Israel Hamas War, West Bank, Etc. | Hostilities resume

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Oval4 said:
The term ethnostate has origins in a white supremacist book (just like how David Duke coined “Zios”) and unsurprisingly both of these terms are thrown around in tankie/leftist circles all the time when it comes to Israel. Almost like they’re drawn from the same antisemitic sources.
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The fact that a term was invented by a bad person doesn't mean the term is itself bad or flawed. If we are going to start throwing out all ideas or terms coined by white supremacists, we're going to lose a lot of knowledge. In fairness, that's what the left likes to do.

But for most of us, the origin of a term doesn't control its subsequent meaning. The overall history of the language matters.

Also, there's an important analogy (close and apt) to the doctrine of independent discovery in copyright law. You don't infringe a copyright if you've never seen the original (to simplify a more complex concept). That makes sense. I'm 100% positive that no leftists read Wilmot Robinson. I've never even heard of him, and I'm pretty clued in. It's not as if "ethnostate" is some unique term that nobody would come up with on their own. Compare to terms like "cookies" to describe software features; that's highly idiosyncratic and there's little chance someone might duplicate that themselves.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Amazing that the usual suspects are still JCDing for Hamas here after they literally filmed themselves celebrating the deaths of infants.
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Who is JCDing for Hamas? Who has ever JCDed for Hamas. Saying Israel is as bad -- based on, you know, actual facts -- is not remotely the same.

If you are watching UK-Duke, and you can't root for either team because both are detestable, you're not taking a position against either team. It shouldn't be that hard to understand.
 
It appears that it's the IDF that is now pushing hard to keep the Russians in Northwest Syria as a counterweight to the Turks. The IDF needs the Druze-Kurd axis as a lever against HTS as well.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
The UN found substantial evidence that Israelis were the victims of sexual violence (to include rape) on 10/7. Of course, Hamas sympathizers will tell you that nothing bad happened that day.
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The UN found substantial evidence that Israelis were the victims of sexual violence based on evidence provided by Israel. My understanding is that they were photos and videos of bodies with legs splayed or clothing removed. That could point to sexual assault or it could point to people waking up early while a masker was occurring or even some posing of the bodies afterwards. They also found some widely reported rape claims, distributed by Israeli propaganda operatives, were unfounded.

I'm sure sexual violence occurred. Let me repeat, I'm sure sexual violence occurred. I think if it was this widespread as was reported, there'd be a whole lot more videos and photos out there. The Palestinians weren't exactly shy about recording body cam footage of their activities that day and I'm sure there were cameras everywhere between cell phones and security cameras but we don't see any of that. Israel released some pretty horrific footage from captured body cams. I suspect if there were rapes, they would have released them too.

I don't think the sexual violence that likely occurred on October 7th holds a candle to what Israel has been doing.
 
1. Sexual violence is wrong. It doesn't matter if the Israelis are doing more, or Hamas is doing more. It's the same with killing.
2. I have little doubt that Hamas used sexual violence in a gross, indistinguishable fashion. The basis for my confidence here is that sexual violence is the norm for soldiers in "the enemy's" land. Every conflict I've known anything about have featured mostly substantiated allegations of horrifying rapes. There is no reason to think Hamas soldiers have greater restraint than Burmese, Russian, Serbian, Saudi, Yemeni, Tamil, Contras, Sandinista soldiers.
3. The US used sexual violence at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo during the Iraq war. Again, there is no reason to think Hamas (or the IDF) has been shy about using it.
 
Bobfripp said:
Jesus slept, more like it.
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I'm reminded of one of my favorite jokes.

An old holocaust survivor dies and gets into heaven

God embraces him and welcomes him. Slightly overwhelmed, the man tries to break the ice. "Hey God, I've heard this really funny joke on earth. Do you want to hear it?"

God smiles serenly and answers: "Yes, my son, please tell it to me."

The jew grins and says: "How do you get the number of a girl in Auschwitz? You look on her arm!"

God doesn't laugh, instead, He looks rather shocked. "That's not funny." He says.

The survivor shrugs.

"Eh, I guess you had to be there."
 
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