Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Gospel]

I wonder what will save the next batch of Israeli civilians kidnapped by Gazan militants.
The clear lesson is that violent Muslim supremacists can kidnap civilians and their supporters, like you, will rally to their cause!
Tom

More than 10,800 posts into this thread, not one of them in support of Muslim supremacists, and you can say ^this^ with a straight face?

Some folks treat reality like optional DLC. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[TSwizzle]

Teh Grauniad will print any old rubbish

Many of the 90 bodies of Palestinians returned to Gaza by Israeli authorities under the ceasefire deal showed signs of torture and execution, including blindfolds, cuffed hands and bullet wounds in the head, according to doctors’ accounts. “Almost all of them had been blindfolded, and had been bound up and they had gunshots between the eyes. Almost all of them had been executed,” said Dr Ahmed al-Farra, the head of Nasser hospital’s paediatric department.

Teh Grauniad

 

[Shadowy Man]

Is it difficult to constantly misspell The Guardian or does your autocorrect now anticipate it?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The latest victim of the onslaught was this guy, Omar Hayek, killed on his way out of the city to a satellite clinic. He was waiting at a bus stop. I sure it was a fucking terrorist bus stop. Murderers! This is the fourteenth killing of an MSF staff member since they began operations in Gaza. You'd be safer as a soldier than you are as a doctor when Israel is on the march, at least soldiers get body armor and are allowed to shoot back.

We have one MSF member documented as Hamas.

And note that Israel has called for the evacuation of Gaza City. Everyone there is either Hamas or a human shield.

You are writing heinous lies about a good man who was just brutally killed while risking his life to help others. It's not an "evacuation" when Israel is gunning people down as they try to flee. You should be ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, typing filth like that. Or don't you?

And once again you blame Israel for what Hamas did. It's Hamas that keeps shooting people trying to get off the X.

 

[Politesse]

The latest victim of the onslaught was this guy, Omar Hayek, killed on his way out of the city to a satellite clinic. He was waiting at a bus stop. I sure it was a fucking terrorist bus stop. Murderers! This is the fourteenth killing of an MSF staff member since they began operations in Gaza. You'd be safer as a soldier than you are as a doctor when Israel is on the march, at least soldiers get body armor and are allowed to shoot back.

We have one MSF member documented as Hamas.

And note that Israel has called for the evacuation of Gaza City. Everyone there is either Hamas or a human shield.

You are writing heinous lies about a good man who was just brutally killed while risking his life to help others. It's not an "evacuation" when Israel is gunning people down as they try to flee. You should be ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, typing filth like that. Or don't you?

And once again you blame Israel for what Hamas did. It's Hamas that keeps shooting people trying to get off the X.

There is no reasonable doubt whatsoever that Omar Hayek was murdered by Israeli forces. I cited my source. If you aren't a liar, and a supporter of the murder of physicians, show me any evidence whatsoever that what you are saying is true.

 

[bilby]

Is it difficult to constantly misspell The Guardian or does your autocorrect now anticipate it?

It's a traditional British joke, mostly propped up by the satirical magazine Private Eye, and stems from a period when the Guardian repeatedly published copy in which their own name was misspelled, due to lax typesetting standards at their Manchester headquarters.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Despite islam, not because of islam.

You sure like rewriting history. You do realize that without 7th-century Islam, the violent tribal society it emerged from would’ve never given rise to the mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy that shaped civilization itself.

It was because of Islam, bruh, not in spite of it. Don’t let your hatred for the violent, reactionary and modern version of the faith erase the history that made your modern world possible.

Persia was the center of European scientific learning from about 600 bc to 1200 AD. When Islam conquered Baghdad they took it over. Mohammed forbade the mixing of Muslims with Zoroastrians. So the Zoroastrians were allowed to just get on with it. Which explains why the Islamic countries kept being scientifically litterate. After the Mongols conquered Baghdad Islam became backward. Islam shifted to a more militant culture which is where it's still at.

The culture wars regarding Medieval Islam has led to a weird situation where nationalists and conservatives want to believe Islam is more backward than it was. The leftists want to believe that Islam was more peace loving and functional than it was. Muslims themselves spread rediculous fantasies about how amazing Mohammed and the Muslims were.

If you want to pin the scientific acheivements of the Middle-East to a specific relgion, I'd pick zoroastrianism over Islam. The Islamic golden age came at a time when the Byzantinians were in decline and the Arab rulers had wisely kept the zoroastrian structure of learning intact. As a result the Quran is obviously a product of zoroastrian scholars. Written in a zoroastrian tradition. Just with Islamic words.

We're not so acquainted with zoroastrianism in the west. Western history has a long tradition of seeing us as the descendents of Greeks, locked in constant opposition with the East. This is a Renaissance invention. The Greeks certainly didn't see it that way. The Persians weren't seen as the monster we get in the film 300. When in reality the Greeks admired and looked up to the Persians. But because the Mongols destroyed Baghdag and because the monks of Constantinople kept the Greek works, we got a skewed narrative. But now thanks to archeology, we know better.

You’re right that Persia had a long intellectual tradition before Islam, Zoroastrian and Hellenistic influences were major factors.

This is another one of those mislabelings of history. When Alexander conquered Persia a lot of the zoroastrian knowledge was incorporated into Greek knowledge and passed off as Greek.

Greeks, like Jews had a fetish for writing things down. That's a big part of their religion.

Zoroastrians have a fetish for being better people. It's the most fundamental aspect of their religion. They had self improvement and self betterment and the most core aspect of their faith. "Constructive thoughts, lead to constructive words, lead to constructive deeds".

They also were richer than everyone else. They could afford to blow wealth on betterment and science.

Over time zoroastrian religion bled into both Judaism and Greek (and then latin religion).

Or as a philosopher friend likes to cheekily put it "Persians invented everything".

But claiming Islam “forbade the mixing of Muslims with Zoroastrians” or that “the Quran was a Zoroastrian product” is a huge leap.

Mohammed forbade his Arab troops to enter any non-Arab city. Which perhaps had more to do with plague than any religious issues. Both Persia and Rome were completely decimated by plague. Which is why a bunch of illiterate nomad camel herders on the fringes of the world managed to conquer them. Fun fact is that Persia was so decimated by plague that Mohammeds main opposition was Arab mercenaries in the employ of Persia. It was the same on the Roman side. Their main Roman opponents were Arab mercenaries employed by Rome.

The fact that they were kept physically separate is what kept the populations culturally separate.

Over time the Muslims became an imperial master race, forbidding the Christians and Zoroastrians to convert to Islam. BTW, Islam wasn't invented until 70 years after Mohammed died. It wasn't until the Turks took over when the general population was allowed to convert to Islam.

The early Islamic empires absorbed knowledge from conquered regions precisely because the Qur’an encouraged the pursuit of knowledge and reflection on creation , that’s why translation projects like the House of Wisdom thrived under Muslim patronage. The scholars weren’t just preserving Zoroastrian or Greek thought; they were building on it, debating it, correcting it, and producing original work in astronomy, optics, mathematics, and medicine.

I'll concede that it wasn't “because of Islam”. I could have said it better when countering Tswissle's "despite Islam" claim. What I meant was that Islam built the kind of environment where Greek, Persian, Indian, and Arab traditions could collide and collaborate under the same roof.

Tom Holland has a good line about Charlemagne and when he conquered Frankia and tried to recreate the Roman empire. "imagine you steal a car but you don't have a drivers licence". Mohameds Arab army was just the same kind of illiterate unwashed barbarians as Charlemagne was. They had been mercenaries of Rome (and Persia) so they understood how they functioned militarily. But they had no idea of how to run an empire. Which is why it all went to shit.

The moment the Arabs took over anything the social fabric unravelled and they became easy pickings for the next warlord over. Leading to a continually fracturing empire. If it hadn't been for the utter destruction of Persia, ongoing bubonic plague in Rome and the Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and the Magyars kept attacing in the Balkans... Mohammed would be a character like Atilla the Hun.

The fact that later Turkic conquerers adopted the Islamic religion and managed to create functioning empires creates an illusion of Islamic stability and the success of Mohammed. The Middle-East was stable and prosperous under the Romans and Persians. When the Arabs took it over it fell apart. Remember, this is the most fertile region from India to the Atlantic. This was the hardest place to fail. They still fucked it up.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I would like to note that it was diplomacy, not genocide, that saved these final survivors of the horror. In particular, American influence. Any American president could have chosen to do as Trump has done. Violence freed 8 hostages. 3 were murdered by their rescuers. 168 were rescued by conference. Let the lesson be clear.

I wonder what will save the next batch of Israeli civilians kidnapped by Gazan militants.
The clear lesson is that violent Muslim supremacists can kidnap civilians and their supporters, like you, will rally to their cause!
Tom

They will also be saved at the negotiating table, if Hamas or Israel doesn't shoot them in the head before that can happen. And yes, there will be more incidents like this, as soon as Hamas recovers from the events of the last two years and the new recruits are old enough to hold a gun without falling over.

And you're lucky I am a pacifist, frankly. I never have supported any terrorist organization and never will, and I don't respect liars and slanderers much either.

You've been criticising Israel repeatedly in this thread. That is to support Hamas, a terrorist organisation. So much for your pacifism.

 

[Politesse]

I would like to note that it was diplomacy, not genocide, that saved these final survivors of the horror. In particular, American influence. Any American president could have chosen to do as Trump has done. Violence freed 8 hostages. 3 were murdered by their rescuers. 168 were rescued by conference. Let the lesson be clear.

I wonder what will save the next batch of Israeli civilians kidnapped by Gazan militants.
The clear lesson is that violent Muslim supremacists can kidnap civilians and their supporters, like you, will rally to their cause!
Tom

They will also be saved at the negotiating table, if Hamas or Israel doesn't shoot them in the head before that can happen. And yes, there will be more incidents like this, as soon as Hamas recovers from the events of the last two years and the new recruits are old enough to hold a gun without falling over.

And you're lucky I am a pacifist, frankly. I never have supported any terrorist organization and never will, and I don't respect liars and slanderers much either.

You've been criticising Israel repeatedly in this thread. That is to support Hamas, a terrorist organisation. So much for your pacifism.

No, it isn't.

But this is an interesting confession on your part. It's not just that you don't criticize Israel, it's that you cannot; in your twisted mind, any criticism of Israel is endorsement of state terrorism on the part of their victims. Ergo, all of your "discussion" in this thread has been in bad faith. You never had any willingness whatsoever to discuss whether or not Israel commited genocide in Gaza, nor whether there was any evidence that they had or had not. Because if the answer was yes, that would be to criticize Israel, and in your view, criticizing Israel is supporting Hamas.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I would like to note that it was diplomacy, not genocide, that saved these final survivors of the horror. In particular, American influence. Any American president could have chosen to do as Trump has done. Violence freed 8 hostages. 3 were murdered by their rescuers. 168 were rescued by conference. Let the lesson be clear.

I wonder what will save the next batch of Israeli civilians kidnapped by Gazan militants.
The clear lesson is that violent Muslim supremacists can kidnap civilians and their supporters, like you, will rally to their cause!
Tom

They will also be saved at the negotiating table, if Hamas or Israel doesn't shoot them in the head before that can happen. And yes, there will be more incidents like this, as soon as Hamas recovers from the events of the last two years and the new recruits are old enough to hold a gun without falling over.

And you're lucky I am a pacifist, frankly. I never have supported any terrorist organization and never will, and I don't respect liars and slanderers much either.

You've been criticising Israel repeatedly in this thread. That is to support Hamas, a terrorist organisation. So much for your pacifism.

No, it isn't.

I'm sorry. You're not getting a free pass on this. Especially not at a time when the world suddenly turned antisemitic on a dime. That was not the time and place to try to wiggle out of moral responsibility.

If there ever was a time to take a stand and support the victims... this was it. And you failed in that. You supported the perpetrators.

There was no side you could have picked in this conflict that wouldn't have led to suffering. Pretending their was is moral cowardice IMHO.

I'm very disapointed over the weak morals of many on this forum displayed when it came to this conflict. I thought better of this place.

It's a free country. You're free to abandon morality. But when you do, you will be judged for it.