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I have nothing to add here, other than to thank you for expressing this so cogently. It’s not always “right” to measure just action in terms of lives saved or

I have nothing to add here, other than to thank you for expressing this so cogently. It’s not always “right” to measure just action in terms of lives saved or lost, but it’s hard for me (and so many other American Jews) to see anything right or just about 10 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.

dotancohen 3y ago
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- mda 3y ago
  "Israel is going great lengths to protect civilians." No they don't. They never did.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > So you are suggesting an eye for an eye, we should kill a Palestinian for every one of our dead? Honestly, I find that thought disgusting. I don’t know how you can possibly arrive at this interpretation from what I wrote.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  > So you are suggesting an eye for an eye, we should kill a Palestinian for every one of our dead? Honestly, I find that thought disgusting. Just to be clear: you find that more disgusting than killing over ten Palestinians for every dead Israeli?
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    No, I find the idea of deliberately killing even a single Palestinian disgusting. Thank you for asking.
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      I think you misinterpreted his post. It seems you both are much in the same position.
  - exoverito 3y ago
    Not that guy, but this mostly comes down to who you view as more just in a war. How many Germans died vs Americans in WW2? If we're going by ratio more than 100 German civilians were killed for every American civilian. As a pragmatist, I see Israel as a relatively liberal democracy with Arab Muslims in their parliament, women and gays have civil rights, the society is open and innovative. Many Arab nations do not have these properties, and their ideologies often oppose them in principle. That said, I do not think Israel should be defended to the inordinate degree it has, which is due to American imperial interests, the military industrial complex, and many elite Jews which have disproportionate influence in American society. Look at the major CEOs of corporations in tech, finance, media, etc. It's also harsh and dark to imagine, but sometimes we benefit from being the inheritors of evil actions that finalized a blood feud or enforced homogeneity. China is unified in large part because of the repression of their totalitarian state. Roughly 92% of China is ethnically Han, which is mostly just a bunch of Chinese ethnicities that were culturally assimilated into being called Han after the Han dynasty. America doesn't have to deal with an insurgency of Comanches because they're utterly out numbered by American citizens and weaponry. Israelis do not have these advantages, and would be at major risk of being conquered by the many more numerous Arab Muslims, who too were the result of oppressive and evil military campaigns of Mohammad and subsequent Muslim warriors.
yyyk 3y ago
Take that logic further. Israel's enemies outnumber it by 10x or more and are more than ruthless enough to sacrifice as many as necessary*. There's no way ever that Israel could avoid having the other side having more casualties. The same would apply to every minority. If your suggested law of war isn't 'majority or ruthless minority, get to do everything they want because they have more causalties', than you need an alternative. The alternative is the current laws of war, which allow for strikes with collateral damage (what Israel says it's doing), but not for terrorist attacks aimed at civilians. * Suicide bombers, Iranian mullahs sending kids with 'plastic keys to heaven' to dismantle minefields, or current refusal of Hamas to allow civilians to use its tunnels as shelters. We could fill the page with examples really. ** Funny, I don't recall opposition to America's post 9/11 response based on counts. Almost as if the same rules don't apply.
- lazyasciiart 3y ago
  I do recall opposition to America’s post 9-11 response based on the same arguments, oddly enough. The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities: Israel’s argument is that they don’t have to follow the laws because Hamas is breaking them.
  - yyyk 3y ago
    >I do recall opposition to America’s post 9-11 response based on the same arguments Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations. >The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities. This is wrong. Medical facilities can be struck if they are used for war. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/08/504815234/u-s-led-coalition-hits-main-mosul-hospital-with-airstrike https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/08/504815234... Moreover, this is not what happened in Gaza - there were raids but not dropping bombs from airplanes, the former being much less destructive.
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      > Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations. Not true. I certainly wouldn’t refer to “the US did it” as a cite for “it’s not a war crime”, but that article appears to be saying they attacked a place not thought to be currently active as a civilian medical facility.
Aunche 3y ago
There has never been a war in history where one side stops because they killed enough people. War ends when the enemy surrenders. The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor. America killed 10,000x as many during their bombings of Japan. Had they not surrendered, they likely would have killed an order of magnitude more. The only alternative would have been for the US to completely blockade Japan indefinitely to prevent them from rebuilding their military. Actually, they wouldn't be able to do that either because that would make Japan an "open air prison."
- woodruffw 3y ago
  By most standards, what the US did to the civilian population of Japan was an atrocity. I don’t have easy answers here. But I think we’ve lost an important piece of the plot here if we can’t look at one terrible human tragedy, and then another, and then ask ourselves whether the first had to beget the second.
  - pxc 3y ago
    This has been a fairly common rhetorical move for defenders of disproportionate Israeli violence, inflicted primarily upon civilians, in recent months. I've seen it done with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the firebombing of Dresden. On TV in English, which atrocity is used to justify the current and growing civilian death toll in Gaza seems to depend on who the audiences. US audiences are appealed to with comparison to Hiroshima and UK audiences, to Dresden. It's easy to read it cynically when it's an Israeli official excusing one war crime with another on television. It's stranger and sadder to see it done by an ordinary stranger online.
    - edanm 3y ago
      You think it's cynical to change your argument to fit your audience? I don't understand this. The basic argument is "If you think it was legitimate when X country did this, then what's different here?" I think it's very valid to find an X that the person you're speaking to will actually agree with.
nailer 3y ago
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dotancohen 3y ago

[flagged]

mda 3y ago
"Israel is going great lengths to protect civilians." No they don't. They never did.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking
woodruffw 3y ago
> So you are suggesting an eye for an eye, we should kill a Palestinian for every one of our dead? Honestly, I find that thought disgusting. I don’t know how you can possibly arrive at this interpretation from what I wrote.
jakelazaroff 3y ago
> So you are suggesting an eye for an eye, we should kill a Palestinian for every one of our dead? Honestly, I find that thought disgusting. Just to be clear: you find that more disgusting than killing over ten Palestinians for every dead Israeli?
- dotancohen 3y ago
  No, I find the idea of deliberately killing even a single Palestinian disgusting. Thank you for asking.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    I think you misinterpreted his post. It seems you both are much in the same position.
- exoverito 3y ago
  Not that guy, but this mostly comes down to who you view as more just in a war. How many Germans died vs Americans in WW2? If we're going by ratio more than 100 German civilians were killed for every American civilian. As a pragmatist, I see Israel as a relatively liberal democracy with Arab Muslims in their parliament, women and gays have civil rights, the society is open and innovative. Many Arab nations do not have these properties, and their ideologies often oppose them in principle. That said, I do not think Israel should be defended to the inordinate degree it has, which is due to American imperial interests, the military industrial complex, and many elite Jews which have disproportionate influence in American society. Look at the major CEOs of corporations in tech, finance, media, etc. It's also harsh and dark to imagine, but sometimes we benefit from being the inheritors of evil actions that finalized a blood feud or enforced homogeneity. China is unified in large part because of the repression of their totalitarian state. Roughly 92% of China is ethnically Han, which is mostly just a bunch of Chinese ethnicities that were culturally assimilated into being called Han after the Han dynasty. America doesn't have to deal with an insurgency of Comanches because they're utterly out numbered by American citizens and weaponry. Israelis do not have these advantages, and would be at major risk of being conquered by the many more numerous Arab Muslims, who too were the result of oppressive and evil military campaigns of Mohammad and subsequent Muslim warriors.

yyyk 3y ago

Take that logic further. Israel's enemies outnumber it by 10x or more and are more than ruthless enough to sacrifice as many as necessary*. There's no way ever that Israel could avoid having the other side having more casualties. The same would apply to every minority. If your suggested law of war isn't 'majority or ruthless minority, get to do everything they want because they have more causalties', than you need an alternative. The alternative is the current laws of war, which allow for strikes with collateral damage (what Israel says it's doing), but not for terrorist attacks aimed at civilians. * Suicide bombers, Iranian mullahs sending kids with 'plastic keys to heaven' to dismantle minefields, or current refusal of Hamas to allow civilians to use its tunnels as shelters. We could fill the page with examples really. ** Funny, I don't recall opposition to America's post 9/11 response based on counts. Almost as if the same rules don't apply.

lazyasciiart 3y ago
I do recall opposition to America’s post 9-11 response based on the same arguments, oddly enough. The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities: Israel’s argument is that they don’t have to follow the laws because Hamas is breaking them.
- yyyk 3y ago
  >I do recall opposition to America’s post 9-11 response based on the same arguments Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations. >The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities. This is wrong. Medical facilities can be struck if they are used for war. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/08/504815234/u-s-led-coalition-hits-main-mosul-hospital-with-airstrike https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/08/504815234... Moreover, this is not what happened in Gaza - there were raids but not dropping bombs from airplanes, the former being much less destructive.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    > Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations. Not true. I certainly wouldn’t refer to “the US did it” as a cite for “it’s not a war crime”, but that article appears to be saying they attacked a place not thought to be currently active as a civilian medical facility.

Aunche 3y ago

There has never been a war in history where one side stops because they killed enough people. War ends when the enemy surrenders. The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor. America killed 10,000x as many during their bombings of Japan. Had they not surrendered, they likely would have killed an order of magnitude more. The only alternative would have been for the US to completely blockade Japan indefinitely to prevent them from rebuilding their military. Actually, they wouldn't be able to do that either because that would make Japan an "open air prison."

woodruffw 3y ago
By most standards, what the US did to the civilian population of Japan was an atrocity. I don’t have easy answers here. But I think we’ve lost an important piece of the plot here if we can’t look at one terrible human tragedy, and then another, and then ask ourselves whether the first had to beget the second.
- pxc 3y ago
  This has been a fairly common rhetorical move for defenders of disproportionate Israeli violence, inflicted primarily upon civilians, in recent months. I've seen it done with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the firebombing of Dresden. On TV in English, which atrocity is used to justify the current and growing civilian death toll in Gaza seems to depend on who the audiences. US audiences are appealed to with comparison to Hiroshima and UK audiences, to Dresden. It's easy to read it cynically when it's an Israeli official excusing one war crime with another on television. It's stranger and sadder to see it done by an ordinary stranger online.
  - edanm 3y ago
    You think it's cynical to change your argument to fit your audience? I don't understand this. The basic argument is "If you think it was legitimate when X country did this, then what's different here?" I think it's very valid to find an X that the person you're speaking to will actually agree with.

nailer 3y ago

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