Comment by random_upvoter 3 days ago
> if Israel wanted to achieve similar results via a conventional war against Hezbollah, it seems virtually guaranteed that far more innocent people would have been injured and killed
"It's OK that Israel causes excessive amounts of civilian casualties, because in the alternative scenario Israel would also cause excessive amounts of civilian casualties"
I think the problem many people have is that Israel's goals entirely revolve around killing people.
That is: If your goal is to murder someone, and you accidentally kill an innocent bystander in committing that murder, the number of civilians killed is infinitely too high. The number of acceptable total deaths is 0.
I understand this is idealistic. But it's the judgement many will choose to make. For the record, no I don't only think it's bad when Israel murders people.
I don’t understand. It seems clear enough to me that Israel’s goal is to prevent Hezbollah from continuing to launch rockets at Israeli towns in the north. Killing is a means to that end. One may disagree with that choice of means, but I don’t see how you can claim that “Israel’s goals entirely revolve around killing people.”
That being said, you might think that killing is never an appropriate means of achieving anything. If so, fair enough. But I think that’s a tough position to maintain when you are actively under attack.
"Israels goal"
I think Israel consists of quite different people with different goals.
Some of them have the goal, to own all of the land, because they believe it is their religious duty - and some of them are indeed part of the government.
And some of them just want to live in peace.
And on the other side it seems quite similar to me. Probably with a higher percentage of ruthless killers, but desperation tend to make people ruthless.
It really isn't a simple conflict that can be solved with more killing, unless we are talking about genocidal levels of killings.
> It seems clear enough to me that Israel’s goal is to prevent Hezbollah from continuing to launch rockets at Israeli towns in the north. Killing is a means to that end. One may disagree with that choice of means, but I don’t see how you can claim that “Israel’s goals entirely revolve around killing people.”
Well, let me start with the necessary disclaimer: First, I'm not an expert on geopolitics or Israel or the ME. That's probably obvious. It could be that my coarse understanding is just completely wrong, but I think it's a broadly correct picture which is lacking lots of detail.
I also don't know much about the conflict with Hezbollah specifically, but what I see from Israel tells me that the prevention of rocket smay not be their top goal. I also believe that even if it is, killing is a means that I disagree with!
The rhetoric I hear about Hamas (not Hezbollah, so it may be different there, but I suspect it's not substantially so) from the Netanyahu administration is about murder. Protecting Israelis is a means to an end; the end goal is to kill every single member of Hamas (and, reading between the lines, the expulsion of all Palestinians). It's widely reported that many Israelis openly feel Netanyahu is not making meaningful efforts to recover hostages, and I've also understood that significant lapses in Israeli security were what made the Oct 7 attack last year possible. Meanwhile, some of the things Netanyahu says about Hamas and Palestine sounds genocidal, frankly.
Again, could be wrong about all that. Every word on the subject is biased in one way or another. Additionally, I know very little of the situation with Hezbollah, so I'm extrapolating: The prioritization of murder over safety that I see in the war with Hamas demonstrates to me that Israel is not making choices in the utmost interest of safety, generally, if the murder of its enemies is on the table.
Of course, I'll also reiterate that even if all of the above is wrong, their means are unacceptable to me: I don't believe one of the most powerful nations on the planet needs to murder its impoverished neighbors to keep itself safe. It's much easier than diplomatic and nonlethal approaches, yes; but I don't think it's necessary.
At some point you have to ignore these perspectives because they are wrong. Look into the founding of Hezbollah. It isn't a secret, their stated goals is to expulse Jews. It cannot get much more plain as that.
The positions in this war are not equal.
The right number? Zero. An acceptable number to help stop Hezbollah from routinely firing rockets at your northern towns and villages? That’s a harder question. Unfortunately, the hard question is the one that’s relevant.
Why isn't it better to cause fewer civilian casualties &/or those of lesser severity than a shooting fight or missile attack?[1] Given the situation has already degenerated to its current state where fighting is the status quo and all options lead to innocent casualties then minimizing those is the horrible "OK" option. Not okay in the sense of desirable, not okay in the sense that things should never have degenerate to this level to begin with, only okay as the less horrible option.
[1] Videos show the explosions highly limited in their ability to cause injuries as bad as a bullet to anyone ever a foot or two away from the explosions, much less than I would expect from anything more conventional.
"Its war on terrorists" sure. by framing what's happening in that way you've already excused away most of the things people are upset about
I agree that the framing is tendentious (though not necessarily false). But I don't think much actually hinges on that. The point is still worth considering even if it's just a "war" rather than "war on terrorists." The linked article is a study on wars in general, not just wars "on terror."
> Who cares what is right or wrong
Kind of an odd thing to say in a conversation with a bunch of other people who clearly care what is right and wrong.
> 400 years ago you'd have owned slaves and not think twice about it.
An oversimplification, to say the least! This is only even a little bit true if we limit ourselves to the small number of nations with chattel slavery (but why would we do that?), and actually not even true of Americans, many of whom were opposed to slavery even 400 years ago.
It seems like you're making a big, unjustified leap from: "people don't always do the right thing" to "right and wrong don't matter and are not worth discussing."
Edit: OK, I'll unpack: your points about Foxconn and modern-day slavery don't seem to establish anything other than that people don't always act according to their moral judgments. But that doesn't demonstrate that right or wrong don't matter and are not worth being discussed. (Or, in your words: "Who cares what is right or wrong?") For one thing, moral judgments could have attenuated, but still significant, effect on peoples' behavior. Or, it could be worth discussing for reasons other than its effect on peoples behavior.
I hoped it would be understood that the quotation marks aren't intended to be interpreted as literally quoting your statements but, rather, are just a way of referring to two different propositions, the first of which is the one actually supported by the evidence that you cite and the latter of which seems to be the one you're espousing.
I don't find it very persuasive to simply assume that the casualties are "excessive." Whether they are actually excessive is really the whole issue. As of right now, there is no strong evidence that I'm aware of that the injuries from today's attack are "excessive" much less those of a different purely hypothetical attack.
And even then: to judge whether casualties are excessive requires an understanding of the goal to be achieved, which is almost completely absent from this discussion.