Israel

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Would you?

- Doc

Yes.

Huh.

edit: Your cowardice is shocking, frankly.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

Yes

Doubtful. What did Trump say about never surrendering?

You and Hamas share the same philosophy: your God is right, everyone else is wrong, and there is no negotiation. Think about how you're ready to go to war over an election that you lie about (and you know you're lying) being stolen. Think about how impossible it is for somebody to be a Republican these days and not go along with outright brazen lying of the religious right, and now, why would the right-wing religious reflection in your mirror called Hamas act any differently?

A long time ago I went out with this one girl a couple of times. She was fashion conscious to a fault, and had a major ax to grind against people who she didn't feel had important careers. Not like she was wealthy or important or anything; just a middle-class corporate cog. I found it off-putting and weird, but it made more sense when she eventually threw it out there that she was from Iraq (never would have guessed that), and that her parents were traditional Muslim who wear all the garb and deeply concerned about all their westernized children who have gone the ways of the world.

That was an inspiring lesson for me about how Western consumerism can corrupt religious absurdity for the good. This is a benefit of integration. Without integration, you have two closed off societies who fear the other and believe the only hope for peace is to destroy the other guy. Even without factoring in morality, since that is an unlikely outcome to ever achieve, you can only hope to continue the war cycle. The underdog will always use asymmetric war tactics; you don't have to look at it in moral terms to see why terrorism will never stop. In fact, if the party of Trump doesn't get their way, the option everyone fears is you folks turning to terrorism to get what you want, while calling it a holy war.

[Bret Ripley]

Hamas could always surrender.

Awesome; of course, the non-Hamas civilians who are doing most of the suffering and dying don't have that option.

[Res Ipsa]

If Hamas is literally underground, go underground and kill it.

It's not worth Israel losing that many of its own men being drawn into a fight in the tunnel. I think my own soldiers should hold a higher priority than enemy civilians. To value enemy civilians over my own soldiers would be immoral in my opinion.

So, how many dead babies = 1 Israeli soldier?

[ajax18]

Yes.

Huh.

edit: Your cowardice is shocking, frankly.

- Doc

There's no cowardice in declining to fight a battle you know you cannot win. It might make you feel better to fight anyway but it's still foolish. Look at the price Japan paid for refusing to surrender in WWII.

[ajax18]

Hamas could always surrender.

Awesome; of course, the non-Hamas civilians who are doing most of the suffering and dying don't have that option.

Maybe the Gazans need to choose better leadership. Hamas isn't working out to well for them.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Huh.

edit: Your cowardice is shocking, frankly.

- Doc

There's no cowardice in declining to fight a battle you know you cannot win. It might make you feel better to fight anyway but it's still foolish. Look at the price Japan paid for refusing to surrender in WWII.

One wonders what the Continental army would've thought had George Washington uttered those words at Valley Forge.

- Doc

[Gunnar]

. . . and parents who speak out against critical race theory.

I have yet to find anyone speaking out against critical race theory who has any more than the foggiest notion about what it is really about.

[Kishkumen]

Without integration, you have two closed off societies who fear the other and believe the only hope for peace is to destroy the other guy. Even without factoring in morality, since that is an unlikely outcome to ever achieve, you can only hope to continue the war cycle. The underdog will always use asymmetric war tactics; you don't have to look at it in moral terms to see why terrorism will never stop. In fact, if the party of Trump doesn't get their way, the option everyone fears is you folks turning to terrorism to get what you want, while calling it a holy war.

QFT.

[Vēritās]

This is you, Veritas:

And you [Ajax18] complained about the media immediately leaping to pro-Palestinian narratives about the conflict, when in fact the opposite is true.

Yep, and this is true. With respect to the 1400 "civilians" within the first two weeks, that quote comes from the article I cited, and you're going to hold my feet to the fire as if it is the same thing as me saying it. Fine. But I still think you're avoiding the point. Western Media is overwhelmingly pushing pro-Israel propaganda. Hell, even our own President won't accept the Palestinian death toll because he thinks the Palestinians are lying about the numbers. Regarding my follow up comment that "initial media reports of 1400 civilian deaths", well that's actually an ambiguous statement. Does it mean all initial reports period, or does it mean only those reports that initially reported 1400 civilian deaths? I already told you I obviously wasn't referring to the very first reports because none of those reports included death counts.

This is also you:
Veritas wrote:
The point is the initial media reports of 1,400 civilian deaths was just pro-Israel propaganda like the 40 beheaded babies narrative. Ajax has been claiming the media has been strictly pro-Palestinian, which is almost laughable.

Whenever something like this happens it takes time for exact death counts to be made, and the initial reports didn't include any exact numbers, only guesstimates. But once the dust had settled, the media did in fact push this false number which appears to be begin with the ADL just six days after the attack. Once they did this, the media ran with it without question. Hell, today is November 9th, more than a full month after the attack, and this is the commercial I recorded just for you last night on MSNBC, sponsored by the ADL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_BKpOOzn_8

The ad starts off preaching the virtues of "keeping the facts together," and in the next breath the narrator says, "HAMAS SLAUGHTERED MORE THAN 1400 INNOCENT CIVILIANS" as it is written across the screen. This, even weeks after you said the media correctly reported 1400 civilians and soldiers.

By the way, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I actually felt bad that you spent two hours trying to fact check everything in that screenshot. I was being lazy obviously, but thanks for pushing me to do better.

So here is better; links, not screenshots, in reference to the attack in Israel, not Gaza:

Oct 13, Anti-Defamation League: "Media from the United States and around the world are covering the war unfolding in Israel, which started with the massacre of more than 1,400 civilians and kidnapping of over 230 people by the Gaza-based terrorist organization Hamas."

Oct 16, Foreign Minister Speech to Australian Senate: "The attack by Hamas was shocking in its brutality and its scale. 1,400 civilians murdered, 3,500 injured. As many as 150 taken from Israel and held hostage in Gaza."

Oct, 16 Chicago Tribune: "More than 1,400 civilians were gruesomely slaughtered, including 260 young people attending a peace concert and entire families hiding in their homes."

Oct 17, Atlanta Journal and Constitution "Hamas launched a surprise attack Oct. 7 from the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1,400 civilians and taking hundreds more hostage. "

Oct 18, Senator Ted Budd: "Hamas terrorists murdered over 1,400 civilians, including 31 Americans."

Oct 18, LA Times "Israel cut off the flow of aid and fuel to the Gaza Strip after the attack that killed 1,400 civilians by Hamas, which controls the region."

Oct 18, New York Daily News "[Hamas] murdered more than 1,400 civilians, kidnapped more some 200 hostages, raped, pillaged, beheaded babies..."

Oct 18, ABC News: "Some 1,400 civilians were killed and roughly 200 others, including Americans, were taken to Gaza as hostages. "

Oct 19, US CONGRESS Rep Tim Burchett: "Hamas terrorists launched a savage attack on Israel over the Jewish holiday of. Sukkot. Over 1,400 civilians were killed, women and children were raped and babies beheaded."

Oct, 19 AP News: "More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly in the initial attack on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants stormed into Israel."

Oct 19, PBS: "Some 1,400 civilians were killed and roughly 200 others, including Americans, were taken to Gaza as hostages."

OCt 20, Jewish Democratic Council of America: "Hamas murdered more than 1,400 civilians, injured thousands, and took over 200 hostages, including Americans."

Oct 20, The Guardian "Drawing on his own experience of multiple bereavements, he consoled Israelis grieving for the more than 1,400 civilians killed by Hamas in the 7 October"

Oct 23, National Review: "Hamas earlier this month perpetrated a brutal massacre in Israel, killing over 1,400 civilians including women and children, some of whom were tortured, raped..."

Nov 9, Time Magazine "In the days after Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,400 civilians..."

The fact that the media is still pushing this lie even a full month later is telling, and pretty much makes my point much better than if it had said 1400 civilians in the beginning and then later changed their tune as more information came in.

This is called moving the goalposts.

A common refrain by people who are missing the point and focusing on the irrelevant in a lame attempt to score points.

Your original claim was that the media immediately leaps to pro-Israeli positions about the conflict.

The point, which is established.

You, not me, chose to lead with a misleading article that claimed, among other things, that there had been "two weeks of blanket western media reporting that Hamas allegedly killed around 1,400 Israeli civilians".

That article was published October 24th, and I have already established above that what it asserted is true. From at least October 13 through November 8th, the Western Media is still pushing this lie about 1400 murdered civilians.

It also strongly insinuated that Israel had lied about the number of civilian casualties based on a BS analysis.

But Israel does lie, and continues to lie.

After I pointed out the misleading nature of the article, you told me what your point was: "The point is the initial media reports of 1,400 civilian deaths was just pro-Israel propaganda."

And it is. See above.

The point is, you made the claim as your first argument to Ajax18. When I criticized it, you doubled and tripled down. You posted what you claimed to evidence [and crowed about it as if it were a great victory], but you didn't do the homework you should have done to make sure your "evidence" supported your claim. If you're not willing to spend the time and effort to read your own goddamn sources, you have no business citing them as evidence. Period. Whining about how long it would have taken to read your own sources is pathetic.

I made a claim in response to ajax's assertion that the media was pro-Palestinian. Given ajax's 25 year history of never responding to arguments or even questions once his claims are undermined, I didn't feel the need to put a lot of time or effort into this, even after you decided to jump in and do your usual, "I'm a progressive who is proving how objective I can be by constantly running to the defense of a Nazi." But yes, I doubled/tripled down because I knew my position was correct, and my mistake was being lazy in proving my argument with screenshots. You're just lucky the reported death toll in Gaza was the exact same number that was being misrepresented in Israel, otherwise I likely never would have made that mistake and given you this little victory lap that you can't seem to stop running.

And when faced with the evidence that your sources don't support your claim, you move the goal posts to "The 1,400 death count for civilians on Oct 7th, was spread however, and a more precise Google search would show that, though not on major outlets."

No, I was reporting a fact. You call it moving goal posts because you want so desperately for the primary point to be about the timing of the false reporting instead of the fact that western media has succumbed to Israel narratives that amount to false reporting.

So, now you're claiming that Time's reporting of Palestinian civilian deaths was spread as an accurate representation of Israeli civilian deaths. No evidence at all.

No, I conceded the point, which you keep milking, that the 1400 figure in the screenshots was in reference to Palestinian deaths. I made that clear in my post, so why are you pretending I am saying something I haven't said?

And, you qualify it as "though not on major outlets." Again, goal post shift.

Then consider the goal posts moved back, if that is the only point that matters to you. Because the AP, PBS, the Chicago Tribune etc. are major outlets I would think. See the links above which basically establish the point.

Your claim precisely that major outlets had misreported the figure as part of a pro-Israeli propaganda claim. Pro-tip: that's not how you admit being wrong.

See above. I'm not wrong.

I was wrong about the Xit about the missle.

Maybe I should pull a Res Ipsa and keep pounding you over your lazy research on that matter. I mean, after preaching about doing homework and all that jazz.

You're moving the goalposts, running away from your prior posts, and claiming that debunking your prior claims is unreasonable.

Wrong on all the above. I don't always have meaningful time to spend on this board, but interpret the delayed response as you will. You haven't debunked anything other than the screenshots that alluded to Palestinian deaths. And again, you're just lucky the 1400 figure that was reported is the same exact death toll that is being disputed in Israel, otherwise you wouldn't have a victory to gloat about at all in this thread. What are the chances of that?

You're moving the goalposts, running away from your prior posts, and claiming that debunking your prior claims is unreasonable. The implication that Hamas's attack is somehow morally justified if it's just soldiers that were killed is itself repugnant.

Stay focused. The point of the Israel propaganda is to prove how Hamas is just a terrorist group that has no sense of right or wrong even in times of War because they attack civilians. But if Hamas views all Israelis as combatants, then the purpose of their message is undermined. Hamas only views Israelis as combatants because 1. decades of suffering under the oppression of "civilian" settlers who can and do kill Palestinians without repercussions. 2. Israel requires military service from all citizens, male and female. But way to go in twisting a rather innocuous and obvious statement of fact into another red herring to make yourself feel better.

Like this one:

I'll make this simple: pushing back on your simplistic, biased, lazy, hair on fire, B.S. posts has nothing to do with being Jewish. Frankly, your question smacks of Jew baiting. No one here has been "triggered" by "any criticism" of Israel. You're engaging in a disgusting ad hominem fallacy specifically targeted at Jews.

I don't give a flying damn if you're Jewish or not, but it seems you have a special need to defend the indefensible and that can best be explained with a personal bias such as this. Jews typically tend to be those who adamantly refuse to accept the fact that Israel lies, or that their wars are religiously motivated. You didn't just "push back" on a simple assertion, you dedicated God knows how many days and hours in an attempt to defend a board's notorious bigot. Either your Jewish, or you just have a hard on for me. I was just trying to figure out which.

Long story short. Ajax said media is pro-Palestine. I said the opposite is true. I'm right, Ajax is wrong. Period. All you did was prove the media lying about the civilian death toll started October 13th instead of the 7th. That's one hell of a hill to die on.