I keep asking pro-Israel people here on Lemmy what the maximum number of children that they feel it is necessary to sacrifice in this war.
I get two answers, usually both together:
Hamas is the one killing the children.
If this was your country, you would kill lots of children too.
And they expect me to accept those answers as if they were true.
They're not really engaging with you, just like Israel isn't really interested in a dialogue about the situation. They just need you to think there's a civil dialogue being had so that we don't realize the need to stop them by force.
I keep asking pro-Israel people here on Lemmy what the maximum number of children that they feel it is necessary to sacrifice in this war.
This is quite literally how they see the world. Every child in Rafa is this child. Every adult is a terrorist cell leader. Every refugee is going to want revenge. Every survivor is going to join the next revolt.
Its the same logic American colonists used on First Nations people, as they carved their way westward. Its the logic Serbians used as they butchered their way through Bosnia. Its the logic American soldiers used in Hadditha and Kandahar. Children are just tiny future evil adults and killing them is right because they are incapable of doing anything but wrong.
You had me in the first half.
The going rate is 1:30 Israelis to Palestinians in revenge killing. For killing each Hamas militant they're allowed to kill around 20 as collateral damage. 50% in Gaza are children so 10 kids per Hamas militant is okay according to the Israeli government.
According to some people here, infinite kids per militant is okay to maintain Israeli security.
And I have no idea why they think a state that believes killing large numbers of children is acceptable is worth securing.
They didn't put the kids in with the terrorists, the terrorists did. They don't get to dictate the terms of battle because it makes a small minority of westerners too sad to see any nuance or larger picture.
"They have to kill the children because there are terrorists next to them" is really not a moral defense for killing children. If anything, it makes it seem like the terrorists have a point.
The terrorism came first.
"The terrorism came first" is also not a moral defense for killing children, sorry. I get that you really like the idea of killing people, but that doesn't make it morally defensible.
Yes, there is no moral defense for hamas's decision to let these kids die.
Ah, so now Hamas is letting children die from Israeli bombs and bullets.
Boy do you do some pretzels trying to avoid connecting the victim with the killer.
It makes more sense when you realize how many simply think Israel can do no wrong.
It's so fucking stupid. Even if you're on Israel's side, just admit they do bad things.
They have always been content with letting children die, and with killing children. No pretzels. I have a consistent model. Happy to try and explain any distinction for you.
You are also content with letting children die. You already said it was justified because they were indoctrinated.
So I guess you're as bad as they are. Congratulations.
We get it, you're such a good person. I was talking about their parents and older relatives. Obviously the kids are innocent victims.
I never said anything about myself. Why are you making this about me?
You have repeatedly justified the killing of children. Suddenly calling them innocent victims doesn't take back the fact that you think it's acceptable for IDF troops to put a bullet in their brain. It just means that you're okay with killing innocent victims.
In other countries. So they ran to Palestine and started killing the people there. You're not allowed to kill everyone and anyone you want, including innocents ams civilians, just because you were wronged by a completely different population of people once.
Wtf are you talking about? The earliest recorded history of the Levant is in Hebrew, written by Judites. The Ottoman Empire (far right pan Islamists) rounded them up, massacred them, took many as slaves, tortured them, and gave them negligeble rights for the last two thousand years, and it was other own Islamists back and back.
Israel is there now though, and it's not going anywhere. It is a democracy with a legitimate government and Gaza is a failed state occupied by terrorists, sorry to break the reality of political science to you.
The last two thousand years? The Ottoman Empire was a refuge for Jewish people for a long time. It wasn't just a neverending massacre or they wouldn't have kept settling there from other places. It gave then some restrictions, but it did the same to Christians. And comparatively, they lived pretty good lives and thrived, especially compared to the oppression and massacred they faced elsewhere in Europe. It had the largest Jewish population by the end of the 16th century. They came from Russia, Prussia, ran from Spain because of the Spanish Inquisition, or Portugal, etc. It was way better than living under Christians for a long time. They would encourage each other to move there. It wasn't until the 19th century that antisemitism started to ramp up there. And most scholars agree the attitude was imported from Christian Arabs, so it's not just a Muslim thing. It sucks that it started to rise again then, but nationalism does that. It made it worse on both sides, since around that time Zionism started picking up steam, too, and they were buying land and kicking off the native tenants to make a country. Not to excuse the antisemitism, because obviously that is horrible, and there's a long history of it happening all over the world. But the point is, so many immigrated there because of things like the Holocaust in Germany or the Russian pogroms, then started fighting completely unrelated people and kicking them off their land, like was done to them somewhere else. Same reason that even though I respect the struggle of slaves, I don't approve of the colonial way Liberia was founded and the way the colonists treated the indigenous people.
Israel is barely a democracy. There are millions of people under their control who don't get a vote. Their leader is stoking a war and nationalistic fervor to avoid corruption trials. They jail people for criticism, require military service, and have killed more journalists than any recent conflict. They're an apartheid, settler colonial ethnostate that only exists because of racist and antisemitic Western interests. Gaza is not a failed state, because every attempt to become a state is stymied by Israel, the country that actually controls all their infrastructure, food, travel, sea, and air. Israel as a nation state could easily disappear and be replaced by an actual state with equal rights and equality for everyone in the area, without a single person being killed in the process, if the US and the Israeli people or government wished it. And that would be a good thing for both the Palestinians who could live free, and the Israelis who don't want to have to worry about being threatened by actual attacks from rightfully pissed people all the time.
In your mind, is Israel more or less of a democracy than any nearby country's immamate or caliphate?
More, but I don't think it gives them the right to genocide innocent people. And it can definitely still be improved, a lot. We should have a higher bar than that.
They require military service to build roads and bridges. Many, many places do it also. Seems like a lot of people criticize only Israel for this, like it's only a problem when it's Jewish people having a military.
You're right, Gaza is not a failed state. It would have to have been a state to be a failed state. The correct terms for it are irredenta or unincorporated territory, a lawless shithole with stakeholders that don't care ahout it (unless it is killing Jews). Literally the only concievable future for Gaza that isn't a complete humanitarian catastrophe is going to look a lot like five to ten years of martial law. Gaza has zero capabilitynor capacity to rebuild itself and literally nobody else cares about it enough to do it for Gaza except the one country you would have a problem doing it. So your plan really is to condemn Gaza. If you wanted to save Gaza you'd be in Gaza pointing out who Hamas is and where they are hiding. See, even Gaza doesn't care to save Gaza.
Israel doesn't care about Gazans either. If they did, they wouldn't be bombing every hospital and refugee camp and preventing aid from coming in. Nor would they be preventing them from making a state and having self-rule at every opportunity. Gaza is already condemned when Israel decided to reduce it all to rubble and make public statements about reducing the population from millions to a few thousands. Hamas is just an excuse to raze and then take the land. Without Hamas, you get something like the government in the West Bank, which hasn't done anything to prevent Israel from taking more land, imprisoning and killing more Palestinians, and failed at every opportunity to get them their own state or a good quality of life, either, because they have no power against the US and Israel. It's the same state of affairs but slower. So no, Hamas isn't the cause of Gaza people suffering, it's Israel.
I agree. The history is irrelevant. Israel is there now. Those who stood to oppose it have been defeated politically and military and if they were at all led by legitimate, well intended non-genociral, non-criminals, they'd surrender, sue for peace. They literally don't want peace, though.
They surrendered but then kept getting killed, getting their land taken, and forced into smaller and smaller spaces. Then in those spaces, they were imprisoned, starved, and oppressed and controlled. Human beings want a quality of life Israel won't let them have. They've diplomatically and strategically geographically isolated them away from having a state, had walls built around them, had their food and trade and movement restricted. They get randomly shot or arrested. In the West Bank, they get their food and trees ripped up and their houses taken. You can't ask a people to sit there and accept that. Even if they've been defeated militarily, human beings desire some innate dignity and quality of life. No group of human beings on Earth would accept how Israel has treated them for 70 years. It's why some ghettos revolted in the Holocaust, or the French resistance existed in WW2. Palestinians want peace, but Israel wants an occupied people to sit there quietly while they get oppressed and slowly lose the rest of their land and are forced to emigrate away from their homes or die.
As per item 2: If the enemy was using them as hostages I sure as shit wouldn't just bomb the building and kill everyone. I'd prefer to use special forces to go in on foot and secure the building with minimal casualties. And only when diplomacy fails.
The enemy was using them as shields because they didn't think you'd be that fucking stupid to just bomb everyone; they assumed you had some empathy.
I'm neither pro-Israel nor pro-Hamas, but I believe the correct answer is "same as in every other war".
In other words, the maximum rate of Gazan casualties you will accept depends on the maximum rate of Axis casualties you would have accepted in WW2. That might be zero or it might be fairly high.
The civilian casualty rate in Gaza is about the same as the Second Chechen War and less than on the East Front, in North Korea, or in Vietnam.
Since I asked how many children and not the rate of children, I'm pretty sure a count of children is not cherry picking.
But I guess your answer is that any amount of children killed in a war is acceptable and nothing to be complaining about.
I didn't say it was acceptable. It is no more acceptable than civilian deaths in Germany, Japan, or Chechnya.
People are often more concerned about the rate of deaths because Gaza is relatively small. But if you really are counting how many and not the rate, then the vast majority of wars were worse than Gaza. The number of civilian deaths in Dresden alone is comparable to those in Gaza. Over 150,000 civilians have died in Iraq.
And as I said, some people find one civilian death to be unacceptable, others are willing to accept more than one. I've never met anyone who is willing to accept "any amount".
Interesting that you keep saying 'civilian death' and not 'child.' Seems like we're talking about two very different things.
I’ve never met anyone who is willing to accept “any amount”.
Then see the person who replied to me who says it's worth killing any amount to get rid of Hamas.
Interesting that you keep saying 'civilian death' and not 'child.' Seems like we're talking about two very different things.
Maybe so. But personally, I believe that all civilian deaths are equally tragic whether of a child, an old man, or a mother. In fact, I would object if someone said "X dead women is acceptable, but X dead children is unacceptable", because personally I believe that whatever X you choose should be age-independent. YMMV
I’m neither pro-Israel nor pro-Hamas
What worm ate your brain and made you think that is the choice of sides here?? Fighting for Palestinian emancipation has nothing to do with being pro-Hamas you dingus.
Those are the two sides that are currently at war. They are both religiously motivated right-wing regimes, and I support neither one.
I'm also not fighting for Palestinian "emancipation", for the same reason I'm not fighting to "emancipate" Istanbul from Turks or New York from Americans.
If Israel were ONLY attacking Hamas, you'd be correct.
The problem is they are insistant on attacking, bombing, killing, and displacing all of the innocent Palestinians in Gaza as well, because they have been at war with Palestine, not Hamas, for generations now.
They are at war with Palestine just as Americans were at war with Germany and Japan. Many civilians were killed and displaced there, too.
Palestine didn't attack them, Hamas did.
Hamas is the government of Gaza
Tell that to the millions of Palestinians homeless and starving thanks to Israel.
I don't follow.
Hamas is the government of Gaza even though Gazans are suffering thanks to Israel. Just as Hirohito was the leader of the Japanese even though they were suffering thanks to America.
In both cases, a government failed to protect its people.
It's a dumb question. Hamas puts the kids in harm's way, Hamas and their loyal supporters. They love nothing more than their own kids dead from Israeli weapons, it's the only way they will win this war, tricking well meaning people such as yourself.
800,000 people left Rafah safely. Blame Hamas for 0.006% of them being killed. What did Hamas do this time, tell them the evacuation was fake or hold them against their will?
More likely they just indoctrinated them over decades, convinced them it's patriotic and holy to sit inside a room with terrorists to be used as fodder for Qatari and Iranian state media to try to drum of western support. At some point they realized this is more effective than suicide bombings.
Ah, "indoctrinated" children deserve to die. I see.
It's kinda sad how many times they just rephrase that hypothetical to make it sound justified to be able to kill children
I keep asking pro-Israel people here on Lemmy what the maximum number of children that they feel it is necessary to sacrifice in this war.
I get two answers, usually both together:
And they expect me to accept those answers as if they were true.
They're not really engaging with you, just like Israel isn't really interested in a dialogue about the situation. They just need you to think there's a civil dialogue being had so that we don't realize the need to stop them by force.
You've got to see this from the Israeli perspective: An inside look at a terrorist group's summer camp for kids
This is quite literally how they see the world. Every child in Rafa is this child. Every adult is a terrorist cell leader. Every refugee is going to want revenge. Every survivor is going to join the next revolt.
Its the same logic American colonists used on First Nations people, as they carved their way westward. Its the logic Serbians used as they butchered their way through Bosnia. Its the logic American soldiers used in Hadditha and Kandahar. Children are just tiny future evil adults and killing them is right because they are incapable of doing anything but wrong.
You had me in the first half.
The going rate is 1:30 Israelis to Palestinians in revenge killing. For killing each Hamas militant they're allowed to kill around 20 as collateral damage. 50% in Gaza are children so 10 kids per Hamas militant is okay according to the Israeli government.
According to some people here, infinite kids per militant is okay to maintain Israeli security.
And I have no idea why they think a state that believes killing large numbers of children is acceptable is worth securing.
They didn't put the kids in with the terrorists, the terrorists did. They don't get to dictate the terms of battle because it makes a small minority of westerners too sad to see any nuance or larger picture.
"They have to kill the children because there are terrorists next to them" is really not a moral defense for killing children. If anything, it makes it seem like the terrorists have a point.
The terrorism came first.
"The terrorism came first" is also not a moral defense for killing children, sorry. I get that you really like the idea of killing people, but that doesn't make it morally defensible.
Yes, there is no moral defense for hamas's decision to let these kids die.
Ah, so now Hamas is letting children die from Israeli bombs and bullets.
Boy do you do some pretzels trying to avoid connecting the victim with the killer.
It makes more sense when you realize how many simply think Israel can do no wrong.
It's so fucking stupid. Even if you're on Israel's side, just admit they do bad things.
They have always been content with letting children die, and with killing children. No pretzels. I have a consistent model. Happy to try and explain any distinction for you.
You are also content with letting children die. You already said it was justified because they were indoctrinated.
So I guess you're as bad as they are. Congratulations.
We get it, you're such a good person. I was talking about their parents and older relatives. Obviously the kids are innocent victims.
I never said anything about myself. Why are you making this about me?
You have repeatedly justified the killing of children. Suddenly calling them innocent victims doesn't take back the fact that you think it's acceptable for IDF troops to put a bullet in their brain. It just means that you're okay with killing innocent victims.
I mean yes but that's how Israel started
The terrorism against Jews started long before Israel.
Yes but it's also how zionists started the county
And where were the Jews before that?
Are you trying to say zionists == jew?
No?
Then why does it matter where they were while zionists were doing terrorism?
In other countries. So they ran to Palestine and started killing the people there. You're not allowed to kill everyone and anyone you want, including innocents ams civilians, just because you were wronged by a completely different population of people once.
Wtf are you talking about? The earliest recorded history of the Levant is in Hebrew, written by Judites. The Ottoman Empire (far right pan Islamists) rounded them up, massacred them, took many as slaves, tortured them, and gave them negligeble rights for the last two thousand years, and it was other own Islamists back and back.
Israel is there now though, and it's not going anywhere. It is a democracy with a legitimate government and Gaza is a failed state occupied by terrorists, sorry to break the reality of political science to you.
The last two thousand years? The Ottoman Empire was a refuge for Jewish people for a long time. It wasn't just a neverending massacre or they wouldn't have kept settling there from other places. It gave then some restrictions, but it did the same to Christians. And comparatively, they lived pretty good lives and thrived, especially compared to the oppression and massacred they faced elsewhere in Europe. It had the largest Jewish population by the end of the 16th century. They came from Russia, Prussia, ran from Spain because of the Spanish Inquisition, or Portugal, etc. It was way better than living under Christians for a long time. They would encourage each other to move there. It wasn't until the 19th century that antisemitism started to ramp up there. And most scholars agree the attitude was imported from Christian Arabs, so it's not just a Muslim thing. It sucks that it started to rise again then, but nationalism does that. It made it worse on both sides, since around that time Zionism started picking up steam, too, and they were buying land and kicking off the native tenants to make a country. Not to excuse the antisemitism, because obviously that is horrible, and there's a long history of it happening all over the world. But the point is, so many immigrated there because of things like the Holocaust in Germany or the Russian pogroms, then started fighting completely unrelated people and kicking them off their land, like was done to them somewhere else. Same reason that even though I respect the struggle of slaves, I don't approve of the colonial way Liberia was founded and the way the colonists treated the indigenous people.
Israel is barely a democracy. There are millions of people under their control who don't get a vote. Their leader is stoking a war and nationalistic fervor to avoid corruption trials. They jail people for criticism, require military service, and have killed more journalists than any recent conflict. They're an apartheid, settler colonial ethnostate that only exists because of racist and antisemitic Western interests. Gaza is not a failed state, because every attempt to become a state is stymied by Israel, the country that actually controls all their infrastructure, food, travel, sea, and air. Israel as a nation state could easily disappear and be replaced by an actual state with equal rights and equality for everyone in the area, without a single person being killed in the process, if the US and the Israeli people or government wished it. And that would be a good thing for both the Palestinians who could live free, and the Israelis who don't want to have to worry about being threatened by actual attacks from rightfully pissed people all the time.
In your mind, is Israel more or less of a democracy than any nearby country's immamate or caliphate?
More, but I don't think it gives them the right to genocide innocent people. And it can definitely still be improved, a lot. We should have a higher bar than that.
They require military service to build roads and bridges. Many, many places do it also. Seems like a lot of people criticize only Israel for this, like it's only a problem when it's Jewish people having a military.
You're right, Gaza is not a failed state. It would have to have been a state to be a failed state. The correct terms for it are irredenta or unincorporated territory, a lawless shithole with stakeholders that don't care ahout it (unless it is killing Jews). Literally the only concievable future for Gaza that isn't a complete humanitarian catastrophe is going to look a lot like five to ten years of martial law. Gaza has zero capabilitynor capacity to rebuild itself and literally nobody else cares about it enough to do it for Gaza except the one country you would have a problem doing it. So your plan really is to condemn Gaza. If you wanted to save Gaza you'd be in Gaza pointing out who Hamas is and where they are hiding. See, even Gaza doesn't care to save Gaza.
Israel doesn't care about Gazans either. If they did, they wouldn't be bombing every hospital and refugee camp and preventing aid from coming in. Nor would they be preventing them from making a state and having self-rule at every opportunity. Gaza is already condemned when Israel decided to reduce it all to rubble and make public statements about reducing the population from millions to a few thousands. Hamas is just an excuse to raze and then take the land. Without Hamas, you get something like the government in the West Bank, which hasn't done anything to prevent Israel from taking more land, imprisoning and killing more Palestinians, and failed at every opportunity to get them their own state or a good quality of life, either, because they have no power against the US and Israel. It's the same state of affairs but slower. So no, Hamas isn't the cause of Gaza people suffering, it's Israel.
I agree. The history is irrelevant. Israel is there now. Those who stood to oppose it have been defeated politically and military and if they were at all led by legitimate, well intended non-genociral, non-criminals, they'd surrender, sue for peace. They literally don't want peace, though.
They surrendered but then kept getting killed, getting their land taken, and forced into smaller and smaller spaces. Then in those spaces, they were imprisoned, starved, and oppressed and controlled. Human beings want a quality of life Israel won't let them have. They've diplomatically and strategically geographically isolated them away from having a state, had walls built around them, had their food and trade and movement restricted. They get randomly shot or arrested. In the West Bank, they get their food and trees ripped up and their houses taken. You can't ask a people to sit there and accept that. Even if they've been defeated militarily, human beings desire some innate dignity and quality of life. No group of human beings on Earth would accept how Israel has treated them for 70 years. It's why some ghettos revolted in the Holocaust, or the French resistance existed in WW2. Palestinians want peace, but Israel wants an occupied people to sit there quietly while they get oppressed and slowly lose the rest of their land and are forced to emigrate away from their homes or die.
Fucking hell. What is your damage, exactly?
Cool there's already one saying they're okay with all of them being killed
As per item 2: If the enemy was using them as hostages I sure as shit wouldn't just bomb the building and kill everyone. I'd prefer to use special forces to go in on foot and secure the building with minimal casualties. And only when diplomacy fails.
The enemy was using them as shields because they didn't think you'd be that fucking stupid to just bomb everyone; they assumed you had some empathy.
I'm neither pro-Israel nor pro-Hamas, but I believe the correct answer is "same as in every other war".
In other words, the maximum rate of Gazan casualties you will accept depends on the maximum rate of Axis casualties you would have accepted in WW2. That might be zero or it might be fairly high.
Not the same as in every war.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/death-toll-children-gaza-israel-rcna143269
That's cherry picking.
The civilian casualty rate in Gaza is about the same as the Second Chechen War and less than on the East Front, in North Korea, or in Vietnam.
Since I asked how many children and not the rate of children, I'm pretty sure a count of children is not cherry picking.
But I guess your answer is that any amount of children killed in a war is acceptable and nothing to be complaining about.
I didn't say it was acceptable. It is no more acceptable than civilian deaths in Germany, Japan, or Chechnya.
People are often more concerned about the rate of deaths because Gaza is relatively small. But if you really are counting how many and not the rate, then the vast majority of wars were worse than Gaza. The number of civilian deaths in Dresden alone is comparable to those in Gaza. Over 150,000 civilians have died in Iraq.
And as I said, some people find one civilian death to be unacceptable, others are willing to accept more than one. I've never met anyone who is willing to accept "any amount".
Interesting that you keep saying 'civilian death' and not 'child.' Seems like we're talking about two very different things.
Then see the person who replied to me who says it's worth killing any amount to get rid of Hamas.
Maybe so. But personally, I believe that all civilian deaths are equally tragic whether of a child, an old man, or a mother. In fact, I would object if someone said "X dead women is acceptable, but X dead children is unacceptable", because personally I believe that whatever X you choose should be age-independent. YMMV
What worm ate your brain and made you think that is the choice of sides here?? Fighting for Palestinian emancipation has nothing to do with being pro-Hamas you dingus.
Those are the two sides that are currently at war. They are both religiously motivated right-wing regimes, and I support neither one.
I'm also not fighting for Palestinian "emancipation", for the same reason I'm not fighting to "emancipate" Istanbul from Turks or New York from Americans.
If Israel were ONLY attacking Hamas, you'd be correct.
The problem is they are insistant on attacking, bombing, killing, and displacing all of the innocent Palestinians in Gaza as well, because they have been at war with Palestine, not Hamas, for generations now.
They are at war with Palestine just as Americans were at war with Germany and Japan. Many civilians were killed and displaced there, too.
Palestine didn't attack them, Hamas did.
Hamas is the government of Gaza
Tell that to the millions of Palestinians homeless and starving thanks to Israel.
I don't follow.
Hamas is the government of Gaza even though Gazans are suffering thanks to Israel. Just as Hirohito was the leader of the Japanese even though they were suffering thanks to America.
In both cases, a government failed to protect its people.
It's a dumb question. Hamas puts the kids in harm's way, Hamas and their loyal supporters. They love nothing more than their own kids dead from Israeli weapons, it's the only way they will win this war, tricking well meaning people such as yourself.
800,000 people left Rafah safely. Blame Hamas for 0.006% of them being killed. What did Hamas do this time, tell them the evacuation was fake or hold them against their will?
More likely they just indoctrinated them over decades, convinced them it's patriotic and holy to sit inside a room with terrorists to be used as fodder for Qatari and Iranian state media to try to drum of western support. At some point they realized this is more effective than suicide bombings.
Ah, "indoctrinated" children deserve to die. I see.
It's kinda sad how many times they just rephrase that hypothetical to make it sound justified to be able to kill children
Nobody is seeking out kids to kill except Hamas.