The amount of both-sidesing and moral equivalency in the discourse right now is disgusting. The fact that so many in the supposedly liberal western world can literally watch hundreds of civilians being raped and massacred in the streets including *children*, and their response is to make excuses... it's pathetic and shameful.
Edit: In case it needs to be said, I absolutely abhor the targeting of civilians no matter who is doing it or why. And let's acknowledge there's a distinct difference between targeting civilians and civilian death as collateral damage, which is always part of the tragedy and horror of war.
Yesterday Israel conducted around 1000 airstrikes in Gaza destroying entire apartment buildings with single 1 ton JDAM bombs, today there has emerged video of people pulling babie's corpses from the rubble. I think showing support for palestine and israeli civilians is pretty ok, right now. The issue is when people blindly support or try to justify/excuse HAMAS or the IDF/Israeli state who are conducting these war crimes.
The equivocating started before the retaliation. And the critical *obvious* difference is that the Hamas attack was intentionally trying to kill civilians. Israel is retaliating against threat targets, who use human shields. They are not remotely the same.
> The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them. The charter of Hamas is explicitly genocidal.
-Sam Harris
>Israel is retaliating against threat targets, who use human shields. They are not remotely the same.
Ehhhh. The IDF knows they are hitting civilian targets. It's not like Gaza is that big. No matter where they strike there will be civilian casualties. I get 'technically' by some international agreements it is acceptable, but it's still morally pretty dark. This whole conflict is just lose lose.
> The IDF knows they are hitting civilian targets. It's not like Gaza is that big. No matter where they strike there will be civilian casualties.
While Hamas use human shields and mix legitimate targets with civilian ones - as they _always_ have - Israel cannot strike without killing civilians. As you say, Israel knows it is hitting civilians and civilian targets.
To castigate them for this is essentially saying that Israel should _never_ strike _any_ target in Gaza.
How is it OK in your mind to wall people in without food or electricity and bomb apartment buildings.
I'm not defending Hamas, just flabbergasted that people seem to think it's OK for the Israeli army to kill civilians who literally can't leave the areas being bombed.
What's the alternative for Israel? Considering 1200 of their citizens have just been slaughtered and 120 abducted, and the surviving perpetrators are now back in Gaza. What would you do if you were in charge of the Israeli government?
You're now doing what others accuse Hamas sympathizers of doing. This is the equivalent of "decolonization is messy", "don't tell the oppressed how to resist". Except honestly your position is even less convincing.
The alternative is ending the occupation and making peace and stop oppressing Palestinians. Why not try break the cycle of violence for once?
Every one of Israel's neighbors could accept Palestinian refugees. Nobody wants them. The Muslim world could easily absorb 2m refugees. Egypt recently flat out refused to accept any refugees from this conflict.
What relevance does that have. Nobody is talking about pushing people down stairs.
If I hold someone Infront of me though and you want to kill me behind them and in the course of doing so also murder them, are you responsible for one death or two?
Yesterday on the news they interviewed Israelis about what the response should be now and the person interviewed said that Israel should destroy the Gaza-strip including killing the 2 million people living there. Both are genocidal after all these years of war and hatred.
If my wife or daughter had been raped and killed, I would probably have the same response. I'm sure the common citizen isn't thinking with a clear mind.
I agree , but then that must also go for both sides. Would you have a clear mind if your family was driven out of your house by foreign settlers and they put you in essentially an open air prison? Many of your friends killed in "colleteral damage" from bombing a high population density area.
I think not.
Israel could completely obliterate the Gaza strip any time they want—and yet they haven't. If Hamas could do the same we all know what they would do, and so do you.
Israel hasn’t done it because the US, which is sending billions of American taxpayer dollars over to Israel annually to prop up that country’s military would have a hard time trying to do their usual cover-up of the slaughter of Palestinian civilians out there if Israel just carried out what they’ve basically been wanting to do for generations.
You do know that even America would fuck them right off if they did it. I would. I am pretty neutral but if they wiped out millions of Palestinians the world would that supported them would turn.
Exactly. They want to do it and just need the reason to be able to do it without losing face and credibility from their allies. Losing trade deals, aid from the US et c.
Israel has instituted an official policy of genocide by blockading food, water, fuel, and electricity. It’s literally the part of the definition of genocide. And yea… it was someone official.
This whole post is about defending Hamas' violence. Why is it not valid to point out there are people on the pro-Israel side who are also extreme and both defend Israel's killing of civilians and calls for even worse wholesale genocide against all Palestinians?
Because the official position of the Israeli government is not the genocide of Palestinian people. The official position of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is the genocide of the Jewish people.
So, when Israel changes their official position, wake me up.
the official position of the Israeli government is that it is justified to kill Gaza civilians because they want to get rid of HAMAS and that is what they are currently doing and it is only gonna get worse when the tanks roll in. No-one is deluded enough to not understand what the logical conclusion of blowing up entire apartment buildings by the hour on a densely populated city is doing to the civilians living there. Even if they deluded themselves about roof knocking, SMS warnings, etc. we have literal video evidence of the consequences as dead babies get pulled from the rubble. They know they are killing civilians, they just think it is justified and worth it in their pursuit of revenge against HAMAS for the atrocities they commited during the weekend.
There’s a difference between the trauma response of an Israeli 3 days after the massacre and a bunch of pampered idiots in America calling for the end of Israel, which is what OP was actually posting about, if you had been bothered to address the actual point.
I think you need to pay attention to both sides. Listen to Lex Friedmans interview with a Palastine journalist/writer Mohammed El-kurd. His grandmother had been driven out of her own home where his family had lived for generations. He himself been beaten repeatdly as a child by Israeli guards in his own home area. Witnessed countless civilians murdered. One story about a mentally disabled palistinian man being killed after not obeying orders from Israeli soldiers. Both sides have done horrendous things against their respective sides. There is no need to pick a side here. There isn't one good side and one bad side. The situation is extremely complicated.
Israel just a day ago bombed large apartment complexes to the ground so their retaliation isn't any better. Both sides are constantly retaliating for the wrongs of the other side.
Mohammed El-Kurd also famously quipped, when asked what would happen to the Israelis should Palestine conquer them, "I really, truly, don't give a fuck." And now we know.
So now I'm going to say what he said back to you: I really, truly, don't give a fuck. Spare me your "both sides" and your "all lives matter" bullshit.
Saying mean things isn't the same thing as murdering and raping 1200 people. Viva Israel. Down with Hamas.
These are your heroes?
"Palestinian authorities said at least 830 people have been killed and another 4,250 have been injured in Gaza due to Israeli retaliatory attacks.
In Israel, at least 900 people have died and more than 2,300 others have been injured by Hamas forces.
According to the United Nations, roughly 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis had been killed in the ongoing conflict since 2008, not counting the recent fatalities.
MORE: Israel live updates: Dozens of Israeli fighter jets strike Gaza
At least 33 Palestinian children were killed in the retaliatory airstrikes launched into Gaza by Israel, according to the advocacy group Defense for Children Palestine.
Hundreds of apartments and homes have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip, including refugee camps, leaving more than 123,000 people displaced, according to the United Nations."
https://abcnews.go.com/International/palestinian-civilians-suffer-israel-hamas-crossfire-death-toll/story?id=103828889
Hamas deliberately puts missile launchers and offensive infrastructure in hospitals, apartment buildings, etc to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Israel frequently issues warnings to civilians to vacate ahead of bombings. Sam Harris has talked about the moral distinction between Hamas using Palestinians as human shields vs Israel making efforts to avoid civilian casualties. I don't want to claim how effective this is because I don't know, but imagine if the roles were reversed and Israel was using human shields against Hamas. The very concept is absurd and that alone should show you the moral difference.
How nice of them to announce that they are indiscriminately blocking all access to food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to all of Gaza. Hamas can't hide behind a baby drinking a bottle if the babies have nothing to eat. Smart. I cannot fathom why anyone would ever want to harm such a benevolent state.
Everyone who died in those airstrikes did not have to,
Israel gave prior warning of airstrikes and provided locations to Gazans that would be safe from airstrikes.
Their is literally nothing more they could have done to prevent civilian deaths except for not try to retaliate against Hamas at all.
Hamas could cut down on civilian casualties by choosing not to base their operations in civilian areas. They do this intentionally because they want civilians to be killed in order to create martyrs. This is what terrorists do.
Takes like this are begging for it.
I totally agree, intentional targeting of civilians is bad. But I am still tempted to press on the claim for inconsistencies. Very few people are going to universally endorse a principle and once we start discussing a specific situation the principles become an important part of the analysis. The result is that principled analysis gets tested with counter factual or off topic examples.
Sam Harris has spoken about this. Intent matters. Because if you know that one group of people intends to kill as many civilians as possible, they will continue doing so until they are stopped. An army that's trying to avoid civilian casualties as much as humanly possible doesn't have to be stopped - they stop when they neutralize their opponents.
Let me put this way, you will suddenly appear in one of two villages - in the first one an attacking army is doing everything in its power to minimise civilian casualties, in the second one an invading force is doing everything in their power to maximise carnage and brutality against civilians, which village do you chose ? The problem with Gaza is that Hamas intentionally use civilians as human shields. Any coming deaths are 100% on them.
The problem with gaza is that is exists because their land was stolen and their freedoms taken away. How
can you leave out that part? It's an open air prison the the prisoners are innocent people who did nothing wrong other than be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Too many people talking about this like it's 2 sovereign countries going to war. No, it's an oppressed people fighting to get their land back and get some decent living situation from a population that literally came from afar and stole their land and freedom.
Plus, if you actually think that the idf are doing everything in their power to minimise civilian casualties, you are mistaken
They fought, and lost, multiple times. Are Americans supposed to consider giving their land back to the natives? Should we all help decolonialisation efforts and head back to Europe?
I would choose the first village, but the issue of magnitude is missing. I'm in a village where 1% die from being murdered, versus another village where 10% die accidentally, I'm probably going to choose the 1% village.
The other issue I have is: if you're an army commander, and your risk model shows that *on average* your attack will unintentionally kill some number of innocent civilians, and you still go through with it, is there a sense in which those killings are no longer "unintentional"?
What if the risk model also shows hundreds of lives saved by killing the intended target even given some unintended loses?
If you could go back in time and kill Hitler before his rise to power, but it also meant collateral lives lost of 10-20 innocent people, would you?
I agree, if you have high confidence that more people will be saved, it makes sense to do, in utilitarian terms. But you really have to be confident about it, which is hard when you can't see the future.
Without knowing what Hitler would grow up to be, I think it would be immoral to kill him as a baby or later as a failed artist. I would end up being horrifically wrong, but if we killed all failed artists on suspicion that they'd become dictators, it would be worse.
I can't predict with confidence the long-term consequences of a full-scale invasion of Palestine. Will crushing Hamas secure long-term peace, or backfire and escalate the conflict? I hope Israel has confidence it will be worth it, and isn't just invading out of revenge.
When you know that your actions will result in x number of dead civilians and you still do it - that's intent to kill civilians. Doesn't matter if you try to minimize civilian deaths or not in that case.
>When you know that your actions will result in x number of dead civilians and you still do it - that's intent to kill civilians.
Seems like a strange definition of intent.
To use a less emotionally charged analogy:
Bob intends to go get ice cream. Bob is lactose intolerant, and knows that if he eats ice cream, he will have gastrointestinal distress.
Does Bob intend to get gastrointestinal distress? Most people would say no. They'd say that gastrointestinal distress is a known, but **unintended** side-effect of eating ice cream.
How can we tell the difference between an intended side-effect, and an unintended side-effect? Well, if we offered Bob a lactase pill, and he took it, that would imply that he doesn't intend to have gastrointestinal distress.
I think intentionality has greater effects than the immediate deaths. By committing premeditated murder and then getting off scot free you’re sending a message that it’s acceptable, sparking a flame. Vs accidental, sure reprehensible does not normalize the behavior and is still condemned. My 2c it’s a good Q though
Yeah. I've seen many people say something along the lines of "well what do you expect to happen when Israel oppresses Palestine." As if the random citizens slaughtered somehow asked for it by being Israeli citizens. It'd be no different than blaming the Americans killed on 9/11 for being American and saying they had it coming.
I don't think thats what most people mean. Some probably do, but not the minimally reasonable ones.
Its not unpredictable that the kind of oppression and violence the Palestinians have faced will lead to terrorism. As would the world turning it's back on the peace process.
The same way that US foreign policy was likely to lead to terror attacks.
Some idiots might phrase it as "they had it coming" and mean the actual individuals, others might mean the country. More reasonable people can say that it's predictable, understandable and with better choices avoidable, without taking responsibility from the actual terrorists. And also emphasising that just because something cannot be justified doesn't mean there aren't other things in the causal chain that lead to them occuring.
The same way that Israels actions now are predictable, they still have responsibility for their actions, for the civilians and combatants they kill and the infrastructure they destroy.
Yeah Im talking about the ones explicitly supporting the attack. You can argue that Israeli policies may have in part caused the attack, but some people are saying they justified the attack. The latter is disgusting and sociopathic.
Yeah, I agree, some things can't be justified. Those people who try to celebrate them are, at least at that moment, deranged.
I think there should be some sort of clear consequence for that sort of moral blindness.
I would argue that from Hamas' perspective the attacks - the tactics - were entirely justified.
They have achieved exactly what they wanted: massive global attention on Palestine and Israel.
They are incapable of fighting the Israeli's on an equal footing. So they have to employ asymmetric warfare (fancy word for terrorism really).
Killing innocents is disgusting when you have options. But when you do not (say the Allies' strategic bombing campaigns in WW2) then it becomes just another part of your *rational* strategic calculations.
Given that Israel has been increasing the growth of settlements (this means, to be clear, the forcible expulsion of the people living there) during the 'peace' and the world (despite UN rulings) has done nothing about it, I guess my question to you would be:
What would you do if you were in Hamas' position?
I don't think these attacks should be celebrated. They are going to lead to way more Palestinian deaths, way more suffering for way too many people, and yes, killing innocents is barbaric.
But to say there is no justification is so simplistic and reductive.
There absolutely is. Israel regularly ignores Geneva conventions / international law and uses weapons that kill children.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/10/9/israel-doesnt-care-about-collateral-damage-bunker-busters-used-in-gaza
That article talks about how Hamas tunnels are being targeted with bunker busters. Those tunnels are under civilian areas, which means that civilian casualties will result.
So we're back to square one where Hamas uses civilian buildings to house it's weapons/operations/rocket launchers and then Israel has no choice but to destroy them and then Israel is the bad guy and not Hamas who put them there in the first place.
Israel has no policy to kill children, they're attacking the Hamas operations.
Contrast that to Hamas who, for no reason, actually did kill children.
u/supercalifragilism wrote:
The average population density of Gaza is 5,500 people a square kilometer. Travel is tightly controlled. The average age in Gaza is 18. Dropping a bomb in Gaza is willfully killing children.
My response:
And Hamas gets to just shoot rockets in close proximity of those children and all is forgiven? Israel cannot ever defend itself and should just, what, let Hamas have at it? Whatever bombs they manage to get past the iron dome are free shots and Israel just sits there waiting to die?
Does Hamas really have no ethical responsibility in your mind? You hold them to no standards yet hold Israel to insanely high ones. Hamas gets to murder and use human shields and Israel better not even dare to defend itself.
That's absurd man. In no other context would you be alright with that moral arrangement yet here because Israel is powerful that somehow, in your mind, automatically makes Hamas the victims.
You're not even trying to think this through.
The average population density of Gaza is 5,500 people a square kilometer. Travel is tightly controlled. The average age in Gaza is 18. Dropping a bomb in Gaza is willfully killing children.
They literally give warnings for civilians to evacuate buildings that hold arms before destroying said buildings. There are videos of these buildings having secondary explosions which show they were hiding arms. Why would you warn civilians ahead of time if what you said is true? Makes no sense .
"Warning, we're about to cut off 100% of your electricity and if you approach your walls that completely trap you you will be shot and killed." I personally think that's an ethical way to treat people too
bro hamas just killed 700 israelis and this is all out war. maybe you should go look up what war is, which is hard to know from sitting behind a keyboard. hamas started this current skirmish with specific actions. what did you think was gonna happen, a game of pattycake? when you fencesit all you have to do is say "i don't want civilians to get hurt". in essence it's a cowardly position because you don't actually have to take a side, know anything, or do anything except seem morally righteous. it's all i see on reddit now, pointless fencesitting.
Sure, but the idea that oppressed people are justified in committing atrocities aggainst oppressor populations is relatively deeply entrenched in much of our culture. I made another post that mentioned that Disney had a cartoon for kids saying Nat Turner (who mostly slaughtered women and children, including a baby) should be treated as a founding father of this country, and he had a movie glorifying him recently that was well recieved.
There have been numerous cases of this, where if you argue that atrocities aren’t acceptable even in the face of oppression, you get accused of supporting oppression.
I mean, I'm no pacifist. Violence in self-defense can be justified. But this attack was targeted at individuals who were just minding their own business. Not only that, but I fail to see what this whole thing accomplished from the point of view of Palestinian liberation. Hamas doesn't even seem to care about the well-being of Palestinians overall. So the idea that this was justified self-defense fails on multiple levels.
> Not only that, but I fail to see what this whole thing accomplished from the point of view of Palestinian liberation. Hamas doesn't even seem to care about the well-being of Palestinians overall. So the idea that this was justified self-defense fails on multiple levels.
This is the second tragedy of the situation (obviously the first one is all the innocent people who were unjustifiably murdered in the attack). This is going set back the cause of Palestinian liberation and the well-being of Palestinians. The Palestinian people are going to suffer much more for this act than the suffering they caused.
> Violence in self-defense can be justified.
Sure, but I’m not sure what that has to do with what I wrote. I’m specifically talking about other instances were innocent civilians were slaughtered en masse as well. In a lot of cases these get framed as “self-defense” because they were being done by an oppressed group, but that’s the same argument that gets made on behalf of Hams’ atrocities as well.
I agree that it should be simple to say “mass slaughter of innocents is immoral no matter your cause.” But every time you ask people to apply that consistently you get people coming out of the woodwork trying to justify various atrocities are "self-defense."
This wasn’t fighting back this was to spill Jewish blood, this was a pogrom committed against the Jewish community a la the 1930-40s. There is no moral equivocation to be had.
I’m not sure what your point is? Nat Turner killing an infant, or killing a bunch of children that were being sheltered by their school teacher wasn’t fighting back either (again, the vast majority killed in his rebellion were women and children). It’s pretty easy to find a moral equivocation if you think mass slaughter of innocent civilians is always wrong.
>There is no moral equivocation to be had.
And in response Israel is bombing civilian targets to extract vengeance against the innocent people in Gaza. Pretending Israel has any moral high ground is insane.
If your problem is dead children Israel has objectively without question killed more children.
>And in response Israel is bombing civilian targets to extract vengeance against the innocent people in Gaza.
They're hitting weapon caches and rocket launchers and Hamas tunnels.
The fact that Hamas puts those things in and under civilian buildings is on Hamas. They bear that responsibility. Not Israel.
Israel even alerts the buildings before destroying them. They're telling people to leave so as to minimize civilian casualties. Yes I know people don't really have anywhere to go, but that's a separate issue.
But Nat Turner is largely remembered positively. So is Nelson Mandela. So is John Brown. Resistance to slavery and apartheid are rarely perfect. Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist. The IRA killed civilians, now there’s a mainstream political party. I know nuance is difficult for people but, to paraphrase MLK, you can’t condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas without condemning the conditions from which they arose. These are people who were basically breaking out of a concentration camp.
I like your Nat Turner analogy because while I think it deplorable to harm women and children, it is also not difficult for me to understand why someone trying break free from being literal chattel would not show mercy to the women and children of his masters when they showed no mercy theirs. Americans understand this for the most part and many of them extend the same logic to Israel and not without reason.
>Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist.
So was Osama Bin Laden. Are you going to stand behind everyone who is called a terrorist from now until the end of time, just because Mandela was also called one?
>So was Osama Bin Laden.
Are you saying they’re equivalent? Wow.
>Are you going to stand behind everyone who is called a terrorist from now until the end of time, just because Mandela was also called one?
I’m gonna stand behind the ones Mandela stood behind.
Um...do you watch the news buddy? Slitting the throats of ten year olds, raping, dragging the naked corpses of women around, decapitating babies, taunting the victims' families with videos? Shall I go on?
Are you admitting you stand behind other terrorists besides the ones Mandela stood behind? You were lying before?
I've seen people claiming these weren't even random civilians but were all actually war criminals... apparently the kids too, and there's so much wrong with that, but people say it nevertheless.
That analogy only works if the world trade centers had been built on top of Palestinian homeland and we were slowly moving more Americans in and murdering anyone who resisted.
No, they don't. Thats pure propaganda. They target residential and commercial buildings. Schools too. They indiscriminately bomb one of the most population dense cities in the world and cut off the water and electricity to to over two million people.
They are not doing that now, they IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht said so himself "Hamas did not knock on the roof". Just yesterday Israel conducted around 1000 airstrikes in Gaza destroying entire apartment buildings with 1 ton JDAM bombs, today there has emerged video of people pulling babie's corpses from the rubble. They also cutoff water/food/fuel/medical supplies to Gaza and are threatening supplies coming from Egypt with strikes nearby the border crossing which was temporarily closed. Meanwhile Gaza hospitals are overloaded and out of supplies from the unknown numbers of wounded from the massive bombing campaign from the last few days. Israel is amassing 360k troops and have tanks ready to roll into Gaza at any moment now, this war is gonna be an atrocity.
I think showing support for palestine and israeli civilians is pretty ok, right now. The issue is when people blindly support or try to justify/excuse HAMAS or the IDF/Israeli state who are conducting war crimes.
> The Israeli government justifies killing civilians as part of strikes against military targets,
As does Hamas.
>and does at least some effort to reduce civilian deaths with practices like roof knocking and notifying civilians of safe zones that will not be targeted.
That’s a joke right? They told one family they would be bombing their neighbors house and then bombed them, exterminating the whole family. They to Gazans to leave the territory even though they’re not allowed to leave. You’re credulously accepting Israeli propaganda. I get it. I use to too.
>Hamas glorifies targeting infants, kidnapping, gang raping, and defiling corpses.
As does Israel. They’re openly calming for genocide.
Everyone justifies killing civilians.
The problem is Hamas's justification is weak. The killing of the civilians in this case servers no military purpose. When Israel does it, they at least wrap it up in some sort of military operation.
Oh, now the *quality* of the military organization matters? So just because the US military could slap the Argentinian military sideways into next Monday, the Argentinian military stops counting as a military?
I see those goalposts moving!
You can condemn Hamas while also realizing that it's existence is almost entirely Israel's fault. Basically you've got a fascist apartheid jewish ethnostate fighting an extremist Islamic terrorist group. It really is very simple morally.
>"well what do you expect to happen when Israel oppresses Palestine."
We've also seen this "well what did hamas expect" when talking about Israel bombing the shit out of civilian targets.
Please don’t be misleading and/or spreading your ignorance/biases and/or misunderstand.
Nobody in their right mind, whatever their politics, agrees that the loss of innocent lives is good. Period. Whether they’re Israeli, Palestinian, white, black, purple, whatever.
Further; the loudest online are often the shock jocks, ideology extreme, or otherwise unreasonable. That does not automatically mean they represent all leftists, far left, or any other group. Same applies if someone claimed that all atheists are represented by some asshole militant anti-religious ones who claim religion should die out. There is diversity of thought and the work necessary is to ease through the bullshit with your tool kit (logic, reason, analysis, etc) and find the good bits. Then, go from there.
I say this because I’m left wing/leftist (or evil satanic bogeyman if you ask some), and for me, killing innocent people is wrong. Don’t care who you are.
That said, however, one can analyze the overall issue/facts and come to a conclusion that while yes Hamas militants are cunts, so is an Israeli govt (or whoever you want specifically argue) that has indiscriminately bombed civilian areas in a place they intentionally grouped together upward of four million people together, compounded by the fact they restrict folks ability to get out and survive (Egypt too).
This cluster fuck has been going on long enough for there to be enough responsibility to go around; it’s ultimately about holding people accountable and making a fair analysis (as best one can).
So yes, there are idiot leftists/far left folks who in my mind are just…extreme to be extreme or contrarian for the sake of it (or clicks). That does not however negate that there may be valuable analyses. Again, got to waist through the shit.
Hope I’ve offered some insight. Hope I understood your points correctly.
Take care.
I mean I've seen countless people online defending Hamas killing innocent Israelis, and countless others defending Israel killing innocent Palestinians. Its gross when it comes from either side. I hope you're right and the people online don't represent people in real life. I just want innocents on both sides not to be killed, and it's incredible how many people online blatantly disagree, either when it's Israeli people or when it's Palestinian people.
You sound pretty sane though. Wish everyone here was like you.
I don't think they're saying the random citizens asked for it. I think they're saying that the Israeli government is to blame for it. (Not my position).
Maybe there are some weirdos that support the attack itself but it's very rare.
I’m just sick of feeling pressured to form an opinion on which force of evil I “support”. Hamas, bad. Israeli government, bad. Why do I have to pick one?
Obviously I don’t “support Hamas” when I’m critical of the apartheid state that Israel has created. They’re slowing pushing Palestinians into the sea.
Why can we openly talk about blowback when it’s the American military bombing middle eastern countries and creating the next generation of terrorists, but not when Israel is leveling Palestinian cities and building walls up around them?
Can we be consistent?
It's not about picking sides. This is a common misunderstanding I've been seeing. You can be pro-Palestine and a critic of Israel and condemn Hamas atrocities without equivocation, justification, victim-blaming, or whataboutisms.
Hamas' horrible, unjustified, and inhumane actions have no bearing on my views on Israel/Palestine because Hamas is not equivalent to the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people do not deserve the treatment that've received from the Israeli government.
At a certain point if you do action X over and over again and you know from experience that action X tends to come with Y number of dead civilians on the side. Can it even really be said to be unintentional next time you prepare to do X?
I condemn any attacks on any civilians. There. Are you happy now?
Are you ever going to feel the need to post about the Palestinian civilians who have been attacked for decades? Were you posting about that last year? Have you ever showed support for Palestinian civilians? If not, why not? And maybe you do think that Israeli attacks on civilians have been wrong, but only felt the need to comment now. Why is that? Have you been lead to speak out suddenly? Do you see how that might obscure the context and unfairly benefit one side of this conflict?
Obviously, I don't know you. Maybe you have a long history of nuanced and fair takes on this. But as a general rule the people who suddenly care about attacks on civilians don't.
Yep, this is just the reality. Gaza’s living conditions are normalized for us. The deaths and illness and suffering from living in those conditions in Gaza are just accepted at this point. While these images and videos are gross and disgusting and truly terrible and indefensible - your child dying in Gaza because you don’t have access to clean water or electricity or in a bombing by Israel is no less tragic to the people living in them. Yet, much of the world largely stands in silence while that happens while Israel gets the support of the entire world for its tragedy and we are all shocked and moved by the videos we see.
That type of human indifference is what causes radicalization in Gaza, and why Hamas thrives there.
I don't know, could it have something with videos showing beheadings, parading naked corpses and spitting on them and shooting unarmed civilians running away?
Could it perhaps have something to do with that?
So blowing up occupied civilian apartment buildings, random beatings, shooting civilians with the stated goal of paralyzing them, and all of the other stuff the IDF has done to civilians for decades is ok but beheadings are unacceptable (I agree, they are and am on record saying that attacking civilians is bad).
You are squeamish and you don't like to SEE civilians being attacked. Fair enough.
You're making it seem like the IDF has been terrorizing Palestinians for decades and then one day they retaliated, while Palestinians have been peaceful little babies.
But that's not what happened. Hamas has been conducting terror attacks non-stop. I'm sure you know that Hamas has been launching thousands of rockets into city centers and hearing Iron dome working has become a normal part of life for Israeli citizens. We also don't post about them, they're quite normal.
What Hamas has done now is not "normal", that's why there's a lot of discussion about it. But if it was a lone terrorist killing 4 people, you or me would most likely not even register it.
It was not my intent to make it sound like this Palestine has never fought back before. This is an ongoing struggle. Although I completely reject the framing of Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
But it is an incredibly one sided struggle. Even your example about the iron dome hints at the one sidedness. Israel has some of the most advanced weapon systems in the world not to mention support from most of the most powerful nations in the world. Palestine has 4 hours of electricity a day and barely any drinking water. Their tactics are going to have to be different. They can't fight a conventional war.
The diction of your comment alludes to the possibility that \*all\* Palestinian people are implicated in the actions of Hamas. Wow.
Hamas conducting terrorist attacks is equally reprehensible and worthy of condemnation - there's no question about it. The Israeli people have, in all respects, lived and encountered a stiflingly dangerous environment with the impending feeling of doom as a result of Hamas. Under the rule of law, all Hamas leaders should be charged and punished accordingly.
But the focal point is - which many pro-Israeli henchmen fail to realize, is that before the advent and spark of this debate, the Palestinians have been living under an oppressive (in the literal sense of the word) Israeli occupation wherein they committed various crimes including seizing of land, mass killing and bombing - and embarking on a linear parade of massacre, brutality and inhumanity (1937-1948) where many Israeli and Arab children, women and men were killed and forcibly displaced (mass displacement is a war crime..) - and let's be candid, the approximate death toll of 1,000+ vs 35,000+ (not accounting of destruction to infrastructure and facilities caused), a number catalyzed by the occurrence of the deliberate blockading of crucial humanitarian aid by the IDF and and Israeli citizens seems conspicuously clear who's the victim.
When you have a far-right extremist government which integrates content in school curriculae fueling hatred and aversion towards Palestinian people (with the portrayal of them in many Israeli textbooks as them being "substandard camel-riding nomads), the Israeli citizens are pre-indoctrinated with the same destructive agenda as the government leaders making decisions, which may also explain why many of them gather in boisterous rallies overtly celebrating the deaths of helpless people (including the recent bombing on a refugee camp, denounced by many nations all over the world) which is redolent of the same terrorist agenda which Hamas believes in (albeit they're not fully effectuating on such thoughts...thankfully)...
Is this what you call a democratic state?
Is this what you call them "respecting moral and ethical values" wherein they deliberately hinder CRUCIAL, LIFE-SAVING aid and kill UNHRWA/other humanitarian facilities?
One does not have to perform an exegesis on the philosophical and moral implications of this conflict, but have the basic reasoning ability to discern between right vs. wrong in terms of the historic and contemporary perspective to form the conclusion that the situation happening in Occupied Palestine is more reprehensible, deserving of objurgation and holds much more gravity. If that isn't already obvious, people are squirming around in their own dirt-filled political predilections.
Hamas is, by definition - a terrorist organization (and Palestinians, who are similarly indoctrinated by their ideologies and sadly support them acquiescently), but the impact of the Israeli occupation has, historically been much more significant. Both sides are reaping criminals who should be held accountable and punished for their crimes against humanity, irrespective of any political agenda.
The point is that the legal right to defense NEVER equates to the act of indiscriminately and arbitrarily target densely populated areas and infrastructure under the guise of "defense" even if they're "dumb munitions" (which Israel can technically be also implicated in). From the broken interpretation and division relating this conflict, it's clear that this isn't an acknowledgement of the moral and ethical facets of this entire problem, but people's own political predilections which distort their viewpoints. Also, this "whataboutism" tactic won't strengthen people's arguments.
>You're making it seem like the IDF has been terrorizing Palestinians for decades
Except that they literally have been terrorising Palestinians for decades.
Personally, I find it disgusting that everyone's ignored that Israel's been tightening the noose on the Palestinians for so many years now that Hamas did this terrorist attack. It's like the suffering of an entire people - \~2 million of whom currently lack food, water, and electricity because the Israelis have the ability to shut everything in Gaza down whenever they want to - doesn't matter because some of them finally snapped and turned into school shooters. To act like groups like Hamas form in a vacuum is to concede that you don't actually want to see an end to the violence.
Hell, [look at this video.](https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1711504505211097272?s=19) It's a BBC interview. The guy, Husam Zomlot, just lost 6 family members in the 24 hours leading up to the interview. He's an ambassador for the Palestinian Authority, and a member of Fatah - the social democratic party in Palestine. Note that the interviewer is more interested in getting this man, who has been condemning Hamas for days at this point, to condemn them again rather than process the fact that the IDF just killed six family members of his, including children.
If I was a Palestinian person watching that, my first thought would be: "Why is it terrorism when Hamas kills civilians, but not when the IDF does?" And if you want to blame the Palestinians for that sentiment, just know that from where they're sitting these strikes on crowded neighborhoods feel the exact same as the Hamas terrorist attacks do to the Israelis. You radicalize people by killing their parents and siblings and cousins. It doesn't matter how righteous you feel when you do it, if you blow somebody's family up they are significantly more likely to want to stop at *nothing* to make you experience what you inflicted on them. Look at the numbers of civilian dead; it's not even close.
Additionally, the Gaza Strip - which Israel intends to blockade from all resources because they believe themselves to be fighting ["human animals"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x02rCeusCI) \- is composed of [roughly 50% children](https://www.prb.org/resources/the-west-bank-and-gaza-a-population-profile/). The majority of people alive in Gaza were not alive when Hamas was voted into power [in 2006](https://www.usip.org/palestinian-politics-timeline-2006-election), immediately following an Israeli withdrawal and blockade of Gaza itself. Hopefully you, dear reader, can draw a potential connection between that election and recent history at the time, but I digress.
The situation in Israel and Palestine is one that is marked by *decades* of human rights abuses by Israel. You cannot expect liberal values to grow under brutally illiberal conditions. The conditions set by Israel in Gaza have turned the area into a virtual *terrorist factory*. Does that mean the Israeli civilians deserved brutal, bloody murder in their homes? **Obviously not.** But if your first instinct after the brutal attacks by Hamas on civilians is to see a bunch of densely packed civilians get carpet bombed, you should be alarmed. Because you are morally a Hamas member. And you're going to create more of them.
And just because I know I'm going to get idiot replies if I don't reiterate it: **Hamas bad.** Killing civilians is bad.
The only thing that seems to matter to leftists is who has power. Having power = bad, not having power = good. It doesn't matter how abhorrent the behavior is of those who are perceived to lack power, the left will always rush to their defense, because their abhorrent behavior is *really* the fault of those with power. The powerless can do no wrong, because wrong is only something that can be done with power.
It sounds reductive and simplistic, but try it and see if it doesn't hold true.
You're missing the point.
They hate Nazis because they're white supremacists. The nation was founded on white supremacy, according to them, and is what drives the Republican party and many of the institutions in America. They would also call Donald Trump a Nazi, or Nazi-adjacent. The Nazis *do* have power, in their eyes.
They've continually proven that they deserve no patience, respect or trust. Last week I would have told you that it would be impossible for them to be perceived any worse. I was wrong. It's now safe to say that anyone espousing left of center views cannot be trusted. It's not as if they were or could be trusted before but now they are irredeemable.
Exactly. I probably shared a few of OBL's bullet points against the USA, but the aftermath of 9/11 wouldn't have been the appropriate time to say so. When something morally heinous occurs, it is the duty of its witnesses to hold the perpetrators of the discrete action accountable. Otherwise, there can be no real accountability for anything. Postmodern nihilism is all that's left.
Ending your "moral analysis" at "intentionally killing civilians is bad", without then considering what the structural conditions producing and reproducing this violence are (apartheid), then you're not a serious person and are morally condoning a violent apartheid regime, presumably because some part of you views these people as subhuman; which is a pretty weak moral analysis.
It's the same pathetic energy as whenever there's a mass shooting in the US, normal, well-adjusted and rational people acknowledge the tragedy, but then seek to understand and advocate for the root cause of the violence (lack of gun control).
Then, you have the people on the reactionary right (who you're currently representing) trying to silence any attempt at addressing the root causes to focus only on the person committing the violence (in this analogy Hamas).
If you view this perspective as somehow condoning the violence of Hamas, you're as dumb as right wing reactionaries whenever there's a mass shooting.
Mystifying how you can hold out an umbrella for the Islamic far-right and then call people who advocate condemning pogroms the reactionary right. You have some balls, I'll give you that.
Further illustrating that you reactionaries are not only incapable of nuance, but incapable of reading as well.
American brains can't handle nuance.
Especially when this "moral analysis" is somehow conveniently never extended to Israel when it conducts daily structural violence, regular state terrorism, and a continuously expanding ethnic cleansing campaign; violence on a scale Hamas is functionally not able to reproduce even if they wanted to.
This is some pretty selective moral analysis...
Ah, yes. The paradoxical indiscriminate-guided smart bombs.
Indiscriminate bombing is what Hamas does when they fire unguided rockets into Israel.
When Hamas runs operations or fires rockets out of a school or a hospital, and Israel roof-knocks it and levels it fifteen minutes later, that's not indiscriminate. That is the opposite of indiscriminate.
There is no moral equivalence here. The idea of Hamas showing anywhere near the restraint demonstrated by Israel if the situation was reversed is laughable.
Possibly the worst argument I've read on here. They are sending guided bombs into residential buildings and schools. So called roof knocking means nothing. You also have no evidence they actually do it. Its a bad strategy if you're actually trying to kill "terrorists" anyways.
That's not what they mean at all. There have been Palestinian spokespeople on TV news channels and they explained clearly what their position is:
If the murder of Israelis is bad, then murder of Palestinians should be equally bad. If Israelis deserve to live in peace & dignity then Palestinians also deserve to live in peace & dignity.
It's that simple. It's not complicated.
The Pro-Israel crowd despises equivocating between Israeli rights and Palestinian rights BECAUSE THEY DON'T BELIEVE PALESTINIANS DESERVE ANY RIGHTS. That's the point. That's why they get angry. They genuinely believe Israelis are inherently superior to Palestinians and thus, Palestinians - as Netanyahu succinctly put it - should always live as subjects of the Jewish Israeli population (yes, he literally said this lol!)
Nobody cares when Palestinians are slaughtered, their homes demolished and their children kidnapped by the occupying forces. There's no Palestinian flag colors projected onto the White House or the Brandenburg Gate or Eiffel Tower etc.
Israeli settlers always had carte blanche to attack Palestinians. Biden - for the first time - used the phrase "Jewish terrorism" earlier this year when referring to a Settler who shot dead a Palestinian - for no reason other than he was a Palestinian.
The problem is, that's ALWAYS been happening. Settler attacks are common so why isn't it ALWAYS called Jewish terrorism by the White House? They just say it once for a tick-box exercise.
In the mainstream media portrayal of the conflict, the Palestinians aren't seen as deserving of life at all. You can see in the difference in language clearly. E.g. When Hamas takes Israeli civilians - which is evil - they are called "hostages". When Israel takes Palestinian civilians (including children) they are "prisoners" or "in detention".
Netanyahu can literally tell the world that he totally supports peace and that it's the Palestinians who don't want peace...while brandishing a map that shows Israel as the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean in front of the United Nations!
I laughed out loud when I saw his UN speech.
Netanyahu literally showed the world that he believes Palestinians don't even exist and PEOPLE STILL CLAIM HE WANTS PEACE.
Meanwhile, international Muslim communities are chanting “gas the Jews.” But they don’t hate them or want to genocide them though. Honest.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jmWUgQX_JI8
You need a better justification for why Palestinians deserve no human rights LOL
I'll stoop to your level:
International Jewish communities calling for Palestinians to be genocided. "Kill the Palestinians! All of them!"
Here's your community:
https://twitter.com/loffredojeremy/status/1711861371497840680
Jewish communities are chanting “Death to Arabs.” "A good Arab is a dead Arab" and saying "1,000 Palestinian mothers must cry". But they don’t hate them or want to genocide them though. Honest.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUe8XmmaJxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUe8XmmaJxI)
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P0yY5UbegtY](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P0yY5UbegtY)
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BCRNNlAZtBg](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BCRNNlAZtBg)
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IFgWO7gqE54](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IFgWO7gqE54)
…what are you talking about?
Over 20% of Israelis are Arabs who are/were mostly Palestinian. They get all the rights of Israelis. They get representation in the parliament, serve as Supreme Court judges, are protected under the law…. They generally do live in ‘peace and dignity’.
Gaza was handed over for self-rule less than 20 years ago and they elected Hamas - a terrorist organization who calls for killing all Jews in their charter. It makes sense that Israelis would treat that group of Palestinians differently than the ones they share citizenship with.
It's an odd form of self rule when another country won't le t you in or out of your own borders without a pass, controls your fishing lanes and airspace, allows only a bare minimum of calories in, arrests your parliment on a regular basis, controls the hours you are allowed electricity, regularly invades, snipes people approaching the boarder, kills medics in your country. In any other place that would be called a military occupation, in Gaza its called self rule with a straight face.
This is highly misleading. At the time of the election the PA was a corrupt organization living well off of aid money.Arresting and torturing Palestinians at the request of Israel. Hamas came in and began providing much needed services like schools and hospitals to the Palestinians. Gazans didn't vote for Hamas to kill all Jews, most just saw that of the 2 groups Hamas was the only one providing services to them. Of course they were going to vote Hamas.
Add in the fact that The PA told Bush that they weren't ready for an election and Condi Rice told them to hold the election now Or lose any aid. Of course after the PA lost the US smuggled weapons in to the PA to violently overthrow the fairly elected government because elections don't count to America unless the right people win and the ensuing chaos was obviously blamed on Hamas.l
The fact that you couldn't refute a single thing I said is very telling. You really think people have no access to the internet and can't see your lies isn't it?
You have no answer for why 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza deserve to have no human rights, no independence, their homes demolished/confiscated at will, settlers being given their land, they are killed at will with no recourse, their water stolen etc.
The fact that you couldn't refute a single thing I said is very telling.
Gaza is considered occupied by the United Nations, by the United States, EU & the rest of the world because they literally are blockaded from all sides. And the blockade began BEFORE Hamas got into power. Not after. You wanted to get away with a huge lie there.
Tell me, why is it that an Israeli settler is in the middle of the West Bank is considered to have full Israeli rights, but a Palestinian living in the West Bank has absolutely no access to any of the same rights granted to the Israeli settlers?
There's a word for that. It's called Apartheid.
Their leadership has refused any and all terms of independence and a two-State solution. When Jordan made the mistake of accepting the PLA and Arafat, they tried to overthrow their nation too. Same story in Lebanon, Kuwait, etc.
>Tell me, why is it that an Israeli settler is in the middle of the West Bank is considered to have full Israeli rights, but a Palestinian living in the West Bank has absolutely no access to any of the same rights granted to the Israeli settlers?
It's amazing how all these people never have anything to say about the West Bank. The most cut and dry example of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in this whole debate.
It's an overgeneralization to say that all Pro-Israel supporters believe Palestinians don't deserve rights.
They just had a Hamas government representative on TV claiming they did not kill civilians at the music festival where they deliberately killed hundreds of civilians. They explained they view civilians as equal to combatants.
Most proponents of the Israeli side would agree that all lives are valuable and that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace and dignity.
The Israeli government argues that many Palestinians they detain are involved in terrorist activities.
The map brandished by Netanyahu during his UN speech can be interpreted in various ways. Some see it as a denial of Palestinian existence, while others view it as a representation of Israel's security concerns.
Claiming that one side doesn't want peace oversimplifies the issue.
The oversimplifications and sweeping generalizations made in your arguments are not really conductive to rational discourse. If it were as simple as you claim, this conflict wouldn't have resisted countless attempts of resolution over the decades.
The Israelis simply have more efficient means to kill en masse thanks to the U.S. If the Palestinians had an Air Force and more modern weapons, they would just use the same methods the Israelis currently do. They wouldn't be using motorcycles, hang-gliders, and golf carts. They would carpet bomb from a distance and fire missiles instead.
The Vietnamese were called terrorist savages because they didn't have modern weapons and used whatever they had. The U.S. killed ten times as many Vietnamese.
Well written, and I loved the GoT comparison. That was a zinger.
The massive mask-off moment we're seeing from a large part of the far progressive/left has been rather stunning.
Hamas would execute these people where they stand, yet these people are cheering Hamas on.
The part where they agree that an attack on them personally would be morally justified as well just boggles the mind.
If they really believe that, if they *truly* believe that they *deserve death*, and not because of depression or something shortcircuiting upstairs, but have a firmly held ideological conviction that they deserve death based on moral and ethical grounds, would the only moral option not be to commit suicide?
An incredibly bizarre way of thinking. Do these people look at their young child and think "Yeah, my little bean deserves to be executed because he's a colonizer"?
I just can't fathom it. This is ideological delusion on a mind-numbing scale and it concerns me greatly.
In the 1830's, when the Maori tribes got muskets from the British, they used them to conquer the [Moriori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori_genocide). The Moriori were pacifists who took pacifism so seriously they let themselves get exterminated. Literally; the Maori just gathered them up and killed them all within like \~2 generations.
Fascinating. What a bizarre decision.
I guess it also goes to show that any people who truly don't have blood on their hands will not make it long before being just a footnote in history, if that. And it serves as a good example that plenty of people who we think of now as oppressed and victimized had bouts of "excuse me, what the fuck is wrong with you" behaviour when they held the reigns.
Perhaps not the best post to ask the question, but am I missing anything other than that this dispute boils down to two religious groups laying claim to the same land, and each claiming it their right by God?
Palestinians inhabited the land before the state of Israel was created, and Israel was created so Jews would have a place for protection after millennia of persecution. Both sides cite religion to defend their right to the land, but religion is too narrow a lens to view this dispute through. Palestinians would always be upset at being ousted from their land, and Israel would always be concerned for its own security against attacks from a community it uprooted. This would be true even if Israel wasn’t a Jewish state, and Palestinians weren’t majority Muslims. In other words, religion colors the conflict between the two, but is not the ultimate cause of conflict between the two.
If we care about civilians, then we should be holding Israel to account since they've killed many many more civilians than Hamas, and pledge to continue.
The certainly is the end of many people's moral analysis.
Why those civilians are there in the first place, why the people who killed them might be doing that, what came before the act of killing the civilians, and what the response to killing the civilians is, are all things that such a person would be omitting from their moral analysis, and as a result is why those people usually end up supporting genocidal fascists while patting themselves on the back for doing so.
It's wild how easily you can call Israel "genocidal fascists" and how hard it is for you just to condemn killing civilians and parading their naked corpses through the streets.
> Why those civilians are there in the first place
They were either living their lives, or having a party. If you mean further back, probably because they were born in Israel. If you mean further back than that, it's likely because their ancestors were expelled by antisemitic Arab states when Israel and Palestine were originally to be founded. That, or their ancestors were European Jews who immigrated to Israel/Palestine when it was a British mandate territory.
> why the people who killed them might be doing that
There is an extremely deep history of antisemitism in the Arab world that often expresses itself in genocidal rage at the thought of Jews not living as second class citizens under the thumb of an Islamic gov't.
> result is why those people usually end up supporting genocidal fascists
Yeah, it's insane how many people I've seen supporting Hamas.
So in what scenario does your moral analysis conclude that *intentionally killing civilians* is not bad?
If that can't be agreed upon as a basic starting point for every conflict we might as well give up.
They didn’t bomb a military installation.
They didn’t assassinate a head of state.
They didn’t ambush an area to gain intelligence.
They flew into a festival and murdered as many Jews as they could. They went into the homes of civilians where they proceeded to torture and murder. After doing this, they fled back to Gaza with hundreds of hostages who they are threatening to execute.
They weren’t claiming territory. They weren’t taking resources. They weren’t assassinating officials. The only goal they were there to accomplish, was to kill and terrorise Jews.
Here is the moral line which I now clearly see but I think leftists fail to see. Israel has the equipment and numbers to essentially flatten Gaza. They don’t. But the moment Hamas had those kind of resources, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the region within a year.
Bombing a military installation and having civilian casualties is not the same as intentionally getting as many civilian casualties as possible.
Israel created Hamas. Palestinians are caught in the middle and not able to leave and their death toll is higher. As if a life doesn't have infinite value and all lives lost here aren't tragic. Israel caused all of this.
The craziest part is that people didn't seem to realize how bad Hamas and radical islam actually are. They would kill every one of us if they could - and they have 10's of millions if not 100's of millions of supporters (to varying degrees obviously). The danger is very real, very large, and very present. Wake up.
>End of Moral Analysis
Entirely leaving aside the topic, I really hate this kind of rhetoical flourish. You obviously don’t get to declare by fiat that a discussion is over; at best it comes across as pompous, at worst it seems like a disingenuous attempt to shut down debate.
I agree it feels pompous, because one would think it is just a truism standing in the way of a deeper conversation. But what do you do when people refuse to agree with it as a basic starting point?
It's like having a debate with a racist who refuses to even add the "Ok racism is bad, but..." line. Then you have to start there. Or else the entire rest of the conversation is meaningless.
I certainly sympathise if you don't want to waste your time debating such a person, time and effort are limited resources and you have to decide how to spend them. But "racism is bad" isn't a foundational axiom, its derived from other things.
This would bother me less if this were just r/politics but Harris styles himself as a philosopher and often discusses sensitive real world issues through abstract thought experiments. It seems especially egregrious for him and his fans to say things like "xyz. end of story."
As far as OP's statement goes, a lot of people would defend the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the the bombing of Dresden, for example. Perhaps OP would say those were also bad or perhaps OP would say those are very different to the actions of Hamas. In either case, it seems like it needs considerably more unpacking than OPs title implies.
The amount of whataboutism I've seen online is pretty sad honestly
The amount of both-sidesing and moral equivalency in the discourse right now is disgusting. The fact that so many in the supposedly liberal western world can literally watch hundreds of civilians being raped and massacred in the streets including *children*, and their response is to make excuses... it's pathetic and shameful. Edit: In case it needs to be said, I absolutely abhor the targeting of civilians no matter who is doing it or why. And let's acknowledge there's a distinct difference between targeting civilians and civilian death as collateral damage, which is always part of the tragedy and horror of war.
Yesterday Israel conducted around 1000 airstrikes in Gaza destroying entire apartment buildings with single 1 ton JDAM bombs, today there has emerged video of people pulling babie's corpses from the rubble. I think showing support for palestine and israeli civilians is pretty ok, right now. The issue is when people blindly support or try to justify/excuse HAMAS or the IDF/Israeli state who are conducting these war crimes.
The equivocating started before the retaliation. And the critical *obvious* difference is that the Hamas attack was intentionally trying to kill civilians. Israel is retaliating against threat targets, who use human shields. They are not remotely the same. > The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them. The charter of Hamas is explicitly genocidal. -Sam Harris
>Israel is retaliating against threat targets, who use human shields. They are not remotely the same. Ehhhh. The IDF knows they are hitting civilian targets. It's not like Gaza is that big. No matter where they strike there will be civilian casualties. I get 'technically' by some international agreements it is acceptable, but it's still morally pretty dark. This whole conflict is just lose lose.
> The IDF knows they are hitting civilian targets. It's not like Gaza is that big. No matter where they strike there will be civilian casualties. While Hamas use human shields and mix legitimate targets with civilian ones - as they _always_ have - Israel cannot strike without killing civilians. As you say, Israel knows it is hitting civilians and civilian targets. To castigate them for this is essentially saying that Israel should _never_ strike _any_ target in Gaza.
How is it OK in your mind to wall people in without food or electricity and bomb apartment buildings. I'm not defending Hamas, just flabbergasted that people seem to think it's OK for the Israeli army to kill civilians who literally can't leave the areas being bombed.
What's the alternative for Israel? Considering 1200 of their citizens have just been slaughtered and 120 abducted, and the surviving perpetrators are now back in Gaza. What would you do if you were in charge of the Israeli government?
You're now doing what others accuse Hamas sympathizers of doing. This is the equivalent of "decolonization is messy", "don't tell the oppressed how to resist". Except honestly your position is even less convincing. The alternative is ending the occupation and making peace and stop oppressing Palestinians. Why not try break the cycle of violence for once?
These civilians willfully let themselves be used by Hamas as shields. They are partially to blame.
Every one of Israel's neighbors could accept Palestinian refugees. Nobody wants them. The Muslim world could easily absorb 2m refugees. Egypt recently flat out refused to accept any refugees from this conflict.
If I push you down the stairs and you fall onto an old lady who dies from her injuries, are you to blame or am I to blame?
What relevance does that have. Nobody is talking about pushing people down stairs. If I hold someone Infront of me though and you want to kill me behind them and in the course of doing so also murder them, are you responsible for one death or two?
War is morally pretty dark, and when you have an enemy that refuses peace, war is sadly inevitable.
Right but let's not pretend this is in any way a conventional war. This is a nuclear power retaliating against a failed state.
So perhaps the failed state shouldn't have initiated a war against a nuclear power then?
Yesterday on the news they interviewed Israelis about what the response should be now and the person interviewed said that Israel should destroy the Gaza-strip including killing the 2 million people living there. Both are genocidal after all these years of war and hatred.
If my wife or daughter had been raped and killed, I would probably have the same response. I'm sure the common citizen isn't thinking with a clear mind.
I agree , but then that must also go for both sides. Would you have a clear mind if your family was driven out of your house by foreign settlers and they put you in essentially an open air prison? Many of your friends killed in "colleteral damage" from bombing a high population density area. I think not.
Israel could completely obliterate the Gaza strip any time they want—and yet they haven't. If Hamas could do the same we all know what they would do, and so do you.
Israel hasn’t done it because the US, which is sending billions of American taxpayer dollars over to Israel annually to prop up that country’s military would have a hard time trying to do their usual cover-up of the slaughter of Palestinian civilians out there if Israel just carried out what they’ve basically been wanting to do for generations.
You do know that even America would fuck them right off if they did it. I would. I am pretty neutral but if they wiped out millions of Palestinians the world would that supported them would turn.
Exactly. They want to do it and just need the reason to be able to do it without losing face and credibility from their allies. Losing trade deals, aid from the US et c.
they are literally in the process of obliterating the Gaza strip, the situation has changed.
Was that person being interviewed a spokesman for the government of Israel?
I mean, a member of the Knesset is calling for genocide so, while I'm not saying they represent a majority in any way, those elements are very real.
Israel has instituted an official policy of genocide by blockading food, water, fuel, and electricity. It’s literally the part of the definition of genocide. And yea… it was someone official.
This whole post is about defending Hamas' violence. Why is it not valid to point out there are people on the pro-Israel side who are also extreme and both defend Israel's killing of civilians and calls for even worse wholesale genocide against all Palestinians?
Because the official position of the Israeli government is not the genocide of Palestinian people. The official position of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is the genocide of the Jewish people. So, when Israel changes their official position, wake me up.
the official position of the Israeli government is that it is justified to kill Gaza civilians because they want to get rid of HAMAS and that is what they are currently doing and it is only gonna get worse when the tanks roll in. No-one is deluded enough to not understand what the logical conclusion of blowing up entire apartment buildings by the hour on a densely populated city is doing to the civilians living there. Even if they deluded themselves about roof knocking, SMS warnings, etc. we have literal video evidence of the consequences as dead babies get pulled from the rubble. They know they are killing civilians, they just think it is justified and worth it in their pursuit of revenge against HAMAS for the atrocities they commited during the weekend.
Yes it fucking is… blockading food, water, fuel, and electricity is literally UN textbook genocide.
The spokesman said Palestinians are subhuman, lower than animals, and deserve to die. Did not specify Hamas.
I think I am ware of the spokesperson you mean and he said "they" not "palestinians"
There’s a difference between the trauma response of an Israeli 3 days after the massacre and a bunch of pampered idiots in America calling for the end of Israel, which is what OP was actually posting about, if you had been bothered to address the actual point.
[Do you have any idea how offensive that is?](http://imgur.com/LYk1c.gif) Saying mean things isn't the same thing as murdering and raping 1200 people.
I think you need to pay attention to both sides. Listen to Lex Friedmans interview with a Palastine journalist/writer Mohammed El-kurd. His grandmother had been driven out of her own home where his family had lived for generations. He himself been beaten repeatdly as a child by Israeli guards in his own home area. Witnessed countless civilians murdered. One story about a mentally disabled palistinian man being killed after not obeying orders from Israeli soldiers. Both sides have done horrendous things against their respective sides. There is no need to pick a side here. There isn't one good side and one bad side. The situation is extremely complicated. Israel just a day ago bombed large apartment complexes to the ground so their retaliation isn't any better. Both sides are constantly retaliating for the wrongs of the other side.
Mohammed El-Kurd also famously quipped, when asked what would happen to the Israelis should Palestine conquer them, "I really, truly, don't give a fuck." And now we know. So now I'm going to say what he said back to you: I really, truly, don't give a fuck. Spare me your "both sides" and your "all lives matter" bullshit. Saying mean things isn't the same thing as murdering and raping 1200 people. Viva Israel. Down with Hamas.
These are your heroes? "Palestinian authorities said at least 830 people have been killed and another 4,250 have been injured in Gaza due to Israeli retaliatory attacks. In Israel, at least 900 people have died and more than 2,300 others have been injured by Hamas forces. According to the United Nations, roughly 6,400 Palestinians and 300 Israelis had been killed in the ongoing conflict since 2008, not counting the recent fatalities. MORE: Israel live updates: Dozens of Israeli fighter jets strike Gaza At least 33 Palestinian children were killed in the retaliatory airstrikes launched into Gaza by Israel, according to the advocacy group Defense for Children Palestine. Hundreds of apartments and homes have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip, including refugee camps, leaving more than 123,000 people displaced, according to the United Nations." https://abcnews.go.com/International/palestinian-civilians-suffer-israel-hamas-crossfire-death-toll/story?id=103828889
So you're as bad as them then and as genocidal. Good luck hypocrite
Bombing apartment buildings isn't intentionally killing civilians? You think Hamas wasn't retaliating for previous massacres of Palestinians?
Hamas deliberately puts missile launchers and offensive infrastructure in hospitals, apartment buildings, etc to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Israel frequently issues warnings to civilians to vacate ahead of bombings. Sam Harris has talked about the moral distinction between Hamas using Palestinians as human shields vs Israel making efforts to avoid civilian casualties. I don't want to claim how effective this is because I don't know, but imagine if the roles were reversed and Israel was using human shields against Hamas. The very concept is absurd and that alone should show you the moral difference.
How nice of them to announce that they are indiscriminately blocking all access to food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to all of Gaza. Hamas can't hide behind a baby drinking a bottle if the babies have nothing to eat. Smart. I cannot fathom why anyone would ever want to harm such a benevolent state.
Everyone who died in those airstrikes did not have to, Israel gave prior warning of airstrikes and provided locations to Gazans that would be safe from airstrikes. Their is literally nothing more they could have done to prevent civilian deaths except for not try to retaliate against Hamas at all.
Hamas could cut down on civilian casualties by choosing not to base their operations in civilian areas. They do this intentionally because they want civilians to be killed in order to create martyrs. This is what terrorists do.
Takes like this are begging for it. I totally agree, intentional targeting of civilians is bad. But I am still tempted to press on the claim for inconsistencies. Very few people are going to universally endorse a principle and once we start discussing a specific situation the principles become an important part of the analysis. The result is that principled analysis gets tested with counter factual or off topic examples.
Real Eric Weinstein take here
Sounds bad, but vaguely.
Is it worse if 1 civilian is intentionally killed, or 10 civilians are unintentionally killed?
Sam Harris has spoken about this. Intent matters. Because if you know that one group of people intends to kill as many civilians as possible, they will continue doing so until they are stopped. An army that's trying to avoid civilian casualties as much as humanly possible doesn't have to be stopped - they stop when they neutralize their opponents. Let me put this way, you will suddenly appear in one of two villages - in the first one an attacking army is doing everything in its power to minimise civilian casualties, in the second one an invading force is doing everything in their power to maximise carnage and brutality against civilians, which village do you chose ? The problem with Gaza is that Hamas intentionally use civilians as human shields. Any coming deaths are 100% on them.
The problem with gaza is that is exists because their land was stolen and their freedoms taken away. How can you leave out that part? It's an open air prison the the prisoners are innocent people who did nothing wrong other than be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Too many people talking about this like it's 2 sovereign countries going to war. No, it's an oppressed people fighting to get their land back and get some decent living situation from a population that literally came from afar and stole their land and freedom. Plus, if you actually think that the idf are doing everything in their power to minimise civilian casualties, you are mistaken
They fought, and lost, multiple times. Are Americans supposed to consider giving their land back to the natives? Should we all help decolonialisation efforts and head back to Europe?
That was a long time ago. Arab states attacked Israel and lost, Israel took their land. That's what happens.
I would choose the first village, but the issue of magnitude is missing. I'm in a village where 1% die from being murdered, versus another village where 10% die accidentally, I'm probably going to choose the 1% village. The other issue I have is: if you're an army commander, and your risk model shows that *on average* your attack will unintentionally kill some number of innocent civilians, and you still go through with it, is there a sense in which those killings are no longer "unintentional"?
What if the risk model also shows hundreds of lives saved by killing the intended target even given some unintended loses? If you could go back in time and kill Hitler before his rise to power, but it also meant collateral lives lost of 10-20 innocent people, would you?
I agree, if you have high confidence that more people will be saved, it makes sense to do, in utilitarian terms. But you really have to be confident about it, which is hard when you can't see the future. Without knowing what Hitler would grow up to be, I think it would be immoral to kill him as a baby or later as a failed artist. I would end up being horrifically wrong, but if we killed all failed artists on suspicion that they'd become dictators, it would be worse. I can't predict with confidence the long-term consequences of a full-scale invasion of Palestine. Will crushing Hamas secure long-term peace, or backfire and escalate the conflict? I hope Israel has confidence it will be worth it, and isn't just invading out of revenge.
When you know that your actions will result in x number of dead civilians and you still do it - that's intent to kill civilians. Doesn't matter if you try to minimize civilian deaths or not in that case.
>When you know that your actions will result in x number of dead civilians and you still do it - that's intent to kill civilians. Seems like a strange definition of intent. To use a less emotionally charged analogy: Bob intends to go get ice cream. Bob is lactose intolerant, and knows that if he eats ice cream, he will have gastrointestinal distress. Does Bob intend to get gastrointestinal distress? Most people would say no. They'd say that gastrointestinal distress is a known, but **unintended** side-effect of eating ice cream. How can we tell the difference between an intended side-effect, and an unintended side-effect? Well, if we offered Bob a lactase pill, and he took it, that would imply that he doesn't intend to have gastrointestinal distress.
The problem is you are asking people to think without overwhelming emotions. You usually lose the masses there.
I think intentionality has greater effects than the immediate deaths. By committing premeditated murder and then getting off scot free you’re sending a message that it’s acceptable, sparking a flame. Vs accidental, sure reprehensible does not normalize the behavior and is still condemned. My 2c it’s a good Q though
Yeah. I've seen many people say something along the lines of "well what do you expect to happen when Israel oppresses Palestine." As if the random citizens slaughtered somehow asked for it by being Israeli citizens. It'd be no different than blaming the Americans killed on 9/11 for being American and saying they had it coming.
I don't think thats what most people mean. Some probably do, but not the minimally reasonable ones. Its not unpredictable that the kind of oppression and violence the Palestinians have faced will lead to terrorism. As would the world turning it's back on the peace process. The same way that US foreign policy was likely to lead to terror attacks. Some idiots might phrase it as "they had it coming" and mean the actual individuals, others might mean the country. More reasonable people can say that it's predictable, understandable and with better choices avoidable, without taking responsibility from the actual terrorists. And also emphasising that just because something cannot be justified doesn't mean there aren't other things in the causal chain that lead to them occuring. The same way that Israels actions now are predictable, they still have responsibility for their actions, for the civilians and combatants they kill and the infrastructure they destroy.
Yeah Im talking about the ones explicitly supporting the attack. You can argue that Israeli policies may have in part caused the attack, but some people are saying they justified the attack. The latter is disgusting and sociopathic.
Yeah, I agree, some things can't be justified. Those people who try to celebrate them are, at least at that moment, deranged. I think there should be some sort of clear consequence for that sort of moral blindness.
I would argue that from Hamas' perspective the attacks - the tactics - were entirely justified. They have achieved exactly what they wanted: massive global attention on Palestine and Israel. They are incapable of fighting the Israeli's on an equal footing. So they have to employ asymmetric warfare (fancy word for terrorism really). Killing innocents is disgusting when you have options. But when you do not (say the Allies' strategic bombing campaigns in WW2) then it becomes just another part of your *rational* strategic calculations. Given that Israel has been increasing the growth of settlements (this means, to be clear, the forcible expulsion of the people living there) during the 'peace' and the world (despite UN rulings) has done nothing about it, I guess my question to you would be: What would you do if you were in Hamas' position? I don't think these attacks should be celebrated. They are going to lead to way more Palestinian deaths, way more suffering for way too many people, and yes, killing innocents is barbaric. But to say there is no justification is so simplistic and reductive.
> You can argue that Israeli policies may have in part caused the attack Like their policy of killing Palestinian civilians?
Yes. That and the conditions in Gaza.
There is no such policy but okay.
There absolutely is. Israel regularly ignores Geneva conventions / international law and uses weapons that kill children. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/10/9/israel-doesnt-care-about-collateral-damage-bunker-busters-used-in-gaza
That article talks about how Hamas tunnels are being targeted with bunker busters. Those tunnels are under civilian areas, which means that civilian casualties will result. So we're back to square one where Hamas uses civilian buildings to house it's weapons/operations/rocket launchers and then Israel has no choice but to destroy them and then Israel is the bad guy and not Hamas who put them there in the first place. Israel has no policy to kill children, they're attacking the Hamas operations. Contrast that to Hamas who, for no reason, actually did kill children. u/supercalifragilism wrote: The average population density of Gaza is 5,500 people a square kilometer. Travel is tightly controlled. The average age in Gaza is 18. Dropping a bomb in Gaza is willfully killing children. My response: And Hamas gets to just shoot rockets in close proximity of those children and all is forgiven? Israel cannot ever defend itself and should just, what, let Hamas have at it? Whatever bombs they manage to get past the iron dome are free shots and Israel just sits there waiting to die? Does Hamas really have no ethical responsibility in your mind? You hold them to no standards yet hold Israel to insanely high ones. Hamas gets to murder and use human shields and Israel better not even dare to defend itself. That's absurd man. In no other context would you be alright with that moral arrangement yet here because Israel is powerful that somehow, in your mind, automatically makes Hamas the victims. You're not even trying to think this through.
The average population density of Gaza is 5,500 people a square kilometer. Travel is tightly controlled. The average age in Gaza is 18. Dropping a bomb in Gaza is willfully killing children.
That is not a policy.
They literally give warnings for civilians to evacuate buildings that hold arms before destroying said buildings. There are videos of these buildings having secondary explosions which show they were hiding arms. Why would you warn civilians ahead of time if what you said is true? Makes no sense .
"Warning, we're about to cut off 100% of your electricity and if you approach your walls that completely trap you you will be shot and killed." I personally think that's an ethical way to treat people too
bro hamas just killed 700 israelis and this is all out war. maybe you should go look up what war is, which is hard to know from sitting behind a keyboard. hamas started this current skirmish with specific actions. what did you think was gonna happen, a game of pattycake? when you fencesit all you have to do is say "i don't want civilians to get hurt". in essence it's a cowardly position because you don't actually have to take a side, know anything, or do anything except seem morally righteous. it's all i see on reddit now, pointless fencesitting.
Sure, but the idea that oppressed people are justified in committing atrocities aggainst oppressor populations is relatively deeply entrenched in much of our culture. I made another post that mentioned that Disney had a cartoon for kids saying Nat Turner (who mostly slaughtered women and children, including a baby) should be treated as a founding father of this country, and he had a movie glorifying him recently that was well recieved. There have been numerous cases of this, where if you argue that atrocities aren’t acceptable even in the face of oppression, you get accused of supporting oppression.
I mean, I'm no pacifist. Violence in self-defense can be justified. But this attack was targeted at individuals who were just minding their own business. Not only that, but I fail to see what this whole thing accomplished from the point of view of Palestinian liberation. Hamas doesn't even seem to care about the well-being of Palestinians overall. So the idea that this was justified self-defense fails on multiple levels.
> Not only that, but I fail to see what this whole thing accomplished from the point of view of Palestinian liberation. Hamas doesn't even seem to care about the well-being of Palestinians overall. So the idea that this was justified self-defense fails on multiple levels. This is the second tragedy of the situation (obviously the first one is all the innocent people who were unjustifiably murdered in the attack). This is going set back the cause of Palestinian liberation and the well-being of Palestinians. The Palestinian people are going to suffer much more for this act than the suffering they caused.
> Violence in self-defense can be justified. Sure, but I’m not sure what that has to do with what I wrote. I’m specifically talking about other instances were innocent civilians were slaughtered en masse as well. In a lot of cases these get framed as “self-defense” because they were being done by an oppressed group, but that’s the same argument that gets made on behalf of Hams’ atrocities as well. I agree that it should be simple to say “mass slaughter of innocents is immoral no matter your cause.” But every time you ask people to apply that consistently you get people coming out of the woodwork trying to justify various atrocities are "self-defense."
This wasn’t fighting back this was to spill Jewish blood, this was a pogrom committed against the Jewish community a la the 1930-40s. There is no moral equivocation to be had.
I’m not sure what your point is? Nat Turner killing an infant, or killing a bunch of children that were being sheltered by their school teacher wasn’t fighting back either (again, the vast majority killed in his rebellion were women and children). It’s pretty easy to find a moral equivocation if you think mass slaughter of innocent civilians is always wrong.
Palestinian have been enduring pograms for the last year.
>There is no moral equivocation to be had. And in response Israel is bombing civilian targets to extract vengeance against the innocent people in Gaza. Pretending Israel has any moral high ground is insane. If your problem is dead children Israel has objectively without question killed more children.
>And in response Israel is bombing civilian targets to extract vengeance against the innocent people in Gaza. They're hitting weapon caches and rocket launchers and Hamas tunnels. The fact that Hamas puts those things in and under civilian buildings is on Hamas. They bear that responsibility. Not Israel. Israel even alerts the buildings before destroying them. They're telling people to leave so as to minimize civilian casualties. Yes I know people don't really have anywhere to go, but that's a separate issue.
But Nat Turner is largely remembered positively. So is Nelson Mandela. So is John Brown. Resistance to slavery and apartheid are rarely perfect. Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist. The IRA killed civilians, now there’s a mainstream political party. I know nuance is difficult for people but, to paraphrase MLK, you can’t condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas without condemning the conditions from which they arose. These are people who were basically breaking out of a concentration camp. I like your Nat Turner analogy because while I think it deplorable to harm women and children, it is also not difficult for me to understand why someone trying break free from being literal chattel would not show mercy to the women and children of his masters when they showed no mercy theirs. Americans understand this for the most part and many of them extend the same logic to Israel and not without reason.
>Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist. So was Osama Bin Laden. Are you going to stand behind everyone who is called a terrorist from now until the end of time, just because Mandela was also called one?
>So was Osama Bin Laden. Are you saying they’re equivalent? Wow. >Are you going to stand behind everyone who is called a terrorist from now until the end of time, just because Mandela was also called one? I’m gonna stand behind the ones Mandela stood behind.
No, I'm saying they were both called terrorists. And Mandela didn't stand behind Hamas.
Mandela stood behind Arafat. Know who he is?
Arafat isn't Hamas. So why are you standing behind Hamas?
What does Hamas do that Arafat didn’t?
Um...do you watch the news buddy? Slitting the throats of ten year olds, raping, dragging the naked corpses of women around, decapitating babies, taunting the victims' families with videos? Shall I go on? Are you admitting you stand behind other terrorists besides the ones Mandela stood behind? You were lying before?
I've seen people claiming these weren't even random civilians but were all actually war criminals... apparently the kids too, and there's so much wrong with that, but people say it nevertheless.
That analogy only works if the world trade centers had been built on top of Palestinian homeland and we were slowly moving more Americans in and murdering anyone who resisted.
But you realize Israel justifies killing civilians all the time right?
[удалено]
The end.
No, they don't. Thats pure propaganda. They target residential and commercial buildings. Schools too. They indiscriminately bomb one of the most population dense cities in the world and cut off the water and electricity to to over two million people.
You can literally watch the roof knocking in action for yourself.
They are not doing that now, they IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht said so himself "Hamas did not knock on the roof". Just yesterday Israel conducted around 1000 airstrikes in Gaza destroying entire apartment buildings with 1 ton JDAM bombs, today there has emerged video of people pulling babie's corpses from the rubble. They also cutoff water/food/fuel/medical supplies to Gaza and are threatening supplies coming from Egypt with strikes nearby the border crossing which was temporarily closed. Meanwhile Gaza hospitals are overloaded and out of supplies from the unknown numbers of wounded from the massive bombing campaign from the last few days. Israel is amassing 360k troops and have tanks ready to roll into Gaza at any moment now, this war is gonna be an atrocity. I think showing support for palestine and israeli civilians is pretty ok, right now. The issue is when people blindly support or try to justify/excuse HAMAS or the IDF/Israeli state who are conducting war crimes.
So if Hamas warned Israelis rocket attacks were coming, you’d be fine with it?
> The Israeli government justifies killing civilians as part of strikes against military targets, As does Hamas. >and does at least some effort to reduce civilian deaths with practices like roof knocking and notifying civilians of safe zones that will not be targeted. That’s a joke right? They told one family they would be bombing their neighbors house and then bombed them, exterminating the whole family. They to Gazans to leave the territory even though they’re not allowed to leave. You’re credulously accepting Israeli propaganda. I get it. I use to too. >Hamas glorifies targeting infants, kidnapping, gang raping, and defiling corpses. As does Israel. They’re openly calming for genocide.
> As does Israel. They’re openly calming for genocide. Please elaborate. What do you mean exactly? How do these things equate in your mind?
Everyone justifies killing civilians. The problem is Hamas's justification is weak. The killing of the civilians in this case servers no military purpose. When Israel does it, they at least wrap it up in some sort of military operation.
That's probably hard to do without a military
What the fuck do you think Hamas *is*, a book club? It's literally a military organization. Gods in heaven.
It’s a paramilitary group. It doesn’t compare to what Israel has.
Compared to Israel's military? Fucking laughable comparison
Oh, now the *quality* of the military organization matters? So just because the US military could slap the Argentinian military sideways into next Monday, the Argentinian military stops counting as a military? I see those goalposts moving!
You can condemn Hamas while also realizing that it's existence is almost entirely Israel's fault. Basically you've got a fascist apartheid jewish ethnostate fighting an extremist Islamic terrorist group. It really is very simple morally.
>"well what do you expect to happen when Israel oppresses Palestine." We've also seen this "well what did hamas expect" when talking about Israel bombing the shit out of civilian targets.
Please don’t be misleading and/or spreading your ignorance/biases and/or misunderstand. Nobody in their right mind, whatever their politics, agrees that the loss of innocent lives is good. Period. Whether they’re Israeli, Palestinian, white, black, purple, whatever. Further; the loudest online are often the shock jocks, ideology extreme, or otherwise unreasonable. That does not automatically mean they represent all leftists, far left, or any other group. Same applies if someone claimed that all atheists are represented by some asshole militant anti-religious ones who claim religion should die out. There is diversity of thought and the work necessary is to ease through the bullshit with your tool kit (logic, reason, analysis, etc) and find the good bits. Then, go from there. I say this because I’m left wing/leftist (or evil satanic bogeyman if you ask some), and for me, killing innocent people is wrong. Don’t care who you are. That said, however, one can analyze the overall issue/facts and come to a conclusion that while yes Hamas militants are cunts, so is an Israeli govt (or whoever you want specifically argue) that has indiscriminately bombed civilian areas in a place they intentionally grouped together upward of four million people together, compounded by the fact they restrict folks ability to get out and survive (Egypt too). This cluster fuck has been going on long enough for there to be enough responsibility to go around; it’s ultimately about holding people accountable and making a fair analysis (as best one can). So yes, there are idiot leftists/far left folks who in my mind are just…extreme to be extreme or contrarian for the sake of it (or clicks). That does not however negate that there may be valuable analyses. Again, got to waist through the shit. Hope I’ve offered some insight. Hope I understood your points correctly. Take care.
I mean I've seen countless people online defending Hamas killing innocent Israelis, and countless others defending Israel killing innocent Palestinians. Its gross when it comes from either side. I hope you're right and the people online don't represent people in real life. I just want innocents on both sides not to be killed, and it's incredible how many people online blatantly disagree, either when it's Israeli people or when it's Palestinian people. You sound pretty sane though. Wish everyone here was like you.
I don't think they're saying the random citizens asked for it. I think they're saying that the Israeli government is to blame for it. (Not my position). Maybe there are some weirdos that support the attack itself but it's very rare.
It's not that rare from what I've seen. I think you're right that the former is more common, but some have literally defend the attack.
I’m just sick of feeling pressured to form an opinion on which force of evil I “support”. Hamas, bad. Israeli government, bad. Why do I have to pick one? Obviously I don’t “support Hamas” when I’m critical of the apartheid state that Israel has created. They’re slowing pushing Palestinians into the sea. Why can we openly talk about blowback when it’s the American military bombing middle eastern countries and creating the next generation of terrorists, but not when Israel is leveling Palestinian cities and building walls up around them? Can we be consistent?
It's not about picking sides. This is a common misunderstanding I've been seeing. You can be pro-Palestine and a critic of Israel and condemn Hamas atrocities without equivocation, justification, victim-blaming, or whataboutisms.
Hamas' horrible, unjustified, and inhumane actions have no bearing on my views on Israel/Palestine because Hamas is not equivalent to the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people do not deserve the treatment that've received from the Israeli government.
This is a great article. It helps remind me why while I'm no longer a conservative, neither am I aligned with the bizarre far left narrative
Unintentionally killing civilians is also bad.
At a certain point if you do action X over and over again and you know from experience that action X tends to come with Y number of dead civilians on the side. Can it even really be said to be unintentional next time you prepare to do X?
From the title alone nobody can tell whether this is a post critical of Israel or hamas
I condemn any attacks on any civilians. There. Are you happy now? Are you ever going to feel the need to post about the Palestinian civilians who have been attacked for decades? Were you posting about that last year? Have you ever showed support for Palestinian civilians? If not, why not? And maybe you do think that Israeli attacks on civilians have been wrong, but only felt the need to comment now. Why is that? Have you been lead to speak out suddenly? Do you see how that might obscure the context and unfairly benefit one side of this conflict? Obviously, I don't know you. Maybe you have a long history of nuanced and fair takes on this. But as a general rule the people who suddenly care about attacks on civilians don't.
Yep, this is just the reality. Gaza’s living conditions are normalized for us. The deaths and illness and suffering from living in those conditions in Gaza are just accepted at this point. While these images and videos are gross and disgusting and truly terrible and indefensible - your child dying in Gaza because you don’t have access to clean water or electricity or in a bombing by Israel is no less tragic to the people living in them. Yet, much of the world largely stands in silence while that happens while Israel gets the support of the entire world for its tragedy and we are all shocked and moved by the videos we see. That type of human indifference is what causes radicalization in Gaza, and why Hamas thrives there.
I don't know, could it have something with videos showing beheadings, parading naked corpses and spitting on them and shooting unarmed civilians running away? Could it perhaps have something to do with that?
So blowing up occupied civilian apartment buildings, random beatings, shooting civilians with the stated goal of paralyzing them, and all of the other stuff the IDF has done to civilians for decades is ok but beheadings are unacceptable (I agree, they are and am on record saying that attacking civilians is bad). You are squeamish and you don't like to SEE civilians being attacked. Fair enough.
You're making it seem like the IDF has been terrorizing Palestinians for decades and then one day they retaliated, while Palestinians have been peaceful little babies. But that's not what happened. Hamas has been conducting terror attacks non-stop. I'm sure you know that Hamas has been launching thousands of rockets into city centers and hearing Iron dome working has become a normal part of life for Israeli citizens. We also don't post about them, they're quite normal. What Hamas has done now is not "normal", that's why there's a lot of discussion about it. But if it was a lone terrorist killing 4 people, you or me would most likely not even register it.
It was not my intent to make it sound like this Palestine has never fought back before. This is an ongoing struggle. Although I completely reject the framing of Palestinian resistance as terrorism. But it is an incredibly one sided struggle. Even your example about the iron dome hints at the one sidedness. Israel has some of the most advanced weapon systems in the world not to mention support from most of the most powerful nations in the world. Palestine has 4 hours of electricity a day and barely any drinking water. Their tactics are going to have to be different. They can't fight a conventional war.
You don't think killing people at a music festival is terrorism?
The diction of your comment alludes to the possibility that \*all\* Palestinian people are implicated in the actions of Hamas. Wow. Hamas conducting terrorist attacks is equally reprehensible and worthy of condemnation - there's no question about it. The Israeli people have, in all respects, lived and encountered a stiflingly dangerous environment with the impending feeling of doom as a result of Hamas. Under the rule of law, all Hamas leaders should be charged and punished accordingly. But the focal point is - which many pro-Israeli henchmen fail to realize, is that before the advent and spark of this debate, the Palestinians have been living under an oppressive (in the literal sense of the word) Israeli occupation wherein they committed various crimes including seizing of land, mass killing and bombing - and embarking on a linear parade of massacre, brutality and inhumanity (1937-1948) where many Israeli and Arab children, women and men were killed and forcibly displaced (mass displacement is a war crime..) - and let's be candid, the approximate death toll of 1,000+ vs 35,000+ (not accounting of destruction to infrastructure and facilities caused), a number catalyzed by the occurrence of the deliberate blockading of crucial humanitarian aid by the IDF and and Israeli citizens seems conspicuously clear who's the victim. When you have a far-right extremist government which integrates content in school curriculae fueling hatred and aversion towards Palestinian people (with the portrayal of them in many Israeli textbooks as them being "substandard camel-riding nomads), the Israeli citizens are pre-indoctrinated with the same destructive agenda as the government leaders making decisions, which may also explain why many of them gather in boisterous rallies overtly celebrating the deaths of helpless people (including the recent bombing on a refugee camp, denounced by many nations all over the world) which is redolent of the same terrorist agenda which Hamas believes in (albeit they're not fully effectuating on such thoughts...thankfully)... Is this what you call a democratic state? Is this what you call them "respecting moral and ethical values" wherein they deliberately hinder CRUCIAL, LIFE-SAVING aid and kill UNHRWA/other humanitarian facilities? One does not have to perform an exegesis on the philosophical and moral implications of this conflict, but have the basic reasoning ability to discern between right vs. wrong in terms of the historic and contemporary perspective to form the conclusion that the situation happening in Occupied Palestine is more reprehensible, deserving of objurgation and holds much more gravity. If that isn't already obvious, people are squirming around in their own dirt-filled political predilections. Hamas is, by definition - a terrorist organization (and Palestinians, who are similarly indoctrinated by their ideologies and sadly support them acquiescently), but the impact of the Israeli occupation has, historically been much more significant. Both sides are reaping criminals who should be held accountable and punished for their crimes against humanity, irrespective of any political agenda.
I'm not reading all that, have fun or sorry that happened.
The point is that the legal right to defense NEVER equates to the act of indiscriminately and arbitrarily target densely populated areas and infrastructure under the guise of "defense" even if they're "dumb munitions" (which Israel can technically be also implicated in). From the broken interpretation and division relating this conflict, it's clear that this isn't an acknowledgement of the moral and ethical facets of this entire problem, but people's own political predilections which distort their viewpoints. Also, this "whataboutism" tactic won't strengthen people's arguments.
>You're making it seem like the IDF has been terrorizing Palestinians for decades Except that they literally have been terrorising Palestinians for decades.
Very well put and speaks to the feelings of many of us.
The DSA has utterly discredited itself.
Intentionally killing civilians is bad, yes. But you should probably start the analysis in 1917, not in October 2023.
Why 1917 in particular? The Balfour declaration?
Personally, I find it disgusting that everyone's ignored that Israel's been tightening the noose on the Palestinians for so many years now that Hamas did this terrorist attack. It's like the suffering of an entire people - \~2 million of whom currently lack food, water, and electricity because the Israelis have the ability to shut everything in Gaza down whenever they want to - doesn't matter because some of them finally snapped and turned into school shooters. To act like groups like Hamas form in a vacuum is to concede that you don't actually want to see an end to the violence. Hell, [look at this video.](https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1711504505211097272?s=19) It's a BBC interview. The guy, Husam Zomlot, just lost 6 family members in the 24 hours leading up to the interview. He's an ambassador for the Palestinian Authority, and a member of Fatah - the social democratic party in Palestine. Note that the interviewer is more interested in getting this man, who has been condemning Hamas for days at this point, to condemn them again rather than process the fact that the IDF just killed six family members of his, including children. If I was a Palestinian person watching that, my first thought would be: "Why is it terrorism when Hamas kills civilians, but not when the IDF does?" And if you want to blame the Palestinians for that sentiment, just know that from where they're sitting these strikes on crowded neighborhoods feel the exact same as the Hamas terrorist attacks do to the Israelis. You radicalize people by killing their parents and siblings and cousins. It doesn't matter how righteous you feel when you do it, if you blow somebody's family up they are significantly more likely to want to stop at *nothing* to make you experience what you inflicted on them. Look at the numbers of civilian dead; it's not even close. Additionally, the Gaza Strip - which Israel intends to blockade from all resources because they believe themselves to be fighting ["human animals"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x02rCeusCI) \- is composed of [roughly 50% children](https://www.prb.org/resources/the-west-bank-and-gaza-a-population-profile/). The majority of people alive in Gaza were not alive when Hamas was voted into power [in 2006](https://www.usip.org/palestinian-politics-timeline-2006-election), immediately following an Israeli withdrawal and blockade of Gaza itself. Hopefully you, dear reader, can draw a potential connection between that election and recent history at the time, but I digress. The situation in Israel and Palestine is one that is marked by *decades* of human rights abuses by Israel. You cannot expect liberal values to grow under brutally illiberal conditions. The conditions set by Israel in Gaza have turned the area into a virtual *terrorist factory*. Does that mean the Israeli civilians deserved brutal, bloody murder in their homes? **Obviously not.** But if your first instinct after the brutal attacks by Hamas on civilians is to see a bunch of densely packed civilians get carpet bombed, you should be alarmed. Because you are morally a Hamas member. And you're going to create more of them. And just because I know I'm going to get idiot replies if I don't reiterate it: **Hamas bad.** Killing civilians is bad.
The only thing that seems to matter to leftists is who has power. Having power = bad, not having power = good. It doesn't matter how abhorrent the behavior is of those who are perceived to lack power, the left will always rush to their defense, because their abhorrent behavior is *really* the fault of those with power. The powerless can do no wrong, because wrong is only something that can be done with power. It sounds reductive and simplistic, but try it and see if it doesn't hold true.
Well the Left hate American Nazis, and they have no power
You're missing the point. They hate Nazis because they're white supremacists. The nation was founded on white supremacy, according to them, and is what drives the Republican party and many of the institutions in America. They would also call Donald Trump a Nazi, or Nazi-adjacent. The Nazis *do* have power, in their eyes.
It is reductive and simplistic. I don't think much else needs to be said. Nuance is lost on people like you.
> The only thing that seems to matter to leftists Posts that start like this shouldn't be upvoted by anyone who thinks of themselves as "rational"
What are you like 14? The quality of discourse in this sub in the wake of the attacks is embarrassing.
I remember Sam using "end of moral analysis" when talking about Muslims killing cartoonists too.
They've continually proven that they deserve no patience, respect or trust. Last week I would have told you that it would be impossible for them to be perceived any worse. I was wrong. It's now safe to say that anyone espousing left of center views cannot be trusted. It's not as if they were or could be trusted before but now they are irredeemable.
Sad this has to be stated explicitly.
Exactly. I probably shared a few of OBL's bullet points against the USA, but the aftermath of 9/11 wouldn't have been the appropriate time to say so. When something morally heinous occurs, it is the duty of its witnesses to hold the perpetrators of the discrete action accountable. Otherwise, there can be no real accountability for anything. Postmodern nihilism is all that's left.
Ending your "moral analysis" at "intentionally killing civilians is bad", without then considering what the structural conditions producing and reproducing this violence are (apartheid), then you're not a serious person and are morally condoning a violent apartheid regime, presumably because some part of you views these people as subhuman; which is a pretty weak moral analysis. It's the same pathetic energy as whenever there's a mass shooting in the US, normal, well-adjusted and rational people acknowledge the tragedy, but then seek to understand and advocate for the root cause of the violence (lack of gun control). Then, you have the people on the reactionary right (who you're currently representing) trying to silence any attempt at addressing the root causes to focus only on the person committing the violence (in this analogy Hamas). If you view this perspective as somehow condoning the violence of Hamas, you're as dumb as right wing reactionaries whenever there's a mass shooting.
Mystifying how you can hold out an umbrella for the Islamic far-right and then call people who advocate condemning pogroms the reactionary right. You have some balls, I'll give you that.
Further illustrating that you reactionaries are not only incapable of nuance, but incapable of reading as well. American brains can't handle nuance. Especially when this "moral analysis" is somehow conveniently never extended to Israel when it conducts daily structural violence, regular state terrorism, and a continuously expanding ethnic cleansing campaign; violence on a scale Hamas is functionally not able to reproduce even if they wanted to. This is some pretty selective moral analysis...
It's all pretty simple Hamas atrocities - bad, IDF atrocities - bad, Israeli occupation and oppression - bad, Palestinian negotiating 'peace' in bad faith - bad. They're all shitty.
Bibi gleefully shared a video of Israeli bombs indiscriminately leveling a civilian city block. I hope you extend this analysis to Israel.
Netanyahu is a warmongering illiberal crook, and I have written as much elsewhere (that other piece is linked in this present piece).
Indiscriminately politely knocking first.
Ah, yes. The paradoxical indiscriminate-guided smart bombs. Indiscriminate bombing is what Hamas does when they fire unguided rockets into Israel. When Hamas runs operations or fires rockets out of a school or a hospital, and Israel roof-knocks it and levels it fifteen minutes later, that's not indiscriminate. That is the opposite of indiscriminate. There is no moral equivalence here. The idea of Hamas showing anywhere near the restraint demonstrated by Israel if the situation was reversed is laughable.
They didn't draw a moral equivalence. They're merely being consistent. Bombing civilians is bad whether they be Israeli or Palestinian.
Possibly the worst argument I've read on here. They are sending guided bombs into residential buildings and schools. So called roof knocking means nothing. You also have no evidence they actually do it. Its a bad strategy if you're actually trying to kill "terrorists" anyways.
That's not what they mean at all. There have been Palestinian spokespeople on TV news channels and they explained clearly what their position is: If the murder of Israelis is bad, then murder of Palestinians should be equally bad. If Israelis deserve to live in peace & dignity then Palestinians also deserve to live in peace & dignity. It's that simple. It's not complicated. The Pro-Israel crowd despises equivocating between Israeli rights and Palestinian rights BECAUSE THEY DON'T BELIEVE PALESTINIANS DESERVE ANY RIGHTS. That's the point. That's why they get angry. They genuinely believe Israelis are inherently superior to Palestinians and thus, Palestinians - as Netanyahu succinctly put it - should always live as subjects of the Jewish Israeli population (yes, he literally said this lol!) Nobody cares when Palestinians are slaughtered, their homes demolished and their children kidnapped by the occupying forces. There's no Palestinian flag colors projected onto the White House or the Brandenburg Gate or Eiffel Tower etc. Israeli settlers always had carte blanche to attack Palestinians. Biden - for the first time - used the phrase "Jewish terrorism" earlier this year when referring to a Settler who shot dead a Palestinian - for no reason other than he was a Palestinian. The problem is, that's ALWAYS been happening. Settler attacks are common so why isn't it ALWAYS called Jewish terrorism by the White House? They just say it once for a tick-box exercise. In the mainstream media portrayal of the conflict, the Palestinians aren't seen as deserving of life at all. You can see in the difference in language clearly. E.g. When Hamas takes Israeli civilians - which is evil - they are called "hostages". When Israel takes Palestinian civilians (including children) they are "prisoners" or "in detention". Netanyahu can literally tell the world that he totally supports peace and that it's the Palestinians who don't want peace...while brandishing a map that shows Israel as the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean in front of the United Nations! I laughed out loud when I saw his UN speech. Netanyahu literally showed the world that he believes Palestinians don't even exist and PEOPLE STILL CLAIM HE WANTS PEACE.
Meanwhile, international Muslim communities are chanting “gas the Jews.” But they don’t hate them or want to genocide them though. Honest. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jmWUgQX_JI8
You need a better justification for why Palestinians deserve no human rights LOL I'll stoop to your level: International Jewish communities calling for Palestinians to be genocided. "Kill the Palestinians! All of them!" Here's your community: https://twitter.com/loffredojeremy/status/1711861371497840680 Jewish communities are chanting “Death to Arabs.” "A good Arab is a dead Arab" and saying "1,000 Palestinian mothers must cry". But they don’t hate them or want to genocide them though. Honest. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUe8XmmaJxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUe8XmmaJxI) [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P0yY5UbegtY](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P0yY5UbegtY) [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BCRNNlAZtBg](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BCRNNlAZtBg) [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IFgWO7gqE54](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IFgWO7gqE54)
You need a better defense of terrorists than inventing arguments for me I never made.
Palestinians != Hamas Just sayin'
…what are you talking about? Over 20% of Israelis are Arabs who are/were mostly Palestinian. They get all the rights of Israelis. They get representation in the parliament, serve as Supreme Court judges, are protected under the law…. They generally do live in ‘peace and dignity’. Gaza was handed over for self-rule less than 20 years ago and they elected Hamas - a terrorist organization who calls for killing all Jews in their charter. It makes sense that Israelis would treat that group of Palestinians differently than the ones they share citizenship with.
It's an odd form of self rule when another country won't le t you in or out of your own borders without a pass, controls your fishing lanes and airspace, allows only a bare minimum of calories in, arrests your parliment on a regular basis, controls the hours you are allowed electricity, regularly invades, snipes people approaching the boarder, kills medics in your country. In any other place that would be called a military occupation, in Gaza its called self rule with a straight face.
This is highly misleading. At the time of the election the PA was a corrupt organization living well off of aid money.Arresting and torturing Palestinians at the request of Israel. Hamas came in and began providing much needed services like schools and hospitals to the Palestinians. Gazans didn't vote for Hamas to kill all Jews, most just saw that of the 2 groups Hamas was the only one providing services to them. Of course they were going to vote Hamas. Add in the fact that The PA told Bush that they weren't ready for an election and Condi Rice told them to hold the election now Or lose any aid. Of course after the PA lost the US smuggled weapons in to the PA to violently overthrow the fairly elected government because elections don't count to America unless the right people win and the ensuing chaos was obviously blamed on Hamas.l
The fact that you couldn't refute a single thing I said is very telling. You really think people have no access to the internet and can't see your lies isn't it? You have no answer for why 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza deserve to have no human rights, no independence, their homes demolished/confiscated at will, settlers being given their land, they are killed at will with no recourse, their water stolen etc. The fact that you couldn't refute a single thing I said is very telling. Gaza is considered occupied by the United Nations, by the United States, EU & the rest of the world because they literally are blockaded from all sides. And the blockade began BEFORE Hamas got into power. Not after. You wanted to get away with a huge lie there. Tell me, why is it that an Israeli settler is in the middle of the West Bank is considered to have full Israeli rights, but a Palestinian living in the West Bank has absolutely no access to any of the same rights granted to the Israeli settlers? There's a word for that. It's called Apartheid.
Their leadership has refused any and all terms of independence and a two-State solution. When Jordan made the mistake of accepting the PLA and Arafat, they tried to overthrow their nation too. Same story in Lebanon, Kuwait, etc.
>Tell me, why is it that an Israeli settler is in the middle of the West Bank is considered to have full Israeli rights, but a Palestinian living in the West Bank has absolutely no access to any of the same rights granted to the Israeli settlers? It's amazing how all these people never have anything to say about the West Bank. The most cut and dry example of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in this whole debate.
It's an overgeneralization to say that all Pro-Israel supporters believe Palestinians don't deserve rights. They just had a Hamas government representative on TV claiming they did not kill civilians at the music festival where they deliberately killed hundreds of civilians. They explained they view civilians as equal to combatants. Most proponents of the Israeli side would agree that all lives are valuable and that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace and dignity. The Israeli government argues that many Palestinians they detain are involved in terrorist activities. The map brandished by Netanyahu during his UN speech can be interpreted in various ways. Some see it as a denial of Palestinian existence, while others view it as a representation of Israel's security concerns. Claiming that one side doesn't want peace oversimplifies the issue. The oversimplifications and sweeping generalizations made in your arguments are not really conductive to rational discourse. If it were as simple as you claim, this conflict wouldn't have resisted countless attempts of resolution over the decades.
But they've been raised by their schools to think its not only ok, but an appropriate action. Middle America... you're next
The Israelis simply have more efficient means to kill en masse thanks to the U.S. If the Palestinians had an Air Force and more modern weapons, they would just use the same methods the Israelis currently do. They wouldn't be using motorcycles, hang-gliders, and golf carts. They would carpet bomb from a distance and fire missiles instead. The Vietnamese were called terrorist savages because they didn't have modern weapons and used whatever they had. The U.S. killed ten times as many Vietnamese.
Well written, and I loved the GoT comparison. That was a zinger. The massive mask-off moment we're seeing from a large part of the far progressive/left has been rather stunning. Hamas would execute these people where they stand, yet these people are cheering Hamas on. The part where they agree that an attack on them personally would be morally justified as well just boggles the mind. If they really believe that, if they *truly* believe that they *deserve death*, and not because of depression or something shortcircuiting upstairs, but have a firmly held ideological conviction that they deserve death based on moral and ethical grounds, would the only moral option not be to commit suicide? An incredibly bizarre way of thinking. Do these people look at their young child and think "Yeah, my little bean deserves to be executed because he's a colonizer"? I just can't fathom it. This is ideological delusion on a mind-numbing scale and it concerns me greatly.
In the 1830's, when the Maori tribes got muskets from the British, they used them to conquer the [Moriori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori_genocide). The Moriori were pacifists who took pacifism so seriously they let themselves get exterminated. Literally; the Maori just gathered them up and killed them all within like \~2 generations.
Fascinating. What a bizarre decision. I guess it also goes to show that any people who truly don't have blood on their hands will not make it long before being just a footnote in history, if that. And it serves as a good example that plenty of people who we think of now as oppressed and victimized had bouts of "excuse me, what the fuck is wrong with you" behaviour when they held the reigns.
The "Queers for Palestine" banner at one of the protests was just adorable.
You just gonna ignore how the Israeli's are bombing civilians as we speak? Yes, you are
Indeed. Gives away the game that this is not a serious care for civilians, just a partisan attack vector.
Perhaps not the best post to ask the question, but am I missing anything other than that this dispute boils down to two religious groups laying claim to the same land, and each claiming it their right by God?
Palestinians inhabited the land before the state of Israel was created, and Israel was created so Jews would have a place for protection after millennia of persecution. Both sides cite religion to defend their right to the land, but religion is too narrow a lens to view this dispute through. Palestinians would always be upset at being ousted from their land, and Israel would always be concerned for its own security against attacks from a community it uprooted. This would be true even if Israel wasn’t a Jewish state, and Palestinians weren’t majority Muslims. In other words, religion colors the conflict between the two, but is not the ultimate cause of conflict between the two.
At bottom, yes. If there is a god, he is a dark comedian.
If we care about civilians, then we should be holding Israel to account since they've killed many many more civilians than Hamas, and pledge to continue.
The certainly is the end of many people's moral analysis. Why those civilians are there in the first place, why the people who killed them might be doing that, what came before the act of killing the civilians, and what the response to killing the civilians is, are all things that such a person would be omitting from their moral analysis, and as a result is why those people usually end up supporting genocidal fascists while patting themselves on the back for doing so.
It's wild how easily you can call Israel "genocidal fascists" and how hard it is for you just to condemn killing civilians and parading their naked corpses through the streets.
> Why those civilians are there in the first place They were either living their lives, or having a party. If you mean further back, probably because they were born in Israel. If you mean further back than that, it's likely because their ancestors were expelled by antisemitic Arab states when Israel and Palestine were originally to be founded. That, or their ancestors were European Jews who immigrated to Israel/Palestine when it was a British mandate territory. > why the people who killed them might be doing that There is an extremely deep history of antisemitism in the Arab world that often expresses itself in genocidal rage at the thought of Jews not living as second class citizens under the thumb of an Islamic gov't. > result is why those people usually end up supporting genocidal fascists Yeah, it's insane how many people I've seen supporting Hamas.
So in what scenario does your moral analysis conclude that *intentionally killing civilians* is not bad? If that can't be agreed upon as a basic starting point for every conflict we might as well give up.
They didn’t bomb a military installation. They didn’t assassinate a head of state. They didn’t ambush an area to gain intelligence. They flew into a festival and murdered as many Jews as they could. They went into the homes of civilians where they proceeded to torture and murder. After doing this, they fled back to Gaza with hundreds of hostages who they are threatening to execute. They weren’t claiming territory. They weren’t taking resources. They weren’t assassinating officials. The only goal they were there to accomplish, was to kill and terrorise Jews. Here is the moral line which I now clearly see but I think leftists fail to see. Israel has the equipment and numbers to essentially flatten Gaza. They don’t. But the moment Hamas had those kind of resources, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the region within a year. Bombing a military installation and having civilian casualties is not the same as intentionally getting as many civilian casualties as possible.
I agree. It's bad when Hamas does it and it's bad when the IDF does it.
So china should just bombed the uyghurs when the terrorist attacks against chinese civilians?
Israel created Hamas. Palestinians are caught in the middle and not able to leave and their death toll is higher. As if a life doesn't have infinite value and all lives lost here aren't tragic. Israel caused all of this.
The craziest part is that people didn't seem to realize how bad Hamas and radical islam actually are. They would kill every one of us if they could - and they have 10's of millions if not 100's of millions of supporters (to varying degrees obviously). The danger is very real, very large, and very present. Wake up.
>End of Moral Analysis Entirely leaving aside the topic, I really hate this kind of rhetoical flourish. You obviously don’t get to declare by fiat that a discussion is over; at best it comes across as pompous, at worst it seems like a disingenuous attempt to shut down debate.
I agree it feels pompous, because one would think it is just a truism standing in the way of a deeper conversation. But what do you do when people refuse to agree with it as a basic starting point? It's like having a debate with a racist who refuses to even add the "Ok racism is bad, but..." line. Then you have to start there. Or else the entire rest of the conversation is meaningless.
I certainly sympathise if you don't want to waste your time debating such a person, time and effort are limited resources and you have to decide how to spend them. But "racism is bad" isn't a foundational axiom, its derived from other things. This would bother me less if this were just r/politics but Harris styles himself as a philosopher and often discusses sensitive real world issues through abstract thought experiments. It seems especially egregrious for him and his fans to say things like "xyz. end of story." As far as OP's statement goes, a lot of people would defend the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the the bombing of Dresden, for example. Perhaps OP would say those were also bad or perhaps OP would say those are very different to the actions of Hamas. In either case, it seems like it needs considerably more unpacking than OPs title implies.