Good for him. Nobody should be forced to fight in a war they don’t believe in.

Nobody’s but when the war ends the number of hostages Hamas has will be an important factor in just how fucked Gaza will be.

How so, and what’s the endgame here? Keep as many innocent civilians hostage in perpetuity?

Here you are admitting that Hamas’ actions have benefited literally “nobody” thus far, and at the same time you’re suggesting that they keep doing what they’re currently doing (something which, as we’ve already established, is a war crime) because it will “be an important factor” in the future, in some very abstract and vague way?

As the saying goes “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.”

Yep, just showed your true colors.

Not sure what this ad hominem is supposed to suggest, but it’s weak either way. 🤷

In that case Israel should also be surrendering its leadership and soldiers to stand trial in the Hague for genocide (or at the very least collective punishment).

I agree that Israel’s actions over the last few months should be put under just as much scrutiny as Hamas’, and in fact, they are. https://apnews.com/article/genocide-israel-palestinians-gaza-court-fbd7fe4af10b542a1a4e2c7563029bfb

No Western country has declared support for South Africa’s allegations against Israel. The U.S., a close Israel ally, has rejected them as unfounded, the U.K. has called them unjustified, and Germany said it “explicitly rejects” them.

China and Russia have said little about one of the most momentous cases to come before an international court. The European Union also hasn’t commented.

So far there doesn’t seem to be much of a argument that anything that Israel has done up until now rises to the level of a war crime, while as I shared above, the Geneva Convention is explicit that terrorist hostage-taking of innocent civilians is, on its face, a war crime. If Israel is proven to have done things that are so blatantly war crimes, they should be held accountable for those things. It’s the only reasonable position to take, frankly.

As always, if you find yourself arguing against the Geneva Convention you might want to reexamine the ethics and soundness of your position.

Israel (specifically Netanyahu) has repeatedly stated they want security control of Palestine “from the river to the sea”.

Hamas have also repeatedly stated, including in their 1988 founding charter, that the goal of their jihad is the complete destruction of Israel and genocide of Jewish people in the Levant.

Neither Netenyahu nor Hamas believe in a peaceful two-state solution in which Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can live together peacefully. If I had my way they’d both be totally stripped of power.

hostages one of the few ways Palestinians can actually do anything to improve their lives

Genuine question, how has Hamas taking hundreds of innocent people hostage on October 7th improved the situation in Gaza or Israel in any way? Whose life is better today than it was a couple of months ago as a result?

International humanitarian law prohibits taking and executing hostages. Such acts are considered war crimes (GCI–IV Common Art. 3; GCIV Arts. 34, 147; API Art. 75) and can be tried before any national court, under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The Convention defines a hostage taker as “any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (‘hostage’) in order to compel a third party, namely a State, an international inter-governmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage, commits the offence of taking hostages (‘hostage taking’)” (Art. 1 of Hostage Convention).

The Convention further specifies that not only those who commit such an act but also any person who attempts to commit or who participates as an accomplice in such an act or attempt is accountable and must be punished.

At any rate, regardless of whether you feel Hamas’ jihad is justified or not (it isn’t, in fact), hostage taking is an international war crime. The Geneva Convention is the bare minimum standard on this, and as such our opinions and political leanings are irrelevant.

The bare minimum Hamas can do now is to release the remaining hostages and surrender themselves to the IDF to stand trial, so that the innocent people of Gaza can start slowly putting their lives back together.

Holding civilians hostage for 3 months isn’t “war”, it’s an act of terrorism and a war crime.

Edit: I see I struck a nerve with that one.

They won’t get anything from handing them over

I guess Allah doesn’t reward people just for doing the right thing then?

There are plenty of things that people do every day that contribute to the potential spreading of diseases, from every kind of sex to not wearing a mask when you’re sick.

To single out anal sex as a sign that homosexuality is immoral (despite the fact that vaginal sex can also spread diseases, and despite the fact that anal sex is not exclusive to gay people) is a sign that the person you’re talking to is biased and arguing in bad faith.

Ethically speaking, if someone wants to live by a moral system that differentiates between right and wrong based on the potential to spread disease, then that’s fine, but that logic still needs to be coherent and apply to all things, not just selectively to things that they dislike.

But anyway, if they’re sophists, you probably aren’t going to convince them. If you have to engage with that shit, then your best bet is probably the socratic method: ask them targeted questions to poke holes in their flawed logic until they back themselves into a corner. You know what they’re saying doesn’t make any sense, so simply asking them questions which reveal more contradictions will force them to adjust or abandon their position.

I wasn’t trying to imply that. I’ve edited my post to reflect that I’m speaking generally. Sorry.

Personally I think that asexual people also benefit from sex-positivity and an honest discussion about the wide variety of forms of sexual expression. When we stop treating sex as some dirty taboo thing, and when we start accepting that everybody wants something different out of it (or maybe doesn’t want it at all), I think it becomes easier to understand that all different kinds of people exist with different relationships to sex. That’s not only OK, but a good thing.

A lot of social ills have come from the idea that people who express different forms of sexuality are wrong, gross, bad, sinful, mentally ill, etc. The sooner we move past that flawed and harmful concept, the better, in my opinion.

We were doing so well in realising that all human beings are worthy individuals with emotional and intellectual depth, yet now so many of us don’t seem to see any problem with society encouraging many to reduce themselves to sexual objects.

Human beings, like most other animals and plants, are fundamentally sexual beings.

It’s good to value emotions and intellect, of course, but even before all of that comes the primitive basis of sexuality, sensual and sensory pleasure, and the propagation of species. Sex (with others or by yourself) is just as much a natural and core part of the human experience as eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on, and embracing sexual freedom and sex-positivity is in no way incompatible with emotional balance, intellectualism, or any other meaningful pursuit.

As such, masturbation or pornography aren’t inherently bad or problematic in any way.

There are absolutely potential problems surrounding pornography, like human trafficking, but those issues are separate things that can and should be treated and handled as distinct. We have the tools as a society to deal with human trafficking and sexual violence, and we can do it without throwing sexual freedom and bodily autonomy under the bus.

In my view the last thing we should do as a society is to continue to engage in mindless sex-negativity, which has a long documented history of direct ties to the persecution of women and LGBTQ+ sexual minorities, as well as needlessly shaming people (sometimes to the point of inflicting real psychological damage) for exploring the full space of sexual possibilities by themselves or with consenting partners. Like everything else, ethics, responsibility, moderation and legality are things to consider, but you can do all of that while still being sex-positive and open minded about personal sexual liberty.

Changing the way you think about and practice sexuality (your own, others, and in general) allows you to know yourself and others in a more intimate, authentic and human way.

I can only imagine being so brainwashed to believe that the Houthis harassing, threatening and attacking one of the biggest international trade routes on Earth, while indiscriminately targeting ships from various countries and ignoring multiple warnings from the UN, Britain and the US, is in any way legitimate.

They attacked civilian ships, they were warned not to, they didn’t stop attacking civilian ships, and now they’ve been retaliated against as promised. Let’s see if they’re smart enough to finally stop fucking with international civilian trade ships.

Do you think America enforces sanctions against Russia by attacking their civilians?

Follow up, do you have a clue how anything in the world actually works?

The terrorist Houthis in Yemen, like Hamas, are backed by Iran–all three of which have individually called for the genocide and annihilation of Israel.

Last week America gave the Houthis one final warning (after multiple others) to knock off their piracy and hijacking of international trade routes.

Instead of widely heeding that warning, they made the very stupid decision to call America’s bluff. As the saying goes “fuck around, find out.”

By the way, Iran is also an authoritarian Islamic theocracy in which women are subjugated, homosexuality is subject to persecution, and freedom of expression is nonexistent. They represent the model of a Muslim State under Sharia religious law, back Islamic terrorist groups in various parts of the world, are creating instability in the region (like the Oct 7 attacks and these trade route hijackings), and are generally not your friend no matter how much koolaid you drink or what medal you pick up in the mental gymnastics Olympics.

So the Houthis get carte blanche to attack international trade routes because something someone Israel?

Hard to believe we’re still making people this dumb. Darwin must have gotten something wrong.

You should be mad that Israel is getting weapons when Ukraine isn’t.

But not at Biden.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-sets-test-vote-ukraine-aid-despite-republican-opposition-2023-12-06/

When it comes to Gaza…

There is no US President, real or hypothetical, who would stop military support of Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks. And there is no US President, real or hypothetical, who is going to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza before every last Israeli hostage is accounted for.

Biden’s policies on Israel so far are not far even from someone as left as Bernie Sanders, because rational minds understand that there is no simple solution to middle east peace, nor has there ever been.

We’d all like to see Hamas release their hostages, and Israel to release those who have been held without due process. We’d all like to see an end to the violence and hostility, and an end to the era where both Israel and Palestine are under the control of fascist authoritarian regimes. Sadly it’s not as simple as sending Jared Kushner over or whatever delusional shit Americans want to come up with next.

I’d love to see every last dollar of the US defense budget go to whooping Putin’s ass in Ukraine, but that’s also not very realistic.

Oh I can fault him for things today as well

Go on.

It’s kind of crazy that you had to go back to 1994 to find something concrete to criticize Biden for.

I guess we’ve arrived at the part where a bunch of low-information lemmings come to say that Biden is bad for striking Houti terrorists who have been attacking and hijacking international shipping lanes, after being warned multiple times over the last weeks to stop. Boo fucking hoo.

Pro tip: when the US military gives you a “final warning” to knock off your shit, maybe listen.

I don’t really get it, what’s even to “hate” about Biden in the first place?

People trash on him for ending the war in Afghanistan, because I guess we’re all supposed to act surprised that the Taliban just walked right back in and took power even though that’s what every expert was saying was going to happen even before the war started. Last time I checked, we all wanted the forever wars in Iraq and Afganistan to end.

Republicans trash him for giving arms and spending money on Ukraine, even though they’re the victim of Russian imperialist aggression.

People trashed on him for not calling for a ceasefire on Hamas, until he did call for it and it happened, after which people trashed on him because the war just started back up because neither Hamas nor Netenyahu were willing or able to back off. Biden didn’t start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor was he the first or only US President to arm Israel (who are one of our only allies in the area), nor did he move the pieces that initiated this round of post-Oct 7th fighting, so it’s frankly the world’s biggest stretch to blame him for it.

And so now people want to trash on him for bombing the Houtis, who are terrorists who have been openly pirating ships on key global trade routes, and who have been warned multiple times that they would face retaliation if there were to continue doing it. We basically told these Houti morons “fuck around and find out” and now they’re finding out so we all have to pretend to have bleeding hearts for him.

“Hating” Biden while the very real specter of Trump looms over the 2024 election is just nonsense to me.

I feel like I’ve given my answer to this question regarding Beehaw once before…

But as I see it, the main driving force and overall source of value for services like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc., is federation. That is to say, federation among a wide variety of different users and servers across the fediverse using protocols like ActivityPub is what sets this entire thing apart from legacy centralized and corporate social media, like Reddit or “X”.

I was initially on Beehaw myself and I liked the mature and kind atmosphere, but I ended up splitting for Kbin due to issues with defederation (on top of being curious and interested in Kbin as an alternative software to lemmy). But whether we’re talking about “Beehaw.org” or “Kbin.social”, in my view the federation is a huge part of the appeal, and I wouldn’t see myself continuing to use a server if it cut itself off from the rest of the network, regardless of whether they did it for “good reasons” or not.

Like, if Beehaw wants to be just a significantly smaller and more highly moderated centralized alternative to Reddit, that feels like a pretty weak pitch which, at best, might end up with a community roughly the size of a classic forum. I’m not really interested in that. I want the Fediverse to succeed as a decentralized, open, scalable, and community-moderated alternative to legacy social media. Frankly, my interest in Beehaw as a community hinges completely on it being a part of that movement or not.

I can understand how federation may have posed significant challenges towards your goal of detailed moderation and creating a safe and friendly space, but only in the sense that you were possibly not fully prepared for the level of exposure to a large number of federated users. But even so, if Beehaw is ever to grow into something bigger (which, to be honest, is not a given, especially if you set out on your own as just another disconnected and insular social media website), you will eventually have to deal with the harsh reality that the kind of moderation that you’re interested in doing is going to be a significant challenge as your community scales, federated or not. (For example, you may be prepared to moderate content in English, but are you prepared to moderate content in other languages? How will you know when someone starts spreading disinformation and hate speech in Burmese?)

Finally, I think you might want to consider the general movement towards federated social media. Between ActivityPub and the Fediverse, Meta’s interest in federating Threads, BlueSky being developed around federation to some extent, federation support in things like WordPress, and a number of other social media platforms tip-toeing their way into the idea, I personally feel that there is a pretty interesting paradigm shift happening right now. Some of that has to do with moderation, responsibility and government pressure on big tech, I think.

But nevertheless, social media is gradually moving towards federation, and I think that’s a good thing for the internet as a whole. You nice people at Beehaw will really have to search yourselves to determine whether you see the value in federation (both in terms of connecting people, but also in terms of allowing various communities to self-moderate to some extent) or not.

I do hope you’ll stay, even though it means facing the growing pains of moderation challenges sooner rather than later, because the fediverse is better with us all connected and communicating together. I’ll be sticking with the fediverse with or without Beehaw, but I do wish you all luck in your goals should you decide to set out on your own.

I could say that the head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv hospital who is treating the people in question (people who were, in a matter of obvious and well-documented fact, taken hostage by Hamas) is a reliable source. Certainly they’re more reliable than you are.

For example?

I’ll always be on the side of the innocent. Innocent Palestinians who are caught up in a war between Netenyahu’s IDF and Hamas terrorists. Innocent Israelis who have been murdered, kidnapped and taken hostage by Hamas terrorists who were propped up for decades by far-right Israeli politicians.

You have nothing. No response but made-up straw-man accusations. You would be embarrassed if you weren’t completely incapable of shame and logic.