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The most macabre humor is taking place over on Eric Levitz’ Twitter/X account where commenters are taking him to task for making the distinction without a difference that Israeli babies without heads were found in the Hamas carnage, but that did not necessarily indicate they were beheaded.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDAHL
Alrighty then.
edited to add: Levitz is an editor at New York magazine. I’m not sure what lead to this softening of language about Hamas atrocities, but I can guess.
What is the source for this thing about the beheadings of babies? I just read this article by Eric Levitz, and I thought it was a very good opinion peace but saw nothing of parsing beheading language.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023...is-doomed.html
I also watched CBS this morning's opinion piece by Hussain Ibish, also trying to neutralize extremist nationalism on both sides.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xtXH1Rzsy0
The source is Eric Levitz’ own Twitter utterings 9 hours ago. His comments are still there, I just checked.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
But here is a screenshot.
Attachment 5659
OK, I went to twitter to see it more clearly... that was a dumb comment for sure, but based on the what he says in the article, he is NOT an apologist for Hamas... in fact, he's the opposite.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Yes, agreed. I figured from his name he was a Jew and that’s why I went out to find the same article you did.Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine
and I’m surprised he said what he said on Twitter. It’s a very deliberate statement. Something is prompting it – his magazine, his lefty loo friends?
A final thought on this nasty business: Eric Levitz today explained his odd tweet as wanting to be precise in representing forensic outcomes.
While I don’t think precision is all that important on this topic, I guess I can see where a professional writer with a wide audience (of East Coast liberals…cough cough) would want to accurately represent a very specific horrific situation. I will cut him slack, poor guy.
Iran’s other proxies in the region have been active. I see there have been sporadic clashes with Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border. The USS Carney has spent the last couple of weeks in the Red Sea intercepting Houthi missiles and drones launched out of Yemen.
I wonder what the end game for Israel would be. I can imagine after all the brutality is said and done, the young people in Gaza will want to grow up to be freedom fighters.
Survival?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
Quote:
I can imagine after all the brutality is said and done, the young people in Gaza will want to grow up to be freedom fighters.
Hamas spokesmen have publicly admitted that the brutality against Israelis will never end until the state of Israel and all Jews have been removed from the face of the earth. I suspect that promotes a little freedom fighting on the Jewish side of the border as well.
It certainly paints a picture of eternal conflict until one or the other has killed all the others. I suspect Israel has the upper hand in ultimate survival, but not protection against rocket and terrorist attacks. Although the odds of escalation from other counties seems a decent possibility right now and all bets are off.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
Yes. When a group makes no secret of a policy of genocide, and has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use civilians as human shields, an accommodative response would not seem productive to me. I think referring to the people specifically targeting little children and old people as “freedom fighters” rings a bit hollow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
Survival.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
Whereas the end game for Hamas is the extermination of the Jewish people.
Freedom fighters? I'm not sure that phrase means what you think it means, in this context.Quote:
I can imagine after all the brutality is said and done, the young people in Gaza will want to grow up to be freedom fighters.
They cannot eliminate Hamas,, they can only beat them into the ground and buy time, maybe a generation of time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
Man, Israeli intelligence really screwed up. Hamas was conducting military drills as they always do but Israel didn’t think much of it. They were overconfident with their wall, and theirvtechnical set ups to monitor Hamas.
I have to hand it to the nasty buggers, Hamas took everyone by surprise with the power and scope of their October 7 attack.
I think a few heads need to roll at the top of Israeli government when the smoke clears on this.
I'm getting ideas that Israel is looking at some scaled version of extermination in Gaza as well. They at least seem to be leading in the death count. I'm not defending anything, I just see a spiral of escalation with no end. Survival is an easy term for a more complicated end game. I suspect there are many hoping to survive in Gaza, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
In my context for the discussion I would say that freedom fighters are a version of jihad extremists bent on the elimination of Israel as a Jewish nation. There are probably other meanings in other contexts.
Perpetual war?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
I think that's what Hamas has in mind. According to Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad:Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and it it must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force. … [cut]
… We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs. …
HAMAD: The occupation must come to an end.
Q: Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?
HAMAD: No, I am talking about all the Palestinian lands.
Q: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?
HAMAD: Yes, of course.
So in your context the SS could be called freedom fighters as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
No. I think they were called storm troopers. They are both just heroic names adopted by their followers. You could probably google Muslim freedom fighters for a more specific description than mine. Militant Hamas is a terrorist organization, plain and simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDAHL
I think anyone who refers to either group as “freedom fighters” suffers from a certain lack of moral and linguistic clarity. Sort of like when the BBC can’t summon up the fortitude to refer to Hamas as “terrorists”.
Would you call he SS storm troopers or a terrorist organization.Quote:
Originally Posted by LDAHL
Yes. Absolutely. I don’t see how anyone with a soul or a functioning mind could think otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
When there is a bombing in Gaza and a twelve year old boy who has lost his family or a leg says he wants to grow up to be a freedom fighter, there should be no question as to what he means. His definition and ours are totally different. Sam Harris has a good recent podcast called The Sin of Moral Equivalence in his Waking Up series. It's only 12 minutes or so and somewhat addresses this exact issue, if interested.
I like Sam Harris’s take on Islam, the Islamic state, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
A hawk can call itself a handsaw, but that doesn’t make it so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
Out curiosity, in your mind and with your theoretical 12-year-old boy, do you think he does not have an his mind to kill Jews? I mean, primarily objective to kill the Jews?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
In one of my many meandering podcasts around the webs I ran across a man who talked about his childhood in a westernized Middle .eastern country, can’t remember where. He went to public school with children of many ethnic backgrounds. He tells about a class assignment where kids were to stand up and talk about what they want to be when they grow up, and he said one of his classmates, an actual friend of his, stood up to say he wanted to be able to kill Jews when he grew up. laughs and approval ensued.
Those thoughts are endemic
Well, first of all the 12 year old boy is not theoretical. At least as it was relayed to me by a friend who picked it up in the mainstream news of some sort. He used the exact words, "freedom fighter". (Too bad LDAH wasn't there to correct him). If I could imagine what he was thinking, I'd say yes, killing Jews would be the obvious basic reaction. Probably the more educated answer would be destroying Israel as a Jewish nation and restoring the Holy Land to it's rightful owner. Which of course would involve killing Jews in addition to pay back killings. I'm sure it's more complicated than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
I think what Sam pointed out is the cultural differences between what is right and wrong among Israel and Palestine. My take is that he is no friend of Hamas (or the Muslins in general) for that reason. I'd like to think that our society has become more civilized, but us Christian white males don't exactly have a squeaky clean perception of cultural right and wrong when it comes to genocide of Native Americans or the hanging of African Americans in the early part of the 1900's, not to mention slavery. Were Custer's or Chivington's troops "freedom fighters"? I'd like to think that was then and this is now, but cultural norms can define acceptable behavior.
"Freedom Fighter" sounds rather noble doesn't it? There was nothing noble about what happened on October 7th so I'm surprised to hear anyone use or defend the term. I thought we were more civilized than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
You’ve totally twisted things if you think I’m defending the term. Maybe it should be banned or at least removed from text books if that’s what you’re suggesting?Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
Shame on the media for relaying this incident! They should have censored this out so we didn’t have to see this poor little boy and hear him use those banned words.
one possibility would be to do an ai type search of the words Muslin, Hamas, and freedom fighter and have all sites changed to terrorists instead of freedom fighter. I think they could find a way to do that in N Korea or China.
it does sound a bit more noble when in reference to US Army Colonel John Chivington, Methodist pastor, Grand Master Mason, and gubeneorial candidate. There may be people in Florida who would like that removed from texts too
I just finished listening to sam Harris’ piece about hamas, Israel, and moral equivalency. He does a nice job.
Glad you found some value in it, IL.
Same here. Nice summary.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
I'm not suggesting that Israel doesn't have a right to exist or defend itself. I'm simply saying that Netanyahu needs to consider the lessons of WWI. Hamas and Palestine aren't one and the same but if Israel treats them as if they are the result will not be peace.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
Interesting observations:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jaccu...el-wolf-nutpe/
Yes, interesting indeed!Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
I've come to believe that the fellow writing the blog post below best represents my feelings on the matter.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dear-world-i-dont-care/
Concur.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
I wonder what our "friends" are propagating in social media.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/t...ation-war.html
It is in my imagination that Hamas has squirrelled away water, fuel, medicine, food, and of course ammo in their tunnels while their innocents on the streets are in bombed out squalor. Possibly to get international sympathy.
good pieceQuote:
Originally Posted by bae
A familiar pattern is emerging. You have the predictable support for Hamas from the nastier regimes in Russia, Iran etc. The scruffier despots Jonah Goldberg has referred to as the “Axis of Assholes”. They of course will view freedom anywhere as a threat to their existence.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
Then you have the usual collection of “useful idiots” in the West. Rashida Tlaib threatening Joe Biden for his “complicity in genocide”. Students harassing their Jewish peers and refusing to take Hamas at it’s word for it’s intentions. They have taken chanting “from the river to the sea” as a contemporary version of wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.
We’ve seen it all before.
This guy’s piece is right on, and very moving.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
I'd like to think some of these things will be resolved by they, but I've not heard the potential presidential candidate Trump weigh in. I get the impression he's not as pro Israel as his GOP cohorts? I could speculate he will say, there's good people on both sides in order to appease his pals in Russia and China. I did see where he thinks Hamas terrorists' and drug smuggler are coming across out open borders.