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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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where it says that 3,208 Palestinian civilians have died from 2008 to 2020 (compared to 177 Israeli civilians over the same period),

That's the same thing I pointed out a couple of days ago. The fact that more Palestinians were killed doesn't mean that Israel has been more aggressive. It just means that that Israel's defenses work better. Counting deaths this way is a bizarre standard which implies that the more you successfully prevent people on your own side from getting killed, the more immoral you are.

Israel shouldn't lose points for preventing more Israelis from being killed and this making this comparison look bad.

Israel shouldn't lose points for preventing more Israelis from being killed and this making this comparison look bad.

How do you feel about the sentencing for murder being different from the sentencing for conspiracy?

I don't think the sentencing for self-defense should be any greater than the sentencing for conspiracy to commit self-defense.

You should provide a small discount to incentivise not proceeding forward with a criminal plan, even if your actions so far have already made you culpable (discounting where you are close to completely certain they were about to go through with it, someone arrested while firing a gun deserves the same punishment as someone who managed to land their shots as far as I'm concerned).

It's the same rationale behind not having the penalty for rape be the same as the one for rape follower by murder, so that rapists aren't strongly incentivise to forever silence their victims. Discount some, because most violent criminals are too dumb to follow incentives that aren't extremely obvious, but it'll help on the margins.