[jpcfl]

> I'm sure their intentions are very different but it's dehumanising to say it's apples and oranges.

Relax. It's a figure of speech. It means, "these two things are different." It in no way dehumanizes anyone.

> Seeing your family members killed is the same, regardless of who you are

Would you agree that it's important to recognize who is responsible for the killing?

[mitthrowaway2]

I think if a missile blew up my wedding and killed my family, and I found out it was because some bad guys were hiding among the guests, I'd still be pretty angry at the people who fired the missile no matter who they were aiming for.*

Experts who study the propagation of violence say that the currency of radicalism is grievance. The more grievances happen, the more support goes to violent extremists to strike back, even if this only results in more bullets coming back their way in the future. I can certainly see this feedback loop playing out on both sides of this conflict, because every Israeli civilian casualty results in more support for hard-line military response against Gaza, and every Palestinian civilian casualty results in more support for Hamas.

* This example is taken from an Obama-era US drone strike in Pakistan, because I'm far too distressed to track specific tragedies happening in Israel and Palestine in real time.

[jpcfl]

I believe you're talking about the 2008 missile strike on wedding convoy in Yemen while Bush was in office during a firefight between US forces and the Taliban. I do not think the US officially took responsibility for that attack.

[mitthrowaway2]

You're partially right; I can no longer find a source for the strike in Pakistan that I thought I was remembering, although there are numerous that weren't wedding-related. Perhaps I was confusing it with a few different US wedding airstrikes (as perhaps you are as well, as the Yemen wedding attack was in 2013, and no Taliban firefight was involved).

Afghanistan, 2002: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/03/afghanistan.lu...

Iraq, 2004: https://web.archive.org/web/20050310145831/http://www.guardi...

Afghanistan, Nov 3, 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs...

Afghanistan, 5 July 2008: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA599423.pdf

Afghanistan, 6 July 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airs... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/11/afghanistan.us...

Afghanistan, 8 June 2012: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/08/general-apolog...

Yemen, Dec 12, 2013: https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-investigates-yemenis-c...

[jpcfl]

Okay. If you're going to make a point based on an event, I would recommend making some effort to get the details right. It's hard to have a discussion that isn't grounded in truth.

AFAIK, the US and Israel make explicit efforts to avoid killing civilians in an effort to abide by international rules of engagement. Compare this to Hamas, who makes explicit efforts to target civilians and use them as human shields (even glorifying and celebrating it), and you can see why it's impossible to draw a moral equivalence of the two. Like I said, apples to oranges.

[mitthrowaway2]

Okay. Not sure if you're trolling. I did make some effort to get the details right, about as much as you did when you referred to a "2008 missile strike on a wedding convoy in Yemen while Bush was in office"; that's about as much research as I'd expect for an aside-comment on HN posted from mobile where the date and place of the attack are not really the point of the comment, but rather the point was that a wedding got blown up in a drone strike, leading to a lot of aggrieved civilians. This discussion is grounded in truth as much as it needs to be, and now I've followed up by providing citations for seven civilian wedding parties that were blown up by US missile strikes aiming for terrorists. In some cases, there were terrorists hiding in the area, in some cases, it was bad intel, in some cases, they just apparently mistook a convoy of vehicles in a remote area as being terrorists.

Obviously in no case were US military commanders evilly rubbing their hands together and looking for innocent brides and grooms to blow up. Perhaps it was a lack of due diligence, or blind faith in unreliable sources. Perhaps it was trigger-happiness. Perhaps it was the fog of war. Perhaps it was a sense of guilt by association. Perhaps a few false positives were deemed to meet somebody's threshold of acceptability. Perhaps it was an understanding that there would be little reporting and no major reputational consequences. Perhaps it was an understanding that principles like "it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" do not apply to non-citizens in poor, far off lands.

If I were the bride or groom, I don't think any of this would matter greatly. I'd still be pretty mad at the people who launched the missile, and it's very likely that this would propagate the cycle of violence. As far as the civilian casualties go, every innocent human life is an apple, and they all count the same, regardless of how guilty their neighbors or cousins or government are. They all feel the same outrage, pain, and grievance when their 13-year-old kid is killed in an explosion, whether it's a car bombing or an air strike or a mass shooting or an improvised rocket. It takes near-superhuman levelheadedness to shrug and say "well I guess I'll forgive them for killing my children, since they meant well". That was my point. Nowhere did I say "Israel and Hamas have exactly the same moral standing" or "The USA is just as bad as the Taliban" or something like that. If you're developing a feeling that anyone disagreeing with you is a supporter of Hamas or an enemy of Israel, it's probably time to put down the keyboard and go for a walk.

[jpcfl]

Not trolling. Just trying to understand the details of the situation, which you boiled down to: the US bombed civilians because "bad guys were hiding among the guests," which I highly doubt is the case. Although maybe you're just saying that's how a Pakistani person would probably interpret the situation, which I absolutely agree with.

Meanwhile, Hamas routinely fires artillery shells directly at Israeli civilians, and people get offended when I say this is different than Israel attack Hamas's terrorism infrastructure embedded in civilian areas.

> If you're developing a feeling that anyone disagreeing with you is a supporter of Hamas or an enemy of Israel

Total strawman. I'm getting the feeling that nobody is capable of talking about this conflict rationally, which is why it's so toxic. Which brings us back to the actual topic: a man got fired for a tweet that sympathizes with a dying Palestinian civilian, which is totally absurd.

[jemmyw]

The person responsible is the one who pulls the trigger. If a murderer runs into a crowd of people it wouldn't be OK for the police to just mow down those people to catch them. And that's an exact analogy here, just because a terrorist hides within a community does not mean you have any kind of moral justification for killing with impunity. Blame the community? Sure, does that blame extend to the kids growing up in that community who know nothing about what's going on. No, it doesn't.

[jpcfl]

> And that's an exact analogy here

Not even remotely close.

[jemmyw]

Please expand

[jpcfl]

I’ll pass. If you’re unable to see the difference on your own, I’m afraid I cannot help you.

Besides, we are way off topic. This is not related to the dismissal of an employee because of his tweet.

[jemmyw]

Sorry, but you've just told me that it's OK to kill innocent civilians, including children, by shelling them because you think a terrorist is hiding in their midst but you can't tell me the difference between that and my scenario. I'm either drastically misunderstanding your scenario or I think your moral compass is well out of whack.

And just to be clear, it's not siding with the terrorists or those directly complicit with them to question these methods, just as it wouldn't be siding with criminals to suggest police can't act with impunity.

[jpcfl]

> you've just told me that it's OK to kill innocent civilians, including children

No, I did not, and the fact that you believe this is just proving my point. You’re being unreasonable, and no amount of explanation is going to help here.

Besides, this is way off topic.