40,000 Hamas militants who have killed some hundreds of Israelis in recent years are not Nazi Germany who had an army in the tens of millions, killed six million Jews, and took over half of Europe. Please stop talking to me. You are really not capable of intelligent conversation and I don't have any more patience for it.

The "bad guys" here are not all on one side; they are on both sides, they are the ones who cannot get their moral head out of their arse long enough even to have the basic humanity to be appalled at the mass killing of defenceless civilians no matter what label is attached to them.

Look in the mirror, apologists.

As I said before, unless you can clarify that you care as much about the lives of Palestinian civilians and also equally assert the Palestinian's basic right to self defense, there is no point engaging because you are not presenting a moral argument but simply Israeli propaganda. I mean, if Israel has the right to kill 4,000 Palestinian children including babies in a hospital as "self defence" against its few hundred casualties of a Hamas attack then how many Israeli civilians, by your own logic, if you are to be consistent, would Hamas be justified in killing in defence of its (much much more vulnerable) population? You're caught in a moral absurdity that pretending this conflict started a month ago and Hamas are the only bad actors is part of.

Nobody here who has spent five minutes studying what's going on would deny atrocities have been committed by both sides nor would they deny the vast number of casualties and by far the most vulnerable party are Palestininan civilians. The numbers are there and whether or not Hamas is more brutal or ruthless in its methods (as I think I've intimated many times, I think they are utter scum) doesn't change the fact of the cruelty of both sides. But your twisted logic sadly mirrors the logic of Hamas and the other bad actors in this conflict that continuously paint themselves as the only victims and thus try to absolve themselves of their brutality. It's nothing more than we're the legitimate "good guys" so we can do whatever we like to the "bad guys". But there are no "good guys" among those who would kill children in hospitals or behead them in homes. Until you get past your moral delusion that you think licences your utter disregard and lack of empathy for the Palestinians then you are of no use here except as an example of a morally degraded partisan pretending to be part of a genuine conversation on the ethics of war. And I understand why you are partisan, which is why I am trying to be nice to you. Yes, this is me being nice.

Worth quoting at length (from YT transcript):

"I'm not pro Palestinian I'm not pro-israeli I'm Pro truth and I'm Pro Justice if the truth is on the Israeli side I will support Israel if Justice is on the Israeli side I'll support Israel and the same thing goes for the Palestinians I've spent the greater part of my adult life you can say beginning 1982 so it's more than four decades researching studying the Israel Palestine conflict and it's my conclusion at the end of that research but already early on that the case that Israel makes for its crimes are in large part fabrications misrepresentations and distortions and then on the other hand the Palestinian case is very strongly supported by the evidence and when I speak about evidence I'm not talking about what Hamas says any more than when I speak about Israel I care much about what the government says if you're serious about these sorts of things first the first thing you do is you try to search out sources which have a certain amount of credibility so when it comes to the Israel Palestine conflict let's say the human rights Dimension you look at what respected human rights organizations have to say Human Rights Watch Amnesty International the bet selum the main Israeli information information center for the occupied territories you look at what the evidence shows not based on bias sources or naturally biased sources but on the available evidence and I try to be as strict adherent of the two principles of Truth and Justice and that's where I landed and I think that's frankly where most of the world has landed.

And it's also incidentally but not trivially it's where a large part of the young Jewish population has landed if you go to the demonstrations now the ones have garnered the headlines say the one in Grand Central Station was overwhelmingly Jewish was organized by Jewish organizations young people mostly but not entirely the Statue of Liberty demonstration again it was Jew, Jewish young people who organized the demonstration so this idea that it's somehow polarized ethnically is bellied by the facts now I will wholeheartedly admit that when I first started out we were a we were a handful of people Je Jews who oppose what Israel is doing but the Spectrum has radically changed in recent years I'm just one among a large number of Jews who oppose what's going on not because they're self-hating not because they're indifferent to the fate of Israelis but because the evidence is overwhelming.

[Israel has] declared a war of genocide on the people of Gaza that's not exaggerated language the prime minister of Israel said in a speech which been which has been reproduced everywhere he said this is a war against Amalek referring to the Old Testament and what's a war against against Amalek will just open up the Old Testament it obliges Israel to kill every man woman and child that's what it means to invoke a war against Amalek.

....

They make up these stories that we have to turn off the incubators in the hospitals because there's a Hamas command and control center in the basement say most recently of alifa hospital and then the spokesperson for our US Department of Defense John Kirby he gives a news conference three days ago and he says we have intelligence information confirming that there is a Hamas command and control center and that justifies in the minds of the public opinion that that's then it's okay to deny fuel to the incubators imagine ... your child is born prematurely and is put in an incubator where the fuel is cut off and your child that you've been carrying for nine months suffocates to death, was there a Hamas command and control center in Gaza? answer no, was Hamas's leadership in the basement of alifa Hospital? answer no, were there hostages beneath alifa Hospital? answer no, you just get the lies and more lies and more lies and more lies and attendant upon those nonstop lies are the sensation the termination of life because of the lies the termination of Life of thousands of Palestinian children is that complicated does it require a PhD in Middle East studies to figure these things out in my book... it's as complicated as Jews like my parents mother, mother on both sides, father on both sides sisters and brothers on both sides, it's as complicated as my family except for my mother and my father being shoved into gas Chambers that's how complicated it is in my eyes."

"Children are Children, Whether in Israel or Gaza, they Never Deserve to Die.

In the fascist reality now sweeping Israel, even such a statement is considered treasonous and an expression of Israel hatred."

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-11-12/ty-article/.premium/in-both-israel-and-in-gaza-they-didnt-deserve-to-die/0000018b-bfcf-d03e-a3ab-bfffe07d0000

From Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Most of it is behind a paywall but what's freely available there illustrates my point: It's not about whether you are Israeli or Palestinian or Jewish or Muslim or otherwise, it's about whether you are an apologist for unjustifiable violence / a moral ignoramus or not. It's that moral fence I'm interested on being on the right side of.

Speaking of useful idiots, your self-contradictory arguments, strawmen, and tu quoque fallacies represent a neat, if hyperbolic, summary of your more sophisticated fellow apologists' positions and helps expose them for what they are: excuses for unjustifiable and excessive violence against one side rather than the application of consistent moral principles.

I've made an ethical argument: both Israel and Hamas kill innocent people. Israel stands for democratic rule and protection of women and minorities — RogueAI

Maybe democracies and those who are in favor of minority rights should also be against war crimes? Anyway, honestly, that's it. You are writing nonsense. I'm moving on.

The world is a better place without Hamas in it, — RogueAI

Yes

if Palestinians support the Hamas attacks, the world is a better place with fewer of them too. — RogueAI

No, no more than it would be a better place should we kill more Israeli civilians because they support Israel's war crimes. Honestly, you are extremely confused; you think Hamas's war crimes should be punished by Israeli war crimes and the killing of civilians seems to be not just a matter of a side effect but an actual goal of the war for you. You and the Hamas militants have very similar moral standards but somehow you can't see the irrational mess you've put yourself in with your outbursts.

War crimes are just fine? Ok, thanks for that. Anyhow, most of the casualties are not Hamas. I don't care what happens to Hamas militants. Put them in a pit with Likud and let them all kill each other. At this point though, you honestly do not appear to be capable of making an ethical argument, so let's just part verbal company as the ethics of the situation are what I'm interested in.

A child killed by an IDF airstrike on a hospital. If you're happy she was "taught a lesson", I again feel sorry for you. This does not have to keep on happening and neither is it necessary because it achieves nothing except to foment a store of more violence for the future. It's a conscious choice to take this path not some inevitability of war and if your main thought is not "how do we stop this", you're missing something.

Which world would you prefer to live in, Baden? It's not really a hard choice is it? — RogueAI

I would prefer to live as far away as possible from people like you. I have met Palestinians. They're human. And I have no sympathy for Hamas who are homicidal extremists who don't give a damn about the lives of anyone, including their own population.

I feel sorry for you.

To others who are less homicidal, Palestinian civilians are not Nazis, they are poor, dispossessed and a plurality are more likely to be critical of Hamas than support them. Certainly children, who represent a majority of Gaza's citizens, are not responsible for the extremist nutters who hold sway there. Wanting them dead to "teach them a lesson" is beyond reprehensible.

Finally, it's also counterproductive. The lesson you are teaching them is to be as murderous as their extremist overlords, as the IDF and as you are should you support such violence. The way out of this is not more bloodshed unless you are intent on killing every single Palestinian and even then you won't kill the idea that Israel deserves to be wiped out, but further foment it.

As for bombing schools, hospitals and residential areas, no you don't get ethical carte blanche to do that, the issue of proportionality must come into play. The idea you can kill as many civilians as you want per militant killed and irregardless of actual threat from a militant "base" (whatever that is defined as) has never been and will never be ethically justifiable. Which is why e.g. the British never even considered such military tactics in N. Ireland. And yes you could have just as easily called the Catholic population there Nazis and said they deserved it. But they weren't either and they didn't. More pertinently probably, they happen to be white, and Irish Americans have a political voice in the U.S. unlike Palestinians who are on the wrong side of power.

Finally, anyone who wants to argue Israel has not committed war crimes in Gaza, try it and you will lose that argument. Start with Wikipedia.

If you think bombing a school full of children and e.g. killing them all is justified because there also happen to be some militants in that school using it as a base then you are a very morally sick individual imo. I wish you the best.

If you want to qualify your statement and agree it would apply to the slaughter of Israeli children also, please do.

Here's another thing, if you come at this from the point of view that Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives. If you would not make excuses for Hamas killing schoolchildren or doctors, nurses and patients, do not even bother replying because you have zero moral standing. Make it clear in your reply that you would apply exactly the same lack of moral standards to Hamas as you do the IDF or you do not have any ethical business here and can be simply dismissed as a partisan.

Thank you for having the patience to deal with the apologists on here with some basic facts, common sense, and humanity. As has been pointed out, if Israel's war crimes against the civilian population in Gaza, and the slaughter of thousands of civilians, including children, are justified by the excuse that Israel is "defending themselves" then the far more vulnerable Gazans are justified in "defending themselves" by also slaughtering as many Israeli civilians as they can.

Those of us who are against killing civilians out of the type of bloodlust and revenge that dominates on both sides in this conflict reject that logic but the apologists can't escape it. Every excuse they make for the mass murder and ill-treatment of Gazan civilians is also an excuse for Hamas's butchery. The most marked difference between the two is only of scale--the IDF is a far more efficient and dangerous killing machine than Hamas and has the actual potential to be an existential threat to Gazans compared to the imaginary existential threat the relatively tiny force of Hamas extremists pose to Israel.

But the way it's proceeding here is that the apologists will claim an existential threat against Israel to excuse Israel's existential threat against Gaza. They will point to Hamas's butchery of civilians to excuse Israel's butchery of civilians. They will claim Israel must stop Hamas's war against it to excuse Israel's extending the war indefinitely. They will claim Hamas must be eliminated to excuse the elimination of Palestinian children while more Hamas militants are created from their grieving families and the cycle of violence intensifies. Any they will always claim "Hamas started it" by ignoring Israeli provocations, including the ongoing occupation.

So, if your reaction to Palestinian civilians being starved, denied medical treatment, made homeless and generally being slaughtered by a far superior force is "Oh well, it's a war" (in other words you simply don't care) but your reaction to Israeli civilians being killed is one of shock and horror then you must be suspected of moral ineptitude or bias or both.

I've made this point before, but as an (imperfect but sufficiently apt) analogy, the IRA engaged in a long guerilla war with the British army in which it committed atrocities against British civilians. It had widespread support among the Catholic population in Northern Ireland and in certain cities, such as Derry, it dominated politically as does Hamas in Gaza. The British government wanted to eliminate and defeat the IRA but no one in their right mind ever suggested bombing Derry and slaughtering masses of Irish civilians as a means to kill IRA operatives because you cannot "eliminate" an embedded guerilla force without committing war crimes against the civilian population in which they are embedded. And trying to do so simply creates more extremism among the remaining population. The British and anyone with any common sense knows this and they remained within international law in dealing with the conflict. But by the logic of the apologists on here, their reaction could excusably have been "Oh well, it's a war" and they could have sent the bombers over Derry.

Why should the lives of Palestinian civilians be so worthless that they are not given similar consideration? Why should their antagonists not be bound by basic moral constraints? For the apologists, it seems to be that they are the wrong race, the wrong religion, too poor, and too far away. There can be no other reason, because the reason "because Hamas are bad" no more excuses the ill-treatment of the innocents of Gaza than Israel's current crimes excuse more Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians, The cycle has to end somewhere, but it won't as long as selective empathy dominates.

But it's really not hard, if you can't manage empathy for Palestinian children being bombed, burned or buried alive at least apply some simple moral rules such as: War crimes are wrong, bombing refugee routes, hospitals, and schools is wrong, slaughtering people at concerts and in their homes is wrong, firing rockets at or bombing residential areas is wrong, killing large numbers of children to get at a far fewer number of military personnel is wrong. Very, very wrong. Then apply these rules unbiasedly. Don't be a supporter and apologist for the killing of innocents on either side or you are part of the problem. Step back and think about what you are really saying and the real consequences for real people. What way forward would or could lead to the least number of innocents (on either side) being killed? The least amount of violence now and in the future? Is this it? Surely no one in their right mind can claim it is.

Been perusing some of Churchill's racist quotes. They do sound like the sort of thing Trump would say. Therefore, racism is fine, I guess. The useful thing is that we can apply this method of making bad things good to pretty much anything by simply finding an admired historical figure who was also an arsehole. Thank you, @NOS4A2 :up:

This thread is about the current Israel / Palestine conflict. Off-topic posts and their replies are being and will be deleted. + Anti-semites (and Islamophobes) will be banned. Holocaust deniers will be banned. Thank you.

It's a fucking dumb argument. — Benkei

Looking the horror in the eye is excruciating. — Echarmion

Yes, there's hardly a greater horror then torturing civilians, including children, to death by burying them in rubble or burning them with white phosphorous as per the IDF or butchering them directly as per Hamas. Rather than recognize this horror though, some see it as no more than an opportunity to engage in apologism and as long as the apologists dominate, it will keep happening.

:up: Will come back to this tomorrow. Thanks.

Anyhow, your reasoning on close proximity killing was faulty imo because it was based on contingencies that could theoretically apply to either party and failed to demonstrate the distinction you thought they could. Your invocation of intent seems flawed too. There's a crucial epistemological aspect to it that you seem to be substituting out. If I know I will break a window by throwing a stone through it and I choose to throw a stone through it then that's sufficient condition to establish intent and the responsibility that comes with that. That I claim I didn't "want" to break the window doesn't absolve me of any of that responsibility.

So, this is wrong:

If the bomber or superior truly DIDN’T want collateral damage, that does make a moral difference. — schopenhauer1

You see the relation though, right? When we achieve some physical and emotional distance from our acts of killing we can start to leverage that into an illusory mitigation of moral responsibility.

If the bomber or superior truly DIDN’T want collateral damage, that does make a moral difference. — schopenhauer1

If that AND they had reason to believe their bombs would not cause collateral damage. If, on the other hand, they had reason to believe they would, no. Again there's no moral get-out-of-jail-free card in saying you don't want to do something but then choosing to do it. Their mental games with themselves can't excuse them of the known consequences of their actions. In fact, insofar as they facilitate more killing, they probably just make them worse people.

We can distill this to saying that knowingly killing civilians is an extreme moral wrong and the method by which they are killed (presuming the amount of suffering they endure to be equal) is of no consequence. The only justification for killing civilians would be to prevent an even greater moral wrong (e.g. the killing of even more civilians by your enemy). Not just the fact that there's any military target nearby or you're using an advanced technology to do so.

Who says either party "want" to do it more? They're soldiers and in both cases doing their jobs. Maybe the bomber gets a sadistic kick out of blowing children to bits and maybe he blows them up impersonally. Ditto with the direct killings. It's easy to argue that the more salient difference is that the bomber is taking a more cowardly route to killing. That hardly makes him morally superior, does it?

An analogy would be with eating meat. Some would say there's more honour in going out and hunting the animals ourselves. At least then we get to understand we're killing them rather than having some other party do it for us. It seems you think playing mental games with ourselves absolves us of responsibility for our actions. I don't. If you bomb civilians and kill them, you and those who directed you to do so are fully responsible for their deaths and suffering just as if you stabbed them in the face yourself. There is no magic intermediate party to take any share of that responsibility from you. It's simply a false moral intuition brought about by a lack of proximity.

But... the revision (at least) is my thought experiment and I stipulate it's not conditioned by some political situation (of any relevance to the ethical question).

Yes, but TPF category = Ethics. And the implications to how we think about these things are important imo (they allow advanced states to act under technological and political cover so to speak). If you just want to argue politics, we all know the thread that's being done on already.

Not to have to focus on politics but on an ethical intuition re methods of warfare...

Yes, that's the point.

Here's a modified version of the OP where things are "evened out" a bit more. No further context should be necessary.

Scenario 1: Armed men of group A searching for a hidden route into an armaments factory of group B come into a residential neighborhood of group B and go from house to house shooting and using blunt force weapons such as axes against civilians that stand in their way. They go from house to house and butcher 100 civilians. They eventually find the route in and set the factory on fire, destroying it.

Scenario 2: A pilot of group B is conducting a strike on an armaments factory of group A. The flight is done at night to minimize civilian casualties. Fliers are also dropped to minimize casualties. And yet it is known that approximately 100 civilian casualties are still the likely outcome of the bombing. The bombs are dropped using a precision missile yet debris from the explosion does indeed kill 100 civilians.

Who is more moral? The leadership of group A who aimed and succeeded at destroying the armanents factory of group B at the cost of 100 civilian lives or the leadership of group B who did the same thing re group A but used different methods?

Just as with the good, there is a dignity and humanity you are dealing with in person, with the bad, there is a dignity and humanity you are disregarding in person, in barbaric and brutal ways of maiming, burning, cutting, etc. in person. — schopenhauer1

But I specifically said I wanted to address the morality of Group A vs. Group B not mix this up with the morality of the pilot vs the assassins. So, yes, it's easier to press a button and drop a bomb than to stab someone in the face. Easier for you. And that might make you more moral or not. But... I think there's a "trolley problem" issue with the intuition that because one group has the power of an advanced technology behind it that separates it physically from the results of its actions, those actions somehow become more humane or justified (the analogy in the trolley problem would be between pushing the fat man off the bridge onto the tracks to stop the train vs pulling a lever to open a trapdoor so he just falls on to them).

This presumption seems like a kind of moral blindness to me. It has the stink of Milgram's experiments to it. As if we just presume our nice respectable bombers are morally superior methods of killing because they represent more clearly political and scientific authority. They are more "civilised". (And yes we can add a bunch more context to get whatever result we want but I'm sticking to the view that removing context or presuming the background context to "even out" allows us to focus on our flawed intuition here.)

You and Baden apparently have no problem with Iran leading a UN human rights group. I think you're nuts. — RogueAI

You can't infer that from my post. I do have a problem with it. But my point was that it has nothing to do with Israel. Iran being on a human rights committee is certainly perverse. So would it be for Israel but for different reasons.

(As for the "appalled" comment. The US gets "appalled" whenever it suits its interests. It wasn't appalled at Israel's bombing of schools or refugees on routes Israel itself designated safe. And it's not "appalled" by the thousands of dead Palestinian civilians in general. What's apparently a worse crime against humanity is some committee designation. The US has zero moral standing and simply pursues its strategic interests (like every other large powerful state), so such statements can safely be taken with a grain of salt.)

The United States is appalled" — RogueAI

Oh no! :monkey:

And if Israel is allowed on any committee, the U.N. is an Iran-hating joke? :chin:

:up:

The one issue that I have with the thought experiment is that the parties to be judged should be group A vs. group B (not the pilot vs the armed men or whatever). But that's not a difficult adjustment to make.

My basic point boils down to asking how hard it is to presume for the sake of argument that neither of the two sides are "Nazis" or etc but are a priori morally/immorally equivalent. Anyone who can't do that ought simply to move on to the next thread.

The thought experiment is unanswerable — RogueAI

I don't agree that it's unanswerable. Coming up with a definitive moral judgement based on the information provided is not the point imo. The point is to abstract out the information given from any partisan context and work with it on its own terms. I find that useful. If you get nothing from it though, that's fine.

The OP asked if there is a moral equivalence between two groups. That's impossible to determine without knowing why they're fighting — RogueAI

Again, you have to understand the nature of a thought experiment and that there are no two real groups, and that positing them as such and giving them a priori moral attributes makes the thought experiment useless.

I don't know if you are one of those people. Are you? I expect it's pointless to ask because you don't seem to want to say anything here except "Nazis are bad". But we all know that...

No, it's not, because that's not how the real world works — RogueAI

Brains in vats and evil demons aren't how the real world works either. I wonder why they should be invoked by philosophers... Obviously we can agree if one side are Nazis (or the equivalent) then all things being equal we are against them and we can agree that in many conflicts one side has the moral upper hand. But if we take that approach then the thought experiment is unnecessary because the answer is decided a priori, right? So, the only way to make the thought experiment relevant is to focus on the precise moral issue it raises. I'm not going to judge the intentions of the OP writer, but I think it's a worthwhile OP insofar as we take the point seriously.

Honestly, I think there are people out there who think being killed by a bomb dropped by a nice respectable airplane pilot is somehow more humane than being shot in the face or stabbed to death. These people either lack the imagination to conceive of a slow and agonising death under a pile of rubble with your legs blown off or are utterly devoid of morality themselves. Either way not good.