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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years.

You... do know that the proportionality argument of international law is about the proportional size of the bombs used to kill people, not the relative proportions killed between factions, right?

Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis.

Why are you going by raw numbers of casualties, rather than raw numbers of attack attempts or missiles fired?

That someone tries to kill often, but is bad at it, doesn't mean that an increase in attempts at killing that get worse over time is a de-escalation of killing intent.

I thought we had enough previous interactions on other similar topics before that you'd know that I find the notion of "international law" to be somewhere in the class of Mohammad (PBUH) claiming that he received a revelation from God saying that Mohammad is his prophet and you must obey him, and so certainly whatever proportionality argument I make would not be intended as a reference to a "proportionality argument from international law".

Re: the other question, I think I responded to similar ones in parallel threads already. I leaned too far out of the window there and don't actually believe the Palestinians were de-escalating; I just don't think the Israelis were either.

I thought we had enough previous interactions on other similar topics before that you'd know that I find the notion of "international law" to be somewhere in the class of Mohammad (PBUH) claiming that he received a revelation from God saying that Mohammad is his prophet and you must obey him, and so certainly whatever proportionality argument I make would not be intended as a reference to a "proportionality argument from international law".

Then your position makes less sense, and holds even less moral sway, as it becomes even more divorced from any coherent ethical system regarding conflicts.

Re: the other question, I think I responded to similar ones in parallel threads already. I leaned too far out of the window there and don't actually believe the Palestinians were de-escalating; I just don't think the Israelis were either.

Why do you think that a fraction of the air strikes in retaliation for the thousands of rocket attacks, as opposed to the ground incursions that have occurred both historically and in most other contexts where one side bombarded another, isn't a de-escalation?