naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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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.
I don't believe you or anyone else actually believes that the aim of Hamas is to kill jewish toddlers. I think you and everyone else recognizes the goals of Hamas are a little broader in scope than that and that any dead jewish toddlers are collateral damage on the road towards those broader goals.
How is it sophistry? Maybe the Palestinian’s goal in killing the toddler is to affect political change, but it’s also true that the Palestinian purposefully murdered a toddler. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t collateral damage. It was the target.
That is different from say bombing a military target that might cause collateral damage. The collateral damage isn’t the target; it is a side effect.
The goal is not to kill a toddler any more than the Israeli goal is to kill a toddler. The goal is as much to kill a toddler as the Israeli goal is to kill a toddler. The rest is sophistry.
This guy is changing the meaning of the phrase collateral damage. It would be like saying “my goal is to obtain 10k so killing the bank employee was merely collateral damage.”
Your argument is that when your side kills civilians its collateral damage and when the other guys kill civilians its evil barbarity. The rest is sophistry.
Seriously? Words have meanings and you don’t just get to change the meaning to support your antisemitism (yes — I saw your other post where you mentioned jewish pharmacists with opioids where the status of the pharmacists as Jews was beside the point).
Collateral damage results in non-military targets being incidentally killed as a result of a military strike on a military target. That’s different compared to targeting civilian targets and killing those targets despite there being zero military objective (but a political one). One might say “what does it matter — the dead are dead alike.” True but generally outcome is not the only matter determine the morality of an act.
When you designate civilian infrastructure as a military target you are just playing with words. The existence of 'collateral damage' as a term is completely meaningless in this context. It is only invoked as a self serving defense for when the ingroup kills civilians.
when you place the military targets specifically inside civilian infrastructure to ensure your side has collateral damage collateral damage is of course an appropriate term.
So the only disagreement we have is whether Hamas using human shields.
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Notes -
This is just sophistry.
I don't believe you or anyone else actually believes that the aim of Hamas is to kill jewish toddlers. I think you and everyone else recognizes the goals of Hamas are a little broader in scope than that and that any dead jewish toddlers are collateral damage on the road towards those broader goals.
How is it sophistry? Maybe the Palestinian’s goal in killing the toddler is to affect political change, but it’s also true that the Palestinian purposefully murdered a toddler. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t collateral damage. It was the target.
That is different from say bombing a military target that might cause collateral damage. The collateral damage isn’t the target; it is a side effect.
The goal is not to kill a toddler any more than the Israeli goal is to kill a toddler. The goal is as much to kill a toddler as the Israeli goal is to kill a toddler. The rest is sophistry.
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Indeed, they want all the Jews dead, not just the toddlers.
Not collateral damage, just a low-priority target.
Really? Never seen that as a stated goal from them. Are you sure it's not just 'boo-outgroup'?
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This guy is changing the meaning of the phrase collateral damage. It would be like saying “my goal is to obtain 10k so killing the bank employee was merely collateral damage.”
No one uses collateral damage in that way.
Your argument is that when your side kills civilians its collateral damage and when the other guys kill civilians its evil barbarity. The rest is sophistry.
Seriously? Words have meanings and you don’t just get to change the meaning to support your antisemitism (yes — I saw your other post where you mentioned jewish pharmacists with opioids where the status of the pharmacists as Jews was beside the point).
Collateral damage results in non-military targets being incidentally killed as a result of a military strike on a military target. That’s different compared to targeting civilian targets and killing those targets despite there being zero military objective (but a political one). One might say “what does it matter — the dead are dead alike.” True but generally outcome is not the only matter determine the morality of an act.
When you designate civilian infrastructure as a military target you are just playing with words. The existence of 'collateral damage' as a term is completely meaningless in this context. It is only invoked as a self serving defense for when the ingroup kills civilians.
when you place the military targets specifically inside civilian infrastructure to ensure your side has collateral damage collateral damage is of course an appropriate term.
So the only disagreement we have is whether Hamas using human shields.
That's not the disagreement at all. The disagreement is the use of vocabulary that only excuses civilian fatalities for one side but not the other.
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