Israel vs Hamas thread.

[aquablob]

Not if you assess the body count as a ratio. Additionally, recall my phrasing: There is no possible justification for matching a death toll of 13 with 1200.

I'm somewhat confused by your use of the word, "matching." Your wording reads as though one side killed 1200 in response to having 13 killed; this, of course, is not the case (and I don't think it's what you mean).

Do you mean simply that any conflict with such a disproportionate death toll is necessarily unjustified? If so, I can only reiterate what I wrote in my previous post: you are basing justification solely on "result" without consideration of the context. And I think you affirm this when you write:

And of course, the absolute body count does matter. In fact, in my opinion it must rise above any context, as people are essentially the reason anyone fights any war for. The value of human life is not measurable.

While I do agree with you that "absolute body count does matter," I don't quite follow your argument that "it must rise above any context" (regrettably).

What are the absolute and proportional body count "thresholds" at which context is no longer relevant? If your reasoning is that the "value of human life is not measurable," then perhaps the absolute body count "threshold" is just 1. That's a conclusion I rather like, and in terms of normal day-to-day living, I think it's one we'll both agree holds water.

War, unfortunately, complicates things. Israel has been the target of rocket attacks for years, and innocent Israelis have been maimed and killed—and the killing has obviously not been one-sided. My point is that war, as Sherman famously said, is hell. More often than not, and especially in long-term conflicts like the one in the Middle East, neither side is "in the right"; each side is just that: a side. Acts of war are typically matters less of "right vs. wrong" than of "us vs. them," regardless of how the warring factions may choose to frame them.

This is why I (respectfully) disagree with you regarding the criteria for determining whether or not acts of war are justifiable. To ignore the context—even in cases of high (or highly disproportionate) body count—is to deny the harsh realities of war. Such an error is easily made from a distance but could prove quite costly for either side involved.

I must repeat that I am not condoning or justifying Israel's recent offensive. My main point is that a meaningful discussion of its justifiability does not begin and end with its results alone.

[Sarastro]

all Russians to commit genocide

Adolf Hitler was German, and Talat Pasha was Turkish. The Russians kill only their own people.

If you are not willing to die for anything, then you aren't living for anything either.

What are you willing to die for, Bunny?

[Bunny]

Adolf Hitler was German, and Talat Pasha was Turkish. The Russians kill only their own people.

Yes, and very efficiently too.  They specialize in journalists and political dissidents.

What are you willing to die for, Bunny?

Truth, justice and the American Way.  And my children, any day of the week.

[Sarastro]

Truth

The truth is that all your "truth" is wrong.

And what is "the American Way"? I should ask my mates tomorrow anyways...

[Florestan]

The war in the Middle East is what it is.  There are no civilian casualties there.  Everyone who lives there is committed to one faction or another

This assertion in strongly reminiscent of Lenin's theory that there are no innocent bourgeois or kulaks. Even if they personally are honest and kind people, simply by belonging to their class they are already guilty of standing in the way of the revolution.

Now change bourgeois with Palestinian, class with race, revolution with peace and Lenin with Bunny.

Truth, justice and the American Way.  And my children, any day of the week.

Yeah, right!

The German soldiers in WWI fought fuer Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland!, that is, their truth, their justice and their German way. Why were they wrong, then?

It is this propaganda, usually promoted in the worst case by bastardly unscrupulous politicians and in the best case by people who have never seen with their own eyes what war means --- Hell on earth, as it was recalled above --- that causes millions of good-willing people to go cheerfully to wars from which they'll return maimed in body and soul, if they return at all, and millions of innocent civilians to die.

As Umberto Eco very aptly put it in The Name of The Rose:

Beware of those willing to die for their truth! More often than not, they make others die too, or even send others to die in their stead! [quoted by memory].

[Herman]

Truth, justice and the American Way. 

How come you're still alive?

Truth and justice do not prevail and the American Way is a Hollywood fiction.

[Renfield]

My main point is that a meaningful discussion of its justifiability does not begin and end with its results alone.

This (and note the word I emphasise) I wholly agree with. The question is, can a meaningful discussion produce applicable results?

My "obsession" with the body count is more towards having a quantified* means of comparison; and almost certainly the total number of Israelis killed in every conflict since the country was established will not match the total number of Palestinian casualties, either.


Hence, I focus on this conflict, compare the loss of human life, and find the overwhelming difference in scale a satisfying measure of whether the current offensive in this precise form "was an unavoidable necessity", i.e. (the way I meant it) was justified.


*Note that "quantified" here does not imply value measurement, as it refers to comparison between sets whose members have equal value (after my reasoning).

[Florestan]

The Russians kill only their own people.

Katyn... Budapest... Prague... Afghanistan... Chechnya... Georgia... who's next?

[Sarastro]

Katyn... Budapest... Prague... Afghanistan... Chechnya... Georgia... who's next?

Are these examples of genocide?

[Bunny]

How come you're still alive?

Truth and justice do not prevail and the American Way is a Hollywood fiction.

Well, I'm still alive and they aren't fiction.  Truth and Justice are as close to humanly perfect in the USA as they can be anywhere in the human world.  If you are looking for Utopia, then perhaps you should consider space travel.

[Bunny]

This (and note the word I emphasise) I wholly agree with. The question is, can a meaningful discussion produce applicable results?

My "obsession" with the body count is more towards having a quantified* means of comparison; and almost certainly the total number of Israelis killed in every conflict since the country was established will not match the total number of Palestinian casualties, either.


Hence, I focus on this conflict, compare the loss of human life, and find the overwhelming difference in scale a satisfying measure of whether the current offensive in this precise form "was an unavoidable necessity", i.e. (the way I meant it) was justified.


*Note that "quantified" here does not imply value measurement, as it refers to comparison between sets whose members have equal value (after my reasoning).

There's no way to quantify death or suffering.  All deaths caused by war are terrible, but trying to judge the righteousness of a cause by comparing casualties and mortalities doesn't work, especially in the Middle East where many of the factions consider their men women, and children as cheap and expendible.  Why is Hamas so willing to sacrifice it's children when they know that it is inevitable that if they put a rocket launcher in a school it will get bombed? It would be more to the point to condemn the strategy that needs excessive casualties in order to succeed than to condemn the other side that is forced to create those casualties in order to survive.

[Renfield]

Why is Hamas so willing to sacrifice it's children when they know that it is inevitable that [A] if they put a rocket launcher in a school it will get bombed? It would be more to the point to condemn the strategy that needs excessive casualties in order to succeed than to condemn the other side that is forced to create those casualties in order to survive.

I have already stated I am not going to pursue this discussion further from my end. However, if you'll excuse my being a little technical about it, A and B are conditionals, not analytic statements. You are presenting them as valid, which they might or might not be.

Yet even if we assume A is valid: how do you know the statement required to make the claim stand, namely "they put a rocket launcher in a school" is true? You know this because the side doing the bombing claimed it? That's not particularly strong indirect evidence, is it?

And why should B be sound for this case? Do you think this is a question of Israel's survival? Under what grounds?

[arkiv]

Adolf Hitler was German,

Austrian, Austrian...

[Florestan]

Are these examples of genocide?

Of course not (For genocide, we have to consider the deliberately provoked Ukrainian famine).  But you pretended that "Russians kill only their own people" and that statement is not true, as my examples prove.