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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

At the dialogue level, I don’t think it’s practical to require people to give a full accounting of every related topic while speaking on a subject. There are infinite facts that are related to any one fact. Anyone can win any argument by including one more related fact and saying “well without stating your opinion on this I can discard your opinion on that.” We’ll all get nowhere.

At the actual substance level, I also don’t think it’s fair or honest to take “silence” on a topic as evidence of support for it.

In this particular case, I would bet fewer than 0.00001% of the people you’re arguing with are actually okay with (or supportive of) keeping hostages in Hamas’ custody or raping people. You’re battling a cartoon villain that you drew yourself.

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I think you grant protesters far too much common sense. What i'm saying isn't theoretical : as a recent example, here in paris a feminist movement protesting in support of palestinians women under bombing explicitly rejected from the march women that came to protest against the raping of israelis women ( and hostages ).

Another recent example in Paris as well is the number of people removing "free the hostages" posters in the streets.

And i won't even mention twitter..

This isn't something i've imagined, it's the sad reality. Those people are actively hostile to israelis even if that means supporting the most terrible atrocities commited by hamas.

Okay let’s take the protest example. There are a few possible explanations.

1. These protestors are actually pro raping Israelis

2. These protestors want a single, specific priority for the protest they organized

And you believe not just that (1) is more likely, but that there’s so little possibility of (2) that you can just discard their entire perspective and accuse them of supporting rape of Israelis without even asking them?

What if a group of men’s rights activists showed up advocating for the men under bombardment? Would the protestors have been wrong to exclude them? Maybe! Arguably! But would their excluding those men’s rights activists have indicated that they are positively “okay with” or perhaps even supportive of the men of Gaza dying? Absolutely not.

That just seems blatantly dishonest. You don’t have the information you think you have.

To be clear: there are people who have the beliefs you’re talking about. Obviously (October 7th speaks for itself). I just think those people are far fewer than you’re perceiving, and it is absolutely necessary for people to be engaging with good criticisms on complex issues like this one with so many lives at stake.

I believe 3/ those people are caught in their own self contradictions. They hate israel so much that they're actually sorting between women that got killed for the wrong reasons and women that got killed and raped because they somehow deserved it.

Which is an absolutely horrible stance for a feminist organization. But that's where ideology leads to.

Did they say that? Or are you just assuming?

Now of course they're never going to say it out loud (hence the hypocrisy). But that's the only logical conclusion for them never organizing anything for the women that got raped and murdered on oct 7, and rejecting the ones that did.

Do you see any other explanation ?

What about their failure to organize a protest for the women of Ukraine? Or the women of Darfur? Or what about for the men in Gaza?

This is not a rhetorical question. I am curious what you make of this. What do you “know” about their opinions based on their failures to organize such demonstrations?

The fact that the israeli-arab conflict in general triggers extraordinary responses in the public opinion is another issue. i don't have any definitive answer on that.

The troubling part is that women are killed almost the same day in the same region, in the same conflict, and i'd even say only the israli ones got targeted as women on purpose and raped. And yet they chose to protest exclusively for the other side.

> i don’t have any definitive answer on that

You should consider asking a few people and actually listening to their answers instead of accusing them of being pro-rape for failing to mention your topics of choice in the same breath.

A lot of people end up with beliefs and attitudes by sheer inertia of those around them and will accordingly have bad answers. Some people don’t though, and they’re the ones who you can both teach and learn from. Thus back to my original point: look for the strong versions of the argument.

I notice you still haven't given me any plausible reason. What's the "strong version" then ?

the "definitive answer" was for the global historical interest on the israel/arab conflict. But once again, this is another issue than what we were talking about.

Strong reasons for why people are so interested in this conflict?

Here are a few reasons Americans seem to be so interested in it:

1. We’re paying for a decent chunk of it, both financially and in terms of international political support

2. It cross-cuts American society along very unique dimensions, creating ad-hoc coalitions between people who don’t normally collaborate very much (e.g. far right white supremacists and Zionists, or far left commies and jihadists). These coalitions are already impacting American domestic affairs and will likely influence our upcoming elections.

3. In general it’s reasonable to pay close attention to situations where a thousand people are killed in a terrorist attack under the purview of a western security apparatus or when an urban area is subject to an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign (given that they tend to be humanitarian disasters even in the best of circumstances)

4. This conflict has a very high potential to unravel into a regional and even global conflict given the networks backing each belligerent

How exactly is it odd that people care so much about the situation?

i'm not sure if you're doing this on purpose or not but that's not what i asked. So let me ask again more precisely : Why would a feminist movement only protest for women killed by bombing and not the ones killed and raped 2 days before , in the same region, and would on the contrary ban other feminists that wanted to also protest against those atrocities ?

You keep saying "we should ask them, there's probably a better reason for them to act like this than pure hate". So, let me ask you, what do you think that reason could be ?

> 2. These protestors want a single, specific priority for the protest they organized

From several comments up. Seems like a sufficiently plausible explanation not to jump to as cynical and self-serving an explanation as “they think Israeli women deserve to be raped.”

And I’d also not be surprised to see them kick out men’s rights activists doing the same thing. It would be excessively cynical and self-serving to jump to “they think the men of Gaza deserve to be bombed,” too.

“They’re pro rape” is an appalling accusation to level at someone. Doing so with the “evidence” you’ve supplied calls into question your willingness to question your priors and find a real solution. So this will be my last comment on the subject as I think I’ve sufficiently made my point. Have a good holiday season!

that would explain the kicking out of the protest. It doesn't explain why no proeminent feminist organization marched for those israeli women that got raped.

It's not about them being pro-rape, it's about them hating israelis more than they like women in general (which is a pretty high level of hate if you're a feminist). It's pure hate and i'm not sorry you're failing to see it for what it is. "Trying to find the best argument" for someone's position only works for people that aren't hypocritical. Otherwise it's just a failed analysis.

Perhaps the feminists in question believe that their voices are more likely to lead to a change in the stance of the US and the behavior of Israel than a change in the past behavior of Hamas. What Hamas _did_ was wrong. What Israel is _doing_ is wrong, and it’s probably only going to stop in the face of real external pressure from democracies, which have historically shown an interest in protests. I can’t speak for these feminists. But you certainly can’t either.

Hamas bad behavior didn’t stop on oct 7. It isn’t « past » behavior. It’s an ongoing conflict, with hamas having hostages and firing rockets every day. They are however the initiator of this war.

This argument is logical and I’m glad you laid it out. Stating obvious truths is a good strategy for revealing willfully ignorant posters.

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