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A US Airman lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy.In the video while he walked to the gate, he explained that he is protesting the actions of Israel. As he burned, he yelled, "Free Palestine". He is now dead. Two questions from me about the incident:
Why would anyone expect these kinds of stunts work at all? I would expect that this only generates sympathy from people that are already on your side. For a neutral observer, I don't get how it generates sympathy. For a committed opponent, I don't understand being disappointed that your adversaries are literally killing themselves. Is the efficacy purely in generating pressure from international media that wanted to pick that side anyway?
How the hell do we have soldiers that are suicidally committed to opposing American allies? Seems bad.
Understanding pacifism without reference to religion makes it illogical, for fairly obvious reasons. The mahatma didn't tell WWII Jews to throw themselves on the butcher's knives or off of cliffs because it would be effective, he told them to do so because it was divinely ordained that it should be so and would reward them in the next life. It's quite likely that a man who chooses to light himself on fire is not doing so primarily in reference to the effectiveness of doing so on others, but out of a sense that his own virtue will only be satisfied by lighting himself on fire. He didn't do it for the win, he did it for his own soul.
It sure got a lot of attention. I'm sure we could play with the utility numbers and say that the QALYs he lost lighting himself on fire achieved more media attention than twice the QALYs spent on sane protests by masses of people.
How the hell do we have allies that our soldiers are suicidally committed to opposing? Seems bad.
This seems much more explicable to me! If I thought our allies were so evil that it was virtuous to self-immolate in opposition to them, I would simply not join the American military. I don't understand the impulse to join the military if you think Israel needs to be opposed at the suicidal extreme.
I'm probably just overthinking it and the guy was simply suicidal though.
Unless he just enlisted I'm not sure your point holds. Sticking here with the view that Israel is Evil:
This time last year, Evil Israel was (at worst) the 90s LAPD from an NWA album with an air force. In Gaza, Evil Israel is (at best) killing civilians every single day. Things have changed significantly.
Protip: to get your soldiers referred to as “murdered civilians” in the press, simply don’t have uniforms.
If you really think there's a day that goes by without Israel killing a civilian, I've got a bridge to sell you.
You can claim they're doing their very very best to avoid killing civilians, and that they're killing more militants than they are civilians, they still are very much killing civilians.
I have no doubt they’re killing civilians. What I dispute is that they’re murderists, a charge all too frequently leveled at Israel, and/or Jews generally, and always a subtle undercurrent when their self-defense actions happen due to circumstances they didn’t want and tried to avoid. They’re pulling the “kill one” trolley lever as fast as they can yank it, but the trolleys keep coming.
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