I didn't mean to suggest that Christians were big on retributive justice. I agree that Jesus' teachings explicitly contradict "eye for an eye" (Matt 5:38-42). However, whenever I see someone try to attribute "eye for an eye" to some source, it's invariably a Christian [wrongly] ascribing the origins of this philosophy to the Bible (more specifically, the Old Testament or the Torah). I have yet to see a Jew or a Muslim make this same mistake, but I grant that there's no reason why they might not. I didn't mean to suggest that "eye for an eye" is a Christian concept, merely that Christians frequently attribute it to some Abrahamic origin, when the fact is that Hammurabi's code predates any mention of "eye for an eye" in Abrahamic texts.
Hammurabi's code is widely regarded to be the most prominent (if not the first) instance of a legal code being imposed on a civilization. While by today's standards retributive justice may seem somewhat barbaric, the intent behind "eye for an eye" actually served to place well-defined limits on permissible retribution, thereby acting to limit feuds where vengeance was escalated beyond the original offense thereby threatening the stability of society. My intent was to attribute "eye for an eye" (and consequently the first established legal code) to its proper creator, Hammurabi, and not the Abrahamic faiths which are often wrongly credited with this historic invention. It was I who was harping on religion (by arguing against this false attribution), and I'd argue that the idea that "eye for an eye" is of Abrahamic origin is quite common among Christians at the very least, not exactly a "fringe group" (and though I'm a militant atheist myself, I'll refrain from commenting about misguidedness). I'm not sure what you were trying to say.
There's an industry that exploits children in order to sell to a market of people who want to view child porn.
Is there? How does it work? Are there otherwise-normal porn sites, where you fork over your credit card information and you get to watch kiddie porn? Or do you dead-drop cash at a predetermined location and pick up your child pornography at some other predetermined location? Or are there CP dealers, analogous to drug dealers, that you can find on the street in certain neighborhoods? Really, how can a "market" exist for something like this? Especially considering how I've been watching (18+) porn on my computer for free ever since I was myself a kid in 1995?
While I agree with everything you've said and also acknowledge that the Abrahamic religions are predominantly responsible for spreading that attitude, I feel compelled to mention (in the interest of proper attribution) that the whole "eye for an eye" thing actually dates back to Hammurabi's code, which precedes the creation of the Abrahamic faiths by quite some time.
How is launching a missile across the border in any way comparable to recognizing a non-existent sovereignty?
They are comparable due to the principle of causality. One is the result of the other. Or are you saying that it's a chicken-and-egg problem, and that we should expect Hamas to step up and break the cycle because Israel is unable/unwilling?
One is attempted murder. The other is a legal dispute.
Manslaughter at best. But it is interesting how a "legal dispute" can kill orders of magnitude more people than your "attempted murder", isn't it?
Show me attempted murder in the checkpoints.
I suppose being crushed to death in an Israeli checkpoint while on your way to work doesn't count? Perhaps when they gunned down a Jordanian judge? Surely he was some radical militant trying to grab a gun from a poor IDF soldier. Palestinians are murdered at these checkpoints every day. There's no need for the "attempted" modifier.
Kidnapping, ransom, and murder of innocent Israeli citizens are all cheered in the Gaza strip. Checkpoints and blockades are a rational response.
Sure, and war crimes against Palestinians are cheered in Israel. Firing rockets is a rational response.
And, of course, Israel provides the Gazans with free power as well.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to summon Godwin. I hear Hitler provided the Jews with free clothing and shelter during WW2.
Imagine asking Gazans to return the favor in any way!
What we're witnessing is just that. Gazans trying to return the favor.
I'm stuck in frameworky Java land. I want to slit my own throat. How the fuck do you manage to find a job writing low level code? I thought that shit died out in the 80s!
Re:I'm bitching about SQL Server Management Studio
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Am I the only person that insists on calling it Microsoft SQL Server?
If the next version of Windows was called "Operating System", would you just call it that?
I agree with your sentiment totally but would like to add one caveat: It is my observation that the people that have been calling for smaller government have not been calling for the elimination of the armed forces or the intelligence agencies; they've been calling for the elimination of regulatory bodies and social welfare programs. Of course, this is just anecdotal, and it's entirely possible that the "real conservatives" were indeed arguing for scrapping the NSA and CIA and I was just blind to their demands.
In any case, I hope that explains how a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds can be acceptable to both "big government" and "small government" types.
For the record, I didn't mean to imply some racial disparity between Israelis and the Palestinians they're killing (or refraining from killing). I use the term 'brownskins' to refer to Arabs, but I don't mean to suggest that Indians, Mexicans, or yes, even Jews are any less brown. This being the first time anyone has called me out for it, I'll consider changing my wording in the future.
I used to question the immediacy of the Ashkenazi Jewish link to a Middle Eastern origin, as they tend to be whiter than many Northern Europeans. I was convinced that European Jews were more European than Jewish, based solely on the fact that they really don't look like they're from the Middle East (primarily based on skin color, sensitivity to intense sunlight, and other superficial factors). After many debates on this issue with my girlfriend (who happens to be half Ashkenazi Jew herself), I've become less ignorant on the issue, having read countless studies on the geneology of Jews, specifically Ashkenazi Jews. I was surprised to learn that it doesn't take very long for a people to turn white. Meanwhile, she was surprised to learn that genetic studies have shown that the matrilineal continuity of Jewishness may not be present in the European Jewish population (it looks like Jewish men arrived in Europe and took indigenous wives). Anyway, these studies also established that yes, indeed, members of the Jewish diaspora are more genetically similar to each other than to their host populations. Based on this fact, I'm not surprised that the [relatively genetically-homogeneous] Jews, who are all originally from the Middle East, are genetically similar to other Middle Eastern people.
Either way, I wasn't trying to portray this as some sort of white-on-brown conflict. I was merely trying to vary my word choice, and I use 'brownskins' in place of "Palestinians" or "Arabs" in a handful of my other posts as well. My apologies for the misunderstanding. Also, I've been sharing these posts with my girlfriend, and she didn't object to my usage of brownskins in that one (and she's rather sensitive and constantly accusing me of being too offensive), for whatever that's worth.
All very valid points. I don't mean to paint Hamas as some crew of saints, nor do I mean to suggest that the UN's various agencies are well-run. However, to argue for the complicity of UNRWA is premature at best. What motives would the UN have for protecting Hamas or acting against Israel? I'd argue that Mr. Gunness (as well as the UNRWA and UN in general) are in a bit of a shitty position. Humor me a moment and assume that these UN folks have nothing but the best intentions. They're out there, lives at risk, underfunded, trying to enable the kids growing up in these shitholes to have some semblance of an education. And every time they turn their backs, assholes stash rockets in their schools. Of course, this jeopardizes their entire effort by making them look like fools at best, enablers of indiscriminate violence at worst. Naturally, if this were the case, we'd expect Mr. Gunness to do anything in his power to sweep this inconvenient truth under the rug, not out of any nefarious sympathy for Hamas and their cause, but simply to protect his own mission to help impoverished children. Or maybe you're right and there's some insane conspiracy at the UN. Personally, since I have no direct experience with Mr. Gunness or the UNRWA, I'll resort to Hanlon's razor (never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity) to favor my explanation over yours. That being said, your explanation is equally plausible.
I'll tell you my friend, that war is hell, and Hamas purposely makes it more hellish for the citizens of Gaza so that Hamas can reap the propaganda benefit of world outrage when photographs of dead and injured children appear in the news media.
Indeed. But that's why it's even more important to resist attempts at embellishing their depravity. Hamas does enough inarguably horrible things that we don't need to make questionable claims about them (like alleging a conspiracy between them and the UN) that could cause reasonable third parties to say "There's some batshit crazy claims being made about Hamas, so how do I know all the other horrendous things I hear about aren't falsehoods as well?"
And I'll tell you further that the humanitarian restraint demonstrated by Israel time and time again heartens me that it is possible for humanity to stand on a higher moral ground even in the midst of bloody war against an enemy whose tactics are immoral, are in fact, evil.
This is something I can't understand. An overwhelming majority of people that denounce Hamas then turn around and defend Israel in the same breath. Personally, I'm very critical of both, having been exposed to incontrovertible proof of war crimes on both sides. Note, I don't attempt to argue for any sort of moral equivalence, mostly because I find it to be a disheartening exercise when the horrors run so deep on both sides (not to mention the lack of reliable reporting by unbiased third parties). I invite you to step away from the "us v them" mentality that is so pervasive in this conflict and accept that it's okay to abhor Hamas without loving Israel. Denunciation of either side is not the same as support for the other. I agree, Israel is demonstrating restraint. They could just march through Gaza killing every last brownskin, and they haven't. But in some sense, Hamas has also shown restraint, since they haven't slaughtered every last Palestinian infant to manufacture even more footage of "Israel's bloodlust" for the evening news. The fact that both sides could go further in their depravity doesn't comfort me much, and I wouldn't really call that humanitarian restraint.
It brings me no joy to tell you that the IDF have been using Palestinian civilians as human shields, having them enter structures ahead of IDF troops, often with IDF soldiers resting their rifle barrels on the shoulders of the Palestinians. They've been using Palestinian civilians (
I was under the impression that ARM Holdings designs chips. They don't even make them, they just design them and license the designs to their customers. If the A7 is an ARM chip but designed by Apple, what makes it an ARM chip? What did ARM do, if not the design?
If Apple just strapped memory, radios, etc., to an ARM-designed chip to make their A7 SoC, I'd argue that an overwhelming majority of the design was still done by the folks at ARM, as turning a CPU into a SoC isn't nearly as hard as making the CPU to begin with.
Although I grant that I could be wrong. Perhaps ARM just licensed the instruction set to Apple, and then Apple went and implemented the whole thing from the ground up. Is that what happened?
Hamas has offered to negotiate with Israel. Israel has rejected offers of negotiation and killed at least one thousand Palestinian civilians in the current operation.
See how productive this type of pissing contest is? Are you really so dense that you don't realize a back-and-forth trading of accusations isn't likely to lead to any sort of meaningful resolution of this conflict?
Yes, I'm sure Hamas is in no way encouraging or endorsing missile attacks on Israel by groups other than itself. That's why it erected a monument [demotix.com] to them. Obviously, they'd love nothing more than to round up those malcontents and arrest them - it's just the Israeli attacks against them in response to those rocket attacks that have prevented them from doing so in the last 13 years.
Your ignorance of the area is astounding. Hamas regularly engages in violence against other groups that may pose a threat to their dominance. Perhaps you think they're just some idealistic Jew-haters, but the reality is that they're a power-hungry political organization determined to dominate Gaza (and greater Israel, according to their charter). You may remember when they routed Fatah from Gaza back in 2006-2007, where hundreds were killed, and thousands more injured. This was not an isolated incident (although it was much larger than any other internal conflicts). Hamas does not generally encourage or endorse independent rocket attacks on Israel as they compromise Hamas' monopoly on violent capabilities. The monument that you link to is a symbol of the resistance against Israel, since rockets are Hamas' weapon of choice ever since the Israeli wall has limited the utility of suicide bombers. I don't see how a rocket monument implies that Hamas wants other groups to challenge their superiority. Indeed, Hamas would love nothing more than to round up their competition and execute them (arrest? ha!). The Israeli attacks on Gaza are the primary reason why Hamas has only partially been able to achieve this goal.
Israel has been delivering such rockets for the last few days now.
Good one. I'm glad to see people still have it in them to make jokes about the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians.
I know it's sometimes hard to research the structure of foreign governments, particularly ones that are as unstable as the Palestinian government. To answer your question, yes, I did say that Hamas is the governing body in Gaza (much like, say, the government of New Jersey is the governing body in New Jersey). That doesn't mean that it's the sole governing body there (and, indeed, New Jersey is still governed by the federal government too (as well as county governments, and municipal governments)). Either way, here's what happened to the rockets that you allege were given to Hamas:
[UNRWA spokesman Chris] Gunness said he didn’t see an issue with the handover, because the local authorities who took control of the rockets reported to the Palestinian government in Ramallah, not to Hamas, which heads the government and runs the police force in Gaza.
“According to longstanding UN practice in UN humanitarian operations worldwide, incidents involving unexploded ordnance that could endanger beneficiaries and staff are referred to the local authorities,” Gunness told The Daily Beast in a statement. “Local authorities fall under the government of national consensus in Ramallah. They pledged to pass a message to all parties not to violate UNRWA neutrality.”
“As far as we are concerned, the government that we are dealing with now is the government of national consensus and they have authority over the organization that we dealt with for getting rid of these rockets from our school,” he said. “We handed them over to the relevant authorities, and that organization, as it were, the experts that came and did it, are under the government of national consensus in Ramallah.”
The fate of the rockets is now unknown. While the Gaza police is almost certainly under Hamas’ sway, it’s an open question to what degree any individual police unit cooperates with Hamas’ irregular army. An Israeli official said the Israeli government is working now to try to confirm that Hamas had taken back the rockets and put them back into circulation.
Israeli officials and experts told The Daily Beast there is no doubt that local authorities in Gaza, including but not limited to the police, are loyal to Hamas.
See? Perhaps you've only been reading the Israeli side of the news, as their politicians are tripping over each other to continue these baseless accusations, trying to spin suspicion as fact. Their authorities are still trying to confirm their suspicions, but they have "no doubt" about what happened. This further illustrates the need to consult a wide variety of news sources if one seeks to learn objective truth about any controversial subject. Now, perhaps you have some inside information that would shed some light on this issue. If so, you haven't presented it yet. This seems like a good time for me to mention that it's incredibly sad that The Daily Beast (of Newsweek fame) is offering some of the most comprehensive coverage of this issue (as far as mainstream media goes, at least).
The second incident where rockets were found at a vacant UNRWA is indeed problematic, as UN staff were evacuated before the rockets could be properly disposed of. I haven't seen much information about that event in the press, but nothing I've seen would suggest that anyone at the UN gave rockets to Hamas.
The World Tribune article you link to contains factual errors ("The UN did not say how many rockets were found or what was done with them" is inconsistent with the quote from the UNRWA spokesman I provided above), and it seems likely that John Baird's comments refer to reports issued by Israeli politicians. If you're aware of any reports from unbiased third parties that corroborate the Israeli claims, I'm eager to see them.
"Hamas Terrorists Fire Rockets from a Gazan School"
I find this sad and dispicable. I tried looking up more information about the rockets that were launched from the Abu Nur school and haven't been able to find much. If you find anything, I'd appreciate if you could share. Most articles on the issue also mention rockets being launched from cemetaries in Gaza. Truly disgusting. I can only hope that the school was actually vacant when this was happening. However, I must mention that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on this planet, and it's not like Israel allows them to establish military bases. An unfortunate consequence of this is that anywhere they launch rockets from is a terrible location. Of course, that doesn't really excuse anything, it's still fucked up that this is happening.
And it was previously two UNRWA schools in which rockets had been found stored, and then returned to their owners by the glorious UNRWA staff.
Returned to their owners? Really? You really fell for that? Please, go find a citation for that. I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised when you discover that the rocket caches that were found were not given to Hamas militants, but instead were handed off to the Palestinian Authority government, which promptly destroyed them. Perhaps next time someone tells you a story that fits your preferred narrative a little too well, you'll be inclined to question it and inform yourself before you go on spreading the great news.
But today it's three
These fucks. I wish I could say I'm surprised. Hamas is one unbelievably fucked up organization.
Ah, but why dwell on the numbers? If you have a cache of rocket bombs, and the school has an empty space next to the kindergarten, what possible harm could there be in storing those rockets in the empty space? It's not like they could blow up or anything.
Sadly, if that actually had happened, Hamas would be scoring one hell of a PR victory, cameras getting close-ups of all the kindergartener body parts littering the area, blaming it on Israel. Thankfully, previous caches were all found in vacant schools, and presumably this one was vacant too. Not that that excuses the violation of UN property.
Israel has shown that they would accept a two-state solution. Hamas has written the destruction of Israel into their charter.
Indeed, you bring up a valid point. Israel has at least pretended to be interested in a two-state solution (although this can be sersiously questioned, what with the attacks the unleashed in response to the formation of a unity government in Palestine, etc.), whereas Hamas has been quite clear about wanting to eliminate any "Jewish State" that exists on land consecrated to Allah. Clearly this won't work.
Don't you believe that Hamas means what it says?
No. I also don't believe that Israel means what it says. A cursory history of international diplomacy should make it clear that one should never believe anyone means what they say. In the context of Hamas and Israel, I'm not even convinced that the senior leadership of Hamas actually harbors any hatred towards Jews. I'm more of the opinion that Hamas is in it for Hamas, and their primary (perhaps only) goal is to gain and retain power. It's entirely possible (and even likely) that they merely stoke bigotry among the Palestinian population to distract from domestic policy failures and give the populace an external enemy to focus their anger on. I see them as more of a power-hungry political organization than an ideological one, and I think such a view goes a lot further in being able to explain their motivations and actions as this conflict unfolds.
Also:... samharris.org
Great link. My girlfriend sent it to me this morning. I agree with most of what Mr. Harris wrote. The one part that did rub me the wrong way, though, happens to be the very part you quote. Mr. Harris seems to be a reasonable person throughout his essay, but somehow has no problem brushing aside the fact that Israeli soldiers have been using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Consider the outrage when Palestinians use fellow Palestinians as human shields. Imagine the outrage if they were using Israeli civilians as human shields. Now reverse that situation and see how casually this atrocity is brushed aside. What the fuck, Sam?
The Palestinian Authority exercises sovereignty over 3% of the West Bank and 0% of the Gaza Strip, by land area. Source.
Since population distribution is not uniform, I expect the figures to be different by population. However, it's quite accurate to say that the Palestinian Authority does not rule over Palestine.
I certainly agree more that Iran is far, very far from a role model when it come to democracy and human rights.
Are you American? I am too (naturalized, at least). Remember that time that we overthrew Iran's democratically-elected government to install our own puppet? I'm just sayin'...
Sort of like the "Crips" versus the "Bloods" gangs in the US, eh?
Sort of. Well, it would be more like the Crips versus the Bloods but with the Latin Kings policing the country instead of actual cops. Would it make sense to hold the Latin Kings responsible for attacks launched by the Bloods? Particularly if we didn't allow the Latin Kings to become powerful enough to actually police the other gangs?
Those wacky Palestinian terrorists, one never knows which of them will turn up to launch rockets from a schoolyard.
It seems like you said this half jokingly. However, as far as I can tell, they don't launch rockets from schoolyards. On two occasions, rocket stockpiles were found in two unused school buildings. Rockets were never launched from the vicinity of an active school. If you actually try to research this oft-repeated allegation, you'll find that there's a huge amount of disinformation from both sides. It's disheartening.
But Hamas will literally stop at nothing, while Israel is at least trying to minimize civilian casualties (warning people to get out of buildings, etc.). Hamas won't even honor humanitarian ceasefires [townhall.com].
Don't you see? This very mentality is the very reason that this conflict is so intractable. "Sure, we're not perfect, but look at them!" is all we've been hearing since this whole mess started over a century ago. What you don't understand is that both sides have a virtually limitless supply of counter-arguments. For example, you say Israel is "better" because they at least try to minimize civilian casualties. Is this consistent with that claim? What about this? Are you still so sure about Israeli concern for the sanctity of life? Of course, you'll have no trouble digging up countless stories of horrors committed by Hamas. And so the world turns, and we're back where we started. Nowhere.
Neither side is perfect, but I reject any claims of moral equivalence between the two sides.
No moral equivalence here. But in the end, it is not productive to keep pointing at them to justify further violence on our part, regardless of which side we're talking about. There will be no end to this conflict until both sides can agree that both sides are wrong.
Perhaps you're not aware of this, but there are several Palestinian militant groups. While Hamas has a clear interest in establishing and maintaining a monopoly on violent force in Gaza, they have been unable to achieve this goal at least in part because Israel prevents them from gaining too much power.
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Tell me, where'd you get your theology degree?
Perhaps I could've written my original post a little more clearly. See here and here for clarification regarding why you're an ass.
Tell me, where'd you get your self-righteous dickhead degree?
I didn't mean to suggest that Christians were big on retributive justice. I agree that Jesus' teachings explicitly contradict "eye for an eye" (Matt 5:38-42). However, whenever I see someone try to attribute "eye for an eye" to some source, it's invariably a Christian [wrongly] ascribing the origins of this philosophy to the Bible (more specifically, the Old Testament or the Torah). I have yet to see a Jew or a Muslim make this same mistake, but I grant that there's no reason why they might not. I didn't mean to suggest that "eye for an eye" is a Christian concept, merely that Christians frequently attribute it to some Abrahamic origin, when the fact is that Hammurabi's code predates any mention of "eye for an eye" in Abrahamic texts.
Hammurabi's code is widely regarded to be the most prominent (if not the first) instance of a legal code being imposed on a civilization. While by today's standards retributive justice may seem somewhat barbaric, the intent behind "eye for an eye" actually served to place well-defined limits on permissible retribution, thereby acting to limit feuds where vengeance was escalated beyond the original offense thereby threatening the stability of society. My intent was to attribute "eye for an eye" (and consequently the first established legal code) to its proper creator, Hammurabi, and not the Abrahamic faiths which are often wrongly credited with this historic invention. It was I who was harping on religion (by arguing against this false attribution), and I'd argue that the idea that "eye for an eye" is of Abrahamic origin is quite common among Christians at the very least, not exactly a "fringe group" (and though I'm a militant atheist myself, I'll refrain from commenting about misguidedness). I'm not sure what you were trying to say.
There's an industry that exploits children in order to sell to a market of people who want to view child porn.
Is there? How does it work? Are there otherwise-normal porn sites, where you fork over your credit card information and you get to watch kiddie porn? Or do you dead-drop cash at a predetermined location and pick up your child pornography at some other predetermined location? Or are there CP dealers, analogous to drug dealers, that you can find on the street in certain neighborhoods? Really, how can a "market" exist for something like this? Especially considering how I've been watching (18+) porn on my computer for free ever since I was myself a kid in 1995?
While I agree with everything you've said and also acknowledge that the Abrahamic religions are predominantly responsible for spreading that attitude, I feel compelled to mention (in the interest of proper attribution) that the whole "eye for an eye" thing actually dates back to Hammurabi's code, which precedes the creation of the Abrahamic faiths by quite some time.
How is launching a missile across the border in any way comparable to recognizing a non-existent sovereignty?
They are comparable due to the principle of causality. One is the result of the other. Or are you saying that it's a chicken-and-egg problem, and that we should expect Hamas to step up and break the cycle because Israel is unable/unwilling?
One is attempted murder. The other is a legal dispute.
Manslaughter at best. But it is interesting how a "legal dispute" can kill orders of magnitude more people than your "attempted murder", isn't it?
Show me attempted murder in the checkpoints.
I suppose being crushed to death in an Israeli checkpoint while on your way to work doesn't count? Perhaps when they gunned down a Jordanian judge? Surely he was some radical militant trying to grab a gun from a poor IDF soldier. Palestinians are murdered at these checkpoints every day. There's no need for the "attempted" modifier.
Kidnapping, ransom, and murder of innocent Israeli citizens are all cheered in the Gaza strip. Checkpoints and blockades are a rational response.
Sure, and war crimes against Palestinians are cheered in Israel. Firing rockets is a rational response.
And, of course, Israel provides the Gazans with free power as well.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to summon Godwin. I hear Hitler provided the Jews with free clothing and shelter during WW2.
Imagine asking Gazans to return the favor in any way!
What we're witnessing is just that. Gazans trying to return the favor.
*envy*
I'm stuck in frameworky Java land. I want to slit my own throat. How the fuck do you manage to find a job writing low level code? I thought that shit died out in the 80s!
Am I the only person that insists on calling it Microsoft SQL Server?
If the next version of Windows was called "Operating System", would you just call it that?
Yes and no.
I agree with your sentiment totally but would like to add one caveat: It is my observation that the people that have been calling for smaller government have not been calling for the elimination of the armed forces or the intelligence agencies; they've been calling for the elimination of regulatory bodies and social welfare programs. Of course, this is just anecdotal, and it's entirely possible that the "real conservatives" were indeed arguing for scrapping the NSA and CIA and I was just blind to their demands.
In any case, I hope that explains how a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds can be acceptable to both "big government" and "small government" types.
Disclaimer: I'm neither.
For the record, I didn't mean to imply some racial disparity between Israelis and the Palestinians they're killing (or refraining from killing). I use the term 'brownskins' to refer to Arabs, but I don't mean to suggest that Indians, Mexicans, or yes, even Jews are any less brown. This being the first time anyone has called me out for it, I'll consider changing my wording in the future.
I used to question the immediacy of the Ashkenazi Jewish link to a Middle Eastern origin, as they tend to be whiter than many Northern Europeans. I was convinced that European Jews were more European than Jewish, based solely on the fact that they really don't look like they're from the Middle East (primarily based on skin color, sensitivity to intense sunlight, and other superficial factors). After many debates on this issue with my girlfriend (who happens to be half Ashkenazi Jew herself), I've become less ignorant on the issue, having read countless studies on the geneology of Jews, specifically Ashkenazi Jews. I was surprised to learn that it doesn't take very long for a people to turn white. Meanwhile, she was surprised to learn that genetic studies have shown that the matrilineal continuity of Jewishness may not be present in the European Jewish population (it looks like Jewish men arrived in Europe and took indigenous wives). Anyway, these studies also established that yes, indeed, members of the Jewish diaspora are more genetically similar to each other than to their host populations. Based on this fact, I'm not surprised that the [relatively genetically-homogeneous] Jews, who are all originally from the Middle East, are genetically similar to other Middle Eastern people.
Either way, I wasn't trying to portray this as some sort of white-on-brown conflict. I was merely trying to vary my word choice, and I use 'brownskins' in place of "Palestinians" or "Arabs" in a handful of my other posts as well. My apologies for the misunderstanding. Also, I've been sharing these posts with my girlfriend, and she didn't object to my usage of brownskins in that one (and she's rather sensitive and constantly accusing me of being too offensive), for whatever that's worth.
I'll tell you my friend, that war is hell, and Hamas purposely makes it more hellish for the citizens of Gaza so that Hamas can reap the propaganda benefit of world outrage when photographs of dead and injured children appear in the news media.
Indeed. But that's why it's even more important to resist attempts at embellishing their depravity. Hamas does enough inarguably horrible things that we don't need to make questionable claims about them (like alleging a conspiracy between them and the UN) that could cause reasonable third parties to say "There's some batshit crazy claims being made about Hamas, so how do I know all the other horrendous things I hear about aren't falsehoods as well?"
And I'll tell you further that the humanitarian restraint demonstrated by Israel time and time again heartens me that it is possible for humanity to stand on a higher moral ground even in the midst of bloody war against an enemy whose tactics are immoral, are in fact, evil.
This is something I can't understand. An overwhelming majority of people that denounce Hamas then turn around and defend Israel in the same breath. Personally, I'm very critical of both, having been exposed to incontrovertible proof of war crimes on both sides. Note, I don't attempt to argue for any sort of moral equivalence, mostly because I find it to be a disheartening exercise when the horrors run so deep on both sides (not to mention the lack of reliable reporting by unbiased third parties). I invite you to step away from the "us v them" mentality that is so pervasive in this conflict and accept that it's okay to abhor Hamas without loving Israel. Denunciation of either side is not the same as support for the other. I agree, Israel is demonstrating restraint. They could just march through Gaza killing every last brownskin, and they haven't. But in some sense, Hamas has also shown restraint, since they haven't slaughtered every last Palestinian infant to manufacture even more footage of "Israel's bloodlust" for the evening news. The fact that both sides could go further in their depravity doesn't comfort me much, and I wouldn't really call that humanitarian restraint.
It brings me no joy to tell you that the IDF have been using Palestinian civilians as human shields, having them enter structures ahead of IDF troops, often with IDF soldiers resting their rifle barrels on the shoulders of the Palestinians. They've been using Palestinian civilians (
Except for this, but you're right, I did misunderstand your comment. My bad.
I was under the impression that ARM Holdings designs chips. They don't even make them, they just design them and license the designs to their customers. If the A7 is an ARM chip but designed by Apple, what makes it an ARM chip? What did ARM do, if not the design?
If Apple just strapped memory, radios, etc., to an ARM-designed chip to make their A7 SoC, I'd argue that an overwhelming majority of the design was still done by the folks at ARM, as turning a CPU into a SoC isn't nearly as hard as making the CPU to begin with.
Although I grant that I could be wrong. Perhaps ARM just licensed the instruction set to Apple, and then Apple went and implemented the whole thing from the ground up. Is that what happened?
Hamas has offered to negotiate with Israel. Israel has rejected offers of negotiation and killed at least one thousand Palestinian civilians in the current operation.
See how productive this type of pissing contest is? Are you really so dense that you don't realize a back-and-forth trading of accusations isn't likely to lead to any sort of meaningful resolution of this conflict?
Care to point out the language in the Hamas charter that identifies the Koran quote as a key element of its policies?
Isn't that an ARM chip?
Yes, I'm sure Hamas is in no way encouraging or endorsing missile attacks on Israel by groups other than itself. That's why it erected a monument [demotix.com] to them. Obviously, they'd love nothing more than to round up those malcontents and arrest them - it's just the Israeli attacks against them in response to those rocket attacks that have prevented them from doing so in the last 13 years.
Your ignorance of the area is astounding. Hamas regularly engages in violence against other groups that may pose a threat to their dominance. Perhaps you think they're just some idealistic Jew-haters, but the reality is that they're a power-hungry political organization determined to dominate Gaza (and greater Israel, according to their charter). You may remember when they routed Fatah from Gaza back in 2006-2007, where hundreds were killed, and thousands more injured. This was not an isolated incident (although it was much larger than any other internal conflicts). Hamas does not generally encourage or endorse independent rocket attacks on Israel as they compromise Hamas' monopoly on violent capabilities. The monument that you link to is a symbol of the resistance against Israel, since rockets are Hamas' weapon of choice ever since the Israeli wall has limited the utility of suicide bombers. I don't see how a rocket monument implies that Hamas wants other groups to challenge their superiority. Indeed, Hamas would love nothing more than to round up their competition and execute them (arrest? ha!). The Israeli attacks on Gaza are the primary reason why Hamas has only partially been able to achieve this goal.
Israel has been delivering such rockets for the last few days now.
Good one. I'm glad to see people still have it in them to make jokes about the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians.
[UNRWA spokesman Chris] Gunness said he didn’t see an issue with the handover, because the local authorities who took control of the rockets reported to the Palestinian government in Ramallah, not to Hamas, which heads the government and runs the police force in Gaza.
“According to longstanding UN practice in UN humanitarian operations worldwide, incidents involving unexploded ordnance that could endanger beneficiaries and staff are referred to the local authorities,” Gunness told The Daily Beast in a statement. “Local authorities fall under the government of national consensus in Ramallah. They pledged to pass a message to all parties not to violate UNRWA neutrality.”
“As far as we are concerned, the government that we are dealing with now is the government of national consensus and they have authority over the organization that we dealt with for getting rid of these rockets from our school,” he said. “We handed them over to the relevant authorities, and that organization, as it were, the experts that came and did it, are under the government of national consensus in Ramallah.”
Citation.
From that same article:
The fate of the rockets is now unknown. While the Gaza police is almost certainly under Hamas’ sway, it’s an open question to what degree any individual police unit cooperates with Hamas’ irregular army. An Israeli official said the Israeli government is working now to try to confirm that Hamas had taken back the rockets and put them back into circulation.
Israeli officials and experts told The Daily Beast there is no doubt that local authorities in Gaza, including but not limited to the police, are loyal to Hamas.
See? Perhaps you've only been reading the Israeli side of the news, as their politicians are tripping over each other to continue these baseless accusations, trying to spin suspicion as fact. Their authorities are still trying to confirm their suspicions, but they have "no doubt" about what happened. This further illustrates the need to consult a wide variety of news sources if one seeks to learn objective truth about any controversial subject. Now, perhaps you have some inside information that would shed some light on this issue. If so, you haven't presented it yet. This seems like a good time for me to mention that it's incredibly sad that The Daily Beast (of Newsweek fame) is offering some of the most comprehensive coverage of this issue (as far as mainstream media goes, at least).
The second incident where rockets were found at a vacant UNRWA is indeed problematic, as UN staff were evacuated before the rockets could be properly disposed of. I haven't seen much information about that event in the press, but nothing I've seen would suggest that anyone at the UN gave rockets to Hamas.
The World Tribune article you link to contains factual errors ("The UN did not say how many rockets were found or what was done with them" is inconsistent with the quote from the UNRWA spokesman I provided above), and it seems likely that John Baird's comments refer to reports issued by Israeli politicians. If you're aware of any reports from unbiased third parties that corroborate the Israeli claims, I'm eager to see them.
"Hamas Terrorists Fire Rockets from a Gazan School"
I find this sad and dispicable. I tried looking up more information about the rockets that were launched from the Abu Nur school and haven't been able to find much. If you find anything, I'd appreciate if you could share. Most articles on the issue also mention rockets being launched from cemetaries in Gaza. Truly disgusting. I can only hope that the school was actually vacant when this was happening. However, I must mention that Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on this planet, and it's not like Israel allows them to establish military bases. An unfortunate consequence of this is that anywhere they launch rockets from is a terrible location. Of course, that doesn't really excuse anything, it's still fucked up that this is happening.
And it was previously two UNRWA schools in which rockets had been found stored, and then returned to their owners by the glorious UNRWA staff.
Returned to their owners? Really? You really fell for that? Please, go find a citation for that. I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised when you discover that the rocket caches that were found were not given to Hamas militants, but instead were handed off to the Palestinian Authority government, which promptly destroyed them. Perhaps next time someone tells you a story that fits your preferred narrative a little too well, you'll be inclined to question it and inform yourself before you go on spreading the great news.
But today it's three
These fucks. I wish I could say I'm surprised. Hamas is one unbelievably fucked up organization.
Ah, but why dwell on the numbers? If you have a cache of rocket bombs, and the school has an empty space next to the kindergarten, what possible harm could there be in storing those rockets in the empty space? It's not like they could blow up or anything.
Sadly, if that actually had happened, Hamas would be scoring one hell of a PR victory, cameras getting close-ups of all the kindergartener body parts littering the area, blaming it on Israel. Thankfully, previous caches were all found in vacant schools, and presumably this one was vacant too. Not that that excuses the violation of UN property.
Israel has shown that they would accept a two-state solution. Hamas has written the destruction of Israel into their charter.
Indeed, you bring up a valid point. Israel has at least pretended to be interested in a two-state solution (although this can be sersiously questioned, what with the attacks the unleashed in response to the formation of a unity government in Palestine, etc.), whereas Hamas has been quite clear about wanting to eliminate any "Jewish State" that exists on land consecrated to Allah. Clearly this won't work.
Don't you believe that Hamas means what it says?
No. I also don't believe that Israel means what it says. A cursory history of international diplomacy should make it clear that one should never believe anyone means what they say. In the context of Hamas and Israel, I'm not even convinced that the senior leadership of Hamas actually harbors any hatred towards Jews. I'm more of the opinion that Hamas is in it for Hamas, and their primary (perhaps only) goal is to gain and retain power. It's entirely possible (and even likely) that they merely stoke bigotry among the Palestinian population to distract from domestic policy failures and give the populace an external enemy to focus their anger on. I see them as more of a power-hungry political organization than an ideological one, and I think such a view goes a lot further in being able to explain their motivations and actions as this conflict unfolds.
Also: ... samharris.org
Great link. My girlfriend sent it to me this morning. I agree with most of what Mr. Harris wrote. The one part that did rub me the wrong way, though, happens to be the very part you quote. Mr. Harris seems to be a reasonable person throughout his essay, but somehow has no problem brushing aside the fact that Israeli soldiers have been using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Consider the outrage when Palestinians use fellow Palestinians as human shields. Imagine the outrage if they were using Israeli civilians as human shields. Now reverse that situation and see how casually this atrocity is brushed aside. What the fuck, Sam?
The Palestinian Authority exercises sovereignty over 3% of the West Bank and 0% of the Gaza Strip, by land area. Source.
Since population distribution is not uniform, I expect the figures to be different by population. However, it's quite accurate to say that the Palestinian Authority does not rule over Palestine.
I certainly agree more that Iran is far, very far from a role model when it come to democracy and human rights.
Are you American? I am too (naturalized, at least). Remember that time that we overthrew Iran's democratically-elected government to install our own puppet? I'm just sayin'...
Sort of like the "Crips" versus the "Bloods" gangs in the US, eh?
Sort of. Well, it would be more like the Crips versus the Bloods but with the Latin Kings policing the country instead of actual cops. Would it make sense to hold the Latin Kings responsible for attacks launched by the Bloods? Particularly if we didn't allow the Latin Kings to become powerful enough to actually police the other gangs?
Those wacky Palestinian terrorists, one never knows which of them will turn up to launch rockets from a schoolyard.
It seems like you said this half jokingly. However, as far as I can tell, they don't launch rockets from schoolyards. On two occasions, rocket stockpiles were found in two unused school buildings. Rockets were never launched from the vicinity of an active school. If you actually try to research this oft-repeated allegation, you'll find that there's a huge amount of disinformation from both sides. It's disheartening.
But Hamas will literally stop at nothing, while Israel is at least trying to minimize civilian casualties (warning people to get out of buildings, etc.). Hamas won't even honor humanitarian ceasefires [townhall.com].
Don't you see? This very mentality is the very reason that this conflict is so intractable. "Sure, we're not perfect, but look at them!" is all we've been hearing since this whole mess started over a century ago. What you don't understand is that both sides have a virtually limitless supply of counter-arguments. For example, you say Israel is "better" because they at least try to minimize civilian casualties. Is this consistent with that claim? What about this? Are you still so sure about Israeli concern for the sanctity of life? Of course, you'll have no trouble digging up countless stories of horrors committed by Hamas. And so the world turns, and we're back where we started. Nowhere.
Neither side is perfect, but I reject any claims of moral equivalence between the two sides.
No moral equivalence here. But in the end, it is not productive to keep pointing at them to justify further violence on our part, regardless of which side we're talking about. There will be no end to this conflict until both sides can agree that both sides are wrong.
Perhaps you're not aware of this, but there are several Palestinian militant groups. While Hamas has a clear interest in establishing and maintaining a monopoly on violent force in Gaza, they have been unable to achieve this goal at least in part because Israel prevents them from gaining too much power.