It seems that there are a lot of Israelis that believe that there are no innocents in Gaza. And one could argue that it’s possible that a significant majority of the population is hateful towards Israelis, considering the history.
If you agree with this argument, can you please explain why and elaborate? And if you don’t, how would you refute it? There is no data that shows that there isn’t a significant majority that’s hateful towards the Israelis.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not stating my opinion as I want to hear an unbiased opinion from you.
The idea of free will is unfalsifiable. So far, there is no evidence that there is anything causing conscious beyond, physical, chemical interactions. This means, that most likely, humans do not have free will. Every action, every thought, is caused by some chemical, or physical thing, and is ultimately predetermined.
The idea of “guilt” is born out of the idea that humans have free will, and are therefore culpable for “bad” or “immoral” actions. But humans do not have free will. Punishing a “guilty” person, is actually just inflicting suffering on the qualia, or the conscious experience of someone, for circumstances completely out of anyone’s control, including themselves.
I believe that all people are innocent. Every act of violence should be evaluated as if it was being done against an innocent person. The only difference between a killer and a saint is that of brain chemistry.
As for Israel specifically, since that is a different question than the nature of innocent, here is my reply:
- Israel funded and supported Hamas to undermine Palestinian authority
- Israel had extensive knowledge on Hamas’ capabilities beforehand, but “accidentally” ignored warning signs
I see a few people blaming Hamas for Oct 7th. I disagree. When a dog bites someone, do you blame the dog or the owner?
This robs Hamas of their heroism. The flood wasn’t just animals escaping their cage, it was a strategic defeat of the most advanced border wall in the world. They overcame incredible odds to break through it into the land that was stolen from them.
And Hamas didn’t break in to randomly kill people. They wanted hostages to exchange for the hostages Israel had. With that in mind, most of the deaths might very well have been inflicted by the IDF under the Hannibal directive to deprive Hamas of hostages.
The way I see it, the only truly innocent people are those who sincerely do not know right from wrong, and they’re mostly children. The rest of us are each and all responsible for our choices and actions.
There are lots of people who commit crime without realizing that they’re doing something wrong. I know a guy personally who raped his date in college, and didn’t realize it was a rape until decades later. Was he innocent? What about drunk people? What about people who don’t “choose”? What if free will is post-hoc nonsense?
Do you think an infant knows right from wrong? I don’t… and I work my way out from there, looking for that same innocence in others. As to your friend or anyone else, I can’t answer for people I don’t personally know… even when I do know people, I still can’t always answer for them.
Hard no.
The idea that your can judge an entire group of people to be innocent or not is heavily flawed. Even if any groups cultural influence was hypothetically incredibly evil, do people deserve death for being influenced by their surroundings? How do we gauge who has true evil in their heart, and who was harbouring doubts but couldn’t say anything? We literally can’t, and that kind of thinking shouldn’t be used to decide judgement of a person, let alone who lives and who dies. In practical terms things get muddier sure, but we’re way past that point.
At this point I feel like the conclusion of violence is made first, then the justification coming afterwards.
Ask those people if there are any innocents in Israel. All of that society contributed to a genocide. We could ask the same thingabout the US. I didn’t get thrown in jail from repeated protesting, so I’m just as much to blame.
If you had, you think any good would have come of it?
Me? No. A million of us, back in July? Yeah. We could have a made a dent.
A million huh? At that point there would not be any arrests. But if that was what was necessary, i don’t think it was a possibility to begin with. I generally do not believe that protesting does much unless it is super disruptive to everyday life. People protest every day, exactly where and how the powers aT be allow them to happen. Out of sight out of mind.
That is usually how a genocide is justified to the public. Every member of the ‘undesireabe’ group is guilty of being an undesirable, and can thus be justifyably murdered.
Examples:
All Jewish people are guilty of some conspiracy and/or killing Jesus
All Muslim people are guilty of replacing white christians and/or terrorism
All LGBTQ people are guilty of grooming kids
All Palestinians are guilty of ‘occupying’ Israeli land.
etc.
Every example of this is a tool of propaganda to get the public to go along with unfair treatment up to and including genocide. The fact that they’re all easily refuted doesn’t matter. It goes hand in hand with the view that the group aren’t fully people.
This reasoning is never ok, no matter what group of people it’s used against this time. When you recognize it, call it out for the sham it is.
Those people who say that are just trying to justify their own hatred/bigotry/war crimes.
This one is just projection. To believe this statement denies there are plenty of people who are innocent on both sides. We are not talking about those people.
We are talking about the people who hate the other side on both sides, but once again we aren’t talking about both sides here. One side has made the statement popular to dehumanize the other side.
This is what we are talking about. You can’t agree with this statement because it is used as an excuse to kill people. Regardless if the statement has truth to it it is in essence propaganda used to manipulate people.
I don’t care if someone says that there are no innocent Israelis or no innocent Gazans. It’s despicable either way, and if it’s coming from a person of faith - Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, then they are directly violating the will of God. (Gen 18:17 ff)
If they are a Kahanist or Hamas supporter, then they are in favor of literal terrorism.
First part everyone would agree. Second part, no way in hell.
Hamas is also the government, which means they are government employees who have never taken a gun or done anything. But you go beyond and call every supporter of them “in favor of literal terrorism”
It’s like blaming all jews and supporters of judaism for the action of zionists
A friend of mine said something reaaaaaalllllly controversial. IDF claims everyone in GAZA is a terrorist. But look at Israel, everyone has mandatory military service. Everyone has either been in IDF, is currently in IDF, or will be in IDF.
If anything the opposite of “everyone in GAZA is a terrorist” holds more ground honestly.
It holds slightly more ground but it’s still hateful propaganda.
The existence of conscientious objectors alone renders its logic invalid. And there are many other issues as well.
no, because you cannot hold one person accountable for the actions of a different person unless they directly enabled it.
Palestinians have every right and plenty of reasons to hate Israelis as far as I am concerned
Its like with Nazi germany. Sure not literally ALL germans supported hitler but they also just didnt do enough to stop him. When your children are killed by people with israeli flags, its hard not to hate the whole country.
That doesnt make them guilty of anything other than hatred however. The amount of people in gaza actively involved in killing israeli civilians is close to zero. Killing soldiers occupying your land is not great but arguably not morally bad.
There were literally thousands of Hamas fighters who entered Israel by land, sea, and air on Oct 7, 2023. They captured and held territory, killed 1200 people, kidnapped hundreds more, and committed war crimes. Hamas claims that they have/had 10s of thousands more fighters. The scale of these numbers is undisputed.
How is that “close to zero?”
They killed ~800 civilians according to Israel, but Israel has refused any independent investigation into these numbers and their causes of death. Likely the number was much lower and a lot were killed by Israel fire in the confusion or under hannibal directive.
The number of Hamas fighters that actually had civilian blood on their hands was at the time of the attack surely not in the thousands, because how can multiple people kill a single person.
After 16 months of bombing, arrests and starvation the number of hamas fighters alive that have actually killed any Israeli civilians is bound to have dwindled to a fraction of the initial number. All that is left are military forces engaged in war with other military forces.
All the while tens of thousands probably more than 100k univolved gazans have been killed by bombing, gunfire or starvation.
In terms of hatred im sure most gazans would be happy if Israel crumbled, but people are to be judged for actions not thoughts.
A whole different topic of discussion is whether settlers occupying and partying on internationally disputed territory should be considered civilians.
A whole different topic of discussion is whether settlers occupying and partying on internationally disputed territory should be considered civilians.
That answers your opinion the “no innocent Israelis” question.
Thousands compared to a population of over a million is very negligible. Even if every single one of them actively targeted civilians. ‘A negligibly small percentage’ is sometimes colloquially referred to as ‘practically zero’.
It’s about 1.4%
Israel lists about 160000 active duty IDF. That’s about 1.6% - practically zero according to you?
USA active duty is about 0.6%
It’s not like they came out of nowhere. If they were framed as the Rebellion in a dystopian movie, everybody would be cheering for them. Probably asking why the other 98.6% of the population aren’t participating.
Those who say there are innocent seem to lack empathy.
What is a child guilty of in the conflict? There are always non combatants who are stuck in this wanting no part on either side.
You missed a word in there.
I don’t think it’s lack of empaty, or rather, it’s not just lack of empaty, I think it’s more an active lumping together of people and ancestry.
So much so Zionist, and Nazi, are into their own a-priori “positive” quality, coherently, absurdly so, Palestinian children have a-priori negative qualities.
I feel sick just typing this because I would think this is very very very clearly idiotic. But it seems to take hold of plenty of people’s worldview.
They lack empathy for the out group.
And often folks like that don’t really have much empathy for the in group once the masks come off.
Children are not born with hatred in their heart.
And as others have pointed out, hatred =/= not innocent. Nobody deserves to die just for hating someone. Even if you could justify killing someone just cause they allegedly hate you, I have a very very difficult time believing that all Palestinians hate Israelis and vice versa. Again, people are not born with hatred in their heart and the actions of a government don’t always reflect the feelings of their citizens.
Also just being pedantic about your disclaimer: opinions are biased. You can’t ask for an unbiased opinion. You can make an unbiased (to an extent) statement, but not an opinion.
They meant an opinion less influenced by the opinion of the surveyor.
And if you don’t, how would you refute it? There is no data that shows that there isn’t a significant majority that’s hateful towards the Israelis.
First, you can’t just say “there is no data that shows that there isn’t X”; you need data that shows X. However, you’ll probably find that data fairly easily, because Palestinians hate Israelis’ guts. That gets us to the real problem with this argument: Having an opinion doesn’t make one guilty of anything. Only acts can make one guilty, acts like—for example—voting for Likud and other Israeli pro-war parties knowing they’re running on a campaign of Palestinian extermination. It’s just more projection from fascists (and make no mistake Zionism is a fascist ideology. For reference see: https://zionism.wtf/.)
it is a valid view.
but i do not support it.
imo, anything that uses absolutes tends to get out of reasonable bounds.
no innocentsin Gaza is really hard to prove.
