Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[TomC]

They were given Palestine because the British governer was an Evangelical Christian loon and thought Jesus would come back if all Jews retured to the promised land. Since this was a once-in-many-lifetimes-offer the Zionists didn't hesitate, and switched to Palestine.

Someone else made a very pointed observation once.

There are more Zionists in Texas than Israel. If by Zionist you mean "Believes that the Scripture is the Word of God, and Exodus is a permanent deed to the Holy Land." That's an extremely common view amongst conservative Christians.
Tom

 

[Gospel]

Yup. I wonder who the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites were? Because they occupied the land 'God' (or whomever really made up all this nonsense) promised to Israel. In short, even the bible notes that Jews weren't the original occupants of what the Romans renamed Palestine.

 

[laughing dog]

Jews tend to be an extremly pragmatic people.

Pragmatism is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly insisting on a location for a country that is surrounded by hostiles is not a good indication of pragmatism in my view. Nonetheless, one could say that almost every surviving "peoples" are pragmatic.

But they didn't. The first Zionists wanted to settle in Uganda. Why Uganda? For racist reasons. Nobody cared about blacks then.

They were given Palestine because the British governer was an Evangelical Christian loon and thought Jesus would come back if all Jews retured to the promised land. Since this was a once-in-many-lifetimes-offer the Zionists didn't hesitate, and switched to Palestine. They were also given vast sums of money by

If you actually look at your response, you would see it does not rebut a single word I wrote.

They listen to reason and will do whatever they need to do to survive. It's a trait that, historically, have served Jews well.

Except, of course, when it didn't.

Things can go badly even if you do everything right.

Or if you don't. There is an ongoing debate among historians and commentators of all types whether cooperating with the Nazis was a good pragmatic strategy.

Big dreams and lofty ideals is something an opressed marginalised people cannot afford. Jewish culture, above all else, is a survival culture.

All cultures have big dreams and lofty ideals. It is how well the people measure up to their ideals/standards that counts. Certainly Jews have such big dreams and ideals for themselves.

I don't think you know many Jews. There's a reason Jews are so fucking funny. It's the most cynical bunch on the planet.

You know virtually nothing about or my life.

Cynicism and big dreams are not incompatible or inconsistent.

 

[Bomb#20]

Yeah, you lost me.

(And what do you think "Zionism" means, anyway, "From the river to the sea for the Jews"? That's not what it means. Anybody who thinks Israel should continue to exist is a Zionist.)

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. If the state of Israel was formed organically I would be a Zionist. However since it's really just a European ham-fist sandwich I'm not. I'm all in for Jewish people though.

You get that "Was creating Israel a bad thing to do in 1948?" and "Israel should be shut down in the 21st century?" are two different questions, don't you? That saying yes to one and no to the other is not a case of cognitive dissonance? If you are in favor of shutting Israel down now because the way it was formed in 1948 wasn't organic, what makes you think that's a good reason to shut a country down? Contrariwise, if you are not in favor of shutting Israel down now, we're squabbling over nothing but terminology.

I lost you. Who here accused others of being supporters of children being beheaded and missiles being lobbed at innocent civilians just because they suggested that Israel forget its roots? Who here among the unwavering supporters of the state of Israel does so on account of not overlooking Israelis' heritage rather than on account of not wanting Israelis to be murdered?

Individuals, motivated by Zionism who fail to recognize Palestinians as equals, instead labeling them universally as adversaries. The same folks whos narrative is any civilian casualties resulting from the conflict can be attributed to the actions of the victims themselves, rather than the complexities of the situation (including but not limited to the ham-fist sandwich).

So, no examples of specific posts in which specific people deemed it unacceptable to ask Israelis to overlook their heritage and forget their roots, and implied that asking them to makes you a supporter of children being beheaded and missiles being lobbed at innocent civilians. You were imputing a double-standard to opponents without evidence to back up your accusation.

 

[Bomb#20]

And yes, the state of Israel is a European ham-fist sandwich. It was entirely manufactured by Europeans. Are you claiming The UN General Assembly Resolution 181 wasn't manufactured by Europeans? I won't even get into the fact it wasn't a legal document and simply a not very well thought out indorsement that the Israeli Declaration of Independence cited as if it were law.

You keep bringing up the UN as though what it did mattered. Why do you think it made a difference? Yes, certainly the state of Israel is a European ham-fist sandwich entirely manufactured by Europeans; but why on earth would you think the relevant (quasi)Europeans were the Americans and Soviets and French who got UN --> General Assembly <-- Resolution 181 passed, let alone the British, who didn't even vote for it and who had spent the previous thirty years trying their best to prevent Israel? The Europeans who manufactured Israel were the Nazis and the Cossacks and Karl Marx and Martin Luther and Ferdinand and Isabella and all the rest of the European anti-Semites who spent two thousand years convincing Jews they were never going to be safe in Europe. For 181 to have made a difference it would have to have been passed by the Security Council. The Israeli Declaration of Independence cited as if it were law because it was conveniently sitting there, but the Israelis were going to declare independence the minute the League of Nations Mandate ran out whether the UN had issued its nonbinding advisory opinion or not. It was inevitable. 181 didn't matter. Facts on the ground mattered.

Ultimately the state of Israel was established through force with the help of every single Zionist (extremists or not).

What country wasn't established through force?

 

[Bomb#20]

But they didn't. The first Zionists wanted to settle in Uganda. Why Uganda? For racist reasons. Nobody cared about blacks then.

They were given Palestine because the British governer was an Evangelical Christian loon and thought Jesus would come back if all Jews retured to the promised land.

The Jews weren't given Palestine at all. They took it themselves by a combination of legal immigration, illegal immigration and force, same way Muslims took Pakistan and Kosovo. The international community endorsed the realities on the ground because of realpolitik and "self-determination of peoples".

 

[Bomb#20]

Jews tend to be an extremly pragmatic people.

Pragmatism is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly insisting on a location for a country that is surrounded by hostiles is not a good indication of pragmatism in my view.

They didn't "insist" on that location; Israel went where it went because every other possible location was a nonstarter. Every other location was occupied by somebody powerful enough to stop them from setting up a new country there. Moreover, Jews had been settling in Palestine since the 1880s -- a new homeland was a going concern there and a figment of wishful thinking everywhere else. Thousands of Jews who wanted out of Europe all had a personal choice of going where there was already a Jewish community eager to take them in, or where there wasn't. Not a hard choice.

 

[Gospel]

Wow bomb. Way to go bruh. EL15 , in order to solve a problem you ought to know what is causing it. That's all I'm saying. But you go ahead and do the usual Bomb thing and make way more out of what I'm saying than I actually said. I preferred it when you simply ignored my posts. It was more productive.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody's coherent claims put the civilian death rate above 1%, nor put the Hamas death rate below 20%.

If there are 28,000 dead and 9,000 are Hamas, then 19,000 are noncombatants. Hamas killed less than 2000 noncombatants. So ratio of Gazan to Israeli civilian death rate is more than 9 to 1.

If you were interested in discussion rather than derailing you would have seen I was talking about Palestinian civilians.

As was I. So your derailment accusation is nonsense.

Specifically, that Israel has killed at least 20% of the combatants but less than 1% of the civilians.

Your comparison to Israeli civilians is falling straight into the dictator's deception of killing their own people to make the enemy look bad.

Your comparison comes right out of the “ How to Lie with Statistics” because it minimizes the relative extent of the attacks. Hamas killed less than 0.02 %of Israeli citizens.

Different fallacy, still a derail.

Are you going to continue to play word games?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If you kill 20% of Hamas, but recruitment skyrockets, have you accomplished much of anything?

I was going to comment on that, too. Discussing percents of terrorist organizations that have been killed has an underlying assumption that the recruiting is 0. Not to mention, there's always a distribution with these things, a continuum or spectrum...so one day a person might not be Hamas and the next day, they may be sympathetic, a year later, they might be Hamas. Then, you may have some who were almost ready to join and then decide to join PA instead but still are sympathetic to Hamas goals. It's a giant clusterfuck of untrackable, changing opinion.

People join Hamas out of economic necessity. That's part of why Hamas wants the place wrecked--the fewer other options the people have the easier it is for them to recruit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And wtf is wrong with you that you can't comprehend Hamas use of babies as human shields?

WTF is wrong with anyone who defends killing babies as the only way to achieve their objective?

Ask Hamas.
They are using human shields by the thousands.
Including babies.
Tom

Why would I ask them that? They’re not defending killing babies as the only way to achieve their objective? Your response is inane.

Yes they are. As are an awful lot of the apologists.

By all means necessary. Babies were killed in 10/7. The Hamas supporters aren't saying "that went too far". Thus they support killing babies to attain their objective.

So the question becomes why is it acceptable to kill Jew babies but not Palestinian babies?

And don't say it was an accident. Jew babies were taken hostage. Hamas clearly supports killing Jew babies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And wtf is wrong with you that you can't comprehend Hamas use of babies as human shields?

WTF is wrong with anyone who defends killing babies as the only way to achieve their objective?

Ask Hamas.
They are using human shields by the thousands.
Including babies.
Tom

i await their answer. And yours.

Using human shields, regardless of age, is a moral horror.
I don't think anyone should do it.

Every country, to some degree, uses “human shields”, because none of the higher ups are out in the open as easy targets. Expecting Hamas to be out in the open is to expect them to be stupid.
Of course, it is cowardly and barbaric.

Now, tell me what Hamas has to say about human shields.
Tom

Ask them yourself. I noticed you didn’t answer my question.

And once again you babble rather than address the point.

We put military things in military facilities. Sometimes cities grow around them but they're still distinct. Purely civilian on one side of the fence, the other side is mostly or entirely military. Nellis AFB is here in town, I've been past it before. Very clear boundary. Likewise, Creech AFB north of town. There's some civilian stuff nearby but even seen from miles away (there are hiking trails that overlook it) it's completely clear what is civilian and what is military.

The only places where the boundary line between civilian and military isn't clear are those where it's nothing-civilian to nothing-military. The large installations have big buffer zones around them which are restricted but contain nothing either military or civilian apart from things like roads. There is no boundary fence for the Nevada Test Site and I don't believe there is one for Area 51, either. Area 51 specifically has it's boundaries set such that any place that overlooks the base is either part of it or part of the Test Site--note that that means it's many miles to anything actually worth hitting. There's also another restricted zone without a fence out there whose name I do not recall--but there's nothing in it worth hitting, period. It's for the Air Force to play, it's restricted because they're free to drop stuff there and there's also UXO about.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Wikipedia lists some.

The problem is that direct sources are not likely to be online and not likely to be in English and thus are in the realm of historians, not Google.

Note that that article about Algeria treated it as if it were a normal thing--because that's how the world was back then. Jews got massacred now and then.

Wikipedia lists some what? Some pogroms that happened in different places at different times under different governing authorities? Which ones are relevant to this discussion? Remember, we're talking about Jews living under Ottoman rule in Palestine. If you think the pogroms carried out by Cossacks in Ukraine are relevant, you'll have to explain the relevance.

Also, if you don't have access to direct sources, what are you using as a source and what makes you think it's reliable? What informs your opinion of life for Jews under Ottoman rule?

Wikipedia lists some things in Palestine.

And it's more a case of the dog not barking. Read that report out of Algeria again--note the tone. Horrific, but not exactly abnormal. It reads about like we would expect to read of hurricane damage. And look at all the head-in-sand about the expulsion/extermination of Jews from Muslim lands. Doing bad things to Jews is the norm. Why should we believe that things were better under the Ottomans than they were elsewhere?

Are you asking why you should believe that different circumstances can result in different outcomes? Why simply believe when you can look into it and see if it ever happened?

There's nothing wrong with being skeptical as long as you're willing to take in information and learn something. I think the problem here is that you are defending a dogmatic belief and are unwilling to confront historical facts that might disprove it.

Why do you think things were better in Palestine than elsewhere in Muslim lands? You're the one presenting the claim: that they didn't show the same pattern as elsewhere.

Especially since there are pogroms listed.

 

[ZiprHead]

If you kill 20% of Hamas, but recruitment skyrockets, have you accomplished much of anything?

I was going to comment on that, too. Discussing percents of terrorist organizations that have been killed has an underlying assumption that the recruiting is 0. Not to mention, there's always a distribution with these things, a continuum or spectrum...so one day a person might not be Hamas and the next day, they may be sympathetic, a year later, they might be Hamas. Then, you may have some who were almost ready to join and then decide to join PA instead but still are sympathetic to Hamas goals. It's a giant clusterfuck of untrackable, changing opinion.

People join Hamas out of economic necessity. That's part of why Hamas wants the place wrecked--the fewer other options the people have the easier it is for them to recruit.

Yup. If you want to eat, join Hamas.

 

[laughing dog]

Different fallacy, still a derail.

Are you going to continue to play word games?

Your disagreement with or incomprehension of a response does mot make it a fallacy or a derail.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

just think how many schools, hospitals, houses, roads etc. would have benefited from that money used.

No kidding! It takes a lot of manhours to dig 10 km of tunnel, not to mention the construction materials go into reinforcing it and equipping it with electricity, ventilation and plumbing.

I've seen an estimate of 10% of all construction materials in Gaza for many years.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why not have sanctuary camps on the Gaza beach?


What prevents the U.S. and other countries from delivering aid to the refugees on the beach?

And get the crews delivering it killed or taken hostage?

Israel tried it, got mobbed and I strongly suspect Hamas fired into the crowd. It would go worse if we tried it.

And how do you distinguish refugees from Hamas?

Besides, the real problem is Hamas wants the people to be starving and they have the guns to make it happen.

And it's a lie to say the refugees could not be evacuated anywhere. There are many possible locations to which they could go.

The problem is that they would be weaponized.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hamas ( or Hamas replacements) will always be the problem. So are ardent Zionists.

How does killing 1000s of civilians of any ethnicity solve those problems?

How do strawmen help matters?

The only side that wants dead civilians is Hamas. But they're quite effective at ensuring some die if Israel defends itself.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm talking about The Balfour Declaration, The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine & The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. All spun from the vibrant threads of colonial daydreams and dipped in the early hues of wokism fantasy.

Edit: Nowadays, all the architects of this conundrum are donning fancy wigs and passionately pounding their fists in the air, proclaiming solutions as if they're auditioning for a political sitcom.

Agreed. Basically all colonial borders are a mess. But the world needs to live with reality.

 

[laughing dog]

Hamas ( or Hamas replacements) will always be the problem. So are ardent Zionists.

How does killing 1000s of civilians of any ethnicity solve those problems?

How do strawmen help matters?

What are you under the delusion is a straw man?

The only side that wants dead civilians is Hamas. But they're quite effective at ensuring some die if Israel defends itself.

Some? For a side that allegedly does not want dead civilians, the IDF manages to kill and injure magnitudes more than Hamas.