Political Memes

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.