Just to be clear, I don’t think the Israeli government had an agenda to harvest organs, and as such were killing people for them. I just think they harvested organs from people they killed for other reasons.
So, you just like saying the Israeli government was interested in harvesting organs, despite the fact that the evidence presenrted says it was a rogue operation and you still want to imply that the Israeli government was acting against a specific group despite the explicit testimony that the rogue operation treated all bodies the same way?
Good to know where you stand.
Yeah, I’m to the left of your straw man about 100 yards.
But I can understand how that was not clear. By ‘they’ I meant the people who harvested the organs.
Which is why someone who was actually reading my posts rather than filtering it through their RO would have noted that I was talking about how Dr. Hiss should have gone to jail for his criminal activities and not just shuffled around internally. I compared it to the Catholic Church’s treatment of pedophiles. By the logic you’re using, I would be saying that the Catholic Church was sanctioning pedophilia.
The Israeli Government did two things:
- Killed Palestinians in various actions.
- Failed to prosecute the criminals who perpetrated these actions.
As a commentary on the previous post (not the poster), here’s a helpful reminder:
The name of the thread is “Blood Libel”, not “Blood Simple”. 
So, because you were sufficiently unclear that you actually have to restate your position, you decide to throw nasty comments at me about “straw man” arguments?
You are the one who opened the thread with a misleading one-liner, failing to provide an actual assertion of what you now claim was your position.
You are the one who resorted to strained analogies rather than actually posting a coherent position.
Now you want to disrupt the thread with accusations of straw men.
I am glad thet you finally figured a way to make your position clear.
Thank you.
Wait, I thought the Israeli government knew about harvesting of organs? What evidence do you have that this was a rogue operation perpetuated by a handful of individuals. I believe Alessan mentioned that Israel has only one foresenic pathologist for the entire country. So maybe it wasn’t a “handful of individuals” and just one person. How can one person run an entire operation like this without getting caught if there was not agreement, implicit or no, before hand?
I don’t know where you come from, but fucking with people’s ‘meat’ in the United States is a crime. If you ever come to the Land of the Free, bursting into the morgue and playing with the corpses will land you in jail regardless of what you think you’re doing for the good of humanity. Now, FinnAgain, I’m sure you’re thinking, “What if I kill an illegal on the border, drag him to Texas, and excise his organs for a loved one?” The answer is you can’t and you’d be executed by the State if you tried. Necromancy is frowned upon here; take that shit to Jamaica.
- Honesty
I was out of my line in my post to you, FinnAgain. If a mod could remove my response to him in the previous post, it would be appreciated. Merry Christmas
The stories so far presented indicate that Hiss got away with his little scam for a while, and then was caught and his scam ended several years ago. How does that require prior approval? The fact that Hiss’s lab was the sole or primary lab makes it more likely that he could get away with something for a while, because there would be no similar agency against which to compare his actions and who better to bypass any safeguards than the person in charge of establishing rules?
Allessan has already noted the tendency of Israeli society to wink at the sins and shenanigans of people who otherwise get the job done. I figure that both the government and society are fair targets for criticisms of that sort of behavior.
However, attempts to point to the Hiss scandal while attempting to state or imply that the silly Swedish story had any basis for belief are absurd until such time as some genuine evidence is brought forth.
The Swedish story claims that the nation of Israel was behind the killing of Palestinians to harvest their organs, yet the first group mentioned in regards to the Hiss scandal are Israeli soldiers, then Israeli citizens. It is more than a little stretch to claim that the one story supports the other.
Just in case this was a specific rather than general comment: I’d want to know a lot more about this case before we parceled out blame. It’s clear that a non zero portion of the-apparatus-of-government and citizenry were concerned/annoyed/wanted charges pressed.
As always, the fallacies of composition and division are dangerous to use and I’d be much more in a full accounting of who knew what when, who did what when and what actual actions or inactions were taken rather than talking about an entire society and government in broad strokes.
/$.02
Hiss is no longer director, but he is still employed and not in prison.
Heaven knows we have too many similar stories in the States, but that warrants some level of crititism of whoever is in charge from my perspective, with some indication that they stonewalled public outrage before I cut the society some slack.
There *was *a public outcry, and many elements in the government wanted Hiss gone as a result. That goes without saying.
I believe that one can say things *in general *about a culture without implying that 100% of that culture is that way 100% of the time. For instance, one can say that a tendency to distrust big government is evident in American culture far more than in other societies - something that even a cursory review of this board would easily reveal. Does that mean that all Americans suspect their government all the time? Of course not, but the tendency still exists, and it should still be factored in.
It depends on if their identity is external or internal. Are they herded into an ethnic identity by the rest of society, or do they self-identify and circle the wagons themselves? That’s the major difference IMHO. Both behaviors slow the progress of the human race towards breaking down the barriers which separate us and joining together in a world where color and creed don’t matter.
Thank you. Once everyone feels the same way about race that you seem to then we’ll be well on our way to realizing our potential as a species instead of fighting among ourselves over trivial, and often uncontrollable, characteristics.
So, pretty much like every other conversation about large heterogeneous groups of individuals that has ever been carried on in GD then? It’s hard to talk forests because trees keep popping up. I have a bit of radical in me and I hope to see the day when people get up and look at themselves in the mirror and think “I’m a human” versus “I’m a [some smaller self-selected group]”. I think the world will be a better place if that happens, and people who do the latter are, I believe, pushing the day when we can interact without artificial barriers further down the road. I understand some of the reasons people identify as smaller groups, but unless some external force is imposing this identity on you, then I think it is each person’s duty to try to break down these walls, not maintain them. I’ll freely admit this is a bit of a pipedream, but I think it’s a good one. People focusing on keeping identities other than the broad/inclusive “human” in favor of narrow/restrictive identities like [tribe/religion/nationality] keeps us tied to those ancient structures, which were necessary in their time, but may not be today, and hopefully won’t be in the future.
No, it’s entirely thinkable. Unfortunately it also perpetuates the divisions among us. There are consequences to setting yourself apart, and one of them is being viewed as something apart. People who might have never thought for a second about treating you differently from anyone else may change once they realize you think of yourself as different from everyone else.
When I was in high school there was a convenience store on my walk to school. I’d stop there in the morning and play a couple of video games and meet up with a couple buddies who also walked to school. I’d often stop by after school too. The owner was a nice guy and we talked a fair bit. Then one day I came by in my costume for Fiddler on the Roof and he asked me what I was. I told him I was playing a Jewish peasant in Tsarist Russia. The atmosphere immediately changed. He drew back and got a look in his eye I’ve never seen before and asked me “Are you a Jew?” I was scared. I was sixteen and I knew he kept a huge handgun under the counter(he had showed me once after telling me a story of how he had chased off a would-be-robber). I said I was not a Jew, as far as I knew, I’m a bit of mutt and I don’t know if I even could track my ethnic lineage. He asked “Then why are you in a play about Jews?” and I said it was just a school play, and he backed off, but that’s the night I learned he was a Palestinian and had some major beefs with Jews.
Until that night ethnic/religious/national origins had never come up, and the shopkeeper and I had gotten along just fine. Afterwards I never felt safe in that store again, and rapidly ceased patronizing it. I was still the same person I was before, and he was still the same person he was before, but how people who wore those labels had influenced life as we(mostly he) had experienced it, had changed everything for us. I feel the world would be a better place if those fracturing influences were relegated to history books, but I’m enough of a pragmatist to know that’s not a good idea in all places at all times.
In a text-based medium, tone is largely determined by the reader.
It takes races in order to be racist. People who self-identify as something different create groups others then discriminate against. If no one said “I am a [whatever]” then it would be difficult for others to treat them differently for being a [whatever]. Barriers could still be imposed via geography/physical features/etc. but there’s nothing anyone can do about that other than refusing to accept such artificial boundaries. But when someone self-identifies as something different, they’re purposefully setting themselves apart. That’s when they end up perpetuating the system instead of breaking it down. I’m not sure how to break the cycle safely, but it isn’t by pretending that adopting a label of a subset of humanity isn’t an act of intentional self-segregation.
Enjoy,
Steven
Right, if only those tricky Jews who have that open secret of favoring and helping other Jews at the expense of Gentiles would just stop self-identifying as Jews, all the problems would go away.
With the exception that you’ve singled out Jews in this thread, this view makes you sound like the stereotypical Archie Bunker type who’s annoyed that some people might, when assimilating into American society, fail to give up every iota of ethnic/religious/national identity. And it’s a phony issue anyway - the first European settlers in America held on to their roots/religion/structure of law etc. They didn’t become the same as the native Americans around them.
There isn’t a single group in this country that can honestly claim that they’ve dropped all vestiges of identity. And it’s hard to see how that would have been a desirable outcome.
I have a bit of dreamer in me, enough to think that maybe someday ancient hostilities and stereotypes will finally break down and allow everyone to feel comfortable that they are universally regarded as members of the human race and not continue to be discriminated against because they are “different”. History however is not encouraging on this matter.
That’s a bit over the top. All you need to keep handy is a big net. 
Steven, I really think it’s time for you to put down the shovel.
Could you point out any posts where you think people were extrapolating some larger lesson about Israelis from this? As far as I can tell only you extrapolated anything by saying that Israelis tend to forgive the capable for atrocities. That seems to sum it up for me. Be good at your job and you can get away with a whole heck of a lot.
I’m not sure what the world would look like if everyone saw everyone without the filters and preconceptions that have shaped human societies throughout history. On the other hand, your next point makes it seem like we’re coming from the same place.
Exactly. History has shown us that whenever subsets of people start coming together to form an “us” it’s always paired with a “us versus them.” Either the groups form in response to persecution, or the persecution comes once they self-segregate, but inexorably the two go together.
If you hold onto ancient identities, ancient grudges and prejudices come with them. We know what that world looks like. It’s a world where lifesaving organs would be denied just because the planned recipient is a [subgroup]. I think that’s a shame. Are [subgroup] identities worth the fracturing effect they have the human race as a whole? Is the whole world to be forever living the macrocosm that Israel lives out in microcosm, where the majority wants peace but a few radicals are able to throw rocks and derail the whole thing because an attack by someone in [subgroup B] on a member of [subgroup A] is an attack on all [subgroup As], and they must retaliate against [subgroup B]?
Fair point. I appreciate you continuing to consider my comments instead of tossing me into the racist dustbin. I’m putting down my shovel.
Enjoy,
Steven
Aldous Huxley had some opinions on that.
Wow. There are actually people who are suggesting organ harvesting is okay. That’s a new one. Shall we add grave robbing? That necklace grandma had could help pay for some medicine.
So, pretty much a Mescaline For Minorities (And Majorities Too) program? 
Sure, the living before the dead!
Absolutely.