What the fuck are you talking about? That wasn’t collateral damage, that was cold blooded murder.
And yeah, the redneck murderer is as much of a bloodthirsty idiot as any Hamas terrorist.
If the United States had had to invade Japan at the end of WW2, G.I.s would have shot Japanese children who were being used as suicide bombers and not lost any sleep over it.
I’m sorry, you don’t think the prevailing attitude of “If Palestinians die, it’s a tragedy but oh well, civilians die in war” spouted here and elsewhere had anything to do with someone feeling it’s their right to murder a child?
If you’re fucking stupid and hateful enough to be unable to tell apart the difference between shooting at a Hamas member who is shooting you and hitting a civilian or murdering a 6 year old for being a Palestinian, then that’s on you.
Let’s not use emotionally charged language here, that’s bad or some shit.
I’m not the one who fails to see how regular discussion almost explicitly stating it doesn’t actually matter how many innocents perish if Israeli lives can be saved will have knock on effects elsewhere.
Absolutely! When the United States attacked Okinawa, G.I.s raped Japanese women en masse and didn’t lose any sleep over it. Defending against suicide bombers is nothing, compared to rape.
I never told anyone not to use emotionally charged language.
Aside from “let’s you and him fight” American “supporters” of Israel, or Hamas-like trash like Ben Gvir, both of whom I have called out many times, that’s not really an attitude I’ve seen expressed. It certainly isn’t my attitude, despite the accusations that led to this Pit thread.
Serious question–you’re way more knowledgeable about Israel’s domestic politics than I am. How common would you say Ben Gvir’s attitude is in Israel? Is his attitude shared by Netanyahu? By the majority of Likud? By the majority of Likud voters? I know he’s not Likud, but I don’t know to what extent his views are shared.
You’re replying as if you’re the only person my original comment was directed at, and not the prevailing attitude of the Dope. You’re not that special in the scope of this conversation. The Dope as a whole has been very much “collateral damage”. Numbers of dead children have been claimed as hundreds of thousands with nobody pushing back that maybe that might be too much, except to put all blame on Hamas, no matter what. This attitude continues to be espoused, with very-thinly-veiled accusations of hatred against anyone who questions the coming invasion and its goals.
None of this is directed at you, no matter how personal you want to make it.
Wait, what? Where? I’ve been following these threads pretty closely, and that’s not at all what I’ve seen.
That’s utterly ridiculous. Noone on this forum is advocating the desire for the deaths of innocents. Many recognize that the least horrible action is going to result in the unfortunate deaths of many innocents. This hand wringing is the sign of not recognizing reality for how it is as opposed to some platonic ideal of an utopia.
Seriously, if you folks whose world view are governed by absolute abstracts have better ideas that would save more lives in the long term then get busy implementing them.
Read the title of this thread; it is literally about @Babale.
It is amazing how steadfastly you avoid basic questions while characterizing the positions of all major aid and humanitarian groups as “not recognizing reality.”
Actually, scratch that: it’s quotidian conservativism, not amazing at all.
Ben Gvir’s attitude is pretty damn fanatical. He’s associated with the exact sort of extremism that assassinated Rabin (and Rabin’s death is seen as one of the country’s biggest tragedies by normal Israelis). He has been in and out of jail for hate speech and incitement to violence, he was not drafted into the IDF because his extremism started when he was a teenager, etc. Ben Gvir is very fringe - among secular Israelis.
Among the ultra-religious, he is still very far right, but less fringe. And the ultra-religious make up 13% of the population with 60% of them being under 18 (as opposed to 30% of the general population). So that’s a bit of a demographic disaster, although the higher attrition rate from religious to secular than the other way around does help.
Likud voters generally aren’t anywhere near that extreme, no. I’d say your average secular Likud voter is mostly motivated by fear, very similar to the American Right’s “tough on crime” rhetoric; at least historically.
Lately (as in the last few years, this isn’tall that recent), Likud has pivoted more and more towards appeasing the nakedly extremist religious folk. That’s what the whole judicial reform issue is about, for example.
I couldn’t say in depth to what extent that’s due to a change in the people voting Likud/allies, vs a change in which parties are aligned to Likud and which are not.
I am not an international law lawyer. Furthermore, words like proportionate and unnecessary aren’t precisely defined and are subject to debate. So, I am not about to get into that quixotic and irrelevant discussion.
Since you are obviously an expert, what precise number of opposing dead is acceptable to you in order to rescue the hostages and to destroy the leadership and members of Hamas? I’m pretty sure you don’t have a number.
I’m just trying to imagine fighting WWII by the goofy, self defeating constraints you impose.
Thanks, that’s helpful.
Again, peak conservatism: determining whether something is a war crime is a “quixotic and irrelevant discussion.”
It’s hard to find a more pure example of this proposition than what @octopus has provided.
These constraints that I apparently impose are the Geneva conventions–which, in his defense, a non-law lawyer like octopus couldn’t be expected to know about. In the interest of fighting ignorance, I encourage you to learn about these goofy, self defeating constraints that every nation has signed onto:
There you go again. Just making stuff up to argue against. There is no purer example of straw man fighting than your posts.
Now how about you stop dodging and start giving some precise answers as to what is and is not an acceptable number of casualties? And if you can’t, stop being such a hypocrite and demanding answers that you can’t or won’t provide.
Again, your projection of your own faults is peak conservatism. You’ve yet to rule out war crimes, despite being asked multiple times.
Of course I don’t have a precise number of acceptable civilian casualties. You need to familiarize yourself with the Sorites paradox. I can tell you that certain numbers are unacceptable (50,000 dead kids means an unattainable goal) and others are acceptable (no dead kids means that dead kids aren’t an impediment to the goal).
The question I asked @WalterBishop was to identify a number that was too high. I can easily identify a number that’s not too high.
What rot. I’m quoting your words. If you’re gonna back away from them, have the courage and integrity to do so, instead of pretending you never said them.
Edit: aaand I realize that octopus is turning this into the octopus show, so I’ll stop giving him the dignity of a response.
Selectively quoting the words and then appending your fallacious interpretation is not a good faith argument. And for one so keen on following the letter of the law deserves a ‘tsk tsk’
The reason I don’t have a precise answer for the war crime question is I believe law to be a tool. You realize we live in a nation whose security is in part guaranteed by our threat and willingness to inflict disproportionate damage? You think our thousands of nuclear warheads are just for show? We are, as voters in this nation, responsible for that. And that discussion is really off topic for this thread and this thread is already going off the track with our back and forth which has its genesis in your inability to comprehend what I posted to Miller. You are so fixated on legalities instead of foundational principles.
But to give you a bone, yes, I think all combatants should follow the generally accepted rules of warfare. However, and to paraphrase a common expression, a treaty or a law is not a suicide pact.
Oh, and to address your late edit… more hypocrisy. You equate me to genocidal maniacs and when I respond I’m at fault. 
The Geneva Conventions don’t say that civilians can not be killed. That would be an impossible task. They state that civilians cannot be targeted, but civilian deaths while targeting legitimate military targets is acceptable. Steps should be taken to minimize civilian casualties.
When the enemy intentiinally surrounds itself with civilians as an act of defense, bombing them or otherwise fighting them is not a violationof the conventions, no matter how many civilians are killed. The Allies bombed lots of cities in WWII to destroy armament factories and such. The bombing tech of the time required carpet bombing of cities to get the military targets, and so we did.
The U.S. was prepared to do to Japan what the Israelis are now going to do in Gaza - go into civilian areas and fight a guerilla war door to door. Estimates for that battle included as many as 2 million dead civilians.
The only thing that stopped it was the nuclear destruction of parts of two cities - along with tens of thiusands of civilians.
That was the situation the U.S. faced - kill maybe 100,000 civilians with nukes, or invade and kill at least ten times as many. Sometimes in war there are no clean solutions.
I find it sickening that Israel is getting blamed for this, when Hamas could stop the carnage tomorrow by surrendering or moving out of civilian areas, Egypt could help the Palestinians by opening refugee corridors, Iran could avoid pouring gas on the fire by reining in Hezbollah instead of funding and encouraging them, yet once again the focus is on what Israel must do, and that always comes down to ‘surrender’ or ‘don’t retaliate against massacres of your people’.
Israel is doing what pretty much every other democracy would do when faced with a similar situation, and a hell of a,lot less than what Putin, Xi, or any of tye other shitty little despots would do faced with the same situation. Grozny, anyone? Where was the campus left’s outrage over the seige and ultimate destruction of over 80% of that city?
The selective outrage over Israel’s defense is telling.