2023 Israel Conflict - Ground Forces Enter Gaza

I do love the use of calling another country a shit hole. Well done

I can choose which item to grab from my fridge (ā€œchooseā€ in the colloquial sense rather than literal Free Will). I doubt Iā€™d be able to get myself to believe in the Tooth Fairy no matter how hard I tried. Regaining my belief in God would be a similarly futile effort, though years ago I did attempt it.

Im ok with that but you have to then say being a republican isnā€™t a choice.

Republicanism is and isnā€™t a choice. I donā€™t believe in Free Will, but in the sense that I can still ā€œchooseā€ an item from my fridge, some people can indirectly choose to be Republican.

The distinction between voluntary/involuntary Republican isnā€™t important to me. Since I donā€™t believe in FW, I donā€™t get to blame stupid/hateful people for being how they are, but so what, blaming them wouldnā€™t achieve anything.

Anyway this all stemmed from NBZā€™s analogy, which Clovis interpreted as NBZ implying homosexuality is a choice. I highly doubt NBZ was implying that; Clovis simply took it as a given that oneā€™s religious beliefs are a choice.

I mean sure, some people choose to never once ponder their beliefs, and so they maintain their existing beliefs by default. A subset of them would have changed their minds had they done such reflection, so their beliefs were a choice in that regard.

3 Likes

I mostly agree with what you are saying. My thought process is in order for someone to choose to be a republican they would have to have certain values and beliefs.

Did they choose those values and beliefs? Maybe, maybe not.

Why would people in a concentration camp overthrow a group engaging in armed resistance against their jailers

Iā€™m going to say that, in theory, what Hamas did could be defensible given a sufficient level of oppression, but I remain unconvinced that the oppression rises to that level, despite legitimate grievances.

1 Like

what incentives are you talking about here? of course nothing develops in a vacuum, and israelā€™s policy matters, but hamas as an organization and palestine as a state is incentivized by a variety of financial and economic sources, like the UN/UNWRA, USAID, European Commission, individual countries, Israel itself, and also Iran, Qatar, whoever else.

like the hamas regime inside gaza is one of the most brutal, and serves as the gatekeeper for much of the aid and support that comes in. of course the blockade sucks and matters, but that itself did not create nor radicalize hamas. radicalization is kinda their one thing. ffs, hamas predates the blockade by 20 years.

if you meant that us incentives for israel are creating gaza, you are zooming out until none of the nuance is needed, which this conflict is full of. you said it yourself that none of us know what itā€™s actually like, and we didnā€™t live the history that we are reading about on wikipedia. so yeah, incentives are a good bit of behavioral theory, but itā€™s a pretty vague solution coming from a bunch of leftists half a world away. at least to me it just sounds like magical thinking, ā€œif only all of the world did the exact opposite incentives for the last 60 years, things would not be the opposite of the current horrorā€

2 Likes

meant to ask you for awhile. itā€™s hard to find english language sources on what happens to israeli settlers who commit assaults on west bank territories? like we hear about murders sometimes. do the israeli courts deal with that? are the perpetrators arrested, investigated?

Gaza is very clearly not a country. And it is a shithole by Israeli design.

You are the one looking at two groups of religious adherents and finding it really important to argue that the one on the brink of genocide at the hands of the other is actually the most evil side with the most evil religion with nary a word of the imminent and ongoing evil from the far more powerful side. You are the one here blatantly and deliberately mischaracterizing anti-genocide as apologia for terrorism and misogyny and whatever all else. You chose to fight the battle that the people of Gaza should not have the support of the posters here, as dire as their circumstances are. Spare me the ā€œI didnā€™t actually say that!ā€ when your opening salvo was a lie.

1 Like

Good thread. Smart forum

Grunching but this is an excellent way of expressing something Iā€™ve been trying to put into words.

Also. I did not know you could selectively quote by highlighting and hitting reply. Mind blown

1 Like

The ā€œarmed resistanceā€ wasnā€™t against their jailers but rather against a bunch of, at most, distantly complicit randos.

Grunching again. Not sure if this is accurate description of Israeli politics. But if it is, two out if three of these camps are psychotic.

Shin Bet is in charge of settlers (at least those outside of major cities like Ariel). The extreme right hates them and always had. Similar to FBI vs Jan 6 protesters i guess. They have a ā€œJewish Departmentā€ that deals with settlers.

Shin Bet notoriously uses interrogation methods that are sketchy at best if not full torture. Since their goal is to keep the WB quiet and settlers violence hurts that cause, they use said methods against settlers as well. Also prolonged arrests without a trial are common for them.

Eventually, sometimes, settlers are brought in front of Israeli courts, but as I said, itā€™s all pretty shady (and of course the only organization that ever care about that are the ā€œextremeā€ left one. cause human rights are a thing even if you hate the humans involved)

2 Likes

Among the average person, itā€™s mostly centered in Islamophobia.

Politically, there is a history of support for a Zionist state from the first president of Czechoslovakia, TomĆ”Å” Masaryk. Diplomatic relations were interrupted during the Communist regime but then got stronger after the Velvet Revolution.

There are 14 million Palestinians, 16 million Jews, and 1.8 billion muslims in the world.

Apologies for continuing this tangent, but why would it matter if homosexuality was a choice?

Given that was the central attack point for the right for decades it obviously matters

I believe the Czechs were the only Nazi conquered country that didnā€™t voluntarily give up their jewish population. The nazis eventually at the very end before their fall were able to round up a few hundred thousand on their own to send to Auschwitz. I could be wrong, but I think the rest of the countries went along with the nazi plan and gave them the jewish citizens information.

The Danes say ā€œHej.ā€

1 Like