Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Egan_BW on November 15, 2023, 06:30:47 pm

You two want to spend your political energies on something more productive? I'm sure you can make positive change in a more efficient manner than arguing with one another. And you're giving me a headache constantly bumping the thread into my unreads.

It's probably also veering into the territory of Summoning The Toad.

I can't enforce anything, but I'd advise both sides just take a step back and breathe. Neither of you is convincing the other.

Discussions in public spaces like forums are not always aimed at convincing the other side because there are spectators. Also, often discussions are conducted just to learn someone's else opinion. I said earlier that I like hearing the opinions of other people and questioning them to understand them better.

This one has quite died because not only, as you said, there is no chance of convincing, but it is quite apparent that spectators don't find it interesting (at least interesting enough to join) and both I and hector13 learned everything that is possible to learn about each other's position.

Also, the discussion was destined to slow down anyway because there are no new events to discuss. Gazan war slowly moves to its conclusion and the nature of protests in GB and Australia( countries that are not-offtopic here) doesn't change much.

The Palestinian flag represents the Palestinian people.

Then the flag of Israel represents Jewish people, right?

Flags usually represent political entities. In this case, it is either the Palestinian National Authority or a hypothetical future Palestinian state to replace Israel. Considering that the PNA is not really the side of the conflict..

Palestinians /=/ Hamas.

Nazi Party /=/ Germans.

But I would love to see protests in 1944 calling for ceasefire with Germany because German children are dying and claims that those were not pro-Nazi protests.

I am a little tired of using this analogy but what can I do if it fits so nicely?

they want their government to change their position on the war to discourage Israel from the indiscriminate bombing or starving the civilian populace of Gaza

Nah, it "isn't change tactics of your war with Hamas\Gaza to more humane", "it is stop your war with HAMAS". Besides, Israeli tactics are no different from what any modern army would do and there are no major war crimes. Please, don't provide links to liars from corrupt organizations like HRW, AI or UN. Actual comparisons with the actions of other armies in similar conflicts will do.

There you go making predictions again

*facepalms* That one isn't even a prediction, that one is hypothetical. There are many other possible hypotheticals how Israel can cease to exist and how existence of HAMAS will contribute in this hypotheticals and why not destroying HAMAS increases the likelihood of Israel's total defeat.

How does a ceasefire in Gaza end in Israel’s destruction along the lines you set out?

Do you really don't understand how not destroying an enemy force at your borders increases the likelihood of the destruction of your country?  Note that Israel mistakingly tolerated this hostile force for 18 years allowing it to strengthen and grow, mistakingly thinking that it couldn't cause noticeable harm. Now they are fixing their mistake. Mistake that caused 1000+ deaths of their citizens. What next? More successful HAMAS operation that will take 10000 lives?

I said that I don't want to discuss the claim that "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free" doesn't mean what it means. Mostly because it is a Flat-Earther level of denial of reality, it is hard to argue against such dishonesty. I never said that the topic of events in Israel and ongoing protests doesn't interest me.

Again, though, before the main point, the protests aren’t calling for an Israeli loss.

"from the..." well... skip that. Besides that: there are certain symbols allowed on protests that can be easily interpreted like that. Like an image of the Israeli flag thrown in a garbage bin or burning of the Israeli flag. But sure, we can always work around that with an alternative explanation until it is literally "Israel must be destroyed!" and even then you can go - those are opinions of a part of the crowd, not all of it. And I know that almost any antisemitism, unless something VERY direct like "gas the Jews" or "Hitler was right" can be redirected - it is about Israel\Zionists, not Jews in general

Let's look at what is harder to deny. What is the visual main symbol of the protest? A Palestinian flag. Not some peace symbol, not something to symbolize innocent children, not Israeli and Palestinian flags together as a call for those people to reach peace. Plain, simple, Palestinian flag. So, during an armed conflict, protests show support to one of the sides. By definition, if you are pro-Side A, you are anti-Side-B. So those protests are anti-Israeli. One very simple observation proves that.

Now what are their demands? Ceasefire? Not really, they don't really address the Israeli government. They address the governments of their countries to pressure Israel by withdrawing support or even sanctioning Israel. Should they succeed, such actions will hurt the Israeli war effort. They may not call for the defeat of Israel but they surely do call for actions that will make defeat of Israel more likely.

Again, though, before the main point, the protests aren’t calling for an Israeli loss. Will a ceasefire allow Hamas to re-arm? Probably. Do you think they’re going to be able to have the same quality of weapons and supplies as the IDF, a modern, well-funded, professional state military, which is receiving support from other modern, well-funded, professional state militaries? Probably not.

Yeah, It is very unlikely for HAMAS to win alone but not impossible in the long run. Underdogs did win in history, especially when a larger country faced internal problems. Israel has its problems with political unity.

But HAMAS doesn't need to be alone. HAMAS has allies that share their goal of the destruction of Israel. Look at Modern Turkey. Its army will likely squash Israeli 1v1. Sure, Erdogan just talks, he doesn't want a war now. But... Decade or two, a more Islamistic Turkey + rebuilt and battle-hardened Syrian army + Iranian support + HAMAS and Hezbollah + less Israel-friendly politicians in Western countries = goodbye Israel, hello new Genocide of Jews. UN will be very concerned. Hey, there may even be pro-Israeli protests!

You’re analogies don’t work. You can have lung cancer without it metastasizing. You can have different types of trees in a forest. Different levels of wealth in a rich country.

Exactly what I meant. Obviously, there are many different people there. They have different personalities, views, goals, and ideologies. But I am not evaluating them, neither am I evaluating an "averaged protestor." I evaluate the protest movement as a whole.

Have you ever been inside a large protest? I have been. Anything that is too radical for the crowd will be labeled as provocation and those people will be kicked out with the speed of sound. So if there are only "some" antisemites in the crowd and they are tolerated by the crowd - it makes the crowd itself antisemitic to at least some degree. In fact, you admit that there is "the minority who were there to spout hate", doesn't the presence of such minority makes the protest as a whole hateful at least to some degree?

Huh? This prominent Iranian talks not about the West but about Iranian plans and goals regarding Israel and Zionism(read Jews) which includes supporting anti-Zionist protests in the Western World.

You may say that it is wrong for them to expect that protests will continue should Israel start losing but my statement is about what Iran expects, not what will actually happen.

I do think that antisemitic crowds aren't going anywhere no matter how this current war will progress. When this kind of stuff starts and it is unopposed - it tends to grow larger. Composition may change but the core will stay the same. But it is merely my subjective prediction.

It is funny how what is happening in Israel goes far better(less badly) than my most optimistic predictions and how I failed to even assume what will happen in EU and NA.

This really reminds me of the reaction of a random neo-nazi group when asked why they use a Swastika-like symbol as their logo and they start talking some bullshit about ancient runic symbols that have nothing to do with Nazism.

All these claims that "From the river to the sea" and "Globalize the intifada" don't mean what they mean are hypocritical, dishonest, and disgusting. Sorry, I refuse to discuss it any further. It is neither interesting, nor pleasant, nor productive.

Quote from: Strongpoint on November 13, 2023, 10:29:31 pm

Quote from: martinuzz on November 13, 2023, 07:15:40 pm

The Arabs are semites as well.

I am rather tired of this take. It is not how languages work. Words mutate and two words with the same root can have very different meanings.

Yet a phrase used by different groups must hold the same meaning regardless of intent and context.

You are full of contradictions.

You have me so confused. Again.

-  Words with same\simmilar root don't always mean the same thing
-  This certain phrase has an established meaning and one can't pretend that it doesn't.

How do those statements contradict each other?

Though I'm not sure what Hamas intended goal was kidnapping a bunch of people, murdering a bunch of people and then killing (some) of the kidnapped people.

If you take into account that Hamas gives 0 Fs to the well-being of Palestinian people, it becomes easier to understand the goals

Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, pan-Arabic religious extremists. Muslim Brotherhood doesn't even believe in a separate Palestinian nation (or any separate Arab nations) their goal was and is an Arabic Islamic Caliphate and all those talks about free Palestine are political tactics. They want to ignite a new huge Arab-Israeli war and finally throw Jews into the Sea. As said above - the major part of the motivation of the attack is to disrupt diplomatic normalization between Israel and Arab States.

Luckily, we don't live in the 1960s and countries like Egypt have around zero interest in a new war with Israel. Note that we don't even see major pro-Palestinian protests in the Arab World. They are there, but they are lesser in scale than European or North American.