Yes, in the Srebrenica massacre prisoners were being summarily executed; this is something we've seen hamas do, but not the IDF. We also saw the russians engage in executions of prisoners, including civilian prisoners. even though the ukrainian civilian death toll is comparable low, russia's tactics make its intentions appear plausibly genocidal.

The IDF is not intentionally massacring civilians. Hamas says 20,000 dead, but this does not distinguish between civilians and militants. Israel says 2:1 civilian to terrorist ratio have died. The IDF could make that ratio a lot higher if it wanted but it has made steps to reduce casualties.

Hamas fires its weapons from schools and hospitals; Ukraine does not use such tactics. Hamas enmeshes itself in the civilian population without a uniform while Ukraine does not.

Where are you getting your news? Tik tok? Lies.

Again, no. Hamas is completely fine with Palestinian civilians dying and this in no way "pressures" them. Hamas has forbid people from leaving zones where Israel said it would bomb. It has not allowed them to leave buildings that were to be bombed. You've got it backwards here.

That's not necessarily true. — Mikie

Practically, it is. It was the case in WWII and it is the case now in Gaza. If military infrastructure is struck, some number of civilians will die. Do we know the janitor's work schedule so we can schedule our bombings on his off hours? Targeting precision is not perfect. No one can control the direction of shrapnel or debris. Bombing campaigns are a matter of how many die.

The bar has to be higher. And what disturbs me here is when I get the impression from some that it's not. — Baden

I just don't know what a humane ratio would be of terrorist KIA vs innocents. Is 2:1 ok? What if it's really 3:1 or 4:1? Or what are we to make if some of those civilians are willingly providing support to hamas but not directly taking part in hostilities? the picture is incredibly complicated and we will never know it perfectly. how precise are the armaments israel is working with? how does their tech compare with e.g. the us or uk?

He was an earnest, polite, and respectful guy looking for a better life and that is my base presumption of who people in Israel and Gaza — Baden

I'm an American Jew. A decade ago I stayed with my dad's cousin in Israel, a hardcore Zionist, and easily the most racist, disgusting person I have ever met. I am under no delusions about israeli racism. I am not nearly as racist as them but I would still describe myself as suspicious of arab muslims. I grew up during the second intifata. I quite clearly remember going to hebrew school and reading articles of how palestinian militants would go into restaurants, bars, or buses full of civilians and blow themselves up during peak hours. They'd also lace their explosives with poison or feces so that those who did get hit would suffer. It would sometimes be women or children who did this. It was a level of hatred that left me astounded at the time and that astonishment has never left me. The absolute disregard that that society shows for human life was made prevalent to me very early. War and conflict degrade people, especially over such an extended period.

If the line is really literally nil for you and you also support eliminating the military then you would be saying you support elimintaing 1.5 million people — Baden

Of course there is a meaningful difference between civilian and militant; innocent and guilty. I wish to make that clear. However, on the ground if Israel is operating in an area where they've told, e.g. all males to evacuate and is known to be a Hamas stronghold then virtually all military-aged males are suspect and will likely be rounded up and interrogated. Hamas's policy of not using uniforms and luring IDF soldiers into traps with the sounds of crying babies endangers the entire Palestinian population.

I heard another disheartening statistic lately. According to one poll, 75% of the palestinian population supported the 10/7 attacks. I am now sympathetic to the view that the society now needs to be fundamentally restructured.

There's a difference, for example, between a targeted missile strike on an apartment that kills an enemy militant and also an innocent civilian from the apartment next door and simply bombing the apartment block and killing 100 innocent civilians and the militant. — Baden

Oh absolutely, proportionality is certainly a legitimate concern. But we also need to be honest that neither of us are in the IDF operations room and have a clear idea of Israel's proportionality policy. We just don't know the exact terrorist to civilian death ratio. Israel claims a 2:1 ratio but that truth may very well be stretched. We'll never know.

But I can tell you that Israel could certainly be more brutal than it's being now. It sends its young soldiers to die to reduce the number of palestinian casualties.

Yes, I do support the use of air power during WWII by the allies. I was making a point to Mikie's logic and extrapolating.

I agree with your analysis. And I'm sure you know by now that in Gaza the line between civilian and military is essentially nil. Hamas does not wear uniforms. Their deaths are counted among the civilian deaths. They use schools and hospitals to store and fire weaponry.

Question: would you think that bombing New York, Boston and Washington DC with few of such bombers would have made a real difference? — ssu

It would have strengthened our resolve. Just as the country rallied together after Pearl Harbor. Henry Kissinger argued in "Diplomacy" that even after Pearl Harbor Hitler declaring war on the US was one of his big mistakes. He says war with Germany was not inevitable after that -- only war with Japan was.

By all means use air power. Just don't use air power to kill innocent women or children. German, Japanese, or otherwise. — Mikie

If a bombing campaign is to be undertaken, civilians will die. It is just a matter of how many. Our militaries do not have the ability to save all innocents.

Innocent people shouldn't be killed, but they will be. Regardless of method. Some methods result in more civilian deaths than others, but none result in zero.

Superior Western intellects are truly on display here, demonstrating just how superior they really are as they find ways to justify the killing of thousands of babies. To wonder why the rest of the world might not agree with this value judgement… — Mikie

But Mikie, what of the thousands of German and Japanese children who died in WWII bombing campaigns? A horrible crime, right? Clearly the allies should have never used air power. I say, if even one poor, innocent German or Japanese child died by allied weapons it would turn us into monsters. Best to be pacifists and let the Germans have their way. I'm no child killer.

As sanctioned by whom? God? Or have you given yourselves license to do the sanctioning as well? — hypericin

In the case of Amalek I could not tell you whether it is God or Samuel, but from memory in I or II Kings members of the tribe of Benjamin gang rape and murder a woman and when the other tribes demand justice the tribe of Benjamin refuses setting off a bloody civil war. Sometimes you just gotta root out the rottenness.


edit: book of judges, not kings.

Even by the crudest biblical eye for an eye standard, Israel has taken seven or eight. — hypericin

That pertains to individuals within a society; the punishment must fit the crime. When it comes to a different people, e.g. Amalek, large scale destruction is on the table.

Yoni Saadon, one of the witnesses, recounts in the Times: "I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, 'Stop it - already I'm going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!' When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head. I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too. I will never forget her face. Every night I wake to it and apologise to her, saying 'I'm sorry.'"

The girl was Shani Louk.

But Western culture is founded on Greek and Roman culture. It's difficult to argue anything else. Especially after the Renaissance, this heritage was found universally even in parts of Europe that never were part of the Roman Empire. And Christianity blended in perfectly to the Roman Empire, both in the West and also in the East, actually. The last remnant of the Roman Empire might well be the Pope, even if the ecumenical patriach of Constantinople is also still around. — ssu

Several historians have argued that Christianity played a large role in bringing down the Roman Empire through fostering a nobility/aristocracy class of wide-eyed mystics. Jesus and the Jews are both enemies of the Romans, but imho Jesus/Christianity is more effective at bringing down the Empire than any Jewish military revolt. I would say western culture comes down some mix of Enlightenment ideas with religious Judeo-Christian ones. But yes I understand how the Romans used Christianity for their own means. IMHO as best as they tried to control it, Christianity ultimately led to their downfall as their value system (the one which helped with their rise and success) was replaced with another. The Empire couldn't stomach Jesus. :rofl:

You need to leave 1948 and enter 2023. Orde Wingate is no longer with us and hasn't been for quite some time. Once this war is over, Palestinian children will need to be raised and educated in a way that encourages peaceful coexistence and cooperation with their neighbor, Israel. It is their only hope.

Or we could teach the new generation of palestinians how Israel is illegitimate and a criminal state and how Orde Wingate killed Arabs in the 40s and how everything is suffering and oppression.

They chose their neighbors and they chose to steal from them. — Vaskane

edit: not wasting my time with this one.

In 1948 the Arab states did not accept Israel as a state. Thankfully, in 2023 quite a few have come to accept it and therefore we have peace. Once the Palestinian governing authorities/society accepts Israel's acceptance that'll be a huge step forward. Look forward, not back. Societies that are caught up with historical grievances look back, not forward.

I never said that. Are you really going back to 1948? Jews have been forced from their homes across the nearly the entirety of the Arab world yet you don't see revenge attacks.

Vaskane, what about when the Babylonians sacked Judea in 586 BC? When are the Jews gonna stick it back to the people of Iraq?

I reject analogies that liken countries to individuals. Countries are not individual moral agents that bear individual moral responsibility. One does not "get back" at this "person" by killing its civilians.

but as far as I'm concerned every illegal settler — Benkei

A Jewish baby born in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv is an "illegal settler" according to Hamas (and unfortunately a significant portion of the Palestinian population). I recommend the Ami Horowitz interview where he interviews a Hamas leader and asks this question directly.

Do you believe Israel has a right to retaliate from the attack?

I don't typically expect to see conservatives support Jewish people considering their concern that the Jews might control entertainment and maybe even the media. — TiredThinker

Anti-semitism isn't limited to one side of the political spectrum.

In modern US culture, supporting Israel would be considered "conservative" although many liberals and even those on the left also support Israel. There's a definite ethnic component to it with even left-wing Jews largely siding with Israel and minorities being sympathetic to palestine. The conflict has strangely been manufactured into "white" Israel versus "non-white Palestine" with "white" Israel as the oppressor. Assad murders 500,000 Arabs no one says anything, but Israel retaliates against Hamas and the world is aflame with protest. Israel is under a microscope compared to other middle eastern countries.

In the long run, maybe in a decade or two, I would like to see a two state solution but not in the near future. Don't forget Egypt also supports the blockade. The Palestinian education system needs to be fundamentally reformed; anti-semitism and violence is inculcated at an early age. One can't help but be pessimistic to see the hostage handovers involving palestinian civilians harassing and shouting death to the hostages. Elon suggested a three pronged approach: eliminate hamas, reform education system, build prosperity. But this will take time.

"The Jewish people are violent" or "The Jewish people are peaceful" - these are racial stereotypes. — fdrake

How about "the Jewish people are learned" is that also a stereotype or just a cultural observation? Are we allowed to comment on Jewish culture or is that stereotype? If we can comment on Jewish culture and Jewish cultural influences, then why not on Jewish people?

I didn't say Jews weren't aggressive. I said they aren't murderous and this view will bear out if we look to homicide rates in Jewish communities. We can also look to prison population numbers.

They killed their own people in which they came from the Canaanites, to gain Israel the first time. And have held plenty of wars in their time.

And Jews had been killing Palestinians under Orde Wingate for over a decade by the time of the Nakba.

Palestinians already knew their fate prior to the Nakba, prior to the 1930s even. — Vaskane

I would take biblical history relating to the 2nd millennium bc with a grain of salt, but regardless, point taken -- Israel was bloody in those times! I am sure there were civil wars. I don't believe in the historicity of the Joshua conquests though. But yes, I do believe that 3300 years ago the ancient Israelites got their hands dirty. What exactly was going on in those days we'll never know, and it should also be clear that the Israelites of Moses's time (~13th century BC if not earlier) did not remotely resemble the ethno-religion of Judaism which is only first mentioned in the 6th century BC, AFAIK -- book of zechariah. They were surely not even monotheists that far back.

Ooh, this is an event that I am not too familiar with. How many Arabs do you figured were killed by Jews working under Wingate? But I'm sure you're familiar with the Hebron massacre of '29 and the Jaffa massacre of '36 among others, where Jews, lacking protection, were massacred by Arabs bearing primitive tools going from house to house with the permission of the authorities. I don't believe the Arabs of the 20s and 30s believed in the inevitability of Israel but perhaps I am wrong?

Immediately upon declaring Statehood they stole the homes of a million + Palestinians. — Vaskane

Immediately upon declaring statehood they were attacked.

Cause they weren't able to contend with the power of a State. — Vaskane

Or because Jews are not murderous people. They are used to be being minorities in countries and having to keep their heads down. They also possess a tradition that places a high value on courts and the rule of law rather than wanton murder.

Many Jews did return to their homes only to find them occupied by Germans. Yet there are virtually no accounts of concentration camp survivors going around revenge murdering and raping Germans. Thank God. No, Jews did not just murder Germans who occupied their homes. They tried to build new lives for themselves.

In the case of the nakba it's a little more complex because immediately after Israel declared/gained statehood, the Arabs attacked so Israel had to counterattack and in doing so annexed "Palestinian" land. We wouldn't be in this situation had there been no aggression from the arab states/palestinians.

So if they wanna get proportional back with the ratio to even make it 10 to 1 in favor of IDF killing the most innocents. I can't blame them, they're the victims. — Vaskane

What do you think the ratio of Germans who killed Jews versus Jews who killed Germans was in 1945? Do you think the Jews ought to have "gotten even?"

This is not the scenario that I posed to Tzeentch. I posed him a hypothetical one involves tribes in antiquity.

So just run. Cede to the wicked. Abandon your farmland, homes, and storage centers to them.

Are you at all able to imagine a scenario where e.g. you're the leader of an ancient tribe that is slowly being encircled by a dangerous enemy who is mobilizing around your borders?

. If you go by the moral clause of not eliminating civillians and if that directly means your defeat in war, then you must either be horrible and kill or accept your own defeat. — Vishagan

I've never heard this idea i.e. "we must kill all their civilians or be killed ourselves" as an actual thing. Soldiers should never intentionally target civilians, otherwise they are murderers and not soldiers. But yes very often civilians will die in the course of a country targeting legitimate military targets and this is a legitimate ethical question, i.e. how many enemy civilian casualties ought a country tolerate in bombing a legitimate target?

But it's not as simple as "oh our sense of humanity holds us back" because often news spreads of dead "enemy" civilians and there are repercussions and the populace turns may turn more against you.

do you have anything to contribute?

Jesus gave a halachic interpretation of eating on the Sabbath. That doesn't mean he condoned work on the Sabbath arbitrarily but that he defended his men (he himself didn't do it) for eating the wheat kernels because they were basically in starvation mode and backed it up from evidence using David and the Showbread. — schopenhauer1

He also said "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore man is lord even of the sabbath." He seemingly claims to know God's intention behind giving man the Sabbath in the Genesis account. Jesus certainly engages in biblical interpretation; it just seems when he does this he'll assume high degrees of certainty/knowledge. The gospels note how he speaks with authority unlike the rabbis/pharisees of the time. So it seems Jesus would be against what we would call restrictive Sabbath rules.

Perhaps he represented a very liberal interpretation, or it could be along the same lines as the eating on the run interpretation. — schopenhauer1

The handwashing episode highlights Jesus's take on defilement which as far as I can tell is unique to him and not the position taken by the writers of e.g. Leviticus, but an interesting one nonetheless.

"There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

So eating shellfish (or eating with unwashed hands) will not defile but e.g. thinking dirty thoughts will. See Mark 7:14.

Rabbi Gamliel is sympathetic to the group in a "wait and see" kind of way. — schopenhauer1

Thank you for sharing. I did not know that about Gamliel.

I never read him in overly positive light. I mean, he was a good king I suppose, but I'd agree with you. He was not a Jesus like figure. Although Jesus was supposedly from his paternal line, because he Bible says the messiah must be, but Jesus had no paternal lineage, being the son of God and all. I never understood that — Hanover

David was the ultimate survivalist and very politically savvy. But yes one doesn't need to look too far to see his faults. The Jesus of the gospels is a very strange figure who is represented differently across different gospels. Regarding lineage, Mark provides a genealogy from David to Joseph who was the husband of Mary. I don't believe there's any mention of the virgin birth. Mark is generally considered the oldest gospel. Jesus also clearly denies divinity in Mark 10:17.

— Baden

hospitals, and schools is wrong

these are normally off limits but since hamas launches operations from these buildings they become legitimate targets. using a hospital or school as an operations center/militarizing it is a war crime. striking a hospital or school that is being used as a military base is not a war crime.

Regardless of whether that's true or not, Israel should stop illegally occupying Gaza and the West Bank. — Tzeentch

Don't rely on my word. Hamas leaders openly state it as it has been their position from the very beginning. This is not about Gaza. Gaza has been rid of Jews since '05.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBwzNAV4sWs&t=197s

At 2:15 the question is asked directly.

Even in the limited context of present events there's no moral high ground for them to claim — Tzeentch

I disagree. Hamas intentionally murders the innocent, Israel kills the innocent as a byproduct of striking legitimate military targets. The IDF does not indiscriminately murder. There is a difference between the indiscriminate, deliberate murder of civilians as Hamas does and targeting, e.g. the Hamas headquarters - a legitimate military target which unfortunately Hamas choose to have at al-Shifa hospital.

Hamas is a resistance movement. — Tzeentch

Resistance fighters don't behead babies in their cribs. They don't throw babies into ovens. They don't murder a child's parents and then play with the children afterwards while filming it. 80% of the victims showed signs of torture. Then there's the rapes. And Hamas has clarified that they wish to do this again and again.

If Israel wants it to stop, they should stop existing. — Tzeentch

FTFY. The state of Israel per se IS the occupation per Hamas. Hamas is committed to the annihilation of any independent Jewish state on that land. This is not about a few miles of Gaza or the WB.

I was thinking more along the lines of e.g. "Rabbi Gamliel preached..." which is similar to Jesus's view. If you're not going to use the gospels then what is our source for Jesus's teachings? We must use the gospels. I mention nothing of the miracles here; only the teachings.

They need Jesus to look sui generis. — schopenhauer1

I've broadly bought into this idea. I could be convinced otherwise if there were other Jewish preachers/thinkers who preached ideas analogous to Jesus but I haven't quite come across them. Show me the sources and my views can be changed. "Blessed be the poor in spirit", "love your enemies" - show me Jewish thinkers who preached in a similar vein.

Yes in a perfect world the palestinian children are safe and happy. no one wants harm to come to children. but regarding how palestinian children are actually raised... that question goes to the palestinians. religion/culture is the major divide in the region and the jews will do things their way and the palestinian muslims have their own way. I think this is ok. But to ask a Jew how the ideal Palestinian muslim ought to live is a minefield of a question. But regarding the Palestinians we'd give the same answer we give all gentiles: Follow the 7 noachide laws and you're fine. Beyond that we don't judge as it would not be our place.

If the OT says the weak are uplifted and the mighty are humbled, that's slave morality. — frank

Yeah, that's the 30,000 foot view. Big picture. But the OT isn't 100% like that. You have the story of King David and Solomon where their riches are written of positively. Israelite strength is portrayed positively. Be strong. Be wealthy. Be knowledgeable. Be righteous. It's really Jesus who imho truly encapsulates and preaches servant morality. The themes are still present in the OT though.

I've noticed Jewish colleagues tiptoeing around answering a simple question: "in an ideal world what do you wish the lives of Palestinian children looks like?" — Benkei

What are they suppose to say? "Convert them out of Islam?" Jews know Jewish culture, don't ask them what the ideal Palestinian/Muslim culture looks like. Do we want them to be shi'ites or sunnis? Do we want them to be devout muslims? No idea. Do the basics but the rest is up to you.