders weeks ago. No more or almost no more Israeli lives are being lost, and the destruction has taken place entirely in Gaza. There is no more "defense". Israel has stopped being on the defensive long ago. In fact overall the aggressor has been Israel for most of this conflict.

On November 13 2023 04:17 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Seeing more and more reports (from doctors without borders) that IDF is shooting civilians trying to evacuate the Al Shifa hospital. The notion that Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties is an absolute farce, we're well into warcrime territory now and even people who fundamentally agree that Israel has the right to try to kill Hamas should still condemn elements of Israel's actions.

Mohdoo, what's your response to 'The U.S. intelligence community has growing confidence that reports on the death toll from health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza are roughly accurate, U.S. officials said.' from the previous page?

On November 13 2023 04:09 GreenHorizons wrote:


You asserted Israel is "killing Hamas" and I've seen very limited (and vague) reporting to that effect (none of it here irc). I think that assertion needs supporting information you haven't provided. An official estimate of how many fighters for Hamas Israel has killed in Gaza would be a reasonable example of such information.

It would also be necessary for any utilitarian calculation about Israel's actions thus far. Not only for any moral calculation, but from a strategic perspective of the cost for each member of Hamas they eliminate. This would include, but not be limited to, creating new members of Hamas (or the formations of even more radical groups) by Israel killing innocent families

On November 13 2023 00:23 Mohdoo wrote:


Israel does not have a moral imperative to prioritize the lives of Gaza over the lives of Israel. If Israel can safely assume killing as many members of Hamas as possible and taking away their control of Gaza will decrease the total of Israelis killed, Israel has incentive to do that.

Once someone offers a method for to deprive Hamas of land, that argument is entirely wiped out. Until there is no alternative method of taking away Hamas’s land, your thought experiment fails to account for the fact that without Hamas getting tossed in ditches, Israelis die no matter what. Your “secure their borders after October 7” is dishonestly pretending it’s that simple or that it can be viewed equivalently to just straight up taking the land from Hamas. It’s not effective, it’s not equivalent. It’s impossible to pretend there is equivalent risk to just let the terrorists keep land and keep living. Israel will secure their border or whatever you’re saying with or without killing a bunch of Hamas trash. But it’s even better with all of them dead and their little dystopian ruling government toppled.

They will do 2 things. You are saying they ought to do 1 instead. The second part is a clear net positive for Israeli lives.

Edit: For the sake of being as concise as possible: the moment when your argument fails to be valid is when you falsely claim Israel can decide to be equally protected from Hamas attacks by “securing their border”. They can’t. It’s not a real situation.

On November 13 2023 04:32 Mohdoo wrote:


That’s fair. I don’t know. I know thousands of people have died and that’s about it. Anything beyond that I consider unknowable for reasons I described in my reply to Drone. Purely from a utilitarian perspective, if we agree Gaza was governed by a hostile government and that government conducted the October 7 attack, at minimum I think we can say wiping out that government can be mostly assumed to be a net positive. Land that was hostile becoming not hostile can be considered positive purely selfishly for Israel, right?

Like if Israel displaces the entire Gaza population, shoves them back towards Egypt, and secures that land against occupation by a hostile government, that’s a net positive from a defensive selfishness perspective, yeah?


Edit: lol I just realized this could be viewed as a sarcastic reference to Russia’s supposed reason for invading Ukraine and I want to be clear I did not mean this in that way. No sarcasm or references intended.

On November 13 2023 04:48 Gorsameth wrote:
The problem with viewing conflicts from a purely selfish position is that (almost) every atrocity is justified.
As your realizing yourself now, your position on Israel also justified Russia, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nazi Germany and probably ever other conflict or atrocity in the history of mankind.