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SmokeyBear1861

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1 minute ago, longhornmatt said:

I hope they don’t commit war crimes, either, but winning a war and having collateral damage isn’t in and of itself a war crime. 

No argument whatsoever.  War sucks.  Sometimes it is imposed.  When that happens, there are two choices:  fight back, or play possum and get run over.  I'm simply saying that it's possible to avoid the intentional brutality of targeting civilians yet still fight back.

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1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Propping up Hamas bc the tension is good for business and political power for Likud is pretty bad. 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/

I did not see any reports of the Likud party raping women and beheading civilians in your link. 

Again, I don't agree with anything they've done, but comparing the Likud party with Hamas is a false equivalency. 

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2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

We know Hamas uses people as human shields, but some of y'all have what I think is an incorrect assumption that Israel's strikes are all targeted at Hamas targets. Their intelligence wasn't good enough to stop the initial attacks and things have been pure chaos ever since. I don't see any reason to think they have a good idea where Hamas militants currently are. They're reducing whole neighborhoods to rubble and they've bombed the crossing into Egypt, where tons of Palestinian civilians had fled to hoping to get out. 

There's no way to completely avoid civilian casualties in war and I wouldn't expect Israel to do so, but I think it's reasonable to expect them to not commit war crimes. All that's asking them to do is adhere to their own training. 

 What?

So because Israel doesn't have perfect or infallible intel they should what? Stop all bombings? 

Bullshit.

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5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Inherently evil? Of course not. Steeped in it, indoctrinated in it, and taught that Jews are vermin to be exterminated from damn near infancy, with no real counter-programming? Yes. That’s a problem. How do you de-program millions and millions who have been taught unambiguously and relentlessly that Jews must die?
You don’t. It’s not feasible.

See the responses below. You again waltz past the absolute practical challenge here. Because it’s inconvenient for the fantasy world you want to construct.


Hamas has committed an act of genocide. It was acting consistent with its stated goals. Hamas is supported by the majority of the people in Gaza. And now, to avoid paying the price for its crime of genocide, it is committing another clearly defined war crime and using civilians as shields.
What is happening on the Gaza side is fucking evil. Why is it so hard to say that?

Who isn’t saying Hamas is evil? Who isn’t saying they’ve committed heinous atrocities? Everyone agrees. 

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4 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

We know Hamas uses people as human shields, but some of y'all have what I think is an incorrect assumption that Israel's strikes are all targeted at Hamas targets. Their intelligence wasn't good enough to stop the initial attacks and things have been pure chaos ever since. I don't see any reason to think they have a good idea where Hamas militants currently are. They're reducing whole neighborhoods to rubble and they've bombed the crossing into Egypt, where tons of Palestinian civilians had fled to hoping to get out. 

There's no way to completely avoid civilian casualties in war and I wouldn't expect Israel to do so, but I think it's reasonable to expect them to not commit war crimes. All that's asking them to do is adhere to their own training. 

The Office Thank You GIF

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1 minute ago, Neonmoon said:

I did not see any reports of the Likud party raping women and beheading civilians in your link. 

Again, I don't agree with anything they've done, but comparing the Likud party with Hamas is a false equivalency. 

They fund the group that does the rape and beheading. But they don’t do it themselves so they’re absolved of the blame! 

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1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

How did you come away with that interpretation of his post?

How can you not?

 

Their intelligence wasn't good enough to stop the initial attacks and things have been pure chaos ever since. I don't see any reason to think they have a good idea where Hamas militants currently are. They're reducing whole neighborhoods to rubble and they've bombed the crossing into Egypt, where tons of Palestinian civilians had fled to hoping to get out. 

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1 minute ago, Asithappens said:

How can you not?

 

Their intelligence wasn't good enough to stop the initial attacks and things have been pure chaos ever since. I don't see any reason to think they have a good idea where Hamas militants currently are. They're reducing whole neighborhoods to rubble and they've bombed the crossing into Egypt, where tons of Palestinian civilians had fled to hoping to get out. 

Are you already drunk?  Am I?  Compare your two posts and then clarify whether you think Israel's bombings have some justification or not.

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1 hour ago, Ted Lange said:

I've seen this posted a bunch.  Im not going to pretend to know the full context of it.   The only person I have ever seen providing some is from this guy.  

 

 

 

And a longer post he had on this topic.   Again, I'm not saying I know the answers but thought this potentially provides some context.

image.png.8e42a8c56036bb72d49dd1b5cdd50d12.png

 

4 minutes ago, Js1 said:

They fund the group that does the rape and beheading. But they don’t do it themselves so they’re absolved of the blame! 

Does Israel fund Hamas? Or does Israel allow the transfer of funds and humanitarian relief? What is the alternative to allowing these funds?

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10 minutes ago, sidis said:

you do make a fair point that there are an infinite number of alternative realpolitik paths that...frankly, would end much better than the current path.  the u.s., the e.u., and the gulf states could impose some good alternatives.  but it would be necessary to engage at a rational and practical level for those and that's simply not realistic in the short-term unfortunately given the impassioned moral and ideological states of the belligerents.

unfortunately, those are the choices once a direct response is executed.  in any alternative you propose that isn't simply idealistic, there is certainly suffering.

Yeah, I'm not arguing any different. The suffering is baked in.

 

There's two things I'm trying to emphasize to folks. 1) The only hope for a solution is rational calculation. And this applies to basically anything in life. People like to think with their hearts. Brain are for thinking, emotions are for feeling, but people struggle with that. 2) Any black or white, good or bad declaration is bullshit. Everything in life is shades of grey and by and large people aren't equipped to deal with that.

 

And a total tangent, when I was in Junior High, in German class, as is custom we all got to pick our "German" name. I picked Otto, as I have been a big follower of his works, good and bad, for a very long time. Heh.

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17 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

See the responses below. You again waltz past the absolute practical challenge here. Because it’s inconvenient for the fantasy world you want to construct.

You literally have no idea what I'm talking about.

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3 minutes ago, G650 said:

2) Any black or white, good or bad declaration is bullshit. Everything in life is shades of grey and by and large people aren't equipped to deal with that.

Man, I was just about to say something similar.  It's rare that there is an objective truth.  Sure, profit margin and stress in a wing strut can be calculated with high precision.  The rest of the world tends to operate in the gray area, where blame is shared and 65/35 is common, and 90/10 isn't.  This, I suspect, is where we are.

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15 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Putting aside the questionable premise that it's morally okay to kill the children of your enslavers, I would hope we all understand that the average Israeli civilian family is not the enslaver of Gaza anyway.

And, this sounds dangerously close to the argument that America deserved 9/11 because of American foreign policy.  And that is one bad fucking argument.

It sounds close if you completely misinterpret it I suppose.

The point is that the argument goes both/all ways. The average Gaza resident isn't murdering Israelis either. And yet none of them have power or water right now. Both groups are led by power hungry zealots and suffer the consequences. 

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4 minutes ago, G650 said:

Yeah, I'm not arguing any different. The suffering is baked in.

 

There's two things I'm trying to emphasize to folks. 1) The only hope for a solution is rational calculation. And this applies to basically anything in life. People like to think with their hearts. Brain are for thinking, emotions are for feeling, but people struggle with that. 2) Any black or white, good or bad declaration is bullshit. Everything in life is shades of grey and by and large people aren't equipped to deal with that.

 

And a total tangent, when I was in Junior High, in German class, as is custom we all got to pick our "German" name. I picked Otto, as I have been a big follower of his works, good and bad, for a very long time. Heh.

I stringently disagree with this statement. And my examples are going to be so absurd to burder on trolling, but I entreat you to consider them at face value, not as some kind of gotcha. I do agree that people aren't equipped to deal with the nuances in life very well (the shades of gray you referenced). That being said, there absolutely ARE black and white, good and bad things in this world and declaring them as such is perfectly fine imo. Otherwise, please illustrate to me some of the following:

1.) How The Holocaust was actually not pure evil, but instead a shade of gray.
2.) How is violent rape not evil, but a shade of gray? 
3.) How is strangling a 3 year old not pure evil, but a nuanced shade of gray?

The fact there are so many different layers to the reasons for the violence in the middle east, going back thousands of years, is why it's so complicated and a solution seems so impossible. Impossible to even see, because of human emotions and their power. But there are acts of pure evil in this world, and a lot of them are happening right now in Israel and Gaza. And it's ok to say that. 

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Just now, SydneyCarton said:

I stringently disagree with this statement. And my examples are going to be so absurd to burder on trolling, but I entreat you to consider them at face value, not as some kind of gotcha. I do agree that people aren't equipped to deal with the nuances in life very well (the shades of gray you referenced). That being said, there absolutely ARE black and white, good and bad things in this world and declaring them as such is perfectly fine imo. Otherwise, please illustrate to me some of the following:

1.) How The Holocaust was actually not pure evil, but instead a shade of gray.
2.) How is violent rape not evil, but a shade of gray? 
3.) How is strangling a 3 year old not pure evil, but a nuanced shade of gray?

The fact there are so many different layers to the reasons for the violence in the middle east, going back thousands of years, is why it's so complicated and a solution seems so impossible. Impossible to even see, because of human emotions and their power. But there are acts of pure evil in this world, and a lot of them are happening right now in Israel and Gaza. And it's ok to say that. 

 

I mean, you don't even have to use those examples, even simple acts are not unequivocally good or bad. They can be mostly bad, even damn near 99.9% bad, yet still have positive effects. A young person is killed in a car wreck say. Pretty fucking tragic. Almost all bad, but the planet has ever so slightly less burden, which isn't. Nothing is 100%.

The entirety of critical analysis is parsing data and finding that line where it's bad enough and then coming up with remedies. And in most cases it's really fucking hard to do. There's obviously acts which are so blatant, it's an easy call. The Holocaust, duh, of course that was bad as fuck. Hamas atrocities in this attack, clearly really fucking awful, so why would you go to the strawman of "it's ok to denounce Hamas", well no shit, everyone is. I hope they kill everyone of the fuckers that participated in this. It's a wholly different subject than solving the intractable problem of Israel and Palestine though and people need to quit conflating the acute with the systemic.

 

Plus, anytime someone uses the words good and evil, it's a tipoff that a half baked emotional outburst is coming.

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34 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Inherently evil? Of course not. Steeped in it, indoctrinated in it, and taught that Jews are vermin to be exterminated from damn near infancy, with no real counter-programming? Yes. That’s a problem. How do you de-program millions and millions who have been taught unambiguously and relentlessly that Jews must die?
You don’t. It’s not feasible.

I didn't ask about inherent evil. But also, if hate (which is not necessarily the same thing as evil, but let's go with hatred=evil for now) can be taught it can also be untaught. And if these people were as fanatical as you claim, why is it that the behavior of the overwhelming majority of refugees, the best evidence of how Palestinians would behave in the absence of a hostile occupation, suggests that Palestinians (like every other immigrant group) can assimilate just fine?

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40 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

This is a real war now.  Not a tit for tat “skirmish” or isolated air strike.  Are we really so naive to think wars can be conducted without civilians suffering, especially in a densely packed urban area like Gaza?

It’s hell.  It’s awful.  It should be avoided if at all possible.  Not invading your neighbor and killing 1,000+ civilians and kidnapping their women and children would have been a good choice to avoid it.  Now it’s going to happen, though.  Don’t start a war you can’t win.  Wars have winners and losers, and the history lessons are purely academic now.  Don’t light the powder keg if you’re going to be on the losing side. 

 

Avoiding war at all costs should be on Israel too but they’ve been allowed to poke the powder keg for decades and they do it intentionally knowing the international community will never criticize their actions. As far as don’t start a war you can’t win, Hamas isn’t waging war. They know they can’t win. It’s why their actions are by definition terrorism. Palestinians are incapable of winning a war with Israel, period. So the result by this theory is for Palestinians to just accept second class status as humans and submit to the Israeli rule. Good luck with that. I don’t think anyone here can honestly say that if that was their lot in life they’d just sit back and accept it for fear of being labeled an anti-Semite.

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15 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

1.) How The Holocaust was actually not pure evil, but instead a shade of gray.
2.) How is violent rape not evil, but a shade of gray? 
3.) How is strangling a 3 year old not pure evil, but a nuanced shade of gray?

Context matters.  #2 and #3 are not what he was talking about.  #1 is pretty much the exception that proves the rule.

He was pointing at Israel/Hamas.  Israel is not devoid of blame for mistreatment of Palestinians.  Does that justify Hamas' attack, and in particular the way it was carried out?  Of course not.

Come on.

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1 hour ago, Ted Lange said:

 

Im sure there are some, but at least here (I could've missed it) I don't think people were denying it, but were simply asking for it to be fact-checked/vetted before they started taking it as gospel.  Any time there is a major event it is littered with reports that turn out to be complete BS, over and over and over.   

The IDF has already stated that they don't have any evidence to confirm and will not investigate the claims, and that the accounts of their people are sufficient. The oz tweet thread linked was pushing back on the notion that the claims originated from one particular reporter, making the argument that the reporter was only relaying what they were told by one of the Israeli rescue workers. It's amazing how this fact pattern is being deployed. 

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Sorry to interrupt y’all’s black (and white) panther party, but is anyone else out off by several posters throwing around the “antisemitism” in the other thread? It seems to be used when someone questions a source or is concerned with innocent children who have absolutely no say it what is happening. Everything on Twitter/social media should be questioned and vetted. That isn’t antisemitism. Nor is expressing heartbreak for any child being slaughtered.

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6 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Context matters.  #2 and #3 are not what he was talking about.  #1 is pretty much the exception that proves the rule.

He was pointing at Israel/Hamas.  Israel is not devoid of blame for mistreatment of Palestinians.  Does that justify Hamas' attack, and in particular the way it was carried out?  Of course not.

Come on.

This all boils down to how explanations are not the same thing as justifications. Explanations are important to anyone who's genuinely interested in avoiding future incidents. In general, we should be careful not to accuse others of offering justifications when they're merely providing explanations.

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7 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Is your kid not three yet? Terrible twos is a joke.

He's about to turn 6. And yeah, he was delightful in the 2s. 

6 minutes ago, G650 said:

 

I mean, you don't even have to use those examples, even simple acts are not unequivocally good or bad. They can be mostly bad, even damn near 99.9% bad, yet still have positive effects. A young person is killed in a car wreck say. Pretty fucking tragic. Almost all bad, but the planet has ever so slightly less burden, which isn't. Nothing is 100%.

The entirety of critical analysis is parsing data and finding that line where it's bad enough and then coming up with remedies. And in most cases it's really fucking hard to do. There's obviously acts which are so blatant, it's an easy call. The Holocaust, duh, of course that was bad as fuck. Hamas atrocities in this attack, clearly really fucking awful, so why would you go to the strawman of "it's ok to denounce Hamas", well no shit, everyone is. I hope they kill everyone of the fuckers that participated in this. It's a wholly different subject than solving the intractable problem of Israel and Palestine though and people need to quit conflating the acute with the systemic.

 

Plus, anytime someone uses the words good and evil, it's a tipoff that a half baked emotional outburst is coming.

And I agree to disagree. And I'm going to be completely dismissive of the "still have positive effects." Sure, you can make chicken salad out of chicken shit, but that doesn't mean you weren't starting with utter shit. I'm sure there's plenty of women who have been violently raped, forced to carry a child to term for whatever reasons or pressures, and grew to love that child. And maybe that's one of the beatiful powerful things about humanity. But to sit here and try to retroactively disignate the act of violent rape upon an innocent victim as not purely evil becuase maybe the kid was good and the mom didn't hate it, well, thanks, but that's not really a mentalilty I believe in and am interested in adopting. 

Plenty of mothers might hate the fuck out of that kid, and that kid could have a shit childhood and become a miserable person too.

That line of thought also parallels too many republican talking points on why abortion should be entirely outlawed. And it's not too far to spin that shit around and say by blowing the entire Gaza strip to hell and killing every Palestinian alive, sure it's 99.9% horrible, but you know what maybe peace for Israel is acheived and it's not entirely a bad thing. You know what, fuck that whole concept. 

I would challenge you to find any post I've made on this thread that could be qualified as a half-baked, emotional outburst, sir. I get what you're saying, I just don't really agree with it. I don't think the world is as gray as you make out. It's plenty fucking gray, but there's plenty of black and fucking white as well. What Hamas has done is evil. Probably going to be a lot of evil bad shit in how Israel responds too. And yes, this subject is difficult and nuanced. But I will not use this wildly complicated thousands of years spanning issue to poo-poo the idea of the existence of black and white good and evil in this world, becuase that exists too. A fucking lot.

And yes, we're mostly in agreement. I just have this particular sticking point. 

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12 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

I didn't ask about inherent evil. But also, if hate (which is not necessarily the same thing as evil, but let's go with hatred=evil for now) can be taught it can also be untaught. And if these people were as fanatical as you claim, why is it that the behavior of the overwhelming majority of refugees, the best evidence of how Palestinians would behave in the absence of a hostile occupation, suggests that Palestinians (like every other immigrant group) can assimilate just fine?

I've addressed the likelihood of hate being "untaught" above. It's pretty fucking rare. 

11 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Context matters.  #2 and #3 are not what he was talking about.  #1 is pretty much the exception that proves the rule.

He was pointing at Israel/Hamas.  Israel is not devoid of blame for mistreatment of Palestinians.  Does that justify Hamas' attack, and in particular the way it was carried out?  Of course not.

Come on.

I'm really addressing a different point. He and I mostly agree, but I reject the notion that 99.% of the world is gray, not black and white. That's what I'm arguing. The rest we mostly agree with each other. 

 

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There are 45 countries in the world that impose severe restrictions on the rights to marry of their citizens,” explains Rabbi Uri Regev. “Israel is the only democracy in the world that falls into that category.” For not only does Israel not allow for Jews to marry non-Jews within the country, but neither is there provision for Jews to marry in any way other than that determined by the orthodox rabbinate – all-powerful in matters of Jewish matrimony and divorce. They don’t just prohibit inter-marriage, but also marriage between Jews whose lineage is considered uncertain.

Israel needs to get rid of archaic interfaith marriage laws if it wants to be considered a true democracy like the U.S.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I've addressed the likelihood of hate being "untaught" above. It's pretty fucking rare. 

I'm really addressing a different point. He and I mostly agree, but I reject the notion that 99.% of the world is gray, not black and white. That's what I'm arguing. The rest we mostly agree with each other. 

 

And yet the better evidence (refugee behavior) shows most Palestinians don't even have this "hate" in the first place, or at least whatever hate they have is manageable and hasn't caused any problems.

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11 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Sorry to interrupt y’all’s black (and white) panther party, but is anyone else out off by several posters throwing around the “antisemitism” in the other thread? It seems to be used when someone questions a source or is concerned with innocent children who have absolutely no say it what is happening. Everything on Twitter/social media should be questioned and vetted. That isn’t antisemitism. Nor is expressing heartbreak for any child being slaughtered.

I've lost track of much of that thread, but there are some guys in there throwing that kind of language around who I don't think have ever given a shit about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, so I've found their sudden moral outrage, um, interesting.

I did see Viper post a tweet from someone with 8888 in their twitter handle though, which ain't great. 

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1 hour ago, Ted Lange said:

 

Im sure there are some, but at least here (I could've missed it) I don't think people were denying it, but were simply asking for it to be fact-checked/vetted before they started taking it as gospel.  Any time there is a major event it is littered with reports that turn out to be complete BS, over and over and over.   

A story like that can be so incendiary, you'd better be fucking right.

 

1 hour ago, Huckleberry said:

You go too far with this line of thinking. In wartime I question the objectivity of any media outlet reporting on their home nation. That's not bigoted, it's logical. It's not anti-Christian to question an American reporter reporting on America in war and it's not anti-Semitic to question an Israeli reporter reporting on Israel. 

Especially since Americans are primarily going to be fed the Israeli point of view in this country. Bibi is an authoritarian, manipulative piece of shit and I don't believe a thing he says normally, much less during a time of war like this.

 

49 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

This is a real war now.  Not a tit for tat “skirmish” or isolated air strike.  Are we really so naive to think wars can be conducted without civilians suffering, especially in a densely packed urban area like Gaza?

It’s hell.  It’s awful.  It should be avoided if at all possible.  Not invading your neighbor and killing 1,000+ civilians and kidnapping their women and children would have been a good choice to avoid it.  Now it’s going to happen, though.  Don’t start a war you can’t win.  Wars have winners and losers, and the history lessons are purely academic now.  Don’t light the powder keg if you’re going to be on the losing side. 

 

Perhaps. But the way things stand today, IDF could very easily wipe out Hamas without indiscriminately leveling entire city blocks just because they can. This isn't like Truman's decision to either drop a couple of atomic bombs or risk 500,000 or more American servicemen lives with a full land invasion of Japan in WWII.

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5 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

And yet the better evidence (refugee behavior) shows most Palestinians don't even have this "hate" in the first place, or at least whatever hate they have is manageable and hasn't caused any problems.

I'm not sure what the percentages are, but man, the protests on college campuses, the graffiti, the gatherings all over the world in support of Palestine the last few days, including in Dallas where the guy was showing video of a dead Israeli boy going "That's your kid, look that's your kid" certainly does not indicate that despite maybe not being arrested for crimes, that Hate doesn't exist. Granted, it's anecdotal evidence. But saying there is no Hate certainly isn't the same as "they haven't acted on it...yet."

 

There are a lot of people who choose to live in America that still hate everything that America stands for...

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1 hour ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Has surly come up with the bare minimum requirements for reclaiming a homeland? Just curious because I have been eyeing this nice little town in the foothills of the Pyrenees with my surname.

Fuck yeah. I'm going to go to Ireland and claim County Galway since it was ruled over by my ancestral clan for a couple of centuries.

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19 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Sorry to interrupt y’all’s black (and white) panther party, but is anyone else out off by several posters throwing around the “antisemitism” in the other thread? It seems to be used when someone questions a source or is concerned with innocent children who have absolutely no say it what is happening. Everything on Twitter/social media should be questioned and vetted. That isn’t antisemitism. Nor is expressing heartbreak for any child being slaughtered.

Yes. It’s bullshit. The state of Israel and its military is not one and the same with the religious / ethnic group of Jewish people generally. One can wholeheartedly support the latter (including denouncing the barbaric acts of Hamas for what they are) while questioning or criticizing acts of the former. 

I certainly wouldn’t want the same illogic to apply to me as an American. We as a people are not the same as our government and foreign policy apparatus at any given time. I shouldn’t be judged for the stupidity of the Trump Administration, for example. Nor would I want friends abroad to condone that stupidity out of loyalty to me. 

tl;dr: apply a little nuance, y’all.

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1 minute ago, BrickHorn said:

Yes. It’s bullshit. The state of Israel and its military is not one and the same with the religious / ethnic group of Jewish people generally. One can wholeheartedly support the latter (including denouncing the barbaric acts of Hamas for what they are) while questioning or criticizing acts of the former. 

I certainly wouldn’t want the same illogic to apply to me as an American. We as a people are not the same as our government and foreign policy apparatus at any given time. I shouldn’t be judged for the stupidity of the Trump Administration, for example. Nor would I want friends abroad to condone that stupidity out of loyalty to me. 

Just to add to your point, the Israeli military as recently as last week was facing major threats of strike from soliders all the way up and down the command structure over Bibi's dismantling of the judiciary powers in Israel. 

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Yes. It’s bullshit. The state of Israel and its military is not one and the same with the religious / ethnic group of Jewish people generally. One can wholeheartedly support the latter (including denouncing the barbaric acts of Hamas for what they are) while questioning or criticizing acts of the former. 
I certainly wouldn’t want the same illogic to apply to me as an American. We as a people are not the same as our government and foreign policy apparatus at any given time. I shouldn’t be judged for the stupidity of the Trump Administration, for example. Nor would I want friends abroad to condone that stupidity out of loyalty to me. 
tl;dr: apply a little nuance, y’all.

Totally agree. Gonna kick the hornets nest now.
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7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I've lost track of much of that thread, but there are some guys in there throwing that kind of language around who I don't think have ever given a shit about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, so I've found their sudden moral outrage, um, interesting.

I did see Viper post a tweet from someone with 8888 in their twitter handle though, which ain't great. 

I don't know, I think you can care about one issue/war/area of the world more than the other based on personal connections and heritage and existing ancestry. So just because someone is more vocal and engaged about this situation over the Ukraine/Russian one doesn't mean they are not worthy of weighing in or are otherwise invalid.

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47 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Man, I was just about to say something similar.  It's rare that there is an objective truth.  Sure, profit margin and stress in a wing strut can be calculated with high precision.  The rest of the world tends to operate in the gray area, where blame is shared and 65/35 is common, and 90/10 isn't.  This, I suspect, is where we are.

"Blame" is its own concept.  As for how this particular situation got to be this bad at this time?  There's ABSOLUTELY blame sharing.  And the calculation is surely impossible to do with precision.  I'm certainly comfortable with a "there's plenty of blame to go around" statement - as I said above, Israel has super-unclean hands.

21 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This all boils down to how explanations are not the same thing as justifications. Explanations are important to anyone who's genuinely interested in avoiding future incidents. In general, we should be careful not to accuse others of offering justifications when they're merely providing explanations.

Agreed.  Understanding how and why we got here is a relevant inquiry.  But also....regardless of how and why we got here....here we are.  And then the question is "where do we go from here?"  It may be stupid, indefensible, and infuriating that this is where we are....but here we are, just the same.  So....where from here?

I'm sorry, I don't think a two-state solution is viable.  There's no way to have it without the Palestinian state being a source of continued killing of jews.  And even if by some miracle it wasn't....there are enough jewish hardliners who would commit enough provocations of the Palestinians to get them back on track of killing jews.

17 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I've addressed the likelihood of hate being "untaught" above. It's pretty fucking rare. 

This.  It's really, really, really, really, REALLY fucking hard to de-program millions of people from a lifetime of not just hate, but literally seeing jews as the worst creatures on the face of the earth.  Worse than disease, pestilence, etc.  The programming is so vile and so complete that there's no undoing it.

As to why every Palestinian in Germany, for example, isn't out killing jews: Even if most Palestinians believe that jews are vermin, not all of them are actively looking to pick up arms (they might happily provide economic and other support to Hamas, though).  Also, it's not as practical there.  Harder to kill jews in Germany.  Not as concentrated.  But, I mean....plenty of islamic terrorism and murder in Europe over the years, often with a Palestinian v. Israel message.  And, I mean...Munich.

There's a whole lot of "if Israel would just play nice, all would be hunky-dory," and there's a shitload of reason to believe that would NOT be the case.

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11 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I'm not sure what the percentages are, but man, the protests on college campuses, the graffiti, the gatherings all over the world in support of Palestine the last few days, including in Dallas where the guy was showing video of a dead Israeli boy going "That's your kid, look that's your kid" certainly does not indicate that despite maybe not being arrested for crimes, that Hate doesn't exist. Granted, it's anecdotal evidence. But saying there is no Hate certainly isn't the same as "they haven't acted on it...yet."

 

There are a lot of people who choose to live in America that still hate everything that America stands for...

This seems like a moving of the goalposts here. Whatever rhetoric there might be in the places one is likeliest to find it cannot be imputed to the overwhelming majority of refugees (and there's no link between actual refugees and the dipshit college kids you're talking about who are likely not even Palestinian). This may seem like a hard truth for many on here to accept, but people can sympathize with Palestine for reasons that have nothing to do with hating Jews.

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15 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This seems like a moving of the goalposts here. Whatever rhetoric there might be in the places one is likeliest to find it cannot be imputed to the overwhelming majority of refugees (and there's no link between actual refugees and the dipshit college kids you're talking about who are likely not even Palestinian). This may seem like a hard truth for many on here to accept, but people can sympathize with Palestine for reasons that have nothing to do with hating Jews.

Sure they can.

I sympathize with innocent Palestinians who do not support genocide.  There are many such people.  I have long thought that Israel's approach to Palestinians and particularly the occupied territories is heavy-handed, counter-productive, and often criminal.  Don't mistake any of my posts as putting a white hat on Israel, or not sympathizing with innocent civilians.

But it is undeniable that the Palestinian CAUSE is in the hands of murderous genocidal shitbags, who have a shitload of support.  Hamas is not a "fringe group."  The belief that jews must be pushed into the sea and/or exterminated is not a "fringe belief."  Discounting those things as such is dishonest.

What came before -- good acts, bad acts, what have you -- doesn't much matter when you reach the point where one side's position boils down to "exterminate the other side."  That is a position from which no good-faith negotiation can occur.  And the most prominent actors on behalf of the Palestinian cause, who have significant popular support, take that exact position.  Until that is no longer a widely acceptable position in Palestinian society, no good-faith negotiations can happen.

Lots of sympathy for innocent Palestinians.

No absolution for Israel.

I am 100% on board with both principles.

But once we get past them, where do we go when "genocide" as a stated goal is the primary goal on the table?  We go to war.  That's where we go.  It's where humanity goes every time it's on the table (well, you either go to war, or you go to the death camps.  Those are the two choices).

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8 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Lulz. I linked in the news thread a yahoo news article where Bernie Sanders gave his opinion about the situation and specifically the siege of Gaza. Post is gone now.

Any mods want to help me understand that?

I'm not a mod, but "I'm gonna kick the hornet's nest".  Clearly you know better and tried to steer that thread off the rails.

@blacklab specifically asked me if I thought your post was CR and I told him yes.  So feel free to neg or bitch at me, 'cause I'm probably the reason it got deleted.

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25 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This seems like a moving of the goalposts here. Whatever rhetoric there might be in the places one is likeliest to find it cannot be imputed to the overwhelming majority of refugees (and there's no link between actual refugees and the dipshit college kids you're talking about who are likely not even Palestinian). This may seem like a hard truth for many on here to accept, but people can sympathize with Palestine for reasons that have nothing to do with hating Jews.

I mean at this point, we're talking past each other. You're claiming I'm moving the goalposts. I see your post as "the overwhelming majority of refugees" while offering no statistics, support, or numbers and immediately dismissing my anecdotal evidence (which I admitted) with a wave of the hand saying "Eh, they probably weren't even REAL Palestinians in the first place!". I mean, what do you expect me to do with that kind of response? 

I do sympathize with Palestine, and I ceratinly don't hate Jews. I fucking sympathize with the women in Iran. I symathize with most of the middle east which operates under a fucked up authoaritarian patriarchal bullshit and lives in the fucking middle ages. I sympathize with pretty much all the people in the world who have been incited to violence and been completely warped by the fanatacism exists within every organized religion in the fucking world. Which brings me back to my Sympathy for Palestinians. 

But you know what? The mass scale deprogramming of that kind of hate takes at best a full time occupation of a nation, takes generations, and a willingness to want to be fixed, and that isn't realistically happening. Sure, it could happen. Jesus could come down from heaven and heal all of our hate too. But that's not a the plan for peace in the middle east I'm willing to bet upon. And I'm equally unmoved by your notion that "they're mostly good people" despite massive protests worldwide in support or Palestine, many of which have people even right here in America revelling in the fucking horrible violence, simply becuase they haven't commmited a crime and dont want to go to fucking jail. Jesus, a fucking porn star, who's literaly career goes against pretty much all of the tenets of raidcal muslim idealogy yesterady posted for the terrorists to hold their phones sideways so she could better enjoy pictures of the carnage, and then she went on a Zionist rant about Playboy after they fired her ass. This is a woman who would be stoned to death in Gaza for what she's done with her life, sitting their cheering on Hamas. I'm sorry I'm not as blindly optimistic as you on the likelihood of radical deprogramming. 

I never try to assume the hearts of men, good or bad. But I guess I'm prone to to assume the worst. 

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2 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

You go too far with this line of thinking. In wartime I question the objectivity of any media outlet reporting on their home nation. That's not bigoted, it's logical. It's not anti-Christian to question an American reporter reporting on America in war and it's not anti-Semitic to question an Israeli reporter reporting on Israel. 

Again, context matters.  Only the Jews are routinely accused of making up the fact of their own genocide to advance their own interests. Coincidentally, that is the official position of the group that murdered* many children in their homes, because those children are Jews. 

So it’s reasonable to say “wait for the international press” when you want war reporting. But when you read a sourced, quoted article in the Times of London and then jump in to flag as suspicious that the reporter:

1. Has a Jewish name and reports from Israel

2. Wrote a (highly critical) biography of a polarizing Israeli politician 

Then sorry, you’re playing into the old trope. And it’s not just a trope that does theoretical damage, the lie that Jews routinely tell falsehoods about their own genocide and pogroms is part of the motivation behind every single attack on Jews in Israel and beyond since the end of World War II.

*Babies only confirmed murdered and mutilated in general by IDF PA personnel, no official word on decapitations.

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