A post of two comments. Israel, Hamas and moral equivalence.

A woman posting as ‘Sue’ wrote a comment on the current Israel/Hamas conflict under the post of the forged Netenyahu speech posted yesterday at this site.

Her comment struck me as being so typical of many of the misconceptions that are now the common form of thought, especially amongst university students but in general for many people that I thought it was worth offering a decent answer.

Since I posted my original answer perhaps an hour or so ago, several videos have appeared that deal with a similar issue. So I will post links to them below the text.

First, Sue’s questions:

Comment: 
How can anyone thing war is good? Killing children good?

In the past 11 years, rocket fire from Gaza has claimed 17 Israeli lives; in the past three days, Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 81 Palestinians, among them 22 children-and over 550 injured as a result of the air force dropping hundreds of bombs.  A driver for journalists was killed, as were Palestinians watching the World Cup at a beach coffee shop.

Israel has an absolute right to self defense but The Occupation is wrong. It is akin to apartheid as John Kerry alluded during the negotiations. The United States should make it clear we do not support apartheid and The Occupation through economic and political sanctions.

Sue

My response:

Sue:

I hope that you will show the patience in reading my reply, that I will show in writing it. This may take a while.

1. Thinking of war as good or not I find kind of childish. The question is, will war obtain the objective or goal more effectively or more economically than some other method? Once you establish that, the next question is, what is the objective you feel you need to achieve? That part certainly should be judged for its moral or ethical value.

Hamas, as well as all islamic groups, as far as I can tell, in the world, has as it’s objective, the extinction of the Jewish people beginning with the destruction of a Jewish state in the middle of a sea of totalitarian Islamic rule. The fact that muslims who live in Israel have more rights, more freedoms, prefer to live in Israel than anywhere else (Israel does have the right of exit unlike North Korea, the former Soviet Union etc) gives some idea of the ethical nature of Israel as a classically liberal state.

I am not saying that Hamas and Islamic groups seek the extinction of Jews by the way. They are. From their various charters (The Hamas charter for one) to their most sacred scriptures to the chants muslims make across the world expressing this desire. The Kybar chant most famously. You will not, by contrast, hear Jewish groups chant for the extinction of all Arabs or muslims, although I myself would like to see the ideology of Islam vanish from the face of the Earth, there are no groups that seek this. You will hear Jewish people and groups chant for the right to their own survival often however and for the survival for their one tiny state. Am Israel Chi I think is the chant.

This would suggest that the two sides do not have morally equivalent reasons for fighting. One seeks the extinction of the other, while the other wishes to continue to exist.

At this point it bears mentioning that Israel has the military capacity to eliminate the threat to itself utterly and completely in about 25 minutes from whenever they want.

The end of the Palestinian threat is one red button push away. For that matter, the end of the Iranian threat, Saudi and so on. Unofficially, the Israelis have had this capacity since the 1950s. But they have never used it nor have they even threatened it, and even when horrifically attacked by enemies, they have not resorted to WMD’s.

I think it is safe to assume that even you know, if the enemies of Israel had a nuke they would use it against Israel at first opportunity.

So this should cover the notion of the goodness of war somewhat. Basically the idea of war being bad is what held the allies back from stopping Hitler before he started something so big it cost 50 million dead and an incalculable cost to civilization. It was in fact, the peace freaks that multiplied the horror of WW2 by 10,000X. Had they just read Mein Kampf and saw what Hitler was doing they could have moved in before he took Czechoslovakia.

2. Killing children as a good thing.

If you have been paying attention to this conflict and frankly all the other ones with muslims on one or both sides, the Israelis have been doing everything in their power not only to save their own children but actually costing themselves opportunity, blood and treasure in their own defense trying not to kill children of the people in Gaza. You may also notice that Muslims, especially in Gaza but ISIS and Al-Qaeda as well have been slaughtering children for being spies or whatever reason, infidels and so on, or have been turning their own children into suicide-bombers feeling this was a great and noble thing to do. There are many MEMRI videos with interviews on this subject from across the islamic world.

Take your time and watch them. Palestinian Media Watch also shows kindergaartens full of kids leaning the art of killing Jews and wearing explosives and training for both killing and dying. I would argue this shows a different ethos than yours. At least I hope so. So lets take that off the table as its too easily demonstrated who thinks killing kids is good, and who thinks its bad.

Now we come to 3. Your idea that a score can be kept of the dead as a moral compass and that the side with the higher number of kills must be the more morally inferior.

I have to say that is a false idea. The question is always who was killed and why, not how many. If a column of 5000 jihadis were marching on a town of 200 people with the intention of killing all the men and old people and taking the young women as life long sex slaves (and yes, historically this happened a lot as well as now in Africa) and then taking the town for Islam, I would be perfectly OK if those townsfolk could hit a button and wipe those jihadis off the face of the earth till not even the stench of them remained.

Seriously, i would donate money to see that happen.

This is because there is no moral equivalence between offense and defense. That a people should have the moral right to do whatever it is in their power to do to defend themselves from that kind of aggression. Because this is a natural truth even to muslims, islam developed complex rhetorical devices to convince each other and their victims that what they do when they attack you, is defending their faith. That is, that by killing you or enslaving you or subjecting you to sharia law, they are defending themselves and their religion against you, because you would stop them from doing it. So their offense is defensive, if you can follow that logic without an Aspirin.

Now the matter of collateral damage. I will concede the part that claims people who should not have suffered did in Israeli response to the hundreds and hundreds of rockets fired at civilian infrastructure, elementary schools and so on and point out that in the entire history of warfare around the world the amount of collateral damage that has been done is so massive that it is measured in the millions when not in the hundreds of thousands. The fact that you can in this case, actually find the individual names and occupations of all the people who may have suffered in this way is the best, yes the best possible testament to the compassion of the IDF.

Again, seriously. I mean that.

Tell me about the people in the last 4 hours that Al-Qaeda, Al Shabab, and other Muslim Brotherhood groups have murdered in Africa and the Middle East and the Maghreb. Tell me their names and occupations. And when you can’t remind yourself that they were not collateral damage but the actual intended targets of these groups. They meant to murder as many people as they could and the weakest people they could. And why? Because of Ishaq:326

“If you come upon them, deal so forcibly as to terrify those who would follow, that they may be warned. Make a severe example of them by terrorizing Allah’s enemies.”

Many more examples of Islam’s scriptural justification for the use of terror can be found with a simple google search. Try the keywords: ‘Allah has made me victorious with terror’

So once again, your choice of examples to try and draw moral equivalence is, shall we say, baseless.

I am curious to know what exactly you mean by ‘the occupation’ and before you answer you better make sure there is no other country on earth with a similar enough circumstance about which you do not use that phrase and have never objected. I also recommend that you read some articles or watch some videos by black men who actually lived under South African Apartheid and then try and explain how that is the case in Israel for anyone at all.

While you do that consider this.

A Jewish man buys land from a muslim man who is the rightful owner. The deed is legal and all is free and voluntary as the Jewish man is offering more money than the land would be worth on an open market. The muslim man’s family finds out about the sale and then murders the muslim man who sold his property to the Jewish man and then proceeds to claim that the Jewish man has no right to live on land claimed to be for muslims.

And now I would like to ask you:

Exactly how is this Apartheid applied?

If you read this far, thank you for your patience.

Below the MORE, a couple of SUN videos from today which also deal with moral equivalence:

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

26 Replies to “A post of two comments. Israel, Hamas and moral equivalence.”

  1. Vlad, that is extremely well-argued and well-said.

    Until I studied islam, I was like Sue. My entire worldview pivoted 180 degrees when I shed my ignorant, media-provided distortion of islam and distortion of the truth. For this pivot to be possible on reading muslims’ own texts shows how phenomenal the distortion is: almost every muslim leader in the world knows the western media are lying on their behalf.

    The single best book I have read in defense of Israel is David Meir-Levi’s “History Upside Down”. http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Upside-Down-Palestinian-Aggression/dp/1594031924 It is far superior to Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel”. Meir-Levi’s book is only just over 100 pages long, but it is packed with information and not one wasted word. Your post reminded me of his book.

  2. The thing is, that when you try to explain to somebody that the entire “Israel/Palestine conflict” is 100% propaganda theater from top to bottom created by the Arab nations out of their religious hatred of Jews and Christians, they tend to find it all a bit much and simply refuse to take it in. I don’t think Christians are capable of dealing with people who are expert liars and who understand the power of a large group of people lying in unison. We tend to be trained that it’s just too rude to call somebody a liar because, well…we’re all gentlemen at the end of the day…men of good faith…one wouldn’t simply lie… We just can’t seem to bring ourselves to admit that Arab Islamists are not gentlemen, they never deal in good faith, and they lie every time they move their lips…

    • Did I read you right?

      “I don’t think Christians are capable of dealing with people who are expert liars and who understand the power of a large group of people lying in unison. We tend to be trained that it’s just too rude to call somebody a liar because, well…we’re all gentlemen at the end of the day…men of good faith…one wouldn’t simply lie… We just can’t seem to bring ourselves to admit that Western Socialists are not gentlemen, they never deal in good faith, and they lie every time they move their lips…”

      If I did, then it means Christian have not been raised to be thinking whole people. It probably started when Catholics were readmitted into the fold of Christianity and Protestantism became as cuddly as Unitarianism.

      • What I meant to say is that Westerners have been taught that it’s not allowable to stand up and call somebody a liar. If you do that in the House of Commons, for instance, they kick you out. We should have stopped pretending the Arabs were anything other than pathological liars long ago but we can’t bring ourselves to be so rude and to come out and say it. That’s what I meant to say…

      • That’s it exactly! Calling somebody a liar simply isn’t done, so in order to avoid looking rude, gentlepeople will simply let the lie stand. Exactly!

        Churchill had trouble getting the honor-bound British to open up to the idea of covert warfare for the same kind of reason…

  3. China jails 32 in Xinjiang on terror charges (BBC, July 11, 2014)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-28258983

    “Courts in China’s Xinjiang region have jailed 32 people on charges of spreading extremist content online and organising terror groups, media report. Three of them were jailed for life while the others received sentences varying from four to 15 years, according to Xinhua. Chinese officials have blamed militant Uighur groups for a growing number of violent attacks across the country. China has seen several recent high-profile attacks on civilian targets….”

  4. Turkey PM Erdogan to push for a new constitution (BBC, July 11, 2014)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28267924

    “Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to push for a new constitution if he is elected president. Such a move would enable Mr Erdogan to attach more powers to the presidency, which is largely a ceremonial role. Most analysts expect him comfortably to triumph in the 10 August elections.

    Mr Erdogan has been prime minister since 2003 but is barred from seeking a new term. Critics say he has become more authoritarian in the midst of corruption allegations. He accuses political foes of plotting against him. Steady economic growth has helped to secure him successive election triumphs.

    His Islamist-rooted AK Party dominates parliament – a power base that has enabled him to challenge the country’s secularist establishment…”

  5. Ebola deaths mount in Sierra Leone and Liberia (BBC, July 11, 2014)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28268430

    “High numbers of new cases of the Ebola virus are being reported in Sierra Leone and Liberia, with 19 deaths over three days this week, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) says.

    Such figures showed that it was a race against time to control the epidemic in Sierra Leone, medical charity MSF said.

    In total there have been 539 deaths in West Africa since the outbreak began in neighbouring Guinea in February.

    Regional leaders have now agreed to set up a fund to combat its spread…”

  6. Iraq forces ‘killed 255 Sunni prisoners’ – HRW (BBC, July 12, 2014)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28274742

    “Iraqi security forces and government-affiliated militias appear to have executed at least 255 prisoners since 9 June, a human rights group says. The killings appeared to be retaliation for attacks by the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), Human Rights Watch said in a statement. The prisoners were all Sunni Muslims, while the majority of security forces and militia were Shia, they added….”

  7. Iraq conflict: Kurds seize two oilfields in north (BBC, July 12, 2014)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28265064

    “Iraqi Kurds have taken over two oilfields amid a growing dispute with the government in Baghdad, Iraqi and Kurdish sources say.

    Kurdish peshmerga forces are said to have seized control of production facilities at the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oil fields in the north of the country.

    Kurdish MPs have also withdrawn from Iraq’s central government.

    They did so after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki accused the Kurds of harbouring extremists.

    In another development on Friday, at least 18 people were killed and 26 wounded when a suicide bomber drove a car into a checkpoint in southern Kirkuk province, officials said.

    Kurdish forces have moved into areas of north-western Iraq abandoned by the Iraqi army during the advance of Islamist insurgents led by the Isis (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) group over the past month.

    The Kurds have since declared plans to hold a referendum on independence in the areas seized, escalating tensions with Iraq’s central authorities….”

  8. ISIS Creating ‘Safe Haven’ For Terrorists in Syria, Say Officials (nbcnews, July 12, 2014)
    http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/isis-creating-safe-haven-terrorists-syria-say-officials-n153831

    “While the world focuses on the military advances ISIS has made in western Iraq, U.S. officials and terrorism experts point across the border to Syria, where the radical Islamist militia has consolidated recent gains and maybe forming a “safe haven” from which terror attacks against Western targets could be launched.

    “In recent weeks, ISIS has consolidated its control over a large area in eastern Syria, where it has established a safe haven, from which external operations can be planned,” said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official….”

  9. Militants Attack Near Pakistan Border, Killing 3 (abcnews, July 12, 2014)
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/militants-attack-pakistan-border-post-killing-24533561

    “Militants killed a Pakistan army captain and two soldiers in an attack early Saturday in a tribal region near its border with Afghanistan, an official said.

    A group of some 60 militants who crossed over from Afghanistan attacked an army post in the Ghakhi area of the Bajur tribal region, said Shah Nasim, a senior government administrator in Bajur.

    He said another soldier and a civilian cook were injured in the attack, which took place when troops had a pre-dawn Ramadan meal before fasting. A later statement from the Pakistani army, however, said the militants attacked a vehicle killing the two, not an army post. The conflicting accounts could not be immediately reconciled.

    Khan said the attackers later escaped to Afghanistan’s Kunar province but a retaliatory attack injured some of them….”

  10. Don’t forget that the Geneva Convention that the left loves to misquote says that if fighters hide among civilians it is their fault when civilians are killed and injured. This is a part of the convention that is rarely mentioned.

      • We do, just not the sections that will let us do what we want, for instance one section says that if your enemy hasn’t signed the convention you aren’t bound by it. When was the last time that was invoked? For that matter when was the last time we fought someone who signed the convention?:

  11. So called spontaneous marches in london, Glasgow etc show mostly muslims marching for Gaza solidarity.
    It would have been nice to see the same people marching for solidarity against the killers of Lee Rigby and 7/7 etc.
    Only an idiot cannot see where the muslim populations allegiance lie.

  12. So typical ¥U to downgrade and label some as “childish” from the very start, during the ongoing eXtiction of local natives in their home land. The death toll passed 170 today, and i’m asking myself if the yuwish behaviour comes from a rush of regulatory blood to the head or don’t they know by indoctrinazion who called especially for the children to come ….

    Who do ¥u LOVE ?
    [- if ye can’t even trust ¥u own parent with a blade -]

    Look at the people of the earth! How many are there even among the Jews, who truly believe in a God and livingly truly put their trust in Him? Almost all of them only have a habitual faith, but in their hearts they are totally godless, and it does not occur to them, that truly a God could exist, – and if there exist one, He is not at all concerned about the mortal people, there prayers and sacrifices. He only created man, so that they could work and cultivate His earth. This is the actual believe even of the better Jews, – the worse does not believe in nothing anymore anyhow.

    Again others who still belong to the older Jews, as there are some in Samaria, say: ‘The statues of Moses are good and one should keep them, irrespective if they originate from God or just from Moses. Who keeps the statues does not do wrong, irrespective if there exists a God or not. One should do good for the sake its being good, and avoid evil because it is evil.

    From such wisdom it again becomes clear, that the living faith in God is not present at all. And the way faith in God is applied in the temple, you yourself know just too well, and it is not necessary to waste another word about it. Since where there is no conscience anymore to abolish the commandments of God and put in its place worldly statues as holy and as if given by God, all faith in a true God has fully come to an end! Before Me, you were still searching for something divine in the temple and kept its statues as far as possible, – but the existence of a true God even you doubted, and your faith was a habit already from the cradle, which would be quite difficult for you to abandon, since you had nothing better to replace it with and your old habitual faith became part of your life’s nature. Therefore also your faith was good as none whatsoever.

    Also with the Jews, as the chosen nation of God, no faith exist anymore; if however, there cannot be searched and found any faith with them anymore, how can it be searched and found among the heathens?! During earlier times they still believed in their idols and oracles; now they believe in nothing anymore. They still practise the external ceremonies and customs, but faith has vanished a long time ago.

    (The Lord:) “To create is easy; but to guide the creatures, which where placed outside of oneself, to become free, unjudged and independent beings, is even for the divine almightiness no small matter. Nevertheless, with patience and forbearance one can in the end achieve everything, and once a matter with regard to the best purpose has been achieved, one does not think of the time anymore required to achieve it.

    It compares to a pregnant woman, who also during her pregnancy has to endure a lot of fear and labour pains; however, once the child is born out of the woman into the world after a certain time, then all fears of the woman have subsided, and she does not think anymore about the labour pains, since she sees in front of her the living fruit, which has gone forth from her into a free and independent life.

    If the making of an independent being would be a matter to achieve more easily, the Creator of all things and all beings would truly not regard it as necessary, to come into this world as a man Himself, to accomplish the possible most perfect free creation of man through teachings and deeds.

    If somebody else would have told you this, you would say to him: ‘Man, what are you drivelling about and what nonsense are you talking!’ But I Myself tell you here such, and thus you can believe Me that it is so; since for a trifle matter I would never have taken up the flesh of this world and even its death, and walk with you, My creatures, like a real father with his children.

    You now say to yourselves that this is highly true, but why does it happens precisely now, and what about the past time eternities, in which God existed just as endlessly perfect like now, – what happened to those creatures, who could not attain this present life perfection, since I never before have taken up a physical body like a created person.

    Yes, My dear children, this is quite a weighty question! However, partly I already have explained this to you, My old disciples, when we where with old Marcus at Caesarea Philippi, and you still know some of it about this; but you still do not know fully, why out of the infinite time periods in particular this period has been chosen, to give to the human creatures from now on the full godlikeness for ever.

    See, with the whole, endless large creation, God observes with regard to time and space always one and the same most wise order! Would it be impossible for God to create a person equipped with all wisdom and strength without procreation and a mother’s womb, just as it is possible for Him, to call in an instance a lightening strike from the air?! Certainly not, and I Myself have given you sufficient proofs for this!

    However, if this is possible for God, why then does He allows it that man is first fathered into a woman’s womb, and then develops and grows in same from period to period and part by part? If fully ripened in the mother’s womb over a considerable period of time, he reaches laborious birth, when still lacking the full development of many body parts. In time these become more fully developed; the tongue becomes more flexible and begins to babble words, the organs become increasingly more orderly, and the stronger and the more mature becoming soul can make more and more use of them, and so it continues from step to step up- and forward for as long until man after about thirty to forty years, exists as a strong, experience rich and intelligent person. All knowledge and experiences he had to acquire through own troubles and work, so that he can become a useful and honourable fellow citizen to his fellow-men. Yes, why then all this with every person, if God is almighty and can produce a fully wise and strong human being without birth and education out of the air or even from nothing?

    Indeed, God can do this; but what would such people be? I say to you: nothing than machines who never could have an own free will, never could have an own self-consciousness and never could have an independent free activity, neither in thinking nor in feeling and actions, but God’s almighty will would have to animate them anew every moment out of Himself; He Himself had to think and will in them and had to stimulate and draw their limbs into action. If God would not do this, such a person would then be apparently completely dead and had to disappear from existence instantly.

    So that the once created person can freely exist like out of himself, develops and consolidates himself, then like out of his own strength becomes free in thinking, will and action, God already from eternity established an order, according to which the once released ideas of God had to isolate themselves more and more from God, finally had to so to speak find and feel themselves as a separated being and life and become freely active according to their own thoughts and free will, so that they thereby as fully life-consolidated can be guided by God through external teachings to become self-growing Gods and be brought to life completion as if by their own means.

    For that it takes a very long time, which is well calculated by God and which is divided into many periods, in which this and that progress can be carried out.

    Just like with every quite properly developing person the moment must arrive, in which he is equipped for the acceptance of a higher wisdom, this moment has come before your eyes for the whole of creation, precisely calculated by God, whereby for all ripened creatures the opportunity is given, to go over from their old judged graves to the full resemblance of God, and therefor it says in the scriptures that now all who were and still are in their graves, will hear the voice of the Son of Man, if they have become ripe out of themselves and out of their own strength have gone forth to the everlasting, true and fully God resembling life.

    And because this from God already from eternity clear and well calculated moment has arrived now, in which all creatures who have attained a certain absolutely independent ripeness, which truly and clearly can be recognised thereby, that the most people nearly doesn’t know anything about God anymore and are completely isolated from God, I as God am here, to not guide the people by My almightiness anymore, but only through the teaching which I give to them, as if I Myself am not more and nothing else than they themselves. [GGJ 6.63.13]

    Very few people know that our Lord gave a MUCH MORE complete story of the EVENTS that happened during His last 3 years before His crucifiXion. A much more complete gospel than what we can find in the Bible. It is up to each individual to DIS*COVER and PROOF the many TEACHINGS and Revelations that were not intended to reveal to the world at that TIME but which are now revealed in a very clear way to us. For every simple humble person whose MAIN purpose it is to KNOW the TRUTH.

    http://www.jakob-lorber.cc/index.php?s=GGJ1&l=en

    What Do Jews Believe?
    [who do ¥u LOVE, if ye can’t even trust ¥u parent with a blade]

    Belief in the eventual RESURRECTION of the DEAD is a fundamental belief of traditional Judaism. It was a belief that distinguished the PHARISEES (intellectual ancestors of Rabbinical Judaism) from the Sadducees. The Sadducees rejected the concept, because it is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. The Pharisees found the concept implied in certain verses. Belief in resurrection of the dead is one of Rambam’s 13 Principles of FAITH.

    1. G-d exists
    2. G-d is one and unique
    3. G-d is incorporeal
    4. G-d is eternal
    5. Prayer is to be directed to G-d alone and to no other
    6. The words of the prophets are true
    7. Moses’ prophecies are true, and Moses was the greatest of the prophets
    8. The Written Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) and Oral Torah
    9. There will be no other Torah[S]
    10. G-d knows the thoughts and deeds of men
    11. G-d will reward the good and punish the wicked
    12. The Messiah will come
    13. The dead will be resurrected

    http://www.jewfaq.org/beliefs.htm
    http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm#Resurrection