Do you think "there are no innocent" is a valid view?
It seems that there are a lot of Israelis that believe that there are no innocents in Gaza. And one could argue that it's possible that a significant majority of the population is hateful towards Israelis, considering the history.
If you agree with this argument, can you please explain why and elaborate? And if you don't, how would you refute it? There is no data that shows that there isn't a significant majority that's hateful towards the Israelis.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not stating my opinion as I want to hear an unbiased opinion from you.
I don't think it's lack of empaty, or rather, it's not just lack of empaty, I think it's more an active lumping together of people and ancestry.
So much so Zionist, and Nazi, are into their own a-priori "positive" quality, coherently, absurdly so, Palestinian children have a-priori negative qualities.
I feel sick just typing this because I would think this is very very very clearly idiotic. But it seems to take hold of plenty of people's worldview.
According to sarah silverman theyll grow up to hate israel so they gotta go (I dont like how she kinda got away from being cancelled because she was already irrelevent and shut off her comments for a year to avoid backlash) Midly salty I was her fan and thought she was a woke comedian because she told mfs to vote once.
That is usually how a genocide is justified to the public. Every member of the 'undesireabe' group is guilty of being an undesirable, and can thus be justifyably murdered.
Examples:
All Jewish people are guilty of some conspiracy and/or killing Jesus
All Muslim people are guilty of replacing white christians and/or terrorism
All LGBTQ people are guilty of grooming kids
All Palestinians are guilty of 'occupying' Israeli land.
etc.
Every example of this is a tool of propaganda to get the public to go along with unfair treatment up to and including genocide. The fact that they're all easily refuted doesn't matter. It goes hand in hand with the view that the group aren't fully people.
This reasoning is never ok, no matter what group of people it's used against this time. When you recognize it, call it out for the sham it is.
Its like with Nazi germany. Sure not literally ALL germans supported hitler but they also just didnt do enough to stop him. When your children are killed by people with israeli flags, its hard not to hate the whole country.
That doesnt make them guilty of anything other than hatred however. The amount of people in gaza actively involved in killing israeli civilians is close to zero. Killing soldiers occupying your land is not great but arguably not morally bad.
There were literally thousands of Hamas fighters who entered Israel by land, sea, and air on Oct 7, 2023. They captured and held territory, killed 1200 people, kidnapped hundreds more, and committed war crimes. Hamas claims that they have/had 10s of thousands more fighters. The scale of these numbers is undisputed.
The idea that your can judge an entire group of people to be innocent or not is heavily flawed. Even if any groups cultural influence was hypothetically incredibly evil, do people deserve death for being influenced by their surroundings? How do we gauge who has true evil in their heart, and who was harbouring doubts but couldn't say anything? We literally can't, and that kind of thinking shouldn't be used to decide judgement of a person, let alone who lives and who dies. In practical terms things get muddier sure, but we're way past that point.
At this point I feel like the conclusion of violence is made first, then the justification coming afterwards.
See that one is a touch different, billionaires aren't something that generally just happens. People making that much money are usually exploiting someone to get there. However, hypothetically, it might be possible to have an outlier billionaire that has done nothing wrong, though unlikely. Though I'd say it's difficult to imagine an ethical billionaire that stays a billionaire as well, given how much good that kind of money could do for the world in general.
I think it's important to judge each individual based on their actions, even if their actions may fit the profile for an unethical businessperson or the like.
Unfortunately though it is pretty safe to generalise when it comes to the wealthy.
I don't think this is a properly formed question because there's a difference between "not hateful" and "innocent". "Innocent" also needs further qualification - innocent of what?
Also, there are no "unbiased opinion" on anything, that's just not possible.
A friend of mine said something reaaaaaalllllly controversial. IDF claims everyone in GAZA is a terrorist. But look at Israel, everyone has mandatory military service. Everyone has either been in IDF, is currently in IDF, or will be in IDF.
If anything the opposite of "everyone in GAZA is a terrorist" holds more ground honestly.
They are brainwashed supporters of genocide. I read about a guy who left to get his 2 newborn twins registered at the hospital and they got killed along with his wife while he was away.
"No innocents."? Fuck you. I wouldn't wish this misery on my absolute most hated enemy.
And as others have pointed out, hatred =/= not innocent. Nobody deserves to die just for hating someone. Even if you could justify killing someone just cause they allegedly hate you, I have a very very difficult time believing that all Palestinians hate Israelis and vice versa. Again, people are not born with hatred in their heart and the actions of a government don't always reflect the feelings of their citizens.
Also just being pedantic about your disclaimer: opinions are biased. You can't ask for an unbiased opinion. You can make an unbiased (to an extent) statement, but not an opinion.
It's probably true for some definition of innocent except for small children and babies. The problem is that people making this argument don't do so honestly otherwise they'd have to apply it to themselves and their own group as well. If nobody is innocent, it doesn't make sense to use it as a discriminator.
And if you don't, how would you refute it? There is no data that shows that there isn't a significant majority that's hateful towards the Israelis.
First, you can't just say "there is no data that shows that there isn't X"; you need data that shows X. However, you'll probably find that data fairly easily, because Palestinians hate Israelis' guts. That gets us to the real problem with this argument: Having an opinion doesn't make one guilty of anything. Only acts can make one guilty, acts like—for example—voting for Likud and other Israeli pro-war parties knowing they're running on a campaign of Palestinian extermination. It's just more projection from fascists (and make no mistake Zionism is a fascist ideology. For reference see: https://zionism.wtf/.)
I would argue that any group of non-self-selected humans will have a handful of members who are inherently good or bad, but as a whole they will be no better or worse than any other group raised in similar circumstances and sharing similar experiences. So any blanket condemnation of an entire group is really a condemnation of the circumstances they’ve been subjected to.
A core principle of modern (western) legal states is that it's preferable to let 10 guilty people walk free before wrongfully punishing one innocent. I'm aware that we often don't manage to live up to that, but it is the ideal.
That's why guilt of the individual (!) has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, it's why certain evidence may become inadmissible if it's been acquired illegally, it's why suspect's may walk free due to formal errors. We try to make absolutely sure that cutting corners doesn't lead to wrong conclusions, even if it means that we sometimes have to let criminals go unpunished.
Following that same principle, "it's possible that there's a significant majority" isn't enough. Where's the proof that there's not a single inhabitant of Gaza who doesn't support Hamas?
Also, since when is it a crime punishable by lifelong imprisonment or death to be hateful of someone?
And if you and your entire people were held in an open air prison for as long as you could think back, would you not grow hateful of your jailers?
Last but not least: The logic that "there are no innocents [on the other side of the fence]" applied by Hamas towards the Israelis led to October 7th. If it was flawed then, how is it not flawed now?
everyone is listening to their own narrative. my israeli friends honestly think that muslims are trying to kill them, because some king in the old testament disobeyed god
I don't care if someone says that there are no innocent Israelis or no innocent Gazans. It's despicable either way, and if it's coming from a person of faith - Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, then they are directly violating the will of God. (Gen 18:17 ff)
If they are a Kahanist or Hamas supporter, then they are in favor of literal terrorism.
First part everyone would agree. Second part, no way in hell.
Hamas is also the government, which means they are government employees who have never taken a gun or done anything. But you go beyond and call every supporter of them "in favor of literal terrorism"
It's like blaming all jews and supporters of judaism for the action of zionists
To me it seems those Israelis are projecting... in other words: They're claiming there are no innocent Israelis. An accusation is usually a confession in this time and age I've noticed.
It's pretty easy to be blinded by hatred and anger and wanting to excuse your own actions. I think we've all been there in life. Whoever is saying "there are no innocents" in Palestine is clearly at that stage.
Ask those people if there are any innocents in Israel. All of that society contributed to a genocide.
We could ask the same thingabout the US.
I didn't get thrown in jail from repeated protesting, so I'm just as much to blame.
We are "all" guilty because we knowingly pollute, for example, and that kills people.
And we buy products and that finance Israel bombs.
And we fight for survival and strangle our jailer that just landed that job to feed his family and never got quality education to choose a different career.
I am more of the idea that there are no truly guilty in a strict sense. We as a society share the responsibility to handle the now extended knowledge we have and we are basically not even trying.
It's an extreme perspective and an oversimplification. So necessarily wrong if you state it this way... Neither do all people in Israel seem to support this, nor is "innocent" any attribute that fits the purpose. Technically like a newborn baby should be pretty much innocent. An adult may not, even if it's just an act of omission. But it's not really a philosophical question in this case, is it? And it's not even what this is about. So I'd say that sentence is immediately wrong on technicalities.
This one is just projection. To believe this statement denies there are plenty of people who are innocent on both sides. We are not talking about those people.
We are talking about the people who hate the other side on both sides, but once again we aren't talking about both sides here. One side has made the statement popular to dehumanize the other side.
This is what we are talking about. You can't agree with this statement because it is used as an excuse to kill people. Regardless if the statement has truth to it it is in essence propaganda used to manipulate people.
The idea of free will is unfalsifiable. So far, there is no evidence that there is anything causing conscious beyond, physical, chemical interactions. This means, that most likely, humans do not have free will. Every action, every thought, is caused by some chemical, or physical thing, and is ultimately predetermined.
The idea of "guilt" is born out of the idea that humans have free will, and are therefore culpable for "bad" or "immoral" actions. But humans do not have free will. Punishing a "guilty" person, is actually just inflicting suffering on the qualia, or the conscious experience of someone, for circumstances completely out of anyone's control, including themselves.
I believe that all people are innocent. Every act of violence should be evaluated as if it was being done against an innocent person. The only difference between a killer and a saint is that of brain chemistry.
As for Israel specifically, since that is a different question than the nature of innocent, here is my reply:
This robs Hamas of their heroism. The flood wasn't just animals escaping their cage, it was a strategic defeat of the most advanced border wall in the world. They overcame incredible odds to break through it into the land that was stolen from them.
And Hamas didn't break in to randomly kill people. They wanted hostages to exchange for the hostages Israel had. With that in mind, most of the deaths might very well have been inflicted by the IDF under the Hannibal directive to deprive Hamas of hostages.
The flood wasn't just animals escaping their cage, it was a strategic defeat of the most advanced border wall in the world. They overcame incredible odds to break through it into the land that was stolen from them.
Sure. This claim might even be true. And you're right, it's not fair to compare real people, fighting for their lives, to "dogs".
But it doesn't undo what Hamas did to innocent* people, nor does it undo the fact that the Israeli government funded, supported, and propped up Hamas while suppressing the actual Palestinian parties.
The way I see it, the only truly innocent people are those who sincerely do not know right from wrong, and they're mostly children. The rest of us are each and all responsible for our choices and actions.
There are lots of people who commit crime without realizing that they're doing something wrong. I know a guy personally who raped his date in college, and didn't realize it was a rape until decades later. Was he innocent? What about drunk people? What about people who don't "choose"? What if free will is post-hoc nonsense?
Do you think an infant knows right from wrong? I don't... and I work my way out from there, looking for that same innocence in others. As to your friend or anyone else, I can't answer for people I don't personally know... even when I do know people, I still can't always answer for them.