Israel/Palestine thread

I have a lot of questions and comments for the "life is a life" people, aka you'd swap the lives of your tribe/countrymen/family for less deaths from another group. I do believe there will be cases where that could prove out. But consider me skeptical of it working in all the cases I bring up later.

But till I have time for that, I have a question.

Let's say that through some big tech innovation, like some virus delivered by drone or something, suddenly the death tolls flipped. Suddenly more Israelis than Palestinians were dying. Reading this thread, you would think that would be the thing that triggers the flip. A flip in empathy, a flip in support, a flip in backing, whatever the case may be. I don't believe for a second that would happen. I believe that if that shift in death toll happened, largely the world would say some versions of:

"The resistance!"
"Palestine will be free!"
"It's their land anyway!"
"Now you see what it's like!"

Am I wrong?

Yes.

I understand not wanting it to be about how after Oct 7th it's been about 35k Gazans killed vs about 200 Israelis killed, but that's what it's about for most Israel critics at least around here.

This issue has been going on in threads like this long before Oct 7th. And during Oct 7th when it was 700-800-900-1000-1100-1200... and climbing, there wasn't tremendous concern for the number. Never really came into focus. I have no evidence it would if suddenly 35k Israelis died tomorrow (and we'd be at "evens")

Someone tell me with a straight face this is necessary.

you would sacrifice 3 of your family members to save 4 palestinians (assume same age and life expectancy each)?

Some voted in favour because the package is also about ukraine and taiwan, they told so to reporters.

Lol yes. But knowing you believe this is very illuminating, so I don’t mind the post.

35k Israeli civilian* deaths would absolutely be criticized by the same people in the same manner. All you’re demonstrating here is a blind spot for actually understanding those you’re debating.

I might not sacrifice one of my children for every single man, woman and child in Italy, but I'm not a racist/xenophobe and not everyone in some poorly defined gigantic group is my family. I do share some stuff culturally with Jews generally, and that can be a bit bonding, but not enough for me to lose the perspective that a person is a person.

I wrote family members because in the post you replied to, that was one of the groups mentioned.

So a person is not a person if it's your family.

Either all people are always worth the same, or the moment you accept that's not true for you , you have to accept it's not for other people, and they can weight human beings differently arbitrarily, like you (and most other people) do with your family.

So we can confirm that "a person is a person", as per rafiki post, is not something even you live believing in, in your revealed preferences. Even if you like the idea that you do, you literally don't, as per your admission.

So we are back at a very more normal conversation about which value to give to some groups, for which your answer might be "approximately the same as the other group", but where you can't claim moral superiority vs people who do weight those groups differently, because it's all arbitrary to begin with and no one among us value all human beings the same.

That's literally false because a good portion of the very pro-palestine people, at least in Italy, are the same people who never criticized the 10k+ ukrainian civilian deaths caused by Putin invasion.

In american social media, the pro-palestinian rightwing people in particular (the non-intervenionist MAGA guys more or less) never criticized Putin for 10k+ ukrainian civiliand deaths either.

So it might be the case for you sure, but not for many pro-palestine people. Many pro palestinian people already treated civilian deaths very asymmetrically depending on who kills them, and who the dead people are.

The CEO of italian state television is under police escort following credible death threats and pro-palestine riots in front of the state television HQ, after he expressed official support to Israel.

This post got too stupid to read all the way through. Of course my children are more important to me than strangers. Because you're a racist and a xenophobe, you value the lives of people differently because they are or are not in huge very poorly defined groups despite the fact that you've never met them and never will.

That "of course" isn't obvious at all philosophycally.

There is actually a fierce debate about that in ethics and it has been going on for centuries.

It might be obvious to YOU (and me and others) because at least on this topic you didn't trascend your biological impulse, but it's ABSOLUTELY NOT OBVIOUS that we should morally attribute more value to our children than to strangers.

Now you instead trascended tribal biological impulses (the in-group / out-group impulse), and insult those that didn't ("racist", "xenophobe") because you feel morally superior having trascended that specific impulse.

I don't think you value 100 oncologists the same you value 100 shark loan lenders either, and i think you wouldn't go to the same length in terms of effort to save the 2 groups if they were threatened by some danger, and that has nothing to do with racism or xenophia.

https://boulderjewishnews.org/2023/lette...

so once again, how many Palestinians have to die until israel says wow this is too many?

so far by the numbers

Palestinians killed about 500 israelis, and they had 50 hostages?

Israelis killed 30k palestinian CIVILIANS, and they have 1000 hostages?

When you talk about tribes like this you're talking about small groups where everyone really knows each other, not like The Apache or something. That's natural and understandable for people to value the people they know, depend on and usually love. The Statist **** where that gets generalized to some racial or national group or even Klan is not a natural impulse and that's why people need to indoctrinate people in the group to believe that. It's universal in immense groups of strangers who form some kind of association because otherwise there would be no such groups, but it's not innate.

Israel says until they destroy Hamas so maybe a few million. But thats going to take time.

Ye the basic biological pulsion is for Dunbar-sized groups.

But you know, most people trascended that and it started quite a while ago (with organized religion in particular), and the reference group size expanded a lot (but very rarely to universal "a person is a person" levels).

Now giving ANY value to complete strangers far away is innatural as well :-). it's true in a sense that outside our group a person is a person biologically, but only because they are all worth literally 0, it's not natural to give ANY **** to the lives of strangers far away. Not natural at all.

It's not innate nor natural to spend any energy, time, effort caring for the lives of complete strangers.

Most of us humans have a basic sense of empathy for others, but you do you.

For others in close proximity, which is partially solved by photos / video footage, it's not normal at all to be empathic about the idea something is happening elsewhere far away from you to people you never met nor heard before.

In fact a single picture of a baby covered in blood triggers more empathy that reading the line "30000 civilian deaths" for basically everyone, you can measure that if you want.

If you agree with that, you understand what i mean and you know it's true.

Israel just lost 4 soldiers to save two hostages

besides the nazis and the fasciit countries that supported them (italy, japan etc) it is very hard for people to kill other people. It is almost an unnatural thing. Even with guns they have found it takes alot of convincing to get people to kill other people, often times soldiers shoot at the ground or miss on purpose; thats how unnatural killing another person is.

so clearly we are hard programmed to give value to other humans.