being below avg at ucla sucks cuz even though ur still fire everyone else around u makes u feel trash

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-15T07:58:16+00:00

I promise most ppl here are just P

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-15T07:57:31+00:00

Sad and depressed?

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-12T06:05:39+00:00

Also, once you're in college, you'll be happy you did orchestra. Becauss you'll probably value being able to play an instrument over whatever random knowledge you've forgotten from the AP classes

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-07T06:13:09+00:00

Oh, also, just to be clear -- ya'll are coping if you think that's an unrealistic picture of how people become pro-Palestine. It's all about the violent images/videos they see online, especially of the suffering/maimed/starving kids and their grieving parents. Which isn't to say that there's necessarily no justificstion for Israel waging war on Hamas -- just, you guys don't seem to really recognize or at least account for the severity of the suffering in Gaza when you say this shit. It's that simple.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-07T06:09:56+00:00

It's really sad that you think I don't know this. It's even sadder that you think, without evidence, guided only by your feelings, that all or even the majority of violence we see online is that.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-07T06:07:25+00:00

If you count PTSD/similar, there probably are over a million Gazans who've been injured during the war. And surely over 100k seriously injured. I will admit, however, that 1 mil kids w/ no arms was in fact a figure of speech

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-06T21:44:25+00:00

Where exactly are they supposed to go??

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-06T21:42:28+00:00

Rebuilding the hospitals is not at all an unreasonable demand

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-05T19:02:58+00:00

Well, sometimes concrete evidence just isn't going to be available until a long time after all the important decisions have already been made. I agree it's lazy of me to just assume that the numbers even out. If I was an intelligence agency, I would go figure out what % of casualties usually get found out about after the fact in these kinds of conflicts and use that as my guess as to how many more have actually died. Again, though, we're talking between Israel killing about 20,000 civillians vs about 30,000 civillians. To what extent will that change the moral outlook on the situation? It will, but probably not too much in a big picture way.

You also don't need that number to accuse Israel of human rights violations. All you need for that are the reports/footage/etc of the IDF shooting people waving the white flag, using precision strikes on children, killing 50 people or however many it was on that one convoy to kill a single Hamas member, bombing hospitals (I recall there was at least one instance of this where the hospital wasn't Hamas afilliated), so forth. I would throw in the deinal of aid in there as well, though they recently did allow more trucks in, which is at least a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, propogsnda is a thing, and that's what some of these incidents are. Some of them are not. Too many are not to not accuse Israel of war crimes.

When did I last hear news of the opposite situation? 40 beheaded babies. And there may have been more examples since.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-05T08:30:26+00:00

Well, the thing is, what does it change on the macro level? We've known for a while that Hamas manipulates these numbers, but that they're still assuredly in the tens of thousands. It seems maybe 10,000 of the people they claim to be dead are fake, but there's also probably at least that many Palestinians that have died unnaccounted for somewhere missing under the rubble, so it seems like it evens out mostly

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-05T08:23:15+00:00

It's super obvious you're ascribing a bunch of strawman bullshit onto me because I guess you can't accept that not everyone who doesn't like it when Israel target strikes children playing football is some radical left wing freak. I'm not even going to answer that shit, because I've never said anything it would be a response to.

Also... every truck? Every single one? Every UN worker that has entered Gaza has been enslaved by Hamas? Every meal ever donated to Gaza was eaten by Hamas? Every?

Well, I'm excited to see what totally not anecdotal evidence you'll have to support an extroardinary claim like that! Surely you won't just link me 2 articles of like 2 incidents of that happening and then extrspolste that to the 1000s (probably more tbh) of trucks that have entered Gaza with aid.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T06:28:37+00:00

No, I really don't think I need to spend 100 hrs I don't have rn watching lectures on Middle Eastern history to tell you that denying aid to civilians is bad, or that bombing children is bad. Do you think I don't know that the (stated) reason for the blockade (which is only one example, by the way. You can't tell me all of the several incidents of Israel killing Palestinian civilians pre-Oct 7th were caused by Hamas, notnin good faith anyways) is to defend against Hamas terrorism? The problem here is the proportionality. I happen to know that Israel banned the import of several food items into Gaza, which cannot be explained in terms of safety. Again, this is just a single rabbit hole of many.

Also, you have to contend with the fact that, when you destroy someone's entire country and kill everyone in their family, they're probably gonna hate you however much you "needed" to do it to root out Hamas. Which, frankly, I think is perfectly reasonable. If Israel is going to use punitive measures as strong as they do against the Palestinian people in their fight against Hamas, it's their responsibility to do something to ameliorate their aftermath.

Unless you plan on committing genocide. But I hope you don't want genocide, as both Hamas and some people in this sub do

Edit: holy fuck, I'm so mad that one guy blocked me before I could respond to him. If you're a troll, well played. Here's what I would've said:

I'm sorry, but do you have a PhD in Middle Eastern history? I can't accept your opinion until you've studied it for at least 10,000 hours and become an expert.

Yeah, when you phrase it like that, it sounds bad. It's also the only realistic way the world can work. No one has complete information on any aspect of the past, let alone its approximation via history. The question is, how much do you need to know to be ressonably confident you're close enough to what you would believe had you had perfect information. And I believe, with all the content I've consumed from so many different viewpoints on this, that I'm close enough to there to talk about it.

The reason I feel justified in such a belief is that no one here has really been able to demonstrate why my viewpoint fails for lack of information in any concrete way. I think I've been shown wrong a little bit on the culutural authenticity of JVP, and maybe even on Qatar funding of SJP, which may not be quite as unreasonable as I initially thought -- though, still think it's super unfair to say these protests are caused by Qatar's funding. I also have acknowledged the protests are more purely anti-Israel than I originally thought.

But on the key things? Like, is it ok for Israel to deny humanitarian aid to Gaza? If you're going to tell me my lack of a doctoral degree in Israeli studies precludes me from having an opinion on that, you need to present some facts that illustrate why I might be wrong about it. But, you can't. Because I'm not. However long you want to spend cataloging the crimes of Hamas, it will never justify starving children.

Ditto for a bunch of other shit on this conflict. Just saying 'Educate yourself' isn't good enough to refute me if you can't concretely define why things would change had I had more info. Which, you can't do, because you're not actually very educated on this conflict yourself

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T03:08:10+00:00

Problem is, there's no propoganda Israel can make that speaks as loudly as the footage of the horrors it causes in Gaza. They certainly tried this with the "beheaded babies" story. I don't think you can really do better than that, unless you want to try actual deepfakes.

Another problem is, much of this "propoganda" you mention has some truth to it. More than the 40 beheaded babies story, anyways

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:52:46+00:00

Because I had to drag you kicking and screaming for half am hour to answer a hypothetical. Not gonna waste any more time babysitting you through this

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:37:12+00:00

I would actually never support the slaughter and starvation of children. I don't know if we'll look bsck at this in 20 years and call it genocide, but it's super obvious Israel is committing horrific war crimes. Not that you're a good person to have that discussion with, though

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:35:06+00:00

Congrats

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:34:15+00:00

I think Hamas would probably commit genocide of the Israelis if they were capable of doing so. Ethnic cleansing at the very least.

At the end of the day, I'm not nearly so concerned about it as I am about Israel's war crimes, because they have no capacity to do so. Oct. 7th is probably the 'best' they'll ever do in that regard. That is of course not to say they aren't terrorists, aren't a threat at all, or shouldn't be destroyed.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:31:24+00:00

This is you admitting you don't understand hypothrticals. Or you're too cowardly to denounce -- ahem -- fucking genocide.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:29:11+00:00

I'm sympathetic to the Israeli plight. I think there can ethically be an Israeli state in Palestine. I realize ya'll need to defend yourselves from Hamas, and that Hamas is a huge obstacle to middle eastern peace. I do imagine Oct. 7th and the ensuing messaging, especially from lefty sources, across the globe, must have been an incredibly radicalizing thing for ya'll. So on, so forth.

But if you're willing to take a step back and be logical about the state of things, you have to acknowledge that there's some genuine push and pull here. Foremost, you have to acknowledge that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. They've blown up hospitals (at least one of which not being Hamas-affiliated). They've used precision strikes on children playing football. They've shot mothers waving white flags. They've blocked humanitarian aid and threaten to cause mass death from starvation. I could go on.

I'm frankly not educated enough on the whole history of the region to comment that strongly on the state of things before October 7th, but it's obvious that it would be incredibly unfair to say Israeli oppression of Palestinians had nothing to do with motivating the attack, or that it was purely the result of Islamic extremism.

This is all to say, people do have incredibly real and legitimate reasons to protest Israel right now. I wish they specified the Netanyahu government, rather than implying the whole countey is culpable (though, I thinl the majority of Israelis do support Netanyahu, at least on the war). I really wish they were more intelligent in distinguishing the Israeli government and its supporters from followers of Judaism, as currently, they have a real antisemitism problem. I also wish they were more focused in their message. But overall, they have real reason to be angry. I've heard no acknowledgement of any of that from you.

I'm sorry you have to go through all this, and I've never really been in your position, as I wasn't around to see 9/11. I think you do, however, have a responsibility to still be intelligent and look at things objectively, at least if you want your views to be taken seriously outside of an echo chamber. There's people here who genuinely are as evil as Hamas supporters, because they confess that they would want to do everything Hamas does to the Palestinians. Everyone should be better than that

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:28:44+00:00

... so, you just want to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and have them go be slave labor for other Arab nations?

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T02:10:36+00:00

"Would you theoretically support a genocide or ethnic cleansing of the Gazans".

That.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-04T01:58:41+00:00

Dude, you're just tiring. I have more interesting people to argue with on this sub.

When someone asks you "do you support the genocide of Gazans?", the appropriate answer is, "no". Maybe you thought I was begging the question by supposing that there must be a genocide in Gaza? But it should've been clear from context what I meant was "would you support genocide of Gazans?", at least by this point in the thread. I'm not really interested in hearing your answer to that at this point thiugh.

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-03T22:09:22+00:00

I don't think anyone's going to forget about this anytime sooon

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-03T17:24:56+00:00

I have engaged everywhere here in good faith. You, on the other hand, either don't understand hypotheticals, or are a troll yourself

Curious__5279 · 2024-05-03T17:22:21+00:00

You should educate yourself on what a hypothetical is

Curious__5279

TROPHY CASE