56 dead Israelis, of which 3 civilians. 1,140 Palestinians, of which “most” civilians.
I mean, fuck.
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Hey, you got the scores back to front.
But if you ask a Zionist, an Israeli is worth 20 Palestinians, so he’d say it’s about even anyway.
/runs
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Jesus, but I’d run too!
I can’t stand this.
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So sit.
Unless you have a better idea… I’m stumped.
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Israel intensified its assault following the deaths of 10 of its soldiers in cross-border attacks on Monday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning of a long conflict ahead.
Cause hey, there’s this whole shipment of US-sourced arms to get through.
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I haven’t bought anything to do with Israel for a long, long time. I love Jewish people, I have a natural empathy with them. But this is just way too much.
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If I was to pick a bunch I empathise with most, it’d be the Scandinavians, by a long shot.
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If it’s going to make any difference - https://campaigns.amnesty.org/campaigns/us-stop-arming-israel :-/
There are similar campaigns going on in other countries too, because it appears that Israel buys weapons from almost everyone that makes them.
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oh yes, me too. they’re very easy to be with.
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Funny, I don’t remember the part of the bible where it says “20 eyes for an eye”…
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Apparently there are lots of bits of the Bible no serious scholar remembers.
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How so? I’m not sure I know what you mean.
Empathy doesn’t really have a “how so”. I just get along with the general way. It might help that I’m a humanist.
Edit: I do get along with most everyone in the world.
IMO (should go without saying, but so there is no doubt)
Hamas is totally playing Israel. They’ve figured out a way to provoke Israel to kill hundreds of civilians. They’ve found a figurative button they can push that provokes an autonomic response.
Hamas does not want to “liberate” the Gaza strip. Hamas has one purpose only: Harm Israel, by any means possible, no tactic is unacceptable.
They can’t do it militarily, but they have learned that they can reliably provoke Israeli counter-battery fire, and if they launch one of their overgrown bottle rockets from beside a school (or mosque, or hospital, or what-have-you) the IDF will oblige them by leveling a 50m radius circle centered on the firing point.
The killing of those Palestinians (women, children, elderly, etc.) is not just “acceptable” but actually the objective. With each successive atrocity, Israel becomes more and more alienated from the Western nations upon whom its continued existence depends.
And the dead? For the most part, they’re faithful Sunnis, so (in the twisted logic of Hamas) they go straight to Paradise, since they were martyred in a Holy war.
If Israel can’t find a more creative solution than reflexive counter-battery fire, they are doomed to become a pariah state, and Hamas wins
I want to re-iterate, the above is my opinion.
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I saw a couple pictures of some of the rockets before they launched them. They looked almost exactly like what the Mythbusters launched for the Confederate rocket myth. Including the launching platform.
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I think the leaders of both sides benefit politically from continued war, to a certain degree. Hamas seems to have done pretty well at commodifying dead Palestinians, while having an almost neutralised but always present threat on Israel’s borders can’t be bad for Netanyahu’s political objectives either (such as helping to justify the continued possession of Palestinian land). The fact that Hamas isn’t very effective at terrorism doesn’t really have a bearing on how we should see them, and if they actually do things like encouraging people to stay in homes that they know will be destroyed, using aid money and times of peace to prepare attacks rather than improving the lives of Palestinians and launching rockets from schools, hospitals etc., I would want to be very clear in any opposition to Israeli policy and support of Palestine that none of this support goes to Hamas (or is influenced by their strategies).
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Yeah, that.
All those Islamist scumbags are a pack of utter dicks; I’d hope that goes without saying.
I agree, but would like to enlarge the description to “All extremist fundamentalists.”
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In a land of Islamist and Zionist dicks, it’s not surprising that the primary motivation is not to look like a pussy.
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Unfortunately, if you don’t say anything someone will assume that you support the other side. I found that out when I had huge concerns about Euromaidan and its sizable fascist minority. Someone decided that it meant that I supported that other authoritarian arsehole, Vladimir Putin, because I didn’t specifially oppose him as well.
Sometimes people can oppose both sides. It’s what I do in both the Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine conflicts.
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