Ed General Israel/Palestine discussion thread - Part 3

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theprestige said:
Not necessarily. The details of the specific circumstances matter.

Using human shields is also an explicit war crime, but you keep avoiding that topic.
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How many times do i have to say Hamas committed crimes. I do not defend or justify their crimes.

What is interesting is that no one here seems to deny Hamas are criminal, no one has tried to justify the crimes of Hamas. What happens is if one argues that IDF may be committing a war crime, then it is turned into but what about Hamas, if you are not a supporter of every action of Israel then you are a terrorist supporting anti-semite. The crimes of Hamas do not justify further crimes. That argument becomes a justification for Hamas actions. That is why I would never make the argument than one crime justifies another.

I also would not dignify the actions of Hamas by calling them a war crime. That implies that there is in some way a war, a legitimate struggle within which crimes have been committed. It implies that for instance Hamas killing active service Israeli military would be a legitimate act of war and those involved in such acts deserve protection under the Geneva convention. I would never make an argument that would in some way legitimise the actions of Hamas.
 
You can mouth the words "Hamas is bad" all you want. What actually matters is what your functional arguments lead to and for a lot of you it leads to Hamas winning because "I'm totally not on their side but every single functional argument I make hands them win."
 
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theprestige said:
I think we're going to go from "my opinion of the IDF would change if they denied it" to "whether they did it or not, denied it or not, I still think the IDF is evil".

ETA: I mean, Planigale's entire epistemology here is to provisionally believe every unevidenced claim from Hamas, and to interpret any temporary silence by the IDF as evidence of guilt. All while telling us she's not on Hamas's side.

Pull the other one, maybe it's got an AGM-114R9X attached.
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Please do not make claims about me that are untrue. you cannot read my mind. Forum rules do not allow personal attacks.

I believed IDF when they said that Islamic Jihad had fired the missile that landed on the hospital. I thought that it was very honest of the IDF not to blame Hamas.

Just note how quickly IDF denied responsibility for the attack on the hospital, and identified the perpetrator, whilst there is silence on the attack on the refugees fleeing Gaza city.
 
"Israel is graciously allowed to fight back but only if it can remove the metaphysical possibility of any civilian causalities which makes fighting functionally impossible and I know it BUT I'm not putting any moral imperative on Hamas (and yes a moral imperative you always forget to mention is one you don't have) to stop hiding among civilian populations" is a pro-Hamas argument. Notice I didn't say statement, I said argument.

"But Hamas is the widdle guy!" is a pro-Hamas argument (or argumentative if you have to split the hair since it's not really a complete argument.)

"But we expect more out of Israel because they are Democratic country with standards" is a pro-Hamas argument and just stupid.
 
JoeMorgue said:
You can mouth the words "Hamas is bad" all you want. What actually matters is what your functional arguments lead to and for a lot of you it leads to Hamas winning because "I'm totally not on their side but every single functional argument I make hands them win."
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Hamas can never win.

We just differ in our views on the best way of defeating them. I don't believe that the current military strategy will defeat Palestinian extremism. Hamas may emerge under another name, or an even more extremist organisations like Islamic Jihad may occupy the political niche once occupied by Hamas, but the problem won't go away. Killing thousands of civilians, starving them killing babies with dehydration is not going to produce fewer extremists.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Israel is graciously allowed to fight back but only if it can remove the metaphysical possibility of any civilian causalities which makes fighting functionally impossible and I know it BUT I'm not putting any moral imperative on Hamas (and yes a moral imperative you always forget to mention is one you don't have) to stop hiding among civilian populations" is a pro-Hamas argument. Notice I didn't say statement, I said argument.

"But Hamas is the widdle guy!" is a pro-Hamas argument (or argumentative if you have to split the hair since it's not really a complete argument.)

"But we expect more out of Israel because they are Democratic country with standards" is a pro-Hamas argument and just stupid.
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Proportionate not none is what the law requires with regard to 'by stander' casualties. Do not put words into peoples mouths. This just makes your argument weak if you have to argue your case with ad hominem and straw man fallacies.
If you really were able to present a cogent argument I am sure you would do so. If you have to lie about what other people have said, then you have lost the argument.
 
Planigale said:
Hamas can never win.

We just differ in our views on the best way of defeating them. I don't believe that the current military strategy will defeat Palestinian extremism. Hamas may emerge under another name, or an even more extremist organisations like Islamic Jihad may occupy the political niche once occupied by Hamas, but the problem won't go away. Killing thousands of civilians, starving them killing babies with dehydration is not going to produce fewer extremists.
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Nothing will produce fewer anti-Semitic, Islamofascist extremists. The idea is to suppress their violent behaviors as much as possible. Which is not done by saying they have legitimate grievances. Which is not done by giving them room to grow and plot terror attacks.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I guess. I'm far too cynical about whether my vote matters or not: for most of my voting life I've lived in places that were always firmly to one party or the other, and my vote has always either been negated by the masses of my neighbors or just one more added to the already more-than-overwhelming tide.

As far as this forum argumentation goes, I'd have to say that the effect on me is to make arguing such matters in real life extremely tedious. As dreadful and crazy as most of the denizens here are, they are as a group rather more sophisticated than the general population (at least when it comes to arguing politics etc). Honestly, listening to my relatives or coworkers talk about issues is like hearing the toddler version of what was already said better here. Even the stuff I disagree with here is better said than most of what I hear elsewhere that I do agree with.
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My mileage varies, but we're cool. At least we understand each other.
 
Planigale said:
Can you evidence this claim for the current war?
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the fact that you don't know this is concerning as this literally took me a minute. the most difficult part was deciding which site to post. i tried to choose sites that are less likely to be biased towards Israel...

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live...r-10-13-23/h_65692c9ecb7e2e94320df83fdf30cfc7


https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blo...-expect-from-israels-ground-invasion-of-gaza/

As it has launched air strikes on Gaza, Israel has in certain cases continued its practice of “roof knocking,” or dropping inert bombs on targets it intends to hit if the structure also is known to contain civilians. This practice can also include disseminating WhatsApp and text messages in specific areas prior to striking, telling civilians where to go to avoid violence, in addition to more broadly released generic messages to the same effect. However, Gaza is densely populated, and in urban combat it is difficult to avoid civilian casualties. There is also no guarantee that civilians will heed the warning, in part because there are few places to go. Egypt has closed the Raffa crossing border checkpoint, and all the entry and exit points along the Israeli border with Gaza are closed after they were attacked by Hamas terrorists. Arab states have said they will send aid to Gaza, but Israel has forced trucks attempting to enter Gaza from Egypt to turn back out of fear they may contain weapons or supplies for Hamas.
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theprestige said:
Nothing will produce fewer anti-Semitic, Islamofascist extremists. The idea is to suppress their violent behaviors as much as possible. Which is not done by saying they have legitimate grievances. Which is not done by giving them room to grow and plot terror attacks.
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We differ on whether cycles of violence and oppression suppress violence and reduces growth of terrorism.

What we do not differ on is that reducing violent behaviour and getting rid of terrorism is the ultimate aim.

What we do not differ on is that Hamas are criminals and terrorists.

What we do differ on is evidence would suggest terrorists can be negotiated with and moved from terrorism.
 
Planigale said:
IDF have been announcing how many Hamas operatives they have killed each day.
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Where? When I look at the IDF daily briefing website, I see no tally of how many Hamas operatives they have killed.

The IDF figures may not be correct.
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Quite possible, but even more importantly, I suspect you're not interpreting whatever numbers you're seeing correctly. I suspect you're taking a tally of named Hamas targets of specific interest, not Hamas fighters in total. I doubt Israel has a very accurate estimate of that, and I doubt they would release such information if they did. But you haven't provided me a source I can check, so... who the hell knows?

There are figures for Gazan deaths they may not be correct
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May not be correct? Every number I've seen comes from Hamas. Including ones like 500 people supposedly killed in a hospital, when what was struck was a parking lot with a dozen or so cars that would struggle to fit 500 people shoulder to shoulder and certainly wasn't filled like that in the middle of the night. Why the hell would you think any numbers coming from Hamas were even close to accurate?

Would you be prepared to admit that I have not made the figures up?
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OK, perhaps you didn't make them up yourself. You're taking fake numbers that Hamas made up and probably misinterpreted numbers and coming to a conclusion that doesn't pass my ******** meter, and you haven't backed it up with anything substantive.

I also think you are fundamentally wrong about pacifists in WW2
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Now you're quibbling over terminology. I'm not talking about cases like from Hacksaw Ridge, where a person refuses to take up arms themselves but still helps the war effort, I'm talking about the people who opposed the war effort in the name of peace. The folks Orwell famously wrote about.
 
Planigale said:
If you have better figures please quote them.
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I don't have better figures, which is why I'm not making any arguments based on casualty figures in Gaza. But that doesn't make your figures any good. They aren't. They're garbage propaganda.
 
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