I think what you’re finding is a lot of Americans can barely afford to live anymore and I mean A LOT. While their way of what they consider to be barely living/scraping by is tens of millions of times better than what’s going on around the world most are so beaten down for their standard of living the reality is setting in hard and you’re seeing the breakdown of a country right before your eyes.
No one besides the privileged people give a shit right now is what you’re seeing because the privileged can afford to stand and picket for a night. Many people are one paycheck away from doom or have iron fist bosses that penalize them for missing a single day of work. Don’t hate the haters…hate the rich, the landlords, the politicians that don’t help the general public anymore that horde all the wealth essentially.
Yes, do we have cause to be against genocide or don’t we? This one is tough. I mean the merits of genocide are obvious but there are drawbacks, too. Those pesky academics can’t see the bigger picture.
Or, generally when students and academics at the world’s top universities start protesting, shit is fucked.
If you're going to define your movement as anti-genocidal you should really have a firm grasp on what genocide is and who is committing it:
Article II of the Convention defines genocide as:
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Hamas, what Israel has been clear they intend to destroy, is not a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. However, Jews/Israel/Israelis, what Hamas has been clear they intend to destroy, are. Therefore, legally Oct 7 was an act of genocide, and Israel's war on Hamas is not. Such a designation has nothing to do with body count.
I support Israel because I oppose the genocidal. Binding their hands and preventing them from retaliating in self-defense only serves to support genocidal Hamas by keeping them in power.
No, because Israel has clearly committed most acts on your neatly bulleted list and your condescending remarks make you look like an idiot demanding their opinions be facts.
They didn't say they thought I was wrong, they said I was a paid shill. Nice attempt at moving the goalposts though.
Work on your reading comprehension, that alone does not a genocide make. It requires an intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part in addition to one or more of those items. If all it took to be defined as genocide was the latter, every war ever fought would be a genocide.
Killing children is bad: this is not something over which genuine disagreement could possibly arise.
I mean, aren’t we literally against Hamas because they kill children? What is so complex about being consistent with the application of your moral rules?
That is but one of many reasons to oppose Hamas. Conflating their actions on Oct 7 (content warning: NSFL, cruelty, violence, death) with collateral damage caused while defending and retaliating against them is inappropriate, wrong, and in incredibly bad taste.
Your energy would be better spent objecting to those who provoked this war while using said children as human shields, hiding among civilians, and using otherwise protected areas as military assets. They are the ones subjecting children and civilians to danger and causing these deaths.
Israel has the right to defend itself even though collateral damage exists, and Hamas hiding among their own children does not make them immune from reprisals. If this strategy worked, we could expect more children and other civilians to be subjected to danger in the future as human shields.
My moral rules are applied consistently, I support our modern, western allies who care about civil liberties, and are defending themselves against genocidal opponents. I oppose genocidal belligerent Islamists who attack civilians. Not going to support for a group that would throw me off a building and opposes the enlightenment by forcing Israel to stop attacking them before they are deposed. Doing so is not a good deed.
The best way to keep civilians safe is to let Israel finish the job, because Hamas puts them at risk and is more than happy to kill them or let them die if it serves their geopolitical interests and makes Israel look bad.
A person makes a decision. If that decision is almost certainly going to result in the deaths of children, it is the wrong decision. You will never face a simpler moral scenario than this.
People can argue about justifications in good faith, of course… although ironically in this case, we can’t even do that, since we both know that bombing Gaza does nothing to ameliorate the conflict and everything to exacerbate it.
Also, this isn’t a war. Wars are fought between nations, and Israel does not recognize Palestine’s sovereignty. Gaza has no self-determination. There’s no government. It is a prison full of children. An abomination for which no civilian living in Gaza bears any responsibility.
Lastly, nations don’t have rights. Nations are imaginary political constructs. People have rights, such as to defend themselves, as you say. However, bombing Gaza not only undermines Israel’s sovereignty by inciting an entire new generation of revulsion and hatred, it violates the rights of children not to be blown to bits. None of this is complex. None of it is morally ambiguous.
As for those “Western allies” you mentioned: you don’t have any. The religious boomers are on their way out, and nobody with half a brain or under the age of 40 supports Israel here in the West. They did this to themselves by slaughtering thousands of children utterly pointlessly. I mean what do you expect?
Lastly, religion is a monstrous evil. If you’re religious, please stop. Please.
A person makes a decision. If that decision is almost certainly going to result in the deaths of children, it is the wrong decision. You will never face a simpler moral scenario than this.
It sounds like you're suggesting that Israel should let Hamas kill Israeli children and civilians uncontested because they are hiding behind their own. Long-Term/big picture, I fail to see how that improves anyone's safety besides Hamas.
People can argue about justifications in good faith, of course… although ironically in this case, we can’t even do that, since we both know that bombing Gaza to the tune of 90% civilian casualties does nothing to ameliorate the conflict and everything to exacerbate it.
As far as I know, the only casualty figures we have so far are from Hamas, and recent analysis seems to indicate that they are not credible.
According to figures I've seen,
Israel's civilian casualty rate is significantly lower than 90%. 90% is the average for civilian casualties in urban combat scenarios involving explosives, according to the UN.
Also, this isn’t a war. Wars are fought between nations, and Israel does not recognize Palestine’s sovereignty. Gaza has no self-determination. There’s no government. It is a prison full of children. An abomination that nobody living in Gaza created, perpetuated from outside.
A nation is different than a country, afaik no one disputes that Palestinians are a nation, but its statehood is hotly contested.
According to Google:
Nation: a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory
Hamas is the government of Gaza, they were elected and bafflingly and unfortunately they still experience widespread support from Palestinians. If elections were held again today, Hamas would win.
Now I know you didn’t think this response through. A nation isn’t a country? Tut tut.
Read that opening paragraph you quoted. It says nothing about Israel. It is an abstract moral rule. You ask yourself, “am I making a decision that will result in the deaths of more children?” If the answer is yes, you are making the wrong decision.
A nation is a group of people with a common language, history, culture, and (usually) geographic territory. A state is an association of people characterized by formal institutions of government, including laws; permanent territorial boundaries; and sovereignty (political independence). A state may comprise one or more nations (as did the Roman Empire and Austria-Hungary), and a nation may be represented in (or ruled by) one or more (usually contiguous) states, as in the early modern principalities of Germany. A state comprising or dominated by a single nation is often called a nation-state.
I read citations, if you cared to provide any.
am I making a decision that will result in the deaths of more children
I submit binding Israel's hands and keeping Hamas in power does exactly this, is makes countless future generations of children unsafe and under the control of a terrorist government who uses them as shields.
Did you read the legal definition of genocide I posted above? The definition literally has nothing to do with body count. Call it a massacre, call it a slaughter, call it any number of terms for things you think are bad and don't like, but calling it a genocide is inaccurate, as I have shown above. Words mean things, especially legal terms.
its always frightening to come across people who rationalize the mass killing of women and children. frightening to see the endorsement of racist policies and religious fanaticism. Israelis speak candidly to reporter about Palestinians.
Racism and collateral damage exist, therefore Israel shouldn't be able to defend themselves or retaliate against a genocidal foe? What's frightening is such reasoning.
For half a century, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip has resulted in systematic human rights violations against Palestinians living there. amnesty.org/…/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispo…
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