I don't support archators. Not if those archators are a State, not if they are a political group that acts like a State, not if they are lone archators. All of those archators are bad guys. All of them.
It doesn't matter if those archators call themselves "Hamas", "Israel", or anything else.
If the archation harms the innocent-- on any "side"-- those who committed the acts of archation are the enemy of liberty and humanity (really, that's the same thing).
It doesn't change anything if the acts are in revenge for something someone else did in the past. No harm to the innocent. Period.
If a politician (or other archator) who is individually responsible for ongoing harm is taken out, that's great. That's always an ethical option. But harming people-- who were just going about their lives-- because of something politicians are doing? Unforgivable. Hold the politicians or the individual followers accountable, don't target anyone else.
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You make a valid point. But how can you avoid harming the innocent entirely during a war? I wish it could be done. But can it be done? Also, Israel and Hamas are not equivalent. Hamas slaughtered teenagers at a music festival. They kidnapped and pistol whipped elderly people confined to wheelchairs. It just came out that they beheaded at least 40 children, including infants. I've never heard of Israel doing that.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't avoid harming innocents during a war, then it's evil to conduct war.
DeleteYou have the right to shoot soldiers coming into your town, not to go to towns where you think their families live and start destroying things and killing people there. It's the difference between defense and aggression. Missiles and bombs are always wrong to use because there's no way to avoid harming the innocent with them.
This doesn't mean people and states won't use them-- they are just doing things they have no right to do. They have no worthwhile ethical sense and they think it's "worth it". I think it just makes things worse in the long run. Again, with the revenge pendulum. It never ends because Side A has to strike back at Side B for things done in the past, and they have to escalate to tip the scales of hurt a little in their favor. It's disgusting.
States are evil. All of them. Including groups that behave like states (Hamas). I won't justify the acts of one because of the acts of another.
This is a conflict thousands of years old, with each side escalating the revenge for things the other side has done in the past.
We already know "the news" doesn't give us the truth-- not if it reflects badly on the side they want us to support, so I don't know what Israel (individual military members acting on behalf of the Israeli government) has done. I hope they haven't done things like those ascribed to Hamas-- and I hope they don't do them in the future because "revenge". I'm also reminded of Kuwait and the "babies in incubators" fiction that was used to justify a previous war in that region.
War does three things really well: Murders, destroys, lies.