How to Justify an Atrocity 

Honestly, it IS kinda accurate that more psychic harm is done to people who are not used to receiving atrocities than to people who are (because it’s a less normal part of life). However, the cost of bringing a population to a point where seeing mass deaths is relatively normal is IMMENSE, and far greater than any psychic harm caused by fear of retaliation. Also, if you harm someone and then fear retaliation, the psychic harm is self inflicted because YOU did the act that caused it.

@@Syzygy_Bliss trauma doesn't work that way. People who have experienced more brutality are not less harmed by it. It may be normalised but not less damaging.

@@reubenmccallum3350I think we’re in agreement. If an event is psychologically normalized, it definitionally causes less psychological harm per occurrence than if it’s not normalized (and thus further outside of the mind’s expected norm). But altering the mind’s expected norm causes disproportionately more physical harm compared to the amount of psychic harm that the act will cause after being normalized. Getting to the normalization IS where the extra harm comes from.

⁠@@Syzygy_BlissSo what you are saying is that with a coddled enough existence it is possible for a person’s Wendy’s order getting mixed up to cause more ‘psychic harm’ pound for pound when compared to actual violence assuming it is inflicted on someone who has experienced enough violence and injustice to become numb to it?

this is how you justify atrocities@@Syzygy_Bliss

it's because gaza is mostly kids and you need at least two kids and a trenchcoat to make a full adult.

I mean, if we want to take a cost analysis, according to FEMA a human life is worth $7.5 million, and therapy is at worst $200 a session. So taking the total cost of therapy for monthly sessions for a year for all Israelis amounts to $17.2B, and the total cost of lost Palestinian lives is $225B. Even if you wanted to do weekly therapy for all Israelis that's still $74B. So yeah, sorry bad take guy, the loss of human life is worse than "psychological harm"

More like the “thoughts and feelings” of Israelis are worth more than Palestinian lives

In November, Hamas agreed to release 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Israeli prisoners - a three-to-one ratio. Hamas, by its own accounting, thinks that Palestinians are worth one-third what an Israeli is worth.

"You simply have less value"

Exactly! and they have been for a good 70~ years.

And Palestine has more children. Who have worse emotional regulation so their fear response might be stronger. Also the one they are afraid of is more numerous and better equipped.

Yes, but you didn’t factor in the random [inhumane] math equations he dreamed up!!

Israelis think palestinians are the agressors though.

ya but israelis are probably more afraid !! /j

imagine if the Germans came up with it during Nuremberg trials: " but but we were so scared of communists and jews, we're just smol beans 🥺"

@@kuman0110 “They were so scawy!!” 😭

“Im sitting here, a veteran, of a 1.000 psychic wars” - blue oyster cult

Weaponized fragility seems to be the modus operandi for oppressors nowadays.

Getting sent to psychic Hague for my psychic war crimes causing irreparable psychic damage

And yet we have stand your ground laws in the US too. It's awful but definitely an ideology people believe.

@@gogreen2496 occupying and blockading someone is not just standing your ground

@@MusMasi I mean yeah, it's way more extreme. I'm not a fan of either. I though that was clear by saying "it's awful".

And the gay/trans panic defense.

Basic cop shit tbh.

Sounds far too close to "psychic damage" to take seriously

Oh I can answer that! He doesn’t care

Ya, I wonder if there's any psychological harm to Palestinian babies and children being demonized and dehumanized as a terrorist for simply being Palestinian? Wonder if there's any psychological harm to being born into an apartheid system where you're forced at birth into poverty and second class citizenship?

@@FabulousSquidward Nah. Turns out brains exist. Full of chemicals n shit. Influence physiological processes. Crazy stuff.

There are no Israeli kids having heart attacks from fear. We 100% would have heard about it.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."

@@LordThanatosOfHades and the three paragraphs afterward are as follows: "There is a possible response to this objection, but before getting to it, I want to address two objections to the idea that Israel can cite the psychic harm from the threat of Hamas on its side of the balance. One objection to this argument is that to live in Israel is to live with such threats. Hamas is not the only threat. Hezbollah too would like to wipe Israel from the map. So would various other groups, including the Iranian regime. Israel cannot possibly eliminate these threats, so it should not be allowed to cite the extra threat from Hamas as a reason to kill Gazans. To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse. For an analogy, consider the difference between living in a city with an ex who you know wants to hurt you, but who you think is also deterred by the threat of criminal punishment from doing anything crazy, and living in a city with an ex who you know is so committed to doing you harm that no threat of punishment will deter him. The other powers all seem, so far at least, deterred by the power of Israel (backed up by the U.S.). For Hamas, this is not the case." He then spends THE ACTUAL REST OF THE PAPER arguing that if Israel destroyed Hamas now and then stopped the war AND rebuilt and liberated Gaza (which is a fantasy that he is indulging in for reasons unbeknownst to me, and a completely worthless statement in an academic ethics paper; yeah man it WOULD be good if the people waging war stopped waging war, thanks for the expert opinion), the genocidal attacks and bombings on Gaza that have occurred as of now WOULD be justified because the short-term of the murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian citizens would create less "harm" than the long-term "psychic harm" for the Israelis. "How could the misery the war is inflicting on Gazans not fully offset the psychic gains for the Israelis? The answer is that it could count for less if, for most Gazans, it is much more short-lived psychic pain than that which the Israelis would otherwise suffer. But the only way for it to be much more short-lived is if Israel takes it upon itself, as soon as possible, to reassure the Gazans that Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution." As if the consequence of Isreal's attacks on Gaza is "psychic pain", instead of thousands upon thousands of deaths, the complete suppression and attempted genocide of an entire culture and the complete devastation of a people's land and infrastructure. As if the amount of harm that has been inflicted on Gaza has not already far surpassed whatever "psychic harm" Israel feels, tenfold. Please read the actual full article instead of cherry picking out-of-context paragraphs. It's not even that long. Edit: I'm going back to edit this really quickly because I realized I've made the mistake of accepting a claim Walen made in order to argue inside its framework. By even accepting the idea that there is a moral calculus to be made, where something arbitrary and irrational like fear can be made proportional to murder and genocide, and simply arguing that Israel's "psychic harm" and the horrors inflicted on Gaza are "not proportional", I've already acquiesced that there is an amount of dead citizens that COULD equate to Israel's "psychic harm", but that this simply doesn't. That's a mistake. Let me make it clear: there is no world where a populous being afraid justifies genocide. There is no moral calculus to be made. Creating a math equation out of human suffering is worthless and immoral.

This applies to both sides. I think Palestine should be free, but free from Hamas as well. Their atrocities they've committed are just as bad

Not to mention, Hamas used to call for the destruction of Israelis as a hole, dehumanizing, saying Israel shouldn't exist, ring any bells (Russian War with Ukraine) hence why they got their terrorist designation.

@@galaxyproductions2076 Hamas is completely irrelevant in this conflict, there is no reason to keep bringing them up other than to promote israeli propaganda. Its a palestinian israeli conflict.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.

yes, you're right to notice that this is basically cop logic applied to global conflict.

@@LordThanatosOfHades Whether or not he ultimately makes the argument that Israel's assault on the Palestinian people is "disproportionate" or not doesn't matter. The entire paper is predicated on ignoring the Israeli occupation up to this point, and minimizing the suffering of the Palestinian people meanwhile his point is philosophically flawed too. The fact that there is any talk of "proportionality" means the writer believes that there is some amount of casualty and bloodshed that would be tolerable for Israel's goals which I vehemently disagree with. Honestly I'd sooner make the point that the Palestinians have not yet reached *their* point of proportionality; having been subjugated on their own homeland and forced to deal with monstrous treatment by the Israeli government for decades should surely qualify them for causing much more harm than they already have. Or maybe "eye for an eye" isn't how we should be acting

@@theswagening6439 For real. We’re still operating under the guise that “proportional harm should be dealt” instead of “all harm should be mitigated”

@@LordThanatosOfHadesNo it’s not 👍 you’re just wrong.

Yeah I was thinking something along those lines too. Like how the initial Gazan attack provided psychic horror to all 7 million Israelis but the hypothetical 30,000 deaths would only psychically harm the friends and families of those 30,000. I guess presumably the rest of the population would be chill with it. Those 30,000 people cut ahead of them in traffic or something so whatever. It's just the argument of someone who wants to justify the harm, that's all.

I may have misunderstood, but I thought that this was based on the idea that ALL Gazans will be psychically harmed. So the reason why the ratio is different is because Israel is killing more people. Like, if there are 100 Israelis and 100 Gazans, 1 Israeli killed and 99 psychically harmed = 1:99 ratio. 10 Gazans killed and 90 psychically harmed = 1:9 ratio.

It's because he's a racist bigot.

Cause it is insane. Like. There's no way to logically defend that. It's absurd.

it seems like his argument is is 'they'll be miserable anyway whereas the israelis can otherwise enjoy their lives' which like.... yes that's because they're occupied, by israel

Real 3/5ths clause shit.

and yet this guy doesnt know when to shut the fuck up.

I’ve only heard this sort of garbage from the rich white population that think we should restrict food from struggling countries because “they’re overpopulating the world”

Yeah this whole thing just justifies genocide. Not like in the specific case of "Israel is doing a genocide in Gaza", but like, the logic of ANY genocide. 200 scared people justifies killing someone. Boy, that kind of minority scapegoating is what genocides thrive on. Like, whats the ratio of Jews to the European population in the 1930s?? Insane that this was written.

@@urgeintheicebox Zionism from its start was always an extremist white nationalist movement, and there really isn't any way around that. They were establishing their own colonialist movement. They didn't even chose Palestine, the British had just acquired the land from the Ottomans with the help of the Palestinians, who thought it would bring their freedom.

How is “threat” different from “potential”?

​@@Violaphobiabeing bombed at the moment is scarier and more real than anticipating a bombing that may or may not happen (because I'm protected in my colony/settlements), hope this helps.

​@@itgetsworse601 ​ You do the Palestinian people a disservice by lying like this. Israel's air defense system only lowers the damage, it doesn't eliminate it.

except it isn't. Its a clear case of neighbors threatening Israel with extinction and Israel threatening Palestinians with the "Don't be a Gobshite" stick.

@@Free.zen. Saying "do your research" is just admitting you don't know shit.

please share links to said panning.

Thank you! It's lacking a lot of academic criticality, so I hope not too many have been fooled by just the title of the writer. Scholarly ethics are not vibe based ramblings. And this is a good example of gaining popular visibility while having your guard down, muddying the waters for yourself as a professional because of something non-academic you wrote. It's important to understand the difference between an academic doing acedemics and an academic writing from personal standpoint, as themselves as an academic but not strictly academically. The first is methodological, critical and impersonal to a realistic degree, and the latter is outside the standards to which you generally need to hold yourself to in serious practice, but you're still using the professional title to gain weight on your personal arguments.

​@@macaron3141592653The piece was originally posted on Daily Nous. There are almost 200 comments, most of which are quite critical.

LMFAOOOO philosophy student of 8 years here, it astounds me how people think just because a “scholar” wrote something it’s bound to be reliable. As if systemic oppression hasn’t happened through academia before.

Other reasons such as?

the article seems pretty unethical for 'ethics'.

Some people renamed "thinking" to "philosophy" and managed to get paid for it.

How? How do you not go insane? How do you live with these people. I work with insane people BUT it isn't part of my work to hear what they think at all.

this is just Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent," except instead of arguing how Israel is using fear to justify their atrocities, the paper is acting like fearmongering is perfectly valid

@@justcommenting4981 a tip for a happy life is to drink tea and not listen to idiots.

A state on less than 20% of my homeland. A state with no means of self protection or true sovereignty.

So the German and Japan after WW2, could never be what their are today , if they are possessing what you said.

Ooof, when put like that, I'm getting some serious Job vibes which is weird?

@@tony608 Yeah, right. It is not like they were helped by giant superpower that had giant benefits from ww2, right? It is totaly because they are hard working people, also because they not brown like this unterm... you get the point (also /s)

What is this give my people a state nonsense? Israel wasn’t the one to say no to a state the last five times, the Arabs were.

That's incredibly small and definitely uneducated. Human Resources suffer from PTSD. Hotlines and call centers operators suffer PTSD.

@@ButtersCCookie The premise here being that the psychological harm on Israel people is significantly disproportionate to someone having their family slaughtered in front of them. The Palestinian people aren’t just experiencing trauma, they’re also having their livelihoods, support networks, and families stripped away. That’s in addition to the PTSD they will no doubt also experience

@@ButtersCCookie Sucks for them, though I imagine the average call operator or HR rep would agree that their experiences are incomparable to genocide being actively performed against them

Palestinians equate being told simply share the land with jews to a genocide. Meanwhile they unironically cite the Elder Protocols of Zion in the charter of Hamas and deny the existence of the Jewish identity.

Oh, this is interesting to me-- what kinds of things are you reading? Are there any pieces of Turkish apologia that are really significant?

I hope so

absolutely, this will be talked about for decades to come. lets hope the next gen doesnt repeat history AGAIN

I remember stumbling upon a video here on YT that was besically Armenian genocide denial. I didn't watch too much of the videos but I remember being appalled by the comments saying it was a just about quelling down "Armenina gang violence." It was a few years ago, so I dont remember what it was called.

@@delunimbusto this day the Turkish state and majority of the population still deny that the Armenian genocide ever happened

Honestly, when I first saw the article title, I was like, oh hey, maybe it's like about how the US overreacted on 9/11, then I remembered the video title and out loud said OH NO

That's such a good observation. It seems that when the victims of violence are majority Muslim Arabs, the West and its settler colony Israel are happy to sacrifice.

it has been USA foreign policy for at least 100 years though. 911 just made it more annoying to get in a plane. the usa was droping napalm and nuclear bombs on civilians in other countries since the 40's.

What is the proportion for prisoner exchange? Gilad Shalit had been exchanged for more than 1000 Palestine prisoners , including Sinwar.

Don't forget that the American Psychological Association (APA) not only endorsed and signed off on torture post-911 when it was being marketed as "enhanced interrogation techniques". Not only that, but prominent APA members developed specific torture techniques for the CIA and the military.

this video was not proportional

this will require that everyone unsubscribe from little joel, as much as it pains me to say

Tbf Dan read some insane shit so he might be desensitized to the insane logic. Ex the 2 hours worth of fifty shades of gray, anything related to the metaverse or nfts.

let us assume ten of Dan's brain cells will carry that burden for every r/wsb post that was read. let us add to that the number of sentences of fifty shades and those cells that will carry that burden. suppose that number is five times higher than the number of wsb posts. if we add those numbers together we get about half a million. if we offset the number of Dan cells with the claim to avoid a psychic burden by that number the number of brain cells whose psychic burden counts will still be close to 86 billion. I find that I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance.

he's read 50 shades, I'm sure he'll survive

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."

​@@LordThanatosOfHadesThat's not the end, he brings that up to give counterarguments to that. "So let us return to the issue of the psychic harm the Israelis are causing by waging this war. How could the misery the war is inflicting on Gazans not fully offset the psychic gains for the Israelis? The answer is that it could count for less if, for most Gazans, it is much more short-lived psychic pain than that which the Israelis would otherwise suffer. But the only way for it to be much more short-lived is if Israel takes it upon itself, as soon as possible, to reassure the Gazans that Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution." "It is much more short-lived psychic pain" It's not a pro-genocide article no, but the weird calculations of psychic pain continue after that quote and are gross. His ideal solution is for israel to pinky promise a good future. After which himself admits that that is not possible with their current government.

@@LordThanatosOfHades I had no plans to read it, but I will after I get some sleep. I'm not really interested in any sort of arguments of proportion. I don't think a military response is the solution. At some point, the killing has to stop and that's when peace and security will begin.

@@tripe2237 I agree entirely. I think the proportionality arguments are quite dangerous, even if in this case my interpretation is that it is not genocide apologia.

"Extremism." I'd say resistance when you're entire family has been killed in the largest extermination campaign of the 21st century isn't extreme at all, in fact its probably the only reasonable response. To frame people fighting back, as their land is literally being invaded as "terrorists" or "extremists" is insane. Why are we using the oppressors langauge and framing? The only terrorists are the IDF, they are the only extremists.

Yeah, we ought to send this guy back in time so all those weirdos doing unethical psychological experiments to try and figure out how something like the Holocaust could happen can study him.

🗿

Sometimes, when people get an education, even going all the way to PhD level, they still never learned one of the most essential things of being a critical thinker: - To find the truth, you follow where the evidence leads. You don't start with a belief that you've already made up your mind to be true, and then bend and twist everything else to try to force that preconceived belief to appear proven, or highlight only the things that appear to support it while dismissing or hiding anything that points to a contrary conclusion.

​@@johnwalker1058education and critical thinking don't make people value life. Values are distinct from education. If you have an actual sociopath, education teaches them to take advantage of people and systems

It is obviously a post-hoc rationalization. Wallen never explores the conditions for why October 7th occurred. He concludes that the number of people Israel has and will kill in the course of their war, will be justified if, "Gaza will not only be rebuilt, better than before, but that it will be set free as part of a two-state solution." The natural conclusion to draw from this is that had Israel pursued a two-solution and economic development of Gaza, that Palestinians would have no reason to have committed the atrocities of October 7th. From this perspective, it was the Israeli government themselves who have inflicted the presupposed "psychic harm" upon their own population, not merely Hamas by themselves, because their occupation and blockade sowed the necessary discontent for an event like October 7th to occur. Of course, Wallen cannot mention that Hamas' actions are in response to Israel's occupation and blockade, or that Israel has had the technological superiority to render much of Hamas' previous rocket actions nearly entirely harmless. Wallen's calculus fundamentally relies on math that involves equivocating deaths with "psychic harm". If Wallen had gone into the history prior to October 7th, he would have had to make the exact opposite argument, conceding that Palestinians have experienced a disproportionately higher degree of "psychic harm" prior to October 7th; Thus, he would have had to contend that it was entirely within the interests, and fundamentally proportional, of Hamas to kill Israelis to make up for the "psychic harm" experienced by Palestinians in Gaza because experiencing occupation, economic deprivation, blockade, and unequal treatment is fundamentally more "psychically harming" than living in modern country with first world living standards a la Israel. Naturally, conceding this would have completely undermined his argument.

nah this is when you start with a conclusion and shape your morality around it. there is actually math in some moral systems and it isnt always something that i agree with but at least there's a measure of consistency

@@GrayYeonWannabe I don't doubt that there are specific moral systems with "some math" in them, but there's a difference between that and the idea you can boil down all moral questions into abstract numbers and then "solve" them.

You technically can turn it into a mathematical equation, but that would require all parties agreeing to basic axioms, similar to the level of "this is how long a meter is". Stuff like, "how much does one suffer when losing a loved one versus living in low level stress for a long time". Problem is that, to go about it that way not only seems pointless cause we as social animals are far better versed at this than systems of math, but also would be extremely complex. Far more complex than what the article shows. tl;dr: Technically morality can be mathematical; it's still pointless to treat it as such.

@@norsehorse84 I'm not convinced it's even possible to quantify the pain of losing a loved one in the same way you can something like length.

@@ScoopMeisterGeneral there is a field of anthropology that specializes in the social after-effects of war, most of the evidence is taken directly from the subjective experience of the survivors. I would love to go into that field.

Not just over 3 months, but over years. 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022, and now 2023 of relentless bombardment. Gaza is constantly under siege, they've never taken a breath. In fact, when children are interviewed "What do you want to be when you grow up?" the typical response is "Nothing. Children in Gaza don't grow up".

seriously what the hell

What about the Jews who grew up under Ottoman apartheid and the lynch mobs of the Mandate period? Oh and don't forget the Neo-nazi ratlines that Egypt and Syria operated.

I agree, but can I ask you a question? What if more than 30,000 innocent Israelis died during the attacks? Would it then make sense to take 30,000 innocent Palestinian lives? I assume you disagree, but I don't know so let me know if you think otherwise. If you disagree, then there's obviously something else at stake here rather than the numbers, right? Then what is it?

That's a good description of far right politics in general

@@NitzanBueno wtf are you talking about?

@@NitzanBueno isreal had already been killing and bombing palestine before that, so no, i don't think so. isreal has and had already taken more than enough lives, and are just acting like the victims at the consequences of their actions.

​@@NitzanBuenoI'm not the OP, but I'll bite. Yes, I disagree. It's not just about the body count, it's also about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. Israel is the clear and unequivocal oppressor in this situation: they came in, forcibly and murderously stole and settled in other people's houses, took their livelihoods, forced them into a tiny fraction or their land, instituted prison-like conditions with unconscionable surveillance and no freedom of movement, and continue to treat Palestinians as non-human. This was all before October 7. So yes, I support the right of a people to resist oppression, and I reject the right of Israel to "defend itself", much like I would reject the right of American slave-owners to defend themselves from slaves fighting for freedom. Or I guess another way to say it is, it IS the body count, but you have to start counting at the real beginning, a hell of a lot earlier than October.

75 years of oppression: I sleep October 7: real shit Look, I’m not condoning what happened on Oct 7, but people pretending that they both share same amount of suffering is so ridiculous. Oh wait, probably need to condemn the Hamas first before I speak out against mass murder

It's heartening to see someone living in Israel who is level headed and speaking for themselves, as someone in New Zealand I'm mostly exposed to everyday Israelis who say the most fvcked up things about Palestinians that echo the words of the various ministers and IDF officers. I imagine you must feel wary about who you share dissenting opinions with in your country.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."

I haven’t read the paper so I’ll take your word on its intended stance. The problem then with your quote would be that he already laid out his insane calculus, showing very clearly Israel’s larger population makes any consideration of so-called psychic harm always fall in favor of Israel. No, the true refutation of this argument - the stance that any truly pro-Palestinian piece would take - is that being made to live in fear is simply not a comparable harm to being killed. No amount of psychic harm on one side can justify a murder on the other. That’s the only moral point worth arguing when someone strings the words “psychic harm” together with regard to this conflict

you live in isntreal. you are not israeli, that doesn't exist. "native" israelis are palestinian, and people living in isntreal are jusst american or european transplants

@@jennyc3919 I'm sorry, I just saw this comment, and... I unfortunately don't understand what you are trying to say in response to my point.

Reminds me of an Onion Classic: "In international news, the equivalent of 5 Americans died in Afghanistan today."

This is precisely the argument, it's just a bad look to say it directly

yeah i've found that there is basically no argument to justify this situation that doesn't require you to view palestinian lives as inherently inferior to israeli lives

One thing more people should keep in mind I think is that, the events of October 7 could have been avoided, but the army was completely unprepared. There is evidence that Israel intelligence (which does nothing but spy on Palestinians 24/7 it's literally their job) knew like at least months in advance that Hamas was up to something, even Egypt tried to warn them. But they ignored all the warnings, thinking that hamas would never pull off an attack like this. Not only that, but the soldiers and guards in the south where unprepared and not properly trained for an invasion situation like this. And as such, when Hamas attacked, they were literally caught by surprise. These soldiers could barely even defend themselves, let alone the Israeli citizens who were killed and kidnapped. Of course, now that the worst has happened Benjamin and the zionists have the perfect excuse to go on tv and say, "ahh! Look what they did to us! We must take revenge and nuke every Gazan hospital" and the (rightfully) terrified people will just accept this without questioning, 'hey wait a minute where the fuck was the army when the people actually needed it?'

@@billkormas3460Beau of the Fifth Column (YT commentator that’s pretty well-versed in foreign policy) helped break this down: “Israel does not have the institutional memory of something like Vietnam. […] They do tend to underestimate low-tech groups. […] If you look at the reporting, it kinda looks like the information went up a couple of levels and then it hit this point where everybody was just like ‘they’re not gonna be able to pull that off!’ And it got disregarded. And that’s where the failure occurred.”

@@billkormas3460 Now they're saying "all in told *1,200* *people* died on Oct 7th" This is because they include in that count all the Hamas members killed and all the hundreds of Israeli citizens that Israel killed out of callousness or incompetence or both.

This is a classic story of Joha, a popular folk figure in Palestine!

Academia is primarily about huffing your own farts and gatekeeping a decent standard of living.

​@@thagomizer4711Weird take, especially to such an unrelated comment but I like your name.

I wouldn't be upset i would be on trial. They refuse to accept responsibility for it

@@TheModdedwarfare3 the point is that being an ethics issue professor doesn’t indicate an understanding of ethics in the current academic climate

@@TheModdedwarfare3 also thanks!

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.

I don't think you need to go back in time I am pretty sure this 1 for 1 one of the arguments slave owners used to justify owning slaves, basically claiming that since a portion of americans benefited economically from slavery removing slavery would equally harm all Americans. No matter what era this kinda argument is insane.

And i bet he glefully would

@@lucas10armond That's not fair. He regretfully would.

@@plateoshrimp9685 🤣

@@plateoshrimp9685Yeah we gotta remember the perversion of liberals since they basically just do everything the far-right does institutionally but pretend to regret it like some kind of display of Catholic guilt.

That's what racism does to your mind.

They can't. If they ever did, they would be forced to recognize that they are basically just Jewish Nazis.

"Israel has the right to defend itself" ✅ "Palestine has the right to defend itself" ❌ 300 IQ morality

Because they don't see Palestinians as humans.

@@sealeo5772 What did Netinyahoo call them again? Human animals?

Is anyone actually genuinely citing this paper?

@@FluffyBunniesOnFire I hope not. But I could definitely see it happening

I had a hard time understanding why one of my favorite, and rational RU-vidrs was saying such odd things, then I realized he was just doing a voice over 😂

Hope Dan got himself a treat + shower afterwards.

The fear that the possibility of these out of context clips might exist is causing me enough psychic damage that I honestly think the only option is to cancel Medium Joel and his youtubes off the internet permanently

💯

I'm guessing you realize this but for anyone who doesn't, they say that about all Black and brown people

Like American doctors say this about their patients

Same things nazi propagandists said about russian people during WWII. It's just dehumanising of enemies by western society. Nothing new, nothing changed since

And people still this day wondering why some of us Asian are offended at the term Oriental. It's never been used for anything good. Oriental always clumps us Asian as something exotically... ignorant.

Why are you framing this with Nazism? Can you process morality sans the Nazis?

@@keemstarkreamstar7069 Bro Israel government officials themselves are the ones comparing that they want to do to Gaza to Auschwitz.

And erm...Who made the country smaller, Wallen?

This is the part that drives me crazy about all discussions of this. Like the whole "there was a ceasefire before Oct 7" as if Hamas started this out of nowhere and there hasn't been Israeli aggression towards Palestine for decades. It denies reality to describe the situation in terms favorable to the west.

For that matter - the rest of us are made pretty damn insecure knowing that the world's effective international powers are unable or unwilling to stop genocide. Israel's direct example and the bystanders' indirect one are doing that psychic harm to some 7 billion of us.

@@DragonNexus - And we should acknowledge the "psychic harm" of Palestinians in the West Bank, who had absolutely nothing to do with the Hamas attack, but are the victims of increased settlement efforts and violence from Israelis who want to "get back" at Gazans. It's another frustrating situation because any mention of it gets brushed aside in bad faith, as if the Hamas attack isn't the exact reason for the increased settler violence.

@@speed0spank I was literally reading titles like "2023 record year for Palestinians murdered by Israel" before Oct 7 and motherfuckers act like Palestinians were treated like kings before and they reacted out of barbaric innate antisemitism

maybe low effort bait? Or worse, a deniable asset whose author can say "yes I meant this sincerely" or "no this was obvious satire; see how blatant it is?" depending on how the article is received, only serving to boost his name

So i don't want to be melodramatic? But I'm American, I live in Oregon, I've lived in Oregon for 43 years, and I have woken up screaming more than once in the past few months

Is that psychic harm or

I will never be able to stop seeing what i have seen

@@no_peace Yeah that sounds like psychic harm. Maybe the kind of thing you should schedule a session with a therapist for, too.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.

@@LordThanatosOfHades did you tell chatGPT to write that wall of nonsense?

@@Meurth Nope, it was written on a healthy dose of painkillers and annoyance.

some people just think the israel-palestine conflict is just a game of hearts of iron or something.

@@manboy4720 I care more about my subjects in Paradox Games than Israel or Hamas does.

It's not on the same scale, but "fear of crime" policies have done so much harm to communities in the UK and US. We put tremendous stock in how people feel rather than what the facts actually show

​@evanfreshman2450 me always picking dispersed industry regardless of whether or not it's the most efficient choice because the icon makes it look like a nicer place to live

@@evanfreshman2450 There really is no comparison between the two sides, Isreal is far worse. Its not even close. This is the largest genocide of the 21st century so far, and all these fucking cowards can't even manage the moral courage to muster anything more than "muh but both sides" and mistaking it for political sophistication.

don’t hold your breath- he sounds like another Sam Harris clone, negative charisma & all

🎯

I saw the comment saying that the more accurate analogy would be to make the citizens not...alive anymore, rather than just abolishing the state, before it got deleted. And I agree, that's a closer parallel, but as you can see the comment gets eaten by the automatic filter if you write that :v

Exactly. Human suffering isn't something that should be equally distributed it is something that should be minimised.

That’s talmudism for you. Judaism isn’t a religion, it’s a racial supremacist organization. They use the “gods chosen people” argument to justify all sorts of atrocities.

I mean that's the only real way to think about large scale political issues isn't it? If you aren't willing to estimate and compare quantities of harm/benefit what's the point of talking about politics at all? The only alternative I can think of are pure appeals to emotion, but those can be used to justify just about anything (I'm not justifying the paper here. Bullshitting your math to justify genocide is unforgivable)

​​@@seizoen At least appealing to emotions feels human. Not a cold Adolf Eichmann schider list stuff, where every Jew was just number on a list to be calculated for death, just as how every Gazan is a number for a kill list for a Israeli accountant of death. Emotions, is the lesser of two evils.

extremely wrong take. Just because he does it idiotically doesn’t mean we have a need to be able to talk about genocide with math. Which btw ofc i agree what israel is doing is clearly one-sided genocide

He seems adamant on the fact that the response RIGHT NOW is proportional to the long-term harm that might be done to Israelis, so it's a justified exchange; but then he goes to say it can only be considered proportional IN THE FUTURE if and only if Israelis give Palestinians freedom and good living conditions as soon as Hamas is destroyed, defeating his own argument entirely.

excellent points! yes presumably the utilitarian person argues that you push the fat guy over the bridge, if it blocks the oncoming train and saves five other people. or (as in ordinary warfare) you sacrifice this smaller bunch of guys, if it's "worth it" in terms of some strategic goal that .. yadda yadda yadda .. ultimately saves a bigger bunch of guys. or something.

Also, Israel creates future combatants & sympathizers every time it kills a child’s parent. Israel could use this reality to justify full scale ethnic cleansing, given the asinine arguments. When the ratio of deaths is already 1000:1 it begs the question, does ANY limit exist?

Glad someone else noticed this. He indirectly argued that any larger group can justify violence against a smaller group by virtue of quality-of-life calculations between the two groups.

thanks for pointing out the time bit, I noticed that too, but the population thing is very true and I hadn't figured it out yet (reading this article gave me such a horrible headache, it made me quite sad)

No but, you see, Wallen has cleverly accounted for that. You see, when an Israeli person lives in fear of Hamas but has not had a family member killed, their psychic damage matters. When a Palestinian person lives in fear of Israeli bombs but has not had a family member killed, their psychic damage does not matter. It's all very straightforward when you think of it like Wallen has! He is so smart and not at all a genocide apologist :)

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what.

@@CiCodiCadno See my above comment, I'm trying to get the word out to actually read the article in full. Joel has done something odd with the framing of this video.

@@LordThanatosOfHades I disagree that the article is pro-Palestinian, but is instead centrist. The main issue of contention though is his calculations of suffering - especially using psychic harm as only calculable (in this instance) as something a Palestinian can experience when "close" to a fellow Palestinian killed in the war, but something an Israeli can experience when no direct harm had occured yet, where no "close" person has been killed. To then top it off with "The ratio would still be something like one collateral death for every 200 or so Israelis who would otherwise live in a state of profound insecurity. I find that _I cannot reject that as an unreasonable balance._ " is unequivocally anti-Palestinian, if not necessarily pro-Israeli. The article does then say "But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans?" And then "To me the most important response to this objection is this: To live with a neighbor who wants to destroy you is bad enough, but to live with a neighbor who is undeterrable is much worse". It's trying to be centrist, and I think it mostly achieves that... If you destroy his calculations from the article entirely. If you keep the calculation, then it's nothing but a callous ivory-tower genocide apology draped in the guise of enlightened centrism

Always nice to see you, Patricia. I totally agree, it's deeply disturbing seeing somebody casually boil down human suffering into statistics - especially when they use it to justify further human suffering.

I am no activist, and I don't speak out half as much as I should. About this, or any other issue. But like. Come on, man. I'm an idiot and even I can see the holes in this.

Not to them, because they fundamentally don't consider Palestinians as human beings.

⁠​⁠@@stoodmuffinpersonal3144 Alec: Well, you HAVE to consider the Israelis, you have to consider the psychic harm- Biden, months ago, in a private speech to his donors: [Israel] is starting to lose [international] support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place. Alec: Alec: Uh-

How insanely tone deaf and completely non self aware do you have to be to not only seriously think like this but to make it public. How can he not realize how this would make you look extremely bad? Just flush your reputation down the toilet with these final solution type equations.

It sort of assumes palestinians don’t have emotions in the same way israelis do

holy shit you're there? you're going to show up to his office and demand this genocidal rhetoric be taken back immediately, right??? GO DO SOME DIRECT ACTION oMG i wish i was in your shoes right now you have the ability to actually bring consequences to this monster

​@@kylezo This is a terrible idea. A pro-Israel staff member being harassed by pro-Palestinian students is exactly the kind of optics these people want. Direct action is pointless if it's directly harmful to the cause.

@@philipsalama8083 yea man, if you think running interference for genocide is less offensive than being impolite, you have a lot of soul searching to do.

that's where Noura Erakat works too, right? talk about a night-and-day difference in terms of public statements (and amount of exercised compassion and critical thought)

@@kylezo And if you think actively harming the cause is worth it because it makes you feel better, I'd suggest you do some soul searching too. What you've described isn't 'running interference', it's useless, self-absorbed foolishness that actively makes the pro-Palestinian side look like the bad guys. There's a thousand ways to call out this professor for his genocide apologism. Cornering him in his office and shouting at him until he calls campus security is one of the worst.

That’s neat. You’ll get to live through both the end of Apartheid and the end of South Africa as a functioning state. Wonder if there’s some sort of connection there…

@@keemstarkreamstar7069 Ah, I see white supremacists have found their way into this comment section. What terrible wrong was done to you to set you on this path?

That's a bingo

I've definitely heard this argument before. Hasan Piker went on the H3 podcast to talk with Ethan Klein about Israel, and this argument about the psyche of the people of Israel was mentioned by Klein and it stuck out to me then, so I don't think Wallen invented this argument, it is most definitely Hasbara propaganda. In other words, manufacturing consent.

Its incredible isn't it, how so many in the west are making moral arguments on behalf of Israelis who are openly declaring an entirely different morality.

Fascists rarely hide their intent towards the objects of their hatred. It's one of the only things they don't lie about.

Notably, it could be used to justify a war of extermination against Israel. I'm pretty sure the "psychic harm" suffered by everyone who looks at Palestinians and sees human beings is greater than that suffered by 10 million Israelis. To say nothing of the numerous awful dictatorships who distract their people from revolt by pointing them at Israel (and Jews more generally). Obviously I'm not arguing for any of that. What this means is the entire argument is insane nonsense and the person who shat it out should never be allowed to speak on a public stage ever again.

One might assume that's a description of a job he is applying for with the article.

His reasoning can probably be used to justify every atrocity that has been committed against a group of people.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.

@@LordThanatosOfHades I'm happy for you.... or sorry that happened. Sucks you gotta defend an article that says genocide is fine if at the end of it, your relatives get to live with the genocidal government in a 'nice neighborhood'.

Were you jailed after refusing to enlist? Can I ask what happens?

Borders are literally not real though, chud. People have always migrated historically.

If u wanna see a perfect example of this attitude in action watch the interview w/ Krystal Ball & Kyle Kulinski that came out recently with that douchebag who is the only establishment Dem challenging Biden in the primary, he is an AMERICAN Jew and his "I'm the BIGGEST victim!!" tears are absolutely astoundingly out of touch w/ Reality, he all but called KK antisemitic bc Kyle pushed back on this tool as a journalist should... it was WILD (I'm not a huge fan of KB & KK but this video is solid & their pushback on behalf of Palestinians is admirable and satisfyingto watch)

Israeli society is extremely narcissistic. They are only capable of thinking about themselves. Although that’s not surprising considering they’ve built their society on the suffering and dispossession of others.

Unfortunately, economic utilitarianism jump started it again after accruing about 50 years of momentum.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what happened. The article is definitely strangely written, but it's pretty clear if you read the whole thing, which Joel has clearly done. This is the paragraph right after the one calculating suffering on the Israeli side: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional." The overall outcome of the article is that Israeli arguments that the suffering of their people outweigh that of the Palestinians makes no sense and that the only way this might be made somewhat right is that after ousting Hamas, Israel offers sovereignty and cooperation under an entirely new government not composed of genocidal maniacs. It's definitely a strange article, and not one I agree with entirely, but it is not the genocidal puff piece the video seems to frame it as.

I'd argue it's more of a historic debt incurred. All of us will need to live the rest of our lives with the books that say this was allowed to happen and the world did almost nothing to stop it. Just like we must live with the books that say the same about every other genocide.

The actual article is pro-Palestinian, Joel is for some reason arguing with a rhetorical device the author uses to frame what Israel or its supporters might say justifies the killing. Walen makes it clear that it Israeli psychic harm does not justify all the pain and suffering inflicted on Palestinians. I'm not sure if he got it in his head from the opening of the article that it's pro-Israel and just ran with it even after reading the whole thing, or what. This is the quote right after the one calculating the psychic harm on Israelis: "But it could be proportional only if the Israelis aren’t imposing on basically all Gazans a greater psychic burden than the psychic burden that Israelis hope to avoid. But isn’t it clear that this war is in fact imposing a greater psychic burden on basically all Gazans? There are currently over two million people living in Gaza, and given the death, destruction, and displacement caused by the war, it would seem crazy to suggest that the war has not caused more psychic harm to those two million people than it might alleviate for Israelis. This would seem to negate the potential for Israelis to appeal to psychic harm to make their war proportional."

Actually I'm surprised they didn't make much more of that approach. I expected them to cite the drone war and how many civilians the US killed, and say that if the ICJ didn't act then it was giving tacit consent.

Absolute ghouls. I'm so proud of my country for taking them to the ICJ.

​​@@garethmartin6522you think they'll bite the hand of daddy usa when they're consrantly begging daddy for money

@@rusi6219 Who are you referring to?

Reminds me of how they also provided arms to Azerbaijan for it's invasion of nagorno-karabakh which then led to nearly it's entire population fleeing or forced out,

Unfortunately a lot of tenured professors are so far up their own ass and are completely out of touch weirdos.

That's been something that's kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about the realm of philosophy :-/ I appreciate you and everyone in the field of thought who recognizes this tendency and actively avoids it/embraces the complexities of nuance and introspection!

I was once a Christian and during the time that I attended a Christian university, I was at one point a philosophy major. I originally signed up for the program thinking that I was going to learn how to become good at defending my faith while also learning about cool ideas and ways of thinking while doing so. After a couple of semesters, I switched programs and also wound up de-converting because I kept running into ideas and arguments that were touted as logically ironclad and irrefutable arguments of the faith masterfully constructed and delivered by PhD theologians and Christian scholars that no atheist or skeptic could ever hope to ever topple. And yet these arguments were constantly riddled with the kinds of informal fallacies that freshmen were expected to have acquainted themselves with in a basic English class in the rhetorical studies unit of their composition textbooks. As generally useless as their program turned out to be, I did still learn some important (although unfortunate) lessons from my time spent as a philosophy student (at least at a Christian university). Even highly educated and well-read, well-versed scholars who spend a lifetime of studying an intellectual subject and working in academia can be just as much of an uncritical thinker and biased in their thinking as a high school grad who never set foot on a college campus ever in their life. Sometimes, they are even *worse* at critical thinking because all their time spent studying and all the facts they learned were only applied to developing better skill at rationalizing their own feelings, emotions, or biases. But their feelings, emotions, or biases could be presented with the veneer of intellectual rigor so that while they may have learned to become more eloquent in their speech and composition, more learned in the jargon and technical intricacies of the field in which they studied, the underlying rationale in their thought processes and arguments is still the logical equivalent of plugging their fingers into their ears to ignore any evidence that contradicts their beliefs and affirming to themselves "I'm right, I'm right, I'm right." Even after all their study, while they may have become more factually knowledgeable about their field of study, they may have never actually learned to be earnest and genuine truth seekers, following the evidence wherever it may lead, but instead more clever and technically trained sophists who have mastered the art of mental gymnastics.

@@ernie39 You can hold a college degree and still be a complete idiot, just look at Jordan Peterson.

Sophists are almost as old as philosophy itself

To own land you need control over it. If you lack control, you have a claim but no actual effective ownership. Palestine is currently losing the long war. Hamas is unable to mount any resistance capable of stopping the IDF, most major foreign actors are uninterested in a war for Palestine unless they are in dire need of prestige or a distraction/ already openly hostile to the USA. People often talk about morality/ethics, and justice - it's all meaningless without the means to enforce your vision of right and wrong. Fighting when a war is lost, even if one believes in the cause, may lead to an eventual breakthrough. But the price the regular Palestinians are paying currently is one they may never recover from.

@@Arcaryon You're exposing a massive vulnerability in your position by ignoring what they said. The OP was talking about Israelis abandoning the invasion of Palestine to live a safe and happy life elsewhere. You aren't able to acknowledge this.

@@DeoMachina The last time Jews lost their state and were forced to flee it ended with centuries of persecution and eventual industrialised mass g*nocide. This is the closest thing to a home these people have. And on not acknowledging something; The Christian conquests ended with mass conversions, the Muslim conquests did too. The difference between hundreds of millions of people is that the ancestors of the modern Jews successfully resisted any attempt at wiping out their small culture. Again: "To own land you need control over it. If you lack control, you have a claim but no actual effective ownership." The Jews in Israel have a better army, stronger allies and even an arguably far older historical claim if you even want to go down that kind of line. Imagine the following; if native Americans had been expelled from the USA and would return to New York - what would you argue? That they are colonizers? Or just returning home? I think that such a thing is not a good argument. Instead, we should focus on the status quo. Which is: Iran and the USA are having a proxy w*r and as long as these two keep fighting ( which thanks to geopolitics arguably expands to Ch*na as well ) - there will be no peace.

@@Arcaryon Nobody is arguing might is right here because everyone knows thats morally wrong. Stop trying to position yourself as objective.

@@DeoMachina OP is decades behind the discussion. Why engage in an argument that was false then and is still false now? The Jews already were forced to leave once It ended in 6 million de*d. Where are you going to force them? The new world? What a joke... The UN needs to step up and handle this via seperating these groups until the hatred d*es with the passing of time.

this is, i think, the most poignant way of putting it, in a comment section full of excellent points

damn,, well-put

And the article says this. Joel is framing it as anti-Palestinian, but if you read the whole article, it's pretty clear the position it holds.

Yeah I am 47% through cancelling him right now.

​@@TheModdedwarfare3 but is 47% enough to justify the psychic damage that cancelling Dan would cause to him???

Incredibly disconcerting indeed. Especially bc I view Dan as one of the most trusted voices on this damn website.

Maybe Israel should just stop slaughtering children.

I laughed, but it was a hollow one

"How many golems do you need to sustain a million dollar a year lifestyle? Show your work."