Do not assume that heterogenous countries should be compared with homogenous countries.
EDIT: For the person strawmanning me as a racist:
Consider a nation like Japan, or Finland. Everyone is of similar genetic background, similar wealth, similar living conditions, similar strengths, similar weaknesses, similar struggles, similar educational opportunities, similar transportation requirements, similar family background.
Compare that to the US: Wildly different genetic backgrounds, massive wealth gaps, massive differences in living conditions, massive differences in strengths and weaknesses, massively different struggles, massively different opportunities, different transportation requirements, different family backgrounds.
In Finland or Japan, the amount of empathy you naturally have for other people is very strong, because you can see how most people are just like you, and are inherently less likely to be violent to people you see as similar to yourself. In the US, developing hate for the "outsider" is much easier, no matter who it may be - take last week with the shooting of the healthcare CEO. Diversity is great for people who benefit from diversity; but there will (in my opinion) always be a subset for whom diversity is a temptation to engage in tribalism.
It would stand to reason then, that a heterogeneous country is going to be inherently more violent, and have a higher incarceration rate, than a homogenous one, and therefore comparing violence between the two is like comparing apples-to-oranges.
EDIT 2: For the secondary "racist" complainant:
You're making the assumption that me pointing out "genetic differences" implies superiority/inferiority. I'm merely saying that it affects whether Random Normal Person A views Random Normal Person B as being similar to themselves. Even if Random Normal Person A is not deliberately racist, it does follow that violence is more likely between people who don't see themselves in each other.
Even if we are not deliberately racist, humans are inherently tribal. Heck, we're tribal over blue bubbles versus green bubbles, and letting something that stupid control interaction. There's no way skin color does not also have an effect, consciously or not, maliciously or not, causing an estrangement between the two groups, without implying that blue is better than green or vice versa.
The point is: I'm saying we have differences. Differences (as seen even on smartphones) cause tribal behavior. Tribal behavior (I am theorizing) causes increased violence between tribes inherently. Because of this, a nation with many differences, should not be compared to nations with few.
Could you please reply to peoples comments instead of just editing your statement which gives no indication that a reply was made?
As to your second edit. I can understand the point made about tribalism and could even mostly agree that I’d expect to see some increased amount of friction between multiple groups of ethnicities based on some dark human instincts. But that isn’t what you started this thread on.
You asked if they deserved it. You’ve made a moral statement and then started bringing race into it as an argument for whether or not they did. That’s racism.
Also inb4 you claim that “genetic differences” that people will have tribal reactions to isn’t a 1:1 analogue for race, like people can tell if you have some mutation in a subtle gene different from their own
You can ask someone their zip code and you can figure out from that their chance of being in prison during their life compared to others. Crime is almost entirely an economic issue. There's no reason to bring genetics into this.
Whether anyone deserves it, vengeance has never been an effective deterrent to crime. This is why most countries focus on rehabilitation rather than just torturing people. The US will never learn this lesson.
> EDIT: For the person strawmanning me as a racist:
Consider a nation like Japan, or Finland. Everyone is of similar genetic background, similar wealth, similar living conditions, similar strengths, similar weaknesses, similar struggles, similar educational opportunities, similar transportation requirements, similar family background.
Claiming it’s a strawmen and then opening up with “genetic differences” when you were suggesting that people “deserved it”. How is that proving that this isn’t a racist belief?
There is no good capitalism in the health insurance field. Every dollar of revenue that goes to the insurer is a dollar not going to patient care. Best case you're a friendly parasitic middleman.
must not have been clear then. what's bad about a site you can log in to and share your information so that it helps others? and provides you with information and data that allows you to make better, more well-informed decisions for you and your loved ones? that's absolutely good by any rational standard, no question about it.
I think you're well intentioned and I appreciate that, but the biggest problems with health insurance/healthcare in the US are so well entrenched I don't think it can be fixed short of tearing it down and rebuilding. My suggestion would be to reach out to a law firm you trust and go over your ideas to see if they'd be viable.
As a user, there is zero chance I'd be comfortable with uploading detailed health information about myself anywhere. That's just too sensitive and personal to share.
I'm also not convinced that such a database of information would be terribly useful, at least in the US. Although I don't know, I'm totally open to being corrected here.
What decisions would I be able to change based on it?
Our tax money is funding these atrocities. I felt the same way about the genocide in Yemen.
>Around the world, countless marginalized groups face equally dire or even worse conditions and would welcome similar support from these people
I don't think this is true. The majority of people dying of or suffering from starvation on earth right now are in Gaza.
>Yet, these so-called human rights advocates remain willfully ignorant of anyone or anything happening outside of the US and the Israel/Palestine conlflict.
You have blinders on if you think this is the case.
>Given this, how can anyone take these protesters seriously when they exhibit a groupthink mentality, lacking self-awareness or critical thinking, and behaving more like zombies than independent thinkers?
I'd rather you didn't take us seriously if you're not going to fully understand our goals or reasons for our beliefs.
"confirmed" data from Gaza at the moment is unreliable. The people who were doing the counting have either been killed or cleansed from the area. The official death toll is still around 40k despite the reality being closer to 100-200k.
Regardless, total deaths don't matter, only deaths that were the result of crimes matter, in this context.
Some of those deaths are going to be legal targets killed during combat, which is not evidence of a war crime. You have to split things out for the numbers to mean anything.
But the problem is that Israel's style of warfare is (intentionally or not) blurring the distinction between those numbers, by using methods of combat that have exceptionally high rates of collateral damage.
The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.
You might hit a lot of legitimate targets with this, but it's also guaranteed you will impact all the civilians in the area.
Generally, in this entire war (and also long before), Israel is far too quick with the "Human shields"/"collateral damage" argument to my liking, and using it as an excuse to basically disregard considerations for civilians at all.
(It's also instructive to see how different the hostages and palestinian civilians are treated in IDF considerations, despite both groups technically being "human shields")
> But the problem is that Israel's style of warfare is (intentionally or not) blurring the distinction between those numbers, by using methods of combat that have exceptionally high rates of collateral damage.
I'm not sure that is true. Urban combat is notoriously bloody, and other conflicts of this nature have seen similar orders of magnitude deaths.
Additionally, civilian deaths are not neccesarily indicative of war crimes. Certain types of collateral damage are allowed where others are not (rules are complex and quite frankly oblivious), so you would also have to separate the legal collateral damage from the illegal collateral damage.
> The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.
Well that allegation is the main basis for this warrant. However so far it seems like only a very small porportion of the deaths are attributable to that practise. To the point where so far the icc found that there wasnt enough evidence for a charge of extermination. I think about roughly 15 people have to die for it to be considered extermination. So it seems like so far there isn't evidence that a significant number of deaths in this conflict are related to that method of war. Of course new evidence can always come to light later. (Its important to note that siege warfare is still a warcrime even if nobody dies. The counter side is israel would probably try and argue (for the recent activity at least) that they gave civilians an opportunity to evacuate and thus it wasn't directed at civilians).
> the problem is that Israel's style of warfare ... The most extreme instances
Yep. The complication is, the Strip is close to being totally dependent on Israel, and yet chose war. I doubt any other country ruled by right-wingers, with that much power over their already (diplomatically, economically, socially) cornered enemy, would have acted any differently. I guess, the sequence of events reeks of desperation & despair from all sides and has ended up exposing one & all.
It's not as if life was particularly pleasant there before the war. Israel was already before restricting the maximally attainable quality of life. Or as if the Palestinian control group in the West Bank who had chosen cooperation was faring any better.
Also that stuff is exactly what international humanitarian law is supposed to prevent. Obligations of the occupying power and all.
You're describing conditions that occur in many asymmetric/guerilla wars. None of these are novel tactics whose acceptability must be evaluated from first principles now.
Further, none of these should come as surprises to Israeli commanders, who will have seen these tactics from Hamas in the past.
The bottom line is that any military can only control its own conduct as it represents its citizens in battle.
> You're describing conditions that occur in many asymmetric/guerilla wars. None of these are novel tactics whose acceptability must be evaluated from first principles now.
Some of those conditions are similar, some aren't. In most cases, the group doing guerilla warfare isn't actively trying to get their own citizens killed, or if you want to be generous, simply doesn't care if they get killed or not.
That said, you're partially right that these conditions have occurred before. That's why many military experts make comparisons to similar situations, like parts of the Iraq war or even closer, fighting against ISIS.
In most of these analyses I've seen, they claim that the IDF performs as well as the US army did in similar situations in terms of protection of civilians, civilian to combatant killed ratios, etc.
> Further, none of these should come as surprises to Israeli commanders, who will have seen these tactics from Hamas in the past.
I don't think anyone is surprised by how Hamas is acting, except much of the international community who simply refuses to accept how Hamas is acting.
> The bottom line is that any military can only control its own conduct as it represents its citizens in battle.
Yes, but if there are legitimate military goals to achieve - and there certainly were legitimate goals to achieve in the beginning of the war - then the military has to fight the battle its enemy is giving it. There simply isn't a way to fight Hamas without inflicting civilian casualties, because of the way it fights. You can choose not to fight it at all, but that wasn't really a choice that was available to Israel on October 7th. (Whether the war should've continued for so long is a different matter.)
The ICC doesn't claim 41 deaths were the result of war crimes. That claim is made by an irrelevant Wikipedia article that is undergoing an edit war. It was recently switched from "62,413 conservative estimate" to "41+"
ICC doesn't claim how many deaths are due to war crimes. GP is purposefully sowing misinformation
GP is not citing the ICC. The ICC never claims 41 deaths are confirmed. GP is citing a Wikipedia article which is undergoing an edit war. The Wikipedia page had cited 62,413 deaths and then was switched to a pro-Israel source that instead says "41+"
>unless something is documented in a very specific gate-keeper approved way
Using strict process and critical methodology is the only want to approximate truth.
> observable reality right before our own eyes.
We don't observe reality correctly with our eyes. We (including you and me) are naked monkeys. Petty, vindictive, and biased. Palestinians and Israeli Jews are just like us but
live in a cesspool of religion, anger and violent history.
Pretty sure even Israel has said the Gaza health ministry’s numbers are usually correct. They have also been found to be generally correct in the past.
Lastly the lower death count is the official health ministry number but the higher estimates are from others, e.g. The Lancet.
> Abraham Wyner, a Pennsylvania professor of statistics, wrote in Tablet that the GHM casualty figures were "faked".[68] Wyner's article was analyzed by professor Joshua Loftus of the London School of Economics, who concluded Wyner's article was "one of the worst abuses of statistics I’ve ever seen".
Do you need one when that ministry reports casualties exactly to single digits within minutes of any incident? Like "567 killed in Israeli attack on Gaza hospital", just look down at your keyboard to see where that number came from.
This is completely false. Gaza Health Ministry provides the most accurate data. You could also just go on X or TikTok and see dozens of Palestinians murdered by the IDF every single day.
Is Israel defending itself when it creates settlements in land it doesn't own (and that even its allies do not consider to be Israel's) and publicly says that it will not stop doing it in the west bank? Or is that not aggression when Israel does it?
They are one and the same. There's no separation for Palestinians, they are a single nation. And Israel has shown that the only way to stop settlements is through armed combat, which is why they have stopped settling in Gaza and done the opposite by institutionalizing colonization and settlement in the west bank the moment the west bank laid down the arms and stopped the armed resistance.
They have also blockaded Gaza since before Hamas so again, that's an act of aggression by definition. You can't just blockade (to the point of attacking any ship trying to make it to gaza) another territory and claim that it is aggression when they attack you.
Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, including forcefully ejecting Israeli settlers, as a show of good will for future lasting peace negotiations, however shortly afterwards Hamas was elected and seized control, hence the blockade since it is a massive security problem for Israel.
Are you saying that Israel wasn't controlling the seaways of Gaza between 2005-2008?
And yes that's my point. Gaza hasn't seen any more settlement since, because it has never stopped armed resistance. What has Israel done to the west bank when it stopped fighting and kicked out armed groups? Pushed for tens of thousands of settlements per year, in complete disregard of international law and with 0 consequences.
Regardless, Israel was actually discussing resuming settlement even in Gaza before the October attacks, as Netanyahu's voter base adores settlement. And I'm not sure why you'd think that not settling in Gaza somehow makes up for the constant territorial theft in the west bank. Again, Palestinians see themselves as one nation. It's like saying that Russia only stole territory from the Donbass, not from west Ukraine so somehow that's a show of good faith lol
Comparison with Ukraine breaks down because Russia didn’t occupy west not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t, whereas with Israel and Gaza the power asymmetry is insane.
And yes, Gaza and West Bank are separate entities with very different realities, both in terms of day to day life and political landscape.
Israel listened to the worlds advice by retreating voluntarily(!) from Gaza, and in return has only received more criticism, of course that fuels resentment inside of Israel, rightfully so I must add. And since October 7th we can throw out all of that out of the window, past reality no longer applies and Israel is no longer letting cowardly UN dictate its demise, plain and simple.
I don’t think West Bank settlements are a good idea, but I also don’t know a way out of it now, since everything that has been done in the past year is further prove to the Jews that they need Israel. I live in Europe, and I feel significantly less safe when traveling further west(thankfully we have negligible Muslim population here in Baltics).
Regardless of what you are saying, Palestinians do not see themselves as separate entities. Saying otherwise does not make it less true
>since October 7th we can throw out all of that out of the window, past reality no longer applies and Israel is no longer letting cowardly UN dictate its demise, plain and simple.
Ha, that's funny because that's true but not for Israel. Israel has shown what it does to groups who try to stop fighting and engage in a dialogue(west bank militant groups). They get absolutely trashed, and have to watch as they see their land stolen by settlers and treated like vermin in the land they used to live in (because the settlers have complete IDF backing). That's why they won't make that mistake again, Israel has shown what it does to groups who stop fighting
>I don’t think West Bank settlements are a good idea, but I also don’t know a way out of it now, since everything that has been done in the past year is further prove to the Jews that they need Israel.
Extremely tired trope that is used to justify everything Israel does. The only issue with that is that Israel has had complete, full backing of every western nation materially, diplomatically, and strategically. On the other hand, Palestinians have had no real support from any country of importance, while their land has been slowly shrinking in full view because of Israel's illegal settlements. But yeah, it's truly Israel that's alone in the world lol.
Civilians in Ukraine are normally evacuated to safer parts of Ukraine or other European countries. Unfortunately Gaza is tiny and no countries are accepting war refugees.
Yeah, I've heard all those official talking points a thousand times.
I've also seen Israeli officials openly dehumanizing and calling for the mass murder of Palestinians, and theft of their land. And I've seen the graphic results.
There's an undeniable reality here and sadly it doesn't align with your official government talking points.
Otherwise, one has to reckon with the fact that Netanyahu's party's founding document doesn't look great, either, as it uses "from the river to the sea", which we're now told is a genocidal saying.
