Moonbat alert: Chomksy condemns Bin Laden kill.

bikerdruid said:
arab men, and mediterranean men in general, have an incredible sense of bravado and macho grandstanding.
most people probably just think that they are full of **** in these regards, but they present a strong face to the world.
if hamas is opening a new mega mall in gaza, they are obviously pretty good administrators.

I]please ignore the weird link.[/I]
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This is a typical example of what is known as "Third Worldism". While the proponent of Third Worldism is a tireless campaigner against any apparent hypocrisies of the "so-called enlightened West", sometimes quite rightly, and while they typically rail against the patriachy of Western culture and how gender roles are defined by mass entertainment such as war films, the same proponents will typically go all gooey and weak-kneed at the sight of some completely unreconstructed banana republic dictator in a uniform or a foam-flecked bearded uber-misogynist spouting Koranic verses against the Jews.

Third World dictators are the future because their bravado is what makes them charismatic.
 
bikerdruid said:
you can be certain, that like any other group of lying scumbag politicians (all of them) on the planet, hamas' rhetoric is far from the reality of their stance.
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You're quite right: the Hamas leadership has absolutely no interest in martyring themselves, they only send others to be martyred in their place.

But the whole wanting to kill Jews thing? Yeah, they're pretty serious about that. I would think that would be obvious to everyone by now, but none so blind...
 
Ziggurat said:
You're quite right: the Hamas leadership has absolutely no interest in martyring themselves, they only send others to be martyred in their place.

But the whole wanting to kill Jews thing? Yeah, they're pretty serious about that. I would think that would be obvious to everyone by now, but none so blind...
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If Hamas were to start wearing swastikas and goose-step around the place raising their arms in Nazi salutes yelling about how they want to kill the Jews some people still wouldn't get it and would be insisting that we should contextualize it and how it really is, at the end of the day, the fault of Israel who are the real Nazis or something.

In fact, were Hamas to start parading around in suicide vests and get their children to do the same some people wouldn't get it and say that it was all Israel's fault.

I once made this point to a bunch of furiously contextualizing lefties who insisted that I was exaggerating the Nazi salute and suicide-vest wearing thing and insisting that such things are done out of pure despair. When I posted photographic evidence that there is very little despair in evidence and even a quite gleeful Nazi saluting going on I was told I was a racist.:D
 
angrysoba said:
If Hamas were to start wearing swastikas and goose-step around the place raising their arms in Nazi salutes yelling about how they want to kill the Jews some people still wouldn't get it
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Well, they don't (at least with Hizbullah).

and would be insisting that we should contextualize it and how it really is, at the end of the day, the fault of Israel who are the real Nazis or something.
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Yup.
 
angrysoba said:
There are certain basic arguments that Chomsky makes which are worth discussing but are being overlooked because ad hominem attacks are either more amusing or because they are easier to make than criticisms of his own views.
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True, true. But you're missing the point -- many folks make Chomsky's sane arguments and criticisms. They are not attacked as supporters of terrorism, whether people agree or disagree with them.

People support Chomsky not because of his sane views, but precisely because he is a poster boy for the loony left with his support of terrorists.
 
In fact, were Hamas to start parading around in suicide vests and get their children to do the same some people wouldn't get it and say that it was all Israel's fault.
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They already did. And, yes, of course the usual gang did say it is all Israel's fault ("root causes", "desperation", "they don't really mean it", blah blah blah).
 
for the left, anything even slightly to the right of "Israel is worse than the Nazis" is "racist" or "supporting apartheid" :rolleyes:
 
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Ziggurat said:
You're quite right: the Hamas leadership has absolutely no interest in martyring themselves, they only send others to be martyred in their place.

But the whole wanting to kill Jews thing? Yeah, they're pretty serious about that. I would think that would be obvious to everyone by now, but none so blind...
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Indeed, some of them surely are. But that is no excuse not to examine them carefully. This 2009 article offers some insight into the organization I think that is useful, and shows us I think, some perspectives that reveal some of the reasons one might consider openings and possibilities within Hamas to achieve a deal:

If war and siege have not crippled Hamas, Gaza’s misery appears to have prompted its greater willingness to compromise and offer its people a political future. Hamas leaders, including the more outspoken exiled leadership based in Damascus, have lately muted criticism of Fatah in the interest of intra-Palestinian reconciliation—even after Abbas’s Palestinian Authority reportedly bowed to Israeli pressure and withdrew its demand for UN action against Israel following Justice Richard Goldstone’s UN report into war crimes by the belligerents in Gaza’s winter war. They have played down the significance of their party’s fiery founding charter, which rejects any recognition of Israel, hinting that they could live with a two-state settlement. In its draft laws, Hamas defines “Palestine” not as the area including Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza but as the geographical district over which the Palestinian National Authority rules. As leaders of Fatah did a generation earlier, some members have discreetly met with Israelis at international conferences, talking peace over breakfast. In addition, within its own fiefdom Hamas’s leaders have decided to suspend declaration of an Islamist state and application of sharia, and to focus on the economy instead​
These kinds of moves alienated some of the hardest core elements, people who really do want Jews to be killed if it means a homeland:

Cracks emerged when Hamas drifted from social activism and armed struggle into politics. After Hamas decided to contest the 2006 elections, one of its preachers in Rafah left the movement with scores of followers. God’s will above man’s, he said, and besides Hamas had no business participating in an authority established by agreement with Israel. During the contentious interregnum of national unity government before Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in June 2007, both Fatah and Hamas solicited Salafist support. Unruly clans seeking an Islamist cover to press their claims bolstered their ranks. Amid the chaos, the Salafists sought to enforce their authority by waging a nasty morality campaign against Internet cafés, hairdressers, the American school, and other such places of ill-repute.​
Indeed, the picture revealed is that of a fractious organization, not particularly united but rather a nexus of competing interests and factions, many of whom are particularly odious and commit acts of evil, but others who have different goals, values and ideas as well that we would find not so alien. We see movement within the organization over time: the departure and addition of influential men and their followers, some with their own deviations from party orthodoxy. We see changes in stance, changes in the way Hamas deals with Egypt, Israel and the world at large.

The article's conclusion ends on a similar note:

Hamas is unlikely to be budged anytime soon from its Gaza stronghold. It is playing a waiting game, hoping that other forces will blink before it does: that the international community will feel shamed into relieving the siege of Gaza, or that Egypt’s hostile regime will fall, or that Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel will prove so stingy in its dealings with Mahmoud Abbas that the Fatah government on the West Bank will collapse. But in the meantime Hamas is under pressure to deliver something more than bravado to its people. Perhaps, as Gunning suggests, it will one day admit that its armed struggle against Israel (unlike against its internal rivals) has been largely symbolic, and that its declaration of a divine right to Palestine represents more of a credo than a political program. Gunning declines to judge whether, with regard to hopes for Middle Eastern peace, Hamas is what political science would term an “absolute spoiler,” or only a limited one. But as he says, politics is never static, nor are political organizations. (emphasis mine)​
I post this merely to illustrate some of the understanding that is possible if we allow ourselves to.

What I hear when people reduce things to "Well they want to kill Jews" is an unwillingness to think any further.

What is most sad - and an offense to my burgeoning sense of skepticism and intellectual inquiry - is that while I and others in fact share that deep disgust over the brutal crimes of hateful people, because some of us take a few steps further along the road of discovery (never losing or forgetting that sense of deep sadness at the wrongful murder of so many), we are penalized as somehow directly/indirectly supportive of those crimes.

See, because a group of people stop at "They Want to Kill Jews" and go no further, everyone else must too, or reveal themselves to be willing to see nuance nested among yes, some evil outcomes and some evil people, and therefore, be what, responsible intellectuals able to absorb facts others inure themselves too?

Now some people may be misguided, some have been influenced by poor sources and some by internal ideology. This may cause them to make poor observations of the situation in the Middle East and of Hamas too.

But I still believe that almost all of us on this board share a deep and abiding disgust for the horrible crimes of people willing to do evil for the sake of their silly religion or stupid ideology.

And I don't think I've seen anyone lately, bikerdruid as well!, who I would think deserves to not be included in that assumption of shared horror at acts of evil.
 
Praktik said:
What I hear when people reduce things to "Well they want to kill Jews" is an unwillingness to think any further.
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There's more than a bit of irony to that statement: you're suggesting that when some people hear that Hamas wants to kill Jews, they stop there and don't probe further. Yet you're simultaneously admitting to doing basically the exact same thing: when you hear someone say "Hamas wants to kill Jews", you think that's the extent of their own thought.

Maybe sometimes it is. But it sure isn't so axiomatically or universally.

So, does Hamas want to kill Jews? Hell yes. They've established that through both word and deed. So that statement is plainly true. We can therefore take that as a starting point. Anyone who denies this isn't operating with reality. Now, you're arguing that this shouldn't be an ending point. That's fine. There's plenty more to discuss, at least in principle. We can talk about how Hamas is trying to kill Jews. We can talk about what else Hamas wants to do. We can talk about how Hamas can be prevented from killing Jews. We can talk about what sorts of influence or pressure can be applied to Hamas. We can talk about the prospects for them giving up on that goal. We can talk about whether some of Hamas's goals can be played off against other goals. We can talk about how much influence Hamas has, and what can be done to affect that influence. There is indeed lots more to talk and think about, and they aren't trivial or simple. And many of the people who say "Hamas wants to kill Jews" are indeed thinking about these questions.

But again, if we don't start with the recognition that Hamas really does want to kill Jews, we're not dealing with reality. There's nothing intellectual, honest, or skeptical about denying that (though in fairness I should explicitly acknowledge that this isn't what you're doing). The best that can be called is cynical.
 
Ziggurat said:
There's more than a bit of irony to that statement: you're suggesting that when some people hear that Hamas wants to kill Jews, they stop there and don't probe further. Yet you're simultaneously admitting to doing basically the exact same thing: when you hear someone say "Hamas wants to kill Jews", you think that's the extent of their own thought.

Maybe sometimes it is. But it sure isn't so axiomatically or universally.
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Surely not (though sometimes it might feel that way in these threads). And in your case I was pretty sure that wasn't the case and was hoping to draw something out like the following:

Ziggurat said:
So, does Hamas want to kill Jews? Hell yes. They've established that through both word and deed. So that statement is plainly true. We can therefore take that as a starting point. Anyone who denies this isn't operating with reality. Now, you're arguing that this shouldn't be an ending point. That's fine. There's plenty more to discuss, at least in principle. We can talk about how Hamas is trying to kill Jews. We can talk about what else Hamas wants to do. We can talk about how Hamas can be prevented from killing Jews. We can talk about what sorts of influence or pressure can be applied to Hamas. We can talk about the prospects for them giving up on that goal. We can talk about whether some of Hamas's goals can be played off against other goals. We can talk about how much influence Hamas has, and what can be done to affect that influence. There is indeed lots more to talk and think about, and they aren't trivial or simple. And many of the people who say "Hamas wants to kill Jews" are indeed thinking about these questions.
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This I'm not sure of though, just on a philosophical basis:

Ziggurat said:
But again, if we don't start with the recognition that Hamas really does want to kill Jews, we're not dealing with reality. There's nothing intellectual, honest, or skeptical about denying that (though in fairness I should explicitly acknowledge that this isn't what you're doing). The best that can be called is cynical.
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I think the main problem is many people assuming that this recognition doesn't exist. Also, I am unsure why this needs to be a starting point in all discussions about Hamas. Strikes me as an artificial forcing of the conversation.

Maybe we'll want to talk about subjects that aren't always connected to it, and may not have much value added by using this as the starting point all the time without fail.
 
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Praktik said:
I think the main problem is many people assuming that this recognition doesn't exist.
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It doesn't exist universally. I can accept that it exists more broadly than some argue, and that people can end up talking past each other because of that, but I've been around long enough to see cases where it didn't.

Also, I am unsure why this needs to be a starting point in all discussions about Hamas.
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One need not read that statement so literally. My point really was that recognizing Hamas's desire to kill Jews shouldn't be a point of contention, and that if you're talking about Hamas, you should probably already know that about them (generic you, not you specifically), even if you discuss other issues.
 
It's interesting how Hamas' genocidal intentions are somehow forgivable, undestandable, and undestated -- in effect, "OK, they want genocide, but let's talk about the OTHER things they are for", or "will you stop going on and on boring us about their genocidal intentions, you boring zionist?", and the #1 excuse, "it's all just a reaction to evil Israeli policies". Especially the holocaust-denial part, I suppose.

The usual result is this. These annoying Jews just don't understand that all those synagogue burnings, cemeteries desecrations, calls for their death, etc., are just "reaction to Israeli policies". Because Muslims have no free will. Any perceived injsutice is reacted to with insensate racist violence; they just have no choice. They are "stimulus-response" creatures, like aomebas.
 
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bikerdruid,

The statement you quoted is Skeptic paraphrasing the views of people with whom he disagrees, not a statement of his own views. he's not saying that Muslims are amoeba-like creatures; he's saying that is the implication of people who try to justify or excuse violence by Muslims against Jews. I understand your frustration with Skeptic, but you need to read his posts more carefully.
 
marksman said:
bikerdruid,

The statement you quoted is Skeptic paraphrasing the views of people with whom he disagrees, not a statement of his own views. he's not saying that Muslims are amoeba-like creatures; he's saying that is the implication of people who try to justify or excuse violence by Muslims against Jews. I understand your frustration with Skeptic, but you need to read his posts more carefully.
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thanks....his statement is ludicrous in the extreme, in any case.
 
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