Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

No, he is not a Zionist. It doesn't help to throw labels around. What's your stake in all this to be so over-the-top about it?

What do you think that Israel should do when Hamas killed 1,200 civilians with rockets and kidnapped another two hundred?

1) Surrender and dissolve the state of Israel. That seems the popular option here, weirdly.

2) Promise not to encroach any further. That would reward aggression, and only encourage more of it.

3) Kill exactly 1,200 Palestinians and kidnap 200 more. That would trigger tit-for-tat attacks.

4) Decide that always being under threat of sudden attack is intolerable and try to end Hamas once and for all. That's what Israel is trying to do, even if Hamas has hidden much military infrastructure under hospitals.

If another nation killed 1,200 civilians in your country, what response would you want from your government?

[Stoppelmann]

No, he is not a Zionist. It doesn't help to throw labels around. What's your stake in all this to be so over-the-top about it?

What do you think that Israel should do when Hamas killed 1,200 civilians with rockets and kidnapped another two hundred?

1) Surrender and dissolve the state of Israel. That seems the popular option here, weirdly.

2) Promise not to encroach any further. That would reward aggression, and only encourage more of it.

3) Kill exactly 1,200 Palestinians and kidnap 200 more. That would trigger tit-for-tat attacks.

4) Decide that always being under threat of sudden attack is intolerable and try to end Hamas once and for all. That's what Israel is trying to do, even if Hamas has hidden much military infrastructure under hospitals.

If another nation killed 1,200 civilians in your country, what response would you want from your government?

Hyperbole, as though the attack in October was the start of the conflict. Typically what ideologists do, so really the question is what's your stake in this? Everybody knows that the Hamas leadership is in Qatar, so who are they wiping out?

Besides, if an anti-terrorist strategy in Australia, Europe or America was to bomb the position where you think terrorists are, no matter how much "collateral damage" (which is not just buildings, but human beings, mainly children) is incurred, what would our reaction be?

It is the narrative that "Palestinians are animals" or "just shields" that attempts to excuse such behaviour, but all the time, it just strengthens the resolve to resist. We saw it in WWII when partisan groups held out whilst fighting the Nazis. We have seen it throughout history, whenever world powers like Britain were ousted by resistance of the indigenous people. The way the West differentiates makes us all oppressors and only pushes the Arab nations into the welcoming arms of Russia. We are so stupid because we have this narrow-minded, reductionist, mechanistic and over-rational perspective, that knows how to start things but doesn't know how to stop them. Sorcerer's apprentices, all of us.

[Stoppelmann]

A satirical approach:

After repeatedly bombing the Al-Shifa hospital, depriving it of power and medicines, opening fire on it, killing doctors, nurses and patients, letting premature babies die from lack of ventilators, and forcing surgeons to carry out operations without pain relief, Israel has proven these actions were entirely justified. This is because it has located the base and tunnel network that, according to old media reports, Israel built under Al-Shifa hospital in 1983.
After courageously battling an elite guard of three-year-olds armed with assault rifles who yelled: “Death to the infidels” as they opened fire, the IDF headed down a secret access point called a “stairway” with red hand-prints on the walls and the words: “Do not proceed,” apparently written in blood.
Israel’s fearless soldiers did indeed proceed, not knowing what horrors might await them, and that’s when they discovered a dusty old room with the words: “Secret underground Hamas command centre,” written on the wall. A shelf contained books entitled: “How to launch stray rockets from graveyards,” and: “Tricking Israel into blowing up human shields,” as well as the world’s largest collection of “Mein Kampf for babies”.
Even worse, the room contained all of the fuel and medicine that Israel had kindly given to the hospital because it wanted to save all of the civilians it had chosen to attack for no reason. There was a note beside the stash which read: “Haha, our stupid hospital isn’t getting the things it needs so we can make Israel look bad when they rain bombs and open fire on it, day in, day out.”
Further searching revealed an address book lying open on the reception desk, containing the details of every member of Hamas. The list included every civilian in Gaza, every member of Doctors Without Borders, every representative of the United Nations, every journalist from Al-Jazeera, and Jeremy Corbyn. This explains so much.
Now that Israel’s alternative facts have shockingly proven to be true, the mainstream media unanimously agrees Netanyahu is entirely justified in reducing every hospital in Gaza to rubble because this is the only way to liberate the people of Palestine who they totally care about x

Laura K from Normal Island News normalislandnews@substack.com

[Sculptor1]

The nub of the problem.

youtube dot com/watch?v=-RB4IsSKx2M

[Lagayascienza]

Stoppelmann Great satire! Sounds about right to me.

Stop the needless killing, negotiate a cessation of hostilities based on the freeing of hostages and on a believable path to statehood for the Palestinians on their own lands. And to hell with both their damned religions. If there were a hell. Which there's not.

[Pattern-chaser]

Jewish terrorists should never have been appeased in 1948 by giving them someone else's land...

Seems to me that this is the core of your position. You see the acts of 1948 as unjust, and desire to see them undone.

Not the core, but the starting point? I do see the acts of 1948 as unwise and unjust, but it is too late now to undo them. The situation has become a great deal more complex than that, in the intervening period. [And its history goes 2000+ years back from the present anyway, as we know. This complicates matters further.]

A just solution to this issue is complex, maybe impossible. It's all got too involved, over too long. But we do need such a settlement, so we search, as this topic encourages us to do...

[Consul]

"Gaza: UN experts decry bombing of hospitals and schools as crimes against humanity, call for prevention of genocide"

Someone begs to differ:

"Opinion: I’m an expert in urban warfare. Israel is upholding the laws of war"

[Consul]

You really are a Zionist aren't you! The fact that an important opposition to Zionist claims came from Arab Jews, who had lived in harmony for hundreds of years, that in Muslim countries there are even Jewish museums displaying the influence of the Jews on their society, seems to completely be ignored in your propaganda for Zionist policies. The ruling party has a history of destructive policies that have, from the very beginning, wanted to take the land back and millions were pushed into Lebanon in 1948.

You are whitewashing the apartheid government of Israel and the atrocious revenge of the IDF, despite the fact that Israeli Newspapers have shown that the Israelis do not hold to their eye for an eye, but even shoot at their own citizens in order to kill terrorists. This mechanistic, inhumane approach is in keeping with calling Palestinians "animals" and dehumanising the whole population.

I'm a pro-Israelist, that is, I think the state of Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself against those who think it hasn't. I deny that Israel is an apartheid state, but I'm not "whitewashing" any actual wrongdoings committed by Israelis, whatever these are. Being pro-Israel doesn't mean blindly being pro-Netanyahu. However, what you call "the atrocious revenge of the IDF" I call a justified military reaction against a mortal enemy who knows no humanitarian rules of war.

"Of course the vociferous pro-Palestinian “progressives” will argue that a disproportionality of deaths is what matters, but there’s also a disproportionality of intent. Israel is interested in uprooting Hamas, not killing Gazan civilians (the IDF knows how damaging a high civilian death toll is to world opinion, which will affect the course of the war). In contrast Hamas is interested in killing Jews, civilians or not, and in fact prefers civilians, as they’re not armed." – Jerry Coyne: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/11/ ... ws-of-war/

[Consul]

Consider "Queers for Palestine", for example. That was pure virtue signalling because Palestine is hostile towards LGBT+ rights. Really, they should be protesting against Palestine for queer rights, but they instead follow the mainstream media in whipping up hatred against Israel for defending itself.

I'm sure Hamas is so grateful for that queer support that they will soon hoist the rainbow flag over their headquarters.

[Consul]

Stop the needless killing…

There is an existential need for Israel to kill the Hamas members and to destroy the network supporting them!
If you think the unintentional killing of civilians—as a highly regrettable yet hardly avoidable "price of war", especially in the hellish situation of urban warfare—is never justifiable, then no war is ever justifiable.

[Sy Borg]

Consider "Queers for Palestine", for example. That was pure virtue signalling because Palestine is hostile towards LGBT+ rights. Really, they should be protesting against Palestine for queer rights, but they instead follow the mainstream media in whipping up hatred against Israel for defending itself.

I'm sure Hamas is so grateful for that queer support that they will soon hoist the rainbow flag over their headquarters.

There's strong feminist support for Palestine too. Where were these feminist protesters while Arab women were being oppressed? Why weren't they marching in the streets about that?

[Consul]

If you think the unintentional killing of civilians—as a highly regrettable yet hardly avoidable "price of war", especially in the hellish situation of urban warfare—is never justifiable, then no war is ever justifiable.

And, again, let's not forget that Hamas is ultimately responsible for all Palestinian civilians unintentionally killed by the IDF in their fight against Hamas!

If Hitler had built his Führerbunker under a hospital, would we regard the bombing of it by the Allies as an inexcusable war crime?

[Consul]

I'm sure Hamas is so grateful for that queer support that they will soon hoist the rainbow flag over their headquarters.

There's strong feminist support for Palestine too. Where were these feminist protesters while Arab women were being oppressed? Why weren't they marching in the streets about that?

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
—Matthew 7:3

The Woke Left sees only "anti-Muslim racism" & "Islamophobia" and overlooks Muslim/Islamic sexism & homophobia, which are rampant in the Oriental world.

[Consul]

The Woke Left sees only "anti-Muslim racism" & "Islamophobia" and overlooks Muslim/Islamic sexism & homophobia, which are rampant in the Oriental world.

I forgot to mention Islamic anti-Semitism!

[Consul]

The Woke Left's anti-Semitism/anti-Israelism results from their overall perspective on the perennial conflict between Arabs and Jews: They generally regard the Arabs as oppressed people of color, and the Jews as oppressing white people (with whiteness = badness).