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Middle East Violence (content may offend)

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There’s always the option of not firing into civilians wanting help, or schools, or hospitals, or bombing restaurants.
 
Gerry_A_Trick said:
What if the person who killed an Israeli was in an Israeli hospital, rathar than a Gaza one, would you still blow it up?
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What if a family in your neighborhood declares a war on your family which is also in the neighborhood and kills a bunch of your family.
Would it change the way you retaliate if this opposing family are sitting at their home, or if they are sitting at the living room of your own family?
Non-combatants should be protected as much as possible, but as I've said before, war is war and is unfortunate.
When your enemy wishes to have non-stop war, declares it, and acts on it, and ceases to stop fighting no matter what, there's not much to do but to engage in this forced war.

You are claiming as though there's no such thing as a people, but there is, just like there's such a thing as a family, and a city, there's a people.
And your people are not the same thing to you that other people are.
Of course, if you are not a radical Islamist, then you respect all other people, but that's not the case with that culture unfortunately.
And again, there is such a thing called accountability. No other people would allow Hamas to rule over them, and not to mention support it.
 
I'm only using LLM's from now on when it comes to TorresElBigot.

That way I can rest assured my jihadist supporting tendencies don't colour my responses.

----------------



You're not engaging in a serious conversation—you’re deploying a set of rhetorical tactics that dodge the core humanitarian concerns raised by others. Let’s break this down:​




1️⃣​


Nobody is excusing or endorsing violence against Israeli civilians. You create imaginary opponents who support extremism to avoid the discomfort of engaging with legitimate concerns about collective punishment, disproportionate force, and the human cost of military action.


🧱 That’s a strawman, and you’ve done it across multiple aliases for years.



2️⃣​


This is your line:


“Not so simple if a person who has killed an Israeli is also there.”
Click to expand...

That’s an argument for obliterating schools, hospitals, or restaurants on the chance someone guilty is there. That's not self-defence—that's moral collapse. By that logic, no civilian infrastructure is off-limits.


Would you apply that logic to an Israeli hospital if the reverse situation occurred?



3️⃣​


You repeatedly frame the war as being “forced” on Israel because the enemy won’t surrender. That’s not a justification for indiscriminate or disproportionate killing. It’s a false binary: either destroy Gaza or submit to terror.


Many here are asking: isn’t there a third option that doesn't involve the mass death of civilians?



4️⃣​


When people talk about rescuing children, you imply they're “shielding Hamas.” When they point out civilian death, you pivot to war as destiny.
But when Hamas kills civilians, you demand individual accountability and blame the whole culture.


That’s not principled. That’s weaponised fatalism.



5️⃣​


MomoWASright made a clear, irrefutable moral point:


“There’s always the option of not firing into civilians wanting help.”
Click to expand...

You dodged it. Again. That’s what you do.



🔚 Bottom Line​


If you’re unwilling to wrestle with the real human suffering involved—especially of children, aid workers, and those under blockade—then just admit you don’t care. But stop pretending your arguments are morally superior.
They’re not. They’re just colder.


 
I'm deploying a set of rhetorical tactics? Ok.

1. I'm not avoiding talking about collective punishment, I'm saying outright that there is accountability. If my community would support and feed a terror organization from within it, I AM accountable for it.
Since Israel is extremely moral in this war, even though Hamas came and raped, decapitated and burnt alive girls that went to a music festival, Israel is doing whatever it can to avoid killing non-combatants, not to mention the fact that involving non-combatants is a Hamas tactic, not that you care or respond to this fact.

2. I'm not saying that Israel is targeting schools/hospitals/restaurants on the chance that someone is there, I'm saying that when it is 100% clear that a terrorist that has killed Israelis, and that is now willingly risking his own people is there, it will sometime be targeted.

Regarding the question of whether this logic applies the other way round, then I can assure you that Hamas would be more than happy to be given access to an Israeli hospital which they will gleefully burn and kill everything that has a heartbeat.

3. You tell me what is the third option my guy. I'm not aware of one that has not been tried by Israel in the last 80 years.

4. I'm extremely consistent in what I'm saying - When Hamas kills civilians it is because they want to win a war in which they obliterate Israel, and Israel is fighting this war that Hamas wishes to fight. It does not wish to fight this war, but Hamas wishes to.

5. I'm not dodging it, I'm saying there is no other option, not when the enemy does the same and does not wish to stop.
 
Thanks for confirming that you're consciously using rhetorical tactics—it's rare for someone to admit it outright.
Let’s go through your points, since they highlight the very evasions I mentioned:

1. That’s not moral clarity—it’s moral surrender.
You're not offering accountability. You're offering justification: “If my community harboured terrorists, I’d accept mass casualties too.”
Would you? Really? Would you accept your children being bombed in hospitals because someone said “your community” deserves it?


You’re not making Israel more moral with this argument.
You’re just normalising the exact logic Hamas uses: “They’re all guilty by association.”

2. So it's not speculative anymore—just definitive?
And who confirms this?
Drone footage? Signal intelligence? Some whisper of “maybe he’s there”?


You’ve just admitted you're OK with bombing civilian infrastructure as long as a target is somewhere inside—which still results in civilian deaths.


You're dressing it up, but it’s still collective punishment.

3. This line is doing so much heavy lifting.
  • International pressure? Reining in settlement expansion?
  • Investing in diplomacy instead of defaulting to siege?
  • Ceasefires brokered by credible third parties?
    All exist. All have been undermined. Israel hasn’t “tried everything.” It’s tried overwhelming force as default.

4. Except when Israel bombs civilians, you say: “Well, it’s the only way.”
And when Hamas does it, you say: “See? They’re monsters.”
That’s not moral consistency. That’s moral selectivity.


5. There’s always another option.
When children are dying in their hundreds, the only morally defensible position is: “We must find another option.”


If you say there isn’t one, then maybe you’ve stopped looking.
Or maybe you’ve just decided it’s easier to call it war and pretend the death toll is a sad necessity rather than a political choice.
 
I think you are the one that is using rhetoric tactics, this whole discussion is mute, because the underlying belief is that Jews do no deserve to have a Jewish nation state in the land, you belive it should be one state with no nation association.

1. Israelis don't have to accept their children being bombed in hospitals mate, that is the whole point that somehow alludes you. Israelis are enduring this for 80 years, their children are being bombed in hospitals, in restaurants, on buses, in hotels, in music festivals, for 80 years, unprovoked terror.
And to the point, yes I'd accept it if my community is sponsoring terror, that is obviously on me also, the terrorists are not being imported from anywhere.
I'm not making Israel more moral? I'm saying that it is moral to hold a community responsible. I'm saying morality is not having your community breed terrorism, just like Israel does not breed it, it's democratic and moral. That's how it is more moral.


2. Israel confirms it, what do you want, Israel to send you a letter before?

3. Settelements have begun after it was clear that Arabs don't want to live side by side, there was diplomacy before there was a siege, it tried force as a last resort.

4. The difference is obviously that they started it again and again. consistent.

5. You tell me what it is.
 
It's almost comical thinking about this guy smashing away at his phone without realising he's responding to the AI response.
 
Anyways,
The more documentaries on the Israeli mindset the more maddening it is.

From the settler one with Thoreau to the Doctors in Gaza one aired last night.
Shows the utter complicity of the BBC, chickened out of showing a documentary that documented with receipts murder, rape, torture just cos the crime was committed by Israeli Jews.
 
I can't be arsed dealing with this fuckwit on today of all days after the passing of Diogo and his brother.
 
Posters can be permanently banned but, as Mamma's post above yours indicates, doing that just because you disagree with someone (however strongly) is censorship pure and simple.
 
Judge Jules said:
Posters can be permanently banned but, as Mamma's post above yours indicates, doing that just because you disagree with someone (however strongly) is censorship pure and simple.
Click to expand...

I've been tempted to engage you in this discussion lately as I cannot fathom your views not being changed by events over the past year.

It would be interesting to know how you feel at the moment about what is actually going on.

Have any of your views altered over the past 12 months?
 
Mamma Mia said:
I've been tempted to engage you in this discussion lately as I cannot fathom your views not being changed by events over the past year.

It would be interesting to know how you feel at the moment about what is actually going on.

Have any of your views altered over the past 12 months?
Click to expand...

I'm torn in different directions by the awful tragedy of what's happening in Gaza.

I'm on record as supporting Israel's decision to finish Hamas militarily after the Oct.7th atrocities and I haven't changed my view on that one iota. Israel could already have done so many times but held back for decades from taking such action. Oct.7th changed everything because it made two things clear: (a) Hamas retains the objective of wiping out Israel and its people, and (b) Israel's restraint up until then had achieved nothing except strengthen its self-declared mortal enemies. After Oct.7th Israel was faced with a choice: put an end to Hamas' military threat, or leave its own citizens in the firing line for however many repeat atrocities Hamas chose to commit. No government could be expected to accept the latter.

However, it seems to me that Israel's right to take action to end a mortal threat has been infiltrated and taken over by the settlement agenda and that that's what drives far too much of what's currently happening. I've always been of the view that the establishment of peace and justice in the region is going to have to involve Israelis as well as Palestinians accepting that they have to abandon absolutist positions. TorresElNino is absolutely right to say that the Jews were the original inhabitants of those lands and were ethnically cleansed from them back in the day, but those who moved in afterwards have now been there for a millennium and a half themselves and must also have their rights respected.

I'm now hoping that Trump - yes, Trump - might just make a difference in the right direction now that he's staked at least part of his own reputation on bringing about some kind of peaceful resolution. Almost half a century ago when Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat took the incredibly brave step of beginning a peace process in the Middle East (for which he eventually paid with his own life at the hands of Islamist extremists in his own army) it was a former terrorist, Menachem Begin, who was strong enough as Israeli Premier to accept the olive branch and give peace a chance. Peace can come from the most unlikely directions sometimes, because regrettably it has to.
 
Judge Jules said:
I'm torn in different directions by the awful tragedy of what's happening in Gaza.

I'm on record as supporting Israel's decision to finish Hamas militarily after the Oct.7th atrocities and I haven't changed my view on that one iota. Israel could already have done so many times but held back for decades from taking such action. Oct.7th changed everything because it made two things clear: (a) Hamas retains the objective of wiping out Israel and its people, and (b) Israel's restraint up until then had achieved nothing except strengthen its self-declared mortal enemies. After Oct.7th Israel was faced with a choice: put an end to Hamas' military threat, or leave its own citizens in the firing line for however many repeat atrocities Hamas chose to commit. No government could be expected to accept the latter.

However, it seems to me that Israel's right to take action to end a mortal threat has been infiltrated and taken over by the settlement agenda and that that's what drives far too much of what's currently happening. I've always been of the view that the establishment of peace and justice in the region is going to have to involve Israelis as well as Palestinians accepting that they have to abandon absolutist positions. TorresElNino is absolutely right to say that the Jews were the original inhabitants of those lands and were ethnically cleansed from them back in the day, but those who moved in afterwards have now been there for a millennium and a half themselves and must also have their rights respected.

I'm now hoping that Trump - yes, Trump - might just make a difference in the right direction now that he's staked at least part of his own reputation on bringing about some kind of peaceful resolution. Almost half a century ago when Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat took the incredibly brave step of beginning a peace process in the Middle East (for which he eventually paid with his own life at the hands of Islamist extremists in his own army) it was a former terrorist, Menachem Begin, who was strong enough as Israeli Premier to accept the olive branch and give peace a chance. Peace can come from the most unlikely directions sometimes, because regrettably it has to.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the honest and thoughtful response.
 
@Judge Jules I always appreciate how thoughtful and grounded your posts are — even when we come at things from different angles.


One bit I keep turning over in my mind is the “original inhabitants” idea. You mention that Jews were ethnically cleansed from the land long ago, and I don’t dispute that there’s a painful history there. But I’m curious: is that kind of historical claim something we apply elsewhere?


For example, in modern-day South Africa, Australia, or the US, we acknowledge indigenous dispossession, but we don’t propose nation-states be reconstituted based on ancient tribal presence. In most parts of the world, we accept that borders and populations shift over time — and that rights should be grounded in the present, not in ancient ancestry.


So I guess my question is: why is this kind of ancestral claim taken as foundational in the case of Israel/Palestine, when it’s not used to settle other long-standing injustices? Is there a moral principle here that we apply selectively — or is the exception somehow justified in this case?


Genuinely asking — I’m still trying to understand how we reconcile historical justice with current realities in a way that’s fair and consistent.
 
Judge Jules said:
Posters can be permanently banned but, as Mamma's post above yours indicates, doing that just because you disagree with someone (however strongly) is censorship pure and simple.
Click to expand...
So far he has:
  • Called entire ethnic or religious groups “backwards,” “barbaric,” and “worthless”
  • Argued that democracy doesn’t work for Arabs or Muslims
  • Repeatedly framed Muslims as a threat by default

I'm not sure we should be give this stuff a platform, no matter how small a forum SCM is. Unless you're all up for allowing people to say whatever.
 
Athens said:
So far he has:
  • Called entire ethnic or religious groups “backwards,” “barbaric,” and “worthless”
  • Argued that democracy doesn’t work for Arabs or Muslims
  • Repeatedly framed Muslims as a threat by default

I'm not sure we should be give this stuff a platform, no matter how small a forum SCM is. Unless you're all up for allowing people to say whatever.
Click to expand...

I’d add a few more to that list:


  • Justifies collective punishment like it’s no big deal
  • Regularly downplays or dismisses civilian suffering (as long as it’s not Israeli)
  • Talks about morality like one side just is more evolved than the other
  • Constantly dodges direct questions with whataboutism or deflection

Taken together, it’s not just “strong opinions” — it’s a worldview that paints entire groups of people as lesser or beyond sympathy. That’s a real problem.

But I’m also torn. As disgusting as some of it is, part of me thinks this kind of thinking is worth seeing in the open.
In a strange way, his posts reveal far more than they conceal. They expose the logical knots, the double standards, the justifications people make when they're too committed to a side to see the humanity in the other.

It’s awful to read sometimes — but also educational. It helps sharpen our own thinking, and it leaves a public record for future readers to see what this kind of mindset looks like laid bare.

I don’t have a final answer on this, but I lean toward keep the sewer lid open — better to watch the rats run than pretend they aren’t there.
 
Mamma Mia said:
@Judge Jules I always appreciate how thoughtful and grounded your posts are — even when we come at things from different angles.


One bit I keep turning over in my mind is the “original inhabitants” idea. You mention that Jews were ethnically cleansed from the land long ago, and I don’t dispute that there’s a painful history there. But I’m curious: is that kind of historical claim something we apply elsewhere?


For example, in modern-day South Africa, Australia, or the US, we acknowledge indigenous dispossession, but we don’t propose nation-states be reconstituted based on ancient tribal presence. In most parts of the world, we accept that borders and populations shift over time — and that rights should be grounded in the present, not in ancient ancestry.


So I guess my question is: why is this kind of ancestral claim taken as foundational in the case of Israel/Palestine, when it’s not used to settle other long-standing injustices? Is there a moral principle here that we apply selectively — or is the exception somehow justified in this case?


Genuinely asking — I’m still trying to understand how we reconcile historical justice with current realities in a way that’s fair and consistent.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your kind words.

IMO your final para.contains the key word, namely "reconcile". Not all such situations, in fact probably very few of them, boil down to right vs.wrong. More often than not there are arguments to be made for both sides and for their genuine respective rights, and the way forward has to consist of reconciling two or more positions which are all soundly based, at least in part.

One difference that I can see between Israel/Palestine and the other situations you mention is quite simply that of demand. The Jewish people have always wanted to return to their homeland and have made that clear in their known religious practices. South Africa is an unusual case because the white population (whose ancestors were established in the country before those of most of the current black population which, I believe, is widely descended from incomers) did of course try and preserve their control but eventually had to give way to a changed reality. My guess is that the reason the indigenous populations of Australia and the US didn't follow suit is a mixture of powerlessness and inculturation.

I'm not enough of an expert on the UN to know what arguments formed the basis for its decision to create the state of Israel after WW2. The practical reality however is that it was the UN which took that decision, in consequence of which Jewish people returned to reestablish and populate the country. TorresElNino is right to remind other posters of the historical facts that, when this happened, those dispossessed were offered but mostly refused Israeli citizenship, tried to move to neighbouring Arab countries and were uniformly rejected, so it wasn't the Jewish people who failed to accept that borders and populations shift over time.
 
Mamma Mia said:
It’s awful to read sometimes — but also educational. It helps sharpen our own thinking, and it leaves a public record for future readers to see what this kind of mindset looks like laid bare.

I don’t have a final answer on this, but I lean toward keep the sewer lid open
Click to expand...

I think a lot about it, and I don't have an answer I'm comfortable with myself yet. Freedom of speech shouldn't mean that there are no consequences, but generally suppression of freedoms tends to lead to rebels. I think that positions of power should be held to different levels of account than others, it matters a lot less what Joe Soap says than what the president of country X says. At the same time, clubs make their own rules and could kick someone out if they want. Its obviously not my decision, but I wouldn't be for banning him either, I wouldn't engage with someone if I did think they should be banned, if you don't like what someone says, you can ignore it/argue it, whatever you want.
 
Judge Jules said:
Thank you for your kind words.

IMO your final para.contains the key word, namely "reconcile". Not all such situations, in fact probably very few of them, boil down to right vs.wrong. More often than not there are arguments to be made for both sides and for their genuine respective rights, and the way forward has to consist of reconciling two or more positions which are all soundly based, at least in part.

One difference that I can see between Israel/Palestine and the other situations you mention is quite simply that of demand. The Jewish people have always wanted to return to their homeland and have made that clear in their known religious practices. South Africa is an unusual case because the white population (whose ancestors were established in the country before those of most of the current black population which, I believe, is widely descended from incomers) did of course try and preserve their control but eventually had to give way to a changed reality. My guess is that the reason the indigenous populations of Australia and the US didn't follow suit is a mixture of powerlessness and inculturation.

I'm not enough of an expert on the UN to know what arguments formed the basis for its decision to create the state of Israel after WW2. The practical reality however is that it was the UN which took that decision, in consequence of which Jewish people returned to reestablish and populate the country. TorresElNino is right to remind other posters of the historical facts that, when this happened, those dispossessed were offered but mostly refused Israeli citizenship, tried to move to neighbouring Arab countries and were uniformly rejected, so it wasn't the Jewish people who failed to accept that borders and populations shift over time.
Click to expand...

Respectfully,

So because some 'demanded' it more it should happen?

As for the last paragraph, you can discuss the UN. Mainly the emergence/force of Zionism, the Balfour declaration but importantly the sympathy towards Jews after the horrors of the holocaust.

Palestinians were not uniformly rejected by neighbouring Arab countries.
over 300k went to Jordan (recently the gov suggested nearly half of Jordanians have Palestinian roots)
Approx 100k went to Syria and Lebabon/Egypt also took on many Palestinians.
I know people who have visited the camps in Jordan where Palestinians are still living.

This is false info that only serves to continue to describe Arabs/Palestinians as less than human and no-one wants them.


I'm living in my house, I've been here for generations.
Some guy comes along and tells me to move at gunpoint but offers my Israeli citizenship. Maybe practically I should take it, maybe my pride might tell him where to go.
On the other hand, I've got nothing and someone offers me 55%, sure I'll take it.
 
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