Vitro13 on 23/2/2025 at 01:17
Quote Posted by heywood
No, I don't want to appease Israel or Hamas. They're both monsters. I want nothing to do with either of them.
I thought I was the only one...
Subjective Effect on 23/2/2025 at 02:39
I'm not denying that the Israelis also do horrible things though.
heywood on 23/2/2025 at 12:57
Quote Posted by Starker
Honestly, I very rarely ever put people on ignore unless they both:
1) are abusive
2) have absolutely nothing to contribute
I don't know if Subeff really ticks the first box, since his attempts to insult me have been pathetic more than anything else and seem to stem from a lack of arguments, but the second part is certainly true.
The feature is useless on vBulletin. But you don't need a feature to ignore people. You just need to recognize when the conversation is going in circles and adding nothing.
SD on 23/2/2025 at 21:46
I thought this stuff about Israeli snipers targeting children was debunked almost as quickly as it appeared. (And of course, by children I mean actual children rather than teenage terrorists). The head x-rays with suspiciously intact bullets and absence of bone fragments were a dead giveaway. People really need some fresh tropes, these ones are stale.
Starker on 24/2/2025 at 01:01
There is testimony from dozens of doctors and nurses as well as photographs, videos, and experts verifying the veracity of the CT scans:
Quote:
(
https://www.nytco.com/press/response-to-recent-criticisms-on-new-york-times-opinion-essay/)
A recent opinion essay gathered first-hand testimonies from 65 U.S.-based health professionals who worked in Gaza over the past year, who shared more than 160 photographs and videos with Times Opinion to corroborate their detailed accounts of treating preteen children who were shot in the head or chest. Following publication, some readers questioned the accuracy of the accounts and the authenticity of three CT images shown. Those criticisms are unfounded.
Times Opinion rigorously edited this guest essay before publication, verifying the accounts and imagery through supporting photographic and video evidence and file metadata. We also vetted the doctors and nurses' credentials, including that they had traveled to and worked in Gaza as claimed. When questions arose about the veracity of images included in the essay, we did additional work to review our previous findings. We presented the scans to a new round of multiple, independent experts in gunshot wounds, radiology and pediatric trauma, who attested to the images' credibility. In addition, we again examined the images' digital metadata and compared the images to video footage of their corresponding CT scans as well as photographs of the wounds of the three young children.
While our editors have photographs to corroborate the CT scan images, because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication. We made a similar decision for the additional 40-plus photographs and videos supplied by the doctors and nurses surveyed that depicted young children with similar gunshot wounds.
We stand behind this essay and the research underpinning it. Any implication that its images are fabricated is simply false.
Pyrian on 24/2/2025 at 01:10
Quote Posted by SD
I thought this stuff about Israeli snipers targeting children was debunked almost as quickly as it appeared.
Welcome to the post-truth world. There's always someone willing to tell you what you want to hear, no matter how transparently obviously bullshit it is.
Subjective Effect on 24/2/2025 at 09:44
There's also ballistics experts who have disputed those claims though.
There was one doctor who was talking about some special square bullets that these new drones shoot at children. It's about the only account of square bullets I can find anywhere on the internet so...
However, I do believe that there are some children who get shot by snipers. Some of these might be on purpose. But I think it's far more nuanced than these pro-pally people make out.
Subjective Effect on 24/2/2025 at 10:21
Israel clearly do a lot of awful things and have a raft of war crimes to answer for.
But even with this clear - Hamas are STILL far, far worse. They are just homicidal maniacs.
The test is extremely easy.
Ask yourself what would happen if for some reason one side suddenly had the means to totally overwhelm the other with almost magical ease. For the sake of argument, let's say aliens arrive with high tech battle armour that fits like normal clothes, makes troops invulnerable to modern weaponry, allows them to fly and gives them extremely high tech weapons that can destroy or disable all Earth technology. So they could just walk/fly into a military base and disable all weapons with a nod, or just multi-laser tanks and aircraft to ash.
If you give this to the Israelis all Hamas die. The civilians mostly survive and there might even be the formation of a two state solution.
If you give this to Hamas every Jew, in the world, dies. And probably a lot of you when they decide to expand and take over the infidels.
You all KNOW this. So please shut the F up with your "b-b-but, Israel".
SD on 26/2/2025 at 14:27
Any attempt to assert equivalency between Israel and Hamas collapses under the slightest scrutiny. The one in the title of this thread being a case in point. A government that can be voted out cannot, under any reasonable definition of the term, be a fascist theocracy. Indeed, with six general elections in ten years, and a strictly proportional voting system that makes coalition governments inevitable, the only argument one could make is that Israel has a surfeit of democracy, not a deficit. Netanyahu himself has already been voted out of office twice before. And (at least) three Israeli Prime Ministers have been atheists, which is not something anyone could associate with theocracy.
demagogue on 27/2/2025 at 03:19
Israel has citizenship, land, and other laws that treat Jews and other religions differently in terms of ability to get & lose citizenship (and instant citizenship vs. some impossible process), the ability to buy and obtain land vs. losing land, and dozens of different ways the populations are treated, e.g., access to work, access to housing, checkpoints, freedom of movement, water rights, getting one's business registered, etc., etc.
A legal system which gives rights to persons of one religion and denies rights to persons of other religions, different legal status and treatment based solely on their religion, is, by definition, a theocracy.
