naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I find the position that I am reflexively most inclined to subscribe to here to be woefully underrepresented in the discourse: neither side is in the wrong. If a village of hunter-gatherers hunts some elephants, and then the remnant elephant herd tramples the village, goring women and children in the process, would you say that either the hunters or the elephants are wrong and evil? Both sides are just doing what they must to survive (and retain the hope to thrive). If anyone is to blame at all, it's whoever put them in this position where they have no other choice to begin with - but even that responsibility seems to largely lie with diffuse, impersonal and/or simply long-gone forces.
I would think the hunter-gathers were evil if the method they chose to use to hunt elephants involved intentionally killing children. Similarly, while the people who flew airplanes into office buildings on 9/11 were evil, the people who bombed the USS Cole were not.
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Notes -
I find the position that I am reflexively most inclined to subscribe to here to be woefully underrepresented in the discourse: neither side is in the wrong. If a village of hunter-gatherers hunts some elephants, and then the remnant elephant herd tramples the village, goring women and children in the process, would you say that either the hunters or the elephants are wrong and evil? Both sides are just doing what they must to survive (and retain the hope to thrive). If anyone is to blame at all, it's whoever put them in this position where they have no other choice to begin with - but even that responsibility seems to largely lie with diffuse, impersonal and/or simply long-gone forces.
I would think the hunter-gathers were evil if the method they chose to use to hunt elephants involved intentionally killing children. Similarly, while the people who flew airplanes into office buildings on 9/11 were evil, the people who bombed the USS Cole were not.
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