gershy

4 ms·

31.
by gershy 3mo ago
I think this article may have been a lot more insightful if it gave some insight into what product goals were achieved.
32.
by gershy 3mo ago
The number is completely secondary - the significant thing is the location of the birthplace of the people/nation - that's what tells you who is indigenous to which land. I assume you concede that there is a perfectly valid reason
33.
by gershy 3mo ago
Israeli culture is roughly jewish + middle-eastern culture. American jews have jewish + american culture. American jews would find they read the exact same prayers as israeli jews, can immediately feel comfortable in synagogue; relate to
34.
by gershy 3mo ago
3000 as that is the age of judea, the state central to jewish ethnogenesis. Netanyahu is an ashkenazi jew. His family traces back to ukraine and lithuania, where it remained jewish; unassimilated. Trace ancestors back further, and you will
35.
by gershy 3mo ago
"All jews are culturally israeli" is an extremely ignorant statement.
36.
by gershy 3mo ago
Judea is central to jewish ethnogenesis. That's ~3000 years ago, not 100000. Netanyahu is an ashkenazi jew. We know who his parents, grandparents, etc are - he's also claimed to have taken a genetic test, which registered him as p
37.
by gershy 3mo ago
The british withdrew from the palestinian mandate under economic and insurgent pressure. The land which is modern day israel/palestine is the only historically jewish land; if not that land there is no other. The connection between je
38.
by gershy 3mo ago
Breadth-first discussion is not effective. It's easy to argue jews terrorized the british to reclaim their indigenous land, i.e the british had no right to jurisdiction there in the 1st place. Your analogy of denied US immigrants is di
39.
by gershy 3mo ago
I love discussing this stuff, but I'm not interested in guessing what your non-specific language is referring to; I'll likely silently ignore that stuff. I generally support israel because: - I don't think it corresponds to y
40.
by gershy 3mo ago
Jews have had a presence in the area that is today israel/palestine for thousands of years, and jews from the diaspora have been moving to israel/palestine gradually. I would challenge you to name an initial inciting incident, whi
41.
by gershy 3mo ago
You can trace it back much earlier than that - until at least the 1500s, when the conflict was present but at much less of a boil. I'm assuming you concede that "if X does it to Y, it's fine for Y to do it to X" is not a
42.
by gershy 4mo ago
I'm saying I could give you an example of unconstrained attacks against israel prior to this incident - so is X sinking to the level of Y, or vice-versa? The answer is, I believe, neither - the mental model simply isn't functional
43.
by gershy 4mo ago
(see above)
44.
by gershy 4mo ago
Those european jews descend from judea (levant) - genetic tests confirm this. It's a rare instance of a displaced population returning home after centuries.
45.
by gershy 4mo ago
Saying "I accept X using any tactic against Y that Y used against X" is meaningless in an ongoing tit-for-tat conflict unless you pick an arbitrary historical starting point. You may naturally lean towards picking an anti-israel s
46.
by gershy 4mo ago
I misunderstood your point earlier. Not that international law is necessarily always a valid philosophy we should accept, but international law does only consider people to be combatants if they're actively serving. Regardless of what
47.
by gershy 4mo ago
Note "the UN" has no unified voice on an absence or presence of genocide - instead it's voiced by individual UN inquiries. Only the ICJ can legally convict a state of violating the genocide convention.
48.
by gershy 4mo ago
We likely agree that individual military strikes ought to aim for collateral damage proportional to their war value. For example a strike with potential to kill enemy leadership (rapidly accelerating the end of the overall war) can justify
49.
by gershy 4mo ago
I love this point, invoking "genocide" will only derail you. The conversation benefits by being framed simply in terms of ethical validity / harm.
50.
by gershy 4mo ago
I think you're wrong - ashkenazis consistently have strong DNA traces back to the levant
51.
by gershy 4mo ago
The idf doesn't fight near civilian infrastructure - it deploys to the borders. Military bases in israel are far from civilian infrastructure. I think you're probably just wrong here.
52.
by gershy 4mo ago
This positions israel as the invader, but pro-israelis (like myself) will argue that historically israeli jews+arabs are the indigenous population, and have been the target of invasion, and israeli territorial expansion has been through a
53.
by gershy 4mo ago
I mean you could qualify it by saying e.g. "it's a post-19XX settler colonial movement" - that would be some refreshing nuance on what is otherwise glaringly ideological language, mostly parroted by those who don't kno
54.
by gershy 4mo ago
The pro-israel argument is that hamas are almost entirely to blame for those numbers (as they use civilian infrastructure for war purposes)
55.
by gershy 4mo ago
Individual events need to be considered on a case-by-case basis, but surely you would agree that if your combat enemy is hiding amidst children it is they who have deliberately chosen for those children to become collateral damage?
56.
by gershy 4mo ago
But of course you're not arguing that collateral damage proves war crime?
57.
by gershy 4mo ago
Tragic as it is, 20,000 children can be lost even in a justified war. It looks like historically, retaliatory wars are initially especially aggressive, lethal and indiscriminate (likely due in part to emotional soldiers who desire to punish
58.
by gershy 4mo ago
I'm digging into this a bit. Looks like the 114 figure (certainly a conservative number) occurred early in the conflict, in the period of late Oct 2023 until March 2024 - in the same time the hamas health ministry reported ~25000 casua
59.
by gershy 4mo ago
I am interested to know the overall scale at which this is happening. Disturbing but illuminating, thanks for the link!
60.
by gershy 4mo ago
I need to push down emotions to put it this way, but I think it's also important to consider that tragedies and losses of life such as hind rajab are possible even in a justified war.

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