Comment by yosamino
1 month ago
I find that a good sniff-test in politics is to change the actor in a claim to be Jewish and then consider if that make the claim an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Works surprisingly well.
For example:
> facing an enemy [Hamas] who does everything they can to get their own people killed to make you look bad
Imagine the "enemy" in that sentence was not "Hamas", but "The Jews" - that would be a very antisemitic narrative, and in a similar way that antisemitism has nothing really to do with Jews, but rather with antisemites what you are writing here just shows your hatred.
> does everything to get their own people killed
for the purposed of making the killer look bad, is such a naïve take on this. Do you think netanyahu and his cronies care about "looking bad" ? To whom ? That ship has sailed since at least the 90ies.
> Imagine the "enemy" in that sentence was not "Hamas", but "The Jews" - that would be a very antisemitic narrative,
Your substitution turns a true statement into a false statement; this mechanism is at best meaningless. Yes, making false claims about Jews is antisemitic, but that has no bearing on statements that aren't false.
> Yes, making false claims about Jews is antisemitic
No. Making false claims about Jews is just lying about Jews.
Antisemitism deals in lies, but the defining characteristic of antisemitism is not the lie itself, it's the use of the lie to cast out the Jewish people from the circle of humans to make them into an outsider and threat to humanity itself. The lie is just a tool and it depends on the kind of lie.
> that has no bearing on statements that aren't false.
your assertion here is that the statement in question
> [Hamas] does everything they can to get their own people killed to make you look bad
is true and not false.
What you are claiming it that Hamas is breaking a very fundamental rule of being human, in that they not only don't care about their own being killed but that they "do everything they can to get their own people killed."
Which is a standard propaganda tactic to assigning to you enemy the most depraved characteristics to convince your side that the enemy is not even really fully human.
It's a transparent and stupid tactic, and it begets hatred.
> No. Making false claims about Jews is just lying about Jews. ...
If you say so. The important thing is that true facts are not antisemitic.
> What you are claiming it that Hamas is [evil]
Yes. We have eyes! Hamas is evil. It's not anti-ism to observe that evil actors are evil. I'm also anti-Stalin and anti-Hitler and anti-Mao; these things are not at all like antisemitism.
[flagged]
> I recall some time ago an Israeli strike--they hit with a roof knocker, Hamas responded by ordering the neighbors to rush to the roof. Too slow, the house was packed with people when the bomb fell. And somehow that's Israel's fault?!
I don't even understand what you are trying to tell me here. You are constructing a sourceless story that after the Israeli Army dropped a small bomb on a house ( "roof knocker" is a euphemism) Hamas ordered some civilians to go on top of the roof.
Hamas did this, in your telling, because they knew that the first small bomb, was the precursor to a large second bomb designed to explode the whole building.
What would be the military objective here? Hamas knows that human shields do not stop the Israeli army. So it was not to stop the Israeli army from blowing up the building.
Even worse, your logic is not even that Hamas ordered the civilians to go up on the roof not because they thought it would prevent the Israeli army from blowing up the house, you write
> Hamas deliberately gets people killed.
that means you think that Hamas sent these people on the roof to let the Israeli army execute them, not even to use them as a human shield.
That is such a confused story.
Can you explain what you are talking about ?
What probably really happened is that Israel did a double tap: attack once, wait for people to rush back to tend to the injured, attack them again.
While atrocious, there is at least a military tactic behind this.
Your story about Hamas sending people on a roof in order for them to be killed has no sense to it and it seems it's only purpose is to dehumanize Palestinians.
But maybe I am off here. Please explain what you were trying to tell me again.
> the Israeli Army dropped a small bomb on a house
Roof knocking is using non explosive ordinance. It is, by definition, not a bomb. Attacking its use is wild, its a tactic that saves civilian lives, even if you disagree with the validity of the target.
> that means you think that Hamas sent these people on the roof to let the Israeli army execute them, not even to use them as a human shield.
Yes. That is what human shielding is. The unfortunate reality is that it is irresponsible to completely stop attacks when human shielding is used, as it encourages further use of the practice. Just like blaming Israel for all of those death is also encouraging Hamas to further use the tactic.
> What would be the military objective here?
Hamas has been very clear that deaths of their civilians further the Palestinian cause by causing the world to turn on Israel. The objective here is clear.
Now I turn it back to you: what is the military purpose of roof knocking?
No double tapping doesn't make sense here. You wouldn't use a non-explosive ordinance if the goal was "double tapping"
4 replies →
The objective was to put a bunch of "civilians" on the target so Israel would not hit it. And if that failed, get a bunch of dead "civilians" to parade in front of the camera. (I use quotes because when you're doing something with a military objective you are not a civilian.)
It makes no sense only because you do not want to believe the evil.