Again, cute thought experiment, but there's nothing 'necessary' about Isreali apartheid and settler colonialism.

So, presumably you believe war against Israel by the Palestinians is justified? Again, in their position, living under a foreign occupation, how would you react?

Same goes if you start your argument from #3.

That's exactly what the Palestinians I know say.

So, presumably you believe war against Israel by the Palestinians is justified? Again, in their position, living under a foreign occupation, how would you react? — Baden

No, all I said was in some instances war is justified and in during warfare or military action intention does matter. That's all I was seeking to establish.

Again, cute thought experiment, but there's nothing 'necessary' about Isreali apartheid and settler colonialism. — StreetlightX

This is a different issue and I don't have time right now to engage further. All I was seeking to establish was that intention matters in military actions and that civilian casualties are generally unavoidable during military action, but that this should not be confused with the deliberate murder of civilians.

and Saudi Arabia still gets all the hardware they want, which recently has been a shit ton — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which contributes to the Yemen catastrophe.

Now we have this massacre. During a pandemic no less.

And then we still have people (a bit less so than before thankfully) asking "why are the Muslims so radical?"

Hah. As if many of us wouldn't be in Hamas or the Brotherhood or whoever is around to fight back to some degree, which compared to Israel or Saudi Arabia is like throwing a rock to a tank.

This is a different issue and I don't have time right now to engage further. All I was seeking to establish was that intention matters in military actions and that civilian casualties are generally unavoidable during military action, but that this should not be confused with the deliberate murder of civilians. — BitconnectCarlos

If you abstract these actions from the context in which they occur you render yourself cognitively incapacitated. And in that context, these actions are the deliberate murder of civilians. The universe doesn't operate on free-floating principles, unembedded in reality.

It doesn't help that the US is basically a pair of international arms dealers and a hedge fund in a trench coat. They need to secure their markets.

No, all I said was in some instances war is justified and in during warfare or military action intention does matter. That's all I was seeking to establish. — BitconnectCarlos

Answer the question. Is taking arms against an occupying army justifiable? Would you consider doing that if you were a Palestinian?

Part of the problem here is one of identification. If you don't identify with a group or do identify with their opponents, it's hard to be an impartial judge. Lay that aside and answer the question.

Calling them rockets is ridiculous. They're basically enhanced fireworks. They can kill if they hit people directly, but if they were really rockets, they'd level an entire city to rubble. This is incomparable to Israel's advanced military slaughtering people.

Yes, no kidding. What "missiles" are those that you can throw 200 of them and kill 2 people?

And to be crystal clear: I do not wish to see any more deaths on any side. This is a tragedy, but those with least capacity to fight back are getting totally slaughtered.

Those "anti-missile" technologies are just for PR purposes, they barely work. Using state of the art technology against civilians is contemptible.

If you abstract these actions from the context in which they occur you render yourself cognitively incapacitated. And in that context, these actions are the deliberate murder of civilians. The universe doesn't operate on free-floating principles, unembedded in reality. — StreetlightX

Do you have a better idea, then? Is it just that all soldiers are war criminals and that everyone who partakes in war is guilty? Is that really the best you've got? Nazis are the same as Allied soldiers, we're all guilty and disgusting. What is your attitude towards an Allied pilot who bombs a German military base or a factory producing weapons?

Do you have a better idea, then? — BitconnectCarlos

That Isreal stop being an apartheid state and cease its colonial activites immediately. As a start. Ideally, pay for the reconstruction and restituion of the the land it has stolen. And then some.

You're the one who dragged in useless hypotheticals about WWII, let's not forget.

Powerful images:

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/5/12/in-pictures-9

Can you please answer my question about the Allied bomber? Otherwise I just don't know what your attitude towards military action is.

Answer the question. Is taking arms against an occupying army justifiable? Would you consider doing that if you were a Palestinian? — Baden

Targeting the Israeli army would be a genuine step above what they're doing now which is firing rockets into residential areas intentionally and killing civilians for absolutely no reason. They aren't responding to attacks from these areas.

The best step would be for them to re-enter negotiations.

LOL. Negotiations.

Otherwise I just don't know what your attitude towards military action is. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't have 'an' attitude toward miltary action because I'm not so naive to think one can reason one's way to action from first principles.

I don't have 'an' attitude toward miltary action because I'm not so naive to think one can reason one's way to action from first principles. — StreetlightX

Then you don't have an attitude towards the deliberate murder of civilians under the banner of military action. This is why it's difficult for us to converse.

What matters is what counts as such deliberate murder. That's why it's difficult for us to converse.

The difference is that I will not search high and low to come up with excuses for the among the world's most sophisticated military for it's war crimes and deliberate murder of children, while it does everything it can to exacerbate resentment among its subject population.

Targeting the Israeli army would be a genuine step above what they're doing now — BitconnectCarlos

Agreed.

The best step would be for them to re-enter negotiations. — BitconnectCarlos

You can't negotiate your way out of apartheid/occupation with a party who has chosen that above a one or a two-state solution. The US would have to step in and that's unlikely.

It arguably did change under Clinton and a deal that featured a Palestinian state on over 95% of the occupied territories was eventually proffered by the Israelis. There were plenty of problems with the deal, but the psychology of Arafat may have been the primary stumbling block there, since he publically turned away the deal without advancing counter terms in a show of bravado.

The Bush II admins position on the conflict, particularly after the start of the GWOT tilted far more towards Israel, and took pressure off Israel.

However, the biggest factors would be those internal to Israel:

1. Demographic shifts with higher birth rates in ultra Orthodox and Middle Eastern Jews, who tended to favor conservative parties led to a long series conservative governments less in favor of peace.

2. The new Israeli border security measures were very effective. The dramatic reduction in successful terror attacks took pressure off the government to make peace.

It's basically impossible to imagine the Israeli army being used to force settlers out of Gaza today; the country has shifted far to the right. The internal political situation is totally different from the early 2000s. It's also hard to imagine who could bargain for the Palestinians and actually control a binding agreement at this point.

What's happening is disturbing generally, but (maybe it's just me) I find the role the "settlers" and "settlements" appear to play in the continuing conflict particularly concerning. The settlers seem motivated, in part at least, by the notion that the land belongs to Israel or the Jewish people as that was and remains God's intent. I'm uncertain whether the government supports them and their expansion for religious reasons or does so because they think it beneficial for other (secular) reasons.

I think of Israelis as civilized, and essentially civilized wrt their neighbors. But what have their neighbors done, been and kept doing, and are doing? Years ago I remember the reporting of Israelis lamenting being bombed in their restaurants, and Yasser, et al, explaining that yes that was terrible, but. Always the but. The disgusting but. And that but about the existence of the Jews.

Hitler made it all explicit to the Jews. Israel's neighbors have tried repeatedly - since 1948 eight times? twelve times? - to bring it home, and with never a real peace 'tween times. And what did the Jews do? "Never again!" When the neighbors do what they do, what do they expect?

I'm uncertain whether the government supports them and their expansion for religious reasons or does so because they think it beneficial for other (secular) reasons. — Ciceronianus the White

It certainly doesn't help that Netanyahu, up to his neck in corruption and so weak a leader that he has been unable to secure a stable majority despite four elections in two years, has been pandering to religious nuts out of the sheer calculus of political mechanation. How convenient that there's now a national cause to rally around after all this deadlock! Can't be anything to do with the fact that Nethanyahu's opponent was recently picked by the president to form government?

But somehow I feel it doesn't matter to those whose homes are being demolished to make way for said religious nuts.

Didn't Israel use white phosphorus attacks on civillians a few years back? Not only is killing civilians by targeting civilian targets a war crime, but the use of white phosphorus is also a war crime even against military targets.

Anyone defending the tactics and behavior of Israel against the Palestinian people either doesn't know anything of what is going on, or they are extremely biased to the western anti-Islam narrative and won't dare to comment in fear of being called an antisemite.

Not being able to criticize a nation's behavior in this way is the reason the conflict keeps going. If the world were to ignore the self-victimizing behavior of Israel and the black and white fallacy-driven apologists of Israel's behavior against Palestine, then Israel would be pressured out of its blatant crimes as a nation.

Maybe the media and people could pay a little more attention to actually asking and visit Palestine in order to get a balanced side to the whole conflict, instead of automatically just accept the Israel perspective first and maybe change that opinion later in the rare occasion there's blatant proof, like the white phosphorus attacks.

In conclusion, there's no denying the crimes Israel is doing here, there's no denying the unbalance of this conflict. The Palestinian people are extremely pressured and controlled by Israel that there's no wonder some shoot homemade rockets. You don't have to condone or condemn these actions in order to understand why it happens. People rarely ask the question "why" something is going on, only that it "is" going on. If we were to start with knowing why some Palestinians shoot home-made rockets into Israel and understand that it comes from a source of desperation, we would see the causal line of events.

If Israel keeps taking land, evicting Palestinians to build luxury homes, control the movement and freedom of the Palestinian people, harass, assault, and even kill Palestinians through their totalitarian control of them, then how can desperate acts of violence by the Palestinian people be a surprise to anyone?

And how can anyone even say that Israel is the one defending itself? How seriously skewed is the logical thinking if that is the conclusion to anything? Palestine acts in desperation, they want freedom and to be their own nation. Israel denies that to them. Even though there is a portion of people who rage religious battle about key land areas and parts of Jerusalem, most inhabitants just want to live in peace. But they are denied that.

It's like if Canada all of a sudden shut down all airports in the USA, no one in the USA is able to move around as they please, they need to have special IDs, they can't leave the country unless being put through months of paperwork and can only do so by traveling to Canada's airports. All while risk being shot or assaulted on the border by "reasons". All imports and exports are prohibited and controlled by rations and sometimes Canada cuts the power grid. If any citizen of the USA were to speak up or try to fight this thing by building their own weapons, the retaliation is to bomb major civilian city targets with white phosphorus causing massive civilian casualties with globally banned weapons of war. All while the rest of the world turns a blind eye because they have trade agreements and good diplomatic bonds with Canada while thinking the USA just have a lot of people who might be terrorists under a degenerate religion.

That allegory should really show how skewed this whole thing is. There's no denying the fact that Israel is in the wrong here. There's no tangible argument for defending Israel's actions. There really is no debate once people abandon their biases and fallacies and look at the facts. Period.

But somehow I feel it doesn't matter to those whose homes are being demolished to make way for said religious nuts. — StreetlightX

No doubt that's true. But I think we should all be concerned whenever government acts, intentionally or disingenuously, because Deus Vult!

The Isrealis have nothing to gain except US client-state status (i.e. military & economic support) and Palestinians nothing to lose by fighting apartheid repression and imperialist colonization by any means necessary. This lose-lose cycle is vicious, and yet, so long as those with less – oppressed Palestinian populations of East Jerusalem, the West Bank & Gaza – lose more materiel and lives than the oppressor by interminable conflict, the Israelis status quo remains secure. (A template for ascendent 'paramilitarized-Jim Crow populism' in the US, no?) While NATO's silent acquiescence and Israeli alliances with Egypt & Saudi Arabia persist, the Palestinians will be fucked for the foreseeable future. "Peace" (i.e. win-win conflict resolution) is Israel's choice alone because it is the master; absent that, the Palestinians have no choice but that of the slave: death by war or death by subjugation. Who here denies that if s/he were a member of a Palestinian community & family subjugated under decades of Israelis Occupation you would choose war?

I think we should all be concerned whenever government acts, intentionally or disingenuously, because Deus Vult! — Ciceronianus the White

Inshallah – this medievalism has to stop!

I think of Israelis as civilized, and essentially civilized wrt their neighbors — tim wood

Yes very civilized!

What matters is what counts as such deliberate murder. That's why it's difficult for us to converse.

The difference is that I will not search high and low to come up with excuses for the among the world's most sophisticated military for it's war crimes and deliberate murder of children, while it does everything it can to exacerbate resentment among its subject population. — StreetlightX

Do you see a moral difference between:

a) Firing rockets targeting aggressors who have already fired rockets onto civilian populations with the knowledge that civilians will likely be killed, lets say 100 civilians die.

b) Intentionally targeting residential neighborhoods with the explicit purpose of murdering civilians and killing 100 civilians.

Do you see a moral difference between these two actions assuming the victim counts are the same?

I'm not going to answer any of your hypotheticals, not one. I'm not here to play masturbatory moral chess games. I'm here to discuss the murder of flesh and blood children by an apartheid state.