Is he really trying to move those goalposts? Or is he just voicing the most-common way for humans to process such events?
I'm thinking that 99% of people would feel horrible and/or morally responsible if they lent an axe to their neighbor Mr. Seemed-Nice, which he then used to kill his wife. Vs. far less so, if their neighbor bought his fatal ax from Amazon or Walmart.
This is exactly what I was trying to point out. You've made some reasonable points here, but that doesn't offer any evidence for the hyperbolic statement that Israel is pure and undiluted evil. Israel could be a bad place without that statement being true.
This might seem like a silly distinction to some but what I find depressing about modern culture wars is how "we disagree on these points" seems to morph into "you and everything you represent is terrible". Nuance matters.
You seem a bit over-focused on the literal truth value of that "Israel is pure and undiluted..." statement.
Vs. 99% of educated and rational people recognize that as a bombastic/emotive statement. Arguing its truth value is like kitchen-testing whether a cookie recipe turns out worse if you replace "2C sugar, 1/2t salt" with "2C salt, 1/2t sugar".
And sadly, such bombastic/emotive mis-statements are far, far older than our modern culture wars.
If the mass murder committed by Israel against the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian people does not horrify you, then you don't have shred of humanity left in you.
Arguing about pedantic details does not change that.
Is he really trying to move those goalposts? Or is he just voicing the most-common way for humans to process such events?
I'm thinking that 99% of people would feel horrible and/or morally responsible if they lent an axe to their neighbor Mr. Seemed-Nice, which he then used to kill his wife. Vs. far less so, if their neighbor bought his fatal ax from Amazon or Walmart.
This is exactly what I was trying to point out. You've made some reasonable points here, but that doesn't offer any evidence for the hyperbolic statement that Israel is pure and undiluted evil. Israel could be a bad place without that statement being true.
This might seem like a silly distinction to some but what I find depressing about modern culture wars is how "we disagree on these points" seems to morph into "you and everything you represent is terrible". Nuance matters.
You seem a bit over-focused on the literal truth value of that "Israel is pure and undiluted..." statement.
Vs. 99% of educated and rational people recognize that as a bombastic/emotive statement. Arguing its truth value is like kitchen-testing whether a cookie recipe turns out worse if you replace "2C sugar, 1/2t salt" with "2C salt, 1/2t sugar".
And sadly, such bombastic/emotive mis-statements are far, far older than our modern culture wars.
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If the mass murder committed by Israel against the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian people does not horrify you, then you don't have shred of humanity left in you.
Arguing about pedantic details does not change that.