Yes, American police use these kinds of justifications when innocent people are killed too. It's absurd (watch Surviving Edged Weapons [0] some time) either way.
The reality is, if you have soldiers mowing down children throwing rocks, mowing down families driving around, mowing down kids playing football, mowing down toddlers in their bedrooms, mowing down hundreds of people each year [1], you've over-indexed on vigilance and under-indexed on the value of human life. You're not trigger-ready, you're trigger-happy.
I'm going to repost and elaborate on a reply of mine that appears to be shadow dead with no explanation. This doesn't seem to be the usual result of disagreement flagging. The only problem I can see is that perhaps this did not meet the level of substantiveness expected from an HN comment (OTOH I don't see how what it was replying to would meet this either, and mine is at least coming from the direction of intellectual curiosity!)
"Perfect example of how no one thinks they're the villain in their own story"
To be clear, the comment I'm replying to is justifying "mowing down children throwing rocks, mowing down families driving around, mowing down kids playing football, mowing down toddlers in their bedrooms" based on some amorphous other "players" supposedly not valuing their own life (as a hypothetical soldier!). If this isn't a stark illustration of how individual people in a cycle of violence justify their own crimes to themselves, I don't know what is.
The position would make sense in the context of say a street mugging where the victim ends up shooting the assailant. It might make sense in the context of domestic policing where the subject of an arrest attacks the police (modulo the usual moral hazard wherein cops create pretexts to claim they were being attacked). But in the context of this article and the proceeding comment, I don't see how it is anything but a rationalization for some pretty sick violence.
That's pretty crazy mental gymnastics. Palestinians have been attacking Israel civilians forever. They strapped bombs under their kids beds, etc. It's clear they don't value Israeli life, nor their own. They have been indoctrinated to hate jews before birth. There is nothing controversial about it. Israel has been doing their best to avoid civilian deaths, polar opposite of Palestinian behavior. Yes mistakes have been made, but trying to equate the two is deliberate misinformation.
Please elaborate on what exactly you're calling "crazy mental gymnastics". Your followup points are merely textbook dehumanization of an entire group. So as I said, cycle of violence.
The only thing I've said here is calling out your incitement to genocide. If that qualifies as an "agenda" to you, then I don't know that there is anything left to say.
> Between 7 October 2023 and 15 March 2026, the UN's humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, says 1,071 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including at least 233 children.
Does that sound like genocide?
Meanwhile, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks says 1,195 civilians and security forces killed. 4300 rockets launched. How many people would that have been if Israel was jamming kumbaya?
lol. That refrain has gotten pretty tired and even the mainstream is waking up to how preposterous it is.
Suffering horrific atrocities in your culture's past is not some license to commit your own new atrocities. Seriously, try applying your own rationalizations to the Palestinian perspective and see how that makes you feel - can October 7th be justified because "[Israelis] have been attacking [Palestinian] civilians forever" ? The answer is a resounding NO.
A professional looks at and understands the situation as it exists now. A professional is trained to not get into situations where fear controls them. Your argument is a compelling one that either these are not professionals or that they are professionals and are doing this on purpose. The stats today clearly show the massive difference between danger to Israeli personnel and Palestinians. Israel at this point has either failed to train professional forces that seek to deescalate and avoid dangerous situations or is training forces to find situations they can claim fear as a justification for murder. So, pick. They are either amateurs at which point it is a deplorable to put amateurs with this much force near a vulnerable population or they are professionals trained to do exactly this, find ways to kill a vulnerable population and claim self defense.
Luck implies a lack of fault. Also we probably shouldn't open fire on suspects fleeing from a heist either, kid or no kid. Extra-judical justice is generally a bad thing, this is why pit maneuvers exist. Allowing police to fire at moving vehicles is a universally bad idea, and one thats understood by most nations.
Or in democratic societies we can insist that our "public servants" actually serve the public interest of law and order rather than merely using it as a pretext to be able to commit their own violent crimes.
Your rationalization is nothing more than a product of a failed society. Bringing it up as pragmatic advice might make sense, although still not for this incident where the "offense" seems to have been merely stopping a car on the side of the road. But invoking it as some universal value of "what ought" is a pure crab bucket mentality.
Then by your logic, every society on earth failed, because there are no places where you can act belligerently towards law enforcement and expect it to end well.
Correct, they failed. Cops are rightfully called all kinds of nice things in all countries. We are far from having what should be a non failed society. But liberal democratic capitalist countries get much closer to success.
Perhaps by your obtusely applied system of logic, but not by mine. Societal values are ideals to be worked towards, not some sort of axiomatic foundation that pops into existence fully formed. The failed society condemnation pertains to your remark, which comes from a place of having given up on the idea that governments should be accountable to their citizens - aka authoritarianism.
I'll repeat the bit about professionals being trained to avoid and deescalate. That is the point. I think the details of this, and many similar incidents clearly show a lack of attempt to deescalate or avoid. That was the clear argument I made in my post and am re-emphasizing now. This clear trend shows either malicious intent by professionals or amateurs put in a situation they shouldn't have been allowed near and those above them should be held accountable for it.
The IDF is not law enforcement. It's a foreign army. It treats Palestinians with utter contempt and has no problem with killing them. Its job is to protect Israeli settlers who are taking Palestinian land and to prevent the Palestinians from resisting Israeli rule.
Comparing the IDF to law enforcement in a democratic country is not relevant.
