I dont know about ending aid to Israel. A lot of the aid we send to Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, is basically payoffs to not fight each other. Dont know if we need to open that Pandora's box just yet.

But I have stated before relocating the Gaza Palestinian population in the Western world (in more desirable locations than the Oklahoma panhandle, unless that is their choice) and allowing them to move on and live normal lives sounds like a good idea.

I covered this. That is all due to conditioning and propaganda, and if we removed the conditioning in a generation everything would be fine.

The 450 million people in the US living thousands of miles away from whatever ancestral land they originated from is pretty clear evidence there is no innate human need to live in the same house their great grandparents did.

I am not opining on what Israel should do. I am suggesting that poker analogies tend to trivialize war, which involves real human beings on both sides, not playing cards.

I am. Israel should not be a fascist apartheid state. thats what I would do if I was Israel.

Snipping away at my opinion/choice of analogies while not taking an opinion of your own doesn't seem particularly sporting..

My point is that these are two diametrically opposed belief systems that have been indoctrinated for thousands of years.. at some points they have to clash explosively.

I guess you are right. Palestinians had their Warsaw Ghetto uprising. and now the results will be the same.

We are a fascist apartheid state because they put 6,000,000 of us in Ovens and we had nowhere to run, so the World promised us our own country. If we allow Arabs equal rights, because of birthrates, they will soon become the majority. When Given free elections Muslims will install Fundamentalist leaders who believe in the Koran and want to destroy us.

Palestine is a made up country that existed for like 30 years. Let's just say Muslims.

I think Muslims is a bit broader. I thought we were talking about a specific subset that is kept in a concentration camp. but I suppose that you would prefer all Muslims are caged similarly amirite?

I would prefer they did not want to push me into the ocean but when they do I want to be able to respond aggressively so they are adequately deterred

A bunch of Saudi Trust fund kids hit 3,000 Americans so we firebombed a different Muslim Country that didn't have oil for 20 years.

Don't underestimate Hamas, either their pure evilness or their capabilities. Their actual goal is to get as many Gaza citizens and Israeli's killed as possible, so they can win the real war and the propaganda war. And they have obviously been planning this a long time.

Israel had to resort so much to bombings in 2014 because Hamas was too prepared for a ground assault and Israel couldn't get through that way. And Hamas has had that much time to prepare and become even more sophisticated, and they claim AA capabilities on top.

Any incursion to depose Hamas is going to involve a lot of dead Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers. I am not even sure collateral damage is the right term, as the actual goal for Hamas is to get as many Palestinians killed as possible for the propaganda war purposes.

Since you recognise this, the natural follow up question would be "do you think it's wise to base important life (and death) decisions on this book, which posits that there is an omniscient, omnipotent preternatural being capriciously guiding and evaluating these decisions?"

It is way outside the scope of this thread, but it is actually an interesting question whether groups of humans can develop a workable moral system that can be passed down generations absent the belief of some "omniscient, omnipotent prenatal being." There is little historical evidence to suggest they can. I think you can characterize many current western societies as more or less athiest, but I am not sure they will stand the test of time for various reasons.

Maybe it isn't "wise," but maybe it is heavily selected for regardless.

I am not dictating policy. I am advocating for reacting aggressively(maybe excessively so) when the next door tribe rapes and pillages my village, or to aggressively preempt that rape and pillaging from ever occurring.

President Biden gave a statement today that was long and had a lot of stuff, but had this line.

"If the United States experienced what Israel experienced, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming."

--And I think this is true for pretty much any country. I mean, you can think maybe Zionism never should have happened, maybe Israel hasn't been the best neighbor, and even after all of that, you still circle back to the fact absolutely no country wouldn't respond to such action.

So the immediate declaration by Qatar for Israel to stand down (while Hamas was still going door to door butchering) and then the progressive left immediately start parroting this declaration, is the height of absurdity. As I am typing this 2 days later I am not sure all the Hamas terror cells have been cleared from southern Israel.

I mean I am sure there is going to be a lot of discussion and second guessing as far as tactics, strategy and goals go. But the call to immediately stand down of the progressive left in this country and states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia is just complete absurdity, and should be treated as such.

I'd read The God Delusion, where Dawkins addresses this point better than I ever can.

And it's "preternatural", which is quite a different word to "prenatal", although I'll grant you that they both have the prefix "pre" and the suffix "al".

Before your little holiday from the forum, you were giving ratios of how many people should be killed based on your book. If you want to go ahead and say that you're vengeful and bloodthirsty, that's one thing, but saying "my book of fairy tales has prescribed ratios of how many people I need to kill" is quite another.

ratios were more based on Historic death rates between Israel and the Muslims residing in "Palestine" post 1948 usually 20 Muslim Bodies for every one Jewish body. But your point remains, if all lives are equally important than that ratio is unforgivable. But my books say we are chosen and they are not so when they try to kill us first **** em.

You've totally missed my point. It wasn't about ratios, it was about where you got them, and the rest of your guidance from.

I'll spell it out. My point is that religion is dumb.

Your anti religion sentiments are kind of irrelevant. They are killing us because of their religion, and we are aggressively and preemptively killing them becuase of our religion. Making value judgments like Dumb or good or bad without a belief in a God is Kind of silly. Things Just are. Unless the intention is to feel smug and morally superior.

But regardless of how dumb it is. We are at this point, they just massacred 1200 Civilians. What is Israel's next move?

No idea what the next move is.

Yeah, we are where we are, but we wouldn't be here if it weren't for religion, and that's dumb. Sorry, I didn't realise that this was a military strategy thread and the ridiculousness of the cause of the conflict was out of scope for this discussion, or irrelevant.

D2: Thinking x is true is dumb.
SH: You can't say that because you don't think x is true.

Logic fail.

Don’t massacre scores more civilians and claim moral superiority for one. Just like after 9/11, this has shown many people to be absolute hypocrites and their ethics a thin veneer easily abandoned. The justifications for Palestinian deaths are basically the same as those given by Hamas regarding Israelis. You’re not better. It’s also completely unhelpful in preventing further violence. What did decades of revenge in Iraq and Afghanistan and literally 100x more innocent people killed than in 9/11 itself get us? There isn’t any less violence as a result. You’re not going to kill your way to peace and security.

Fighting for peace is like ****ing for virginity.