Trump: "We will take over Gaza and move all Palestinians out"

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ZZLPHeels said:
It is a shame that forebearance and patience was in very short supply on 10/7. Then those 20,000 kids would still be alive.
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Hamas makes up about 2% of the Palestinian population.

I'm not talking about them.
 
superrific said:
You're a firefighter. Did you hear about the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland? 36 people died and others were injured. It was a complex series of events that led up to it, but as I recall from a detailed news report I read a few years ago, here were some of the factors:

1. Guy has some studio space. New developers take over his building and outlaw artists studios. He has to leave.
2. Other artists who were living in their studios were also evicted, leaving them homeless.
3. There's this seemingly abandoned warehouse with plenty of space inside, high ceilings, and the like. Perfect for artists' studios
4. Building owner had no idea what was going on.
5. Original handful of artists move in. The original guy somehow becomes a "master tenant" but the owner pays no attention to what's happening. Then, as word gets out, more artists come in, either to live or to make their art projects
6. The original guy has no idea about fire codes or maintaining a building. He thinks it's pretty cool that he's now at the center of a local art community. He has thoughts of building a new version of Andy Warhol's Warehouse in Soho.
7. More artists come in. Some of them are painters, but some are multimedia artists. Some are sculptors or fabricators who use power tools.
8. At one point, the breakers fail. As they are not living there legally, they can't call to get access to the breaker box. They end up rigging up a circuit to bypass the breakers.

You can see where this is going. Ultimately, there was a huge party there, and the power usage was too high, and the breakers would have tripped except there were no breakers, and the building -- which is not only an old building built prior to modern fire codes, but is also filled with artists' chemicals that are fire accelerants.

Now, as a fire professional, what's your assessment about the cause of this fire? Would you say, "this fire was started because they held a huge party there," or would you say that the cause goes further back than that? In my view, the fire was the result of a long series of decisions, policies and neglect that built up over many, many years. Some of those policies were relatively benign (i.e. kicking the artists out of studios); some of it was ignorant (the so-called master tenant who didn't know how to run a building); some lax supervision; etc.

I would submit that the gaza conflict is like that. Not in the particulars. I don't know who would be analogous to the absent owner or the master tenant or the artists. But the point is, the flash point isn't always the root cause. I would think you of all people would understand that quite well.
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Good analogy, but I would argue that we need to be asking two questions.

Question 1: What caused the fire? It seems like an electrical issue caused the fire, like you pointed out. This is a typically straightforward answer that can usually be pinpointed to a single cause.

Question 2: What caused this fire to be so deadly? That's where everything else that you listed comes into play. A much more complex answer that goes back to an accumulation of decisions and mistakes that built on each other over a period of years.

If we're going to apply that logic to situation in the Middle East, then 10/7 would be the fire that caused everything afterwards up to this point. Everything else was simply existing in the background, just like the people living and hanging out at the Ghost Ship. Without that electrical fault, that fire doesn't start and those people don't die that day. 10/7 was the electrical fault that lit off the invasion of Gaza by Israel. Without 10/7, the other issues are still there, but the situation doesn't ignite in the way that it did.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Sort of why no one expected us to invade Afghanistan after the 1993 WTC bombing but no one was surprised at all when we invaded after 9/11.
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Afghanistan had nothing to do with the 1993 WTV bombing. So that's probably why we didn't take any military action.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Good analogy, but I would argue that we need to be asking two questions.

Question 1: What caused the fire? It seems like an electrical issue caused the fire, like you pointed out. This is a typically straightforward answer that can usually be pinpointed to a single cause.

Question 2: What caused this fire to be so deadly? That's where everything else that you listed comes into play. A much more complex answer that goes back to an accumulation of decisions and mistakes that built on each other over a period of years.

If we're going to apply that logic to situation in the Middle East, then 10/7 would be the fire that caused everything afterwards up to this point. Everything else was simply existing in the background, just like the people living and hanging out at the Ghost Ship. Without that electrical fault, that fire doesn't start and those people don't die that day. 10/7 was the electrical fault that lit off the invasion of Gaza by Israel. Without 10/7, the other issues are still there, but the situation doesn't ignite in the way that it did.
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1. You're not wrong to ask those two questions. They are logically distinct. But they are empirically connected. The whole reason that there could have been an electrical fire like that was they bypassed the breakers. The reason they bypassed the breakers is that they were trying to run a collective artists' studio where an artists' studio should not have been.

All those factors did account for the deadliness but also caused the fire.

2. Is it your opinion that the building would still be standing if not for that party? Because my reading of events is that the building was destined to burn down because the entire arrangement was structurally unsafe. If that party didn't start the fire, something else would have.

Indeed, this is why we have fire codes, right? Buildings have to be built in a certain way because those are the ways that minimize the fire risks. If the building isn't built according to code, and there's a fire, the builder will be facing massive liability, yes?

3. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank was inherently unstable. Israel's policy was to keep evicting people from apartments and cramming them into the studio. It didn't matter if the Palestinians owned the apartments; it was taken, they were shunted off somewhere else. Gaza was under severe economic sanctions, and material scarcity was very high.

I just don't see how you can absolve the Israelis here, any more than you would absolve a slumlord who refused to repair his buildings to bring them up to code. If you want to blame the master tenant more than the absent owner, I don't care about that. But the owner bears considerably liability and his role in the tragedy can't be ignored.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
I think that most people can agree that skirmishes that result in a few fatalities here and there over a period of several months in a region that has experienced intermittent conflict for generations are expected. A major attack that kills over 1,200 people in one day and results in 200+ others being held hostage is a massive escalation of hostilities. Sort of why no one expected us to invade Afghanistan after the 1993 WTC bombing but no one was surprised at all when we invaded after 9/11.
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"skirmishes resulting in a few fatalities here and there" is a hell of a way to couch 243 Palestinians killed by the IDF and Israeli settlers in the first 9 months of 2023.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Which country did we invade in the aftermath of the 1993 bombing?
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Well, we would have had to invade ourselves, since the perps were mostly US citizens. Instead, we let the courts do their jobs and the perps are still locked up and are likely never going to see the outside of a prison.
 
superrific said:
1. You're not wrong to ask those two questions. They are logically distinct. But they are empirically connected. The whole reason that there could have been an electrical fire like that was they bypassed the breakers. The reason they bypassed the breakers is that they were trying to run a collective artists' studio where an artists' studio should not have been.

All those factors did account for the deadliness but also caused the fire.

2. Is it your opinion that the building would still be standing if not for that party? Because my reading of events is that the building was destined to burn down because the entire arrangement was structurally unsafe. If that party didn't start the fire, something else would have.

Indeed, this is why we have fire codes, right? Buildings have to be built in a certain way because those are the ways that minimize the fire risks. If the building isn't built according to code, and there's a fire, the builder will be facing massive liability, yes?

3. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank was inherently unstable. Israel's policy was to keep evicting people from apartments and cramming them into the studio. It didn't matter if the Palestinians owned the apartments; it was taken, they were shunted off somewhere else. Gaza was under severe economic sanctions, and material scarcity was very high.

I just don't see how you can absolve the Israelis here, any more than you would absolve a slumlord who refused to repair his buildings to bring them up to code. If you want to blame the master tenant more than the absent owner, I don't care about that. But the owner bears considerably liability and his role in the tragedy can't be ignored.
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Thanks super. I'm not absolving Israel at all. I'm simply stating, reasonably IMO, that Israel would not have launched its massive invasion of Gaza had 10/7 not occurred. They simply would have continued with the status quo (intermittent skirmishes) which was tolerable for Israel. Had Israel simply decided to pursue the same invasion on its own without the justification that 10/7 gave it, it likely would not have gotten any support from the US or anyone else.
 
superrific said:
Well, we would have had to invade ourselves, since the perps were mostly US citizens. Instead, we let the courts do their jobs and the perps are still locked up and are likely never going to see the outside of a prison.
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it's sad for the people on the ground but LOL for those people here who didn't feel like Joe/Kamala didn't speak up enough for the brown and held out there vote.

Dems need to be better in messaging, but all these groups who voted against their self interest for this criminal/TV showman are going to find out...I just hope it doesn't go all the way off the rails. I hope there still is a deep state.
 
4thgenheel said:
"skirmishes resulting in a few fatalities here and there" is a hell of a way to couch 243 Palestinians killed by the IDF and Israeli settlers in the first 9 months of 2023.
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Not to mention the literal thousands of missiles launched by Hamas and its affiliates into civilian areas of Israel during the same time period. Doesn't change a thing about my post. Skirmishes are not the equivalent of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
I think that most people can agree that skirmishes that result in a few fatalities here and there over a period of several months in a region that has experienced intermittent conflict for generations are expected. A major attack that kills over 1,200 people in one day and results in 200+ others being held hostage is a massive escalation of hostilities. Sort of why no one expected us to invade Afghanistan after the 1993 WTC bombing but no one was surprised at all when we invaded after 9/11.
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Do you think it would have been the same if Hamas had killed 200 Israelis over that time period? How many fatalities are acceptable before one reacts? Would it have been less tragic if Hamas killed 1200 Israelis, but over 2 years instead of in one attack? I'm just trying to understand where the threshold is before it is no longer "expected"
 
RaiGuy said:
Do you think it would have been the same if Hamas had killed 200 Israelis over that time period? How many fatalities are acceptable before one reacts? Would it have been less tragic if Hamas killed 1200 Israelis, but over 2 years instead of in one attack? I'm just trying to understand where the threshold is before it is no longer "expected"
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Hamas tried to kill thousands of Israelis over that time period. Unfortunately for Hamas, and fortunately for Israel, Israel has a solid air defense system. I'm having a hard time understanding why some people can't comprehend the magnitude of a terrorist attack almost on the scale of 9/11 generating a different response than a typical skirmish that has been happening every other day for years.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Thanks super. I'm not absolving Israel at all. I'm simply stating, reasonably IMO, that Israel would not have launched its massive invasion of Gaza had 10/7 not occurred.
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1. This is not only reasonable; it's incontestable. The pushback you're getting is that you seem to be drawing other, unwarranted inferences from that fact.

2. Al-Qaeda had many legitimate grievances against the United States. There was no reason for the US to station troops in Saudi Arabia after the first Iraq war. But we did, because we were basically uninterested in the opinions of anyone else but the House of Saud. There were other indignities as well.

Did the US military bases in Saudi Arabia cause 9/11? I mean, yes it did, in the "but for" cause sense. But most people hold Al-Q responsible for its decision to blow up buildings, as well they should. On the other hand, we've subsequently tried to pursue policies (more under Obama than W) that take greater account of the impact of American foreign policy on the people who live in a region and not just the heads of state. We've not had a 9/11 since then.

We also invaded Iraq at tremendous cost of lives (both American and Iraqi). Did Al-Q "cause" that by blowing up the Trade Centers. I would say no, using the same principle that I applied above: there was nothing necessary about what happened in Iraq. We did that. We chose to do that. The state and defense departments either turned a blind eye to many of the abuses (Abu Ghraib) or actively supported torture. To single out 9/11 as the cause for the Iraq War or the forever war in Afghanistan is neither logically sound nor helpful in any way to preventing further attacks. And of course, the legit grievances of Al-Q pale in comparison to the legit grievances of the Palestinians in Gaza.

3. I sense that you want the world to be simple, because when it's complicated it's hard to understand. A lot of times on this board, my contributions to threads are to say, "actually, this is really complicated." Sometimes I know about the complexities but it's too long to get into, but more frequently, the inference I draw from "it's complicated" is the recognition that I can't reliably assess the situation. Whatever I think I know is probably not correct, and/or doesn't go very far.

And I admit, that sucks. "It's complicated" is rarely a satisfying answer to anything. The rational response, of course, is to vest policy decisions in experts who do understand the complications, but that sucks too. For one thing, it sucks for the expert. It makes their world very small. I know a guy (husband of an ex-gf) who was fairly prominent in the field of hunger policy in Africa. He did a lot of work with the Gates Foundation, and for a while he was running their African hunger programs. The cost was that he didn't know much about infectious disease in Africa, or hunger in Asia or North America for that matter. He became interested in hunger programs from the world of agricultural technology (he had a PhD in biochem, I think, or something similar), but after 20 years of hunger work, his degree and previous technical experience were useless.

It also sucks for the public, who have to trust the experts and it's hard to evaluate their work because we know none of the complexities. On the whole, though, wouldn't you think it's better for the experts to be making the decisions rather than the public at large -- even though we know that the experts will occasionally make mistakes because a) it's complicated; b) nobody is perfect; and c) sometimes experts, like people in any organization, ascend to a role that exceeds their competence. And you can't really know that until the person is incompetent.

This is the way the world works. Burning it down because you think, on the basis of shallow knowledge at best, that some experts made bad decisions is irrational and destructive.

The more time we have to spend understanding any specific problem, the less time we have for understanding other problems. We can know a little bit about a lot of things, or a lot about a few things. Both are unpalatable choices, but that's the way our world works after centuries of industrialization and scientific discovery.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Hamas tried to kill thousands of Israelis over that time period. Unfortunately for Hamas, and fortunately for Israel, Israel has a solid air defense system. I'm having a hard time understanding why some people can't comprehend the magnitude of a terrorist attack almost on the scale of 9/11 generating a different response than a typical skirmish that has been happening every other day for years.
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I'm having a hard time understanding why some people can't comprehend that this wasn't a random, isolated incident and they ignore the months and years leading up to this. It's also ironic that the killing of nearly 50,000 Palestinians is justified because Hamas killed 1200. I mean, sorry, they were "collateral damage" because shit like that happens in war, amiright?
 
RaiGuy said:
I'm having a hard time understanding why some people can't comprehend that this wasn't a random, isolated incident and they ignore the months and years leading up to this. It's also ironic that the killing of nearly 50,000 Palestinians is justified because Hamas killed 1200. I mean, sorry, they were "collateral damage" because shit like that happens in war, amiright?
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Sorry Rai, sounds like "victim blaming" to me. We can go back and forth about Israel's conduct in the war, but the bottom line and indisputable truth is that without 10/7, the invasion of Gaza simply doesn't happen.
 
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