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Comment by prionassembly | Hacker News Reader

That's a strange extreme. I mean, there are good odds that you're from the country that perpetrated Abu Ghraib, and for what -- a make-work war on the other end of the planet.

The whole Israeli question is really too complicated for a HN comment. All I'm claiming is that the BDS movement claims a kind of moral certitude that's not only not sufficiently grounded, it doesn't try to be sufficiently grounded. And while I'm sure many support "global progressive movements" out of the goodness of their hearts, the fact that there is such a movement betrays something darker. Remember that I said "xor" -- the firm anti-Israel position is naïve xor malicious.

Then: you don't have to be "firmly anti-Israel" to see many of their crimes.

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>That's a strange extreme.

I agree, that's why I mocked your assertion that any dislike of Israel is due to ignorance, arrogance, or racial hatred. Thank you for immediately engaging in a whataboutist slander to defend your position, it's a great indication of your ability to have a discussion about this topic fairly.

The USA and Israel are both guilty of horrible atrocities that fairly allow reasonable people to hate them. They are not "naive or malicious" they just have a different point of view than you do.

It is an entirely ridiculous assertion from a zealot.

I said "a firm anti-Israel stance". Let me try to put this in a polite way: you've already made your mind about this, you're not... open-minded.

Many both-sidesisms are bogus, but this one isn't. There's enough horror to account for on, uh, both sides. (Isn't it amazing how we're conditioned to mock the phrase "both sides" now?)

So you're asserting that I dislike Israel based on nothing - thanks again.

If you've made up your mind about the openness of my own, then I suppose we're at the end of our conversation.

Ok, let me try to put this in a more actionable way.

There's plenty of horror to go around here. Both parties have committed atrocious crimes, and they plan on continuing to do so indefinitely. (Israel pays lip service to a two-state solutions, while the policy on Arab leaders everywhere is "destroy Israel". But eh, words.)

By (financially!) punishing only one side in this mess, you're rewarding the other side. Are you that certain this is the righteous path?

This is an all-or-nothing defense. You're saying it's outside of righteousness to impact a single perceived injustice because you cannot correct every evil on Earth.

That's nihilism that prevents anyone from being "righteous" as long as a single grain of evil exists. It's not a very practical way to engage a moral compass.

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