Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[NoHolyCows]

Exactly. Their jobs do not matter, as they do not prove that they were not also combatants.

Then you’ve just admitted the core problem: flipping the burden of proof. Under international law, civilians are presumed protected unless there’s clear evidence they’re directly participating in hostilities. If your position is “their job doesn’t prove innocence,” you’ve abandoned that presumption entirely.

That’s not how lawful warfare works. It’s how targeting becomes suspicion-based killing—and why so many civilians, including journalists, keep dying without accountability.

We as public rarely have access to such operational evidence and as such should not presume that non exists and that the strikes are unlawful.

That’s exactly why the burden isn’t on civilians to prove their innocence—it’s on the military to justify its strikes. If evidence exists, it must be documented and accountable. Otherwise, “just trust us” becomes a license to kill without scrutiny. That’s not justice. That’s impunity.

Support often involves actions. Like operating rocket launchers or agreeing to keep hostages captive.

Exactly—and those are actions that would strip someone of civilian protections. But unless there’s specific evidence that a person operated a rocket launcher or held a hostage, they remain a civilian. That’s how the law works. You don’t kill first and guess later.

Somebody does not have to carry a personal weapon to be a combatant. That in itself is not evidence of non-involvement.

True—but the burden of proof still matters. Wearing a symbol or living in Gaza isn’t enough to strip someone of protection. Without concrete evidence of active participation, you’re not targeting combatants—you’re targeting assumptions. That’s not justice. It’s a war crime.

The question is not which is "majority", especially when you add up two different groups to get to a slight majority (55%). If two groups that together comprise 75% of the population, but only 55% of the dead, then they are significantly underrepresented among the dead.
I do not understand your point about Hamas numbers. If they have a vested interest in exaggerating civilian deaths, and downplaying combatant deaths, then in reality <55% of the dead are probably "women and children".

If even Hamas—who you say exaggerates—admits 55% of the dead are women and children, then the real number could be higher, not lower. And claiming they’re “underrepresented” in death relative to population size ignores the core issue: tens of thousands of civilians are still dead. The goal isn’t demographic proportionality—it’s preventing unlawful killing.

I am not saying people should be profiled and targeted based on age and gender alone.
I am saying that if we look at fatality distribution, and IDF is targeting combatants, then we would expect to see disproportionally many fatalities belonging to demographic slices that combatants belong to. Most combatants are males between 15 and 45, and that's what we see in the data. Therefore, even Hamas data is consistent with the fact that IDF is targeting combatants rather than indiscriminately bombing neighborhoods.

That logic only holds if you have independent proof that those fatalities were fighters. But you’re inferring combatant status from the result, not proving it. Civilian protection doesn’t vanish because someone fits a demographic profile. That’s not data analysis—it’s reverse-engineered justification.

It is the Hamas et al that makee things more dangerous for civilians. Why should we not blame them for it?

Because blaming Hamas for putting civilians at risk doesn’t erase Israel’s obligation not to kill them. You don’t get to shift responsibility for civilian deaths just because the enemy is immoral. That’s not how law—or ethics—works.

These criminals are targeting civilians. Like Hamas.

Then condemn them both. But don’t use one crime to excuse another. If targeting civilians is wrong, it’s wrong—no matter who does it. That’s what moral consistency means.

Then show where IDF bombed indiscriminately and I will condemn it. But saying that many civilians came to harm without condemning Hamas et al for putting them in that danger is what's depraved.

If you’re only willing to condemn civilian deaths when they’re “indiscriminate,” but always shift blame to Hamas the moment they occur, then you’re not applying a standard—you’re creating an excuse. Restraint isn’t just about intention; it’s about outcome. And when the outcome is mass civilian death, the burden is on the power delivering the bombs—not just the one hiding behind the people hit by them.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

This is lame. There's very little difference between Nazi Germany and Hamas Gaza. They have so many things in common. Stop making excuses for extremists.

Germany also blamed the Jews and blamed the post WWI occupation and reparations for their attack on Poland.

I suggest you take a long hard look at yourself and what you base your opinions on. You seem to be a nice guy with your heart in the right place. But you've clearly been taken in by the antizionist propaganda.

Me and Derec are on opposite sides ideologically. Yet, you managed to get me to defend him. Well done.

You’re not arguing. You’re emoting—and comparing an imprisoned, stateless population under decades of military blockade to Nazi Germany isn’t just obscene, it’s historically illiterate. Hamas is a militant group in a fractured, besieged territory. Nazi Germany was a global military power with sovereign control, industrialized genocide, and the ability to wage world war. The only thing they “have in common” is that you need a villain extreme enough to launder collective punishment into moral necessity.

And no—I’m not “making excuses for extremists.” I’m refusing to let extremists on either side be used as human shields for bad arguments. You don’t defend human rights by abandoning them the moment they become inconvenient. You don’t defend Israel by turning Gaza into Warsaw and pretending it’s self-defense.

If you’re this quick to collapse history, law, and morality into slogans, then it’s not your ideological opponent who needs the long, hard look. It’s you.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

No its not. Its the opposite of essentialism. You seem to be just using long words you don't understand. As if you are just using words you have read in articles, but wrongly.

No, it is essentialism—because you’re reducing a diverse, global religion of over a billion people to a single “scaffolding of atrocity,” as if violence is its natural outgrowth. That’s not cultural analysis. That’s ideological profiling.

You talk about incentives and dynamics, but then flatten the outcome to “Muslims created this.” That’s exactly what essentialism is: treating complex sociopolitical conditions as if they spring inevitably from identity. If you actually believed cultures are dynamic, you wouldn’t speak about Islam like it’s a fixed, pathological code.

And spare me the lecture on “using long words.” I’m not throwing jargon around—I’m naming what you’re doing. You’re trying to dress up a sweeping generalization in intellectual language. But underneath it, it’s just the same old argument: blame the culture, not the context.

That’s not clarity. It’s the scaffolding of dehumanization.

Again. Word salad

Calling it “word salad” doesn’t make the point go away. You generalized about 1.9 billion Muslims by labeling “modern Islam” as inherently violent, and then used that framing to justify the suffering of civilians in Gaza. That’s not analysis. That’s cultural indictment as moral cover.

If someone said “modern Judaism” created a culture of apartheid or repression, you’d call it antisemitic—and you’d be right. So when you say “modern Islam” produced atrocity by design, don’t pretend you’re above the thing you’d condemn in reverse.

Dismissing that with “word salad” is just a lazy dodge from a very real accusation: you’re not critiquing ideology. You’re using ideology to excuse brutality.

I see no arguments. You’re just making (rediculous) statements

No, you just don’t like the mirror. You reduced 2 billion people to a threat, claimed their religion inherently breeds atrocity, and then called the pushback “ridiculous” instead of addressing it.

That’s not argument. That’s projection. And if you can’t tell the difference between critiquing extremism and indicting an entire faith, then you’re not offering analysis—you’re offering fuel.

Stop reading antisemitic propaganda

That’s not an argument—it’s deflection. If describing facts on the ground feels like “antisemitic propaganda” to you, maybe the problem isn’t the facts. It’s what they reveal.

Culture is what people do. They did it. So it's part of their culture. Reality doesn't care that it offends your slogans.

If “culture is what people do,” then colonialism, apartheid, and genocide are also “just culture.” But we don’t excuse atrocities by rebranding them as sociology. What you’re defending isn’t realism—it’s a worldview that strips people of moral worth based on where they live and who governs them. That’s not clarity. That’s complicity.

This is so wrong I see no point in replying.

When someone walks away not because the argument is weak—but because it hits too close to the truth—that’s not a rebuttal. It’s a retreat.

You can’t defend domination, call it generosity, and expect no one to call it out. If your position crumbles the moment it’s held up to the mirror of facts, history, and basic human rights, then the silence that follows isn’t strength. It’s surrender.

You are right. I don't have an answer to word salad. Because the meaning of what you are trying to say is lost in your jibberish.

If the meaning were truly lost, you wouldn’t keep reacting to it.

Calling it “jibberish” is just a dodge—a way to avoid grappling with the substance without admitting you’re doing so. Because deep down, you do understand what’s being said. You just don’t like where it leads: that the powerful can’t wash their hands of responsibility by blaming the weak for their own suffering.

If you had a real counterargument, you’d make it. But you didn’t. And that silence says more than any insult.

Good that we agree that I didn't say it.

You didn’t say it. But you keep defending the outcomes that follow from it.

That’s the problem. You want to distance yourself from the conclusion while still holding onto every premise that leads to it. But if you keep saying an entire population is shaped by a culture of violence, that their suffering is just the natural result of their “choices,” and that war crimes are unfortunate but understandable given who they are—then you don’t need to say the quiet part out loud. You’ve already made it loud in everything else.

Israel has been showing restraint. Starting a war when your opponent has all the power is retarded. The ONLY reason Gaza had self rule is because Israel let them. And you frame it as oppression.

Its just like everyone just hates the Jews no matter what they do

If this is your idea of “restraint,” then words have lost their meaning. Flattening entire neighborhoods, bombing refugee camps, and blockading food and medicine aren’t acts of generosity—they’re not even justifiable as military necessity when they consistently kill civilians in numbers that shock even seasoned war reporters. That’s not restraint. That’s unchecked power rationalized after the fact.

And no—this isn’t about “hating Jews.” That’s a cheap shield against real accountability. Criticizing a government’s actions—especially those that violate international law—is not antisemitism. In fact, conflating the two is dangerous. It silences legitimate moral and legal critique by pretending every objection is rooted in bigotry.

You say Gaza only had self-rule because Israel “let them.” Think about that sentence. If you get to give someone self-rule, then by definition they never had it. That’s not independence—it’s permission. And revoking it by siege, blockade, and bombardment isn’t security. It’s domination.

You want to talk about the roots of extremism? Start there. Because nothing fuels radicalization like telling an entire population that their dignity, freedom, and safety hinge on the mood of their occupier.

Stop making excuses for Hamas. Its pretty distasteful

Insisting on the protection of civilians is not making excuses for Hamas—it’s upholding the most basic principle of humanitarian law. If you can’t tell the difference between defending civilians and defending terrorists, that’s not on me. That’s on a worldview that’s collapsed morality into tribal loyalty.

What’s actually distasteful is pretending that concern for human life somehow equals complicity. If you think defending civilian rights is the same as siding with Hamas, then you’ve already lost the plot—and the moral ground.

Bullshit

That response says more than you intended. When you can’t refute the point, you dismiss it with profanity. But the principle stands: condemning Hamas and holding Israel to international law is not hypocrisy—it’s integrity. If your standard only applies to your enemies, it was never a standard. It was just a slogan.

NHC

 

[Playball40]

This is just heartbreaking.

Gaza influencer, 11, among dozens of children killed by recent Israeli strikes | First Thing

Yaqeen Hammad is one of dozens of minors killed by Israeli attacks. Plus, US faces another summer of extreme heat

www.theguardian.com

 

[DrZoidberg]

No its not. Its the opposite of essentialism. You seem to be just using long words you don't understand. As if you are just using words you have read in articles, but wrongly.

No, it is essentialism—because you’re reducing a diverse, global religion of over a billion people to a single “scaffolding of atrocity,” as if violence is its natural outgrowth. That’s not cultural analysis. That’s ideological profiling.

You talk about incentives and dynamics, but then flatten the outcome to “Muslims created this.” That’s exactly what essentialism is: treating complex sociopolitical conditions as if they spring inevitably from identity. If you actually believed cultures are dynamic, you wouldn’t speak about Islam like it’s a fixed, pathological code.

And spare me the lecture on “using long words.” I’m not throwing jargon around—I’m naming what you’re doing. You’re trying to dress up a sweeping generalization in intellectual language. But underneath it, it’s just the same old argument: blame the culture, not the context.

That’s not clarity. It’s the scaffolding of dehumanization.

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

Again. Word salad

Calling it “word salad” doesn’t make the point go away. You generalized about 1.9 billion Muslims by labeling “modern Islam” as inherently violent, and then used that framing to justify the suffering of civilians in Gaza. That’s not analysis. That’s cultural indictment as moral cover.

You have a point?

If someone said “modern Judaism” created a culture of apartheid or repression, you’d call it antisemitic—and you’d be right. So when you say “modern Islam” produced atrocity by design, don’t pretend you’re above the thing you’d condemn in reverse.

I don’t understand your problem with this. I'm describing a thing that really happened. I'm sorry reality doesn't conform to your confused ideological filters

Dismissing that with “word salad” is just a lazy dodge from a very real accusation: you’re not critiquing ideology. You’re using ideology to excuse brutality.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say, and also I think you don't understand what you are trying to say

I see no arguments. You’re just making (rediculous) statements

No, you just don’t like the mirror. You reduced 2 billion people to a threat, claimed their religion inherently breeds atrocity, and then called the pushback “ridiculous” instead of addressing it.

That’s not argument. That’s projection. And if you can’t tell the difference between critiquing extremism and indicting an entire faith, then you’re not offering analysis—you’re offering fuel.

No I didn’t. Islam today breeds atrocity. Buy it didn’t always. I would like Islam to go back to what it was a hundred years ago. That would be nice

 

[NoHolyCows]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

No—I didn’t “learn” anything from you except how badly you’ve misunderstood the word you’re trying to weaponize.

Essentialism isn’t just about whether people can change. It’s about claiming that people are a certain way because of what group they belong to. When you say Islam itself produces atrocity, or that Gaza’s population behaves a certain way because of “Muslim culture,” you’re not analyzing actions—you’re attributing identity-based essence. That’s textbook essentialism.

You’ve confused it with immutability, which is about whether something can change. But essentialism is broader: it says the reason people act the way they do is because of some fixed, defining trait—like race, religion, or culture. And that is exactly what you’re doing when you blame atrocities on “what Islam does.”

So no—you didn’t teach me anything. But thanks for accidentally proving my point: when you reduce entire populations to a cultural “scaffolding of atrocity,” you’re not describing behavior—you’re branding an identity.

And that’s not insight. That’s ideological profiling in a cheap academic disguise.

You have a point?

Yes, the point is this: You’re not critiquing ideology. You’re blaming an entire religion for the actions of some, then using that blame to excuse the suffering of millions. That’s not logic—it’s scapegoating.

You framed “modern Islam” as a “scaffolding of atrocity.” That’s not a critique of extremists—that’s an indictment of 1.9 billion people, and especially the ones being bombed. When you reduce entire populations to ideological threats, you’re not analyzing. You’re just justifying their dehumanization.

So yes—I have a point. You just don’t like what it says about your argument.

I don’t understand your problem with this. I'm describing a thing that really happened. I'm sorry reality doesn't conform to your confused ideological filters

No—you’re not just “describing a thing that happened.” You’re claiming that an entire religion is the engine behind it. That’s the problem.

You didn’t say “some extremists within Islam committed atrocities.” You said “modern Islam” produced them—full stop. That’s not a description of facts. That’s a sweeping cultural judgment. And if someone said “modern Judaism” produced occupation or “modern Christianity” produced colonial slaughter, you’d call it bigotry. So why pretend it’s objectivity when it’s about Muslims?

You don’t get to universalize blame and then hide behind “just stating facts.” That’s not reality. That’s rhetoric designed to excuse cruelty. And history knows exactly where that leads.

No I didn’t. Islam today breeds atrocity. Buy it didn’t always. I would like Islam to go back to what it was a hundred years ago. That would be nice

You just moved the goalposts. First you blamed “modern Islam” as a whole. Now you say you’d like it to be like it was “a hundred years ago”—as if Islam is a monolith that changed on a schedule.

Islam today isn’t one thing. It’s 2 billion people across dozens of cultures, languages, and political systems—from feminist reformers in Indonesia to secular Muslims in France to autocrats in the Gulf. You’re collapsing all of that into a single narrative of violence to justify collective suspicion—and you still haven’t shown how that’s anything but ideological profiling.

Want to critique extremism? Fine. But stop pretending your generalizations are insight. They’re not. They’re just dressed-up prejudice.

NHC

 

[pood]

So we're not allowed to analyse and talk about the behaviour of groups because we're afraid of dehumanising them? What crack are you smoking? You're not making any sense.

Groups of people do stuff. People respond to incentives. Cultures are dynamic systems where the different parts influence eachother. People just do stuff that works out for them personally. Somehow Muslims managed to create a "ideological scaffolding of atrocity" that led to the 7/10 attacks. We've got to be allowed to talk about that. If we don't, I'm pretty sure Islam will continue to build even more ideological scaffolding of atrocity. And I think that's a bad thing.

You’re right that we should be able to talk about cultures, incentives, and ideologies. But what you’re doing isn’t analysis—it’s essentialism.

No its not. Its the opposite of essentialism. You seem to be just using long words you don't understand. As if you are just using words you have read in articles, but wrongly.

You have no idea what is wrong with what he said.

You didn’t isolate extremist ideologies or power structures. You painted “modern Islam” as a civilizational engine of violence and implied that 2.2 million Gazans are shaped by a culture so broken, it justifies siege and bombardment. That’s not critique. That’s dehumanization with academic window dressing.

Again. Word salad

Having had your ass throughly handed to you by NHC and others, it is telling about yourself, and not in a good way, that you dismiss the tightly reasoned arguments of perhaps this board’s most articulate poster as “word salad.” You are projecting. Your posts are defenses of genocide and slurs against the entire Islamic world, most of whom live in relative peace.

There’s a difference between saying “some Muslims have adopted an ideology rooted in violence” and saying “Islam produces atrocity unless we do something about it.” The first is analysis. The second is justification for collective suspicion, fear, and punishment. You’re not diagnosing a problem. You’re building a moral case for abandoning empathy.

I see no arguments. You’re just making (rediculous) statements

This is what happens when you are exposed and beaten. “Nyah-nyah-naah,” it’s you not me!”

And it’s spelled “ridiculous.”

Yes, groups respond to incentives. But what are the incentives in Gaza? Decades of blockade, military occupation, economic suffocation, and international neglect. If you strip a population of rights, isolate them politically, bomb them periodically, and then demand they produce a liberal democracy or else—it’s not just dishonest. It’s rigged.

Stop reading antisemitic propaganda

What he wrote is the exact truth of the matter.

Hamas is a problem. So are ideologies that glorify martyrdom or civilian targeting. But if your takeaway is that Islam itself is the source of the violence—and that entire populations are incubators of atrocity—then you’ve crossed from critique into the very logic that has justified every ethnic cleansing campaign in history.

We can and should talk about violent ideologies. But we cannot—must not—allow that conversation to become cover for reducing whole peoples to threats, and their deaths to inevitabilities.

Culture is what people do. They did it. So it's part of their culture. Reality doesn't care that it offends your slogans.

And it deeply offends you, obviously, that the vast majority of Muslims do not practice violence and are not Hamas. Offends you so much that you make shit up.

Israel has historically been super nice to the Gazans. Super super nice. While the Gazans have only treated them like shit.... scratch that. Loads of Gazan Palestinians got with the program and decided to live in peace with the Jews. Which is why loads of Muslims are Israeli citizens and get on just fine within Israeli society. I'm talking about the other Palestinians. The one's for whatever reason cannot accept treating Jews as their equal. Those are the problem.

You framing extreme arrogance and beligerence as being oppressed.. is a fucking joke.

Calling a decades-long blockade, military occupation, land seizures, and mass displacement “super nice” is not just dishonest—it’s delusional. You don’t get to cage a population, bomb them, control their air, borders, economy, and movement, and then call it generosity when they don’t disappear quietly.

Yes, many Palestinian citizens of Israel live peacefully within Israeli society. But they’re not the Gazans. You know that. Gaza is not part of Israel. It’s under siege. Its people have no vote in the government that controls their lives, no freedom of movement, and no citizenship rights. They are stateless, occupied, and controlled.

So when you say “the problem is the Palestinians who don’t treat Jews as equals,” flip it: who controls whose borders? Whose water? Whose freedom to leave, trade, or build? You can’t claim to want equality while maintaining domination.

As for “arrogance and belligerence”—you’re applying that label to a population that’s been systematically denied the tools of statehood, stripped of land, and bombarded repeatedly. You’re calling the response to decades of structural violence “a joke.” But nothing is more arrogant than demanding submission from the oppressed, then blaming them for resisting.

You say you want peace. But what you’re defending isn’t peace—it’s control, disguised as patience, wrapped in the language of superiority. And that’s not a roadmap to coexistence. It’s the moral license for indefinite punishment.

This is so wrong I see no point in replying.

Hopelessly beaten and publicly giving up. No argument against the truth, right?

I think this is jibberish. I think this is social studies academia words in a word salad to trigger strong (and misplaced) emotional reactions. This kind of emotional manipulation, in the guise of social justice, is where I think most evil comes from.

Calling it “word salad” doesn’t make it untrue. It just shows you have no answer.

There’s nothing academic or abstract about a blockade, a military occupation, or a stateless people being denied movement, sovereignty, and basic human rights. That’s not “social studies lingo”—it’s reality, backed by UN reports, human rights documentation, and decades of lived experience. If describing that reality makes you uncomfortable, maybe it’s not because it’s manipulative. Maybe it’s because it’s accurate.

You say this kind of language is where “evil comes from.” But here’s the irony: the actual evil is not in naming oppression—it’s in justifying it. The real manipulation is pretending that domination is defense, that resistance is barbarism, and that criticizing power is somehow more dangerous than power itself.

What you’re rejecting isn’t emotional manipulation. You’re rejecting accountability—because you’re not ready to accept that the people suffering aren’t just symbols, but human beings who deserve justice too.

You are right. I don't have an answer to word salad. Because the meaning of what you are trying to say is lost in your jibberish.

Aw, look at the poor guy who didn’t even know that the majority-Muslim nation Indonesia is a democracy accusing others of spouting, and misspelling, “gibberish.”

I guess it's lucky I didn't do that then.

You didn’t use those exact words—but that’s exactly what your logic does.

You’ve repeatedly framed Gaza’s population as shaped by a “culture of atrocity,” claimed that “modern Islam” produces terrorism, and called Palestinians “arrogant and belligerent” rather than oppressed. You’ve rationalized collective punishment as “consequences,” dismissed humanitarian suffering as “karma,” and defended policies that target entire civilian populations on the grounds that Hamas governs them.

You don’t have to spell it out explicitly. The implication is already baked into the way you justify what’s happening. And if you really don’t believe that an entire people is tainted, then the arguments you’ve made don’t hold. Because you’ve excused their suffering not on what they’ve done—but on what you’ve decided they are.

So no, you didn’t say it. You just built the scaffold for it.

Good that we agree that I didn't say it.

I doiubt that you fail to understand the implications of your words.

First off I think you are wrong. I'm also very grateful you are wrong. Because... if true... that would truly have been a violent and dangerous world. We make the world peaceful by conquering dangerous players. Not by verbal hairsplitting and formulating nice sounding slogans.

I can't see you having come up with a better strategy to conquer Hamas than Israel is doing right now. Because I do assume you want Hamas removed from power? Let's hear your genius plan that won't hurt anyone?

You’re mistaking restraint for weakness and law for indecision. That’s how atrocities get normalized—when people start believing that principles are luxuries in the face of danger. But the laws of war weren’t written to protect terrorists. They were written to protect civilians from exactly the kind of logic you’re defending now: that “we must destroy them, no matter the cost.”

If the only strategy you can imagine is one that flattens cities and kills tens of thousands of civilians, then it’s not a strategy—it’s vengeance dressed up as necessity. And no, I’m not required to hand you a bulletproof plan to replace the one that’s clearly failing. Because what’s happening now isn’t removing Hamas. It’s strengthening their narrative, radicalizing a new generation, and isolating Israel diplomatically and morally.

You say you’re grateful I’m wrong—but look around. If this is the world you’re grateful for—one where the death of thousands is rationalized, hospitals are leveled, and starving civilians is a tactic—then you’re not defending peace. You’re defending domination.

And yes, I want Hamas out of power. But not at the price of erasing the distinction between civilians and combatants. Not by adopting the very logic Hamas thrives on. Because the moment we stop holding ourselves to higher standards, we’ve already conceded that justice is a luxury only the powerful can afford.

If you want to conquer extremism, you don’t do it by becoming indifferent to the lives caught in the middle. You do it by refusing to trade law for brute force—and by refusing to call that surrender.

Israel has been showing restraint. Starting a war when your opponent has all the power is retarded. The ONLY reason Gaza had self rule is because Israel let them. And you frame it as oppression.

Its just like everyone just hates the Jews no matter what they do

Ah, calling us Jew haters again, sweetie-pie?

I don't think that follows logically. It sounds to me like you're making excuses for Hamas. You're starting more and more to sound like a criminal mastermind who just wants the world to suffer.

Calling me a “criminal mastermind” because I insist on civilian protections isn’t a rebuttal—it’s deflection. It’s also a classic tactic: when someone can’t address the argument, they attack the person making it.

There’s nothing illogical about what I said. You claimed Hamas is the legitimate government of Gaza, which by definition means it governs civilians. So if you’re waging war on Hamas, and justify mass civilian casualties because Hamas uses human shields, then yes—you’re justifying a war on a governed population. That’s the textbook definition of collective punishment.

Stop making excuses for Hamas. Its pretty distasteful

No one here is excusing Hamas or what it did. NHC and I have made that perfectly clear. Your stupid little charges are pathetic.

Pointing that out is not “making excuses for Hamas.” I’ve repeatedly condemned them. What I won’t do is excuse war crimes just because Hamas commits them too. That’s not moral equivalence. That’s moral consistency.

Bullshit

Just like when Norman Mailer belted Gore Vidal and Vidal, on the floor, replied, “I see you’re lost for words again.”

When you’ve lost the argument, resort to rhetorical or actual violence. You are so transparent.

 

[pood]

Yes, groups respond to incentives. But what are the incentives in Gaza? Decades of blockade, military occupation, economic suffocation, and international neglect. If you strip a population of rights, isolate them politically, bomb them periodically, and then demand they produce a liberal democracy or else—it’s not just dishonest. It’s rigged.

Stop reading antisemitic propaganda

This is the whole crux of the matter. For people like who, Israel can do whatever the hell it wants, and they and you get to hurl the “antisemitic” slur at anyone who objects.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No I didn’t. Islam today breeds atrocity.

9/11 and 10/7, along with the other dates for London and Madrid and Bali were bad. But the idea that Islam "breeds atrocity" sounds disjointed. This whole Netanyahu plan on Gaza up to before 10/7 helped breed 10/7. There is a new generation in Gaza that don't know of Ariel Sharron. And now those people are suffering from a siege. I wonder what that'll breed.

For someone that claims to be pragmatic, you don't do a good job at it.

 

[pood]

“Islam breeds atrocity.” There you go, Astounding. Insane. And just up the right-wing alley, though it is telling that many right-wingers are anti-Semites as well.

 

[bilby]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

Essentialism is the belief that people can't change, because their behaviours are unavoidably imposed on them by their membership of a class, category, or group - eg "Of course he's a theif, all Irishmen are theives".

"You learned something today" is patronising bullshit that you should shove back into the orifice you pulled it from. You are not some great teacher handing down wisdom to a bunch of ignorant kids, you are just a simpleton who has a massively inflated opinion of the value of his very limited perspective.

 

[pood]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

Essentialism is the belief that people can't change, because their behaviours are unavoidably imposed on them by their membership of a class, category, or group - eg "Of course he's a theif, all Irishmen are theives".

"You learned something today" is patronising bullshit that you should shove back into the orifice you pulled it from. You are not some great teacher handing down wisdom to a bunch of ignorant kids, you are just a simpleton who has a massively inflated opinion of the value of his very limited perspective.

Right well put.

 

[ZiprHead]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

WTAF??? Where in the world did you dig up that half cocked definition?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

WTAF??? Where in the world did you dig up that half cocked definition?

Did you try googling?

Essentialism - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[DrZoidberg]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

Essentialism is the belief that people can't change, because their behaviours are unavoidably imposed on them by their membership of a class, category, or group - eg "Of course he's a theif, all Irishmen are theives".

"You learned something today" is patronising bullshit that you should shove back into the orifice you pulled it from. You are not some great teacher handing down wisdom to a bunch of ignorant kids, you are just a simpleton who has a massively inflated opinion of the value of his very limited perspective.

But I was right. As confirmed by you above. So... what's your point?

 

[DrZoidberg]

No I didn’t. Islam today breeds atrocity.

9/11 and 10/7, along with the other dates for London and Madrid and Bali were bad. But the idea that Islam "breeds atrocity" sounds disjointed. This whole Netanyahu plan on Gaza up to before 10/7 helped breed 10/7. There is a new generation in Gaza that don't know of Ariel Sharron. And now those people are suffering from a siege. I wonder what that'll breed.

For someone that claims to be pragmatic, you don't do a good job at it.

When it comes to atrocities and the disregard for human life Islam is overrepresented to the extreme.

In the west we have an extremely unhelpful guilt driven post colonial attitude towards Islam. So we keep making excuses for them.

You're not being a good person by downplaying atrocities in the name of Islam.

If the current generation of Muslims keep committing atrocities in spite of not remembering Ariel Sharon, then perhaps it's not that?

Edit: and just to be clear. European colonialism is one of the worst set of systematic atrocities in human history. But acknowledging that still doesn't give ex colonial cultures a free pass to commit atrocities

 

[DrZoidberg]

If your "solution" is to tie Israels hand behind their backs, so they can't fight, then you are supporting Hamas. Until there's a viable Palestinian alternative to support, you're out of teams to support.

If you think this is about simply picking teams, no wonder you are so confused.

Maybe try growing the fuck up and not trying to over simplify everything?

And I thought being an adult was accepting that we sometimes can't have everything we want and just have to work with whats possible.

How in the world does that philosophy translate into "siege on Gaza"?

If one only sees two options, or annihilation of Israel or annihilation of Gaza, and one is an Islamaphobe or bigot against Arabs.

If that's how simplistic you see the situation then that would explain your shallow understanding of the conflict

 

[DrZoidberg]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

No—I didn’t “learn” anything from you except how badly you’ve misunderstood the word you’re trying to weaponize.

Essentialism isn’t just about whether people can change. It’s about claiming that people are a certain way because of what group they belong to. When you say Islam itself produces atrocity, or that Gaza’s population behaves a certain way because of “Muslim culture,” you’re not analyzing actions—you’re attributing identity-based essence. That’s textbook essentialism.

You’ve confused it with immutability, which is about whether something can change. But essentialism is broader: it says the reason people act the way they do is because of some fixed, defining trait—like race, religion, or culture. And that is exactly what you’re doing when you blame atrocities on “what Islam does.”

So no—you didn’t teach me anything. But thanks for accidentally proving my point: when you reduce entire populations to a cultural “scaffolding of atrocity,” you’re not describing behavior—you’re branding an identity.

And that’s not insight. That’s ideological profiling in a cheap academic disguise.

You're the one who accused me of essentialism. What I have said about Islam does not fit the above definition.

Essentialism suggests a kind of cultural pre-determinism. Go ahead and try to find evidence of me implying that

Claiming that people in a group influences each others behaviour (within and without) isn't essentialism. Its the opposite. Since that would be a dynamic system

I still maintain that you don't understand what the word means

You have a point?

Yes, the point is this: You’re not critiquing ideology. You’re blaming an entire religion for the actions of some, then using that blame to excuse the suffering of millions. That’s not logic—it’s scapegoating.

That's just straight up nonsense.

Its like saying that US school mass shootings is not the result of American culture, just because it's rare events.

When stuff repeatedly happen in a culture, then that is a cultural expression of that culture. No matter how much we wish ut wasn't.

Acknowledging reality isn't to dehumanize anyone. Rather the opposite. I'd say denying Islam leads to extremist violence is to treat Arabs like less than human, since we aren't the holding them accountable.

Here's a counter point. Following WW2 Germans acknowledged that their culture is prone to lead to extremism. This has led them to put in place a bunch of social safeguards in order to lessen the effects. Obviously the new social norms to stop extremism are also extreme. But it's Germans... so this was going to happen. My point is that we need to acknowledge cultural shortcomings or we will just repeat history

You framed “modern Islam” as a “scaffolding of atrocity.” That’s not a critique of extremists—that’s an indictment of 1.9 billion people, and especially the ones being bombed. When you reduce entire populations to ideological threats, you’re not analyzing. You’re just justifying their dehumanization.

So yes—I have a point. You just don’t like what it says about your argument.

You're the one who brought up the "scaffolding of atrocity ". I took your term and used it to show how it can be used to prove any point

I don’t understand your problem with this. I'm describing a thing that really happened. I'm sorry reality doesn't conform to your confused ideological filters

No—you’re not just “describing a thing that happened.” You’re claiming that an entire religion is the engine behind it. That’s the problem.

Yes. And you're trying to use fancy long words to explain away reality. Its not working out for you

Islam obviously is mostly functional and a force for good. Or there wouldn't be so many Muslims. But its not ONLY a force for good. Clearly

You didn’t say “some extremists within Islam committed atrocities.” You said “modern Islam” produced them—full stop. That’s not a description of facts. That’s a sweeping cultural judgment. And if someone said “modern Judaism” produced occupation or “modern Christianity” produced colonial slaughter, you’d call it bigotry. So why pretend it’s objectivity when it’s about Muslims?

You don’t get to universalize blame and then hide behind “just stating facts.” That’s not reality. That’s rhetoric designed to excuse cruelty. And history knows exactly where that leads.

I don't think you are making any sense. Are you perhaps doing the black white fallacy?

No I didn’t. Islam today breeds atrocity. Buy it didn’t always. I would like Islam to go back to what it was a hundred years ago. That would be nice

You just moved the goalposts. First you blamed “modern Islam” as a whole. Now you say you’d like it to be like it was “a hundred years ago”—as if Islam is a monolith that changed on a schedule.

I think the problem is that you are arguing against a straw man. I'm sorry I don't conform to the MAGA caricature you seem to be fantasising I am

Islam today isn’t one thing. It’s 2 billion people across dozens of cultures, languages, and political systems—from feminist reformers in Indonesia to secular Muslims in France to autocrats in the Gulf. You’re collapsing all of that into a single narrative of violence to justify collective suspicion—and you still haven’t shown how that’s anything but ideological profiling.

Yes, captain obvious. Please say more obvious things I, at no point, have denied or argued against

Want to critique extremism? Fine. But stop pretending your generalizations are insight. They’re not. They’re just dressed-up prejudice.

NHC

Extremism is like the top of an iceberg. Its a result of all that non-extremist stuff below the water

You're like a Republican complaining about the high crime rate among poor people, while ignoring that crime is a result of the entire system

 

[bilby]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

Essentialism is the belief that people can't change, because their behaviours are unavoidably imposed on them by their membership of a class, category, or group - eg "Of course he's a theif, all Irishmen are theives".

"You learned something today" is patronising bullshit that you should shove back into the orifice you pulled it from. You are not some great teacher handing down wisdom to a bunch of ignorant kids, you are just a simpleton who has a massively inflated opinion of the value of his very limited perspective.

But I was right.

No, you were wrong.

As confirmed by you above. So... what's your point?

My point is that there is a VAST difference between "people can't change", and "the belief that people can't change".

You said "Essentialism is when people can't change". That is false. Essentialism is when people believe that certain other people can't change.

If you can't grasp the difference between a fact and a belief, then maybe an infidels forum is not for you. The entire raison d'être of this board is that its members challenge the claim that belief is synonymous with fact.

For example, you believed that I had confirmed what you claimed, when in fact I absolutely rejected it and refuted it - even providing an example.

Is the source of your confusion that you actually think that all Irishmen are theives? Or that you think that I think it? I chose it for its absurdity - was that sweeping generalisation not absurd enough for you?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Essentialism is when people can't change. You learned something today

Essentialism is the belief that people can't change, because their behaviours are unavoidably imposed on them by their membership of a class, category, or group - eg "Of course he's a theif, all Irishmen are theives".

"You learned something today" is patronising bullshit that you should shove back into the orifice you pulled it from. You are not some great teacher handing down wisdom to a bunch of ignorant kids, you are just a simpleton who has a massively inflated opinion of the value of his very limited perspective.

But I was right.

No, you were wrong.

As confirmed by you above. So... what's your point?

My point is that there is a VAST difference between "people can't change", and "the belief that people can't change".

You said "Essentialism is when people can't change". That is false. Essentialism is when people believe that certain other people can't change.

So what. Essentialism is also bullshit. Yes, it's a belief. A wrong belief. It makes no difference if we believe that a belief in something wrong to be true or thinking that something is wrong is true. You've just added an extra, redundant step

If you can't grasp the difference between a fact and a belief, then maybe an infidels forum is not for you. The entire raison d'être of this board is that its members challenge the claim that belief is synonymous with fact.

Nope. I think you have gotten lost in your bullshit logic

For example, you believed that I had confirmed what you claimed, when in fact I absolutely rejected it and refuted it - even providing an example.

Is the source of your confusion that you actually think that all Irishmen are theives? Or that you think that I think it? I chose it for its absurdity - was that sweeping generalisation not absurd enough for you?

Irrelevant