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On January 17 2024 05:45 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 05:11 Magic Powers wrote:On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument. Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians. A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right. To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias. It’s not about having family or not having family. It’s that people will always choose their own over others. I am pointing out boiling it down to prioritizing some humans over others is technically a moral failing but not really a useful distinction. I think a nation will always choose their own over others. All nations choose their own over others. Celebrate is not saying Palestinians have zero value. He is saying he is comfortable with Palestinians dying to protect Israelis. Even if more Palestinians die. That doesn’t mean he thinks Palestinian lives are useless. It means he think its still morally acceptable for Israel to kill Palestinians as participants in this war. There is no shame in this bias. This is hard to even frame as a bias because it’s universal. All nations would make the same choice. I am not aware of any instance in history where a nation in Israel’s position, or similar, has made a different decision.
In my experience when someone says that something is universal it's because they agree with it and they want to give it weight. We have many examples of people not "choosing their own over others" just on this subject alone. There are many Jewish people in the pro-Palestine movement, there are even Israelis who fight against the occupation and the injustice that is being inflicted on the Palestinians. As a human being you've been given the capacity to choose what you think. Live with it.
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Norway28490 Posts
Pretty huge difference between 'my family' and 'people from my country'. I'd certainly choose 100 (or 1000, or some absurdly high number I guess) dead strangers over the death of my kid, but if you're telling me to pull a lever that kills 1000 people from x country or 1 person from norway (and I obviously have to choose one of them in this hypothetical scenario) then I'd go with the 1 person from Norway. It's not a 1:1 ratio - the probability that I know (or know of) the person from Norway is higher than that I know the person outside Norway, but I don't value the life of a Norwegian I don't know of higher than the life of a person outside Norway I don't know of. (Stuff like Breivik still ends up affecting me much more than a civil war elsewhere - but part of the reason is a tragedy in Norway ends up with me knowing of the people who perish, it's not that I consider them inherently more valuable due to their norwegianity.)
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On January 17 2024 06:46 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 05:45 Mohdoo wrote:On January 17 2024 05:11 Magic Powers wrote:On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:
[quote]
I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument. Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians. A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right. To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias. It’s not about having family or not having family. It’s that people will always choose their own over others. I am pointing out boiling it down to prioritizing some humans over others is technically a moral failing but not really a useful distinction. I think a nation will always choose their own over others. All nations choose their own over others. Celebrate is not saying Palestinians have zero value. He is saying he is comfortable with Palestinians dying to protect Israelis. Even if more Palestinians die. That doesn’t mean he thinks Palestinian lives are useless. It means he think its still morally acceptable for Israel to kill Palestinians as participants in this war. There is no shame in this bias. This is hard to even frame as a bias because it’s universal. All nations would make the same choice. I am not aware of any instance in history where a nation in Israel’s position, or similar, has made a different decision. In my experience when someone says that something is universal it's because they agree with it and they want to give it weight. We have many examples of people not "choosing their own over others" just on this subject alone. There are many Jewish people in the pro-Palestine movement, there are even Israelis who fight against the occupation and the injustice that is being inflicted on the Palestinians. As a human being you've been given the capacity to choose what you think. Live with it.
Sure, there are Jews that are “pro Palestine”, but the specifics of what that means varies. It’s not like all Jews identify with Israel or the existence of Israel. Tons of people can agree Palestinians are the victims of lots of injustice and still say Israel is justified in eliminating Hamas. This is another example of it not being necessary to choose one or the other. And I’d like to reiterate the existence of this or that perspective technically existing among some number of people does not mean it is a reasonable request.
I guarantee you there are people in this world who would sacrifice their own child to save 2 strangers. But boy oh boy would they be hard to find.
Speaking personally, I think Palestinians are victims beyond measure. Even if we only focus on the psychological condition of Palestinians, they are victims. Setting aside situations like torture rape and stuff like that, I think Palestinians as a population are among the greatest victims on the planet right now. And yet here I am saying “obviously Israel is within their right to kill Palestinians so long as Palestinians support Hamas.”
It really just doesn’t matter that Palestinians are victims when it comes to the decision to protect yourself. If my wife committed some atrocity against a family and that family tried to kill my daughter, I’d absolutely chop that person up and toss em in the ocean with zero hesitation. That family would have been victims and it would mean absolutely nothing as it pertains to my decision to defend my daughter or not. I wouldn’t let my daughter die just because my wife killed someone else’s daughter. Not gonna just shrug and say “well maybe fair is fair! Think about their family, aren’t they victims? Didn’t our family initiate this whole mess? Isn’t blood on our hands? Maybe I should just toss my daughter to these people because they are angry about a bad thing that happened to them”
But I want to be clear you did not address my point. Jews supporting Palestinians and even supporting a ceasefire does not address my argument that there is no history we can point to where a country has done what Magic Powers is asking. The whole idea of just accepting Hamas as it is and focusing on defense to ensure they don’t achieve their goals is not a behavior a government has pursued. It is a non-real concept. It isn’t reasonable to ask Israel to adhere to a mostly theoretical moral standard when we have no other examples of the same choice ever being made
Am I wrong? Are there examples I am not aware of?
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I can't address your point because your point is based on the false premise that Israel is defending itself, which it isn't. If your premises were correct, your point would be correct. But your premises are absurd, and therefore so is your point. As I told Jimmi yesterday, if we accept the international defense of Israel, then their position is justified, and it is normal to view them as the "good guys". But their international defense is obviously bullshit, and therefore we shouldn't make arguments based on it.
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On January 17 2024 07:05 Nebuchad wrote:
I can't address your point because your point is based on the false premise that Israel is defending itself, which it isn't. If your premises were correct, your point would be correct. But your premises are absurd, and therefore so is your point. As I told Jimmi yesterday, if we accept the international defense of Israel, then their position is justified, and it is normal to view them as the "good guys". But their international defense is obviously bullshit, and therefore we shouldn't make arguments based on it.
Israel is absolutely defending itself. Palestinians are also defending themselves. That’s what makes this whole dumpster fire burn so intensely.
This is why I was using my psychotic murderous wife scenario to show why neither can really be blamed. Once both governments decided the other can’t be trusted, it became a matter of protecting themselves. Do you see how in my murderous wife scenario, my decision to kill the other family was to protect my daughter? Despite the other family being strictly victims from my murderous wife, it is a simple decision to kill someone’s trying to kill my daughter.
So now what if me defending my daughter just causes that other family’s extended family to target me? Well suddenly I’ve got a bigger problem on my hands. What if this family decides my house is too well fortified and they get their revenge on my parents instead? Maybe they take out my mom but not my dad. Now what? I know they still want to kill my dad, and they have killed my family before. What do I do? Is it ethical for me to kill them first?
Now that this is all set in motion in the above scenario, do you see how both families are in a position where they are defending innocents? The other family is defending innocent children. I am also defending innocent children. But since this war is so deep and we trust each other so little, there isn’t really a good path to peace. Regardless of who was right to begin with, it’s totally meaningless because both factions now have innocent, entirely morally clean children to defend.
I see no value in your pursuit of a good guy or any kind of defender or aggressor blah blah stuff because those people aren’t really even a thing at this point. Even if we agree who was originally at fault, it does nothing for the safety of this new generation of children who need to be protected.
Hamas and IDF have both killed children and both sides deeply believe the other faction needs to be defeated. They are both defending innocents. It’s totally pointless to try to frame the situation with respect to some core, knowable moral baseline. Concluding who started it or who is the most evil doesn’t matter when both are defending children.
Israel will not allow their children to be killed for the sake of appeasing their own conscience. Even if they believe it’s sad and unethical to kill Palestinians, they’ll still decide “these children of ours have no guilt, but they will be victims of murder if we don’t wipe out Hamas”
Similarly, some Palestinian 15 year old who isn’t even mentally developed is a victim by being raised in that environment and they are not morally responsible for the views they’ve been born into and the war they have witnessed. So that 15 year old is gonna go kill some Israelis and Israel is gonna go kill people too. Both feel like they are acting morally and both are defending people who can’t defend themselves. So trying to tell either of these people “hey can we chill for a bit and just accept the risk” is beyond pointless.
Ask a Palestinian why they don’t support Hamas surrendering and they’ll say “so the IDF can just kill all of us?”
Ask an Israeli why they don’t support the IDF surrendering and they’ll say “so Hamas can just kill all of us?”
There are times where diligently working to determine absolute guilt is worthwhile to resolve conflict. This is not one of those times.
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On January 17 2024 02:18 Ryzel wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. Cerebrate: Shouldn’t we empathize with the southern Israelis who were attacked? Magic: How dare your question not mention Palestinians. You’re obviously biased. Cerebrate: Uh…I’m not talking about Palestinians right now. I’m asking a question about southern Israelis. Magic: There you go again, God what a biased person you are. Cerebrate: …OK, look I get why someone might not care about southern Israelis given the circumstances, but that doesn’t change how they’d feel given the terrible things that happened to them. Do you get where I’m coming from? Magic: Well duh what happened to them is terrible, and no it doesn’t change my mind because you still aren’t talking about Palestinians which means you obviously don’t care about them at all. Does that sound about right? Cerebrate, to appease Magic I’ll give you a chance to just answer flat out: do you care about the suffering of the Palestinian people?
Lol. Thanks for the synopsis Ryzel. Saved me from having to roll in the mud with MP (possibly).
Yes of course I care about the suffering of the Palestinian people.
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On January 17 2024 05:45 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 05:11 Magic Powers wrote:On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument. Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians. A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right. To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias. It’s not about having family or not having family. It’s that people will always choose their own over others. I am pointing out boiling it down to prioritizing some humans over others is technically a moral failing but not really a useful distinction. I think a nation will always choose their own over others. All nations choose their own over others. Celebrate is not saying Palestinians have zero value. He is saying he is comfortable with Palestinians dying to protect Israelis. Even if more Palestinians die. That doesn’t mean he thinks Palestinian lives are useless. It means he think its still morally acceptable for Israel to kill Palestinians as participants in this war. There is no shame in this bias. This is hard to even frame as a bias because it’s universal. All nations would make the same choice. I am not aware of any instance in history where a nation in Israel’s position, or similar, has made a different decision.
It seems to me we're talking past each other. I'm explaining that there is a bias that is affecting Cerebrate's judgement of what should be done to ease the conflict. I'm not arguing that he shouldn't have a bias, I'm saying that he has a bias and that it's causing him to favor only the most positive outcomes for Israelis at the greatest expense of Palestinians. He's unwilling to accept a disfavorable outcome for Israelis because of his bias. You can tell me as many times as you want that there's an explanation for his bias, it wouldn't matter to the argument that I'm making, which is that he's not being impartial because of his bias.
There's a reason why there are often juries in court. It's because they can be relatively impartial. We wouldn't let the family of a victim sit in the jury for the very reason that their judgement is presumed to be impaired by their emotional bias.
This is why it's important for us to realize that Cerebrate has a pro-Israel bias that is affecting his judgement. When he asks what should be done to make sure Israelis don't have to be afraid anymore, he's arguing from the lense of a pro-Israel bias. We know that he's not judging the situation fairly and he would accept outcomes that disproportionately disfavor Palestinians.
When it comes to a political solution that satisfies all sides in this conflict, we have to apply ethics consistently, and that means a pro-Israel bias can be understood, but never tolerated.
On January 17 2024 07:58 Cerebrate1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 02:18 Ryzel wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. Cerebrate: Shouldn’t we empathize with the southern Israelis who were attacked? Magic: How dare your question not mention Palestinians. You’re obviously biased. Cerebrate: Uh…I’m not talking about Palestinians right now. I’m asking a question about southern Israelis. Magic: There you go again, God what a biased person you are. Cerebrate: …OK, look I get why someone might not care about southern Israelis given the circumstances, but that doesn’t change how they’d feel given the terrible things that happened to them. Do you get where I’m coming from? Magic: Well duh what happened to them is terrible, and no it doesn’t change my mind because you still aren’t talking about Palestinians which means you obviously don’t care about them at all. Does that sound about right? Cerebrate, to appease Magic I’ll give you a chance to just answer flat out: do you care about the suffering of the Palestinian people? Lol. Thanks for the synopsis Ryzel. Saved me from having to roll in the mud with MP (possibly). Yes of course I care about the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Ryzel made it hilariously easy for you to answer the question.
Answer this one instead: do you care about the suffering of the Palestinian people as much as that of the Israeli people?
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On January 17 2024 07:46 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 07:05 Nebuchad wrote:
I can't address your point because your point is based on the false premise that Israel is defending itself, which it isn't. If your premises were correct, your point would be correct. But your premises are absurd, and therefore so is your point. As I told Jimmi yesterday, if we accept the international defense of Israel, then their position is justified, and it is normal to view them as the "good guys". But their international defense is obviously bullshit, and therefore we shouldn't make arguments based on it. Israel is absolutely defending itself. + Show Spoiler +Palestinians are also defending themselves. That’s what makes this whole dumpster fire burn so intensely.
This is why I was using my psychotic murderous wife scenario to show why neither can really be blamed. Once both governments decided the other can’t be trusted, it became a matter of protecting themselves. Do you see how in my murderous wife scenario, my decision to kill the other family was to protect my daughter? Despite the other family being strictly victims from my murderous wife, it is a simple decision to kill someone’s trying to kill my daughter.
So now what if me defending my daughter just causes that other family’s extended family to target me? Well suddenly I’ve got a bigger problem on my hands. What if this family decides my house is too well fortified and they get their revenge on my parents instead? Maybe they take out my mom but not my dad. Now what? I know they still want to kill my dad, and they have killed my family before. What do I do? Is it ethical for me to kill them first?
Now that this is all set in motion in the above scenario, do you see how both families are in a position where they are defending innocents? The other family is defending innocent children. I am also defending innocent children. But since this war is so deep and we trust each other so little, there isn’t really a good path to peace. Regardless of who was right to begin with, it’s totally meaningless because both factions now have innocent, entirely morally clean children to defend.
I see no value in your pursuit of a good guy or any kind of defender or aggressor blah blah stuff because those people aren’t really even a thing at this point. Even if we agree who was originally at fault, it does nothing for the safety of this new generation of children who need to be protected.
Hamas and IDF have both killed children and both sides deeply believe the other faction needs to be defeated. They are both defending innocents. It’s totally pointless to try to frame the situation with respect to some core, knowable moral baseline. Concluding who started it or who is the most evil doesn’t matter when both are defending children.
Israel will not allow their children to be killed for the sake of appeasing their own conscience. Even if they believe it’s sad and unethical to kill Palestinians, they’ll still decide “these children of ours have no guilt, but they will be victims of murder if we don’t wipe out Hamas”
Similarly, some Palestinian 15 year old who isn’t even mentally developed is a victim by being raised in that environment and they are not morally responsible for the views they’ve been born into and the war they have witnessed. So that 15 year old is gonna go kill some Israelis and Israel is gonna go kill people too. Both feel like they are acting morally and both are defending people who can’t defend themselves. So trying to tell either of these people “hey can we chill for a bit and just accept the risk” is beyond pointless.
Ask a Palestinian why they don’t support Hamas surrendering and they’ll say “so the IDF can just kill all of us?”
Ask an Israeli why they don’t support the IDF surrendering and they’ll say “so Hamas can just kill all of us?”
There are times where diligently working to determine absolute guilt is worthwhile to resolve conflict. This is not one of those times .
They really aren't.
Regardless, the "international rules based order" demands on its face to step in and sanction Israel for its ongoing crimes against humanity/ethnic cleansing campaign you describe as "defending" themselves. Sorta like how you're ignoring the laws to rationalize murdering another family in your example.
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On January 17 2024 05:11 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument. Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians. A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right. To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias.
Eh. Speaking out the perspectives of a group doesn't make me biased. You spoke out the perspective of the foot soldiers of Hamas pretty articulately and thoroughly, yet you also claim to not be biased for Hamas.
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On January 17 2024 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 07:46 Mohdoo wrote:On January 17 2024 07:05 Nebuchad wrote:
I can't address your point because your point is based on the false premise that Israel is defending itself, which it isn't. If your premises were correct, your point would be correct. But your premises are absurd, and therefore so is your point. As I told Jimmi yesterday, if we accept the international defense of Israel, then their position is justified, and it is normal to view them as the "good guys". But their international defense is obviously bullshit, and therefore we shouldn't make arguments based on it. Israel is absolutely defending itself. + Show Spoiler +Palestinians are also defending themselves. That’s what makes this whole dumpster fire burn so intensely.
This is why I was using my psychotic murderous wife scenario to show why neither can really be blamed. Once both governments decided the other can’t be trusted, it became a matter of protecting themselves. Do you see how in my murderous wife scenario, my decision to kill the other family was to protect my daughter? Despite the other family being strictly victims from my murderous wife, it is a simple decision to kill someone’s trying to kill my daughter.
So now what if me defending my daughter just causes that other family’s extended family to target me? Well suddenly I’ve got a bigger problem on my hands. What if this family decides my house is too well fortified and they get their revenge on my parents instead? Maybe they take out my mom but not my dad. Now what? I know they still want to kill my dad, and they have killed my family before. What do I do? Is it ethical for me to kill them first?
Now that this is all set in motion in the above scenario, do you see how both families are in a position where they are defending innocents? The other family is defending innocent children. I am also defending innocent children. But since this war is so deep and we trust each other so little, there isn’t really a good path to peace. Regardless of who was right to begin with, it’s totally meaningless because both factions now have innocent, entirely morally clean children to defend.
I see no value in your pursuit of a good guy or any kind of defender or aggressor blah blah stuff because those people aren’t really even a thing at this point. Even if we agree who was originally at fault, it does nothing for the safety of this new generation of children who need to be protected.
Hamas and IDF have both killed children and both sides deeply believe the other faction needs to be defeated. They are both defending innocents. It’s totally pointless to try to frame the situation with respect to some core, knowable moral baseline. Concluding who started it or who is the most evil doesn’t matter when both are defending children.
Israel will not allow their children to be killed for the sake of appeasing their own conscience. Even if they believe it’s sad and unethical to kill Palestinians, they’ll still decide “these children of ours have no guilt, but they will be victims of murder if we don’t wipe out Hamas”
Similarly, some Palestinian 15 year old who isn’t even mentally developed is a victim by being raised in that environment and they are not morally responsible for the views they’ve been born into and the war they have witnessed. So that 15 year old is gonna go kill some Israelis and Israel is gonna go kill people too. Both feel like they are acting morally and both are defending people who can’t defend themselves. So trying to tell either of these people “hey can we chill for a bit and just accept the risk” is beyond pointless.
Ask a Palestinian why they don’t support Hamas surrendering and they’ll say “so the IDF can just kill all of us?”
Ask an Israeli why they don’t support the IDF surrendering and they’ll say “so Hamas can just kill all of us?”
There are times where diligently working to determine absolute guilt is worthwhile to resolve conflict. This is not one of those times . They really aren't. Regardless, the "international rules based order" demands on its face to step in and sanction Israel for its ongoing crimes against humanity/ethnic cleansing campaign you describe as "defending" themselves. Sorta like how you're ignoring the laws to rationalize murdering another family in your example.
If Israel just stepped right out of West Bank and Gaza tomorrow, you are saying there is no risk of innocent children being harmed by Hamas? That’s the standard to meet. That’s what any nation in the world would require as a safe assumption before doing something. So long as Hamas is a risk to children in Israel, Israel will always defend those children.
Let’s assume you had the ability to eliminate whatever evil you are assuming Israel possesses and you eliminated any hatred or desire to kill Palestinians without any defensive purpose. Do you think you would succeed in convincing Israelis their children are safe from Hamas?
Maybe it’s worthwhile to make sure we are aligned otherwise. Is it moral for someone to kill someone to defend their children? If you disagree with me that it is moral, nothing else will be agreed on. Everything I am saying operates under the assumption it is moral to kill a victim to defend an innocent. If you don’t believe that is true, we of course will not agree on the other stuff.
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Regarding this point:
@Mohdoo
"But I want to be clear you did not address my point. Jews supporting Palestinians and even supporting a ceasefire does not address my argument that there is no history we can point to where a country has done what Magic Powers is asking. The whole idea of just accepting Hamas as it is and focusing on defense to ensure they don’t achieve their goals is not a behavior a government has pursued. It is a non-real concept. It isn’t reasonable to ask Israel to adhere to a mostly theoretical moral standard when we have no other examples of the same choice ever being made."
The people involved in a conflict are rarely impartial, this doesn't come as a surprise. It is, however, not true that Israel is defending itself at this moment. We can be impartial as observers of the conflict, and thus we can tell that the only force currently inflicting harm on the general population is the IDF. Hamas may successfully land a missile or two and kill the odd Israeli citizen, but that is not comparable to the thousands of Palestinians being slaughtered right now. The IDF is in the driver's seat and Hamas is receiving a pounding. There is absolutely no doubt who's going to be the winner of this war if or when it ends. And the only victims of this war from this point forward are Palestinians. They've been the only ones since months. And that is true for Gaza as well as the West bank. Everywhere the victims are Palestinians.
This can only be the case when there's a supremacist point of view. That view is that Israeli lives are worth a hundred times more than Palestinian lives. The Israeli administration holds this view, and the IDF enforces it.
We - since we are uninvolved observers - can judge the situation impartially. We can come to a conclusion about the level of force that is or isn't justified. Just as a referee decides when to end a boxing match, we can decide when the war goes too far. My position is that it has been going too far since no more than a few weeks after Hamas invaded.
It is obvious to me that Israel's administration is not going to change course. This isn't because they're in the right, it's because they're committed, and they believe they're in the right.
We, just as a boxing referee, can step in and say that they're in the wrong and call an end to the fight. We can decide that we've seen enough of the beating, and any more punches received by the loser are not in the spirit of the fight.
Israel's administration is free to reject our judgement. And we can judge them for rejecting our judgement. And that is what we should be doing.
The argument that "no country has ever done this before" is therefore not relevant to the matter of ethics. The boxing referee decides over boxing ethics, the boxers currently fighting don't. Foreign nations decide over the ethics of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the warring factions do not.
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On January 17 2024 08:19 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2024 07:46 Mohdoo wrote:On January 17 2024 07:05 Nebuchad wrote:
I can't address your point because your point is based on the false premise that Israel is defending itself, which it isn't. If your premises were correct, your point would be correct. But your premises are absurd, and therefore so is your point. As I told Jimmi yesterday, if we accept the international defense of Israel, then their position is justified, and it is normal to view them as the "good guys". But their international defense is obviously bullshit, and therefore we shouldn't make arguments based on it. Israel is absolutely defending itself. + Show Spoiler +Palestinians are also defending themselves. That’s what makes this whole dumpster fire burn so intensely.
This is why I was using my psychotic murderous wife scenario to show why neither can really be blamed. Once both governments decided the other can’t be trusted, it became a matter of protecting themselves. Do you see how in my murderous wife scenario, my decision to kill the other family was to protect my daughter? Despite the other family being strictly victims from my murderous wife, it is a simple decision to kill someone’s trying to kill my daughter.
So now what if me defending my daughter just causes that other family’s extended family to target me? Well suddenly I’ve got a bigger problem on my hands. What if this family decides my house is too well fortified and they get their revenge on my parents instead? Maybe they take out my mom but not my dad. Now what? I know they still want to kill my dad, and they have killed my family before. What do I do? Is it ethical for me to kill them first?
Now that this is all set in motion in the above scenario, do you see how both families are in a position where they are defending innocents? The other family is defending innocent children. I am also defending innocent children. But since this war is so deep and we trust each other so little, there isn’t really a good path to peace. Regardless of who was right to begin with, it’s totally meaningless because both factions now have innocent, entirely morally clean children to defend.
I see no value in your pursuit of a good guy or any kind of defender or aggressor blah blah stuff because those people aren’t really even a thing at this point. Even if we agree who was originally at fault, it does nothing for the safety of this new generation of children who need to be protected.
Hamas and IDF have both killed children and both sides deeply believe the other faction needs to be defeated. They are both defending innocents. It’s totally pointless to try to frame the situation with respect to some core, knowable moral baseline. Concluding who started it or who is the most evil doesn’t matter when both are defending children.
Israel will not allow their children to be killed for the sake of appeasing their own conscience. Even if they believe it’s sad and unethical to kill Palestinians, they’ll still decide “these children of ours have no guilt, but they will be victims of murder if we don’t wipe out Hamas”
Similarly, some Palestinian 15 year old who isn’t even mentally developed is a victim by being raised in that environment and they are not morally responsible for the views they’ve been born into and the war they have witnessed. So that 15 year old is gonna go kill some Israelis and Israel is gonna go kill people too. Both feel like they are acting morally and both are defending people who can’t defend themselves. So trying to tell either of these people “hey can we chill for a bit and just accept the risk” is beyond pointless.
Ask a Palestinian why they don’t support Hamas surrendering and they’ll say “so the IDF can just kill all of us?”
Ask an Israeli why they don’t support the IDF surrendering and they’ll say “so Hamas can just kill all of us?”
There are times where diligently working to determine absolute guilt is worthwhile to resolve conflict. This is not one of those times . They really aren't. Regardless, the "international rules based order" demands on its face to step in and sanction Israel for its ongoing crimes against humanity/ethnic cleansing campaign you describe as "defending" themselves. Sorta like how you're ignoring the laws to rationalize murdering another family in your example. If Israel just stepped right out of West Bank and Gaza tomorrow, you are saying... + Show Spoiler +there is no risk of innocent children being harmed by Hamas? That’s the standard to meet. That’s what any nation in the world would require as a safe assumption before doing something. So long as Hamas is a risk to children in Israel, Israel will always defend those children.
Let’s assume you had the ability to eliminate whatever evil you are assuming Israel possesses and you eliminated any hatred or desire to kill Palestinians without any defensive purpose. Do you think you would succeed in convincing Israelis their children are safe from Hamas?
Maybe it’s worthwhile to make sure we are aligned otherwise. Is it moral for someone to kill someone to defend their children? If you disagree with me that it is moral, nothing else will be agreed on. Everything I am saying operates under the assumption it is moral to kill a victim to defend an innocent. If you don’t believe that is true, we of course will not agree on the other stuff.
I'm saying what I said.
What Israel is doing is not self-defense regardless of your attempts at rationalizing their ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign with your example/analogy of you being a murderous vigilante.
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On January 17 2024 08:08 Cerebrate1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 05:11 Magic Powers wrote:On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument. Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians. A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right. To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias. Eh. Speaking out the perspectives of a group doesn't make me biased. You spoke out the perspective of the foot soldiers of Hamas pretty articulately and thoroughly, yet you also claim to not be biased for Hamas.
I don't care what the perspective of an oppressive regime such as Israel is, other than to learn how their leaders think so I can understand why they have an impaired view of the conflict they're involved in.
My argument has never been that Palestinians deserve to be protected more than Israelis do. If it had, you'd know with absolute certainty, because then I'd be calling for the death of Israel. Do you want to know what a 100 : 1 ratio in favor of Palestinians would look like? That's what it would look like. The death of Israel.
Maybe this helps you understand how strong I think your pro-Israel bias is. Just flip it around in favor of Palestinians. It's a good thought exercise if you want to understand the opposing side.
When I explain the way Hamas thinks, it's purely for the purpose of understanding how they come to see their own actions as morally justified.
If I have an impaired view, feel free to point it out. I'm open for discussion.
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On January 17 2024 06:58 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Pretty huge difference between 'my family' and 'people from my country'. I'd certainly choose 100 (or 1000, or some absurdly high number I guess) dead strangers over the death of my kid, but if you're telling me to pull a lever that kills 1000 people from x country or 1 person from norway (and I obviously have to choose one of them in this hypothetical scenario) then I'd go with the 1 person from Norway. It's not a 1:1 ratio - the probability that I know (or know of) the person from Norway is higher than that I know the person outside Norway, but I don't value the life of a Norwegian I don't know of higher than the life of a person outside Norway I don't know of. (Stuff like Breivik still ends up affecting me much more than a civil war elsewhere - but part of the reason is a tragedy in Norway ends up with me knowing of the people who perish, it's not that I consider them inherently more valuable due to their norwegianity.)
It's a slightly different conversation by countries than by individuals, but the logic is similar on a grander scale. The reason countries have militaries is so they can protect the lives of their citizens at the expense of any foreign citizens who want to attack. Norway is planning to spend 90 billion NOK on their military this year so they have the ability to kill as many Russians as they need to to hopefully prevent even a single Norwegian death. (Edit: and if they could get their military efficient enough that they could kill 100 enemy Russian soldiers to 1 loss, they absolutely would.) If they just demilitarized and said they won't kill Russians to save Norwegians, Russia wouldn't have to fight much to conquer the place and only a token number of Norwegians might die in a subsequent takeover.
Is Norway wrong for spending such a significant amount of it's money on big guns whose only use could be to kill foreigners?
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On January 17 2024 08:35 Cerebrate1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 06:58 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Pretty huge difference between 'my family' and 'people from my country'. I'd certainly choose 100 (or 1000, or some absurdly high number I guess) dead strangers over the death of my kid, but if you're telling me to pull a lever that kills 1000 people from x country or 1 person from norway (and I obviously have to choose one of them in this hypothetical scenario) then I'd go with the 1 person from Norway. It's not a 1:1 ratio - the probability that I know (or know of) the person from Norway is higher than that I know the person outside Norway, but I don't value the life of a Norwegian I don't know of higher than the life of a person outside Norway I don't know of. (Stuff like Breivik still ends up affecting me much more than a civil war elsewhere - but part of the reason is a tragedy in Norway ends up with me knowing of the people who perish, it's not that I consider them inherently more valuable due to their norwegianity.) It's a slightly different conversation by countries than by individuals, but the logic is similar on a grander scale. The reason countries have militaries is so they can protect the lives of their citizens at the expense of any foreign citizens who want to attack. Norway is planning to spend 90 billion NOK on their military this year so they have the ability to kill as many Russians as they need to to hopefully prevent even a single Norwegian death. If they just demilitarized and said they won't kill Russians to save Norwegians, Russia wouldn't have to fight much to conquer the place and only a token number of Norwegians might die in a subsequent takeover. Is Norway wrong for spending such a significant amount of it's money on big guns whose only use could be to kill foreigners?
Last I checked, Norway was afraid Russia might invade, and was shoring up their military as a precaution, so if Russian soldiers enter Norway they can kill them.
IDF is not doing that. The equivalent to Norway would be if Norway was afraid of Russia, and therefore turned St Petersburg to rubble, displacing its citizens and slaughtering 24,000 of them with the excuse that the Russian army is there somewhere.
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On January 17 2024 08:42 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 08:35 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 17 2024 06:58 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Pretty huge difference between 'my family' and 'people from my country'. I'd certainly choose 100 (or 1000, or some absurdly high number I guess) dead strangers over the death of my kid, but if you're telling me to pull a lever that kills 1000 people from x country or 1 person from norway (and I obviously have to choose one of them in this hypothetical scenario) then I'd go with the 1 person from Norway. It's not a 1:1 ratio - the probability that I know (or know of) the person from Norway is higher than that I know the person outside Norway, but I don't value the life of a Norwegian I don't know of higher than the life of a person outside Norway I don't know of. (Stuff like Breivik still ends up affecting me much more than a civil war elsewhere - but part of the reason is a tragedy in Norway ends up with me knowing of the people who perish, it's not that I consider them inherently more valuable due to their norwegianity.) It's a slightly different conversation by countries than by individuals, but the logic is similar on a grander scale. The reason countries have militaries is so they can protect the lives of their citizens at the expense of any foreign citizens who want to attack. Norway is planning to spend 90 billion NOK on their military this year so they have the ability to kill as many Russians as they need to to hopefully prevent even a single Norwegian death. If they just demilitarized and said they won't kill Russians to save Norwegians, Russia wouldn't have to fight much to conquer the place and only a token number of Norwegians might die in a subsequent takeover. Is Norway wrong for spending such a significant amount of it's money on big guns whose only use could be to kill foreigners? Last I checked, Norway was afraid Russia might invade, and was shoring up their military as a precaution, so if Russian soldiers enter Norway they can kill them. IDF is not doing that. The equivalent to Norway would be if Norway was afraid of Russia, and therefore turned St Petersburg to rubble, displacing its citizens and slaughtering 24,000 of them with the excuse that the Russian army is there somewhere.
The equivalent for the IDF was spending billions of dollars on their military last year as a precaution. This year Hamas invaded them (edit: and still have over 100 of their citizens as hostages that they are torturing and killing on the regular).
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On January 17 2024 08:35 Cerebrate1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 06:58 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Pretty huge difference between 'my family' and 'people from my country'. I'd certainly choose 100 (or 1000, or some absurdly high number I guess) dead strangers over the death of my kid, but if you're telling me to pull a lever that kills 1000 people from x country or 1 person from norway (and I obviously have to choose one of them in this hypothetical scenario) then I'd go with the 1 person from Norway. It's not a 1:1 ratio - the probability that I know (or know of) the person from Norway is higher than that I know the person outside Norway, but I don't value the life of a Norwegian I don't know of higher than the life of a person outside Norway I don't know of. (Stuff like Breivik still ends up affecting me much more than a civil war elsewhere - but part of the reason is a tragedy in Norway ends up with me knowing of the people who perish, it's not that I consider them inherently more valuable due to their norwegianity.) It's a slightly different conversation by countries than by individuals, but the logic is similar on a grander scale. The reason countries have militaries is so they can protect the lives of their citizens at the expense of any foreign citizens who want to attack. Norway is planning to spend 90 billion NOK on their military this year so they have the ability to kill as many Russians as they need to to hopefully prevent even a single Norwegian death. (Edit: and if they could get their military efficient enough that they could kill 100 enemy Russian soldiers to 1 loss, they absolutely would.) If they just demilitarized and said they won't kill Russians to save Norwegians, Russia wouldn't have to fight much to conquer the place and only a token number of Norwegians might die in a subsequent takeover. Is Norway wrong for spending such a significant amount of it's money on big guns whose only use could be to kill foreigners?
Oh, now we're shifting the point, interesting. Since you realize how bad the optics are for a 100 : 1 kill ratio of innocent citizens, therefore you move the point to the kill ratio of an invasive force. It's a pretty good attempt at obfuscation. I wonder how many people here are going to fall for it.
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On January 17 2024 08:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 08:19 Mohdoo wrote:On January 17 2024 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2024 07:46 Mohdoo wrote:On January 17 2024 07:05 Nebuchad wrote:
I can't address your point because your point is based on the false premise that Israel is defending itself, which it isn't. If your premises were correct, your point would be correct. But your premises are absurd, and therefore so is your point. As I told Jimmi yesterday, if we accept the international defense of Israel, then their position is justified, and it is normal to view them as the "good guys". But their international defense is obviously bullshit, and therefore we shouldn't make arguments based on it. Israel is absolutely defending itself. + Show Spoiler +Palestinians are also defending themselves. That’s what makes this whole dumpster fire burn so intensely.
This is why I was using my psychotic murderous wife scenario to show why neither can really be blamed. Once both governments decided the other can’t be trusted, it became a matter of protecting themselves. Do you see how in my murderous wife scenario, my decision to kill the other family was to protect my daughter? Despite the other family being strictly victims from my murderous wife, it is a simple decision to kill someone’s trying to kill my daughter.
So now what if me defending my daughter just causes that other family’s extended family to target me? Well suddenly I’ve got a bigger problem on my hands. What if this family decides my house is too well fortified and they get their revenge on my parents instead? Maybe they take out my mom but not my dad. Now what? I know they still want to kill my dad, and they have killed my family before. What do I do? Is it ethical for me to kill them first?
Now that this is all set in motion in the above scenario, do you see how both families are in a position where they are defending innocents? The other family is defending innocent children. I am also defending innocent children. But since this war is so deep and we trust each other so little, there isn’t really a good path to peace. Regardless of who was right to begin with, it’s totally meaningless because both factions now have innocent, entirely morally clean children to defend.
I see no value in your pursuit of a good guy or any kind of defender or aggressor blah blah stuff because those people aren’t really even a thing at this point. Even if we agree who was originally at fault, it does nothing for the safety of this new generation of children who need to be protected.
Hamas and IDF have both killed children and both sides deeply believe the other faction needs to be defeated. They are both defending innocents. It’s totally pointless to try to frame the situation with respect to some core, knowable moral baseline. Concluding who started it or who is the most evil doesn’t matter when both are defending children.
Israel will not allow their children to be killed for the sake of appeasing their own conscience. Even if they believe it’s sad and unethical to kill Palestinians, they’ll still decide “these children of ours have no guilt, but they will be victims of murder if we don’t wipe out Hamas”
Similarly, some Palestinian 15 year old who isn’t even mentally developed is a victim by being raised in that environment and they are not morally responsible for the views they’ve been born into and the war they have witnessed. So that 15 year old is gonna go kill some Israelis and Israel is gonna go kill people too. Both feel like they are acting morally and both are defending people who can’t defend themselves. So trying to tell either of these people “hey can we chill for a bit and just accept the risk” is beyond pointless.
Ask a Palestinian why they don’t support Hamas surrendering and they’ll say “so the IDF can just kill all of us?”
Ask an Israeli why they don’t support the IDF surrendering and they’ll say “so Hamas can just kill all of us?”
There are times where diligently working to determine absolute guilt is worthwhile to resolve conflict. This is not one of those times . They really aren't. Regardless, the "international rules based order" demands on its face to step in and sanction Israel for its ongoing crimes against humanity/ethnic cleansing campaign you describe as "defending" themselves. Sorta like how you're ignoring the laws to rationalize murdering another family in your example. If Israel just stepped right out of West Bank and Gaza tomorrow, you are saying... + Show Spoiler +there is no risk of innocent children being harmed by Hamas? That’s the standard to meet. That’s what any nation in the world would require as a safe assumption before doing something. So long as Hamas is a risk to children in Israel, Israel will always defend those children.
Let’s assume you had the ability to eliminate whatever evil you are assuming Israel possesses and you eliminated any hatred or desire to kill Palestinians without any defensive purpose. Do you think you would succeed in convincing Israelis their children are safe from Hamas?
Maybe it’s worthwhile to make sure we are aligned otherwise. Is it moral for someone to kill someone to defend their children? If you disagree with me that it is moral, nothing else will be agreed on. Everything I am saying operates under the assumption it is moral to kill a victim to defend an innocent. If you don’t believe that is true, we of course will not agree on the other stuff. I'm saying what I said. What Israel is doing is not self-defense regardless of your attempts at rationalizing their ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign with your example/analogy of you being a murderous vigilante.
Ok let’s use another term: protecting. Do you think Israeli children would be harmed even if Israel withdrew from Gaza and the West Bank and canceled all settlements? I think Hamas would still attack Israel. If Hamas still attacked Israel, it would mean Israeli children are in danger. Do you agree? Or are you saying if Israel withdrew, Israeli children would not be at risk of being harmed by Hamas?
What I am saying is that if Israeli children would still be at risk because of all the history that created a ton of hatred on both sides, then that means there is still an incentive to kill Hamas. In that way, it becomes protecting children. Where do my assumptions disagree with yours? You’re being brief. I don’t understand where my logical diagram diverges from your. Please help me.
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On January 17 2024 08:44 Cerebrate1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 08:42 Acrofales wrote:On January 17 2024 08:35 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 17 2024 06:58 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Pretty huge difference between 'my family' and 'people from my country'. I'd certainly choose 100 (or 1000, or some absurdly high number I guess) dead strangers over the death of my kid, but if you're telling me to pull a lever that kills 1000 people from x country or 1 person from norway (and I obviously have to choose one of them in this hypothetical scenario) then I'd go with the 1 person from Norway. It's not a 1:1 ratio - the probability that I know (or know of) the person from Norway is higher than that I know the person outside Norway, but I don't value the life of a Norwegian I don't know of higher than the life of a person outside Norway I don't know of. (Stuff like Breivik still ends up affecting me much more than a civil war elsewhere - but part of the reason is a tragedy in Norway ends up with me knowing of the people who perish, it's not that I consider them inherently more valuable due to their norwegianity.) It's a slightly different conversation by countries than by individuals, but the logic is similar on a grander scale. The reason countries have militaries is so they can protect the lives of their citizens at the expense of any foreign citizens who want to attack. Norway is planning to spend 90 billion NOK on their military this year so they have the ability to kill as many Russians as they need to to hopefully prevent even a single Norwegian death. If they just demilitarized and said they won't kill Russians to save Norwegians, Russia wouldn't have to fight much to conquer the place and only a token number of Norwegians might die in a subsequent takeover. Is Norway wrong for spending such a significant amount of it's money on big guns whose only use could be to kill foreigners? Last I checked, Norway was afraid Russia might invade, and was shoring up their military as a precaution, so if Russian soldiers enter Norway they can kill them. IDF is not doing that. The equivalent to Norway would be if Norway was afraid of Russia, and therefore turned St Petersburg to rubble, displacing its citizens and slaughtering 24,000 of them with the excuse that the Russian army is there somewhere. The equivalent for the IDF was spending billions of dollars on their military last year as a precaution. This year Hamas invaded them.
Hamas invaded and killed civilians, so Israel is justified in counter-invading and killing over 10x more civilians (and counting).
Don't worry, if Norway flattened St Petersburg in response to Russia raiding Svalbard, I'd also be up in arms about Norwegian war crimes.
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Okay I see that you guys posted a bunch of things in the meantime but since it took me a while:
The facts that are happening on the ground should be enough for anyone unbiased to conclude that they're not acting in self-defense. You don't drop appartment blocks on children in self-defense. You don't destroy empty buildings with bulldozers, buildings belonging to people that you had earlier forced to flee, in self-defense. But that's not my first time saying this, so for this post I'm going to talk about and quote some far right people. My intention is to ask you if you would like to let the leaders of Israel know that they're acting in self-defense, because they don't seem to be aware of it.
Let's start with IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari, who is quoted by The Guardian as saying that “thousands of tonnes of munitions” have already been dropped on Gaza, adding that “while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage”.
The Dahiya doctrine, Which M. Hagari is in my opinion referencing here, is a military strategy which encompasses the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of regimes deemed to be hostile as a measure calculated to pressure combatants, and endorses the employment of "disproportionate force" (compared to the amount of force used by the enemy) to secure that end. This strategy has this name because it's the strategy that Gadi Eizenkot used when he bombed the fuck out of the Dahiya district in Beirut in 2006. Gadi Eizenkot was subsequently quoted in 2008 in Reuters saying: "What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. [...] This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized."
In related news, Gadi Eizenkot is currently in the Israeli war cabinet, which is why it's no surprise that there's now a new paragraph on this wiki:
"Commentators [...] have noted that the attacks of the Israeli Defense Forces on the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip during the 2023 Hamas-Israel war may constitute an extension of the doctrine. Haaretz reported that IDF had dropped "all restraint" in its war: killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure at an unprecedented rate."
Yoav Gallant, the minister of Defense, a few days after saying (in self-defense) that Gaza would receive no food, no electricity and no fuel because they're human animals, declared that "Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything." He also threatened specifically the citizens of Lebanon: "What we are doing in Gaza, we can do in Beirut", which presumably the citizens of Lebanon didn't feel was very threatening because they know, like you, that Israel is only targeting Hamas.
So here we have Israel doing literal state terrorism in self-defense. Here are some other ministers being very invested in defending themselves against Hamas:
Eli Cohen (Minister of foreign affairs):
"At war’s end, not only will Hamas be gone, but Gaza’s territory will shrink"
The Guardian
"Another senior official, Israel Katz, now minister of foreign affairs, declared last year when he was energy minister: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” Meanwhile the heritage minister, Amihai Eliyahu, opposed humanitarian aid on the grounds that we “wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”. He also suggested nuking Gaza, declaring “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians”. That saw him suspended by Netanyahu."
From the wiki of Bezalel Smotrich:
According to Ron Ben-Yishai, in his dual role as Finance Minister and adjunct Minister in the Ministry of Defense, Smotrich intends to implement ideas set forth in his "Decisive Plan" (2017)[37] which, according to Ben-Yishai, foresees: “Flood(ing), simply so, the areas of Judea and Samaria with settlements and Jewish settlers. When this happens, the Palestinians are supposed to understand that they have no chance to get a state of their own, and they would have to choose between one of the three options – a life of subjugation under Israeli rule, emigration, or a Shahid [martyr] death”.
On 14 November 2023, Smotrich called for a "voluntary emigration" of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries, stating that Israel would "no longer be able to accept the existence of an independent entity in Gaza".
Here's a report about an israeli think tank making the following claim: the Hamas attack provides a “rare opportunity” to cleanse Gaza. It's not a reaction, it's an opportunity. We had been wanting to do this but couldn't, and now perhaps we can.
Finally we have the opportunity to cleanse Gaza (in self-defense).
Netanyahu himself,
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”
(Slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass (in self-defense)).
Bibi has been at it for a few decades now. Concerning the Tian an Men massacre, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador to the United Nations and an American businessman with the Boston Consulting Group, was reported by the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot in November, 1989, to have said the following:
“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China [Tiananmen Square], when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.” (Israeli Journal Hotam, November 24, 1989)
(Exploit events that draw international attention elsewhere to remove Arabs (in self-defense)).
Please also remember from earlier posts that we have allegations that Netanyahu voluntarily propped up Hamas because he thought it was good that Palestine was divided between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as that made it less likely that Palestine could become a state. There is also a leaked document talking about strategy when it comes to the current conflict, in which it was highlighted that if the two options left for Israel at some point were either the Palestinian Authority running Gaza or Hamas running Gaza, it was preferable for Hamas to be ruling Gaza, as the PA ruling would make it more likely that Palestine would become a state. That is prioritizing Palestinians not having a state over the destruction of a terrorist group, before and after Oct 7th.
(Many of those examples are taken from GDF's "Debunking Israel's Defense Speedrun" video, I am crediting it)
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EPT
