• sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No, read the thread. I was responding to a comment that said Israel can’t fight an ideology. My point is that you can fight an ideology and we have many times. You cannot entirely eliminate an ideology, but you can destroy governments that are based on an ideology. My examples included the Nazi government.

    Hamas is a popularly-supported state actor espousing and ACTING on an obnoxious, violent ideology that started a war with a much more powerful state by literally killing civilians. Civilian casualties on the Gaza side are unfortunate, but also expected as a natural consequence of war. The other argument in this thread is that the ratio of civilian casualties shows that Israel is purposely genociding Gazans, which is belied by the fact that the ratio of civilian casualties is about the same on both sides (while admitting that precise figures are hard to verify).

    And, no, I don’t think that Gazans should be massacred. Nor do I think that German civilians should have been massacred when the Allies invaded Germany. However, the German people surrendered and repudiated the Nazi ideology. If they had not, perhaps Germany would still be occupied by the Allies and it would look a bit like Gaza today.

    • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      What does the ratio of civilians killed have to do with it when Israel has killed over ten to twenty thousand more since that day? It’s like saying it would be okay to carpet bomb Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 so long as you hit a couple militants while massacring thousands. Whatever point you’re making, Israel is an illegitimate terrorist state so it really is irrelevant, they must be stopped and the state dismantled.

      • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Again, read the thread. The other commenter pointed out that the ratio of civilian casualties proves that the Israelis are trying to genocide the Gazans. I pointed out that the ratio is about the same on both sides, thereby refuting the commenter’s assertion.

        • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Fair enough, my apologies, that in itself does not prove a genocidal intent. This whole semantic discussion does seem a little useless to me though when there are thousands of people being massacred currently. It only serves to legitimize the actions of Israel.