Israel declares War - Destruction of Gaza / Growing conflict in Middle East

[Methodical Management]

“genocide must stop. kamala is complicit”

“yea yea yea…but remember trump moved the embassy to jeruselam” (which biden didn’t undo lol)

not sure that’s the burn you guys think it is

if it makes you feel better i don’t live in a swing state so my stein vote won’t be more than a protest vote (unfortunately). if i did live in a swing state id still vote for stein.

if you don’t vote for stein, you’re anti-semetic

If you believe that Harris is bad, but Trump is worse, why do something that will help the “monster” get elected? Who benefits from that?

If you can’t honestly answer that by yourself, then you’re parroting a thought that isn’t yours for reasons you can’t explain.

I have to partially disagree there. The point of the trolley problem metaphor was to illustrate the absence of logic in pro-Palestine Jill Stein voters or abstainers.
The trolley symbolizes the uncomfortable reality that inaction does not make any logical sense and can result in the worst outcome for a position, in this case the fate of the Palestinians.

The problem is of course as simple as Trump undisputably being far more pro-Israel than Kamala and the Democrats. Yet there are single issue pro-Palestine voters choosing inaction, which could lead to the worst outcome for the Palestinians. Inaction directly contradicts the Pro-Palestine stance.

That's what the trolley metaphor was for. To show that inaction (third party voting or abstaining) has no logical basis and that it may contribute to an even worse fate for the Palestinians.

It's rather obvious why DLF didn't want to answer the trolley question.
He'd be faced with the unfortunate reality that inaction has absolutely zero basis in logic and is arguably anti-Palestine.
Voting for Jill Stein isn't going to change anything. Those are the actions of someone blinded by privilege and unwilling to deal with an uncomfortable reality.

Voting third party while proclaiming to be a single issue pro-Palestine voter is patently absurd. I do view that as an anti-Palestine position, albeit not maliciously but under the delusion of privilege and unwillingness to confront an uncomfortable reality.

I get the point that people who invoke this metaphor are trying to make, but in this context I’ve yet to see it accomplish anything other than come off as callous and detached.

Misapplying it to this situation frames Palestinian genocide as either a lost cause or “acceptable casualties” relative to the greater good, which is repugnant. It’s not an argument you’d try to make (or be receptive to) if it were your loved ones tied to the tracks.

It’s also overcomplicated. You don’t need to use it to make the argument that inaction is not innocence and complacency is complicity. That’s one the driving messages of the ongoing protest movement.

It’s far more effective and direct to simply extend these same principles to blocking a Trump administration that anyone paying attention would agree would make an already unbearable situation even worse.

If your top priority truly is to reduce - by any amount and by any means - the suffering, you’d be using your vote for that very real, exigent purpose and not for symbolism or spite. No small number of people died in the first Trump presidency who might otherwise still be with us.


People don’t protest members of the Biden Administration or the Democratic Party because they’re all Russian/Republican plants. Many do so because they KNOW Trump and Republicans do not care and they feel that Vice President Harris/Democrats are comparatively persuadable.

94 Congresspeople have called for a ceasefire. ALL of them are Democrats. If elected, Harris will need their support to fully enact her agenda. Trump will not.

Even if you for some reason don’t care about anything else (climate change, healthcare, police brutality, affirmative action, Social Security, immigration, protecting the rights to bodily autonomy and no-fault divorce, preventing “Moms for Liberty” types from gutting libraries and policing bathrooms in their crusade against LGBTQ Americans, etc. etc. etc.) we are undeniably better off with an administration we CAN protest vs. one that has proven in both word and deed their intent to deport, criminalize, and brutalize nonviolent protesters.

Simply put: you don’t need hypothetical thought experiments to explain why abetting White Christian Nationalism in the United States is a bad idea.

 

[degenerate423]

 

[earldagoat]

 

[Belgium]

If you believe that Harris is bad, but Trump is worse, why do something that will help the “monster” get elected? Who benefits from that?

If you can’t honestly answer that by yourself, then you’re parroting a thought that isn’t yours for reasons you can’t explain.



I get the point that people who invoke this metaphor are trying to make, but in this context I’ve yet to see it accomplish anything other than come off as callous and detached.

Misapplying it to this situation frames Palestinian genocide as either a lost cause or “acceptable casualties” relative to the greater good, which is repugnant. It’s not an argument you’d try to make (or be receptive to) if it were your loved ones tied to the tracks.

It’s also overcomplicated. You don’t need to use it to make the argument that inaction is not innocence and complacency is complicity. That’s one the driving messages of the ongoing protest movement.

It’s far more effective and direct to simply extend these same principles to blocking a Trump administration that anyone paying attention would agree would make an already unbearable situation even worse.

If your top priority truly is to reduce - by any amount and by any means - the suffering, you’d be using your vote for that very real, exigent purpose and not for symbolism or spite. No small number of people died in the first Trump presidency who might otherwise still be with us.


People don’t protest members of the Biden Administration or the Democratic Party because they’re all Russian/Republican plants. Many do so because they KNOW Trump and Republicans do not care and they feel that Vice President Harris/Democrats are comparatively persuadable.

94 Congresspeople have called for a ceasefire. ALL of them are Democrats. If elected, Harris will need their support to fully enact her agenda. Trump will not.

Even if you for some reason don’t care about anything else (climate change, healthcare, police brutality, affirmative action, Social Security, immigration, protecting the rights to bodily autonomy and no-fault divorce, preventing “Moms for Liberty” types from gutting libraries and policing bathrooms in their crusade against LGBTQ Americans, etc. etc. etc.) we are undeniably better off with an administration we CAN protest vs. one that has proven in both word and deed their intent to deport, criminalize, and brutalize nonviolent protesters.

Simply put: you don’t need hypothetical thought experiments to explain why abetting White Christian Nationalism in the United States is a bad idea.

I agree with every point you made here, though I think you missed that I made that analogy solely for DLF, who appears to be a single issue pro-Palestine Jill Stein voter.
The choice of who to vote for in this election is incredibly simple, but as I'm sure you've noticed in talking to DLF , such simple logic appears to be something he is incapable of or for some reason unwilling to engage or accept.
So I wanted to see how he would respond to that logic test. The point of the people on the tracks was not that there is an "acceptable amount of deaths", it was to illustrate that Israel will proceed to kill more people regardless of which action taken, but that one path is very obviously more deadly than the other.

Normally I wouldn't make that analogy either. It shouldn't be necessary. However DLF refuses to accept or engage even the most simplistic explanation.
That is why I wanted to use a thought experiment to see how he processes logic. What makes a person arrive at "im pro-Palestine and voting for Jill Stein" despite repeatedly being confronted with an extremely simple choice and the reasons behind it?

Based on DLF 's prior interactions, he is going to ignore every single aspect of your post and stick to voting for Jill Stein while still proclaiming to be pro-Palestine.
If he even has the spine to provide a substantive response to your post in the first place.

 

[earldagoat]

 

[Belgium]

Even if Netanyahu' is forced out, perhaps if he's convicted in his still pending trial for bribery and fraud charges, unfortunately there's plenty of other extremists in his party who would be glad continue what Netanyahu's been doing. Bibi has people in his party and close circle that are even worse than him.
Yoav Gallant seems just as bad as Netanyahu at minimum, likely even worse judging by his actions and especially his public statements.

We can only hope that the Israeli citizens in the next election are able to prevent Likud from re-electing Bibi or installing someone just as bad or worse.

 

[gry60]

Even if Netanyahu' is forced out, perhaps if he's convicted in his still pending trial for bribery and fraud charges, unfortunately there's plenty of other extremists in his party who would be glad continue what Netanyahu's been doing. Bibi has people in his party and close circle that are even worse than him.
Yoav Gallant seems just as bad as Netanyahu at minimum, likely even worse judging by his actions and especially his public statements.

We can only hope that the Israeli citizens in the next election are able to prevent Likud from re-electing Bibi or installing someone just as bad or worse.

When I say that Hamas majorly ****** up, it's because Oct 7th moved the average Israeli so far to the right that it will take a generation to undo whatever legislative measures are being implemented as a reaction to the attack.

The only people who look at Oct 7th positively are accelerationists, and I don't think that strategy has ever worked to their benefit. Israel may end an international pariah, but Israel will also be left to their own devices, and that can't be good for the goal of Palestinian self-determination.

 

[earldagoat]

 

[Belgium]

 

[me love nutella]

When I say that Hamas majorly ****** up, it's because Oct 7th moved the average Israeli so far to the right that it will take a generation to undo whatever legislative measures are being implemented as a reaction to the attack.

The only people who look at Oct 7th positively are accelerationists, and I don't think that strategy has ever worked to their benefit. Israel may end an international pariah, but Israel will also be left to their own devices, and that can't be good for the goal of Palestinian self-determination.

The Israeli far right was already in motion and going to go about their actions whether Oct. 7th took place or not.

Putting in the argument that October 7 attack is used by Israel as a pretext to pursue genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip, as an isolated event, takes away the ticking time bomb and pressure cooker that was implemented to foster October 7 attacks, so then Israel can use it as a pretext. The Palestinians can argue that Israel's occupation and injustice is the pretext for October 7 attacks.

Over the past 50 years, the occupational forces have inflicted persistent collective punishment on the Palestinians in these territories, exposing them to constant harassment by Israeli settlers and security forces and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of them. Since the election of the present fundamentalist messianic Israeli government in November 2022, all these harsh policies reached unprecedented levels. The number of Palestinians killed, wounded and arrested in the occupied West Bank skyrocketed. On top of that, Israeli government policies towards Christian and Muslim holy places in Jerusalem became even more aggressive.

Finally, there is also the historical context of the 16-year-long siege on Gaza, where almost half of the population are children. In 2018, the UN was already warning that the Gaza Strip would become a place unfit and unlivable for humans by 2020. So, how is this not all the pretext for Hamas to commit Oct. 7 attacks?

 

[gry60]

The Israeli far right was already in motion and going to go about their actions whether Oct. 7th took place or not.

The Israeli far-right was dealing with a highly discontent and antipathic population before Oct 7th.

Israeli pilots, the same who are now bombing Lebanon and have been bombing Gaza for a year, were refusing to fly under Bibi before Oct 7th. They were outside protesting against him. Bibi's coalition was fragile before Oct 7th. Hamas put the proverbial battery in his (and the far right's) back.

I don't buy the argument that Oct 7th was inevitable. It comes from the same place the Israeli argument that killing civilians is necessary for their security comes from.

 

[me love nutella]

The Israeli far-right was dealing with a highly discontent and antipathic population before Oct 7th.

Israeli pilots, the same who are now bombing Lebanon and have been bombing Gaza for a year, were refusing to fly under Bibi before Oct 7th. They were outside protesting against him. Bibi's coalition was fragile before Oct 7th. Hamas put the proverbial battery in his (and the far right's) back.

I don't buy the argument that Oct 7th was inevitable. It comes from the same place the Israeli argument that killing civilians is necessary for their security comes from.

Oct. 7th was years of planning.

Hamas listed the reasons that led to the attack, citing Israel’s campaign of settlements’ construction and Judaization of the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians from 2000 until this year (2023 was one of deadliest years). They also wanted to get in the way/pause the progress of the Saudi Arabia normalization deal with Israel.

Also, in Gaza, supposedly before October 7, Hamas was becoming more unpopular as people were suffering with no quality of life and no future from the blockade/siege and there had to be a catalyst from their strategic perspective.

So ya, October 7 was the blowback, which Netanyahu allowed to happen.

 

[Belgium]

The Israeli far-right was dealing with a highly discontent and antipathic population before Oct 7th.

Israeli pilots, the same who are now bombing Lebanon and have been bombing Gaza for a year, were refusing to fly under Bibi before Oct 7th. They were outside protesting against him. Bibi's coalition was fragile before Oct 7th. Hamas put the proverbial battery in his (and the far right's) back.

I don't buy the argument that Oct 7th was inevitable. It comes from the same place the Israeli argument that killing civilians is necessary for their security comes from.

I think October 7th was a tactical miscalculation by Hamas’ leaders. Sinwar’s own messages suggests he was surprised the assault on the festival was so brutal.

Later on though, Hamas’ political leadership secretly held peace negotiations without Sinwar’s knowledge, as Sinwar states in his writings. He also expressed regret and frustration in his messages that proxy support from Iran never came despite an apparent agreement where Iran would send proxy forces to fight Israel.

Reports in Gaza are also showing a decline in support for Hamas, citing the length of the war etc.

Hardly surprising when you have Hamas leaders glorifying the genocide by framing the amount of Palestinian deaths as a positive for Hamas’ recruitment. The more dead Palestinians, the better for Hamas is presumably not very appreciated by the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Especially since those remarks came from a Hamas leader safely living in luxury in Qatar.
Hamas appears to have miscalculated the cards they had.

Either way, I think the way Palestinians have historically been treated by Israel was of course the perfect breeding ground for terrorism. If not Oct 7th, I strongly believe a terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas was going to happen sooner or later.

 

[gry60]

Either way, I think the way Palestinians have historically been treated by Israel was of course the perfect breeding ground for terrorism. If not Oct 7th, I strongly believe a terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas was going to happen sooner or later.

From 2001-2021:

Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

P

List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel in 2022 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I'm not under the impression that the Oct 7th attack was a one-off event in the way that it gets pictured in this thread. When you take into account the investment in rocket attacks from Palestinian resistance groups, you can see that the stated policy of Hamas was harassment in response to the Israeli blockade. We just don't hear about this side of the conflict because the death count is very low (28 deaths for 20k rockets fired).

I think October 7th was a tactical miscalculation by Hamas’ leaders. Sinwar’s own messages suggests he was surprised the assault on the festival was so brutal.

That's all I'm saying.
The miscalculation was even deeper than deciding to attack; they chose to attack areas of Israel that traditionally supported the side of Israeli politics that was willing to talk to Palestinians at the time when the pendulum was going to swing from the Right (20 years of security based policy had not born fruit). The attack pushed Israelis further right and basically killed the platform of peace negotiations.

This suggests peaceful resolution to the conflict was never in Hamas game plan, and I find it foolish of Hamas leadership to think they could regain the entirety of Mandatory Palestine against a better equipped an equally determined opponent.

 

[gry60]

Oct. 7th was years of planning.

Ok. And?

Hamas listed the reasons that led to the attack, citing Israel’s campaign of settlements’ construction and Judaization of the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians from 2000 until this year (2023 was one of deadliest years). They also wanted to get in the way/pause the progress of the Saudi Arabia normalization deal with Israel.

And how was the attack supposed to stop any of that from happening?

Military response is taken to convey the message that "I have the violent means to stop your plans." Hamas doesn't have that capability

Palestinians have diplomatic and political leverage in that Israel allies agree that the settlements are illegal. They've rejected the use of that leverage because it's preconditioned on giving up the right to return.

 

[Belgium]

Military response is taken to convey the message that "I have the violent means to stop your plans." Hamas doesn't have that capability

Worth bringing up these excerpts up again to further emphasize your point.
Non-paywalled WSJ article link: https://archive.is/7f3EC#selection-2773.0-2777.39

Non-Paywalled link to article: https://archive.is/DL9Kk#selection-2635.1-2635.14