Why Israel

G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
sufi said:
sorry i missed that you asked me this question a while back.

no i absolutely don't - i consider that the "brave Palestinian terrorists" are morally in a stronger position than the "cowardly Israeli oppressors" precisely because of the occupation and the massive disparity in strength - & that point seems to be what you dont grasp at all - i reckon if you had any actual experience of these matters at all (rather than virtual experience of the issues - as someone pointed out above) then you might have some genuine insight & your toxic rants might be worth taking seriously,
as it is: :rolleyes:
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OTM. False equivalency is bullshit when the disparities of power are what the whole situation is about...
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
just like to state once and for all, without anything in terms of explanation, reasons, or hessitation:

Long Live Palestine. Death to the Zionist Dogs.
 
B

bassnation

the abyss
vimothy said:
Do Israelis explicitly target kids (not accidents in theatre but actual operations which target kids)?

Do IDF commanders tell their troops to kill civillians on purpose?

The IDF have rules of engagement. Do the Palestinians?

Can you find any instances of Israeli terrorism?

Have you ever seen crowds of Israelis dancing in the streets at the news of Palestinian civillian deaths?

There is no moral equivalence. There is a political case on both sides, but there is no moral equivalence.
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accidents in theatre is bullshit and you know it. there are sooo many accounts of where soliders could have stood down even when people were screaming that there were kids and they didn't. they even killed a uk citizen shot in the fucking head. wake up.
 
B

bassnation

the abyss
crackerjack said:
Vimothy will be delighted to see you back up his point so eloquently.
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ha ha! that whole red ink massive font thing is the equivalent of someone lurching up in a pub half way through a debate and just launching into one! zhao is cool though and got to admire the passion, if not the reasoning.
 
Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
NO MORAL EQUIVALENCE
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Such an odd turn of phrase... What's Google say, I wonder?

US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14035.htm
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To be clear, the war between Israel and Palestinian terrorism is not morally equivalent. Let's look at some of those distinctions.
...
The first step in gaining any peace is replacing the Palestinian regime that knows no distinction between just and unjust war. The first step for us is in making moral distinctions.
http://www.claremont.org/publications/precepts/id.175/precept_detail.asp
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"There are people who say, "Yes, but there is greater violence being done to the Palestinian people by the Occupation--and Palestinian children killed in their beds by Israeli bombs from the sky are no less victims than Israeli children killed by terror." But this is a crazy and sick way to think. I hate it when a similar argument is made by Jews ("the killing of those Palestinian civilians by Israeli planes and bombs is not morally equivalent to the acts of Palestinian terror."). THERE IS NEVER ANY MORAL EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN ONE ACT OF MURDER AND ANOTHER--BECAUSE EACH ONE IS A UNIQUE TRAGEDY IN ITSELF, AND NOT TO BE EXPLAINED AWAY. HUMAN BEINGS ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, THEIR LIVES ARE SACRED, AND IT IS IMMORAL TO TAKE SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE TO ACHIEVE YOUR POLITICAL ENDS. Period."
http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm/action/current/article/134.html
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Even Rush Limbaugh likes it:
What is the compulsion so many Americans have to want to draw these lines of equivalence between us and this human debris?

Let me address your specific example. We're in a war. We have insurgents like this al-Sadr fellow and his terrorist cohorts and they've taken over a town and they've taken prisoner of the kids you're talking about, and they're hiding behind them. They are cowards. We are not there to murder. We are not there to maim and kill children. We are not there to burn down their homes or their schools and weren't. We are rebuilding their schools. We are rebuilding their hospitals. Their schools are open, their hospitals are functioning, the electricity is back with more wattage and power and functionality than it ever had under Saddam. The U.S. military does not target civilians, the U.S. military does not target children, the U.S. military does not seek them out for wanton murder and call it war.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1134391/posts
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Just as there's no moral equivalence between the arsonist and the firefighter, there's no moral equivalence between the terrorist and the defenders of civilian life. Brave firefighters, like Israelis, aren't causing more fires when they attempt to put out the conflagration engulfing their citizens.
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2002/11/11-07-02tdc/11-07-02dops-letter-02.asp
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Thanks to the release of A Mighty Heart, the Angelina Jolie movie which premieres in the UK this week, Danny's legacy is once again receiving attention. Of course, no movie could ever capture exactly that magical combination of humour and integrity, gentleness and resilience, that made Danny admired by so many. Still, traces of these qualities are certainly evident in A Mighty Heart, and viewers will leave the cinema inspired by them.

At the same time, I am worried that the film falls into a trap Russell would have recognised: the paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far. You can see traces of this logic in the film's comparison of Danny's abduction with Guantánamo (it opens with pictures from the prison) and of al-Qaida militants with CIA agents. You can also see it in the comments of the movie's director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote in the Washington Post that A Mighty Heart and his previous film, The Road to Guantanamo, were very similar: "There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."

Drawing a comparison between Danny's murder and the detention of suspects in Guantánamo is precisely what the killers wanted, as expressed in both their emails and the murder video.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/09/wpearl09.xml
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This phrase is used almost exclusively to argue for special exclusive Muslim immorality in order to justify violence by Israel and the West.
 
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T

tht

akstavrh
this is all about the jews isn't it? there are other ethnicities capable of eliciting pathos for those who talk often about israel, as evidenced by the armenians and their success last week, though none is fetishized like the jews, to the extent that even the appending of a definite article suggests jew fetishism and likely neurosis

that an antisemite would alight upon actual jews slaughtering actual nonjew babies to conceal their symptom is often noted, though the reactive (semitophilic) form less so

this is visible in the well to do american gentile who chooses jew as their other ethnicity, co-opting the fantasy of chosenness, the law, the word, nous somme tous juifs etc

surely this has all been written about by the experts too
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Zhao, I think it's a bit rich that you've had a go at me for messing around in a thread started by you on one of your pet topics, because you wanted to keep it a 'sensible debate', and then come over here with this big red DEATH TO ISRAEL crap. I expect better from you, tbh.

crackerjack said:
Yeah, I'm sure I saw something almost identical in Readers Digest:slanted:
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Hahaha. :)
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
tht said:
this is visible in the well to do american gentile who chooses jew as their other ethnicity, co-opting the fantasy of chosenness, the law, the word, nous somme tous juifs etc
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yeah, my dad is a quarter jewish, and he does this. i just don't get it? he mixes his christianity all up with "chosen personhood" and all of that. evangelicals over here combine the original "covenant" with manifest-destiny style "America is the New Isreal" thinking, and at the same time, somehow, support Zionism fully.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
Mr. Tea said:
Zhao, I think it's a bit rich that you've had a go at me for messing around in a thread started by you on one of your pet topics, because you wanted to keep it a 'sensible debate', and then come over here with this big red DEATH TO ISRAEL crap. I expect better from you, tbh.
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my statements, as crude as they are, express how i feel about the topic of discussion. i did not post unrelated juvenile shit making light of the discussion.
 
T

tht

akstavrh
yeah, my dad is a quarter jewish, and he does this. i just don't get it? he mixes his christianity all up with "chosen personhood" and all of that. evangelicals over here combine the original "covenant" with manifest-destiny style "America is the New Isreal" thinking, and at the same time, somehow, support Zionism fully.
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that is surely a very common false consciousness, though i think there is a secular form of semitophilia too
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
zhao said:
my statements, as crude as they are, express how i feel about the topic of discussion. i did not post unrelated juvenile shit making light of the discussion.
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Zhao, you keep forgetting! It is only a "valid" point if it is "in-between" and dispassionate. Remember not to care too much about anything. This is, of course, easiest if you've never had to worry about anything, so I suggest you stop doing that, too.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
tht said:
that is surely a very common false consciousness, though i think there is a secular form of semitophilia too
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One of my bosses was from SE Asia, but his wife was Jewish so he converted. And kept kosher. He was one of these secular semitophiles--I always got the sense that his expressions of "faith" and his insistence on keeping kosher were ways to try to identify with the social status of prominent Jewish people in America. He certainly didn't seem too concerned with practicing Judaism on a basic level of prayer and Torah/Talmud reading.

Weird.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
nomadologist said:
Zhao, you keep forgetting! It is only a "valid" point if it is "in-between" and dispassionate. Remember not to care too much about anything. This is, of course, easiest if you've never had to worry about anything, so I suggest you stop doing that, too.
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Right, cos Zhao's comment exhibited real concern for what's best for the region, rather than 5th form nihilism masquerading as revolutionary zeal :rolleyes:
 
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