Obviously, all facts should impact the evaluation. But then one can do good things in one area and bad things in another, and those don't cancel out. It can still be shitty for the western powers to invade Afghanistan, even if the Taliban do terrible stuff. — Echarmion

Sure, we can tally up rights and wrongs and then say "well if it were me...." but I can only take this type of talk so seriously before I start rolling my eyes and tuning out. It's about what we do in response. Of course Israel deserves condemnation when condemnation is due, and we can entertain a variety of approaches towards how to improve the state of Israel and make it more moral. You remember your idea of non-response to rocket attacks? I told you that I was willing to entertain it, and I am still am, but what about the actual flesh and blood politicians? Would they be willing to sit on the sidelines while their voters and constituents are being bombed? Is this really a reasonable request to ask of a politician in any country or are we asking the politician to commit political suicide even if the idea is sound?

In international relations our approach needs to be practical, first and foremost, and with an understanding that no country is perfect. International relations is no place for moral crusaders and zealots. Incremental improvement and compromise should be the MO. Often look to allow your opponent a way to save face as opposed to backing them into a corner. Of course there are some instances where we can burn everything down but this should be a last option.

The point is that asking e.g. the Israeli people responsible for commanding and executing airstrikes to stop is in no way equivalent to asking for the destruction of Israel. Israel is not remotely in danger of being destroyed. — Echarmion

Absolutely, I agree and we can discuss ending airstrikes or the "occupation." What we cannot discuss -- and what the ruling party in Gaza has refused to acknowledge -- is Israel's right to exist. You've heard that phrase "don't engage with others who refuse to acknowledge your right to exist" - that's why you don't negotiate with Nazis.

Public condemnation of the Israeli government is probably more likely to be effective than public condemnation of Hamas, because Hamas doesn't need to win elections. — Echarmion

Hamas did get voted in, no? In any case I'm all for public condemnation of Israel when warranted and given this condemnation is in view of the deeper reality of the situation. See, I could actually rightfully condemn an act - say, how US soldiers massacred Dachau guards after liberating the camps (they should have rightfully gone to trial) but if that's all I'm saying then something is seriously wrong with me. Condemnation needs to be proportionate and in view of the bigger picture. Retaliatory strikes do not constitute genocide, and to claim so is possible indicative of bigotry.

People can b*tch & moan all they want, I don't care, it's action that counts. Money matters, weapons matter. I'm going to start donating $50 to Israel every time someone in this thread accuses Israel of genocide from now on.

They could but that would require an IQ over 70.

Why haven't you acknowledged the attempted genocide of Jews by Hamas? How about by the rest of the Arab countries? How about the slow, gradual genocide of virtually every minority by its host country? Everything is genocide today.

Streetlight quoted a thinker earlier who basically defined genocide not as the actual extermination of a people, but as the erosion of their social institutions. Under that definition virtually everything is genocide.

Says the person whose sole objective in this thread is to excuse genocide. — StreetlightX

There is no genocide. Never has been. What ever happened to our discussion about America's ongoing genocide against its own minorities? Now that should be news, why not start a thread on it?

No you don't, because you're a racist shit. Y — StreetlightX

Says the person who doesn't even believe in letting other societies rule in their own way and set their own national policies based on their own unique histories and cultures.

I'm not even going to accuse you of being a racist here; I honestly think you just don't like humanity. Like...at all. You have absolutely zero respect for other cultures or traditions, and your fundamentalism isn't far from the Taliban blowing up ancient Buddhist statues. Same level of respect for others.

I feel bad for the Palestinian people but when the ruling body in Gaza refuses to accept the existence of its much more powerful neighbor & launches lethal attacks that's gonna end up hurting the people when the retaliation comes, just as Hitler's regime left the German people endangered.

I still haven't heard you talk about the ethnic cleansing of Jews by Arabs between '48-'72, by the way.

All I find hateful is Hamas and their insistence on the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. The "occupation" can be negotiated and Israel has made concessions in the past such as removing settlements and withdrawing the army from Gaza. Right or wrong, that territory was won by Israel in a defensive war.

Accept Israel's right to exist and we precede from there and negotiate like civilized people. Reject it and it's permanent war. Hamas chooses the latter. Smart, forward-looking Palestinians choose the former.

But to say that morality doesn't properly apply in the context of international relations because states are not individuals is an evasion. — Echarmion

This is not the claim that I am making.

I was saying if if you're a neutral third party evaluating a regional conflict between two parties, how these two parties treat their minorities (e.g. Egyptian Jews, Israeli Arabs) is relevant in an evaluation of the conflict. If one party treated their minorities extremely poorly and the other party treats them less poorly but not in an ideal manner, then that should impact our evaluation. It would be ridiculous to spend all our time and energy as a neutral third party denigrating the more humanitarian side and completely ignoring the other especially when the other treatment is ethnic cleansing.

Additionally, plenty of other countries have had racial problems but these problems have been improved on. There has been progress. We didn't advocate for the immediate destruction of these states that have/had racial problems either, we just work towards improvement ideally within established, democratic channels.

there a moral obligation to contribute to organizations working to alleviate poverty until doing so involves sacrificing something of comparable moral significance. — owain

While I agree that the stated goal is noble, his prescription is ineffective towards reaching it. Those resources, instead of being contributed, can also be invested which will likely provide a greater return at a later date which can then be used to help charitable organizations. If we just agreed to live subsistence-level existences and donate everything past that sure we'd contribute some to charity, but we'd be able to contribute a lot more if that wealth was allowed to vest over time.

EDIT: I'd also suspect that those who are able to make and maintain finances and cash flows would be much better equipped to help charities and non-profits actually raise funds in the real world.

However I do think it is counter-intuitive that it is morally required to treat strangers on the other side of the planet the same way as you would treat your family. — owain

It is also patently wrong. It just makes a mockery of family: your mom and dad and siblings should be no more special to you than some stranger half-way around the world. Who are they to tell you that (unless you've had abusive parents)? I love my parents and I owe them.

Don't make ridiculous demands of people.

Singer would say that buying a birthday present for your child is immoral, because a birthday is not of comparable moral significance. — owain

I feel terrible for his kid now.

However I do not think it is immoral to buy your child a birthday present. — owain

Good, it's not. Provide for your family, make your children happy sometimes. These are good things. Don't let other people tell you otherwise.

Good to know, then you wish the rocket attacks into Israel would immediately stop? Once that happens Israel will stop responding with its own attacks.

Simple yes or no question: Do you support the rocket attacks into residential areas of Israel?

You know why Hamas started bombing, right? — frank

The riots and clashes between protesters? Storming of the al-Aqsa mosque because the Palestinians were stockpiling weapons there?

Ask yourself this: Does anything justify the deliberate launching of rockets into residential areas for the purpose of murdering random civilians not responsible for the conflict?

Israel just re-entered Gaza because rockets were being fired into Israeli and killing Israelis. Prior to that Israel hasn't had any ground forces or settlements in Gaza since 2005.

Hamas is in charge in Gaza right now.

Countries are run and populated by people. Morality applies to their actions just fine. — Echarmion

Countries consist of millions of people interacting and consist of multiple different layers of government and in addition to those governments you have countless institutions which have their own rules and norms. To treat a country as if it were an individual person is just not a realistic description. Sure, there may be problems in certain institutions and not in others. Does that mean the entire country is just basically one person that we label as "evil?" Even powerful political leaders can't just press a button to make a certain problem go away unless it's totalitarianism.

Hamas has never, ever been shy about its intentions: Destroy Israel, establish an Islamic state in its place. It does not care if Israel removes settlements because its final goal is the absolute destruction of Israel. Hamas has sent suicide bombers into crowded nightclubs and bars on weekends, and they terrorize their own people through strict social controls that includes the execution of homosexuals and the routine subjugation of women. Hamas embezzles funds meant for humanitarian aid to the Palestinians to spend on weapons. Hamas doesn't even care about their own people.

But then again they are the weaker group compared to Israel and they don't like the US so how bad can they really be? Gotta support David over Goliath.

Morality is a different field than international relations. Countries aren't people.

tu quoque fallacy mate. And you do this every time. As if it's a good look for Israel to be compared to autocratic Middle Eastern regimes just to look good. I don't think you want to go there to begin with.

The upshot is of course that if people recognise Israel for the racist Apartheid State it is, they might finally come to their senses about continuing to support it. — Benkei

Whenever you're dealing in international relations like this you're essentially choosing friends and enemies. You're picking sides. If I was a neutral bystander to a regional conflict and one of the countries treated its minorities better than how the other countries treated their minorities - even if the treatment was far from ideal - I would still likely give credit to that imperfect country for that treatment of minorities.

It reminds me a bit of in the 50s and 60s when the US would criticize the Soviet Union for human rights' abuses and the Soviet Union would respond "well you guys lynch black people."

When you demand the absolute highest standard for one country and routinely penalize just that country for failing to meet that standard while essentially ignoring the other side that's a horribly unfair way to treat the conflict. It's not objective at all.

Hamas has been open that they won't lay down arms until the state of Israel is destroyed. As strong as Israel is it can't control the actions of the Palestinians who mainly govern themselves. Simply by continuing to exist as a Jewish state it draws hatred and violence. The Palestinians have agency in this.

You've demonstrated time and time again that you genuinely cannot tell the difference between actual murder and collateral damage so I just can't take your views on warfare or conflict particularly seriously.

Did you know that around 1/4 of Palestinian missiles fired into Israel are misfires and they end up going back into Gaza? They've killed some number, at least 8, of their own children this way.

Yeah, out of 850 rockets fired into Israel 200 of them stayed in Gaza.

Nothing ethical justifies ethnic cleansing. — 180 Proof

Jews are the indigenous inhabitants of Israel and they were the ones ethnically cleansed when they were originally expelled from their homeland by occupying powers. The Jewish immigrants coming from Europe were simply righting that original wrong and many were fleeing from Europe prior to the second world war. After the war many Jews in displaced person camps arrived in Israel seeking a better life after witnessing the horrors of the war. And some have the nerve to call these people "imperialists" or "colonizers."

Are you going to demand that the Arabs [Turks] and the Europeans compensate the Jews?
Of course not. Europeans already have "ccmpensated the Jews" by firstly making an egregious mess of colonial partition after the collapse of the Ottomans and secondly then giving degrees of support for the establishment and on-going existence of the European Jewish State of Israel. Any more "compensation", if such is needed (and it's fuckin' not), should come from the dregs of the Ottoman & Roman Empires which in their respected ways had dispossessed Jews almost completely from the Levant and scatters Jewish communities in a diaspora that has lasted millennia across much of the known world. — 180 Proof

Arabs could absolutely be asked to compensate Jews for any number of atrocities & ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries following the 1948 war. Why haven't you commented on this ethnic cleansing? There were also pogroms against Jewish villages during this time by Arabs. I could of course go on to list these but all I'm really after is you acknowledging that there is a long history of Arab atrocities towards Jews, including ethnic cleansing. You could make a pretty strong case that the history of the Middle East is just one ethnic cleansing after another.

So let's say, e.g. everyone is evil and the history is all f*cked up. So what do we do now? If we just nuked the whole joint that would put an end to the ethnic cleansing (and if Maw is reading this I want to point out that this comment is tongue in cheek.)

It was a reference to an earlier conversation that I had with Streetlight.

Insults? No just statements of fact. You think what’s happening there is justified.

And I think the main problem is: you couldn’t provide a response. Not that you felt insulted. You’ve been called all sorts of things on this thread “genocide supporter” is hardly the worst. So I doubt that it made you feel insulted enough not to respond. — khaled

Not a statement of fact. Complete lie. There has never been any Israeli plot to genocide either the Palestinians or the Arabs.

I could throw the same thing back at you - why are the Palestinians trying to wipe every Israeli Jew off the face of the Earth?

We could do this all day. Is this a productive line of conversation?

lol maw it was obvious satire. learn to take things less literally.

Well, no, we want to discuss the issue and show genocide supporters like you why it’s wrong. — khaled

I was going to provide a response but once I heard this it's just a no-go for me. We're just throwing insults around now, nothing productive.

I can’t understand how you find “Look at all these other countries committing atrocities” an argument for committing atrocities. I thought you’d get the point after I made fun of it. Apparently not. — khaled

Why are we talking about Israel? Lets talk about the Arab countries today, no more Israel talk. Lets make a list of everything they've ever done wrong... for what purpose? Who knows, we just want to make them feel bad! :brow:

Maybe if Isreal wasn't involved in exactly both, it would be slightly harder to use the term. — StreetlightX

Terrible thing, isn't it. But what about the ongoing genocide of black and brown people in the United States? Shouldn't we be condemning that one first? Have you been to Baltimore, Maryland lately? Reminds me of Auschwitz. Come on over the states and we can protest together.

This is not true! There's a huge difference in how Israeli citizens with the Jewish nationality are treated and those without the Jewish nationality. I'm disappointed you repeat this, as I pointed this out a year ago in the Israel and Zionism thread. — Benkei

Ok and what's the upshot of this? Do we wag our finger at Israel and tell them to be better? Or does it mean we should dismantle the Israeli state? Have you seen how Jewish minorities are treated in the Arab world? Have you strongly condemned the Arab treatment of Jewish minorities in this thread? There's plenty of work to be done around racial justice everywhere in the world including the US and Canada. How have you been treating your muslim immigrants over there in Europe?

So, Joshua lead a horde of rabid Hebrew tribes to steal Canaanite land (i.e. ethnic cleansing) through mass rapine slaughter at the behest of voices in his fucking head (and voices in dead Moses' fucking head) more than three millennia ago AND THAT "justifies" modern Israelis claim now to "the Jewish Promised Land" and therefore their ("divine birth")right to gradually reenact of that ancient atrocity ur-myth by nearly eight decades of dispossessing a centuries-long settled Arab population in order to ethnically cleanse the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea for "Judenstaat, Judenstaat" über alles? Well, Bitcon et al, to quote my beloved Hillel the Elder: G-F-Y. :shade: — 180 Proof

Before I even start with this we really need to address this term "ethnic cleansing." It can be used for both genocide and banishment/expulsion, and while these are obviously both bad things the two are not the same at all and should not be used interchangeably. The Jews have been banished all across Europe throughout their history but I would feel weird saying that Europe "ethnically cleansed" the Jews e.g. in the Middle Ages, due to this term's association with genocide. Just something to be aware of.

Onto the topic - What kind of justification would suit you in terms of proving that the holy land belongs to the Jews? Do I need more ancient sources? Is that really going to convince you? Short of God personally coming down here, what on Earth could I use to justify this to you? Do you believe the Muslim holy books more?

There have been Jewish communities living in that area for thousands of years. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled in 1948 because they expected the area to be a mass graveyard after the fledgling state fell & Arab armies rushed in. I'm not saying it's all cookies and cream and forced expulsions occurred just as many Jews were kicked out of many Arab countries following these wars. Are you going to demand that the Arabs and the Europeans compensate the Jews? Let's get started on that.

Ok, but I was wondering on what basis you claimed it to be the "Jewish homeland." Perhaps this is why, but if not, let me know if you like. — Ciceronianus the White

I don't know what else to tell you besides ancient/religious texts and Jewish oral history. Jews have prayers going back thousands of years that speak to this issue.

And sure we could take a step back and go "well rationally speaking...." and say that since the Jews are only one group that has claimed the land, what should make their claim rightful? Well who defines what is rightful? Who determines which sources are valid and which aren't? No human is in a position to do this, i.e. to say "here is the absolute truth." So the struggle continues.

Yeah, that's just a difference between us then. But you see how one could call your view intolerant? You're making a universal declaration that cultures or societies need to operate in a certain, secular, western way. Who are you to tell the Chinese that they can't implement some version of Confucianism in education? You think they care?

In any case - and this'll probably be my last post on the topic for the time being - I don't think your view on this subject is insane or out of line. I disagree but there is a certain part of your argument that I can sympathize with.

How about the Arabs countries? You think they love Jews over there? I haven't forgotten about your earlier post btw, I didn't mean to ignore it but I was just so mobbed with responses yesterday.

Not along ethnic lines would be a minimum. I.e. not racist. — StreetlightX

How about religious ones then? Example: Calls to prayer in Muslim countries that are broadcast everywhere. You think non-Muslims love to hear this? Are you going to tell Muslim countries that this is a no-no?

You just said you want to see all countries run roughly the same way and I'm just trying to get a sense of what that would mean. Just give me something to work with. Even if we had the same governance systems around the world the policies implemented would be quite different if we're dealing with democracy.

Indeed I do. — StreetlightX

So would this be a liberal democracy? What system are you looking to implement everywhere?

I certainly think one can implement cultural values and not be racist. Do you believe that all countries ought to run themselves in the same way? No cultural variation?

You're the one who wants to tell other entire nations that they're not allowed to enshrine their own cultural/historical values into law and maintain those through governance and I'm the racist. :chin:

You just don't respect other customs. You don't respect the autonomy of communities. We don't all have to be like you.

You and I are just different then. I don't see anything wrong with a state having a fundamentally, e.g. Indian, Han Chinese, Jewish, Muslim, character and striving to maintain that.

by ethnostate I meant a state that strives to reflect certain cultural values in its laws & policies and strives to maintain a certain ethnic make up. are you mad at India because they strive to maintain a fundamentally Indian state with Indian values?