Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Derec]

ignoring the inept analogy with WW2, if the justification for death of civilians is “It’s war and civilians get killed”, then why the outcry when Israeli citizens get killed in war?

Because targeting civilians is a war crime.
And certainly raping anybody, as Hamas has done, is a war crime.

Let's offer a different example since you think WWII one is "inept" (even though you have not elaborated as to why you think that).
On 9/11 Al Qaeda targeted civilians. That is in no way similar to US targeting terrorists and also killing some civilians in the process.

 

[Arctish]

Thank you for doing some research. I have been waiting for years for someone to take even a cursory glance at the history of the Ottoman Empire. If you quoted my post and provided links to show that I was wrong when I said Jews were as safe as other ethnic and religious communities, point taken.

My point was that "as safe as other ethnic and religious communities" is not particularly safe.

Jews were safer.

"Safer than other ethnic and religious communities" is a pretty low bar.

Where on Earth is the bar set higher?

Christians got massacred there at the end, while Jews didn't.

As your links show, the victims of those massacres were Christian citizens of the Empire in Anatolia and further north, and the massacres of Greeks and Assyrians only happened during WWI as the Empire was coming apart. There had been previous massacres of Armenians but the really big one also happened during WWI. All three massacres of Armenians apparently happened for the same reason as the massacres of the other two Christian groups - suspected or known attempts by some individuals to aid in the overthrow of the Empire resulting in horrific collective punishment of everyone in their communities.

Yup. So the Jews would probably not have been genocided by the Ottomans, unless a few Jewish hotheads took some stupid provocative treasonous action, like blowing up a hotel full of Ottoman employees in an attempt to help Jewish-majority parts of Palestine secede from the Empire.

You mean if the Irgun, or Lehi, or some other Zionist terrorist groups had carried out the same campaign of murder and terrorism it did under British rule, would the Ottomans have reacted by massacring Jews? Perhaps they would have. But the militant Zionists in the early 20th century were immigrants from Europe, like Joseph Trumpeldor, Menachim Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Avraham Stern, and their fellow Russian/Polish zealots. I think it more likely the Ottomans would have gone after those armed immigrants setting up walled compounds and deported them rather than target Palestinian Jews, who were only about 10% of the population and not a majority anywhere except in some towns and scattered villages.

But if things had been different, then things would have been different.

I am sticking with my contention that things were quiet under Ottoman rule. I acknowledge that it was not a perfect place (not even Dulac is that). Yes, there had been murderers, thieves, land swindlers, corrupt officials, violent racist bigoted assholes, organized crime, and many other unsavory types living there, but for four centuries the society was as peaceful as we human beings can usually manage.

Yes; and they were even making progress. For instance, in the 1800s the Ottoman judicial system abolished execution by impalement.

Did I forget to say that the Ottomans weren't perfect? Ah, no, I can see I said it right there in the part you quoted.

Did I forget to mention I think we should take what the Ottomans did well and improve on it? Nope, I said that, too.

I remember talking about improvements like voting rights and free speech in a discussion I had with Loren. Perhaps you didn't participate in that one. If it helps clarify my point I'll say it again here. I think the Ottomans fell short in a lot of ways but we can take what they did well and improve on it, like ensuring people can participate in their government, that they have freedom of speech and a free press (with limits on speech that is harmful to society like inciting violence or slandering citizens), that women and men have equal rights, and probably a whole long list of other rights and freedoms.

 

[pood]

It's not all Palestinians, but Hamas are Palestinians.

A big part of the problem is how many people refuse to accept that:

1) Hamas is a subset of Gazans.
2) Gazans are a subset of Palestinians.
3) Palestinians are a subset of Muslims.
4) Muslims are a subset of violently anti -Jewish bigots.

That's just how it is.
Tom

Let me see if I can follow your logic here,

Even and odd numbers are subsets of real numbers. Although even and odd numbers are different, they are both real numbers.

In the above, groups 1-4, are, according to you, a subset of violently anti-Jewish bigots. Your list terminates in “violently anti-Jewish bigots,” so I must assume they are equivalent, for you, to the real numbers of math and arithmetic.

It therefore follows, according to your own logic, that you think that all Palestinians are violently anti-Jewish bigots, just as all even and odd numbers are real numbers.

Are you even going to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

 

[TomC]

Are you even going to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

No. Since I didn't make it.

Your allegations are not the same as me saying anything.
Tom

 

[pood]

Are you even going to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

No. Since I didn't make it.

Your allegations are not the same as me saying anything.
Tom

Then perhaps you do not know the meaning of a subset.

You said that Palestinians are a subset of violently anti-Jewish bigots. You did not qualify this assertion with the word “some” — you just said “Palestinians.” Absent that qualification, and given the actual definition of a subset, it follows you are claiming that all Palestinians are “violently anti-Jewish bigots.”

Again, would you care to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

 

[Arctish]

Spoiled, and evidently not very hungry Palestinian in northern Gaza is not very happy with airdropped MREs.


2/10 he says. He should have moved to Rafah if he wanted to eat shawarma every day...

I found a bit about your source Imshin, but who is Adam Albilya? What makes him a credible source?

I also found this about Chef Hamada in Rafah. It appears to be from the same place, perhaps on the same day:
Chef Hamada's food stall

I don't know if Imshin was deliberately spinning a yarn about Gazans having plenty of good food so no reason to worry, but Chef Hamada's open air food stall is a step down from the restaurant he and his family owned, and it's not well stocked. His food does look pretty good, though.

 

[pood]

Maybe this will make it clearer:

A is a subset of B, if all elements of A are also elements of B. However, B is the superset, which means that while all elements of A are also elements of B, not all elements of B are elements of A.

Consider: odd numbers are a subset of real numbers. This means that while all odd numbers are real numbers, not all real numbers are odd numbers.

When you say, “Palestinians are a subset of violently anti-Jewish bigots,” from the above correct definition of sets and subsets, you mean that while not all violently anti-Jewish bigots are Palestinians, all Palestinians are violently anti-Jewish bigots.

I’m going to assume you did not actually mean to say this, but did not properly express whatever in fact you did mean.

 

[pood]

Spoiled, and evidently not very hungry Palestinian in northern Gaza is not very happy with airdropped MREs.


2/10 he says. He should have moved to Rafah if he wanted to eat shawarma every day...

Wow, nothing like anecdotes as evidence, eh?

But keep it up. Anything to justify Israeli genocide, I guess. Anecdotes will do just as well as any other stupid bullshit.

 

[laughing dog]

ignoring the inept analogy with WW2, if the justification for death of civilians is “It’s war and civilians get killed”, then why the outcry when Israeli citizens get killed in war?

Because targeting civilians is a war crime.
And certainly raping anybody, as Hamas has done, is a war crime.

If it is a war crime, then the alleged war criminals should be arrested and tried. Are you arguing that this is what the IDF and the gov't of Israel is trying to do?

Let's offer a different example since you think WWII one is "inept" (even though you have not elaborated as to why you think that).
On 9/11 Al Qaeda targeted civilians. That is in no way similar to US targeting terrorists and also killing some civilians in the process.

True. but the US did not kill magnitudes more civilians than Al Qaeda. But what the US did was, in my opinion, immoral.

 

[TV and credit cards]

ignoring the inept analogy with WW2, if the justification for death of civilians is “It’s war and civilians get killed”, then why the outcry when Israeli citizens get killed in war?

Because targeting civilians is a war crime.
And certainly raping anybody, as Hamas has done, is a war crime.

Let's offer a different example since you think WWII one is "inept" (even though you have not elaborated as to why you think that).
On 9/11 Al Qaeda targeted civilians. That is in no way similar to US targeting terrorists and also killing some civilians in the process.

It's really a matter of how ham-handed you go about it. The disregard for innocents in pursuit of the criminals. What Israel (Netanyahu) is doing is just vindictive and it would appear, opportunistic. But this course was easy to predict. I made comments early on this was going to be ugly and Biden would have some hard decisions to make; how to stand by Israel when you know the actions its loathsome prime minister is likely to take? I appreciate Chuck Schumer's comments. To a degree, it helps to separate Netanyahu's actions from the Israeli people.

 

[pood]

Famine imminent in northern Gaza

But, hey, Derec scrounged a couple of videos off the internet — and we all know how reliable the internet it, and how reliable Derec is — and that’s all we need to conclude things are hunky-dory in Gaza. Probably the Gazans should be thanking Israel for performing urban renovation and putting them on healthy diets.

 

[TomC]

Are you even going to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

No. Since I didn't make it.

Your allegations are not the same as me saying anything.
Tom

Then perhaps you do not know the meaning of a subset.

You said that Palestinians are a subset of violently anti-Jewish bigots. You did not qualify this assertion with the word “some” — you just said “Palestinians.” Absent that qualification, and given the actual definition of a subset, it follows you are claiming that all Palestinians are “violently anti-Jewish bigots.”

Again, would you care to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

I see the problem as you using mathematical precision to dodge the messier reality of the human situation.
So liberally sprinkle the qualifier "dominant majority" if it helps you understand the human reality. You might prefer "some", but that doesn't really get the reality either.

Some of the terrorist militants in Hamas aren't originally from Gaza. They've gone there to join the violence against Zionists from other places. So in the strictest terms Hamas aren't Gazans, necessarily. But still...
Tom

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

On 9/11 Al Qaeda targeted civilians.

The 9/11 terrorists were assholes and both previous to 9/11 and post 9/11 there were instances where al Qaeda targeted civilians. That said, 9/11 activities were directed at high-value economic, infrastructure, and/or military targets including the WTC, Pentagon, and probably also wanted to fit in the White House. While al Qaeda may not have given two shits about civilians, their target was the apparatus that made US defense and offense function which they wanted to seriously wound at a minimum.

That is in no way similar to US targeting terrorists and also killing some civilians in the process.

That depends on who is doing the describing and splaining. If we look at what happened in the aftermath of 9/11, we observe an unjustified war of aggression against Iraq that included hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths because it was purported that Iraq harbored WMDs. There was a treatment of all Iraqis as the bad guys and assumptions that Iraqi males in particular were up to no good which decimated populations of cities like Fallujah. And of course at the same time there was what they were calling "enhanced interrogation" which was in effect torture and the Geneva Conventions were being called "quaint" in order to promote the use of torture, indefinite detention, lack of habeas corpus as well as those hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The purported goal was to go after al Qaeda in Iraq, WMDs, and Saddam Hussein (who was incorrectly alleged to be the mastermind of nuclear weapons in 2003) and so these were in effect the "high value" targets to capture and destroy.

Both 9/11 and the ensuing war on Iraq had militaristic objectives and both had seriously fucked up levels of civilian casualties from prioritizing those misconstrued objectives. The level of fuckedupness of civilian deaths, so-called collateral damage, is so high that using your phrase "some civilians in the process" is inappropriate.

And this ultimately is what we're talking about, whether it is Hamas, Israel's far right-wing, al Qaeda, or the US Christo-fascists. People choose to have such high priorities of things that they end up dehumanizing others, making it acceptable for mass slaughter.

 

[TomC]

And this ultimately is what we're talking about, whether it is Hamas, Israel's far right-wing, al Qaeda, or the US Christo-fascists. People choose to have such high priorities of things that they end up dehumanizing others, making it acceptable for mass slaughter.

So much this.
It's an unfortunate part of human nature but it's an ancient tradition.
Tom

 

[pood]

Are you even going to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

No. Since I didn't make it.

Your allegations are not the same as me saying anything.
Tom

Then perhaps you do not know the meaning of a subset.

You said that Palestinians are a subset of violently anti-Jewish bigots. You did not qualify this assertion with the word “some” — you just said “Palestinians.” Absent that qualification, and given the actual definition of a subset, it follows you are claiming that all Palestinians are “violently anti-Jewish bigots.”

Again, would you care to gesture at a shred of support for this insane allegation?

I see the problem as you using mathematical precision to dodge the messier reality of the human situation.
So liberally sprinkle the qualifier "dominant majority" if it helps you understand the human reality. You might prefer "some", but that doesn't really get the reality either.

Some of the terrorist militants in Hamas aren't originally from Gaza. They've gone there to join the violence against Zionists from other places. So in the strictest terms Hamas aren't Gazans, necessarily. But still...
Tom

Well, fine. But you used the word subset, and I pointed out what that means, and now you’ve retracted that this is what you meant. That’s great. I didn’t think you really meant, what you wrote. But still, I would take issue with your new claim that the “dominant majority” of Palestinians — I take it, by “dominant majority,” you are referring to Palestinians, or specifically residents of Gaza — are “violently anti-Jewish bigots.” This claim is demonstrably wrong. The vast majority of Gazans do NOT engage in “violent” activity against Israel, and I see no evidence whatever that this majority consists of “anti-Jewish bigots,” either. Anti-ISRAEL, maybe, but that’s not the same as “anti-Jewish bigotry,” no matter how many times various pundits try to spin opposition to Israeli government policy as the same thing as anti-Semitism. It’s not — after all, many Jews, including a great many ISRAELI Jews, oppose Israeli government policy, and as it stands now, Netanyahu, a war criminal, is actually widely loathed inside of Israel. In any event, given that Israel stole their land, I can well imagine wide Palestinian loathing toward Israel.

 

[Bomb#20]

I see the problem as you using mathematical precision to dodge the messier reality of the human situation.
So liberally sprinkle the qualifier "dominant majority" if it helps you understand the human reality. ...

... I would take issue with your new claim that the “dominant majority” of Palestinians — I take it, by “dominant majority,” you are referring to Palestinians, or specifically residents of Gaza — are “violently anti-Jewish bigots.” ... I see no evidence whatever that this majority consists of “anti-Jewish bigots,” either. Anti-ISRAEL, maybe, but that’s not the same as “anti-Jewish bigotry,” ...

You're carefully distinguishing between Jews on the one hand and Israel on the other. Good for you -- that's the right thing to do. But what made you do it? How did you learn that it was the right thing to do? Pretty much all of us in the west have learned to make that sort of distinction by growing up in a culture steeped in liberalism. Whether we're individually liberals or not, we've all been heavily exposed to liberal ideas, and we can generally tell they're mostly good ideas -- reality has a liberal bias. Carefully distinguishing between Jews and Israel is just part and parcel with carefully distinguishing between sets and individuals. We can do that sort of mental gymnastics in our sleep. It's baked into our culture.

But if you are proposing that the dominant majority of residents of Gaza make the same sort of mental distinction between Jews and Israel that you make, how do you propose that they learned to do that? Doing that sort of mental gymnastics is not baked into their culture. They grew up in a culture that tells them the right thing to do is throw gays off buildings. It's not a culture steeped in liberalism. As for the specific matter of distinguishing Jews from Israel, we already know how middle-eastern Muslim cultures have historically viewed that distinction: when Israel was set up in 1948, the nearby countries reacted by expelling their own native Jewish populations. The Arab and Iranian street appears to have been dominated by anti-Jewish bigots at that time. That includes the part of Palestine that remained under Arab control, i.e., Jordan, which is one of the countries that expelled its Jews. So, since you're challenging Tom for evidence, do you see any evidence whatever that Palestinian culture has grown substantially more liberal since that time?

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

I see the problem as you using mathematical precision to dodge the messier reality of the human situation.
So liberally sprinkle the qualifier "dominant majority" if it helps you understand the human reality. ...

... I would take issue with your new claim that the “dominant majority” of Palestinians — I take it, by “dominant majority,” you are referring to Palestinians, or specifically residents of Gaza — are “violently anti-Jewish bigots.” ... I see no evidence whatever that this majority consists of “anti-Jewish bigots,” either. Anti-ISRAEL, maybe, but that’s not the same as “anti-Jewish bigotry,” ...

You're carefully distinguishing between Jews on the one hand and Israel on the other. Good for you -- that's the right thing to do. But what made you do it? How did you learn that it was the right thing to do? Pretty much all of us in the west have learned to make that sort of distinction by growing up in a culture steeped in liberalism. Whether we're individually liberals or not, we've all been heavily exposed to liberal ideas, and we can generally tell they're mostly good ideas -- reality has a liberal bias. Carefully distinguishing between Jews and Israel is just part and parcel with carefully distinguishing between sets and individuals. We can do that sort of mental gymnastics in our sleep. It's baked into our culture.

But if you are proposing that the dominant majority of residents of Gaza make the same sort of mental distinction between Jews and Israel that you make, how do you propose that they learned to do that? Doing that sort of mental gymnastics is not baked into their culture. They grew up in a culture that tells them the right thing to do is throw gays off buildings. It's not a culture steeped in liberalism. As for the specific matter of distinguishing Jews from Israel, we already know how middle-eastern Muslim cultures have historically viewed that distinction: when Israel was set up in 1948, the nearby countries reacted by expelling their own native Jewish populations. The Arab and Iranian street appears to have been dominated by anti-Jewish bigots at that time. That includes the part of Palestine that remained under Arab control, i.e., Jordan, which is one of the countries that expelled its Jews. So, since you're challenging Tom for evidence, do you see any evidence whatever that Palestinian culture has grown substantially more liberal since that time?

Regardless of your interpretation of their beliefs, have Palestinians outside of Hamas committed crimes worthy of death while living in Israel? If one basketball team pulls out guns and shoots their opposing basketball team dead, does that give the right to the fans of the dead basketball team to kill the fans of the aggressors?

aa

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Is it possible for you to either provide evidence for your claim or even to address the actual content of a post instead of imputing motives on the part of the poster?

By Hamas' own data the kill rate of terrorists is 20x the kill rate of civilians. That's an undisputed low value for the ratio. Reality is probably something like 40x but I don't think anyone knows for sure.

That is not providing evidence, it is irrelevant testimkny.

So this is a game of pigeon chess? You have no answer so you pretend there's no question? You're just running in circles long enough to get the issue clipped out of the quotes.

What figure are you disputing?
The 6,000 Hamas fighters they have admitted have been killed?
That 30,000 dead (Hamas numbers) of a bit over 3 million (again, Hamas numbers) is approximately 1%?
The 30,000 militants in Gaza (admittedly, a number from Israel)?
Or that 6,000 is 20% of 30,000?
Or that 20% is very different than 1%?

Keep practicing "Every accusation is a a confession".

Which is not a rebuttal.

I did encourage you to practice “every accusation is a confession”, so I really cannot complain.

I'm not after zero-meaning posts.

 

[laughing dog]

Is it possible for you to either provide evidence for your claim or even to address the actual content of a post instead of imputing motives on the part of the poster?

By Hamas' own data the kill rate of terrorists is 20x the kill rate of civilians. That's an undisputed low value for the ratio. Reality is probably something like 40x but I don't think anyone knows for sure.

That is not providing evidence, it is irrelevant testimkny.

So this is a game of pigeon chess? You have no answer so you pretend there's no question? ….

Honestly, I think neither of us knows what you are going on about.

Keep practicing "Every accusation is a a confession".

Which is not a rebuttal.

I did encourage you to practice “every accusation is a confession”, so I really cannot complain.

I'm not after zero-meaning posts.

That is neither a rebuttal nor a denial.

 

[repoman]

It is funny and somewhat appropriate and accurate that "every accusation is a confession" is similar to "The Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you."