I’m not trying to make it sound like someone took away my agency. I’m not at all trying to make it sound like someone took away my agency; I’m aware that it’s my choice, and I’m enthusiastic that it’s my choice. I literally have no idea why, of all the things you could criticize me for, you’ve hit upon this one.
Here, run with the following, if you want:
Well, then, I choose trying to hit lower. I’m aware that it’s my choice; I so choose.
How you somehow reached the opposite conclusion — that I’m trying to make it sound like it’s anything but my choice? — I may never know.
At that, there’s this:
Again, you’re just downright mystifying. You wrote that a fist-sized rock will cause me no harm in this scenario; I replied that I think you’re incorrect; and here you are leaping to the conclusion that I must therefore think it’s “as dangerous” as something else. Seriously: why do you do that? Why can’t I think it’s almost as dangerous, or half as dangerous, or one-tenth as dangerous, or any number of other possibilities? Why the heck would you deduce what you did?
(If you tell me that zero Germans will win medals at the next Olympics, and I reply that I think you’re incorrect, will you respond with a quick, “oh, so you think they’ll do as well as the Americans? Because if you don’t think it’s ‘zero’, then surely you must think it’s This Other Amount; nothing in between is possible, see?”)
Because I thought, for some reason, that you were arguing that it was actually the correct thing to do to shoot into a crowd of protestors, not just something that you wanted to do.
Like I said, I was under the impression that you were actually trying to justify the actions, not just glorify murder. My bad.
No, a fist sized rock will not cuase you any harm if you are wearing armor and shields. If you really want to go with a ratio, maybe 1% as dangerous as firing a gun into a crowd.
No, I would not respond like that. It does appear as though your ability to read minds is on the fritz.
First, you’re leaving aside the possibility that it’s both: that I want to do it, and that I think it’s the correct thing to do. Second: how would me thinking it’s the correct thing to do lead you to that messed-up conclusion about taking away my agency?
You’re still incorrect, and for the same reason: yes, I want to glorify shooting a guy who so whips those fist-sized rocks at people — I’d sincerely meant what I’d said about medals — but that’s not incompatible with also believing that such an action would be justified. (Which is, in turn, not incompatible with Making That Choice, instead of saying Agency Was Taken Away; I still don’t get where that’s from.)
I’m not following you: you double down on the flat No-It-Will-Not from before; and then, in the very next sentence, you call it at 1%?
Hamas does want to kill Israelis, and they are the ones coordinating this.
OK, what do they deserve? There are thousands of people, with rocks and slingshots and Molotov cocktails and grenades and some rifles. They are trying to break down the fence so armed Hamas terrorists can get into Israel and kill Israelis. How do you stop them without shooting? Again, please be specific.
It’s not that complicated. Hamas is putting their civilians in the forefront of the battle as human shields, so that they can blame the civilian deaths on Israel.
The terrorists are hiding behind women and children. Read that a couple times and let it sink in.
As mentioned, the millions of Palestinians do have a chance of improving their lot. Stop attacking Israel and negotiate in good faith. They have already been offered a deal that gave them 95+% of what they want. They turned it down flat.
Unnecessary brutality on the part only of Israel, it seems - I don’t see you calling for an investigation on Hamas using civilians as human shields.
He’s conceding the point without knowing it. If a rock is 1% as dangerous as a gun, and you are faced with a crowd of more than a hundred throwing rocks, you are justified in shooting.
I have no problem at all with Israel going after Hamas. Most Palestinians are not members of Hamas.
Force may well be necessary. As to the facts of the case, from the unbiased (i.e. not the IDF or Hamas) sources I’ve seen, the vast majority of the protesters were unarmed, including most who were shot. I don’t need to be specific to be concerned that the deadly force used may have been unnecessary, and that a third-party investigation should be conducted.
Yes, Hamas is terrible, and I have no problem with Israel taking measures against Hamas and other terrorist organizations. That doesn’t justify any and every deadly shooting against these and other Palestinians. Israel has almost all the power here, and as such they are morally bound (IMO) to do absolutely everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. I’m unconvinced that they are doing so, especially when the Israeli Defense Minister says things like “there are no innocent people in Gaza”.
Does Lieberman’s statement concern you at all, or do you have no problem with Israeli leaders assuming everyone – including those women and children – living in Gaza should be treated as an enemy combatant?
I agree with your criticism of the Palestinian leaders. This doesn’t mean that every Palestinian is responsible. I have trouble blaming average Palestinians, especially children, for the poor decisions of their leaders in the past. The vast majority of average Palestinians have done, and are doing, nothing wrong.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. I certainly won’t oppose investigations into their use of terrorism.
Well, of course you are going to try to justify that it is the correct thing to do, you want to do it. Convincing yourself that firing into a crowd of protesters is the “correct thing to do” because someone in their vicinity threw a rock at you is not that hard a task when you want to fire into a crowd of protestors.
As far as the agency part goes, I was wrong about that, I already said so and apologized in the previous post. I thought you were trying to say that the protesters were forcing you into the position of firing into them, and that was taking away your agency. As you have come out and said that it is you desire to fire a gun into protestors, I take that back. It is in fact your choice to shoot and kill these people, not something that you are actually forced to do to protect yourself.
Right, you can justify anything. I’ve already seen you do so in this thread. It is motivated reasoning, because the end result that you want is to justify shooting at people because they are upsetting you with their protesting, and you can choose to justify killing people because they were in the general vicinity of someone that threw a rock at you.
Like I said, I apologize for thinking that you were claiming that you had no choice in the action. That was before you responded to the idea of whether you should take the high road or try to hit lower, you said that you want to hit lower. You do have a choice, and you choose the action that causes harm to others.
Not doubling down, acknowledging reality. You have dozens dead and thousands wounded on the protestors side, and 0 dead, and very few* wounded on the IDF side. So yes, rocks thrown at soldiers in riot gear vs guns into a crowd, guns win, hands down. I am surprised that you would be trying to challenge this point. You were so absolutely insistent that there be some sort of comparative ratio, that I generously gave you the rocks being 1% as dangerous as a gun, though given the casualty numbers, it’s more like .01%. This should not have caused you as much confusion as it seems to have, as it was specifically responding to the question that you demanded that I answer.
*I could not find any reports of injuries of the IDF, but I assume that there are some, even if there was just someone who got their finger caught while reloading to fire upon more protesters.
Not really. But thanks for trying. TOWP was demanding that I give some sort of relative danger ratio. I very generously gave a 1% as dangerous ratio, thinking that that would calm him a little.
Can you tell me how many IDF soldiers were injured or killed by rocks? Can you compare that to the number of protesters that were injured or killed by bullets?
So, by your “math” if you are faced with a crowd of more than a hundred throwing rocks (please cite), then you are “justified”.
How does that math work out if you are in a crowd of more than a hundred firing guns?
I can’t tell - are you withdrawing the claim of 1%? If so, what percentage do you think is applicable? Or are you saying that a crowd of people throwing rocks (with some Molotov cocktails and rifles thrown into the mix) presents zero risk?
It wasn’t my math; it was yours.
It doesn’t. But again, I don’t see your point - if the crowd of protestors/rioters included people firing guns, are you saying that shooting them is justified?
Off the top of my head, I thought it was 60 or so killed and a couple of thousand injured. I don’t know how many injuries were from bullets or from some other cause. I also don’t know how many IDF personnel were injured.
The point is that the soldiers were morally justified, and Hamas was and is not. Hamas was wrong in trying to get civilians to rush the fence and get shot, because Hamas does not have the right to rush the fence and attack Israelis. Israel is right in defending itself and its borders against Hamas incursion. Even if the civilians are dumb enough/deluded enough/desperate enough to bring a rock to a gun fight.
It also, very conveniently, means that death tolls and details don’t matter. Dozens killed and thousands injured? That’s okay, Israel has to defend itself. Details don’t matter; what matter is Hamas is evil, Israel must defend itself, therefore Israel shooting masses of people is always okay and doesn’t eve need to be investigated.
Israel has to defend itself, therefore anything they do, and anyone they kill, is justified. After all, as the Israeli Defense Minister said, there are no innocents in Gaza.
I wasn’t aware that Kent State was an attempt by a terror organization to get armed fighters across the border into another country so they could kill people. Did you have a cite?
Ah, now you are moving the goalposts. The original claim that TOWP made was that fist sized rocks could cause enough damage to an armored individual that shooting them was the only way to preserve one’s safety. He later walked that back, and said that it wasn’t really about safety, it was that he had a desire to shoot at unarmed protesters, and this allowed him to justify shooting them.
Now you are changing the goal posts. Why don’t you state the scenario that you are talking about, rather than playing a “what if this, what if that” game all day.
Your words:
More “what if’s” from you. Sure, if people are shooting guns at you, shooting the people who are shooting guns at you is justified. This is an entirely different scenario, and the goal posts are getting tired of running all over the place trying to keep up with you.
Right, so you admit that guns are more dangerous than rocks. That firing guns into a crowd causes far more death and injury than throwing rocks at people wearing body armor. I was assuming that there would be at least some reports of some IDF soldier having some injury, but I’m not seeing anything about it.
The point is is that you can come up with a way to justify anything. Hamas justifies its actions based on the oppressive subjugation that Israel puts the palestinians in. It further justifies and recruits people when it shows the IDF massacring civilians. Israel justifies killing civilians because there are palestinians that are upset about their subjugated status.
In your opinion, is there any time when de-escalation and working toward peace is justified? Or is justification only to be used when you want to try to make it okay to kill someone?
Israel exists because of the sympathy the world had for the treatment of the Jews by germany before and during WWII. Now that they are taking a playbook from their one time oppressors, and using the same tactics that were used against them against others, that sympathy is waning fast.
This is taking it much too far, I think. Israel is doing what powerful countries have typically done to protesting and oppressed popualations until very recently. They’re not doing anything the US, UK, Australia, etc., haven’t done. They’re not doing anything close to “uniquely Nazi”. They’re doing the typical level of oppression and brutality that many or most countries have done. They should certainly be criticized, but IMO comparing them to the Nazis is particularly egregious. The Nazis killed millions; Israel hasn’t come close to such a crime. Which doesn’t mean Israel shouldn’t be continually challenged and criticized when they go to far, as I think they might have a few days ago. Shooting poor protesters is terrible, but it’s the mundane sort of terrible that the US and other first-world countries have engaged in many times.
As you said, “until very recently”. We like to think that we live in a better world than it was, and that we have left behind such things. The worst the US has done in “recent times” is Kent state, and that didn’t kill dozens and wound thousands, yet, is considered by many to be a horrendous act by the govt.
And I don’t think that there is anything uniquely Nazi about shooting at unarmed protesters, but, there is some level of turn about when they have imprisoned a population, refused to allow them any level of self governance, prevented them from developing any real economy or trade with the outside world, and govt officials are now claiming that all of palestine is terrorists. That kind of dehumanization is concerning to me. It allows them to justify further atrocities.
If this had happened, and Israel was all like “Oh shit, our bad, things got out of control, and we should have never let our soldiers fire upon unarmed civilians, we will be taking punitive actions against those who did”, then they would be in a different place.
As they are doubling down, and in justifying their actions, they are also justifying further actions that they may take in the future, I do see how this could essentially just turn into blatant genocide.
They aren’t there yet, and they don’t have to go there, but that is the road they are speeding down.
The US started a completely unnecessary war in Iraq that got thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of others killed. That’s far worse than anything Israel has done in the last 20 years.
I think the unique nature both of Israel and the Nazis, and their unique relationship, in that the atrocities of the latter necessitated the creation of the former, means that it’s particularly egregious to compare them.
The closest simile I can come up with to explain this is that it would be like telling a young mother who has made a mistake with her children that she’s being just like her father, who brutalized and raped her for a decade before she finally escaped. It’s beyond inappropriate, IMO. Israel can be challenged and criticized without being compared in any way to the Nazis.
I don’t want to justify shooting at folks because their protests are upsetting; to the extent that they’re simply protesting, I don’t want them shot at all. That said, if a guy starts whipping fist-sized rocks at my head, I’d want to justify shooting regardless of the protestations; I could even — far from finding it troubling — be in agreement with whatever slogan a guy was chanting, which would have no bearing on whether I’d still gun him down as he went to whip said rock at my head.
The protest isn’t what’s doing the heavy lifting; the rock is.
And the guy who in this hypothetical chose to whip a fist-sized rock at my head also had a choice, and, uh, we both made our choices. Seems blandly unremarkable.
But I’m not “absolutely insistent” that you provide a nonzero answer, and I don’t believe that I “demanded” you give a nonzero answer. If you believe the answer is “zero”, then I’ll think you’re incorrect — and I’ll say so — but that’s it.
Granted, since you replied by saying the nonzero answer I have in mind must be as dangerous as something else in particular, I pointed out that, no, there are all sorts of other possibilities you’re overlooking — but I didn’t insist or demand that you pick one of them; I merely wanted to note that there are other possibilities.
No, I didn’t; that wasn’t my claim; your statement is false.