straits

It will be an interesting study in motivated reasoning, but so far it looks like the main issues are treating the AI output as a human decision, and then allowing disturbingly lax parameters on top of that. The choice of target and acceptable conditions for attack really seem to be the key issue, along with the generous tolerance for civilian casualties: We can put this in the "manmade horrors beyond my comprehension" category.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/ Rage-inducing

I understand that you are referring to the post-WW2 period, but France does not belong in that sentence.

It depends on who your allies are. In fact, magical thinking and special pleading is being used to carry out ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism as we speak.

They could have easily stopped there.

The lot of them ought to meet up at the Hague, to better continue their high-brow discussions on the shades of acceptable and unacceptable levels of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism.

I had a brief look at the wiki page for Avi Dichter, Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and Itamar Ben-Gvir. The names of their official roles suggest that they are at the core of the operation of the state of Israel; not at the fringes. If I wanted to present its government's officials as cartoonishly evil, I would struggle to invent their personal backgrounds.

They have not "embedded" themselves in an urban center. They grew up in the ghetto that it is. And all of their violence and resistance - organized or not - has adapted to the surroundings. There is no scenario where Israel will tolerate well-delineated army barracks and military areas without actually destroying them the moment they can be called a proper military institution. This outcome is entirely logical. Not recognizing this is an embarassment to your mental faculties. In a one-sided bombing campaign where over 60% of the 23,000 dead are women and children, you come up with this number? This is delusional. The assumption that every male of 18 and over - teens included - is a trained member of Hamas ascribes militant characteristics to Palestinian society which would be nonsensical for nearly any other ethnic group. It is taking the shape of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the outcome will be an entire society at war, whose unifying factor is the oppressor.

You'd think that not doing ethnic cleansing and apartheid were achievable standards, but here we are.

Always. Although, the different edges of the blade cut to different depths.

This tactic was employed in the Gulf war. "300 babies dragged out of incubators to die" by Iraqi forces. By the time a correction was issued, the lie had done its job, which is to silence disagreement in the initial heat which forms the the response to an attack. On October the 8th (or rather in the first few weeks that followed), denial of "beheaded babies" would have earned you a swift ban on some online spaces. It reminds me of a quote by Terry Pratchett — 'A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'

I almost agree! But ending up on the US sh*tlist is an experience which ranges from unpleasant to fatal.

This is basically it. The only thing mildly surprising to me is that she did not expect it.

It would be sensible for the international community to decide. The US did not wait for such a decision before they began bombing Serbia in 1999, due to the unfolding crisis in Kosovo. Watching over 22 thousand Palestinians die, over a million souls risking starvation in winter, and over 70% of the population ethnically cleansed - forced out of their homes with less regard than people give to cattle - I don't even see sanctions on Israel discussed as an option. In fact, American tax money is financing their suffering.

Agreed, but this and most of your comment is applicable to the Yugoslav wars. It is disturbing to see a logic, laid out meticulously to identify and condemn genocidal crimes in the 90s, be thrown out entirely when a geopolitical ally is on the examination table. It sends the message that justice and accountability is applied to and demanded from countries not allied to the western sphere of influence. edit: it would only be honest to add that this is well-known. It is only being reaffirmed.

Which is an interesting parallel, given the huge difference in the western response regarding the wars and atrocities in the 90s in the ex-Yu region, when compared with the response towards Israel's set of policies (and occassional "mowing the lawn" bombing campaigns) against Palestinians.

And? Israel has maintained a steady increase in human rights violations and departures from UN resolutions before Hamas existed. It has continued that during the existence of Hamas, and all the facts today point towards a continuation of those practices if Hamas is destroyed.

I assume Iran engages in active persecution of the Ba'hai as a matter of government policy, out of the sheer principle that they are different. But I think that framing disagreement as hubris of conflicted superstitions is of limited use. It almost supposes a chauvinist bend seen with some nationalists. This is probably true for some religious folks, but they are making a mistake if that is what they practice. For someone who actually believes in God and a given scripture, those who disagree are not competitors who represent different belief systems. I believe in God: you may agree with some of my beliefs, or none of my beliefs, or all of my beliefs. But in all these cases, the belief is not mine to give or take or deny; we belong to the same God. To make others your competitors is, for a monotheistic believer, a strangely secular reflex.

The last sentence above describes Islam in general, although Muhammad as a messenger is considered the "Seal of the Prophets", with Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Noah... all the way back to Adam being considered prophets of various periods and mandates, peace be upon them. It seems that the Ba'hai tradition just adds a few interjections.

Israel does not need to drag thousands of Palestinians to their military courts, or subject them to an entire catalogue of oppressive practices. Not do they need to advance settler colonialism further. But here we are.

Hypocrisy might be a phenomenon best reserved for discussion outside of this thread, because it has the potential to derail the conversation. Those who were eager to point out Russia's atrocities since early 2022 are conspicuously silent on how much murder and destruction Israel committed in only a few months.

Just check the link again, maybe it's my browser or app, but it looks like an advertizing channel when I access it.

Ilan Pappe made an astute observation on this topic in an interview of his: there is often no smoking gun for ethnic cleansing. The directives are loose and generalizable, but the actors which carry them out know what to do when they arrive at the next city or village, and the rest of the details are written in blood and violence.

There is a confusion of the concrete reality of establishing a new nation on already populated lands. People do not "willingly leave" during a war, and the Palestinians were forced out by the threat of aggression. This is the same logic which enables someone to claim that Palestinians are voluntarily leaving Gaza. What awaits them is rubble and guns. It is certainly not unusual for entire families and ethnic communities to be driven out of their homes and then not allowed back; it's referred to as "ethnic cleansing", and it happened to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. What "their Arab brothers" did is not transferrable, nor a justification for ethnic cleansing of a population whose hostility increased with the measure of their disenfranchisement at the hands of settler colonialists. Just as the suffering of Palestinians did not justify the subsequent exile and ethnic cleansing of Jews in many Arab countries. Oddly, this short-circuit in logic was not observed in Israeli pioneers like Moshe Dayan and Ben-Gurion. Transcripts of their conversations show that they knew exactly what they were doing to Palestinians. But the animus of the post-war period is gone, as should be its methods.

You are referring to the Jewish ownership of land which reached 6.6% of the total Mandate by 1947? This figure would have remained a footnote had the partition not been forced the following year. What stopped the Palestinians from returning to their homes in the years that followed?