Other commenters are right, but I'll point out another fallacy you're pushing here.
The current situation is like somebody commits a murder. Then the community rounds up a posse and goes out to kill the murderer. Then kill the murder's family, their neighbors, the residents of the next neighborhood over, raze the neighborhoods and then take all the land for themselves.
Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
But isn't that what Hamas did? Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women? Shoot up clinics and murder the entire staff and patients?
Nothing Hamas has done justifies what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians, because collective punishment is a war crime. "But they did it first" is not a valid excuse, especially when trying to excuse mass starvation and bombing population centers.
Taking your post at face value (which nobody should), the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head, or setting up snipers near hospitals or UN Aid stations - both things which are confirmed by foreign doctors and aid workers.
> Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women?
It's important to note that these things never happened, and you're still repeating them years later. The only baby that died on 10/7 was a 10 month old hit by crossfire.
I have no idea of the third, and though I feel sure it's wrong judging by the rest of what you have said, I feel obligated to check. Try it.
Getting away from the debate around your details (most of which didn't happen) ...
A singular terrorist event is not the same as an multi-decade occupation, on-going theft of land, discrimination, annexation plans, and - not least - a 2 year long genocide of tens of thousands of civilians.
> Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
I disagree. Your definition of justice inadvertently prevents justice. Holding Hamas accountable for the thousands of rocket attacks and the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7 means hunting down all of them, getting rid of their weapons, and freeing hostages. You can only do so with some degree of collateral damage since they’re hiding in civilian populations.
But also, “civilian” is debatable. It’s this same population that voted for Hamas despite their charter explicitly calling for religious genocide. It’s the same population that supports Hamas even after the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7, according to multiple polls. It’s the same population that has so many times turned a blind eye to the actions of Hamas.
You are thinking of "Palestinians" as a collective group, synonymous with a group of extremists who have done horrible things
Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their control.
They're collectively paying the price for horrific violence on both sides of an ugly, tragic conflict that they have no power over.
Giving those victims some sovereignty and peace would not be "rewarding" extremists, it would be taking a tiny step towards sanity.
So, do we owe Germany an apology after we obliterated it to stop the nazis?
Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?
Can you make this a bit clearer for me? Quantify it? How much hardship should someone endure to make up for voting for Hamas? Losing a home? A limb? A friend? A child?
What a delightful selection of specific incidents.
In just the past two weeks Israel attacked a half dozen of its neighboring countries.
Israel itself is a belligerent Western colony that has been ethnically cleansing Palestine since the 1940s.
It is the obligation for an occupied people to resist their occupiers, and according to the UN that is up to and includes violent resistence. The entirety of Palestine has been increasingly under occupation since Israel's inception.
Countless UN resolutions highlight Israels belligerence time and again with only the US and its subservient states like Micronesia voting against the overwhelming voice of the whole rest of the world.
Israel is an evil apartheid genocial settler colonial state that has brought nothing but further war and bloodshed to the region, and nothing Zionists state can change that fact.
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactiv...), 70% of the dead are women and children (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history), 70% of the dead are women and children (tried adding links but doesnt seem to let me), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
You seem to be unaware of all the Palestinian hostages Israel has been taking for decades. Thousands of people locked up without trial or charges, many of them children. Please educate yourself.
Why do you use the term "completely innocent teenagers" only for Israelis? Are Palestinians teenagers guilty because of their ethnicity? Why do you ignore the many, many documented instances of torture in Israeli prisons, and the fact that the man who runs that prison system, Itamar Ben Gvir, idolizes a mass shooter who murdered Palestinians and has been convicted for supporting terrorism?
There is no justification for Israel's occupation and apartheid of Palestine. The attacks on civilians are unjustifiable as well but the trigger for them wasn't random - Hamas never would have come to power if Israel didn't occupy Palestine, let alone fund Hamas with the explicit stayed goal by Benjamin Netanyahu to divide Palestinian politics.
Look to Israel, the source of decades of suffering for everyone in the region, including its own citizens whom it exposes to retaliatory violence in response to the violence it delivers to its neighbors.
Of course there is a difference. And if you did some kind of scoring exercise you may be able to say that one entity is objectively worse than the other. But so what? That score does not justify the killing of innocent people by either side.
The article is discussing "mass surveilance" of millions of phone calls per day. Whatever scenario you're trying to describe isn't at all reflective of what's being discussed here.
Other commenters are right, but I'll point out another fallacy you're pushing here.
The current situation is like somebody commits a murder. Then the community rounds up a posse and goes out to kill the murderer. Then kill the murder's family, their neighbors, the residents of the next neighborhood over, raze the neighborhoods and then take all the land for themselves.
Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
But isn't that what Hamas did? Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women? Shoot up clinics and murder the entire staff and patients?
Nothing Hamas has done justifies what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians, because collective punishment is a war crime. "But they did it first" is not a valid excuse, especially when trying to excuse mass starvation and bombing population centers.
3 replies →
Taking your post at face value (which nobody should), the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head, or setting up snipers near hospitals or UN Aid stations - both things which are confirmed by foreign doctors and aid workers.
2 replies →
> Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women?
It's important to note that these things never happened, and you're still repeating them years later. The only baby that died on 10/7 was a 10 month old hit by crossfire.
I have no idea of the third, and though I feel sure it's wrong judging by the rest of what you have said, I feel obligated to check. Try it.
5 replies →
Hamas is a terrorist organization. IDF is a state-sponsored military force.
I expect those two categories to behave differently from one another. Do you?
3 replies →
Getting away from the debate around your details (most of which didn't happen) ...
A singular terrorist event is not the same as an multi-decade occupation, on-going theft of land, discrimination, annexation plans, and - not least - a 2 year long genocide of tens of thousands of civilians.
So, no, that isn't what Hamas did.
13 replies →
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> Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
I disagree. Your definition of justice inadvertently prevents justice. Holding Hamas accountable for the thousands of rocket attacks and the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7 means hunting down all of them, getting rid of their weapons, and freeing hostages. You can only do so with some degree of collateral damage since they’re hiding in civilian populations.
But also, “civilian” is debatable. It’s this same population that voted for Hamas despite their charter explicitly calling for religious genocide. It’s the same population that supports Hamas even after the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7, according to multiple polls. It’s the same population that has so many times turned a blind eye to the actions of Hamas.
You mean like we did with Germany?
Obviously if the nazis and hamas had come out and surrendered we wouldn't have had to.
But sometimes one has to take out evil. Be it nazis in Berlin or Hamas in Gaza.
And it also serves as a lesson. A lesson certain countries might soon have to learn the hard way:
don't vote for evil, and if you did, don't be the ones who line the streets to cheer for them like Germans and Gazans did.
You are thinking of "Palestinians" as a collective group, synonymous with a group of extremists who have done horrible things
Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their control.
They're collectively paying the price for horrific violence on both sides of an ugly, tragic conflict that they have no power over.
Giving those victims some sovereignty and peace would not be "rewarding" extremists, it would be taking a tiny step towards sanity.
So, do we owe Germany an apology after we obliterated it to stop the nazis?
Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?
Can you make this a bit clearer for me? Quantify it? How much hardship should someone endure to make up for voting for Hamas? Losing a home? A limb? A friend? A child?
2 replies →
>when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power [with the financial backing of Netanyahu]
I think you omitted part of it.
1 reply →
[dead]
“Now imagine this scenario and ignore everything else that’s happened for the last 60-70 years and oh yeah, don’t mention the current genocide.”
Let's not ignore the last 60-70 or even 1400 years.
Israelis hit back hard. But they haven't been the ones to declare war on peaceful neighbors.
It wasn't them who stood for thr München massacre or a number of plane hijackings in the 70ies.
It wasn't Israelis who blew up buses in Gaza.
Was it?
We must stop confusing powerful with evil and currently helpless with "innocent".
What a delightful selection of specific incidents.
In just the past two weeks Israel attacked a half dozen of its neighboring countries.
Israel itself is a belligerent Western colony that has been ethnically cleansing Palestine since the 1940s.
It is the obligation for an occupied people to resist their occupiers, and according to the UN that is up to and includes violent resistence. The entirety of Palestine has been increasingly under occupation since Israel's inception.
Countless UN resolutions highlight Israels belligerence time and again with only the US and its subservient states like Micronesia voting against the overwhelming voice of the whole rest of the world.
Israel is an evil apartheid genocial settler colonial state that has brought nothing but further war and bloodshed to the region, and nothing Zionists state can change that fact.
16 replies →
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactiv...), 70% of the dead are women and children (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
2 replies →
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history), 70% of the dead are women and children (tried adding links but doesnt seem to let me), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
If the powerful are genociding the helpless, then the powerful are evil. It doesn't matter who hit whom first.
4 replies →
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You seem to be unaware of all the Palestinian hostages Israel has been taking for decades. Thousands of people locked up without trial or charges, many of them children. Please educate yourself.
You don't see the difference between imprisoning people that attack you and taking care of them (mostly, exceptions sadly exist)
and storming a music festival and houses to abduct completely innocent teenagers and even toddlers to use them for leverage?
Honestly?
Why do you use the term "completely innocent teenagers" only for Israelis? Are Palestinians teenagers guilty because of their ethnicity? Why do you ignore the many, many documented instances of torture in Israeli prisons, and the fact that the man who runs that prison system, Itamar Ben Gvir, idolizes a mass shooter who murdered Palestinians and has been convicted for supporting terrorism?
2 replies →
There is no justification for Israel's occupation and apartheid of Palestine. The attacks on civilians are unjustifiable as well but the trigger for them wasn't random - Hamas never would have come to power if Israel didn't occupy Palestine, let alone fund Hamas with the explicit stayed goal by Benjamin Netanyahu to divide Palestinian politics.
Look to Israel, the source of decades of suffering for everyone in the region, including its own citizens whom it exposes to retaliatory violence in response to the violence it delivers to its neighbors.
2 replies →
Of course there is a difference. And if you did some kind of scoring exercise you may be able to say that one entity is objectively worse than the other. But so what? That score does not justify the killing of innocent people by either side.
The article is discussing "mass surveilance" of millions of phone calls per day. Whatever scenario you're trying to describe isn't at all reflective of what's being discussed here.