. If you would just remove yourself from the situation and see it as group A vs group B and focus on the actions of each, I think you could come up with a coherent position but you won't do that. Everything is coloured with the fact that you will support Israel no matter what. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that. — Baden
Really, you need to read this again, consider the implications, and potentially rephrase it so you don't sound like some Victorian "white man's burden" carrier. Otherwise, be prepared to get your ass satired off. I mean, dude... — Baden
Have you considered the options for defending the value of civility that don't involve bombing schools, designated safe routes, shooting white flag carriers, and pulling the plug on newborn babies in incubators. Because those things don't seem all that civil. It's almost like they're the opposite of civility... It's almost like war crimes do not constitute superior values but are barbaric and something we should be against. Right? — Baden
I agree with this, but I also hold some sympathy for the position of Israelis (not the government or military). Israelis ought not to live in fear of terrorist attacks by a neighbor. Theirs is a long term concern that is perceived (rightly? wrongly?) to be solvable by eradicating Hamas. Will their military actions accomplish this goal of eradicating Hamas? Maybe, but either way, it's likely to increase resentment and anger by Palestinians toward Israel. That is what breeds reaction, including the deplorable reaction of terrorist action. Hence there's no end in sight to the cycle.And Israel is doing a very comprehensive job at this. Who's more destabilized, ruined, and fearful? Over a million Gazans, most of them children, with inadequate food, water, and shelter, being bombed daily including on routes Israel is telling them are safe, knowing that even white flags can't save them from being designated legitimate targets or the 99% of Israeli citizens suffering no such deprivations? — Baden
What's hard to believe is that you don't think you can say it out loud that your society is better than others. — Hanover
I'm protecting the walls of Israel, a democracy from an invasive force. — Hanover
Maybe I'm watching the wrong lefty YouTube videos. Are these the stone-throwers?Palestinian terrorists — Hanover
We could take a deep dive into this question, but can you see how bringing this up in a thread about a Israel and Gaza makes it sound like you think Israel's attack is justified based on Israel's moral superiority? Do you really believe that? — frank
The basis for the war is that Israel was invaded by a group of people who were morally inferior to it and the consequences of not protecting itself goes beyond just A now occupying where B used to be. The consequences are that A being in B's place will have far more significant consequences that have to be considered when one is thinking about who to back in this war. — Hanover
It's an impossibility for Hamas to militarily defeat Israel, a nuclear state backed up by the U.S. Talk about an invented fear. — Baden
Are you also worried about Honduras taking over California? — Baden
Should we go in and bomb just in case? It's absurd. — Baden
The only existential threat is to the Palestinians. They're the ones who just had their city of 1.5 million people destroyed and you're telling me the danger is Israelis being ethnically cleansed? — Baden
And I'm not a fan of, say, Iran as a society either. But so what? If I don't want to wipe them from the earth militarily, is that supposed to indicate some guilt complex about being Western? — Baden
So you're saying that we should back Israel, not only because Israel needs to defend itself, but because the Israeli way of life is superior to the Hamas/Palestinian way of life, and if the latter is allowed to take over Israel, Israel would be a worse place. Is that what you're saying? — frank
The fact that there was mass outrage over the killing of a handful ISRAELI Hostages, but not thousands of Palestinian Children is telling of the Israeli position and extreme bias. — Vaskane
I'm saying we back Israel because they have the right to defend their land that was invaded and we need not be so foolish to think that the outcome of this war won't have greater implications for all involved, which includes who gets to control the area politically. — Hanover
The fear isn't invented, at least not for the raped women and burned babies. Are you suggesting the only way to lose is by complete takeover? — Hanover
My position is that Hamas set this in motion, — Hanover
What they did instead was to open unpublicized background communication channels with the group and appeal to more moderate elements in the nationalist community to get the IRA to stop. — Baden
The children were killed because Hamas declared war on Israel and its values and put them in harm's way. — Hanover
Invasive force? So the concentration camp we call the Gaza strip — that’s the “invasive force”? — Mikie
Israel couldn't be a democracy, if they actually accepted the Palestinians in it would mean the Jews would be out numbered and thus Israel would be democratically dismantled. — Vaskane
Rapists like locusts from the sky first, Israeli tanks second. — Hanover
Modern Zionism started as a method to overcome Judaic tradition which leads to Self-Hate as Lessing details it. — Vaskane
Anyways, that notion that Israel just all up and did this to the Palestinians and like it hasn't been a succession of events, is misleading and shortsighted. — schopenhauer1
Sure — saying the Nazis “up and did this” to the Jews is equally misleading and shortsighted, I suppose? — Mikie
Yes, there’s a long sequence of events that led to this monstrosity, which is true for literally everything. To the show up and declare how “shortsighted” it is to believe it’s unlike any other event in the world is…incredible. — Mikie
I dunno why am I an Irish American who finds the Hawaiian culture to be the one of the most noble life affirming culture in the modern world? (Hawaiian culture is vastly different than American culture btw) — Vaskane
A pretty sure goal when you are the sole nuclear power in the Middle East with likely a working nuclear triad deterrence, a superior armed forces compared even to all neighbors combined. Addition to all that, then you are backed by the sole Superpower that funds your defense spending and will rush to your aid.Israel's main goal is to preserve their identity and not have it wiped out. — schopenhauer1
?Palestine wants to maintain their identity, but functionally speaking, if there was no Palestine, the culture that Palestine represents (Arab Muslim, roughly.. a subset one can say of the southern Syrian province of the old Ottoman Empire if one wants to find a historical precedent), would be intact in a vast swath of the region of the Middle East. — schopenhauer1
A pretty sure goal when you are the sole nuclear power in the Middle East with likely a working nuclear triad deterrence, a superior armed forces compared even to all neighbors combined. Addition to all that, then you are backed by the sole Superpower that funds your defense spending and will rush to your aid.
Oh, how close it is that Israel would perish! — ssu
Again an argument for the inferiority of Palestinians compared to the 'new comers'?
Jewish culture endured even when there was no Israel around. — ssu
Just curious. Do you think that despite the terror nature of the groups, there is a fundamental difference in Hamas versus the IRA, mainly concerning the intensity of actions the points at which they would stand down versus perpetually continue, and thus the circumstances aren't apples to apples? — schopenhauer1
Also, a tangential but Irish-related question. Strategically, Ireland didn't enter WW2 because they were not fans of Britain and remained somewhat neutral (with some help at various times to Allies). Was that the right decision simply because Ireland's hands were "clean" of being involved in a war? If Britain remained defensive only and did not attack German positions, would they have been the "better" for it? — schopenhauer1
But the point won't be illluminated by quibbles over divergences in the tactics of the IRA and Hamas or their ideologies. — Baden
It's the cultural, racial, and geographical closeness of Britain and Ireland and the political sway of Ireland in the U.S. that made it impossible for the British to use massive indiscriminate force and collective punishment against the Irish. That is what dictated they be civilized. Whether, for example, the IRA would have ever stood down is irrelevant to this dynamic. — Baden
So we need to wake up, be honest with ourselves, and recognize that the current level of destruction of the Palestinian population, including civilian life and infrastructure, is an option (for we "civilized" Westerners) not simply due to the nature of Hamas but because the Palestinians are poor and lacking powerful allies and because they diverge from us ethnically and culturally, so they can more easily be dismissed as expendable. Hanover's speech on the superiority of all things Western illustrates this well. Of course, what's really uncivilized is this othering that sets ethical arguments on different planes according to such an artificial, albeit convenient (for us), dichotomy. — Baden
Ireland stayed neutral for political not moral reason. I'm not sure what the moral thing to do was given the information available at the time and Ireland's military weakness. But the mere fact that I'm Irish makes zero difference to how I would analyse it. — Baden
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