I thought he had said the opposite of this - that Israel did not see themselves as an occupying power. Then the Israeli Supreme Court decision of 2008 was cited, and FinnAgain says -
Therefore I don’t think this -
is accurate.
Regards,
Shodan
See, should you now be moderated for this?
Not only did I admit I had been wrong and was unaware of the 2008 ruling, clearly and unambiguously, you then claimed that my being unaware of it meant that I was totally ignorant of the very basics of the topic… while you yourself had been unaware of it until just a few hours before that.
Likewise, I never said that we were discussing the entirety of the Palestinian territory. In fact, I corrected you numerous times on that point, and explained, several times, that I was objecting to your blanket statement that “Israel says it is not an occupying power”, something that would be false even though Israel has claimed it is not occupying Gaza. I explained at least once, probably two or three times, directly to you, that this did not mean I claimed that we were discussing the West Bank but that Israel had stated it was an occupying power even if it stated that Gaza, in specific, was not within its sphere of occupation. Truth be told I do not understand why you claimed that at any point I said we had been in a discussion about the West Bank. Nor do I understand why you are repeating a mistake which I have cleared up many times.
Should you face moderator sanctions for that error?
I’d argue that part of the problem is, as well, that such hyperbole, especially when the subject under discussion is a factual matter, doesn’t help and can distort the issue.
The problem that I had with “All of Lebanon was flattened by Israeli bombing” is the same I have with “All Palestinians are terrorists” or “all black men in America are criminals”, or what have you.
Yes there was a lot of real estate in Lebanon that was damaged, and it’s possible to have a reasonable discussion of that. Yes there are Palestinians terrorists and it’s possible to have a reasonable discussion of how many there are estimated to be and what their impact is. Yes there are many black men in the United States who are in prison, but agian it’s possible to have a reasonable discussion on the exact percentage and the various causes and circumstances without simply resorting to hyperbole. Especially hyperbole that has the effect, by design or not, or using exaggerated rhetoric to try to discuss non-exaggerated actual facts.
People would, and should, object if someone said “The whole Arab world is out for Israel’s blood.” Even if they cite newspaper articles (or what have you) where someone says that so and so is “out for blood” and mean that a grudge exists.
There’s nothing dishonest or bad-faith about my arguments.
Which (a) we clearly hadn’t and (b) clearly wasn’t the way people actually discuss (see my example of WMDs in the thread).
So, he didn’t actually know his shit about Israel and decided to hijack the thread instead of accepting it and moving on.
[/QUOTE]
I’d argue it’s a step below such deliberate distortions as claiming only a portion of Lebanon was affected by the fighting, though.
Go back and re-read it then. You have got it wrong.
See, now you guys are starting up the same damn arguments all over again in this thread that you were complaining about in the other - and it’s not Finn’s fault - he’s responding to you! 
For people who claim not to like Finn’s style of argument, you people sure have a wierd way of showing it.
Hell no - the thread is longer now than it was when I read it the last time.
This is going to turn into either a rehash of that seventeen-page nightmare, or a Pitting olf FinnAgain having nothing to do with moderation, so I’m out.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, fair enough :smack:
I never said you did. I was disputing whether you “know your shit” about Israel.
Except I never made a blanket statement. You can say I did again and again but that doesn’t make it true.
We were discussing Gaza. I don’t have to punctuate everything with “regarding Gaza”. That is common technique in the English language.
As I said in the thread:
If we are discussing Iraq and I say “the US never found WMDs” that is clearly referencing Iraq. It is not a blanket statement about the US never finding WMDs anywhere, despite me not having written “in Iraq” at the end. It is the same here. We are discussing Gaza and I said that Israel does not see itself as an Occupying Power. For the exact same reason as the WMD example, this is clearly not a blanket statement as it is used in the context of Gaza, thus meaning that the “in Gaza” is implied.
I also have made no claims here about moderator actions and whether you should have faced them, so I don’t quite know why you are asking me "Should you face moderator sanctions for that error? "
Yeah, probably best to not go back, find out you were wrong and admit it.
Interestingly enough, when I responded in context to your claims about Lebanon the absolute entirety of Lebanon being flattened, you insist on taking my remarks totally literally. But your remarks are obviously not to be taken literally.
I was responding to your claim that the entirety of Lebanon had been reduced to rubble. Yes, later you said that “flattened” meant to simply be struck by a bomb, except when you didn’t claim that Hezbollah flattened its targets in Israel. Or when you said some areas in Lebanon had been “completely” “simply struck by a bomb” and others only “partially” “simply struck by a bomb.”
That’s part of the problem with using bombast to sell a rhetorical point. You could have engaged in a measured discussion about the actual bombing campaign, how much damage it did and how many buildings were estimated to be hit. Instead, you claimed, several times, that either the totality of Lebanon had been “flattened” or “bombstruck” or whatever (which was still false) or that the south had been “completely flattened” or “completely struck by bombs” which was also false.
That’s the whole point, that you can discuss why you think Israel did something wrong without having to rely on inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric to make your point.
I also pointed out that, in context, I’d been responding to your claim and my comment about the North not being touched was a comment about it not being touched by the kind of bombing your were alleging. I pointed out that only a portion of Lebanon had been subjected to the kind of fighting that really did reduce large parts of some areas to ruins. I also pointed out that if you’d claimed that several bridges and a handful of military targets in the north had been hit, then of course that was true.
Yes, that too was false as the whole of Lebanon was not “bombstruck”.
You also contradicted your claim that you were using “flattened” to mean simply “struck by a bomb at all” as you used adjectives like “completely” to describe degree of “struck by a bomb at all”. Something cannot be “completely struck by a bomb at all”.
You were using it to imply something about the level of damage. And as I pointed out, while Hezbollah hit many parts of Israel with rockets, not only would you not apply your own metric and claim that “all of Israel was flattened by Hezbollah” or even “All the cites hit by Hezbollah rockets were flattened by Hezbollah.”
Whilst we are talking about this. I got two warnings in that thread. What is the deal with warnings? Is there a maximum and then you are banned?
Yes, whilst mine are to be parsed in the most narrow, braindead way possible, whilst everybody needs to keep in mind all the necessary context that’s no doubt obvious to you to make your words imply what you want them to.
Unfortunately for you, you were the one who started reading everybody’s words as narrowly as possible, not me. You just don’t like anybody else playing you at your own bullshit style of debate.
If you think this place is biased towards a pro Israeli pov, you should have been here when Dexter-Haven was moderating.
To be fair, I agreed several times that the MFA had said that Israel wasn’t in a state of belligerent occupation in Gaza, but that I thought that the Iraeli Supreme Court hadn’t certified that decision and was aware of only the 2004 SC decision where Israel certified that it was in a state of belligerent occupation WRT the West Bank and I’d assumed that since it had maintained control over Gaza, that the decision extended to Gaza as well.
When the 2008 verdict was brought up, I immediately responded and admitted that I’d been unaware of it. (Although not before Amanset waited a whole 32 minutes after his post, when I hadn’t responded to anybody in the thread, to demand that I respond and talk about how they were all “waiting for me” to get back to him.)
He then brought it up, I think, close to have a dozen times in two or three other posts, up to the point where he claimed that my being unaware of the 2008 verdict meant I was totally unaware of the basics of the situation. Except while he, himself had been unaware of the verdict until about 1 hour before I was, that he wasn’t going to claim that he was totally unaware about the basic facts of the matter.
Now he’s bringing it up again. It seems that pointing out the one factual error he’s found from me, that I immediately agreed was an error and retracted, is a very big deal. 
Exactly, so should you be moderated?
You were ignorant of the exact same issue, and yet you claimed that it only made me totally unaware of the basic facts while you, being unaware of the very same ruling, hadn’t been totally unaware of the basic facts.
Should the moderators have Warned you for that?
That’s a blanket statement. It does not become a non-blanket because you meant to imply “is not the occupying power in Gaza” rather than “is not an occupying power”. Should you be Warned for this too?
No, you don’t. But if you make a claim that Israel says it is not an “occupying power” when, in fact, Israel says it is an occupying power but that it is not occupying Gaza then that can be pointed out. As I brought to your attention, an occupying power is an occupying power as long as they occupy something, even if they don’t occupy the territory in question.
Again, I cannot let this little insidious bit of disinformation go unchallenged. My first use of “flattened” wasn’t in selling any rhetorical point at all, nor was it in the context of a discussion. It was in detailing my reasons why I no longer support Israel, re: their epic overreaction in Lebanon. The point only became a discussion when you decided to challenge its use. Frankly, I do not care one iota if you find my use of “flattened” to be in contravention of what you’ve decided the facts are: it’s not going to change my support of Israel one way or the other, which is the important point, not whether you believe Lebanon qualifies as being “flattened” under some insanely narrow reading of the term.
That was my take too.
His positions were logical and buttressed with research.
When he (very rarely) was proved wrong on a factual point, he conceded quickly and incorporated the new facts.
I’ve noticed that the Mods only seem to be biased when they are busting chops on someone who has an ideological chip on their shoulders. That’s why you see so often veiled (or open) references to the Mod Squad being biased to a left wing (or whatever) point of view. It’s because when someone is vehement in their posting and, perhaps, feels a bit harassed or harried, and then says something that crosses lines and gets hammered, they naturally think it’s because of their position, instead of the manner and tone of their posts. I followed the thread in questions (which, honestly, I think the Mods would have been justified in shutting down or sending to the Pit), and I find it ironic that the OP of this thread repeatedly seemed to ignore Mod hints and even warnings and kept on doing the same provocative things over and over. Frankly, I don’t understand why the OP wasn’t suspended, at least, since I seem to recall several dire warnings to cease and desist which were (again, seemingly) ignored. It just seemed (to me) that the Mods in that thread were bending over backwards to NOT ban or suspend anyone, and they kept saying, in effect ‘Stop doing this! We REALLY mean it this time! Seriously! Really Really!’, over and over again.
It’s definitely a touchy subject, and there is a lot of heat on both sides (I know from my own perspective that some of what I think of as knee jerk opposition to anything Israeli sets my teeth on edge…which is why I don’t participate fully in these kinds of discussions anymore, not wanting to get banned or anything).
-XT
Damn. Replace “discussion” by “debate” in the second sentence.
So… Ajashi might as well have written his OP about himself?
You know what they say about pissing off both sides in an argument, right? 
Damuri Ajashi, I hope you’ll be satisfied if I don’t respond to every single article of your post. I don’t want to reargue that entire 800-post thread. The really short version is this: FinnAgain argues very hard and very much in a point-by-point style that grates on some posters. (Other posters just disagree with him on a lot of things.) I don’t think this qualifies as Being a Jerk[sup]TM[/sup] by itself. We take mod action on his posts when we feel he’s over the line, getting there, or in a way that’s going to lead in that direction. That’s the same way we moderate everyone.
The mods and any number of posters - including a few in the current thread - have tried to tell FinnAgain that some of his tactics are counterproductive. I think it would be a credit to him if he listened. But we don’t require everybody to be friendly here.
Your comment about FinnAgain “precipitating all shitstorms” suggests we should deal harshly with FinnAgain because other posters just can’t help themselves when he’s around, they just have to cross the line and insult him. That’s not a reasonable attitude, and it borders on excuse-making. He gets into a lot of controversies but it is not entirely his fault. His complaints about bias and lies on the part of other posters are overblown in my opinion, but fairness requires me to point out they are not totally invented. He defends Israel a lot, and more so than I would do personally, but he does not do it unfailingly, uncritically, or unthinkingly. Some posters - who feel just as passionately about these issues as he does, but who usually take opposing views - often accuse him of those things, but it’s not really true.