stopped caring about your opinion on this subject a while ago I'm afraid. But nice way of quoting out of context I suppose. — Benkei

Speak among yourselves then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

So given the centuries of persecution of Jews in Europe and ME, I do think we have a collective responsibility to give them that piece of land for sovereignty. — Benkei

I'd submit that no duty is owed by others to the Jews to give them Israel, but the duty is owed not to intervene in their right to their land. I can't think of any other group of citizens where the world feels it within their authority to decide who gets what land and under what conditions that land can remain in that groups' possession.

If that land is for sovereignty, then it is not subject to reconsideration nor international debate. It is theirs and the expectation should be that it will be defended as unforgivably as one would expect any other sovereign nation to defend their land.

After several decades without major wars, two have begun in the last 2 years. — Tim3003

1998 to 2003 - Second Congo War, 3 million dead.
2011 to present - Syrian Civil War, over 300,000 dead civilians
2003 to 2008 - Darfur Conflict - 300,000 dead
2001 to the US withdrawal in 2010 - Iraq War - over 85,000 civilians dead
2001 to 2016 - Afghanistan War - 30,000 Afgans troops, 31,000 Afgan citizens, 30,000 Pakastani forces dead.
2010 to 2016 - Boko Haram in Nigeria, 11,000 citizens dead and 2 million displaced.
2014 to 2021 - Yemeni Civil War - 375,000 estimated dead, 3 million displaced
2022 - present - Russian Ukraine War, 40,000 Ukranian citizens, 100,000 troups, 200,000 Russians killed, and 1.6 Ukrainians forcibly transferred into Russia.

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict wouldn't make this list as a major war.

But anyway, I do think the statistics show there are fewer deaths from war now than historically, but I don't think they support your thesis that there was a war holiday the past couple of decades.

The universe wouldn't surprise me at all if it is fundamentally incoherent to it's own content (for example observers) which are restricted to experiencing time and space from a falsely standardised pov. — Benj96

I thinks it definitionally impossible for an event to occur outside of time and space, considering an event is defined as that which occurs somewhere at some time. If I were to tell you that Event A exists nowhere and it occurred at no time, we'd just say that Event A never occurred.

The initial singularity was not located "anywhere" nor at "any specific time". Temporo-spatiality applies to the universe as we know it, that is - after the big bang, after expansion, after entropy increased, where those dimensions came into play. — Benj96

Per Kant:

"Space is not something objective and real, nor a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation; instead, it is subjective and ideal, and originates from the mind’s nature in accord with a stable law as a scheme, as it were, for coordinating everything sensed externally. (Ak 2: 403)"

This is also his view of time.

We require that events occur in space and time in order to be coherent, but those attributes are not objective properties but are subjective.

Questions about what happened before there were time or location fail not because they preexisted the physical world, but because they are entirely incoherent.

How long would you have to run this scam to recoup the cost of all those cars? — Vera Mont

The cars are decoys, easily maneuvered with a centralized pully system fully operated remotely by internet from my hidden headquarters, allowing multiple parking lot locations to be take advantage of at once. Duh.

At some places, they have you take a number and wait for it to be called. My idea, and it's a good one, is to get there early in the morning and take all the numbers. I then wpuld sell them to customers who come in, with the higher prices going for the lower numbers.

My other Idea, again a good one, is to take the best parking spots at the most crowded stores and to offer to leave for a price.

I call my business "Dickhead."

The Israeli government could simply upgrade its iron dome and station 40,000 troops at the border with the orders to shoot to kill - Hamas terrorists, motor gliders, drones, etc. — FreeEmotion

The iron dome proved ineffective though from the recent attacks.

But anyway, think about the concept of having to protect your life daily from incoming attacks by shrouding yourself in a cloak of defensive missles, hoping death doesn't find its way to your door.

We've changed the conversation. My question was what you would do if you were Israel, and you've said you'd die the death you deserve. I got my answer to that.

As to whether I'm a hypocrite in holding Palestine to a standard I don't hold Israel to, I could draw all the distinctions between the two, but you'd still disagree. At the most, you'd prove me a hypocrite, not that I'm incorrect about my disgust at the Hamas attacks.

So here's my position: I do not condemn the Israeli response to the Hamas/Palestinian attack and I do not believe the Israelis to be the instigators in this conflict. My stand with Israel is clear here and you can condemn it as you will and find it unsustainable.

But as to your position, do you acknowledge that the recent Palestinian attack on Israel was vile, disgusting, and barbaric? Or, was their response fair game? I'm just waiting for you to tell me that each person involved, from top to bottom, in the planned rape and butchering of innocent children should be located and made to pay the consequences for their crimes just as should occur with the Israelis. But these issues are not mutually exclusive. The same vigor ought be exercised in the correction of injustice regardless of the perpetrator. This would include an insistence that ordinary citizens with knowledge of what occurred and who planned and committed these acts come forward and share the information they have.

That you think I give a pass to the Israelis for the same conduct, means you question my ethical consisitency, but ithat is an aside. The question is whether you accept that you are ethically inconsistent under your same standards you allege I am. If you're not, then let's get to the bottom of who these rapists are. Or, are we just both hypocrites, me siding with the allowance of injustice at the hands of the Israelis and you the Palestinians?

When you shoot this particular pitbull, the whole neighborhood is likely to fall apart. That's why a giant swat team has pulled up along the coast of your house. Does pulling the trigger really seem like a rational solution? — frank

We're getting too deep in this metaphor, so maybe spell out what everything represents the way you're presenting it. I think I'm assigning different entities to different objects than you maybe.

But Israel was more or less safe the day after Hamas' attack wasn't it? — bert1

No, Hamas had no plans just to return to business as usual after having let off some steam. Israel's show of force and dismantling of Hamas is part of a larger longer term deterrent strategy.

As if raping someone on Saturday is excused on Sunday because he tells us he's done.

Even if the analogy were apt (although I disagree with the characterization), your response is on the absurd side.

Drawing it out a bit further:

You have a pit bull tied to a chain in the yard. You underfeed it, you leave it in the cold, you poke it with a stick, and you do all you can to antagonize it. One day it breaks free from its leash, charges into your living room, starts chomping on your children, raping your parents and grandparents, and destroying all your property. No amount of "Down Fido!" seems to do the trick. Fido has arrived to give you the biggest mouthful of comeuppace he can muster and he's not backing down.

Your reponse, as you've indicated it would be, would be to dismantle the chain in the yard and to get the dog and the members in your household to figure out a way to give the dog a nice yard to live in seperate from your household so that the two of you may live peacefully.

The immediate question though seems to be what you are planning to do about the actual dog in the living room. Fido has your kid's leg in its mouth. Do you just say "Fair is fair my son. This dog, violent as he may seem, is just enjoying his just dessert. Justice demands we so endure"?

My response, contrary to your tempered and suicidal approach, is to kill the raging pit bull in my living room. While we may feel different duties to our families, and while I respect your right to let the dog settle all scores past and present on your kin, I think you can at least understand my feeling of duty, which is to eliminate the real and immediate threat threatening my family, which has become apparent through my son's severed and gnawed leg. That is, I would eliminate the dog, even if my kind hearted neighbors were shocked and dismayed because they thought I had earned this healthy dose of dog chomping.

This is to say, even if I were to buy into your argument that Israel represents an antagonizer of a helpless pup, I still don't think your response can be taken seriously. Your response does not give a nod to proportionality, as if to suggest that Israel has a right to a military response but just not as extreme as it has been. Your response is that Israel is entitled to no military response, but that it must lay down its neck and accept its punishment. If that were not your belief, I would think you would have permitted Israel some sort of responsive bombing or military attack, but here you've suggested no military response is acceptable.

to what Israel should do. Israel is reaping what it sowed for years. It should start with dismantling it's apartheid regime and stop it's continuous well documented human rights violations. And getting parties in power that are actually interested in a two state solution, instead of the corrupt turds they have. — Benkei

That'd be your response to your attacks? Seems like you'll be taking in heavy casualties while your dismantling and running elections.

So proportionality isn't a thing? — Benkei

Proportionality is generally associated with retributivism and Kant, where the objective is punishment for the sake of punishment and it should be proportionate to the offense. For example, a person who murders receives 30 years in jail while a shoplifter receives probation, regardless of whether those sentences deter or reform the offender.

Israel's primary obective would be deterrence in trying to stop the ongoing violence. I would view its proper limitation as doing that which acheives the deterrence without violating some higher right or objective.

For example, if I shoot all shoplifters, I will eliminate shoplifting entirely, but I'd be opposed to that response on deterrence grounds not because it's disproportionate to the crime, but because the goal of preserving life is greater than preserving items in people's stores. That is, it's worse to kill people who steal from stores than to allow people to steal from stores without consequence. But that has nothing to do with proportionality. Proportionality would limit the punishment to a just dessert, perhaps providing to the offender a dose of unhappiness equal to what the offender received.

Consistent with this line of thinking is that we would not hesitate to put store owners out of business who sold dangerous products, again because we value people over store items.

So,

If the objective is to deter citizens from murder, rape, and kidnapping, the response will not be limited by the concept of proportionality, but it will be limited to its effectiveness as long as it does not violate some other higher principle. So, using the Israeli example, they may do whatever they need to to protect their citizens lives as long as the rights of their citizens are not of lesser value than what they are destroying. Unless you are going to convince the Israelis that the rights of Palestinians to kill Israelis exceeds the rights of the Israelis to stop Israeli death, you are not going to convince the Israelis their response is ethically invalid, and that's because it's not ethically invalid.

On the other hand, if you could arrive at a way for the Israelis to stop the violence against them that would not entail a similarly violent counter-response, then that would be ideal. What do you propose? How would you defend your home if it were under similar attack?

Anyway, no one is denying the history of antisemitism in the Middle-East. Trying to excuse Israel's treatment of Palestinians in this way is familiar caveman logic. — Tzeentch

The point here is that the Arab nations have been expelling Jews from "their" land historically and during modern times. That clear case of apartheid for some reason is overlooked. What's also overlooked is that while there has been a Jewish presence in Palestine for thousands of years, a large portion of today's Jews are the descendants of refugees from all over the globe. Jews currently exist in their largest numbers (although still very small) in Israel and the US, and then way down the list you come up with France and the UK, but those numbers are very low.

The big picture here, if you're not seeing it, is that this tiny minority is being evicted from everywhere they go, including Israel, one of the only places available. If not for the US, where do you think they'd go?

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians while shocking to you appears to overlook the fact that Palestinians butchered and burnt babies, raped women, and took the very old as hostages. The outrage that followed Israel's supposed bombing of the hospital seems to have been muted as evidence comes forward that it was Hamas. Why not the outrage and protests against Hamas for bombing a hospital? Will you take to the streets if evidence is confirmed it was Hamas?

Palestine suffered human rights violations and crimes against humanity under Israeli occupation. Ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, discrimination, apartheid, etc. — Tzeentch

In 1948, about 80,000 Jews lived in Egypt, in 2016, it was 6. In Iran, in 1948, there were 140,000 to 150,000, in 2019, 8,300. There are 0 in Jordan. At the end of WWI, Lebanon had 3,500, now 29. Libya had 40,000 in the 1940s, now it has 0.

The systematic effort to remove the Jews from the middle east has been largely successful.

When they were expelled from these nations, they immigrated largely to Palestine, but the effort to remove them has been unrelenting. I mean, why can't they just leave Israel once and for all and just go to New York where they can live without bothering people.

Have you morphed into a Democrat? Just curious. — frank

I don't think so, but If Bush, Kasich, Christie, Pence, and Trump are all Republicans, I'm not sure what it means to be a Republican.

I have no evidence that Hamas did blow up the hospital, based on the missiles they have.

Now the context is important, but you seem to want to downplay it, for lack of "official reports." The context is, there is clear as day evidence that Israel is bombing Gaza to the stone age, without care about who is killed.

I don't know if that "type of evidence" achieves the high standards you demand. — Manuel

I was only responding to your incorrect comment that there was evidence Palestine didn't blow up the hospital, which you acknowledge you don't.

As to whether they are bombing without concern who they kill, I disgree with that.

Based on previous actions, which have been widely reported. I can refer you to several books if you want to read the myriad of abuses and crimes committed by Israel, as well as taking a look at the Israeli human rights organization which I posted. — Manuel

I would only want to read your books if I chose to allow you to divert attention from the question that we're addressing so that you can pretend it wasn't asked.

The question was who blew up the hospital. Your answer was it could not have been the Palestinians because they lack the rocket power to do that. I asked you for a cite to that. You then started telling me about how Israel has a long history of abuse against the Palestinians and you had some books that supported that.

So, back to what we're talking about. What evidence do you have that the bombings could not have been the result of a Hamas weapon due to the fact that Hamas lacks the firepower?

If you tell me, well, the Israealis are always doing bad things to the Palestinians, so it more likely was them, that will not address your statement that it could not have been the Palestinians due to lack of firepower.

And that's what I'm going to keep coming back to because yours is attempt to create empirical evidence from nothing to support your view that it must have been Israel.

That you are an open detractor of Israel, even if justifiably so, doesn't mean you must abandon the truth and misreport objectively verifiable facts. That is the point of my responses. If you want to say you don't believe Israel because they're sons of bitches in your opinion, then just say that, but going down the road of providing what is represented as objective fact when it is not is simply disingenuous.

A 20kg explosive that probably hovers somewhere between civilian-grade and military-grade will produce a decent boom, but 500 dead + presumably many more wounded sounds extraordinarily high for such an explosion, especially if walls were seperating people from the blast. — Tzeentch

There's an equal chance that your foray into forensic pyrotechnics began about 20 minutes ago and you have no idea what rockets are within the Hamas arsenal, what their explosive power is, and no idea what forces the hospital structure could withstand.

On the other hand, if you were correct, I would expect someone other than the friendly folks at The Philosophy Forum would have arrived at these conclusions, would have presented them somewhere on the great world wide web, and then you could simply provide me a link as opposed to providing me the benefit of your new found expertise.

If it's something that never happened before I would agree. But the extensive documentation provided by human rights agencies in the 2014, 2016 and other Gaza massacres have shown that this is not abnormal behavior for Israel at all. See for instance the Goldstone report. — Manuel

The question was whether there were empirical evidence, not whether you've sorted out what you consider credibility evidence and decided who to believe. If you want to just say you don't trust the Israelis so you think it must have been their doing, that's one thing. But that's not what you've said. You said that Palestine didn't do it because they lack the fire power to do that.

You changed your argument.

If I were engaging in a credibility assessment of your comments, I would be led to the conclusion that you're willing to provide reasons for Israeli misconduct that are not supported by the evidence only to withdraw those arguments when challenged, and then to rely upon other grounds to support your prejudged conclusion that it was the Israelis, meaning I would see your opinions as biased towards what you wanted to conclude anyway. .

Jeez man, this is vulgar Israeli propaganda and people believe it! Wow, suddenly Hamas has rockets that can destroy entire hospitals. — Manuel

Again, provide your support for your position that Hamas rockets cannot destroy hospitals. Obviously if that were true, then it was the Israelis, but I've not seen any cite that states (1) Hamas rockets lack the destructive power to destroy hospitals or (2) that the Palestinians have argued they lack the ability to destroy hospitals. That is, you're making an argument that has no empirical support and one that not even the Palestinians are making.

There are literally thousands of rockets being fired in a very small space. It would be more surprising if none missed their target than if all did. The question then becomes whether (1) this was an accidental misfiring or (2) whether it was purposeful. It would seem the likelihood of an Israeli intentional targeting of a Palestinian hospital is unlikely, considering the political fallout that would result. It is possible it was an accident by the Israelis. In terms of whether it was accidental or intentional by Hamas, either explanation works, considering their missles are notoriously inaccurate and also it could be intentional considering the political gain they'd derive from it if the Israelis could be blamed.

The point here though is that no one knows what happened and there are equally compelling reasons to believe in theory it was caused by either of the two. Any suggestion that it's clearly one or the other only reveals the bias of the person offering the opinion.

I missed the sarcasm. Sorry.

I never called it (the audio) "authoritative". Nor affirmed my commitment to it. Taken in another sense, your claim sounds even contradictory. — neomac

You indicated

And then also lie about it with "extremely fake" audios according to the most authoritative infowar experts on earth. Anyway, in today's day and age it's best to reserve judgement. — neomac

Your position was that there was authoritative evidence disproving the legitimacy of the evidence submitted by Israel in questioning the cause of the explosion.

This is to say, both you and @ssu throw out accusations that the Israeli account is preposterous, but then when asked for some sort of cite, nothing is provided.

Then others play junior pyrotechnics experts and offer opinions as to what they think the videos show, as if such analysis does anything other to reveal confirmation bias.

And then also lie about it with "extremely fake" audios according to the most authoritative infowar experts on earth. Anyway, in today's day and age it's best to reserve judgement. — neomac

Again, you're pointing to authoritive empirical evidence that doesn't exist.

Just seems to me the most likely case here. — ssu

Except you provided an empirical argument for why it was the Israelis (i.e. Palestine lacked the rocket power) and now you're backtracking to theorizing (i.e. Israel needs to maintain its moral position for US support, so this is spin control).

These are entirely different arguments.

The counter theory is that Hamas cannot win this war militarily, they have no moral high ground since their invasion of the kibbutz, so they hope to politically turn the tides in their favor by showing Israeli brutality and their own suffering by causing their own death and blaming it on Israel.

This is to say that Hamas scores far more points if it was Israel that bombed the hospital, so much so that it could sway political support in their favor.

Israel gains nothing in such an attack.

Somehow the single most powerful rocket fired from Gaza ever, that could destroy whole buildings, misfired and hit one of the few hospitals in Gaza. — ssu

What cite do you have to support this claim?

You're arguing impossibility, meaning Palestine couldn't have done this because their arsenal isn't capable of doing it.

I've not seen any articles where the Palestinians have even asserted that.

All's fair in love and war.

is obvious that Japan would have won against the US if Truman hadn't dropped the atomic bombs. — javi2541997

This article says:

Japan was considering surrendering prior to Nagasaki, the conventional bombs killed more than the nuclear ones, and Japan never could have fended off the US and the Soviet Union successfully.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/#:~:text=But%2C%20in%201965%2C%20historian%20Gar,use%20was%2C%20therefore%2C%20unnecessary.

There needs to be a protected humanitarian corridor. I'm sure Israel will put effort into creating that. Unless they just want to do a massive fuckup. — frank

I'm in favor of that in theory, but Gaza is tiny and massively overpopulated and pretty much in rubble. If the citizens could be moved around so that the Hamas infrastructure could be dismantled, then that would be ideal, but the truth is there is no place for anyone to go, and it's not in Hamas' interest to allow the citizens to go safely. Hamas scores points with every Palestinian death because their war can't be won militarily, so their battle is political in trying to win world support by showing Palestinian victimization.

Hamas pokes the bear by firing indiscriminate missles and raping, murdering, and kidnapping. Predictably, Israel's detractors line up and argue justification and moral equivalence and hand Palestine a political victory as the victim. The sentiment pervasive in this forum is what Hamas wished to expand throughout the West with their repugnant suicide mission.

Israel's proper response is full rejection of its detractors, with a focus only upon its own safety. That the anti-Israel world might more firmly become anti-Israel is irrelevant in how Israel should and will respond.

Only in over-intellectualized 21st century liberalism, where the weaker party is the per se victim can it be an effective political strategy to provoke a war and then to lose so badly that that you use your losing to your political advantage.

So jeer from the sidelines. Israel has a population it must protect.

So you have the keys to the castle and your job is to protect Israel and assure continued random bombings and terroristic bands of rapists and butchers don't run their periodic raids.

What do you do?

Do you talk about moral ambiguity, feel the guilt of your predecessors in putting you in this place, and then set up a meeting with Hamas to discuss your displeasure at their murderous yet understandable behavior and figure out how we can go halfsies on the land so everyone will be happy?

For real, what do you propose in real terms other than the vague platitude that Israel should be careful not to hurt the innocent. Their position is that they will do their best.

So General Baden, protect your nation. What do you propose?

And so Hamas uses its citizens as human shields so the law of not harming citizens protects Hamas from attack? Is it that easy?

it really a threat? Who cares? — frank

That is the critical question. If the threat isn't real, responding to it with force isn't justified.

The distinction between the German justification for slaughtering Jews and the Israeli's justification for invading Gaza, is that Israel's justification is correct and Germany's wrong.

It requires moral judgment. The solution isn't to declare an amorality and paralyze yourself with inaction because you think yourself too humble to decide right from wrong

If you believe Israel isn't occupying foreign territories in Gaza and the West Bank, then what exactly do you believe Israel is doing there? — Tzeentch

They're invading it after being attacked. That's what happens in a war. Do you think Gaza is a safety zone that can't be entered into by Israel after being attacked?

Do you think Gaza occupied foreign territory when it arrived at the kibbutz?

Clearly "legitimate possession" is not the end of the question. — Echarmion

No, but it's the first question. If the Mexican government continuously lobbed bombs into El Paso and raped and butchered its citizens, it wouldn't be shocking if the US took over a chunk of Mexico. That justification comes from no one remotely questioning the US's right to its land.

The security problem in the region goes both ways. And let's not pretend terrorism wasn't a reaction to the illegal occupation and not the other way around. — Benkei

Terrorism is not a legitimate response. Period.

And vice versa? — unenlightened

The existential threat to Gaza is Hamas provoking war with Israel.

Ok, so you're making a claim about Israel's annexations of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 - places that belonged to Egypt and Jordan respectively at the time, and where there lived (and still live) primarily Palestinians.

What makes this annexation by Israel during the Six-Day War legitimate in your eyes? — Tzeentch

I'm not laying an Israeli claim to Gaza or the West Bank. That is a Palestinian territory, controlled by Hamas and Hezzbolah respectfully.

But can land be acquired by war? Of course. If not, the world map would look very different.

Acquisition of land by ancient inheritance is no more defensible than by war.

According to your own premise, Russia is legitimate to occupy Crimea, Donbas and Donetsk, right? — javi2541997

That doesn't follow.

Now, does this include Gaza and the West Bank? — FreeEmotion

Israel isn't at war over a claim by Israel that Gaza and the West Bank belong to Israel. Israelis presence in Gaza is part of a military operation. I don't think Israel has any interest in occupying and policing Gaza every day.