Israel (12 Viewers)

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Heathen Saint said:
There’s lots to get angry about in this world, friend. Personally, I don’t think you’re livin if you aren’t angry about at least one injustice in this world. Now, I don’t know if you find that unhelpful or not, but some of the biggest changes we’ve made societally have come into being because people were angry.

So in that way - sure, being a mad person isn’t healthy. Being angry about things can be a driver for good, I think…as long as it’s reigned in and utilized in a productive manner.



That’s one way to look at it. I think that the end goal even if you think it is impossible (and sure, realistically it seems as such) is peace and the reduction of bloodshed and needless suffering to the most of our abilities in this conflict.

We should hold those who have committed evil accountable. We should strive to reduce that needless hardship upon those who cannot help themselves as much as we have power to.



I see it as having persisted many years.



Maybe so. Again, we still must play with the cards we’ve been dealt. It’s surely easy to get hopeless. I just hope that doesn’t cause people to “look the other way” or forget about hardships. It’s human nature, sure, and no citizen with no real power to change policy here is responsible - but to the extent we can speak out, I think we can shift the cultural zeitgeist one way or the other.

Even if it takes time. Even if it makes no apparent difference at first.
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Climate change, and air pollution, they are connected. Over that I become a mite angry, it comes and goes.

I'm currently concerned as to what happened to almost all of the underground dwellers except for the frogs at my place. I think that very heavy late snowstorm may have drown them in their burrows. It's the gophers, lizards, and snakes who seem to be gone.

The frogs are still alive but they're trying to move into my house. I can't go to the bathroom without a frog in the room.
 
A slight tangent, an anecdote I wanted to share. It is in no way meant to paint with a broad brush, but something that really struck me as unsettling and shocking.

If you don’t desire to read this, just don’t. Scroll on past. It’s just something interesting I wanted to get out. It’s not meant to be anything other than a subjective experience.



This weekend while hiking a few of our beautiful 11,000 foot peaks, I had a civil but heated discussion with a friend of mine the other day on this topic (he has brought up his anger with Palestinian protestors).

I had asked what sets someone who engages in terror as a terrorist. Is it size of the group? I asked “if a Hamas leader goes into Israel and slaughters Israeli people peacefully trying to enjoy their lives - are they a terrorist “

Yes, obviously was the feedback.

I then asked if an IDF leader launches a rocket at a home where a poor family in Palestine lives, blowing that family and children to bits - are they a terrorist.

Uneasy scoffing. “They’re trying to target Hamas. War is not always pretty”.

He said there was “no evidence” that Israel was purposefully targeting civilians. I asked him if he meant in ANY case to which he responded “no, of course there are bad apples”.

I then asked what evidence it would take to convince him that Israel was doing this as covert policy while overtly claiming to “simply be targeting Hamas” and “something something human shields”. He didn’t seem to want to get into this, and just responded with “war is hard” and made mention of what “we had to do to Japan” and again - sometimes war isn’t easy.

He even confronted me a bit and asked “Do you not think we shouldn’t have done what we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki?? Look at what they did to US in Pearl Harbor”. I acknowledged that it was not an easy choice. However, I insisted that knowingly slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people is a criminal act.

He scoffed.

I asked him if he’d feel the same about his “war is war” feelings if it were Hamas wiping out Israel and killing Jewish people at will. He came back with a question of “well which one do you want existing - a democracy or theocracy?” - seeming to invoke a very binary choice between the existence of human beings - as if both couldn’t because of decisions their radical leaders had made. Not to mention the clearly morally inept exercise of pitting the deserved existence of people based on their culture. The idea that certain people aren’t deserving of the same right to life — because of stories of faith healers and gods thar some people thousands of years ago had conjured up. And because those people are simply part of a (his words) “barbaric religion”.

I pressed him “Why should any child be convicted and deserving of death based on a group they belong to, of the choices of their culture, of even their relatives “.

“Look man”, he said “I’m just a pleib. We all really know nothing. I’m uninformed and so is everyone else “.

I asked “Well do you think it’s ever right to kill 40,000 innocent people? To mutilate children ?”

A bit of silence.

The conversation stopped when he mentioned “I think we should just wipe Gaza clean, level it.. that’s the only way you get rid of Hamas”.

I stood there, dumbfounded, looking at a guy who claims to be against the worst parts of religion (very big into Sam Harris’ ideas), of wanna be dictators, someone I thought was more of an enlightened individual than most. Ivy League grad. All that. Maybe someone I had assumed didn’t have ideas like this.

And to be clear, I’m fine if someone doesn’t agree with my view of how a situation should be handled. What I’m not fine with is clear moral inconsistency. The idea that certain people should have a right to live in peace and free of terror or hardship. Others? Well “life, war etc is hard” and “who are we to know how hard it is - have you ever been in war?”

There has to be some consistency. It reminds me a lot of people cherry picking verses in religion to fit what is culturally acceptable at the time, then “context away” or play the argument from authority when challenged on that consistency. Maybe I just found it keenly ironic. For example:


Appeal to Complexity fallacy:
Gaza situation:
“You don’t know the history of this conflict, there’s so much we don’t understand”
Religion:
“Well yes god killed innocent people. But it was a different time back then. Things were complicated. I don’t think you have the right to judge a different time period like that “.

Argument from Authority fallacy:
Gaza situation:
“In war things are hard. You have to hill people. What’s your plan? Are you in the military? Did you serve? You don’t understand unless you did.”
Religion:
“Are you God? We are not. We are but flawed man, sinners. We can’t judge God because God is above us, we can’t know his ways “

Back to our conversation - I asked him:

“So to be clear, do you mean in the process, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to root out Hamas? What about the IDF executing civilians in front of their families and burying them with dumpsters? Of internment camps of physical abuse - amputations, burning, and humiliation? Of starvation? “

A bit more silence. Some anger in his body language. Shaking his head.

He responded:
“War is hard, how would YOU get rid of Hamas?” He dejectedly retorted, seemingly offering only a binary option in this conflict he’d claimed to know nothing about earlier.

“I don’t know”. I said “But they need to be gotten rid of in some way without killing innocents. The evidence shows that the IDF and their leaders are killing innocents frequently. It shows that the IDF plan is to occupy Gaza. Their religion tells them that these people are (paraphrasing) infidels.

“Remember Amalek” - Netanyahu

I pressed him back - “How would you get rid of the IDF members who have killed innocent Palestinians for sport?”. I mentioned former Israeli leaders from the Nakba laughing about the fact that they had killed children at will and raped them. I questioned why he so deeply believed this was something that only one side did .

He shook his head again. “Hamas wasn’t prepared, were they?” He said with a sarcastic jeer.

Hamas, Hamas.
Human shields.
War is hard.
Etc
 
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I have not participated in this thread. Yet I was scrolling thru YouTube...just passing the time and this video caught my eye.
Hopefully it is appropriate to post it here.
If not, the moderators can of course remove it.
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SteveSBrickNJ said:
I have not participated in this thread. Yet I was scrolling thru YouTube...just passing the time and this video caught my eye.
Hopefully it is appropriate to post it here.
If not, the moderators can of course remove it.
*
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Hardly surprising. Rules in wartime tends to support war time goals.

Regardless, if you live in a country that is at war, and support said war, then pitch in.

I'm not a fan of the draft and hope we don't get to that point, but it could become necessary at some point.
 
SteveSBrickNJ said:
I have not participated in this thread. Yet I was scrolling thru YouTube...just passing the time and this video caught my eye.
Hopefully it is appropriate to post it here.
If not, the moderators can of course remove it.
*
Click to expand...

My opinion is they are the hard core which is creating the lion's share of the problems on the Israeli side. They are Israel's Hammas, they are terrorist cowards.

Not only ought they to draft them, they should draft them, and then use them as cannon fodder with the hope that they use them all up. The are the ones who want the war, but they don't want to serve.

Do those meat wave tactics like the Russians do using them as the meat.

I don't like them. They have thrown rocks at me. That was in Denver Colorado. There's a neighborhood there one shouldn't go to if you are another kind of Jew. It's reasonable that I don't like them.

I dodged those rocks that day thirty years ago, but I wasn't able to get even.

NOW! I get to get even. I celebrate their being drafted.

It sure would suck having to serve with craven cowards like that. I almost pity the IDF for having to deal with THEM!
 
efil4stnias said:
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I'm not pleased. Israel committed a clear act of war. The US is supposed to stick by Israel by prior commitment???

I'm asking if Israel starts a war we don't want to have, are we allowed to just blow them off. That's what I think would be reasonable.

Tell Israel the unvarnished facts of life. We don't have to come stand by their side, if they start a war without consulting with us about it first.
 
SamAndreas said:
I'm not pleased. Israel committed a clear act of war. The US is supposed to stick by Israel by prior commitment???

I'm asking if Israel starts a war we don't want to have, are we allowed to just blow them off. That's what I think would be reasonable.

Tell Israel the unvarnished facts of life. We don't have to come stand by their side, if they start a war without consulting with us about it first.
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You know what they did. Ole Bibi came here and spoke from the floor of Congress and I guess he figured he could do what he wanted to after that. Israel needs to get their sheet together and punt Bibi and get out of Gaza.
 

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