People are lazy and stupid. — I like sushi

Well I read somewhere that people are stupid, and I have a long record of laziness, so... guess that's true.

The NY subway system is roughly 250 miles long -- all underground? I don't think so -- some of it is above ground. Isn't an above ground subway a contradiction in terms? There are roughly 310 miles of Hamas Tunnels, which like the subway lines, vary in depth quite a bit. 250 miles is not the length of trackage (since some tunnels have 4 sets of tracks -- 1 inbound all stops, 1 outbound all stops, and 1 express track in each direction).



The map doesn't include tunnels dug by smugglers from Gaza into Egypt. Those are privately built and owned, according to a YOUTUBE video, and are worth quite a bit to the owners. They are not as well built as Hamas' tunnels, and there are a lot more cave ins. But they can import cars through the tunnels -- they cut them up. Animals are brought in through the tunnels too, Well, just about everything/anything.

I have no idea how the map of the tunnels relates to the street map of Gaza. That's a problem for Israeli Intelligence to work on. Clearly though, destroying the tunnels from the air (to whatever extent that's possible) is going to be a smashing operation. Soldiers destroying the tunnels would, my guess, lead to very unacceptable losses by Israel.

ChatGPT will have to improve its game A LOT before it becomes useful. Send it back to the drawing board,

In the past I've generally accepted that the State of Israel has a right to exist but I have to say that Israeli brutality against civilians is severely testing my belief. — Wayfarer

General William T. Sherman, one of the Union's best generals, said: "It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell."

War is hell, regardless of the combatants, without respect to the goodness of one side and the wickedness of the other. Yes, Israel is deploying massive force against an intrenched enemy in a very crowded urban setting. Israel depends on advanced weaponry (no homemade missiles). Had they opted for a ground war without using their air force, their own casualties would be very high, and there would still be many civilian deaths, and maybe an unsuccessful outcome from Israel's POV.

The legitimacy of Israel isn't negated by its battle tactics, any more than the legitimacy of Palestinians need for an secure state in which to live is invalidated by Hamas' brutality.

Some demonstrators accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. This seems to have occurred at the time of Israel's founding when many Palestinians were displaced. What the settlers are doing on the West Bank is more 'ethnic encroachment' than ethnic cleansing. Israel ought (imho) to return the settlers' seized lands. I don't think that is going to happen, but it should happen. The Gaza war is definitely not ethnic cleansing: it's an effort aimed at regime change. (Those don't always work out very well either,).

I pretty much support Israel. I'm not very enthusiastic about the Arab block. Israel's birth could have been engineered more successfully, perhaps (don't ask me how). I'm not very enthusiastic about the increasing dominance of the ultra-conservative religious factions in Israel, but I don't know what we can do about it. I dislike the American religious ultra-conservatives too, and not much I can do about them, some of them are close relatives!

Israeli demonstrators protesting.

Reading from right to left... of course war has winners, and let us not forget, losers. Israel exists because they have won their wars. Israel's Arab neighbors have, so far, not won their wars against Israel. Were the Arabs to launch a successful war on Israel, who doubts that the Jews would receive the kind of treatment that Hamas is receiving--from the river to the sea.

If massacres do not justify self-defense, what in god's name does?

11000+ Palestinian men, women, and children killed? Some people think that number is exaggerated. Given the intensity of Israeli bombing of Gaza, I would be surprised if it is not significantly higher.

Is there a manner of attacking Hamas (who are literally dug in under Gaza) which would not result in a large number of civilian casualties?

Probably not. Bombing in WWII had mixed success rate -- as did bombing in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. "Precision targeting" has been the elusive goal since the beginning of WWII. A lot of dropped gravity-guided bombs do not come close to or hit their designated targets. Guided bombs do better, as do guided missiles and drones. Presumably Israel targets within fairly tight parameters. That's better than just opening the bomb bay doors over Gaza and letting loose.

I don't know to what extent Hamas represents the political opinions of the Gazan and wider Palestinian population. Do they deserve to be wiped out, at considerable human cost to the civilians they claim to represent?

Yes, for three reasons: #1, they are on record as favoring the destruction of Israel. #2, they demonstrated a willingness and ability to carry out effective attack on Israel -- 1200+ killed on 10/7. They launched 9,500 missiles at Israe over the previous month, most of which were shot down or were not heading toward a significant targets. #3, they are not uniquely able to govern Gaza. I have no knowledge about their administration, but I have not heard much in the way of positive reviews let alone rave reviews about how effectively they have governed Gaza.

My guess is that Hamas has diverted a large percentage of material imported (or smuggled in through tunnels) into Gaza for its own use, rather than for the benefit of average Palestinians. They have further endangered their own people by digging in under significant civilian buildings -- hospitals, schools, mosques, etc.

What good has Hamas done?

Does one get any rest from spite, despite a respite from spite? I mean, spite and then re-spite? Can we de-spite somebody, the way one de-worms a dog?

No wonder the world is getting hotter.

Burning irony is a major contributor to global warming.

Wanna go out for a few beers tonight?

Sad. Tragic. But "time makes ancient good uncouth" a poet once said. The train of militant leftist working class activism and mass demonstrations seems to have left the station quite some time ago. The departure is lamentable.

However... I'm of an old enough age where dying might happen. There is some comfort in that, oddly enough. When I was much younger, I felt called to act on the many injustices, and that involved a lot of sturm and drang. That's over. An order of concern on dry whole wheat toast, hold the sturm and drang.

It just seems like that would be the reason to maintain contact, not sever it. — frank

It would IF one was not a rigid ideologue. Hey, I've been rigidly ideological at times on different issues, and it is hard to escape the box of one's own construction. I can find endless embarrassment in my past--confusion, rigidity, self-righteousness, etc. etc. etc. There were good things too -- insight, smart moves, deep commitments, loyalty, flexibility, and so on woven in with the crap, as it usually is.

But this incident was mild compared to teachers in colleges who were hounded out of their jobs by a braying mob of Woke lunatics.

It was crazy, as in DSM IV diagnosis: lunatic leftism. His behavior is also a testament to the ineffectiveness of long-term psychoanalysis. Perhaps a balloon was punctured -- maybe I was of the the last comrades still standing? A lot of the old guys in the party/movement have died of old age.

Quite a few stories about people being the victims of "woke leftists" places the woke mob in the same category as 1950s McCarthy witch hunters. "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist Party?" no matter what one's reasons were or what circumstances applied.

I've been a small-time victim of a woke-leftist (whom I counted as a good friend). I rejected the necessity of the working class acquiring marxist enlightenment as a necessary prerequisite to solving the environmental crisis of global warming. "If that's the way you think," he said, "I never want to talk to you again!" and he hasn't.

I thought my view was quite reasonable. Considering the extremely meager results we had achieved in 20 years as Marxist missionaries, we had best move on. Try something else. No! No! If you are not with us 100%, then you are against us.

What is a stable government? How long is a long term? — Vera Mont

I'm thinking in terms of generations--20 to 25 years. A stable government should stand across generations. So, when people think about their government, their grandparents and grand children would have the same government, (This doesn't mean the same political party over the years.) The United States government was stable for 3 generations (1781 to 1861) then experienced a rupture. Since the Civil War, 170 years ago (6-7 generations) the government has been stable with stable (if not necessarily good) political control.

Town meetings have been going on in Massachusetts since the 17th century; the English Parliament has been in business for a similarly long period. France, an entirely going concern, has had several governments, including revolutions and invasions by an occupying army. Very strong cultural continuity has kept France enduringly glued together.

What is an adequate economy? — Vera Mont

An adequate economy is able to provide the basic needs of citizens -- food, clean water, housing, clothing, transportation, cultural activities, and so on. "Adequate" doesn't mean "plenty"; a good economy provides plenty. An adequate economy is able to distribute what people need (through employment and production) somewhat evenly. I assume some people are going to get more than others. That's a political matter -- market regulation and taxation.

A stable government and an at least adequate government requires a reasonably effective political system. "Reasonably effective" means reasonably honest, reasonably fair, reasonably competent, reasonably focused on the needs of the citizens. Since, per Emmanuel Kant, "nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind", "reasonably" is as good as we are likely to get for periods longer than a bad cold. Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty and all that.

Quite a few nations qualify, but quite a few don't. I don't disagree with Donald Trump that Haiti qualifies as a "shit hole". Haiti isn't the only one. It's a graphic term, but doesn't over-state how bad things can get when everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

That is to say, if you turn off your cable news (an ancient thing nowadays), put down your newspaper (an even more ancient thing), don't look at online media, and don't talk politics, are you really affected much as to what happens on "Capitol Hill"? Every so often it comes to you in taxes and ballots, but really, many are detached. I think of an office worker or mechanic or construction worker blissfully just doing their thing. — schopenhauer1

"The Economy" on which we all depend isn't managed from Capital Hill, 1600 Pennsylvania, or elsewhere in the District. And you are right: a lot of Americans are 'detached' from government / political affairs. Still, when I talk to people who do not listen, watch, or read the news, they often seem detached from reality to some degree.

I want to know what is going on in the world. The quality of life of many Americans has, or will be, conditioned by decisions that are made in Washington--not just taxes and elections.

I'll have to chew on Debord's Society of the Spectacle for a while.

But, really, is that all a government is supposed to do? Keep its own people down and other peoples out? — Vera Mont

Gee, Vera, that's kind of a negative way of looking at it. But yes, a functioning government should control immigration and political unrest.

I would propose that a state is successful wherever it is considered sovereign, while the people who it nominally represent remain dependent and subordinate to its whims. With this it is successful in its most basic function. — NOS4A2

So, a minimally successful state is sovereign; controls its borders; controls its own population; facilitates an adequate economy; maintain a stable government over a long period of time.

Failed states are taken over by insiders or outsides; lose control of its borders; loses control of its population; has a collapsed economy; has a series of very short, ineffective political regimes.

A successful state may not make everyone (or anyone) happy. The question is whether it's a going concern, or not.

Your Op was well drawn and has brought in solid interesting discussion. I rarely see Maher doing his shtick but I liked the clip you posted.

I am getting old and I don't have much time for the woke left. In all, it seems like there are some very non-polemical a-political trends at work.

"Everybody says" that politics is getting more extreme -- from the screwy woke left to the screwy fascist right. More extreme and more contentious, less civil, less thoughtful, less accommodating (not to very different positions, but often to only slightly different positions. Why?

Perhaps it's a result of a reasonably free society where the bar to entry into political debate has been lowered by technology. Anybody can get on one social media platform or another and babble away about anything. The Elite are still the elite and still run things, but the proles now have big megaphones to express themselves.

"Post modernism" seems to have mentally unhinged many on the the left. Up until... what? the 1950s? 60s? the now old left seemed firmly anchored in reality. They may have been dull, but they were accounting for real material forces.

The "public attention span" is only so long, and there is stiff competition to get one's views heard, to dominate the stage. This alone leads to exaggerated claims -- attention bait in the crowded market place.

A lot of what we see on the news seems to be "public performance". This isn't new, of course. Over the decades, maybe a century, people have learned how to effectively demonstrate anger, rage, grief, resentment, outrage, and so on.

People in politics have to work fairly hard to differentiate themselves. This is true for Republican Party candidates and the woke left, as well. Getting noticed can lead to absurdities (like the famous drag queen story hour).

I'm sort of a relativist. I heartily disapprove of slavery (chattel slavery or wage slavery), for instance, but it's conceivable that slave holders didn't feel guilty about owning slaves, any more than capitalists feel guilty for paying very low wages. Similarly, people leaving England to colonize New England mostly felt quite justified before God. They felt plenty of guilt, but it wasn't for being colonizers.

I don't look at "empire" -- colonialism -- as it was practiced in the 17th - 20th century as a moral evil. Certainly not very nice, certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end, certainly took away more than was given, certainly relied on sticks (guns) much, much more than on carrots. The Romans required a steady flow of goods from its colonies to feed everyone, England, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia -- everybody who COULD -- wanted to tap into (for them) new resources. Finding, acquiring, holding on to, and exploiting resources is a well-established practice, everywhere on every continent, wherever it could be managed, by any group who could pull it off.

Western Civilization is not perfect, but it's the only civilization [people in the west] have got, and it is better than most. Those who are too good for this culture could emigrate to the East and to the south, to Russia, to the PRC, to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, or any number of places where the "woke left" would be sent to prison, reeducation centers, mental hospitals, or end up beheaded.

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” — I like sushi

I recently read an article about the frequency of thoughts about Rome. Apparently many males think about the Roman Empire quite a bit -- at least once a day. I like thinking about various aspects of the Roman Empire.

In my opinion, the line of reasoning you are taking here is problematic.

I recently had this discussion; in a nutshell...

Conservative evangelical: "Employers can't find anyone to fill jobs. There are all these people sitting around doing nothing, People don't want to work. That's a fact!"

Me (left/liberal/pinko): "It isn't that people don't want to work -- it's that there aren't enough workers available. The unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is 3.1% (in this state). 3.1% unemployment is considered "full employment" -- meaning that most people who can work are working."

Conservative evangelical: "That's just your opinion."

There are facts about the world that are different than opinions. A fact may support or weaken an opinion, but an opinion does not support or weaken facts. In my opinion, there are facts about both the social and physical world which are not dependent on opinion.

Fact: Most people take available work that they can do because being able to obtain what we need to live is a better option than having nothing.

Opinion: Most people are lazy and would rather be parasites than be productive.

Would you agree that the above fact is a fact and the opinion is an opinion?

The direction earth is spinning was arbitrarily assigned. The only thing definitive is that earth is spinning in one relatively consistent way. But East, West North and South are not fundamental to space. — Benj96

The earth had been spinning in a very definite way for a few billion years before some smart ass decided that the direction of spin was "assigned" a few years ago. The galaxy had been spinning in the same direction for much longer. The term we use for the direction of spin is a trivial issue, rising from the history of whatever language we use.

We didn't make the world, we discovered the world a couple of million years ago, when we developed enough cognitive power to begin conceptualizing our environments instead of only living in them.

I thought one was entitled to ones own opinions, but not entitled to one's own facts.

The magnetic pole has nothing to do with the direction in which the earth is spinning. In order for the sun to rise in the west, the earth would have to come to a standstill, and then start spinning in the other direction.

valid claim — flannel jesus

When it comes to claims of national property, it seems like occupation counts for a great deal, whether the previous occupants agreed to it or not. Look at the Western Hemisphere.

Establishing Israel was as legitimate as establishing any other regime in the world.

The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) may or may not have relevance to the situation, but it looms much larger in the narratives about the existence of Israel. The narratives have been around far longer than the current crisis.

Zionism came out of specific conditions in Europe. This article provides a history of Zionism. One of the influences here is that in Russia there was an emphasis on ethnic identities. In the liberal west, ethnicity was dissolved in individualism. Vicious antisemitism was another strong influence.

the most straight-off answer is that the Jews were behind it. — BitconnectCarlos

Of course. Jesus challenged the Jewish power elite, which outside of the Temple was subordinate to the Romans.

But the narrative of the Jewish elite's animosity towards Jesus wasn't, in my opinion, responsible for anti-semitism. I don't know of antisemitic attacks on Jews in the late Roman era, or in the immediate period after the collapse of the Western Empire (around 480). I don't think I've read about antisemitic attacks in Europe until the 10th - 15th centuries.

Religious attitudes were reflected in the economic, social, and political life of medieval Europe. In much of Europe during the Middle Ages, Jews were denied citizenship and its rights, barred from holding posts in government and the military, and excluded from membership in guilds and the professions. To be sure, some European rulers and societies, particularly during the early Middle Ages, afforded Jews a degree of tolerance and acceptance, and it would be an error to conceive of Jews as facing an unchanging and unceasing manifestation of anti-Jewish oppression throughout this period. In 1096, however, knights of the First Crusade unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France and the Holy Roman Empire, including massacres in Worms, Trier (both now in Germany), and Metz (now in France). Unfounded accusations of ritual murder and of host desecration and the blood libel—allegations of Jews’ sacrifice of Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened bread—appeared in the 12th century. — Encyclopedia Brittanica

The ghetto system began in Renaissance Italy in July 1555 with Pope Paul IV's issuing of the Cum nimis absurdum. This change in papal policy implemented a series of restrictions on Jewish life that dramatically reshaped their place in society.

on March 31, 1492, in the Alhambra's resplendent Hall of the Ambassadors, Ferdinand and Isabella signed an edict, the Alhambra Decree, expelling the Jews from Spain.

If there has been a thousand years of antisemitism in Europe, there were also a thousand years after Jesus when there wasn't much antisemitism. Something besides the Biblical Texts was at work. My guess is that the early slanders, i.e., using Christian children's blood to make passover bread, was authored by some sons of bitches in the church, or by some of their running dog lackeys. But for what reason did the bastards do it?

Antisemitism starts out as a Christian thing.

Prior to the Christian era, the Jews were one of several religious ethnicities that were periodically plundered / conquered by stronger neighbors. The Babylonias didn't conquer them because of religion or ethnic features. They were just inconveniently located on property the Nebuchadnezzar wanted.

The Christian Era began some time after the crucifixion (and alleged resurrection) of Jesus Christ by the Romans. Jesus was Jewish, of course, and if he was born to be the savior of Israel, it didn't work out very well.

The early church began informally and eventually became a capitalized group -- Christians. By this time, the Jews had revolted, and in reprisal the Romans totally profaned the Temple and scattered more Jews across the empire.

Somewhere along the line, Christians got the idea that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus = god = deicide. That worked well enough for Christians. Somebody needed to be blamed, and the Romans were no longer in business (as an empire in the West, at least). So, blame the Jews.

Enemies are handy because so many things -- plagues, wars, financial problems, bad harvests, etc. -- can be blamed on them. The Jews were numerous enough in total, but nowhere in particular. They didn't have a lot of power. They were duly blames for bad news.

Being on good terms with a group and at the same time viewing them as enemies is cognitively dissonance. As time went on, Jews became a caricature in the portrayals by Christians. The Church (Roman and Orthodox) was the vehicle for distributing antisemitism.

Antisemitism has been well established in Christian countries since... pick a century -- 13th? Maybe even before then, It has put down deep roots among Slavic, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and various other ethnic groups,

Then there's Islam,

White people in Europe and North America generally tend towards low rates of reproduction -- a trend associated with more education and higher incomes. As a consequence, the demographics forms a mushroom effect of more elderly people than younger people can financially support and care for. China and Japan either have or soon will have the same kind of demographic problem.

Immigration solves this particular demographic problem: more young workers paying into government coffers, more young workers available to provide care for elderly people. France and the United States have immigration patterns that will support growing economies and provide younger workers to care for older people.

A number of European countries, like Italy, are neither reproducing nor adding enough immigrants to counteract the mushroom demographic problem.

Demographics is one thing. Culture and politics is a different concern, the medium or long term outcomes being uncertain.

if you walk up to someone and slap them do they have to turn the other cheek?

I say yes. — FreeEmotion

Which is why it's the dirt the meek inherit, not the earth.

Can I really believe in nothing? — A Realist

No, you cannot. "Nothing" means nothing; zero; zilch; empty set; absence of anything. There is nothing about nothing to latch onto.

It sounds cool to say, "Oh, I don't believe in any of that crap. I BELIEVE IN NOTHING!" It's OK for an adolescent tantrum, but otherwise it's a meaningless statement. The good news is that one can articulate all of the crap one doesn't believe in, and that will piss off everyone more than throwing a tantrum.

Man, the 20th Century was a mess!

Britain and France were eager to carve up the rotting Ottoman Empire for the oil treasure under the territory. Fine, but the slices they made through the Middle East did not take account of all the various ethnic/religious divisions there. (Colonial powers did the same thing in Africa.). As if there wasn't enough turmoil already, the Zionist movement pleaded for a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, aka, Israel. Zionism, of course, wasn't hatched in a vacuum. Jews had been repeatedly subjected to pogroms across Europe. They wanted a refuge of safety. Than the Balfour Agreement.

Was Britain the greater or lesser villain for limiting Jewish Immigration to Palestine during the Holocaust in Germany?

After WWII, Britain washed its hands of the problem and in 1948 the State of Israel created itself -- what the Arabs call the Nakba. The state of Israel meant the dispossession of the Palestinians. Further bad acts have been carried out by all concerned in the last 75 years.

Europe's distaste for the "The wretched refuse of your teeming shores" landing on Lampadusa, the Azores, Greece, and various other places seems quite understandable to me. I don't have any enthusiasm for the millions of migrants heading toward our southern border. I'm a leftist quite out of step with a lot of leftists on this issue. My view is that sovereign nations have the right and responsibility to maintain their borders and follow a rational policy on admission. Just because x-millions of South Americans or Africans (and people from elsewhere) want to come to the US or EU doesn't mean they must be welcomed or admitted at all.

If they can't get in, too bad, but I readily recognize that many of these people are trying to get away from economic, political, and social adversity, some of which we can trace back to our own policies. I'm on Israel's side, but I also recognize that Palestinians got the royal shaft. Unfortunately, consistency is just not going to be possible in resolving all (any?) of the wrongs.

If the actions of Group A and Group B are morally indistinguishable and equivalent, how should everyone else (call it Group C) act with respect to the immoral acts of A and B?

Many people will identify with either A or B and assent to whatever their preferred group does. The choice of one's preferred group will be debatable. Some will call for a plague on both their houses. That approach is often a cop-out, as is dismissing both sides as crazy extremists. Quite a few people will not have been paying attention and will not have heard about it.

Can one identify with both A and B, and recognize that an equivalent tragedy is happening to both sides?

The immediate judgement about the "morality of war" vs the "morality of murder" is largely guided by whose ox is getting gored. "Group B" in your example will condemn the attack as savage brutality, murder, aggression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and more. "Group B" will retaliate with what "Group A" characterizes as savage brutality, murder, aggression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and more. Both groups will be more or less correct in their description of what happened to them.

The acts of A and B are morally indistinguishable and equivalent.

The difference between shooting "innocent civilians" and soldiers in war and shooting random targets in the United States (like the 18 people just killed in Maine) is that the latter is a matter of national policy and the former is a matter of severely disordered behavior.

We have rules of engagement, international laws about conducting wars, and various ideas about the morality of war. The trouble with these various guides is that in principle "war is hell" as Union General William Tecumseh Sherman said, as he burned Atlanta and marched through Georgia.

The hell of war, as it is generally conducted and experienced, renders finicky questioning about the morality of this or that tactic moot.

I know some abstemious people who really should get drunk more often, for their own and everybody else's sanity.

Why do humans want to escape their mind and avoid reality? — Skalidris

It's entertaining. The religious rites of the Eleusinian Mystery cult at Eleusis (Ancient Greece) involved drugs, alcohol, and vision seeing. People did go there for the mysteries, but they also went there because it was interesting, festive, and fun.

I've always found a couple of beers a necessary, reliable, and effective social lubricant. .

It was safer to drink than water from the Nile. — jgill

The idea that beer and wine were safer than the Nile, the Rhine, or the Thames is floated again and again. We know that that drinking water from the Danube, Tigris Euphrates, or Congo Rivers might be unsafe, but we have known that for less than 200 years. People certainly understood that some water tasted better than other water, but as for safety... not back then.

People drank beer in preference to river water because of those mind-altering features of alcohol.

It would be pretty nervy of me to review any of the psalms (#55 here). Apparently an old King David was lamenting political adversity.

Much closer to horror and terror is this Psalm verse: “Happy is the one who seizes your infants / and dashes them against the rocks.” Psalm 137:9. Whose children? The children of Israel's enemies, the Edomites and Babylonians. Who does the bashing? Presumably that would be ANCIENT Israel.

What's the point? The point is to make sure there are no future generations of one's enemies.

I absolutely am not drawing a parallel between ancient Israel and the modern world, but The Final Solution was also intended to root out future generations of the hated Jew.

Not really — universeness

Yes, really.

This is the asymmetry: Hamas does not have capacity to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza, or anywhere else. It is embedded in Gaza but funded by external sources -- Qatar and Iran for instance. It has a small armed force compared to Israel, and no tanks or airplanes. It does have rockets, guns, and explosives. While it can attack Israel, there is no chance of it defeating Israel (by itself). It can, as we have seen, stage an effective limited attack on civilians.

Israel, on the other hand, has the capacity to destroy Gaza and Hamas by bringing overwhelming force to bear. I suppose it could deploy nuclear bombs, if it was existentially threatened. In the meantime it has the iron dome, lots of bombs, enough airplanes, and so on. If Hamas has Qatar and Iran, Israel has the US and other western powers.

If Israel has overwhelming air power, Gaza's environment presents major difficulties for Israel. Urban warfare is a very difficult bloody business, especially with a 'dug in' adversary. The urban environment goes a long ways to reducing the asymmetry in terms of on-the-ground operations. My understanding of Hamas's tunnel system is that it would be difficult to destroy it by bombing alone.

Asymmetry would be further reduced if Hezbollah were to open a full attack on Israel.

3 recent victors in asymmetrical war: The Taliban managed to survive and win against the United States and Nato. The Islamic State was defeated with great difficulty. The Viet Cong won against overwhelming odds.

The stronger power in asymmetrical war is compelled to use brutal force because it has little alternative. Israel can neither lose nor leave Palestine,

by targeting only Hamas, and not respond to the massacre of its innocent civilians by mimicking such atrocity — universeness

This is the problem of asymmetric warfare: a surprise attack by a small force can wreak great damage. The more powerful side will counterattack with either technology (planes and bombs) or ground forces. Precisely identifying the agency behind the attack is extremely difficult, so... the innocent are slaughtered.

Russia vs. Ukraine is a more symmetrical style of war, as were WWI and WWII, and many other wars before those two. Asymmetric warfare isn't new, but given the mechanized, technologically enhanced armies of the "have" powers, it's the best option for "have nots".

There is no moral solution to the problem "in the world as it is" -- a world packed with injustices and grievances. Long standing (and grave) injustices would have to be unwound, which is a utopian goal. Nice, but highly unlikely.

What was it do you think that made Viking and Mongol warriors okay with being "horror-ible"? Was it that the horror inflicted terror — schopenhauer1

Thankfully we have all been spared the fury of the Norsemen and the scourge of the Mongols. Their various successors have proved worthy successors in the arts of horror and terror. Terror is an effective offensive approach. If it's bad enough, it paralyzes the victim with horror and fear, ties them up in knots,

Hamas' attack on Israel was clearly intended to be "terrible" -- not just for the immediate recipients, but for the entire nation. It was also well timed and well executed, apart from the terror they created. Hamas - 1, Israel - 0. Israel's response, the bombing and siege of Gaza, couldn't be a surprise, but it could be (and has been) very very bad for the civilian Palestinians. How bad has it been for Hamas fighters and militants? We don't know, yet, and we won't know -- until (IF and WHEN) the Hamas defenses have been invaded and cleared out.

Russia's attack on Ukraine, and seizure of its eastern lands and Crimea has not been a terror and horror operation--not that it has been a picnic, of course. As brazen as the Russian seizures have been, as costly in lives and infrastructure as the war has been for Ukraine, a relatively low level of terror and horror seem to have prevailed. There was no blitzkrieg; no gas, biological, or atomic weapons; no massive bombing; no massive invasion. Rather, a steady grinding up of Ukraine's resources. For Ukraine, it's been slow destruction. Why?

The Norsemen, Mongols, Hamas, and Israel are doing what they COULD do. So is Russia. Vlad P. might want to have done things differently, but he couldn't manage a lightning strike, a blitzkrieg, lots of shock and awe.

The victim of a big surprise attack (horror, terror) is always at a disadvantage. After 9/11, the US could not duplicate the horror, terror, and surprise of planes crashing into the WTC and Pentagon. A few people can pull off a surprise. After the surprise is over, the perps are all dead. Who is the victimized country going to kill? In our case, Iraqis and Afghanistanis. Did it produce satisfaction in America? No. We didn't seem able to duplicate the horror, terror, and surprise we experienced.

I suspect that Israel is not going to get satisfaction from pounding the shit out of Gaza, even if there is nobody left there.

Terror and horror can be distinguished as unrelated experiences, but I don't have a problem with people using them interchangeably when they report their experiences.

Terror is, in a sense, a "transitive" noun. Terror is something that can be imposed on someone else, or on many people. Israel and Hamas have imposed terror on each other. War, by its nature is terrifying. A city can not be bombed without producing terror, as the bombs crash into buildings, explode, collapse buildings, burn flesh, ignite fires, etc. People really DO hate it when that happens, and they find it terror-ible.

Horror is a more subjective experience. I find some circus rides horrifying, despite them being safe devices which many people find quite entertaining. I find spiders and their webs horrifying, especially when encountered in dim enclosed spaces. Many people are indifferent to spiders. I don't find bats disturbing (I'm talking about ordinary brown bats that eat insects).

One can learn and unlearn horror. I find spiders less horrifying than I used to, and this is owning to a deliberate effort on my part. I find heights horrifying. There is a glass observation deck built on the wall of the Grand Canyon that allows one to look straight down for about 3/4 of a mile. I could learn to not find this glass deck horrifying. Horror films key right into my horror potentials. This too could be unlearned (but then I wouldn't have the experience of horror in a theater).

Terror, on the other hand, is too overwhelming a condition to be unlearned. One can become desensitized to terror, but this is not a desirable goal.

Terror and horror can be similarly bad experiences, except that horror does not normally involve actual physical threat. Terror IS threat, both physical and psychological.

So again, if somebody reports they were terrified and horrified in a bombing attack -- I have no objection. The rest of us who are not getting bombed and shot at can afford to be fussier,

I agree 100%. Off with her head!

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.

Does anyone know of any example of human style 'vengeance,' being sought by any other species on Earth, other than humans? — universeness

A friend's cat which I had teased and annoyed a lot wreaked vengeance on my person whenever I visited. Quite justifiably.

Crows apparently sort out humans into "friendly" and "not-friendly" categories and take such vengeance as they can on not-friendly people.

Inanimate objects can be quite malicious and will take vengeance on the animal kingdom, especially our species, but others as well.

More seriously, though, what facilitates human vengeance are extensive cognitive resources to carry out the impulses of the emotions. Most animals lack the capacity. Animals are equipped for self-defense, territorial defense, off-spring defense, food defense, and so on. But when the defense is over, it's over. With humans, one never knows whether it's over or not. Years can pass before vengeance is taken.

Maybe NYC was the promised land all along?

Middle Eastern countries have been driving out Christians as well.

These ancient Christian ethnic groups were drastically reduced by genocide during and after World War I (see Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide and Greek genocide) at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish army and their Kurdish allies. Population exchange between Greece and Turkey is another reason

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The percentage of Christians in Turkey fell from 19 percent in 1914 or 3 million (thought to be an undercount by one-third omitting 600,000 Armenians, 500,000 Greeks and 400,000 Assyrians) to 2.5 percent in 1927 in a population of 14 million

We should have gone somewhere like Newfoundland". — EricH

Sure, but then they would have had to put up with bitter and resentful Canadians. Besides, God had already given Newfoundland and Labrador to four Indigenous Peoples: the Inuit, the Innu, the Mi'kmaq and the Southern Inuit of NunatuKavu).

It's helpful to remember that every place on earth worth having has been colonized and recolonized several times over (well, maybe not Tierra del Fuego).