Ancestors

Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-27 at 15:06

I was visiting a relative over the weekend and we got to discussing #Gaza and I made a comment about Israel killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians there.

My relative literally hand-waved me away and said, "I don't want to get into that, but I'm fine with Israel dropping tons of bombs on Gaza."

The abdication of any responsibility, guilt, or shame is stunning.

My relative thinks the Israeli hostages are human beings and the Palestinians aren't.

Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jan/27/israel-gaza-us-jews-peter-beinart

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-27 at 15:07

Mind you, if I confronted my relative on this (which I won't because they are a close relative and I can't afford to cause that kind of fallout in the family), they would deny it. But there is no way to interpret their actions and the actions of so many other Jews as anything other than valuing Jewish Israeli lives orders of magnitude more than Palestinian lives.

That's astoundingly abhorrent.

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Toot

Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-30 at 14:19

When the U.S. does a spy swap with another country (most commonly Russia, or before that, the USSR), the number of people exchanged is roughly equal on both sides.

[#]Israel, on the other hand, always exchanges hundreds of Palestinians for a few Israelis. Israel thinks that's a fair swap. It couldn't be clearer: as a matter of policy, Israeli believes Israeli lives are hundreds of times more valuable than Palestinian lives.

Most Jews accept that math uncritically.

[#]politics

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Descendants

Written by Boris Nikitashov on 2025-01-30 at 14:26

@jik ehm, I’m sure Israel would love to make an equal swap. So it rather looks like the Palestinian side sets the exchange rates here

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-30 at 14:33

@ohray The Palestinians are happy to take advantage of Israel's contempt for them to get as many prisoners released as they can in every swap. If the Israelis thought it was a bad deal they would say no. This is basic economic theory.

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-30 at 14:34

@ohray But really, I'm not going to waste my time discussing politics with someone who thinks it's a good thing that Trump is president. 👋 plonk Ref: https://mastodon.social/@ohray/113434788796990594

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