212
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
212 points (85.6% liked)
Political Memes
9272 readers
1804 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The numbers are intended the other way around. The 32% I cited for Hamas suggests 68% of the deaths are civilians; the 20-38% I suggested for Israel suggests 80%-62% of Israel's genocidal campaign are civilian deaths. I can see how you'd get the other interpretation.
Explained is a cute word for 'dismissed because targeting civilians hurts the hero-worship for Hamas you're cultivating'
I think you have good points, but can I ask why you always jump to the assumption that people are hero-worshipping Hamas?
Part of it is that I see Hamas apologia often on here, people saying shit like "October 7 was legitimate resistance!" and "Hamas doesn't target civilians!"
Part of it is that phrasing things in stark terms forces examination of the issue - people can brush off "I think your estimate is too low" and then continue peddling the same nonsense elsewhere - or even in the same conversation - without ever bothering to actually consider the implications of their position.
Part of it is just frustration.
Hmmm. What I see here is that the person disagreed with you because they depend on the Gaza ministry as a source (whose numbers are considered accurate since before the war) and you depend on some other third party source only provided later on to me (and not the person you were having the discussion with).
It's good to consider when one is right and when one is assuming too much about other people.
Edits: typos from autocorrect
My problem, though, as I mentioned, wasn't with their numbers. It was a fundamental disagreement on concepts
Gonna be honest here, I think this sounds disingenuous.
Considering they said
I really don't think it's a disingenuous question to ask what the lowest civilian casualty ratio they'd accept for genocide was
Your question (at least to me as a reader) seems to imply that you regard that person as a genocide-denier. It doesn't sound like a question based on good faith, more like a question that would have an incorrect answer no matter what they say because the implication seems to be that they are a genocide-denier, not that you are actually trying to understand their point better.
You also said:
I am yet to see where @[email protected] even does that in the slightest... It's almost like with this question, the discussion shifts from "can we identify this as a genocide" to "Ahh, so you seem to think this is an excuse for Hamas' actions!"
The poster denies genocidal intent on the part of Hamas on the grounds of 'only' 67% civilian casualties. They're more of a 'genocide desire denier'
It does lack a correct answer. By claiming 33% military casualties is too few for genocide, any answer they give can be used against them, because that's a ridiculous claim. If they claim something lower, they contradict themselves. If they claim something higher, they run the risk of having to answer the question of whether other genocides with that criteria weren't then, genocides - knowing that the only viable answer is not genocide denial, but acquiescence to the point that that's a stupid fucking criteria to use.
It lacks a correct answer because the position it is addressing, whether the proportion of soldiers to civilians killed can invalidate genocidal intent, is ridiculous.
Answering does not inherently imply genocide denial.
The commenter literally denies genocidal intent on the part of Hamas, and uses Israel's current genocide as an excuse for that position.
At least we agree on the this. This is disingenuous discussion.
If I ask a question, in which any answer points out the ridiculousness of the claim, that's disingenuous?
In an isolated incident? Yes/No/Maybe.
In this situation, and given your previous discussion with the person and your general tone? Yes.
Your question itself was meant as an accusation or trap for the other person (I guess by your own admission), and not particulartly meant to enrich the discussion, but rather to "win" the discussion and "reveal" how "ridiculous" the other person is. Sure, there's more than one way to skin a cat, but this one isn't super effective.
Also, I believe the problematic part that your answer above didn't address is that you jumped from "so are you denying a genocide" to "why are you excusing Hamas' actions"? Which @[email protected] never does, at least not in this discussion. This seems to show (to me at least) that you have painted a different picture of @[email protected] in your head... And I think that's worth reconsidering.
I think it helps to know that given 75 years of colonial history and the unspeakable pain and horror that Palestinians are going through, it's a little more complicated to discuss genocidal intent and actions. Granted, maybe your point is that we shouldn't consider all these details when determining whether or not a massacre is part of a genocide campaign, but it's generally a bad idea to ignore context.
On a different note:
I wanted to as about this part of your question
But is it solely based on ethnicity (I'm not denying it's genocidal, but gotta add this here just in case)? Or is there more to it? Would a Hamas fighter be interested in killing an American Jew who never stepped foot in Palestine? or do they seem to be focused entirely on the Jews in the self-declared Jewish Ethnostate of Israel?
Ah, I think I see. You think I was entering into the discussion to sit down and have a metaphorical cup of tea and a chat. There's nothing wrong with that, but it was clearly not my intent from the start here, and I never pretended otherwise. This was always a challenge to the assumptions and statements made by Linkerbaan in this comment section.
It's the same as one might challenge someone who makes some dumb fucking comment like "The freer the market, the freer the people!" Such dreck cannot be allowed to go unchallenged, and treating ridiculous positions with respect legitimizes them, both in the minds of others as well as the holder. Ridiculous positions must be deconstructed without room for ambiguity.
I don't know if I've said it in this thread or not, but I'm getting real fucking tired of repeating this in general.
It. Does. Not. Excuse. Genocide.
Israeli apologists would gleefully bring up "Oh, well, you have to consider the history of the persecution and genocide of the Jewish people"
No. Full fucking stop.
As you grant, my argument very much is that we shouldn't consider those details when determining whether or not a massacre is part of a genocide campaign, because "The genociders are despereate and in a lot of pain" doesn't make something not fucking genocide.
If you will remember the collection of quotes I posted from Hamas officials, there is certainly some amount of glee at the idea of murdering Jews in general, but more pertinently, Israeli (and Jewish Israeli) is very much an ethnicity. If someone's argument is "If they murdered every Jew in Israel it wouldn't be genocide because they spared Jews outside of Israel", then they're really no better than the Israel apologists talking about how Palestinian Arabs aren't a 'real' ethnicity and that since Israel doesn't have genocidal claims on non-Palestinian Arabs, it's actually all kosher (forgive the pun) to murder Palestinians and not genocide at all.
It wouldn't hurt you to be nice.
That's not an unfair position to take, but it's not me. I can de-escalate, but not in the face of positions I find outrageous.
The sad part is that we agree but I don't think you're able to see it.
No, no, you outlined my position and our conflict just fine here. 'These details' are irrelevant. That's my point.
There is no context that can justify it. It's like saying one has to look at the context of a rape before judging it. You really fucking don't.
I understand your frustration.
I don't think we're in a strong disagreement on the subject. It's a detail. But it is a disagreement on how to approach things.
There's a difference between committing a War Crime and committing Genocide get over it already.
Genocide is not a label you can just stick on everything. It's reserved only for absolute terror nations such as Nazi Germany and israel.
70% of Palestinians killed are owmen and children.
62% civilian deaths for israel means that you're saying 100% of Palestinian men are Hamas and 8% of Palestinian women and children are Hamas. Either I'm still not understanding your claim or it's a very stupid claim.
The IDF has already admitted there's no babies in ovens, no pregnant women with bellies cut open, and many news outlets are throwing the rape stories out of the window because of credibility issues.
You want Hamas to be some evil monster org. They did some bad stuff sure but you're comparing them to actual genocidal maniacs like the Nazis or israel.
By the newest math, Netanyahu now says 75% of Hamas has been eliminated (citation needed of course because the IDF lies through their teeth at every chance). If we take the generous assumption of Hamas being made up of 30,000 fighters, how many civilians killed is Netanyahu claiming are Hamas?
And I think the most hilarious thing with Israel is that they claim to both being hugely successful but also that "lots more needs to be done". If the end goal is making Gaza unlivable (we are almost there!), then this kind of rhetoric will buy them enough time to finish the job.
Oh yeah wait, I forgot! Israel claims everyone is Hamas... Everyone who works a government job is working for (K)HAMAS, every garbage man is a (K)HAMAS operative because they work for a (K)HAMAS-run municipality, every volunteer at the library is in a (K)HAMAS LIBRARY, hence okay to kill. They even blew up the Gaza archive building, maybe the archives were (K)HAMAS? Or maybe they are trying to eliminate these people and any means of them surviving 🙃
Even on ToI, they had this ridiculous news report about how "KHAMAS POLICE RETURNS TO NORTHERN GAZA AND CREATE MAKESHIFT CENTERS TO DISTRIBUTE PAY"
Bro, those are the actual fucking Police! They claim Hamas is both in the tunnels and not in the tunnels simultaneously so they can cover more surface area for murder.
The way that most Western people implicate everyone with the slightest relation to Hamas of being soldiers, is the same (or more extreme) than implicating every IDF reservist shot on Oct7 was an IDF soldier instead of a non-combatant.
I'm just citing the range of third party sources. Although I don't think female participation in hostilities is ridiculous considering Hamas has used women in previous operations, 100% of Palestinian men obviously is. Take the 80% if you prefer - it's still not that far off from the 68% of Hamas.
I don't see where I claimed that? I claimed Hamas has intentionally targeted and murdered civilians on ethnic grounds, which is incontrovertible.
Believe all women (unless they're Israeli), huh?
"They did some bad stuff"
Ah, yes, just a little light genocide, a bit of a massacre based on the ethnicity of the victims, please don't worry about it.
What are your third party sources?
Israeli study for a low estimate of 61/39
High estimate of 83/17