Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

Loren Pechtel said:

Gospel said:

DrZoidberg said:

If someone has a problem with Israel for no reason, that only leaves one reason.

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It’s clear that you’re unwilling to engage in reasoned discussion, as every post you label as hating Israel or Jews without cause has, in fact, provided a clear reason for the critique. What you’re doing is akin to accusing someone of being a rapist, pedophile, or similarly vile things simply because you disagree with their opinions. I strongly suggest you stop this behavior.

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Sticking your head in the sand about what he's saying doesn't make it go away. He's not looking at a single incident, but a pattern. You can quibble about any given case but that doesn't change the situation.

Flip a coin. Ok, it came up heads, doesn't mean anything. Flip 20 coins, all come up heads. Someone can argue that any given coin was fair, but you're still going to figure the coins are rigged.

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Your coin-flip analogy falls flat. We’re not ignoring a “pattern”—we’re refusing to rationalize dead children as acceptable. You can’t dismiss real human lives by turning them into statistics or coin tosses. Each child’s life is singular, irreplaceable, and that alone invalidates your argument.

I don’t understand why you, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC, are suddenly distancing yourselves from your earlier stance that it’s acceptable to kill children in order to eradicate Hamas, and resorting to labeling me a ‘Hamas propagandist.’ Let me make this crystal clear: like everyone else here, I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and want Hamas gone. But you three insist on twisting any legitimate concern for civilian casualties into some form of support for Hamas, which raises serious questions about your motives. From my point of view you truly find the deaths of Gazan children acceptable and in fact encourage it.

Loren Pechtel said:

DrZoidberg said:

Gospel said:

That's quite a lengthy way to justify being okay with children being killed because, in your view, Hamas makes it acceptable.

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What kind of monster are you? Your morals seem despicable

Hamas doesn't make it acceptable. Hamas is guilty of those children dying. Let's put the blame where it belongs

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He's not a monster, he's blinded by faith. Faith that there is a good answer. The faithful tend to have a huge problem with comprehending blasphemous arguments.

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This isn’t about faith or blasphemy, it’s about basic morality. Reducing objections to child deaths as simply ‘blind faith’ dismisses legitimate ethical concerns. The real question you're avoiding here is, why you justify the killing of innocent children as an acceptable price.

Loren Pechtel said:

Gospel said:

I understand that some actions, though tragic in the short term, are often justified as a means to prevent even greater loss of life over time. The U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan is frequently framed in this way: as a swift conclusion to the war that avoided a prolonged conflict potentially costing millions more lives. However, even if we accept this reasoning, it does not diminish the profound moral tragedy of the innocent lives lost.

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Life sometimes demands brutal choices.

Despite all the revisionism it's very clear that dropping the bombs (plural) saved more Japanese lives, more Chinese lives and more American lives. No group (other than those in the relevant cities) fared worse because of them.

Gospel said:

This is why I’ve been focused on Israel’s endgame. Having effectively carried out their version of Hiroshima, will it truly bring the conflict to an end? Does anyone here genuinely believe that eliminating Hamas will resolve the deeper conflict? I think we all know the answer to that.

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This will not bring an end to the conflict--Iran is still out there. All Israel can hope for is more time until the next 10/7, or that Iran will fall.

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The justification for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan is often framed as preventing an even larger number of casualties—albeit at a terrible immediate cost. If we accept that argument, then logically we should ask: will Israel’s offensive in Gaza, with its acknowledged civilian toll, actually save more lives or definitively resolve the conflict?

By your own admission, eliminating Hamas won’t bring long-term peace; Iran (and other underlying tensions) remain. In other words, while the atomic bombs in WWII arguably ended the broader war and prevented additional mass casualties, Israel’s actions don’t seem poised to bring a similar finality. If the conflict is likely to re-erupt, and if that’s the consensus even among those who justify the strikes, then this tragedy isn’t serving to prevent future large-scale violence in the same way Hiroshima and Nagasaki arguably did.

That’s the critical point: it’s one thing to argue that a horrific act might ultimately save lives by ending a conflict outright, but quite another when it’s clear the conflict will continue anyway. If the current course of action doesn’t achieve true peace, then we’re dealing with a moral tragedy and a conflict that remains unresolved.

From my perspective, your stance ultimately supports the senseless deaths of both Palestinian children in Gaza and Israeli children, tragedies that achieve no meaningful resolution.

Gospel said:

I don’t understand why you, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC, are suddenly distancing yourselves from your earlier stance that it’s acceptable to kill children in order to eradicate Hamas, and resorting to labeling me a ‘Hamas propagandist.’ Let me make this crystal clear: like everyone else here, I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and want Hamas gone. But you three insist on twisting any legitimate concern for civilian casualties into some form of support for Hamas, which raises serious questions about your motives. From my point of view you truly find the deaths of Gazan children acceptable and in fact encourage it.

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You're reading things into our posts that aren't there

Yes, you are a Hamas apologetic.

DrZoidberg said:

Gospel said:

I don’t understand why you, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC, are suddenly distancing yourselves from your earlier stance that it’s acceptable to kill children in order to eradicate Hamas, and resorting to labeling me a ‘Hamas propagandist.’ Let me make this crystal clear: like everyone else here, I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and want Hamas gone. But you three insist on twisting any legitimate concern for civilian casualties into some form of support for Hamas, which raises serious questions about your motives. From my point of view you truly find the deaths of Gazan children acceptable and in fact encourage it.

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You're reading things into our posts that aren't there

Yes, you are a Hamas apologetic.

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I notice you’ve made no effort to refute your support for the killing of children, even as I’ve thoroughly dismantled your weak accusation that I’m a Hamas apologist.

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

You have not referenced a single quote of mine. Not one. Either you don’t understand what evidence is or you don’t have any. All you need to do is produce a quote of mine (hopefully in context) that leads you to your conclusion but only if you wish to your post taken seriously instead of being viewed as the rantings of a raving bigot.

My maternal great grandparents and great uncle were killed by Nazis because they were Jews. Frankly, if we were discussing this in person, after the 2nd slander, I’d be facing criminal charges.

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How about your continual demand that Israel find better ways of protecting civilians despite there being no indication that there is any better answer? They're already the world's best and you act as if they are atrocious.

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Really? What other sieges did you compare this to to make that determination?

I’m just saying out loud what they refuse to admit: they don’t care about Palestinian children and effectively endorse their deaths to wipe out Hamas’s ideology. Meanwhile, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC hide behind calling me a ‘Hamas apologist’ as a smokescreen for their own stance. Hamas apologists don’t call for Hamas’s destruction, yet I’ve explicitly done so multiple times. Despite that, these three want readers to ignore my clear stance against Hamas and instead focus on this supposed ‘propaganda’ they claim I’m spreading, all so they can justify the indiscriminate killing of children in Gaza. It’s especially telling that, while they demand unwavering support for Israel’s actions, they don’t show the same blind faith in their own government.

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

Loren Pechtel said:

I'm not slandering, just calling attention to your cherry-picking. And you continue to blame Israel for what Hamas intended to happen.

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Since there was no cherry-picking and there was no blame, so you add to your slander. One would think a moderator would know better.

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Maybe you're not the one that picked the cherries but there's cherry picking here

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Yes, and you should stop it.

Loren Pechtel said:

--the situation changed. Israel had the civilians move around because that gave Israel a chance to filter out Hamas people hiding amongst them. Hamas of course hated that and reports it as Israel bombing the safe zones.

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You are arguing that Israel sent people to "Filtering Hamas zones" but that is not what they were called. Calling them "safety zones" is misleading (to put it charitably). It almost sounds to me like you are accusing Israel of deliberately mislabeling the zones for international public relations purposes.

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What you continue to ignore is that things can change. Today's safe zone doesn't mean it's always going to be a safe zone.

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It is a safe zone until the IDF informs the inhabitants it is no longer one. The onus of proof is on you.

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

Dr Zoidberg said:

So how are they supposed to get the hostages back? Do you think that it's acceptable that Hamas took those hostages? The fact that Hamas took the hostages does give Israel every right to enter Gaza until they find them. IMHO

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Every participant in this thread who you’ve accused of antisemitism has denounced Hamas’s actions, including me. That includes hostage taking.

How’s that hostage rescuing going?

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Israel has recovered some. You have objected to their actions.

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Yes, 177 have been recovered alive: 8 rescued, 105 in a prisoner exchange and 4 unilaterally released. I have objected to the massive destruction and death to civilians. There is no way to know what would have occurred without that horrendous cost. But it seems that prisoner exchanges have occurred in the past without such carnage.

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You pretend to have no way to know but look at the past prisoner exchanges you refer to.

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There is no way to know what might have happened. One can guess what might happened.

Loren Pechtel said:

Massively lopsided. Apply that to the 10/7 situation and what do you get? Israel did and recognized that it was a non-starter. Besides, previous prisoner exchanges released people that killed more than the hostages Israel got back for them. This makes any such deal bad for Israel.

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Your response is based on your assumptions about what a deal would have to look like. Certainly some members of the cabinet and the IDF felt that the invasion and bombing were not the way to get the hostages back and deal with the situation.

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Why should we not expect Hamas to make demands similar to the already-established "price"??

laughing dog said:

I have no idea if a deal could have been arranged nor what might have entailed if it had materialized. Neither do you. But since you invoke history, it is pretty clear from history that Hamas takes hostages in order to make prisoner swaps.

My point was that if a prisoner swap had been done, some of the death and destruction would likely have been avoided. Nothing in your response rebuts that.

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The last prisoner swap ended up killing a lot more Israelis than the prisoners they got back. Thus it was a very bad deal for Israel--so of course the world is trying to cram it down their throat.

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The only entity cramming anything down anyone’s throats is you with your straw men.

Nothing you have written rebut the observation that an exchange would have likely avoided the massive destruction and death of the IDF’s war.

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

You have not referenced a single quote of mine. Not one. Either you don’t understand what evidence is or you don’t have any. All you need to do is produce a quote of mine (hopefully in context) that leads you to your conclusion but only if you wish to your post taken seriously instead of being viewed as the rantings of a raving bigot.

My maternal great grandparents and great uncle were killed by Nazis because they were Jews. Frankly, if we were discussing this in person, after the 2nd slander, I’d be facing criminal charges.

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How about your continual demand that Israel find better ways of protecting civilians despite there being no indication that there is any better answer? They're already the world's best and you act as if they are atrocious.

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Even if your straw man about my”continual demands” was true, and your hand waved claims of fact (no indication and “world’s best) were true, none of it is evidence of antisemitism.

My position is that killing innocents is wrong no matter who does it and no matter who is killed. That means whoever knowingly does it is doing wrong.

There is nothing antisemitic about that position.
I and others, including Israeli and Jews, think Israel could act to avoid the level of carnage and destruction. That does mot make anyone anti-semitic.

Please stop abetting and defending slander. As a mod, you should model appropriate discussion not ape and defend TOU offenses.

Swammerdami said:

Loren Pechtel said:

Swammerdami said:

Loren Pechtel said:

People consistently have a problem with Israel for invalid reasons. That means either they are actually simply opposed to Israel (and the antisemite label fits) or they are duped by the propaganda and are unknowing antisemites.

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What is an "unknowing antisemite"? Someone who hates the Jews but doesn't know he hates them?

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Someone who blindly believes all the anti-Jewish propaganda and thinks they have a legitimate gripe with Israel's actions.

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Do you include the former Israeli Defense Minister and others who respect ICC indictments among those "who blindly believe all the anti-Jewish propaganda"?

And why do anti-Netanyahu and anti-Israel morph in your mind into "anti-Jewish"?

If I reject some of Trump's actions does that make me anti-Christian? (555^*)

* - in Thai, the number 5 is pronounced "Ha!" So we write "555" to simulate laughter!

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There's good reason we reject the ICC.

One example of why:

Gospel said:

Loren Pechtel said:

Gospel said:

That's quite a lengthy way to justify being okay with children being killed because, in your view, Hamas makes it acceptable.

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That's a quite short way of saying don't bother me with the facts.

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Let’s be clear: children are dying as a result of IDF strikes aimed at targeting Hamas. You seem entirely comfortable with this outcome, as if the moral line is so black and white that sparing children would somehow equate to supporting Hamas. This oversimplified logic not only dismisses the humanity of innocent lives but also dangerously conflates ethical opposition to the killing of children with political allegiance to a terrorist organization. How you and those who align with you reconcile that kind of moral absolutism with the value of human life is what's on display here.

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Comfortable is not the right word.

I accept that this is a situation with no good outcomes. Israel can't just sit back and be perfect like you want, that would make things worse rather than better.

Compare this with Afghanistan. We took down a country because of a terror attack that proportionately was only 1/10th the size. Did we kill more civilians than Israel has killed in Gaza? Certainly.

Gospel said:

Loren Pechtel said:

Gospel said:

DrZoidberg said:

If someone has a problem with Israel for no reason, that only leaves one reason.

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It’s clear that you’re unwilling to engage in reasoned discussion, as every post you label as hating Israel or Jews without cause has, in fact, provided a clear reason for the critique. What you’re doing is akin to accusing someone of being a rapist, pedophile, or similarly vile things simply because you disagree with their opinions. I strongly suggest you stop this behavior.

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Sticking your head in the sand about what he's saying doesn't make it go away. He's not looking at a single incident, but a pattern. You can quibble about any given case but that doesn't change the situation.

Flip a coin. Ok, it came up heads, doesn't mean anything. Flip 20 coins, all come up heads. Someone can argue that any given coin was fair, but you're still going to figure the coins are rigged.

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Your coin-flip analogy falls flat. We’re not ignoring a “pattern”—we’re refusing to rationalize dead children as acceptable. You can’t dismiss real human lives by turning them into statistics or coin tosses. Each child’s life is singular, irreplaceable, and that alone invalidates your argument.

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Apples and oranges!! I was explaining why we see antisemitism in a pattern. That is a separate issue from what is happening in Gaza.

Gospel said:

I don’t understand why you, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC, are suddenly distancing yourselves from your earlier stance that it’s acceptable to kill children in order to eradicate Hamas, and resorting to labeling me a ‘Hamas propagandist.’ Let me make this crystal clear: like everyone else here, I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and want Hamas gone. But you three insist on twisting any legitimate concern for civilian casualties into some form of support for Hamas, which raises serious questions about your motives. From my point of view you truly find the deaths of Gazan children acceptable and in fact encourage it.

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I'm not distancing from a prior position and I don't think they are. Rather, you have ascribed a false position to us that we never agreed with in the first place to be distancing from.

And the problem is not with concern for civilian casualties. Civilian casualties are never a good thing, but that doesn't mean they can always be avoided. You are putting civilian casualties above Israel's defense--in effect, saying that Gaza can trade it's civilians for Israeli lives. That is what we object to. We do not encourage it, but we don't let ourselves be blinded by it to not see what's going on. The dead children are a Hamas weapon, fought in the press rather than the battlefield.

Look at what's been happening to the north, where they aren't so focused on human shield tactics and where they don't just call everyone a civilian: Around 90% of the dead are combatants. That's what would be happening in Gaza, also, if Hamas weren't so aggressively pursuing human shield tactics. It's the same Israel so you would expect similar ratios--the fact that they are very different is because of the tactics employed by Hamas. And it means that upwards of 80% of the civilian casualties (assuming the Hamas data is at least reasonably connected to reality) are in effect killed by Hamas, not Israel. But you're blaming Israel.

Gospel said:

Loren Pechtel said:

DrZoidberg said:

Gospel said:

That's quite a lengthy way to justify being okay with children being killed because, in your view, Hamas makes it acceptable.

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What kind of monster are you? Your morals seem despicable

Hamas doesn't make it acceptable. Hamas is guilty of those children dying. Let's put the blame where it belongs

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He's not a monster, he's blinded by faith. Faith that there is a good answer. The faithful tend to have a huge problem with comprehending blasphemous arguments.

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This isn’t about faith or blasphemy, it’s about basic morality. Reducing objections to child deaths as simply ‘blind faith’ dismisses legitimate ethical concerns. The real question you're avoiding here is, why you justify the killing of innocent children as an acceptable price.

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You're just repeating your faith problem.

You believe there's a scenario with no deaths of innocent children--but that's a matter of faith, not reason. We recognize that there is no such path, the only question being whether they are Israeli or Gazan children who are dying. And we are choosing to side with the defender. (Yes, Israel is the defender, Hamas started this. The fact that the fighting is in Gaza says absolutely nothing about who is the attacker and who is the defender.)

Once again, I'm going to bring up that cartoon I posted a while back (for any who have forgotten: Hamas fighter with a baby in their plate carrier.) Until you have an answer for that (and sniper is not an answer as it's not meant to be taken literally) you don't understand what's happening and thus can't arrive at the least bad answer.

Gospel said:

The justification for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan is often framed as preventing an even larger number of casualties—albeit at a terrible immediate cost. If we accept that argument, then logically we should ask: will Israel’s offensive in Gaza, with its acknowledged civilian toll, actually save more lives or definitively resolve the conflict?

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The issue with casualties from the bombs is brought up because the other paths (yes, that still applies even if we didn't fire another shot) are all worse, thus rendering the discussion moot.

Gospel said:

By your own admission, eliminating Hamas won’t bring long-term peace; Iran (and other underlying tensions) remain. In other words, while the atomic bombs in WWII arguably ended the broader war and prevented additional mass casualties, Israel’s actions don’t seem poised to bring a similar finality. If the conflict is likely to re-erupt, and if that’s the consensus even among those who justify the strikes, then this tragedy isn’t serving to prevent future large-scale violence in the same way Hiroshima and Nagasaki arguably did.

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True.

Gospel said:

That’s the critical point: it’s one thing to argue that a horrific act might ultimately save lives by ending a conflict outright, but quite another when it’s clear the conflict will continue anyway. If the current course of action doesn’t achieve true peace, then we’re dealing with a moral tragedy and a conflict that remains unresolved.

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The problem here is that you are saying lives make right. If you're attacked by a group you can't defend yourself because killing them is worse (multiple deaths) than them killing you (one death.)

Gospel said:

From my perspective, your stance ultimately supports the senseless deaths of both Palestinian children in Gaza and Israeli children, tragedies that achieve no meaningful resolution.

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And from my perspective your stance supports sticking your head in the sand and letting Iran commit genocide. It's a horrible situation and Hamas has done a very good job of distracting you from the big picture. And, yes, that's exactly what would happen. Have you been paying attention to what's been going on in Syria? They've found one mass grave that appears to contain more dead than from the entire Israel/Hamas conflict (not merely the current phase of it.) Same puppetmaster, they would do the same in Israel if they could. And by saying Israel can only defend itself perfectly you are saying Israel must submit to this.

DrZoidberg said:

Gospel said:

I don’t understand why you, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC, are suddenly distancing yourselves from your earlier stance that it’s acceptable to kill children in order to eradicate Hamas, and resorting to labeling me a ‘Hamas propagandist.’ Let me make this crystal clear: like everyone else here, I fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and want Hamas gone. But you three insist on twisting any legitimate concern for civilian casualties into some form of support for Hamas, which raises serious questions about your motives. From my point of view you truly find the deaths of Gazan children acceptable and in fact encourage it.

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You're reading things into our posts that aren't there

Yes, you are a Hamas apologetic.

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Disagree. He's never apologized for Hamas. He's fallen for the Hamas propaganda but there's no intent to support Hamas.

ZiprHead said:

Loren Pechtel said:

laughing dog said:

You have not referenced a single quote of mine. Not one. Either you don’t understand what evidence is or you don’t have any. All you need to do is produce a quote of mine (hopefully in context) that leads you to your conclusion but only if you wish to your post taken seriously instead of being viewed as the rantings of a raving bigot.

My maternal great grandparents and great uncle were killed by Nazis because they were Jews. Frankly, if we were discussing this in person, after the 2nd slander, I’d be facing criminal charges.

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How about your continual demand that Israel find better ways of protecting civilians despite there being no indication that there is any better answer? They're already the world's best and you act as if they are atrocious.

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Really? What other sieges did you compare this to to make that determination?

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We don't have a siege here.

I'm simply comparing it to the norm for urban combat in a city that hasn't been evacuated. And that's 90% of the dead are civilians.

Gospel said:

I’m just saying out loud what they refuse to admit: they don’t care about Palestinian children and effectively endorse their deaths to wipe out Hamas’s ideology. Meanwhile, Loren, DrZoidberg, and TomC hide behind calling me a ‘Hamas apologist’ as a smokescreen for their own stance. Hamas apologists don’t call for Hamas’s destruction, yet I’ve explicitly done so multiple times. Despite that, these three want readers to ignore my clear stance against Hamas and instead focus on this supposed ‘propaganda’ they claim I’m spreading, all so they can justify the indiscriminate killing of children in Gaza. It’s especially telling that, while they demand unwavering support for Israel’s actions, they don’t show the same blind faith in their own government.

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You've been duped, you are not an apologist.

The problem is that you are demanding perfection from Israel--and that simply doesn't happen in war even without human shield tactics. You focus on any imperfection as a reason to quit--but there will always be imperfections and thus defense is impossible. You do not realize your position leads to genocide.