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

[Calheel]

Good thing we aren't comparing an active war with random attacks against civilians all over western world.

I’m pretty sure the perpetrators of those random attacks would say they are in an active war.

I also don’t think the family members of the dead Gazans think that Israel’s killing techniques are more moral.

 

[Paine]

If a military campaign consistently produces massive civilian casualties, flattens civilian infrastructure, and targets places like hospitals or refugee camps, then saying “they don’t intend to kill civilians” strains credibility. At some point, repeated results reflect either indifference or tacit acceptance.

Even if Israel says it tries to avoid civilian casualties, its rules of engagement, targeting choices, and collective punishment tactics (e.g. siege, cutting off water and electricity, bombing dense urban areas) tell a different story. You can’t claim moral high ground while enacting policies that make mass civilian suffering inevitable.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich aren’t fringe; they’re cabinet ministers. Their words are reflected in actual policy and military actions. Dismissing their genocidal or eliminationist rhetoric as merely “inflammatory” ignores how power works: when you give extremists the keys to the state, their rhetoric becomes real.

 

[superrific]

There is a cultural element to Islamic terrorism,

Those are just the major attacks, and just those on western civilians. I didn't list the numerous other smaller attacks in which one or two people were killed. And let's not talk about the unsuccessful or thwarted attacks: bombs on airliners over Detroit and Miami, in Times Square, plots against fuel farms and Christmas markets in the United States.

Those aren't one-offs, nor are they coincidences. There are cultural differences between Islamists and Westerners. It isn't Islamophobic to state that, because most Muslims aren't jihadists.

1. This conversation isn't about terrorism. It's almost a meta-conversation. It seems to be about whether Islam -- in general or just in jihadi form -- is uniquely disparaging of or uncaring toward human life. And your logic is fallacious: you're making the classic Wason selection task error. In your defense, it's a common mistake -- about 90% of people get it wrong.

Wason selection task - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Here, the "8" card is like your observations of Islamic terror groups. But you also have to turn over the red card, which is the context. That's what Paine and others are pointing out.

2. These cultural differences between Islamists and Westerners seem quite ad hoc and posited for convenience. Did you know that Churchill, the great stalwart anti-Nazi, created a mass famine in Bengal during WWII that left some preposterously high number of people dead? How does that fit into your cultural classifications? Or the Trail of Tears? Or the Holocaust? Or in my lifetime, apartheid, the Balkan genocide, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, etc.

But you know, maybe it's the culture of Abrahamic religions. If we look to the East, maybe we'll find better behavior. Like Japan -- I mean, did they rampantly violate human rights during and before WWII? Oh. Well, what about China? Oh. Cambodia? Oh Oh Oh.

3. I think it's more accurate, by a fair amount, to posit that humans do awful things in power struggles, regardless of religion.

4. To the extent that there's a culture of retribution (I think there might be, which isn't really what you're talking about here), I think it's more of a geographic thing. It's specific to the cultures of the area, including non-Muslim populations in the area (after all, Assad's government in Syria was Alawite, with backing from Christian groups. They gassed the Muslims, not the other way around).

 

[ZZLPHeels]

I’m pretty sure the perpetrators of those random attacks would say they are in an active war.

I also don’t think the family members of the dead Gazans think that Israel’s killing techniques are more moral.

It doesn't matter what the terrorists say. A random Muslim guy in the middle of Paris in 2015 is not in a warzone. If that guy decides to get a few of his friends together and murder over 100 civilians at a concert, that still doesn't make it any more of a warzone.

Gaza is a warzone. Paris, Manhattan, Brussels, Orlando, etc. are not.

 

[superrific]

Even if Israel says it tries to avoid civilian casualties, its rules of engagement, targeting choices, and collective punishment tactics (e.g. siege, cutting off water and electricity, bombing dense urban areas) tell a different story. You can’t claim moral high ground while enacting policies that make mass civilian suffering inevitable.

It's the blockade that truly reveals the lie behind "Israel tries to minimize civilian deaths." Mass starvation is quite possibly the least discriminating form of siege. There are no "hiding behind civilians" arguments there. It's just collective punishment, and it's illegal as hell and fucking immoral.

As for some of the posters here: as a general rule, when you're defending someone who is intentionally using hunger as a weapon, something has either gone very wrong for you intellectually or you're revealing your true colors. THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR BLOCKADING A HUMAN POPULATION, CUTTING THEM OFF FROM FOOD. None whatsoever.

 

[Healing]

So now intent is more important than impact. Got it.

Nothing like the good ol’ evangelical style logic of self absolution. “I’ve accepted Jesus into my life”, thus, my past rape, murder, theft, and destruction shall not preclude my reward of heaven.

 

[superrific]

It doesn't matter what the terrorists say. A random Muslim guy in the middle of Paris in 2015 is not in a warzone. If that guy decides to get a few of his friends together and murder over 100 civilians at a concert, that still doesn't make it any more of a warzone.

Gaza is a warzone. Paris, Manhattan, Brussels, Orlando, etc. are not.

OK, but why is any of that relevant to what was being discussed, which was the relative morality of Israel and Hamas?

I mean, MBS ordered the brutal death of Khashoggi. Putin killed 600 hostages in a movie theater in order to kill the perps. I think the common denominator is dictatorial power and intent, as opposed to an uncommon denominator of religion.

If you're going to start citing random attacks -- I mean, the math there isn't going to be pretty for non-Muslims. Was Pittsburgh Tree of Life a war zone? Christchurch New Zealand? Wherever in Norway Anders Brevik killed like 50 children? The slaughter of Bosnians and Albanians by the very Christian Serbian population?

 

[Calheel]

OK, but why is any of that relevant to what was being discussed, which was the relative morality of Israel and Hamas?

I mean, MBS ordered the brutal death of Khashoggi. Putin killed 600 hostages in a movie theater in order to kill the perps. I think the common denominator is dictatorial power and intent, as opposed to an uncommon denominator of religion.

If you're going to start citing random attacks -- I mean, the math there isn't going to be pretty for non-Muslims. Was Pittsburgh Tree of Life a war zone? Christchurch New Zealand? Wherever in Norway Anders Brevik killed like 50 children? The slaughter of Bosnians and Albanians by the very Christian Serbian population?

Well the Bosnian thing is ok because that was a war zone.

 

[ZenMode]

If a military campaign consistently produces massive civilian casualties, flattens civilian infrastructure, and targets places like hospitals or refugee camps, then saying “they don’t intend to kill civilians” strains credibility. At some point, repeated results reflect either indifference or tacit acceptance.

Gaza has 15,000 civilians per square mile. Urban warfare, in general, causes more civilian deaths. Add in the fact that Hamas is using hospitals, schools and other civilian structures as military locations, and I have a difficult time saying ~50k causalities is a reflection of an Israeli intent or indifference to kill civilians.

Even if Israel says it tries to avoid civilian casualties, its rules of engagement, targeting choices, and collective punishment tactics (e.g. siege, cutting off water and electricity, bombing dense urban areas) tell a different story. You can’t claim moral high ground while enacting policies that make mass civilian suffering inevitable.

I don't agree with all Israeli tactics but the civilians deaths, when you consider population density, show that Israel has and continues to be considerate of civilian casualties. Israel, if they were indifferent toward civilian deaths, could have killed 50k in a weekend at any point of the war.

Denying aid is a problem. Probably the biggest problem of the entire war from Israel's side.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich aren’t fringe; they’re cabinet ministers. Their words are reflected in actual policy and military actions. Dismissing their genocidal or eliminationist rhetoric as merely “inflammatory” ignores how power works: when you give extremists the keys to the state, their rhetoric becomes real.

If they follow through on forcing civilians out of Gaza entirely, that would be a huge issue. It hasn't happened yet, as far as I know.

 

[Paine]

If you're going to start citing random attacks -- I mean, the math there isn't going to be pretty for non-Muslims. Was Pittsburgh Tree of Life a war zone? Christchurch New Zealand? Wherever in Norway Anders Brevik killed like 50 children? The slaughter of Bosnians and Albanians by the very Christian Serbian population?

This really gets to the heart of the issue: how Muslims, and specifically Muslim terrorists, have been portrayed in the media, especially since 9/11.

When a white Christian terrorist murders Black people or Jews in a mass shooting and then kills himself, it’s of course not labeled a “suicide bombing,” but it’s clearly a suicide attack. The difference lies in the emotional response it triggers. Acts of terror committed by brown Muslims evoke a visceral fear and revulsion rooted in decades of racialized media narratives.

What do we usually call this kind of selective emotional response? There’s a word for it. But don’t worry—he’s not racist, because “Islam isn’t a race,” right?

The broader point is this: any country with a fragmented civil society is vulnerable to religious extremism. Just look at the United States.

 

[ZenMode]

UN retracts aid chief's claim that 14,000 Gazan babies will die in 48 hours without aid​

The UN later cited a report that said there could be 14,100 cases of malnutrition in children in Gaza between April 2025 and March 2026, a timeframe of one year not two days.

UN retracts aid chief's claim that 14,000 Gazan babies will die in 48 hours without aid

The UN later cited a report that said there could be 14,100 cases of malnutrition in children in Gaza between April 2025 and March 2026, a timeframe of one year not two days.

www.jpost.com

 

[Paine]

Gaza has 15,000 civilians per square mile. Urban warfare, in general, causes more civilian deaths. Add in the fact that Hamas is using hospitals, schools and other civilian structures as military locations, and I have a difficult time saying ~50k causalities is a reflection of an Israeli intent or indifference to kill civilians.

I don't agree with all Israeli tactics but the civilians deaths, when you consider population density, show that Israel has and continues to be considerate of civilian casualties. Israel, if they were indifferent toward civilian deaths, could have killed 50k in a weekend at any point of the war.

Denying aid is a problem. Probably the biggest problem of the entire war from Israel's side.

If they follow through on forcing civilians out of Gaza entirely, that would be a huge issue. It hasn't happened yet, as far as I know.

Your framing does a lot of heavy lifting to downplay the scale and meaning of civilian death. Saying “Israel could have killed more” doesn’t prove restraint. It shifts the moral goalpost like always. Imagine applying that logic to any other conflict:

“Yes, tens of thousands of civilians are dead, but it could’ve been worse.” You’re just defending mass death.

No matter how many times you say it, population density doesn’t absolve responsibility, it increases the burden to protect civilians. The idea that urban warfare naturally leads to high civilian casualties has been used before to excuse disproportionate force, but under international law, the standard isn’t “less than maximum possible harm.”

And as for the claim that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure: even if true, it doesn’t mean those sites become fair game. The laws of war don’t disappear when combatants violate them. If anything, that’s when the obligation to uphold them matters most.

You admit that them denying aid is an issue, but Israel denying aid is not an isolated policy failure. It’s part of the same pattern: a strategy that treats civilian suffering as secondary or even desirable.

The threat of total displacement should not be dismissed with “hasn’t happened yet.” We’ve already seen what happens when rhetoric about “voluntary relocation” becomes reality.

 

[farce©]

When a white Christian terrorist murders Black people or Jews in a mass shooting and then kills himself, it’s of course not labeled a “suicide bombing,” but it’s clearly a suicide attack. The difference lies in the emotional response it triggers. Acts of terror committed by brown Muslims evoke a visceral fear and revulsion rooted in decades of racialized media narratives.

What do we usually call this kind of selective emotional response? There’s a word for it. But don’t worry—he’s not racist, because “Islam isn’t a race,” right?

The broader point is this: any country with a fragmented civil society is vulnerable to religious extremism. Just look at the United States.

When a white Christian goes on a shooting spree in the US, the perpetrator is typically labelled "mentally ill" and the conversation is changed to the state of mental health in our country.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

When a white Christian goes on a shooting spree in the US, the perpetrator is typically labelled "mentally ill" and the conversation is changed to the state of mental health in our country.

That really hasn't been my experience. Off the top of my head, I can think of three Muslim mass shootings. There was the guy at the army base in Texas. There was some concern about Muslim terrorism with that guy. Same with the husband wife in California. But just like most other mass shootings, they were mostly forgotten in a week or two. Pulse nightclub waa a Muslim guy but I really felt more like an anti-gay thing. I don't remember any fear of Muslims with that one.

There was the Boston marathon bombing but I guess because the dudes were pretty white, the Muslim thing didn't really lead to some sort of Muslim panic. Even the more recent one with the guy trucking down Canal Street in New Orleans didn't lead to some crazy mass hysteria of muslims. The only one that did was of course 911.

 

[ZZLPHeels]

If you're going to start citing random attacks -- I mean, the math there isn't going to be pretty for non-Muslims. Was Pittsburgh Tree of Life a war zone? Christchurch New Zealand? Wherever in Norway Anders Brevik killed like 50 children? The slaughter of Bosnians and Albanians by the very Christian Serbian population?

Sure, let's go down that road. Since 2000, Islamic terrorism has caused more deaths than all other forms of terrorism combined. You can pick out a few incidents....I can pick out hundreds. The biggest victims of Jihadist terror are other Muslims, but we've seen how devastating those attacks have been on the west.

 

[ZZLPHeels]

When a white Christian goes on a shooting spree in the US, the perpetrator is typically labelled "mentally ill" and the conversation is changed to the state of mental health in our country.

Dylan Roof is rightly labeled as a terrorist. Same with the dude in El Paso and the guy who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh. Those things just don't happen to be nearly as deadly as incidents of Islamic terrorism.

 

[superrific]

Sure, let's go down that road. Since 2000, Islamic terrorism has caused more deaths than all other forms of terrorism combined. You can pick out a few incidents....I can pick out hundreds.

No, let's not. First, we can't possibly litigate this question here. More importantly, the point I was making, as many posters have made already, is that "terrorism" is a fickle and unreliable term that is much more ideological than descriptive.

Would you call what the Burmese are doing to the Rohingya terrorism? Why not? Because it's perpetrated by a government? They are still slaughtering, raping and displacing a muslim population for no reason. The Rohingya genocide alone outnumbers terrorist attacks by a large margin. Uighurs? If it's a government policy, then it's OK?

Plus, the use of 2000 as a starting point is arbitrary. Go back a little further and the list of major terror attacks is dominated by the IRA and the Basque separatists. Peace agreements were achieved in those conflicts. In Israel, though . . .

 

[ZenMode]

Your framing does a lot of heavy lifting to downplay the scale and meaning of civilian death. Saying “Israel could have killed more” doesn’t prove restraint. It shifts the moral goalpost like always. Imagine applying that logic to any other conflict:

“Yes, tens of thousands of civilians are dead, but it could’ve been worse.” You’re just defending mass death.

Not just could. If Israel was simply indifferent, the numbers would have been much higher.

No matter how many times you say it, population density doesn’t absolve responsibility, it increases the burden to protect civilians. The idea that urban warfare naturally leads to high civilian casualties has been used before to excuse disproportionate force, but under international law, the standard isn’t “less than maximum possible harm.”

I agree, which is why it's important that Israel continue to warn people so they can evacuate buildings and use precise weapons.

And as for the claim that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure: even if true, it doesn’t mean those sites become fair game. The laws of war don’t disappear when combatants violate them. If anything, that’s when the obligation to uphold them matters most.

I agree and the approach that Israel is taking, as it relates to civilians infrastructure, seems to show that they are successfully operating within the laws of war. But, again, I'm not saying Israel is perfect. I'm saying the claim of moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel is just wrong and there's objective evidence of that.

You admit that them denying aid is an issue, but Israel denying aid is not an isolated policy failure. It’s part of the same pattern: a strategy that treats civilian suffering as secondary or even desirable.

Given the circumstances, I think it's fair to say that there is going to be some civilian suffering. The question is how much is too much.

The threat of total displacement should not be dismissed with “hasn’t happened yet.” We’ve already seen what happens when rhetoric about “voluntary relocation” becomes reality.

 

[ZZLPHeels]

No, let's not. First, we can't possibly litigate this question here. More importantly, the point I was making, as many posters have made already, is that "terrorism" is a fickle and unreliable term that is much more ideological than descriptive.

Would you call what the Burmese are doing to the Rohingya terrorism? Why not? Because it's perpetrated by a government? They are still slaughtering, raping and displacing a muslim population for no reason. The Rohingya genocide alone outnumbers terrorist attacks by a large margin. Uighurs? If it's a government policy, then it's OK?

Plus, the use of 2000 as a starting point is arbitrary. Go back a little further and the list of major terror attacks is dominated by the IRA and the Basque separatists. Peace agreements were achieved in those conflicts. In Israel, though . . .

The discussion in question was about whether or not suicide attacks and terrorist attacks against civilians were cultural. In particular, whether they were part of radical Islamist/jihadist culture. I believe that the answer to that question is 100% yes. There is a substantial group of radicals that believes to their core that every person who doesn't subscribe to their particular brand of Islam needs to die. They have acted on these beliefs numerous times. We're not talking about a couple of people here. We're talking about a sustained terrorist campaign over multiple decades all across the world.

Pointing this out is not Islamophobic, because the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject these people. Many Muslims have risked or even given their lives fighting against these people. There is absolutely a cultural element that binds these radicals together, though.

Jihadist terror is cultural just like COVID denialism is cultural amongst a large segment of the MAGA crowd. Yes, there are some COVID conspiracy nutjobs who don't belong to the right but the biggest problem has been with the ones that wear red hats and vote for orange people.

 

[Ramrouser]

That really hasn't been my experience. Off the top of my head, I can think of three Muslim mass shootings. There was the guy at the army base in Texas. There was some concern about Muslim terrorism with that guy. Same with the husband wife in California. But just like most other mass shootings, they were mostly forgotten in a week or two. Pulse nightclub with a Muslim guy but I really felt more like an anti-gay thing. I don't remember any fear of Muslims with that one.

There was the Boston marathon bombing but I guess because the dudes were pretty white, the Muslim thing didn't really lead to some sort of Muslim panic. Even the more recent one with the guy trucking down Canal Street in New Orleans didn't lead to some crazy mass hysteria of muslims. The only one that did was of course 911.

DC Sniper. John Allen Muhammad.