Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

What Hamas did last week should have sparked a robust debate about -oh, I don't know- the rules of war, the role of Antisemitism, and the resurgence of the barbarian.

and Netanyahu is still an idiot

¹ I refer to the Star Trek phenomenon of the Borg... ↵

“You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.
War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors.
You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.”
― William T. Sherman

In this, our own free and tolerant land, where wars have been waged and constitutions violated for the benefit of the African negro, the descendants of barbarian tribes who for four thousand years have contributed nothing to, though in close contact with, the civilization of mankind, save as the Helots contributed an example to the Spartan youth, and where laws and partisan courts alike have been used to force him into an equality with those whom he could not equal, we have seen Jews, educated and respectable men, descendants of those from whom we derive our civilization, kinsmen, after the flesh, of Him whom we esteem as the Son of God and Saviour of men, ignominiously ejected from hotels and watering places as unworthy the association of men who had grown rich by the sale of a new brand of soap or an improved patent rat trap!

[...]

The popular habit is to regard an injury done to one by a man of different creed as a double wrong; to me it seems that the wrong is the greater coming from my own. To hold also, as some do, that the sins of all people are due to their creeds, would leave the sins of the sinners of my creed quite imaccounted for. With some faith of a scoundrel is all important; it is not so with me.

[...]

[Jews] have managed to endure with long-suffering patience the knout of the Czar and the bow-string of the Turk, but they have fled for life from the presence of the wooden nutmegs and the left-handed gimlets of Jonathan. Is there any man who hears me to-night who, if a Yankee and a Jew were to "lock horns" in a regular encounter of conmiercial wits, would not give large odds on the Yankee? My own opinion is that the genuine "guessing" Yankee, with a jack-knife and a pine shingle, could in two hours' time whittle the smartest Jew in New York out of his home-stead in the Abrahamic covenant.

Monument to Confederate governor who loved Jews is coming down in Asheville, NC

Complicated legacy of Zebulon Vance — US senator, North Carolina governor, defender of the Jewish people and white supremacist — is reexamined by a town and its Jewish mayor

[...]

As to why Vance wrote ["Scattered Nation"], one reason might lie in his membership in the Masons, a group that readily accepted Jews. Another, [a local Jewish heritage leader] Rogoff says, may have been the Confederacy’s view of itself as suffering Israelites. In this trope, the Confederates cast themselves as Israel, escaping the “pharaoh” Lincoln and his tyranny of oppression, even as they defend slavery.

In 1876, Vance won back his old job as governor of North Carolina. That sent a message to anyone in the state who might support racial equality.

“What a powerful symbol,” said Tom Hanchett, a community historian in Charlotte. “The rebels of the Confederacy are coming back into power, their ‘rightful’ place.”

Bringing back as much of the old system as possible was the instinctive response of defeated Confederates, adds Harry Watson, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“If you couldn’t hang onto slavery, the idea was to reinvent white supremacy so that it existed without actual enslavement,” Watson said.

Three years later, Vance was elected to the Senate, where he served until his death in 1894.

There was no mention of his passing in the Jewish press. The Vance Monument was dedicated in Asheville in 1897. The following year, North Carolina was host to the only armed coup d’etat in US history when white residents in Wilmington overthrew a democratically elected, biracial government.

The bloody frenzy had been planned for months. White insurrectionists forced Black leaders and their allies to flee the city. They shot into Black residents’ homes. They burned down the local Black-owned newspaper office. It’s believed that some 60 people were murdered, possibly more.

Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2023-10-17, 10:10:35

What Hamas did last week should have sparked a robust debate about -oh, I don't know- the rules of war, the role of Antisemitism, and the resurgence of the barbarian.

Why should it? Nothing has changed. Hamas is still a bunch of terrorists and Netanyahu is still an idiot — heck, this underlines it.

Quote from: krake on 2014-12-26, 18:18:12

There are good terrorists, those who are useful for our geostrategic interests (call them moderate or freedom fighters) and bad terrorists, those who don't serve our geostrategic interests.

Is a term like "freedom fighter" even used anymore since the Wall fell? I've seen words like "guerrillas" my entire life, "freedom fighter" being some kind of quaint Cold War relic that primarily refers to guerrillas opposing oppressive communist regimes. Perhaps it's simply that the militants tend to instill their own dictatorship after emerging victoriously, but let's not forget that some insurgents never use the language of freedom at all. Some rather explicitly want to install dictatorships and/or theocracies. As such the term "freedom fighter" seems more naive than meaningless per se. A pretty common way to distinguish between "regular" insurgents and terrorists is whether or not they make a point of attacking non-combatants. So,

a. Hamas targeting Israeli soldiers is probably not terrorism, depending a bit on the specifics including e.g. treatment of prisoners.
b. Hamas targeting Israeli citizens is definitely terrorism.

Ergo, Hamas is a terrorist organization, clear as day. It's only when b is absent that things might get a bit muddier. In my experience, b is always present when calling something a terrorist organization.

Hamas is a terrorist organization and their rocket attacks should be unconditionally condemned. But this was also calculated political recklessness and opportunism by Netanyahu. His political end is nigh and apparently, cynically, a battle for Jerusalem during Ramadan is just the thing. Close the gate, close the Al-Aksa mosque without provocation, kick people out of their homes, wait for the Hamas deplorables to take the bait. Mission accomplished, even if presumably slightly more so than expected.

Also keep in mind Hamas has more popular support among Palestinians now because of that wretched wall and because of the increasingly apartheid-based state.

I generously assumed

Quote from: ersi on 2023-12-20, 09:18:10

I generously assumed

Since when is war against an enemy whose stated purpose is your destruction a "tit-for-tat" affair, one death at a time?

You'll likewise not care when Taiwan is "reunified"... (I don't recall you being upset at what happened when Great Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China...)

One wonders: How about Estonia?

Proportionality is a principle.

Quote from: ersi on 2023-12-23, 03:40:34

Proportionality is a principle.

A grossly misguided one, when war has been declared. You are not just naive, you are perversely so.

Was the U.S.S.R (e.g., Russia) wrong to pursue the destruction of Nazi Germany in WWII? Were the Allies wrong to do so? Should lawyers and accountants have drawn up tote-sheets to determine what was acceptable?

yes, unconditional surrender is proportional when the aggressor is engaged in all-out assault in all directions. The comparison on this point puts Israel in worse light than Hamas.

Israel should bend the neck, and wait for the sword to drop?

Anyway, Israel's statehood has not been under threat at all this century.

You (obviously don't) see, there is a difference between people and their country/government/statehood. For example, you are an American but you hate your government. By your own (il)logic, you are therefore anti-American! When will you stop being racist and genocidal against Americans? Yeah, you didn't even know you were one of those!