domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
Wow, it really sounds like that doctor should call for Hamas to surrender. Unconditionally, even. Has he?
Or is he a regular member of his death cult, like the old women in Palestine who weep with joy that their children were killed trying to murder Jews?
I feel like, especially in this community of mostly atheistic high decouplers, that everyone posting on this topic should have to specify if they grasp the concept of what true belief in a warrior's afterlife would entail.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
No one but a mod should have been able to see it or reply to it before it was unfiltered.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
Again, everyone (apart from you) claiming that people are dying of starvation now has been claiming this since the end of 2023.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
America should focus more on making things like working in all aspects of chicken farming/processing less terrible, not on importing desperate Guatemalans who will work until their fingernails rot off.
There are some jobs so terrible that they can only be done by the desperate or by forced labor. There's fewer of them than there used to be, but picking strawberries is still a job that really sucks, and there's no improvement on the horizon. There can be people doing certain jobs because the carceral system forces them to work full time and they can't get a better job, or there can be people doing it because they're desperate third worlders.
yunyun333
1d ago
There's been widespread malnutrition and hunger of course, but few actual deaths directly from starvation until recently.
And if the debate centered around how people's views of your aunt depended on her belonging to a specific outgroup, such as women, whether or not she had balls would be pretty relevant.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I acknowledge that there is a place for handguns without in-built mechanical safeties. But that place is not as service weapons.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
How are a bunch of dudes in pickup trucks and paragliders ever, EVER going to credibly threaten one of the most sophisticated armies on planet earth?
You say this like we didn't just have the Afghan war, with the US military fighting dudes in pickup trucks and with AKs and jerry-rigged IEDs.
Also, Israel is tiny It's literally about 9 miles wide from the border to the sea at one point, and it's only 20 miles from Tel Aviv to the border. How many people with AKs running around Boston would it take for the whole city to freak out and panic?
The "ceasefire now" folks totally miss that all of this cycle will just repeat when the next terrorist attack happens
The mistake is thinking this is a bug, rather than a feature of this way of thinking for these people. I don't think I'm being overly cynical when I say that most self-described Palestinian supporter don't want peace, they want a war where Hamas is winning. "Ceasefire now" is only a slogan that gets brought up when Israel has the military advantage.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1d ago
It's very late in the time zone I'm currently in and I probably won't be replying to anything in detail until tomorrow. I don't have time to write long posts every hour of every day---like waiting 24hrs is the standard for written communication.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Are the descendents of the Sudeten Germans and other Ostdeutsch who were ethnically cleansed out of eastern europe into Germany after WWII still living in refugee camps? Of course not. Population exchange is traumatic, but people can get on with their lives afterwards. The current never-ending simmer of terrorism and oppression is just categorically worse.
You know, the more I learn about Palestinians the more I'm convinced it was a bad idea to move ethnic cleansing into the category of "never under any circumstances even thinkable actions". Palestinians are brazenly explicit about their refusal to ever accept Jews living in the region and their commitment to "resistance" under all circumstances - a state of affairs practically unique in history because just about every other society to ever exist has known full well that the rewards for being even a fraction as belligerent would be getting wiped out. If they've shown after nearly 80 years they're still not going to behave, maybe threatening to move them somewhere else is the only thing that will get them reconsider their attitude.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1d ago
The early draw of reddit for me was learning fuddlore from different communities.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
If the first post was filtered, it's likely the responses have been filtered as well. An annoying artifact from rDrama. Try to upvote them even if you disagree with their post until they break free.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
“Israel wants to starve innocent people in order to ethnically cleanse the land for Israelis” is the reasonable takeaway to me, because there is no evidence of Hamas ever taking aid (1, 2),
The very first bullet point sub-head on your second link disproves your claim: "State Department disputes findings, cites video evidence of Hamas looting"
Also, there's plenty of mainstream coverage indicating that Hamas has been heavily involved in receiving food "aid" - look at this article from November last year, which outright admits:
Hamas' efforts to take a lead in securing aid supplies point to the difficulties Israel will face in a post-war Gaza, with few obvious alternatives to a group it has been trying to destroy for over a year and which it says can have no governing role. . . .
The new anti-looting force, formed of well-equipped fighters from Hamas and allied groups, has been named "The Popular and Revolutionary Committees" and is ready to open fire on hijackers who do not surrender, one of the sources, a Hamas government official, said. The official, who declined to be named because Hamas would not authorise him to speak about it, said the group operated across central and southern Gaza and had carried out at least 15 missions so far, including killing some armed gangsters.
They'll admit that Hamas is taking the aid meant for civilians if they can use Russell conjugation to make it sound pleasant - "securing aid supplies [from hijackers]" but when someone actually carries that thought through to its obvious and logical conclusion - that a combatant organization is taking aid meant for civilians - nope, no evidence!
phailyoor
1d ago
I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with the gun. The guy died, so he certainly wasn't making excuses like "I holstered it I swear I didn't touch the trigger" and it seems likely that respondents showed up and found the gun in its holster in a way that made it clear that nobody pulled the trigger.
Considering how much the military loves to put its people in deathtraps and deny that anything is wrong, I'm pretty sure that there's some serious evidence that the gun is actually bad. And the military bureaucrats certainly don't care what gun twitter has to say about hating the gun when they decide whether or not to ban it.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
Are you seriously suggesting that Israel is purposely targeting babies to starve?
I think the best case scenario here is that Israel is criminally negligent when it comes to avoiding starving babies. Certainly there are starving babies.
starvation has long been a legitimate tool to bring armies to their knees.
Agreed, but again, how is starving babies going to bring an army to its knees?
But that's not really what interests me. If you think starvation is a bad tactic for dealing with Hamas, that's totally fine, and I think I probably agree with you. I just wonder what tactics would be good for dealing with Hamas. What should Israel do?
There's only three options I see here. The first is to kill the Palestinians, which would be a horror that Israel would not recover from. The second is to move them, which is impossible because nobody is foolish enough to take millions of Palestinians.
When Kahane wasn’t condemning normie Zionists for having contempt for the Arabs, he liked to call them dogs. Not the most original metaphor, but vivid enough, so let’s run with it. Imagine a dog, not a Pitbull (that’s racist), but a Belgian Shepherd or similar. We observe one person who tries to reason with the dog, discusses with him the categorical imperative, and performs random unsolicited acts of kindness to appeal to its better nature. Another, swarthier person enters, perplexed at this cringe European, and pushes him to the side. He takes a good long look at the dog, walks over and kicks it square in the nuts, returning to high-five his friends. Rinse and repeat for three decades. Who is surprised that the dog is deranged?
What you do with a dog, obviously, is you train it. You don’t respond to its barks and snarls by getting down on all fours and barking back because ‘this is the yard’ and that’s what is done here. How do you train the dog? Well, go find someone who’s good at it, and ask him.
What does this look like? I don't know. But directionally, perhaps it's something like the British Raj. A civilizing mission is basically the only way to turn things around.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
This is true, but by the same token, a lot of people wringing their hands over the poor Palestinians being ethnically cleansed, if it was another Arab nation doing it would not give one single fuck.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
Almost everyone claiming that Gazans are starving now has been claiming the very same thing since the war started.
aqouta
1d ago
I do actually agree with you in this case, but it's kind of a funny claim to make when we have no idea how this ends.
Of course we have an idea of where this ends. The Palestinian aim to drive the jews, every one, out of the region and the Jews will not leave willingly. It can end with the Palestinians somehow accepting the Jews existing in the region or one side killing the other. Those are the options.
Oh, I see. Looking at Netstack's post I guess it's only been 4 hours; maybe he'll come back.
I was getting pretty tired of the AlexanderTurok inspired you people posts, with minimal drive by engagement.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Yes, my questions are relevant to what you said. You are making arguments that Jews aren't "real" citizens because they don't show loyalty to their nation, and when I point out where this is untrue or where their nation literally unpersoned them, you say that's not what you're talking about. Sorry, you don't get to talk about only the very specific Jews who fit your generalizations.
Jews are somewhat underrepresented in the armed services in the US. Blacks are greatly overrepresented. Is this because Jews are less patriotic, and therefore blacks are more patriotic? Or is it because most Jews have better options than joining the military, and many blacks do not? Or will you find a convenient way to choose one from column A and one from column B?
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Unless it is Israel's intention to starve everyone in Gaza to death how does their current strategy deal with Hamas?
They are attempting to replace an ineffective aid stream that primarily benefits Hamas via confiscation and resale (UN channels) with another ineffective aid stream that attempts to cut out Hamas and provide aid directly to civilians (GHF aid, guarded by IDF and/or contractors). The goal is denying food aid to actual combatants (Hamas) and also denying combatants the ability to monetize aid by confiscating it and reselling it to the population, providing the combatants extra income and resources with which to carry on resistance.
It's not a complicated strategy.
It is not even clear to me that would be sufficient to end the threat of Hamas, as an organization, to Israel.
You are correct; Hamas is just the Gaza branch of the broader Muslim Brotherhood, which has many other branches in many other arab/islamicate countries. However, Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, and the quasi-sovereign entity which attacked Israel on 10/7, therefore Israel's effort is concentrated against them. Other areas with Muslim Brotherhood parties which have not conducted such hostilities (e.g. the West Bank) are not subject to military operations.
Is literally ever member of Hamas in Gaza?
No, a bunch of them are sitting on stolen billions and living in Qatar and other luxe gulf states.
No one to pick up the torch if everyone in Gaza were gone?
No, but if Israel were to target "everyone who might pick up the torch if everyone in Gaza were gone" then you'd fault them for carrying on a regional rather than a local genocide; Catch-22 and bad-faith criticism.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
I agree that simply killing every Palestinian would entail eliminating Hamas, but I am not convinced that killing, say, 10% of Palestinians will do that. I am especially doubtful that starving Palestinian babies will bring an army to its knees, on account of babies not being part of the army.
You spent a considerable amount of words digging away at the foundations of “The Gun That Goes Off For No Reason,” but if it turns out this is true,* would you consider it a gun that goes off for no reason?
*One hopes that everyone discussing this understands that “no reason” means “without purposeful human input.” The guy bumping his desk as he stood up is a reason in the causal sense, but obviously not the sort of thing you want your holstered gun to do.
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