Israel/Palestine

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(Thread IKs: Main Paineframe, Irony Be My Shield, punishedkissinger)

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

TGLT posted:

some one should tell the world health organization

https://twitter.com/WHOoPt/status/1714713833359466702

Crazy to think that 136 Hamas rockets all misfired and hit hospitals and ambulances.

Or wait, maybe that's the wrong thing to believe?

Right, we are supposed to believe that Israel targeted and attacked 135 hospitals and ambulances, but this one that people are mad about was just a fluke accidental rocket misfire in exactly the spot Israel had ordered evacuated.

Or wait, that sounds stupid, too.

There must be some way to believe that this wasn't Israel without coming across as a complete rube. There must be.

Also, at the end of the Sopranos, Tony was shot by Hamas.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Oct 18, 2023 23:40

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 14:09

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

It's not just that Egypt "don't want refugees." They can actually think two steps ahead.

Okay, suppose all of Gaza is emptied into Sinai. Now Hamas is operating from Sinai, launching rockets at Israel from Sinai.

What does the IDF do next? We all know what they do next, they start bombing Egypt.

Egypt doesn't want a war with Israel. If they did, they'd have joined in by now.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2023 22:01

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Arguing about the morality of Hamas's kidnapping in this context is just like arguing about the morality of George Floyd's paying for cigarettes with a fake 20. Of course it may be wrong and it may be prohibited, but there's a vastly bigger crime going on here and it makes you look like you're trying to distract attention from that.

You are distracting from the larger crime, even if that's not your intention. And just like with George Floyd, it makes you look racist when you do it, even if you don't mean to be.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 18:23

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Xombie posted:

No, I am absolutely not going to agree to the context that imprisoning babies is a victimless crime. That is absolutely sociopathic. Imprisoning any innocent person is, by definition, victimization and unjust. No, there isn't a bigger context that *justifies* crimes against innocent people.

Nobody said kidnapping was victimless. Hell, even passing a fake bill isn't completely victimless!

And no, I am not saying the genocide justifies the kidnapping. I also would not say that being murdered by cops retroactively *justifies* counterfeiting. These are obvious strawmen. (Which I think gets you a probe in this thread, if my own rap sheet is to be believed.)

With this comparison, I am using a small-scale example to demonstrate my point. The point is not that kidnapping is like counterfeiting. The point is that kidnapping is so much smaller than genocide, in the same way that counterfeiting is so much smaller than a single extrajudicial murder. That is the comparison being made here.

In order to argue against this comparison, you would have to say that kidnapping is actually not a much smaller crime than genocide, and that they are of similar scale.

So make that argument or don't. If you won't, then it's clear to all that you are trying to spend your time here discussing what you know to be the smaller crime. You may think that is okay, but others will draw their own conclusions. Just as we drew conclusions about people who wanted to argue about George Floyd's fake bill.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 19:28

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Civilized Fishbot posted:

The problem here is that you think people here discuss events based on how important they are, and not how interesting they are.

Out in the real world, people should take concrete action in proportion to the significance of the crime and where they can have the most influence - for virtually everyone here, this means focusing all our attention on Israel, because it's killing thousands of civilians and westerners have some influence over it, unlike Hamas, which is abusing dozens of civilians and totally independent of our influence. But the Something Awful forums aren't the real world and posting isn't action, so inferring a person's priorities from their posts is a failure.

"What are the moral obligations, if any, of a quasi-state actor resisting the colonization and occupation of its constituents" is an interesting question where decent, thoughtful people can have different answers. It has no practical application for anyone in this discussion, but that's fine, this isn't a forum for practical planning, it's for discussing interesting questions.

"Is the State of Israel murdering thousands of civilians, and is that bad" is not a question where decent, thoughtful people can have different answers, so I don't think it's an interesting question - important but not interesting. It is practically critical that we all know the answer is "yes" but that's accomplished.

If anyone said "I'm out every day trying to get Hamas to release the captives, whatever Israel's doing isn't s big priority to me, it seems bad but I'm focusing on pressuring Hamas by any means I can" then the dynamic you describe would be applicable, because that's someone who clearly thinks that the kidnappings are more important then the genocide.

I like this post a lot. And it makes a lot of sense. But when I go back to my own analogy, I see that "is counterfeiting a victimless crime?" and "in what circumstances is it morally ok to try pass a fake 20?" are objectively more interesting questions than "is it bad that cops choked a man to death over a fake 20?" which is an obvious"yes, duh."

And yet... every one of us with pattern recognition saw that the people bringing up the fake bill tended to fit a certain description. I can't say that everyone who brought it up was racist, but I can say that most of the ones I saw doing that were absolutely racist. And plenty of people, myself included, made judgements about the people we saw making certain arguments. Those arguments made them all look racist, even if some of them weren't.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 21:13

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Yeah, the propaganda is strong. I always heard "The day Israel declared independence, the Arab states invaded." Even as someone who has been anti-israel for 20 years and kept up with the news and all their abuses, I believed that. I figured it was true but didn't justify anything 70 years later.

But this year I found out that it's just another of their loving lies! The Arab states never invaded Israel! They entered Palestine. Where Israel already had forces. Israel had already invaded Palestine.

I honestly don't know if I learned a single true thing about Israel growing up.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2024 03:49

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

Yureina posted:

True. A change in government is not necessarily genocidal by itself, though depending upon who carries it out it could very much end up in that direction. Naturally, such a change would need to be kept out of the hands of those with genocidal intent.

Good point. They'd have to legally exclude any zionists from holding office.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 01:41

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

The point of reading these threads is to change your own mind. It won't always happen but if it never happens then you're really getting nothing out of it.

The point of posting in these threads is to change other people's minds (hopefully without being dishonest). We all come in with an agenda and it's not "bad faith" to have one. Agendas are the natural result of understanding. Someone without an agenda can simply lurk and read and educate themselves until they have enough understanding to have an agenda.

Bad faith is when someone pretends they don't have the agenda they have. When someone says that they don't have an agenda but continues to post, nobody has to presume anything.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 18:07

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 14:09

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

DeadlyMuffin posted:

If you think people are arguing in bad faith, report them. Or call them out.

I just want anyone posting anything in defense of the embassy attack to also post the same thing in defense of October 7th because there were military targets in that attack, too. I want to see them posting "they weren't attacking a music festival, they were attacking through a music festival."

If they say that Iran's response is an inappropriate escalation, then I don't just want to see them simply stating the obvious fact that Israel's response has been disproportionate. I want them to say that even one volley of missiles would have been an inappropriate escalation.

If they really believe in the arguments they are making, they should make themselves clear. If they don't really believe, well that's the definition of bad faith, right?

Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Apr 15, 2024

# ¿ Apr 15, 2024 17:06

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