Sudan Massacre

[bilby]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

It seems to me that the fundamental difference is that we assume that the violence in Sudan and Nigeria is intractible - that the perpetrators cannot be reasoned with with any expectation of success because they are irrational religionists who would never listen to reason, and over whom we have little or no leverage.

In contrast, we do Bibi Netanyahu the great compliment of assuming that he could, in principle, be persuaded to stop killing civillians and start complying with the rules of war.

That is, we protest about what the IDF are doing more than we protest about what Boko Haram or RSF are doing, not because what the IDF does is just as bad, but because we assess the chances of our protests being in any way useful as much higher in the case of the IDF.

That assessment is partly a compliment to the Israeli leaders (or if you prefer, an islamophobic insult to the leaders of the forces engaging in genocidal attacks in Sudan and Nigeria) in assuming that the Israelis are less irrationally fanatical; and partly a recognition that as a major funder and supplier, the US has more leverage over the IDF than it does over the RSF or Boko Haram.

In short, we care more about those things we feel we might have at least some chance of influencing.

 

[TSwizzle]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved. Leftists can quickly identify an ongoing genocide, or humanitarian disaster and organize protests, boycotts and whatever else when Jews are involved but turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other atrocities. It's no mystery really.

 

[bilby]

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved.

I think it's pretty obvious that the right are irrationally obsessed with Jews and Judaism, and are constantly inventing anti-semitic conspiracist claptrap about how important and different Jews are.

I suspect it's because of Christian Dominionism.

 

[Emily Lake]

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved.

I think it's pretty obvious that the right are irrationally obsessed with Jews and Judaism, and are constantly inventing anti-semitic conspiracist claptrap about how important and different Jews are.

I suspect it's because of Christian Dominionism.

I'm struggling to parse your post, bilby. I think you're trying to say that the right is, in overly simplistic terms, pro-Israel? And that the right then assumes anti-semitic reasons on behalf of the left not being equally pro-Israel?

How that becomes christian dominionism I don't really follow.

Then again, I also don't get how it's somehome Islamophobic to decry extremist religious genocide being committed using islam as a justification. That doesn't seem "phobic" to me.

 

[Arctish]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved.

I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that the United States provides about 3.8 billion dollars in aid to Israel annually and sent an additional 16.3 billion in military aid since the October 2023 attack while it sends an average of about 500 million per year to Sudan, largely through food or health programs.

And I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) how many US Presidents and presidential candidates have visited Israel and why they did so, while none of them have visited Sudan.

And I suppose you never realized how many times the leaders of the State of Israel have visited the United States and what their visits accomplished, or how few times the leaders of Sudan have visited or how long ago that was.

So of course you wouldn't know why Israel garners more media attention in the US than Sudan which would explain why you think it's because of Jews.

Leftists can quickly identify an ongoing genocide, or humanitarian disaster and organize protests, boycotts and whatever else when Jews are involved but turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other atrocities. It's no mystery really.

And I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) how the US responded to the humanitarian disaster in Somalia or to the genocide in Bosnia even though the US had little stake in them. Or why the HUGE on-going political and financial entanglement between the US and Israel is affecting the response to the ethnic cleansing and humanitarian disaster in Palestine.

So here's a thought: how about we judge the rightness or wrongness of an action based on the action itself, not on who is doing it to whom, or how much our own faction might benefit from it? How about we decry atrocities wherever and whenever they occur?

 

[Bomb#20]

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved. Leftists can quickly identify an ongoing genocide, or humanitarian disaster and organize protests, boycotts and whatever else when Jews are involved but turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other atrocities. It's no mystery really.

I think it's pretty obvious that the right are irrationally obsessed with Jews and Judaism, and are constantly inventing anti-semitic conspiracist claptrap about how important and different Jews are.

I suspect it's because of Christian Dominionism.

I think it's pretty obvious that neither of those purported explanations is a serious attempt to understand the thinking and motivations of the other side, Both theories are constructed for the purpose of giving oneself and others on one's own side a smug feeling of superiority and a convenient justification for despising the opposition. Come on, TSwizzle, do you really think the left's blatant double-standard where Israel is concerned would be one iota different if all that formerly Arab land were currently inhabited by Dutch Protestants or British atheists instead of by Russian Jews? It's ridiculous. And come on, bilby, do you really think rightist atheists like TSwizzle make the exact same arguments about Israel as rightist Christians because of their shared goal of restoring medieval Christian theocracy? It's ridiculous.

In reality, neither the left nor the right give a rat's ass about Jews, Judaism, or anti-semitism per se. The left has a blatant double-standard about Israel because they classify Israelis as Europeans, Europeans rank lower than Arabs on the progressive stack because white progressives feel siding against their own ethnicity proves how non-racist they are, and progressivism is all about self-congratulation. And the right are constantly inventing conspiracist claptrap about how important and different Jews are to the anti-semitic left, not from irrational obsession with Jews and Judaism, but from means-ends rationality, because the charge makes such a useful rhetorical club for the right to whale on the left with, because the left laid itself so open to the charge with its blatant double-standard about Israel, and because if there was one thing the entire western world could agree on in the wake of WWII it was that it's wrong to pick on the Jews.

 

[Bomb#20]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much ... at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

It seems to me that the fundamental difference is that we assume that the violence in Sudan and Nigeria is intractible - that the perpetrators cannot be reasoned with with any expectation of success because they are irrational religionists who would never listen to reason, and over whom we have little or no leverage.

In contrast, we do Bibi Netanyahu the great compliment of assuming that he could, in principle, be persuaded to stop killing civillians and start complying with the rules of war.

That is, we protest about what the IDF are doing more than we protest about what Boko Haram or RSF are doing, not because what the IDF does is just as bad, but because we assess the chances of our protests being in any way useful as much higher in the case of the IDF.

That assessment is partly a compliment to the Israeli leaders (or if you prefer, an islamophobic insult to the leaders of the forces engaging in genocidal attacks in Sudan and Nigeria) in assuming that the Israelis are less irrationally fanatical; and partly a recognition that as a major funder and supplier, the US has more leverage over the IDF than it does over the RSF or Boko Haram.

In short, we care more about those things we feel we might have at least some chance of influencing.

If that's the real reason, which seems doubtful to me, it isn't well thought through. We have about a hundred years of evidence that Israeli-Palestinian violence is intractable too. And it seems pretty unlikely that Israelis can be persuaded en masse to agree either to allow themselves to be murdered or to collectively evacuate their country, which appears to be what it would take to satisfy the 'genocide' folks. In contrast, Trump's ham-handedness aside, the US has generally had friendly relations with Nigeria and it would be perfectly feasible for our military to operate in the north with the cooperation of the Nigerian government and kill an awful lot of Boko Haram fighters. Doing the same in Sudan would be a lot harder; but we have influence with the UAE and could lean on them to stop funding the RSF.

 

[bilby]

And come on, bilby, do you really think rightist atheists like TSwizzle make the exact same arguments about Israel as rightist Christians because of their shared goal of restoring medieval Christian theocracy? It's ridiculous.

Of course it's ridiculous. It's an attempt to reflect the ridiculousness of the post to which it forms a reply.

I seriously didn't think I would need to spell that out, and I apologise for overestimating people's intelligence.

 

[bilby]

In reality, neither the left nor the right give a rat's ass about Jews, Judaism, or anti-semitism per se. The left has a blatant double-standard about Israel because they classify Israelis as Europeans, Europeans rank lower than Arabs on the progressive stack because white progressives feel siding against their own ethnicity proves how non-racist they are, and progressivism is all about self-congratulation.

Well, I consider myself part of the left, and I am certain that the "progressive stack" concept is an absurd strawman, at least as applied to the vast majority of those of us on the left.

There are extremists who actually think that way, but they are a tiny extreme fringe; It makes about the same sense to talk of the progressive stack as a driver of all left wing thinking as it does to talk of the Führerprinzip as a driver of all right wing thinking.

Progressivism may or may not be "all about self-congratulation"; If it is, then I am not a progressive, but still remain a part of the left - and, I believe, that is true of the majority of the left (though possibly not in the US, where the left has apparently largely ceased to exist at all - the majority of the US "left" are centre right Democrats, and the few Americans remaining left of centre may well be mostly extremists, and could be "progressives" for all I know).

I don't have a double-standard about Israel; I hold both sides in that conflict to the exact same standards, and expect them not to be an evil bunch of tits (which of course most of them are not - people just want to get on with life in peace and safety). The problem is that both sides are led by religious zealots, who allow the moderates very little say, and who consider their main opponent to be subhuman (or at least disfavoured by God), so justifying treating them with utter disregard.

Israel is constitutionally and practically much more democratic, but even there, moderates don't have much say in the big decisions. There have been protests by Israeli Jews against Bibi's excessive use of violence and his disproportionate response to the kidnappings of October 2023, but clearly their PM isn't listening to the moderates amongst his own citizens.

Of course, if I am talking to someone who does have a view that one side is largely blameless, I will spend more effort highlighting why that is not the case, than I will agreeing about the vileness of the crimes of the other side.

The problem in Israel isn't so much differences of opinion, political, religious, or otherwise; It is the fact that power can only be achieved (on either side) by ambitious politicians who pander to the popular sentiment that the others can and should be violently opposed, and ideally eradicated.

Moderates are easier to find on the Israeli side than on the Palestinian, but on neither side do they get to set policy, and until they do, on both sides, the violence and killing will continue. The best we can hope for is the reduced intensity of the odd bombing or shooting or rocket attack, rather than a full-on war.

 

[bilby]

if there was one thing the entire western world could agree on in the wake of WWII it was that it's wrong to pick on the Jews.

See, that was not the right lesson to take. The lesson is "it's wrong to pick on a hated outgroup". And Jews are no more incapable than anyone else of picking on a hated outgroup. Because Jews are just people.

Jews happen to have been the hated, rather than the haters, for most of the last couple of millennia, but that doesn't imply that they will be any less able or willing to commit genocide than anyone else - just that until recently, they lacked the means.

 

[bilby]

We have about a hundred years of evidence that Israeli-Palestinian violence is intractable too.

All protracted conflicts are intractable. Until they suddenly aren't.

And it seems pretty unlikely that Israelis can be persuaded en masse to agree either to allow themselves to be murdered or to collectively evacuate their country, which appears to be what it would take to satisfy the 'genocide' folks.

it seemed pretty unlikely that Protestants in Northern Ireland could be persuaded en masse to agree either to allow themselves to be murdered or to collectively evacuate their country, which appeared to be what it would take to satisfy the 'Fenian' folks in the IRA. There was about a hundred years of evidence that that conflict was intractable, too.

But it ended without mass murder or evacuations, and if the peace persists for another century or so, there's every prospect that the enthusiasm for hatred on both sides will become limited to irrelevant numbers of enthusiasts, whose compatriots will treat them with increasing scorn, until they have no more political clout than any other bunch of tin-foil hatted conspiracists.

 

[bilby]

it would be perfectly feasible for our military to operate in the north with the cooperation of the Nigerian government and kill an awful lot of Boko Haram fighters.

Would that make the remaining Mulsims in Nigeria less likely to be violent extremists?

I strongly suspect it would do the opposite.

What is needed is the far more difficult and expensive task of arresting, trying, and (if convicted) imprisoning or otherwise punishing, a small but well protected number of Boko Haram leaders.

You cannot bomb or shoot people into liking you. And killing an awful lot of fighters is neither necessary nor sufficient to stop a campaign of violence; What is needed is to remove the leaders of such campaigns from power. Killing them is one way to do this, of course; And it's often the easiest. But it's demonstrably less effective at ending the campaign than other, harder, options - dead leaders leave behind lots of vengeful subordinates who want to take their place.

"Just kill all of the enemy" is a (usually unachievable) simplistic solution, and not only doesn't usually work, but also is the very genocide against which we are supposedly standing.

 

[Bomb#20]

it would be perfectly feasible for our military to operate in the north with the cooperation of the Nigerian government and kill an awful lot of Boko Haram fighters.

Would that make the remaining Mulsims in Nigeria less likely to be violent extremists?

I strongly suspect it would do the opposite.

Less likely than what? Less likely than telling the Muslims they can murder all the Christians they want and take all their land and nobody will do a damn thing about it? I strongly suspect that's doing the opposite too. Sometimes you need to grade on the curve.

What is needed is the far more difficult and expensive task of arresting, trying, and (if convicted) imprisoning or otherwise punishing, a small but well protected number of Boko Haram leaders.

You cannot bomb or shoot people into liking you.

You cannot arrest, try and punish people into liking you either. If getting the Muslims to like the Christians is the standard on which we're going to judge strategies, the only approach with much track record of success is for the Christians to convert to Islam. Is that something you'd recommend?

And killing an awful lot of fighters is neither necessary nor sufficient to stop a campaign of violence; What is needed is to remove the leaders of such campaigns from power. Killing them is one way to do this, of course; And it's often the easiest. But it's demonstrably less effective at ending the campaign than other, harder, options - dead leaders leave behind lots of vengeful subordinates who want to take their place.

Not really following your thinking here. Arrested, tried and imprisoned leaders leave behind lots of vengeful subordinates who want to take their place too. They also give subordinates a powerful incentive to kidnap people to try to trade for their leaders' release.

"Just kill all of the enemy" is a (usually unachievable) simplistic solution, and not only doesn't usually work, but also is the very genocide against which we are supposedly standing.

Sure, sure, American troops hunting Kalashnikov-carrying fighters would actually spend their time massacring women and children -- that's just what Americans do -- and anyway, it would be Americans against Africans, so even if we aren't killing women and children it's still genocide because calling that sort of thing genocide makes you virtuous.

 

[Bomb#20]

We have about a hundred years of evidence that Israeli-Palestinian violence is intractable too.

All protracted conflicts are intractable. Until they suddenly aren't.

And it seems pretty unlikely that Israelis can be persuaded en masse to agree either to allow themselves to be murdered or to collectively evacuate their country, which appears to be what it would take to satisfy the 'genocide' folks.

it seemed pretty unlikely that Protestants in Northern Ireland could be persuaded en masse to agree either to allow themselves to be murdered or to collectively evacuate their country, which appeared to be what it would take to satisfy the 'Fenian' folks in the IRA. There was about a hundred years of evidence that that conflict was intractable, too.

But it ended without mass murder or evacuations, and if the peace persists for another century or so, there's every prospect that the enthusiasm for hatred on both sides will become limited to irrelevant numbers of enthusiasts, whose compatriots will treat them with increasing scorn, until they have no more political clout than any other bunch of tin-foil hatted conspiracists.

That's pretty much the exception that proves the rule. While pretty much every other gang of militants focused like the PLO on murdering non-combatants, the IRA primarily focused on legitimate military targets. Fenian culture was just never as psychotic as typical terrorist cultures. If there was anybody civilization was going to be able to make a deal with, of course it would be them.

 

[bilby]

the IRA primarily focused on legitimate military targets

As a civilian (and for much of the time, a child) living in England during the "Troubles", I can assure you this was absolutely not the case.

One of my earlest memories is my father picking me up and carrying me out of a department store in Leeds, in a crowd of evacuating shoppers that could easily have crushed a child to death, because an IRA bomb threat had been called in targetting that store. That would have been in about 1974 or '75.

I remember having to take a detour on the way to the Australian Consulate in 1996 when I was applying to emigrate, because the IRA had actually bombed the Arndale Shopping Centre in Manchester. That bomb was described as "The most powerful bomb to go off in Britain since WWII" and consisted of a truck packed with 1.5 tonnes of explosives, parked outside the shopping centre in Corporation Street.

The IRA gave 90 minutes warning, and 75,000 people were evacuated - as a result, nobody was killed, but over 200 people were injured.

Those shoppers and city workers were not 'military targets'.

Nor were the civilians killed and injured by the Woolwich, Guildford, and Birmingham pub bombings (though the IRA never admitted responsibility for the latter). The Woolwich and Guildford attacks were claimed to be 'legitimate military targets' as those pubs were frequented by British Army personnel, but fatalities included one civilian in each case, and many of those injured were also civillians.

The Birmingham bombs had remarkable forensic similarities to known IRA bombs, and the warnings used IRA code words. It seems plausible that the IRA were responsible but denied that when the lack of military casualties became clear, though another hypothesis is that the bombings were carried out by a splinter group and not authorised by the Provisional IRA command.

Many civilians died due to IRA attacks in England, and there was considerable fear amongst the general public - nobody was in any way reassured that the Provos were only attacking 'legitimate military targets'.

In the Six Counties, the focus was even less on military targets (even if you count the police in with the military). Ten civillians and a police officer were killed in Enneskillen when the IRA bombed a Remembrance Day service on November 8th, 1987; The IRA later claimed that their target was an Army parade, but clearly little or no effort was made to limit civillian casualties. The Enneskillen bombing led to a significant lessening of support for the bombing campaign, even within Sinn Fein, and certainly in the wider Catholic community in Northern Ireland.

I lived through this stuff. It wasn't primarily focused on legitimate military targets, unless such targets can be defined to include anyone who was English, or was Protestant, or was unlucky enough to be near a nominally English or Protestant target when the timer ran out.

 

[Harry Bosch]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved.

I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that the United States provides about 3.8 billion dollars in aid to Israel annually and sent an additional 16.3 billion in military aid since the October 2023 attack while it sends an average of about 500 million per year to Sudan, largely through food or health programs.

The US gives more aid to the Arab countries (Jordan, Egypt, and etc) than Israel.

 

[Arctish]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved.

I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that the United States provides about 3.8 billion dollars in aid to Israel annually and sent an additional 16.3 billion in military aid since the October 2023 attack while it sends an average of about 500 million per year to Sudan, largely through food or health programs.

The US gives more aid to the Arab countries (Jordan, Egypt, and etc) than Israel.

Each one individually gets more aid than Israel, or all of them collectively get more than Israel?

I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that the US began sending economic and military aid to Egypt when Egypt accepted a peace treaty with Israel that the US had brokered, or that US stopped sending that aid in order to pressure Egypt to enact reforms and to ensure it continued to abide by the terms of the treaty, only restoring the funds when both Israel and the US were satisfied with Egypt's compliance.

And I suppose you don't remember (or never knew) that US aid to Jordan skyrocketed when Jordan made peace with Israel and that the US pays Jordan to maintain secure borders with Syria and Iraq and allow Israel to use Jordanian airspace.

 

[Bomb#20]

the IRA primarily focused on legitimate military targets

As a civilian (and for much of the time, a child) living in England during the "Troubles", I can assure you this was absolutely not the case.

One of my earlest memories is my father picking me up and carrying me out of a department store in Leeds, in a crowd of evacuating shoppers that could easily have crushed a child to death, because an IRA bomb threat had been called in targetting that store. That would have been in about 1974 or '75.

I remember having to take a detour on the way to the Australian Consulate in 1996 when I was applying to emigrate, because the IRA had actually bombed the Arndale Shopping Centre in Manchester. That bomb was described as "The most powerful bomb to go off in Britain since WWII" and consisted of a truck packed with 1.5 tonnes of explosives, parked outside the shopping centre in Corporation Street.

The IRA gave 90 minutes warning, and 75,000 people were evacuated - as a result, nobody was killed, but over 200 people were injured.

Those shoppers and city workers were not 'military targets'.

Three things. 1. Those shoppers and city workers were not killed. The IRA did not try to kill them. The IRA tried not to kill them. The attacks were meant to do economic and psychological damage, not murder. Do you think Hamas or the RSF would give 90 minutes warning so people would be able to evacuate?

Nor were the civilians killed and injured by the Woolwich, Guildford, and Birmingham pub bombings (though the IRA never admitted responsibility for the latter). The Woolwich and Guildford attacks were claimed to be 'legitimate military targets' as those pubs were frequented by British Army personnel, but fatalities included one civilian in each case, and many of those injured were also civillians.

The Birmingham bombs had remarkable forensic similarities to known IRA bombs, and the warnings used IRA code words. It seems plausible that the IRA were responsible but denied that when the lack of military casualties became clear, though another hypothesis is that the bombings were carried out by a splinter group and not authorised by the Provisional IRA command.

Many civilians died due to IRA attacks in England, and there was considerable fear amongst the general public - nobody was in any way reassured that the Provos were only attacking 'legitimate military targets'.

In the Six Counties, the focus was even less on military targets (even if you count the police in with the military). Ten civillians and a police officer were killed in Enneskillen when the IRA bombed a Remembrance Day service on November 8th, 1987; The IRA later claimed that their target was an Army parade, but clearly little or no effort was made to limit civillian casualties. The Enneskillen bombing led to a significant lessening of support for the bombing campaign, even within Sinn Fein, and certainly in the wider Catholic community in Northern Ireland.

I lived through this stuff. It wasn't primarily focused on legitimate military targets, unless such targets can be defined to include anyone who was English, or was Protestant, or was unlucky enough to be near a nominally English or Protestant target when the timer ran out.

2. I don't mean to understate how traumatic the Troubles were for civilians or to play down the IRA's targeting of civilians, which of course they did as well; but "primarily" doesn't mean "exclusively" and listing attacks on civilians necessarily only gives half the picture. According to Wikipedia,

"The IRA's armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, killed over 1,700 people, including roughly 1,000 members of the British security forces and 500–644 civilians."​

3. An attack targeting security forces is a lot more likely to randomly kill a civilian than an attack targeting civilians is to randomly kill a soldier. So the roughly 5-to-3 ratio in body count actually understates the degree to which the IRA was primarily focused on military targets.

My point isn't to defend the IRA -- they were evil. Sorry, "immoral". The point is that the fact that the IRA proved to be rational enough to let themselves be persuaded to stop murdering people is not evidence that Hamas et al. are rational enough to let themselves be persuaded to stop murdering people.

 

[Bomb#20]

if there was one thing the entire western world could agree on in the wake of WWII it was that it's wrong to pick on the Jews.

See, that was not the right lesson to take. The lesson is "it's wrong to pick on a hated outgroup".

True, but like it or not that was the taken lesson. "It's wrong to pick on a hated outgroup" is such a hard lesson to take that even an awful lot of the people who think they took the "it's wrong to pick on a hated outgroup" lesson go right on picking on their own. Outgroups are like children -- it's different when they're yours.

And Jews are no more incapable than anyone else of picking on a hated outgroup. Because Jews are just people.

Jews happen to have been the hated, rather than the haters, for most of the last couple of millennia, but that doesn't imply that they will be any less able or willing to commit genocide than anyone else - just that until recently, they lacked the means.

True; but the observed fact that now for the first time in two millennia they have the means and yet choose not to, does imply it.

 

[Harry Bosch]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

I think it is pretty obvious that the only reason leftists obsess about a tiny sliver of land on the Med is because Jews are involved. Leftists can quickly identify an ongoing genocide, or humanitarian disaster and organize protests, boycotts and whatever else when Jews are involved but turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other atrocities. It's no mystery really.

I agree with you that it's unexplainable. However, there are just as many people on right or more who believe the same. It's just that weird religious right people aren't on our forum much.