Why should I answer 3 questions that are not related to my Post ? Questions that's being asked just to side tracked the issues.
As in, "they say we do X so might as well do it"?
You shouldn't, that's the point. Statistically speaking, it would be nearly impossible for you to answer these. The purpose was to improve my understanding of your opinion by observing whether any answer was given.
Agreed to an extent. I do not see a way for someone reasonable (i.e. someone not applying mental gymnastics) to be simultaneously anti-Hamas and pro-Palestine without being pro-Israel as well, or alternatively be pro-Hamas, pro-Palestine, and anti-Israel. Otherwise there are just too many opposing values which is bad for one's mental health.
I understand this position, but I cannot hold it simply because to me it does not stand to scrutiny. I was once a socialist, but eventually I was disillusioned. Why? Because the moment I applied scrutiny to this worldview it crumbled.
It is impossible to truly quantify pro-Palestine sentiment this way. There is no up to date poll that truly encompasses all necessary parameters. For example, do pro-Hamas count as pro-Palestinians because Hamas best expresses traditional Palestinian nationalism? Or are the two inherently opposed because ultimately works against the best interests of the Palestinians?
apnews.com
Ahh yes, it is also the point on your game of reframing and reflecting other people issue. Clearly shown how your game on debating issues. Everything that against Israel will be classified as Anti Semitism, thus playing to anti Judaism and clearly racism. Convenient way to sidetracked Israel apartheid policies toward Palestinian this past 70 years.
Yes from river to sea is cry to destroy Israel, not cry of Palestinian to be free and treated as equal human being. No, treating Palestinian as human being clearly antisemitic.
Yeah pretty much.
Human beings are rarely completely logically consistent. I also suspect your definition of reasonable and theirs isn't the same.
Not sure what you mean by this. Israel has done things that aren't exactly great, and Israeli territorial expansionism is a historic fact. If one has a problem with this, one might be anti-Israeli.
This is my entire point. Your question assumes something that is debatable at best, and that you don't have good support for.
I've come across this logic before but I reject the idea that Jewish (or any semitic identity) and Israeli statehood are inseparable. I understand that this is probably an unusual position but there is no inherent logical contradiction in thinking that Israel as a state shouldn't exist, yet having no issue with Israelis or Jews. I understand the slogan has problematic associations, so from a practical standpoint I'm not surprised if most using it are anti-Israeli (anti-semitic would just be weird, Arabs are also semites).
There is a pacifist position that exists in principle. Do you believe this position is anti-semitic? Let's not forget the, well... let's call it "collateral damage" from Israel's war effort dwarfs the number of hostages taken.
Anti-Jewish and anti-semitic attitudes exist. Of course protests against Israel would be accompanied by a rise in hate crimes. But correlation is not causation and it certainly doesn't prove that most pro-Palestine activists are actively engaged. Your specific claim is the issue, not the idea that many of those who support Palestine don't like Israel, or even are bigoted.As for actual statistics. Every city in which such protests occurred, has reported massive increases in antisemitic hate crimes. If they only want some ceasefire, why are non-involved Jews attacked much more often? Many reported hundreds of % increases. The article on the UK cites a report that suggests the spike in antisemitic hate crimes occurred as celebration of Hamas's brutal massacre of 1,200 civilians and kidnapping of over 200, not in response to any Israeli reaction (which doesn't justify antisemitism in the first place either).
Antisemitic incidents in Germany rose by 320% after Hamas attacked Israel, a monitoring group says
A group tracking antisemitism in Germany says that it has documented a drastic increase of antisemitic incidents in the country in the month after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.Antisemitic Hate Crimes Soar in New York City
Several high-profile incidents are being investigated as hate crimes in New York, where anti-Jewish incidents more than tripled in October compared with last year.www.nytimes.com
Identifying as socially progressive and being anti-abortions is logically inconsistent to a minor degree but it can be a reasonable deviation, one that can stand to scrutiny.
I mean by this that I understand why people argue that they're anti-Israel when they claim Israel is evil and has wronged the Palestinians, but no more than I understand why a child bumps his head on the wall. It happens, yes, but you probably won't find any bit of logic behind it other than a need to waste some excess energy.
That is just a matter of semantics. To the people living there, these "protests" are extremely dangerous. They are widespread, they are massive, and they bring with them anti-Jewish indoctrination and physical assaults. It already ended in murder. There is no denying that the average pro-Palestinian activist/protester holds antisemitic ideologies. Yes, calling for the destruction of Israel is in fact antisemitic.
So you're saying that destroying Israel, ultimately annihilating 9 million Israelis of which 7 million are Jewish, an event greater than the holocaust - is in fact not antisemitic.
So a pacifist position asks that Hamas not ceasefire and only Israel does, ultimately leading to new rounds of violence in which the total amount of violence is exponentially greater than the current course? I disagree. I also disagree with the notion that "ceasefire" activists are inherently pacifist. Their rhetoric is generally very militant.
Can you define how many hostages were taken and how many non-combatant deaths occurred in Gaza?
If we always bind ourselves to concrete numbers and variably interpretable statistics, we will react too slowly and preventable trends will inevitably have concrete consequences.
Nation-states are not arbitrary. And I can't speak to a practical means to eliminate Israel as a state, without eradicating the Jews. However, in principle it is completely possible to argue that instead of an Israeli state there should be a liberal democratic Palestinian state where Jews are citizens and are welcome to live there. We're discussing positions and beliefs one can have not specific action plans.
A semite is a member of any of the semitic tribes. The fact that a dictionary took the common parlance usage of the term and made it the definition doesn't make it correct. It makes the dictionary wrong.
I don't agree with the pacifist position nor condone it but I have family members who are pacifists and their position is that Israel and Hamas should stop fighting immediately. The position exists. If your point is that it is ridiculous, I agree. But anti-Israeli?
Sure. Approximately 250 hostages were taken and approximately 1200 total Israeli civilians were killed. At this point over 28 000 Palestinians are dead. You yourself provided the number of Hamas killed according to IDF sources. The delta is substantially larger then the number of hostages. Now let me ask you this? Do you contend the opposite is true? Or do you contend that the data we have is insufficient to draw the conclusion that substantially more Gaza civilians are dead then Israeli hostages were taken?
Sure. Let's not wait for evidence, or make an effort to find it. Israel is a state level actor. If this data isn't readily available, couldn't they fund the research to be done by a university or a research organization within the US?
You've once again retreated from a very definitive maximalist claim to a more reasonable position without ever admitting that you've shifted your stance. If there is a trend in rising violence against Jews it ought to be reacted to. If antisemitic or anti-Jewish sentiment is being expressed, the people doing so are bigots and any right-thinking person should condemn them. It doesn't mean that anyone who is unhappy with Israel or supports Palestine is probably (over 50% likelihood) "engaged in blatantly anti-semitic activities such as attacking Jews". Again, your claim was;
Hamas casualties are not to be counted because they are not "collateral damage", but rather a very intentional damage, and civilian casualties are simply not counted.
Language is its usage, not a strict ruleset. The word "antisemitic" was used at the time to describe hatred of Jews, which hasn't changed since then.
If I tell a Taiwanese that I believe China and Taiwan should just negotiate and Taiwan must meet China's demands at least halfway, then I may not know why, but he will rightfully call me anti-Taiwanese.
People have a right to hold opinions. Opinions later manifest as votes. Votes later manifest as policy. Policy affects people's lives, sometimes constructively, sometimes destructively.
Why Israel? It does not represent all world Jewry. It is important to separate Israel from Jews in certain cases. There are Jewish organizations that compile such data.
Re your example, any reasonable person would call you out for your opinion, rather than using a label as "anti-Taiwanese", which implies that opinon would deny the entire identity of Taiwanese people. Hence it is a weird take to me.
Just as a point of interest, a recent pro Palestinian (would be) politician (in the UK standing for election in a constituency with a large Muslim population did state to his supporters that the October the 7th attack on Israel was indeed the (deliberate) fault of Israel, as Israel knew all about the forthcoming attack and actually allowed it to go ahead unopposed so as to give them the justification to attack Gaza.
www.independent.co.uk
Because the slogan says "Palestine" not "Palestinians".
www.theguardian.com
Consider for a second how many people refer to themselves as anti-Israeli (newspeak), and you'll see just how absurd it is. People disagreeing with a policy item are not necessarily anti-X-country. Yet there are many who self-describe as anti-Israeli, but seemingly no anti-French, anti-Germans etc.
What would the term be for someone who has a bigoted/prejudicial dislike of the French? Francophobic? I.e. is it an issue of vocabulary at all? Or is the issue that people have been prejudiced towards Jews for a very long time?
Fair enough, and in a way this supports my earlier argument about us not really knowing the real numbers of dead. However based on the scale of destruction, and the quantity of ordinance involved I'm reasonably confident the civilian death toll is in at least the thousands, whereas the hostages taken are in the hundreds so my point stands. I don't think you can reasonably argue that no more then a couple hundred Palestinian civilians have been killed.Hamas casualties are not to be counted because they are not "collateral damage", but rather a very intentional damage, and civilian casualties are simply not counted.
Hamas casualty numbers are ‘statistically impossible’, says data science professor
University of Pennsylvania statistician has analysed the widely quoted death figures put out by the terror groupwww.thejc.com
The author of the article compiled data provided by Hamas's ministry of health, which shows that provided figures are entirely independent of circumstances.
Meaning it doesn't matter if fighting intensifies or slows down - the next figure is already determined.
So in the complete absence of civilian casualty figures, we simply cannot assume that there were more Palestinian civilian casualties than there were Israeli casualties or are Israeli hostages. It is non quantifiable. Best we can do is conjecture.
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We can agree to disagree. Logic like that led to words like "yolo" being included in the dictionary. Not a positive thing in my opinion. I'm going to continue to adhere to language based on inherent meanings and the linguistic context for the term, while disregarding actual usage even if common, when it is formally improper.
Maybe. But what if China had launched a war against Taiwan and after much loss of life, with China occupying some territory, and Taiwan not winning the war, and a ceasefire gets called for, is it anti-Chinese? Anti-Taiwanese? You've once again shifted the logical basis by introducing a new factory, namely that of forced negotiations and forced compromise.
A democratic liberal Palestine would not lead to "practically a second larger and more barbaric holocaust" because a Palestine that manages to be liberal and democratic would have to have a population that doesn't want to commit such acts, and a government that would not allow it.
Your initial argument was that data to quantify your claims about the active engagement of most pro-Palestine activists in anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish activities is not available. I then suggested the Israeli government make an effort to obtain said data. You are now claiming that there are organization who in fact already do so? It appears to me you have lost the thread of this discussion, at least on this point.
That I would leave to linguists to decide. But there is a fundamental difference here in that those who dislike the Fr*nch simply dislike them, while a very significant portion of the "criticism toward Israel" comes in the form of calls to dismantle it.
Turning toward reasonable assumptions over quantifiable data is exactly how this turned into a debate. It should be beyond all reasonable doubt at this point that the pro-Palestinian narrative involves significant amounts of anti-semitic/anti-Jewish ideologies. One can simply interact with such people and listen to their ideas. A rare few would believe in a necessity in a 2 state solution, but even those would rarely admit that Israel has a right to self defense.
I'm not Taiwanese. I don't get to decide what the Taiwanese people want or feel.
Which in turn leads us to the question of what even a liberal Palestine be? If it's liberal, it's not a democracy. If it's a democracy, it's not liberal. The insinuation that a Palestine can be both at the same time, is to associate the Palestinian culture with traits it will take many decades to develop.
There are Jewish organizations that conduct polls and studies that each create small pieces, but none really arranges the larger puzzle for us.
Your objection seems practical. We're discussing positions in principle stemming from your original claim that anyone who holds a certain position must believe certain things, and from the claim that most pro-Palestinian activists are in fact involved in anti-Jewish activities.
Sure. However this doesn't address my point. There exists a position that calls for a ceasefire, without being anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish, or even necessarily pro-Palestinian. Your point is that few/none of the people you've interacted with hold said position. All well and good, so what? The position exists. You are incorrect in claiming that calling for a ceasefire is anti-Israeli in and of itself. You may be correct if you state that the majority of those in fact calling for a ceasefire are anti-Israeli. My issue is with your principal maximalist position that utilized deductive reasoning. You then attempt to support it with probability-based (inductive) arguments. You can not prove the claim you made with the arguments you are advancing. It's a basic philosophical issue.
And you would have been wrong to assume that then.
Reasonable people can disagree. The fact that you have a set of beliefs about what constitutes a reasonable position is misaligned with someone else doesn't inherently make them unreasonable. Would the total death toll from the fighting been high or lower if Israel had stopped it's operation 3 months ago?
I disagree completely. You have every moral right to express your opinion, and people can choose to listen or not listen to it. Having a stake in the outcome is not a prerequisite to participating in the conversation.
Again a perfectly reasonable argument, possibly even sound, but so what? It might make the people calling for this wrong. It doesn't make them anti-Israeli.
You keep dancing around the issue. Does the information needed to back up your claim about involvement of pro-Palestinian activists in certain activities have data that allows for the conclusion you provided or does this data not exist? Sophistic tangents about who gathers what information are irrelevant. You made a claim. I pointed out that you likely don't have the data to back it up. You first implied the data didn't exist, then suggested that non-state actors may have collected the data, and are now claiming they don't have the data? What?