You mean we should believe the numbers when the IDF is reporting them?

It’s like flipping over the ad pages in a magazine. It’s like taking the advertisement brochures out of a newspaper and throwing them into the trash. It’s like leaving the room during halftime break. It’s like taping a show without the commercial breaks. It’s like walking past a poster without reading it. It’s like getting your letters from the mailbox and throwing away the advertising mailers. It’s like going to the cinema and talking during the ads that are playing before the movie. It’s like walking down the sidewalk and ignoring the people trying to sell you merchandise. It’s like switching channels when commercials come on.

But for some reason, people are trying to tell me that I’m ethically and morally in the wrong for blocking fucking YouTube ads.

These must be those death panels Republicans warned us of when the Affordable Care Act passed…

It really depends on what a Trump reign will look like, right?

Will he be able to round up tens of millions of people and deport them, as he has promised? Will he institute another Muslim ban, as he has promised? Will he stay in office after his next four year term, as he has said he wants to? Will he use the office of the president to persecute political opponents, as he has promised? Will he “root out” all the “vermin” in the United States, as he had promised? And if yes: who will get declared to be “vermin?” How will they be “rooted out?” Will he make torture legal, as he promised? Will he bring back family separation and child detention camps? Will he threaten nuclear war again? And if yes, will some crazy regime take him up on the offer?

And if all of that or even just a fraction of that comes to pass, will you still sleep well, knowing that you might have been able to stop all of that but voting for the lesser of two evils was just beneath you?

Because ultimately, that’s the decision you’re making.

It’s a show about nothing!!

It’s probably just a definition thing.

To me, constructive criticism means that the criticism doesn’t just point out failure, but that it then also shows how to correct that failure.

By itself, “you’re doing it wrong” is just destructive: it takes something apart, it destroys it. Without a subsequent “and here’s how you would do it right,” it doesn’t become constructive, it doesn’t help in putting things back together in the correct way.

Sure, as a first step, “you’re doing it wrong” is completely justified when something is actually wrong.

But without the second step - the constructive part - it just doesn’t constitute constructive criticism. By itself, it’s just criticism.

Is saying “you’re doing it wrong” really constructive?

“Atomstrom wird so billig sein, dass es sich nicht lohnen wird, Stromzähler einzubauen.”

Atomstrom ist halt überall auf der Welt subventioniert. Ob jetzt in den Sicherheitsgarantien, die der Staat trägt, oder in der Kostenübernahme für Rückbau und Endlagerung, oder in direkten Subventionen wie in Frankreich.

Das Irre an der Sache ist, wie viele Leute auf den Strompreis in Frankreich gezeigt haben mit der Behauptung, so günstig wäre doch Atomstrom, ohne auch nur eine Ahnung davon zum haben, wie sehr das in Frankreich subventioniert wurde.

They could also apply asymmetric warfare strictly against military targets, and guerilla movements in other conflicts have done exactly that.

Nobody forces Hamas to murder civilians. It’s something they’re doing out of their own volition.

I’m not defending the tactics used by the Israeli military.

At the same time, they’re using tactics that are pretty similar to the tactics used by the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan - yet even back then, despite all the opposition took America’s military interventions, we didn’t see people around the world claim that America was committing genocide or that America was s terrorist state.

Yet those labels are constantly applied to Israel.

Why do you think there’s this difference?

And I never said that, either. I was asking whether or not somegeek was equating Israel with all Israelis, since they didn’t make a distinction (e.g. by saying “the state of Israel” or “the IDF” or “the Netanyahu administration”).

Seems fair in light of the broad statement made by somegeek.

I’m not the one justifying any mass murder.

Sure. Equating Israel with all Jews is just as wrong as equating the state of Israel with all those living within it.

Yeah, you’re right. If you put it like that, that totally justifies the cold blooded murder of 265 people.

If the term “allistic” offends you: grow up, it’s a new word. Is learning a new word scary?

I have no particular opinion on the term “allistic,” but what happened to the maxime that each group should get the final say on the terminology applied to that specific group?

Now we’re saying to a specific group “hey, from now on we’ll call you all this new term and you all can just shut up and deal with it, because you don’t get a say?”

Seems like contradicting messages.

Well, is the poster up there saying that all Israelis are terrorists?

Conversely, what would saying “Palestine is the terrorist of the human race imply?” That some Palestinians are terrorists? That many Palestinians are terrorists? That all Palestinians are terrorists?

Yeah, the external fire escapes on the second and third floor would also suggest that it’s been subdivided into several apartments.

Just like when they thought that yelling “Let’s Go Brandon” was sooo fucking clever.

Sorry this is a barrage of accusations i dont have the time to try and dig through myself.

I understand.

You’re trying to defend the massacres committed by Hamas as legitimate self-defense. You’re trying to defend Hamas as a bunch of freedom fighters protecting Palestinian civilians.

Of course you’re not going to look up evidence that Hamas has been making Palestinians’ lives miserable. That would run counter to that narrative.

I think this is a bad take.

First of all, it assumes that there are only two sides when in reality, there’s an incredible multitude of groups and factions with their own interests - whether it’s Hamas or the IDF or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or militant Jewish settlers or Hezbollah or the Iranian leadership or Qatar or the Houthi rebels or any of the other groups that have been involved just in this current conflict.

And secondly, it inherently blames everyone put into either Group A or Group B for the absolutely worst, horrendous atrocities committed by the most extreme elements categorized into those groups.

So suddenly, Israeli citizens who were just a few weeks ago demonstrating against the Netanyahu government are now responsible for atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza or by some violent settlers in the West Bank. And vice versa, Palestinian families who had to flee their home, maybe lost innocent family members to arbitrary bombing campaigns and are now living as refugees under the most dire circumstances are suddenly responsible for the murder of Israeli civilians, for Israeli children burned, for young Israeli women murdered and paraded around the streets in Gaza, and for all the atrocities committed by Hamas.

That makes absolutely zero sense.

Pointing out that atrocities are being committed by many different factions and groups doesn’t constitute “both-sidesing” the issue, it’s not some kind of enlightened centrism to pretend that it’s just impossible to form an opinion on the issue.

There is no hierarchy of suffering, either. Hamas doesn’t stop being a terrorist organization just because the IDF killed more Palestinians than Hamas murdered Israelis.

But, by the same token, the Netanyahu government doesn’t stop being a right wing extremist government hell bent on destroying democratic institutions in Israel in favor of an authoritarian system just because murderous Islamist terrorists stormed across the Gaza border and killed 1,200 Israelis in the most heinous way imaginable.

And no, pointing out all of the atrocities committed in this conflict or existing empathy for all the innocent victims doesn’t equate to condoning certain atrocities committed by a certain group.