The zionist entity really loves that argument that "they are held to an unfair standard" and all that, and I will admit there is a small nugget of truth to that. They're jealous of the European powers who got to slaughter and plunder the rest of the world centuries ago but they don't even get to do it to the "savage natives" in their much smaller slice of conquered land.
Only problem is that since then an international framework of law and human rights was developed and agreed to by nearly the entire world condemning atrocities like that. (Ironically this was spurred on by the Nazi genocides and warmongering) Obviously it's still not very well enforced, but it's at least agreed that aggressive conquest and genocide is 'not good.'
Yet the zionist entity still wants to apply 18th century attitudes to the 21st century then also act outraged that people hate them for it. Yeah, more powerful states than you got away with it back then, but the unfairness isn't that YOU can't slaughter anymore, the real injustice was what happened to the VICTIMS of those massacres. And they have the gall to talk like this while they perpetuate more massacres and create hundreds of thousands of more victims. Not to mention they literally are getting away with it anyway, the imperial hegemon is delivering them weapons right now, and no one is stopping them except the glorious axis of resistance.
may Palestine be liberated from the river to the sea
I was with you until the last sentence. Removing the Israeli state "from the river to the sea" as you say, would mean another genocide. I guess at the end of the day, it's always ok to commit a genocide, but only if it's your side committing it, eh?
The real solution is to create two states, one for the Jews, one for the Palestinians, create a well-defined border and stop it with the holy wars, stop it with the persecutions, stop it with the genocides, stop it with the forced resettlement, stop it with terror attacks, stop it with the bombings and stop it with religions altogether.
Everyone has the right to live, so just live and let live
Removing the Israeli state "from the river to the sea" as you say, would mean another genocide.
You're really telling on yourself with that sentence. Zionist delusional fears have always been pure projection.
Removing the Israeli state "from the river to the sea" as you say, would mean another genocide.
No it fucking wouldn't. Completely dismantling the STATE of Israel, a terroristic settler-colonizer project, would not necessitate a genocide in any way and by pretending it does, you're doing the propaganda work for the actual genocidaires.
I guess at the end of the day, it's always ok to commit a genocide, but only if it's your side committing it, eh?
Stfu with your false equivalency bullshit. Let's use the stolen house analogy that was used elsewhere in this thread because it is apt. If a group of armed assholes comes into your house and starts killing off your family, claiming your house as their own, your doing everything within your power to get them back out of your house is not committing a crime at all, let alone one that is equivalent to the crime they are currently perpetrating against you.
The real solution is to create two states, one for the Jews, one for the Palestinians, create a well-defined border
Consider again the analogy above and ask yourself if the real solution is letting those who came in your house and killed your family have their own kitchenette, bathrooms, and bedrooms in your house, just with new walls. When they've been saying the whole time (as they were killing your family) that that's all they actually wanted to do.
The following is from: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/the-two-state-solution-is-the-only-way-forward/ which you should read in full.
Is the two-state solution the only viable solution?
Viable for whom and for what?
The two-state solution is inadequate to right historical wrongs, as it focuses on the pre-1967 borders as a starting point, which are in themselves a product of the colonization of Palestine, and not the root cause of it. It is thus preoccupied with finding solutions to symptoms, rather than dare address the root cause, which is Zionist settler colonialism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
This automatically means that Palestinians must relinquish any rights or hopes for their millions of refugees, and it also means that Palestinians must relinquish their rights to live in over 80% of the land they were ethnically cleansed from. Consequently, resource distribution, from water to fertile land, will be heavily stacked in Israel’s favor.
Shortly put, the two-state solution is more interested in maintaining Israel’s colonial gains and artificial demographic aspirations, and lending them legitimacy, rather than seeking justice for the Palestinians in any form.
You should really go ahead and read the other myths discussed there too.
stop it with the holy wars, stop it with the persecutions, stop it with the genocides, stop it with the forced resettlement, stop it with terror attacks, stop it with the bombings
Only one "side" is doing all that and is the only one that has the power to immediately stop doing all of that. Instead, it keeps doing all of that. I wonder why it hasn't stopped.
and stop it with religions altogether.
Seriously? You are a clown. And I say that as an atheist myself.
Everyone has the right to live, so just live and let live
Oh, just give peace a chance, right? My god liberals are so fucking vapid. This is not a situation with two sides of equivalent means and committing equivalent atrocities with an equivalent power to stop the violence. It is extremely asymmetric in every sense, including the fact that one side is currently conducting an open genocide against the other which is disproportionately made up of children. I would guarantee that most of the Palestinian people would do just about anything to be able to live and let live but Israel will not have that - they never have and they never will, which is the nature of all settler-colonial projects which you clearly don't understand.
TBH I even agree that Israel is the one doing the genocide right now. The problem I have is with your solution.
If the solution is dismantling the state of Israel and giving everything to a possible new State of Palestine, it means another fuck ton of problems, if not a straight-up civil war and genocide.
What's the solution that avoids genocide, displacement, apartheid and suffering BOTH for Jews and Palestinians?
Right now Israel is perpetrating all of these atrocities, but, unless you believe them just when perpetrated on your enemy, you should be looking for a solution that doesn't involve destroying a nation and its people. Otherwise, you are the same as them.
Remember that most Jews in Israel were born in the land of Israel, in Palestine, for the vast majority there is no place to "return to".
We need a better solution than "destroy their nation, send them away, kill them all or make them live under a muslim-arab state in a state of apartheid"
As I already said, you have no understanding of what settler-colonialism is, and your disgusting (and actually racist) insistence that the Palestinians (who we agree are being genocided right now) will simply genocide everyone living on their stolen land is testament to your ignorance. You know how space_comrade pointing out you were telling on yourself by spouting a Zionist delusional fear, and that it is pure projection? Well it really is both those things: delusional and projection.
Most of what you said I already addressed, and you seemed to have missed it, so it doesn't make me very keen to respond to it again. But this part:
you should be looking for a solution that doesn't involve destroying a nation and its people.
is very revealing. Destroying a STATE is not the same thing as destroying a people and it's very sneaky to pretend that it's the same thing.
The site I already linked has a FAQ, and here is one entry from it:
Does Israel have a right to exist?
People have a right to self-determination, but no state in the world has a right to exist. This ‘right’ simply has no foundation, and Israel is not special in this regard. More here
Since I don't expect people to always read when something is linked, even when they absolutely should do so if they have even a passing interest in actually understanding the situation they are talking about (let alone talking as if they have the solution, lol) I am going to paste another piece from the write-up that I linked and suggested you read in my last comment. It puts the lie to your insistence that a Palestinian state (which is the only way forward that is congruent with both justice and long-term peace) would also necessitate another genocide.
Everything below is from: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/the-two-state-solution-is-the-only-way-forward/
These anxieties are not unique to Jewish Israelis, settlers in many different colonies throughout history have echoed these same sentiments. If we were to take a look at the narrative surrounding anti-Apartheid South Africa activism and boycotts, we would find eerily similar projections and arguments.
For example, In an article for the Globe and Mail under the title “The good side of white South Africa” Kenneth Walker argued that ending the Apartheid system and giving everyone an equal vote would be a “a recipe for slaughter in South Africa”. Others, such as Shingler, echoed similar claims, saying that anti-racist activists were actually not interested in ending Apartheid as a policy, but in South Africa as a society. Others came out to claim these activists were actually motivated by “anti-white racism”, fueled by “Black imperialism”. Political comics displayed a giant soviet bear, bearing down on South Africa declaring “We shall drive South Africa into the Sea!”
Sound familiar?
Yet even when it is rarely acknowledged that Palestinian refugees were wronged, and deserve to return home, the refrain is that while it is tragic, it is the only way to keep the Jewish people safe. Once again, this pretense is hardly unique to Jewish Israelis, as a matter of fact, similar arguments were used against the abolition of slavery in the United States. For example, Thomas Jefferson likened slavery to a wolf:
“we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”How utterly ridiculous this all sounds now.
While the first approach is crude and vile propaganda, designed to instigate fear and panic, it is par for the course for settler societies. Perhaps the second approach stands out a little bit more for its brazen attempt at manipulation. In a final endeavor to center their experiences and erase their victims, settlers frame themselves as the stars of their own tragedy, in the end they were the tragic victims of fate, forced to wield injustice for the sake of self-preservation.
Underlying the logic of both of these approaches are racist assumptions that the colonized are barbaric, bloodthirsty and ruthless. It is a deeply dehumanizing logic, steeped in every colonial and Orientalist trope. The idea that a decolonized, free Palestine would inevitably lead to genocide comes from this same logic. As a matter of fact, for all the claims of the Palestinians wanting to push Israelis into the sea, only the opposite has occurred in reality.
Regardless of your ideological leanings, the reality is that we are already living under a de facto one-state reality. Israeli politicians proudly boast about never allowing a Palestinian state to materialize. Israeli school books already erase the green line. Israel already rules the lives of everyone there. Palestinians calling for the dissolution of this naked colonialism is legitimate and just. The fact that Palestinians are even asked to guarantee the well-being and welfare of their oppressors as they are killed, imprisoned and brutally repressed daily is a testament to their utter dehumanization.
Regardless of your ideological leanings, the reality is that we are already living under a de facto one-state reality
And this is the problem. Until there is just one state, one side will feel oppressed. There's also the religious issue, where both Jews and Muslims can't apparently tolerate each other. Just or not, I don't see a way for Jews and Palestinians to peacefully and happily coexist in the same state. Maybe you do, I don't.
I also don't see a way for Palestinians to gain the whole region without a war, or for Jews to renounce to the land they live in and to the state they have peacefully. If it's a war, I think it will be very very ugly; I mean, we are seeing right now what an all out war is like, it would be this, but on an even greater scale.
I'm with you, we need to stop Israel. The international community needs to force them to the negotiating table, and I feel like a two-state solution is the only thing that could make this genocide stop. Asking for a Palestinian one-state solution will only reinforce Israel aggression. What's the other solution really?
Just or not, I don't see a way for Jews and Palestinians to peacefully and happily coexist in the same state.
That's odd, they coexisted just fine for the first 1300 years of Islam's existence. There were maybe 3 instances in that whole period that Jews were excluded from certain areas by Arab or Islamic authorities, and these still weren't blanket bans. Compare that to the dozens upon dozens of times that they were kicked out by Christian kingdoms. Ashkenazi Jews had no barriers to doing "aliyah" to Palestine where they met Mizrahi Jews who were still living in the region.
Israel is an ethnostate that emerged from late-19th-century European nationalism. This is not true of Palestine, which has no ethnic exclusion and is more accurately part of the movement towards decolonization (whether Ottoman or British).
Saying that "Palestinians would do the same to Jews" is not even a simple counterfactual. There is no evidence for it. A couple vague statements and actions by fundamentalist minority groups that were curated by Israel do not make an entire population guilty of a Tu Quoque malicious intent. This is a bad faith argument, and it sounds like you have absorbed it from ubiquitous repetition in spite of the egalitarian values you seem to have.
The genocide in Rwanda was ended without splitting it up into two states, there is certainly precedent for inclusivity. Listen to what Palestinian voices are actually saying, not what they're presumed to be saying by Israelis.
the only people who actually tried to genocide white people to any significant degree were... other white people. the germans doing genocide on the slavs. and european jews.
only one "culture" decided to travel all over the world and steal everything. the west.
but western imperialist dogs will continue to project their own barbarity on the rest of the world, based on no evidence.
We need a better solution than "destroy their nation, send them away, kill them all or make them live under a muslim-arab state in a state of apartheid"
Zionists simply cannot argue in good faith and have no tactics beyond lies and subterfuge. Nobody said kill them all, nobody said send them away, nobody said "a muslim-arab state of apartheid"
Disgusting.
An actual democratic nation with equality. Imagine being so brain poisoned by zionism that the only kind of nation you can imagine is a racist one.
would mean another genocide
No it wouldn't. You are saying EXACTLY the same thing that people said about the end of South African apartheid. Everyone claimed it would be a genocide for white people.
It was not.
And it will not be in Palestine either.
You are indistinguishable from the people who opposed the end of apartheid in South Africa.
I wrote longer response but then I lost it, so I'm just going to quickly simplify it.
The two state solution is what we have now, and it means Palestine is forced to live in a permanently degraded state of sovereignty. Sovereignty is the key cornerstone of international relations, as is deterrence (live and let live, as you call it). This is not a holy war, this is a colonial war over the autonomy and self-determination of a people, the Palestinian people.
Thus, if you truly believe in equal rights for the Palestinians in a two state solution, you need to ask yourself this:
Would you allow the Palestinians to form their own army? Import weapons from Iran? Build their own air force with bombers? Many of their officers would undoubtedly be Hamas veterans, you wouldn't get to exclude them from serving their new country either, could you accept that?
You say you don't want forced resettlement, a laudable ideal to be sure, but you can't have no forced resettlements and a hard border because of the Zionist settlements. Go look at a map, there is no border line to be drawn between them, they are scattered around the whole of Palestinian territory. Those settlements are their for the express purpose of denying the Palestinians their freedom of movement and critical resources and infrastructure, so they would have to go.
Would you let the Palestinian army evict those settlers if they refused? Would you let them defend their new borders, with lethal force if necessary? And how about the people who have already been forcibly resettled, the Palestinian refugees? They're still alive, waiting to come back, what about their homes? Even if somehow a general peace treaty was signed to settle all these messy issues at once, would you really expect either side to just take eachother's word for it? Would the Zionists turn over their illegal nuclear weapons? And allow Palestinians to inspect sensitive facilities to ensure their destruction?
You don't have to like these things, but you would have to accept them, because they are the rights afforded to every sovereign nation.
I can tell you now the Zionists would never accept these conditions, it would be incredible blow to their colonial project. Maybe under extreme international pressure and isolation, but then you have the lingering tension between the two states that lasts for who knows how long. A two state solution is basically impossible, the Zionists made it impossible over decades. So in my opinion alright then, you made this bed, you fucking lay in it now: a single state is the only way forward now. A single state from the river to the sea, so that all of the people victimized by this colonial project may move towards a brighter, more peaceful future. I will never apologize for saying that, despite the recriminations of the zionists and the propaganda of their collaborators. There would in fact be less chance of war and genocide than with two states. However, you couldn't call it a Jewish (ethno)state anymore. But the Jews living there would still get to stay there, what's more important?
Honestly, the Zionists wouldn't accept that either, but they need to humble themselves and accept something, because they are marching the entire region toward a massive conflagration that will engulf and destroy them eventually.
They are people. If you don't consider them people, well, that's what brings on genocides.
They live there, they were born there, and they have equal right to stay where they were born as the Palestinians do. If the only option you are willing to entertain is total displacement or annihilation, then you are no better than them and should be ashamed of yourself.
How was it they lived there before? I wonder what happened. I wonder who stole land, murdered thousands of people, and turned themselves into the enemy of everyone in the region?
(it was zionists. the zionist project created this strife intentionally to push jews to israel. zionists made their bed and they're not going to get sympathy because now it's inconvenient for them.
You can play the blame game all you want, but what's going to help anyone today?
Well isn't that fucking rich, since Israel right now today is committing a genocide, a real, actual ethnicity-wiping-out, mass-child-murder genocide. I think we can go ahead and "play the blame game" there and blame Zionists for doing a bit worse than an oopsie. What makes you saying that even more tone deaf is that the Zionists are trying to victim-blame it on Palestinians! Maybe once everyone understands who really is to fucking blame here, it will make helping people today a lot more possible.
I am not personally responsible for what people did decades before I was born.
You are personally responsible for any ways in which you benefit from the continued oppression of a people whose stolen land many of them were murdered for that you continue to live on.
Why -- and where -- should I evacuate?
Why? You're asking why should you give back something your parents stole from people that are still asking for it back (the ones who survived anyway)? As for where you should "evacuate," you could probably just stay there in the post-occupation Palestine, it just wouldn't be an apartheid ethnostate, rather a state that doesn't deny the human rights of people by their ethnicity and religion and actually affords justice with equity, part of which includes returning land to those individual people and families it was stolen from. In fact if you're not in a house that literally belonged to a violently-evicted Palestinian family, or in a house that was built over the bulldozed ruins of homes of Palestinians, then you may be fine living exactly where you are right now. I know you have the settler-colonial mindset of being afraid of violent reprisal for the crimes your parents previously committed and your government currently is committing, but no, actually most people even after horrendous oppression don't feel the need or even desire to go on a killing spree of their oppressors. White settler South Africans were afraid of that too, but no, turns out oppressed people tend not to behave like violent settler colonists themselves did. If you were still afraid of that anyway, you could as you said, evacuate since from my understanding many western states would sponsor you to move there.
Two states living peacefully side by side is the only future that isn't a genocide.
This is complete nonsense. I hope you read the rest of the thread, because this fact has been made clear. There is precedent for this.
But that's not an option
Behold the brain damage of zionism, where only apartheid is possible.
What a barbaric and uncivilized philosophy.
Yes. Do you think there are no Palestinians who just want to live in peace? Do you think that desire is only felt by white people, perhaps?
Okay, let me rephrase... Do you think most Palestinians want that? I think the number of people who want that, both Israeli and Palestinian, is negligible. And I count myself among them.
Yes. I think most Palestinians want to live in peace. Unfortunately, Israel wants them to be dead or starving.
That's not what I asked. I asked if you think most Palestinians want to live in the same country under the same shared government as the Jewish population that lives here?
The Palestinian Jews, Christians, and Muslisms seemed to be pretty okay with living together.
Then European Jews showed up and installed their own genocidal, apartheid ethnostate. Obviously that ethnostate—which is a political entity, distinct from the European Jews themselves—must go.
Are you joking?
Me:
I’d be perfectly happy with a single state that belongs to everyone [...] But that’s not an option
You:
But that’s not an option
Behold the brain damage of zionism, where only apartheid is possible.
What a barbaric and uncivilized philosophy.
Me:
Forget Israelis. Do you think any palestinian wants that?
Who's moving the goalposts? I think you're projecting.
Why do you think you would have to leave if Israel were abolished?
It's because they're too racist to be willing to live as equals with Muslims and arabs.
Shhhh, gotta let them realize the contradictions of their own inner-biases
Why do you think whoever gains power in the aftermath would be any better than that?
Why do you think a new state being formed would be worse than the current genocidal settler colonial state slaughtering children for sport?
I didn't ask you if it was or not. Why do you think a new state would be worse than the present genocidal settler-colonial state of Israel?
In order to be against a new one-state solution, you'd have to prove why you think the present situation is preferable, or that there aren't better alternatives.
As it stands, you are tacitly approving the genocide and settler-colonialism, even if you don't morally agree with it, which is why I am asking what your problem with a one-state solution is.
As I said, I don't have a problem with it. I literally said that's what I'd be happy with. I just don't see it as realistic.
Because of gestures at everything maybe?
I'd really fucking love to stop oil companies from polluting our planet and making climate change worse by the day, but it's not realistic to shut them down tomorrow. Do I need to explain why that's not realistic either?
Vibes are truly the pinnacle of material geopolitical analysis.
You have no points, just vibes. Push for a one-state solution, come up with a meaningful alternative that is factually better, or admit that you're okay with the status quo of genocide and settler colonialism.
The mistrust between the Israeli population and the Palestinian population goes back decades. And here you come - an outsider, am I right? - to decide for us what the best solution is and to essentially "just get along". Do you have any idea what people in Palestine and Israel actually think, and actually feel? You're completely tone deaf. To decide as an outsider what we should be doing is rooted in exactly the same origins as colonialism - western powers think they can decide what the world should look like, and bend everyone to their will. Even if you think you're right, you're just tone deaf.
That's what Palestinians have been supporting though. The Israeli slaughter of Palestinians via genocide has indeed gone back 75 years, it sounds like we should listen to the voices of the oppressed.
Yes, I do believe Israelis and Palestinians can get along, in a single state not dominated by either, but democratically by the people.
Pretending that opposing settler colonialism is somehow colonial, and that I should just watch Israel massacre children, is truly vile.
Rethink what you're saying. Either push for a one-state solution, propose a better alternative, or admit that you're fine with genocide and settler colonialism continuing. Right now, you've only fought against a one-state solution by saying different ethnic groups just can't get along, which is a colonial mindset.
Yeah no, the one state is the only future, and if you're squatting in a Palestinian family's home your ass is getting evicted so you best come to terms with that
I hope you enjoy your future Palestinian citizenship and can look back on your old racist self with disgust and shame, it's honestly more than you deserve
from the river to the sea
You should look up the Likud party chapter
To remove a state is not to remove a people, the Israeli state can be destroyed potentially without any loss of life (not that that's likely)
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Fuck off with this racist, xenophobic shit.Apparently decolonization is xenophobic.
I recently got banned from !Playstation@Lemmy.zip because I called out the moderator for crying about black people in God of War. The reason given? Racism, apparently, for telling the mod to stop being racist.
They deleted their account and locked the community, lol
Edit: to add on, a hexbear user saw that I got banned for "racism" after calling out the racist mod, and they also got banned, lmao. It's really funny, the mod edited their post and pretended they were a victim for "being called a bigot for standing against DEI in video games."
Such reactionary bullshit.
being called a bigot for standing against DEI in video games.
I love this response because thats still being bigoted.
Yep, they genuinely thought that immediately getting tossed the fuck out proved their point, that gamers are an oppressed minority. I haven't seen shit like that since Reddit.
'How dare they call me a bigot for my bigoted views!' it's so tiring, would the fuckers just own it and stop crying all the time?
Oh hey! That was me! Nice to see you around!
That mod was a piece of work, hilarious little saga all aroundHey, fancy seeing you, comrade! It was wild, and it was hilarious to see them shut it all down. <3
Love when they get to the point of using "show me a modern nation that isn't deserving of nuclear fire" as an argument for why America isn't so bad.
Sadly, due to the decimation of the indigenous population, you're stuck with my white ass.
I'll have to remind the French and British settlers that died hundreds of years ago to knock it off the next time I see them.
Stealing is not okay as soon as you give the stolen item to your kid. It should still be returned.
Yeah but is the kid to blame?
Answer: no, but the kid should recognize inequity and help correct it anyway.
Meh, blame is still relevant, and the kid deserves to keep getting blamed when he not only fails to give back what was stolen and keeps insisting he's the rightful owner, but continues to rob and suppress the victims of the original theft, forcing them to pay exorbitant rent for access to the tiniest morsels of what was stolen from them.
Give it back to who? The slave owning Dalai Lama? Fuck off, it wasn't stolen, it was liberated.
If my grandpa stole your grandpa's house, and I live in that house while you're homeless (my dad also fucked over your dad a bunch), how clean are my hands? Are my hands clean if my sister is fucking you over still today (maybe I yell at her about it, but it still happens) and I still live in the house?
Your hands are clean until you tolerate injustice. Help your fellow humans.
You'd agree it isn't "trying" to say:
I'll have to remind the French and British settlers that died hundreds of years ago to knock it off the next time I see them.
(I see that wasn't your comment)
Get outta here with this false equivalence. The marginal human suffering inflicted per year caused by Israeli's colonialism is incomparably greater than any other country's in the modern era.
The average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is 52 for men and 54 for women. Their land is contaminated from uranium mining and the US uses parts of it as a bombing range.
What is happening in Israel is exactly what was done and is being done to indigenous people in all those other places too.
A terrible injustice which of course needs to be corrected.
The population in question is 20,000 people. That's about 400 people born per year with a life expectency of 60% the national average; arguably equivalent to 400 murders per year.
Gaza has 2.4 million people with a similar life expectency. (The same math yields 50,000 effective murders per year.) Not to mention they are actively being bombed today, and their population is mostly children (under 18). This means that when someone is killed by an Israeli soldier, that someone is most likely a minor!
What is the point of isolating Pine Ridge within the United States to directly relate it to Israel's treatment of all Palestinians? Pine Ridge isn't the only indigenous community in the United States. The United States is just farther along the settler colonial project, that doesn't make it better or incomparable.
Of course it's better to be further along the colonial project. Probably every country on earth could be considered colonial over some timespan. As that duration goes to infinity, the marginal damage per year inflicted by colonialism goes to zero. (The cumulative damage increases of course, to some upper bound.) This is basic calculus.
This is basic calculus.
I don't think you're coming from the worst place, but maybe consider that quantifying marginal units of human suffering isn't the best framework for this type of discussion.
Absolutely it is. I'm a staunch utilitarian. This is the most effective framework to help reduce human suffering in the modern world.
I'm going to say the folks who'd slit your throat if it makes enough other people feel warm and fuzzy do not have the best framework to reduce human suffering
Obviously not.
What you're missing is that most ethical frameworks see human life as valuable enough that it should only be taken in the most dire of circumstances (usually to prevent at least one more death). So it's fine to kill an active shooter, but it's not fine to kill someone who's stolen a bunch of cars, even if the value of those cars is more than the dollar figure a utilitarian would place on an individual's life.
A utilitarian will (generally) also see a human life as being so valuable that it should only be taken in the most dire of circumstances. Unlike other people, they are actually willing to calculate exactly how dire that circumstance should be.
You can press a button once that will extend somebody's life by a month but 90% of that month will be spent in pure agony. You cannot ask them what their preference is. Do you extend their life or not? I wouldn't press that button. A hospital might.
A utilitarian will (generally) also see a human life as being so valuable that it should only be taken in the most dire of circumstances.
The first link you dropped in this exchange includes articles like "You Can Put A Dollar Value On Human Life." I just don't believe people who assign that sort of value to lives, and whose core philosophy is maximizing value, are strictly opposed to trading others' lives if the math checks out. Strict utilitarianism is basically "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."
I'm sure lots of utilitarians try to put a nicer gloss on this, but that's the bones of the philosophy.
I love Le Guin.
The link you mentioned is dead, but I agree with the notion. Governments already put a dollar value on human life. Dollars can save lives, therefore human lives are worth dollars. Katja Grace says it better than I can.
Pull the lever, divert the trolley, save four lives.
Yes. The overall damage through the centuries caused by western colonialism, in my estimate, is far greater than Israel's.
That in and of itself is not a good reason to wish America/Canada/Australia not to exist. Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
Genocide is happening right now in Israel/Palestine and we can do something about it. There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing. Let's tear down the western world sensibly, please.
Should we wish China to de-exist because of the Yangzhou massacre of 1645?
There's a pretty clean break between the PRC and the Chinese dynasties of the 17th century. I'd have to brush up on my history but that's borderline pre-Qing even. Very different than holding the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) to account for a genocide it did under the same constitution and form of government it has today.
There are modern injustices happening today which we should occupy ourselves with, not meaningless finger-pointing.
I don't think it's meaningless finger-pointing to say that the continuing harm the U.S. (or Australia, etc.) is doing to indigenous people (among others) is a live issue that should be addressed. Israel actively killing people right now does not mean those other wrongs should be dismissed.
Of course those wrongs should not be dismissed. Those are serious wrongs and need to be fixed. I'm of the belief that the entire western world needs to be dismantled and it's causing great harm. But "occupying other people's land" is not a good justification here, since that land has by and large traded hands many generations ago. Israel is different.
I do not wish to see hundreds of millions of non-indigenous people shipped out of North America back to wherever their ancestors used to live in order to re-establish the sovereignty of a small minority of people. Let's solve inequality and inequity in sane and non-violent ways instead.
I do not wish to see hundreds of millions of non-indigenous people shipped out of North America back to wherever their ancestors used to live
Who's calling for this?
When people said "the Russian Empire should not exist" in 1915 they were talking about replacing the existing political structure with something like the USSR, not depopulating the country in its entirety.
People's nationalist brainworms go so deep they immediately conflate people with the state.
Fair enough. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to depopulating Israel though (if some safe way to do this were possible).
This is also not what the overwhelming majority of Palestinians want.
Just because it isn't obviously genocidal(anymore) doesnt mean the US hasnt done incredible harm to the entire world. What israel is doing right now if horrific yes but the US is responsible for even greater suffering. Neither should exist
Not to mention that many of the policies regarding Indigenous peoples and enforcement thereof in North America are still actively genocidal. Just because the US is not bombing people within their own land doesn't mean that indigenous peoples in Turtle Island are thriving.
Does anybody know when is gonna change Netanyahu the national anthem to "Israel uber alles"?
that's the one!
