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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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The condemnation, as Nybbler says (and again this is in Ackman’s Twitter post) is because they’re unwilling to actually commit to freedom of speech. They want their exceptions for discourse around trans issues or HBD, but then when it’s POC vs Jews, they want to be able to sit back and say they’re just following the spirit of the first amendment.

You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians, and it's especially rich that Jews have been able to force the discourse on an alleged call to genocide with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history. We should be left in awe that they've been able to steer the discourse to pearl-clutching around that slogan while they openly endorse an ongoing ethnic cleansing. None of the hypocrisy you are trying to identify here between "POC vs Jews" on the free speech question can possibly hold a candle to the hypocritical Elite support for Zionist brutality. The fact this has been made an issue proves Jews are on the top of the pyramid, above and beyond the POC, and the kvetching over this controversy is just proof of that fact and not at all proof that Jews are put upon.

Slaughtering, to me, seems like a highly incorrect use of the word. They are incidentally killing people in Gaza, some tiny percentage of which are civilians, most of whom are in the crossfire because they are being used as human shields by agents of Hamas, a foreign military operation that just conducted an act of aggression in Israel.

It seems rather likely to me that a large percentage are civilians, given how much Hamas tries to hide itself with civilians and inside civilian structures. Which doesn’t make the IDF’s collateral damage any less moral, in my opinion.

Oh I disagree. You can't have such a standard practice without willing participation of the vast majority of the population. Almost everyone over age 10 knows why they are there and is agreeing to it.

That may well be, but supporting the military doesn’t make you a combatant, or else the civilian/combatant distinction would be virtually meaningless in the vast majority of cases.

Yes I agree that the civilian/combatant distinction is useless in the vast majority of cases. I further assert most people asserted to be Palestinian Civilians would fail all but the most lenient tests if given a questionnaire with a perfect truth detector.

Now that’s interesting! Do you believe that there’s much of a point at all then, to making targeting civilians a war crime? Do you see the Oct 7 attack on Israeli civilians as a justified part of war-making?

Do you believe that there’s much of a point at all then, to making targeting civilians a war crime?

Targeting how? Am I bombing a football stadium during gametime with a MOAB? Sure. Give that Colonel or Major the death penalty after the war.

But almost always when it is applicable, its a street level thing where you are operating with near zero info, often nowadays soldiers are intentionally dressing as civilians, and "civilians" are running interference for their local boys. In that case, blow the whole block and I don't see where the crime is. If I am "supporting" the military with a vote, I also am not a civilian, because the purpose of voting is to avoid internal civil wars. But that is not a good standard for the other side to try and figure out. So just lay off women and children that are in basements where there are no other men at all. If any men want to profess equal amounts of non-participation they should begin a military resistance movement against the government that they do not support.

Edit I forgot this part

Do you see the Oct 7 attack on Israeli civilians as a justified part of war-making?

Not really. They didn't make any real attempts to target IDF soft targets. They just targeted the equivalent of a football stadium, a concert. They also actively fled engagement with IDF instead, fleeing them, and targeting residences where they had zero reason to expect to particularly find IDF resources. Also, it was a surprise attack. I don't subscribe to the idea that you have to hamstring yourself in war, like a lot of progressives seem to think Great Britain/USA/Israel/France should do, but it does show a certain lack of courage. Combined with their cowardly appeals to the UN/western progressives for a ceasefire since 10/7 I think it betrays a guilty mind of a people who know they are not conducting themselves in a way compatible with being considered members of a human society.

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