My God the number of fallacies is just staggering for one post. One, you're equivocating Palestinians in Gaza with Hamas and confusing them with Palestinians in The Knesset. It's a total red herring to bring either up. Or the aid, that needs to go into construction every time the fucking IDF destroys the place.

The fact of the matter is that if Israel wasn't occupying and strangling the Palestinian territorities they wouldn't need billions in aid or build rockets to get the oppressor and occupier to move off of their lands.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israelis-restrictions-cost-the-Palestinian-economy-34-billion-annually-328129

https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-chokes-palestinian-trade-says-un-study/10352

https://unctad.org/topic/palestinian-people

EDIT; Just read your post history here. Since you're an uncritical and unambashed Israeli war crime apologist, this is exactly the first and last time I'm replying to you.

Here are some facts: Israel has had no troops or settlements in Gaza since 2005. It's entirely self-governed except for the borders, with virtually all internal affairs dictated by Hamas. — BitconnectCarlos

This is a silly thing to say or you don't realise what this factually means. Palestinians do not control access to clean water, electricity or gas, can't get medicine, don't get enough stuff to build (wood, concrete and steel), import of foodstuffs are regulated causing inflated prices and keeping Palestinians poor, they can't travel to and from Gaza, even through the corridor to the West Bank without going through a checkpoint, they can be administratively detained for 6 months which can be indefinitely extended without being charged with anything. And I don't recall with certainty whether this concerned Gaza, but Israel created a landfill in the most arable region destroying good land and poisoning the aquifer underneath it, increasing Palestinian dependence on Israeli water. And that's just the stuff I remember at 6 in the morning. This isn't self governance, it's an atrocity.

There's many things in the world I don't want to happen and they still happen. It quite obviously doesn't follow from the fact that Arabs didn't want a Jewish state that it would therefore not have come to pass. And since the politicians and warmongers didn't try Buber's way, we can't know what would've happened if Jewish Zionism had followed his Hasidic approach from the 20s onwards.

Why,’ you say, ‘shouldn’t they have chosen violence as a means of attracting attention to their existence and their dreams of obtaining a national identity?’” [Wiesel in The New York Times, June 23, 1988].

Wiesel, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”

While Wiesel never condemned Israel, that was as consequence of his love for the country that was unconditional and that he thought he could not judge as a Diaspora Jew. On the other hand, in his later personal memoirs he has indicated he never did enough for the Palestinian plight.

Nahum Goldmann: “[t]o use the Holocaust as an excuse for the bombing of Lebanon, as Menachem Begin does, is a kind of ‘Hillul Hashem’ [sacrilege], a banalization of the sacred tragedy of the Shoah [Holocaust], which must not be misused to justify politically doubtful and morally indefensible policies.”

Buber highly valued consensus with the Arabs, but there would be no state of Israel if we took that seriously as the Arabs categorically refused any Jewish state in 1947-48. — BitconnectCarlos

I see you're more of a mystic than Buber with that crystal ball.

Maybe you should read some more Martin Buber.

things we can do : fund J Street.

I think that's the shortest way to policy change in the US. With a bit of luck, Republicans will split in two parties for the next election, handing victory to the Democrats. That should give enough time to cement some changes in US foreign policy with respect to Israel.

So admittedly the bombings are of no strategic value but only meant to punish people living in Gaza, as if the brutal oppression wasn't punishment enough.

Hmmm... Curious. Any way to find it somewhere else based on title in the link?

Edit: I was in the middle of the video.

where did your link go?

tu quoque fallacy mate. And you do this every time. As if it's a good look for Israel to be compared to autocratic Middle Eastern regimes just to look good. I don't think you want to go there to begin with.

The upshot is of course that if people recognise Israel for the racist Apartheid State it is, they might finally come to their senses about continuing to support it.

The "right" is just a bunch of snowflakes after all.

This is not true! There's a huge difference in how Israeli citizens with the Jewish nationality are treated and those without the Jewish nationality. I'm disappointed you repeat this, as I pointed this out a year ago in the Israel and Zionism thread.

No, I'm just accusing you of committing fallacies. That last one is just another one. If all you can do is offer red herrings or poison the well, just get lost OK?

do you want to start charity dick measuring? Or maybe, how much people can we influence? What's the point of your comment except for being a twat? I mean in the grand scheme of things blowing up a couple of Palestinians has no bearing on anything either so let's not talk about it, ok?

How much bearing does that have on the veracity of positions and arguments? But nice poisoning of the well!

When you engage in a discussion with someone you have never met , have no background context on , and especially when the topic is something as complex and personal as politics , you might want to examine what it is that makes you inclined to use worlds like ‘moron’ , ‘stupid’ , ‘deliberate obfuscation’. I understand my sarcasm irritated you, but it was intended
as a gentle prodding for you to explore more than just what initially seems to you to be the obvious and correct interpretation of my comments. Especially since the reality is I could care less about Israeli politics , I just jotted off my comments in an offhand way, and I am not wedded to any of the assertions I made. Apparently my sarcasm had the opposite effect, making you feel threaded and causing you to double down on your initial
construal of my post.

I’ll tell you what I am wedded to, and that’s a way of understanding human behavior and belief systems that rejects the concept of ‘evil’, which I’ve noticed you like to use. To me , ‘evil’ is what we accuse other people of when we fail to make sense of their thinking from their own perspective. The paradox is that it is this well intended accusation of evil or immorality leveled at individuals or groups that is the root of the sorts of violence and conflict that our concepts or morality are supposed to attach themselves to.

For me your response to my comment is a textbook case of a well intentioned attempt to defend a righteous moral view. But what it shows at a deeper level is that righteous moralism , and along with it the use of terms like ‘stupid’ and ‘moron’ , is a failure of insight, an inability to recognize that we all view the world from
within what in many cases are profoundly different perspectives, all of which can righteously justify themselves in equal measure. — Joshs

One, I didn't call you stupid, I said your comment was unless it was made in bad faith. Second, I also never called you a moron but since you identify as a defender of fascists you believe it applies to you. Thank you for clearing that up for all of us. Saves me a lot of time.

I care strongly because I care about fairness, justice and human rights. I'm originally a human rights lawyer after all.

It's not their country. It's the Jewish homeland. — BitconnectCarlos

There's no Jewish Homeland defined except in the Torah which, as a religious text, has no legal standing. There's an area designated for Jews to settle, which area was called Palestine, with the understanding original inhabitants wouldn't be displaced. We all know what happened and who have been driven from their homes. I think it was Begin who said : there's not a Jewish village that isn't build on the rubble of a Palestinian.

Here's some more material for you : https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/100000/mde150332004en.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj1ptPlr8fwAhUREhQKHXWcACYQFjAFegQIDBAC&usg=AOvVaw3SBqsmtye-7u37B9kbhC8f

It's not genocide and for you to use that term is absurd. If you think the Israelis are literally trying to genocide the Palestinians then there's no point in talking to you. It would put me in a position where I'd be defending Nazis. I can't go on in this conversation. Are you at all familiar with any of Hamas's genocidal language towards the Jews within their Constitution? But who cares about that - weak victims are always good, even if they're throwing gays off rooftops which happens frequently. — BitconnectCarlos

It's not genocide because it's not going quickly enough to your liking, or what? How fast should the destruction of Palestinian society go exactly before it is genocide? The Israeli State is fascist and yes you're defending fascists. This was already recognised by Einstein and Arendt in 1948 and unfortunately very few Jews recognise they've learned more from the Nazis than they care to admit. Things haven't improved. I'm intimately familiar with the entire situation, having studied international law for years, by the way. I just don't have the patience anymore to guide people through all the steps why I see things this way

Hamas' language is no different than that of Israeli main political party. Zionism implies racism, discrimination and the slow killing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is denying the right to exist to Palestinians in their own country. That fits the bill.

A couple days ago an elderly Israeli woman and her caregiver were killed when Hamas' rockets struck their homes in a residential area. Is this an example of resisting evil? — BitconnectCarlos

Let's weep for personal tragedy to obfuscate the slow genocide of an entire people. Sorry. Not playing. I can empathise with the personal tragedy but once I step back from the particulars and look at the bigger picture the moral position is clear. That Israeli woman had been sacrificed on a zionist altar.

Evils don't cancel out. The Palestinians are certainly oppressed, and against some kinds of oppression, violence can be justified. But only if there is a plausible connection between said violence and the end of oppression. And that connection simply doesn't exist here. The Hamas has no military solution, and as such it cannot justify its military actions as fighting against oppression. — Echarmion

Violence against oppression isn't evil. I'm not cancelling anything out. Sorry. And the conclusion that if there's no way out and they should just roll over and accept is ridiculously nihilistic. Evil should be resisted especially when success is unlikely.

Anyway, this is quite a unfruitful way to look at a conflict. Every civilian casualty is a tragedy. Every combatant casualty is also a tragedy as we are talking about human beings. Conflicts are either solved by military means or by diplomacy, not by moral righteousness. I think the better way would be to look at what to do here. — ssu

If you only look at the results and don't look at causes, both parties will look equally guilty. That's why people keep repeating "each civilian casualty is a tragedy" as a mantra because that reinforces equivalence. Intuitively it feels good, appears empathetic but really just glosses over the fact that not every tragedy is equally tragic. Just looking at the number of casualties on both sides makes this clear. The tragedy that befalls Israelis is of their own making, the tragedy that befalls Palestinians is wreaked upon them by the Israelis.

I think the main problem is that some people think there's a moral equivalence between the violence of Palestinians and Israel. That requires you to deny several of the following things :

1. Palestinians are oppressed, discriminated against and economically undermined by border control that basically functions like the worst sanctions we have in the world
2. A gross differential in military might and state power
3. A gross differential in political support from other countries and political representation
4. Israeli "security" trumps Palestinian "security" pace every draft of every deal where on average there's pages upon pages on the former and very little or nothing in the latter
5. Israeli deaths are a fraction of Palestinian deaths
6. The multitude of discriminatory laws in Israeli proper linked to religious affiliation
7. Palestine barely functions, Israel is a modern state claiming to be a democracy

So when a Palestinian cheers an Israeli death, it's not the same thing. If an Israeli is killed in this conflict, it's not the same thing. To interpret the violence between these two groups as morally equivalent is wilfully ignoring context.

Nothing in the past 20 years has given any indication Israel wants peace. If one side doesn't want peace and undermines it every time, what's the moral obligation of the other side? At what point does violence against the oppressor become a moral obligation?

There's no secret handshake mate. You're just being an ass. Begin gets elected after the atrocities were committed. Obviously he was more "moderate" after that, the deed was already done. So your comment was either stupid or a deliberate attempt to obfuscate. It says something about Israeli politics that they are fine to elect a fascist and war criminal and then decades later still have morons defending it. You'd think 70+ years would give some perspective but can't fight tribalism I suppose.

Apologist's crap. A moderate fascist is still a fascist.

Wiki is not a good source for most things political. I advice an actual history book or comments from people living at the time. The writing was on the wall in 1948 that Israel was turning into a fascist shithole: https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948

Social power is often contrasted with state power. It’s wherever the locus of power is in society or the community and not in the government. It might be an outdated term but I couldn't think of a better one. — NOS4A2

You cited writers and philosophers before that I have read a long time ago but I'm not familiar with this. What is this "outdated term" based on?

I don't realize that because the state also denies rights, or otherwise granted themselves selectively: to nobles, the wealthy, members of certain races, members of certain sexes, and so on. The examples are myriad and not worth repeating.

I also grant rights, as can anyone else, and we don't need any legislation to do so. Should someone infringe on your rights I'll be right there defending you. — NOS4A2

But this raises the question; what rights exists without the State? Only moral rights. But moral rights will be ignored by most people if they can get away with it. It's quite obvious from history that rights are best preserved and protected in a civilised society. Human rights, unfortunately, really are a luxury not available to most and a recent invention.

I would therefore argue that rights are only meaningful, if they are legal and therefore protected by the legal order and organisation of a State. Morality still informs us about the content of what those legal rights should be. The "I can grant rights" doesn't exist - it's merely a sentiment. You're not capable of protecting me from Russian or Chinese interference, or indeed Facebook's abuses, or enforce a contract for me against an unwilling counterparty. Your "granted rights" are in that sense worthless and in any case a contradiction in terms if your position is that I have intrinsic rights (who are you to grant me my rights?).

My point is it doesn’t matter if the confiscation is legal or not; it is still theft. If someone confiscates my resources without my permission and for their own use, whether state or man on the street, it’s theft. I don’t excuse someone for theft because he makes the laws or claims a right to my income.

I can’t see why it would matter if the income is fair and equitable. What matters is that someone is confiscating what another has earned. — NOS4A2

It's not confiscation if you don't have a claim to the income.

The reason why it matters whether it's fair or equitable is that if your morality is merely procedural, then obviously the legal procedure creates the moral basis for taxes. If you want to have a moral claim to income, you need to prove your claim to specific income is fair and equitable. But this isn't "priced" into markets, so the income paid is not a reflection of moral worth but happenstance.

LOL. Negotiations.

decline of social power — NOS4A2

What do you mean with social power?

I see taxes as forced labor and theft — NOS4A2

For taxation to be theft, there must be a right to pre-tax income. Legally, this is clearly not the case.

A moral right to pre-tax can only be said to exist if earned income results in a fair and equitable payment for labour rendered. This too is false. Market circumstances are not concerned with the moral worth of labour or who needs the job the most or who is most deserving of fulfilling the assignment. So a moral right to pre-tax income is incoherent.

Since no rights are infringed, there's no theft.

You do realise this is totally a-historical? Rights were and are granted by the state. Human rights are a civilised luxury, nothing fundamental about it.

The presumption is innocence is a legal fiction, it says exactly nothing about actual guilt or innocence.

Yeah...that's about it.

Atheists think that what they "believe" and how they "believe" it...

...is much better than what theists "believe" and how they "believe" it.

And then atheists try to sell the idea that atheists are not "believers."

Two sides of one coin! — Frank Apisa

So people who believe in unicorns and those who don't are two sides of the same coin? The available proof for unicorns and an Abrahamic God are more or less equal, lots of mentions in books and story telling.

Ah, a random idiot joins the discussions by misinterpreting my meaning. Get lost.

Perhaps it looks like that because you yourself have extreme views?

Depends on the democratic system really. If you have a winner takes all system, majorities matter. If you need coalitions to rule, the dynamics change a lot.

No, I meant that literally. I have no fucking clue what you think to mean with that.

That means exactly nothing to me.

Probably true which is why the US is potentially a bigger danger to the democratic order in many countries than Russia or China.