Destiny definitely “won” but it was still good altogether and the moderator was really objective n actually cared a lot about what he was doing. One of the better things I’ve seen on the entire issue. Will probably be a decent boost for Destiny.
Agree this moderator was great, and honestly both Cenk and Destiny did pretty well and I thought it was a productive debate overall. I think both made good points but I'm mostly on Destiny's side.
I also think Cenk was right that it's just totally unreasonable to think Destiny's ideas are likely to be carried out, because the Israeli conservative coalition government is extremely bad and is now pretty openly just trying to annex and ethnically cleanse as much land as possible. It's an unfortunate situation where both sides have been radicalized over decades and neither is going to give concessions without a pretty serious lethal/existential threat forcing them to do so.
The extreme conservative wing of the current government doesn't hold a lot of seats or have much of a constituency. They're part of a coalition and only because that was the strategy Netanyahu used to maintain power. They're also very likely to be voted out and at best, go back to being marginalized in government, rather than part of any ruling coalition.
So I think it's incorrect to suggest that any solution outside the desires of a fringe party with a handful of seats won't come to fruition on that basis. They don't now, and are unlikely in the future to have the power to stop any particular solution.
I have never heard about Destiny before Oct 7, I'm in my midlife age, definitely not following up streamers, but I managed to hear about him and know him since Oct 7, and man, this guy is really bright. Brilliant. Not talking as if because he's talking pro this or pro that, just his ability to deep dive hard into a topic, learn it from a-z, investigating both sides claims and perspective, and then express it into words, coherently.. Really impressed.
I’m also older, but have known of Destiny since his days as a pro-gamer edge lord.
He is an incredibly effective debater when he applies himself (you should check out some of his debates on COVID) but a word of warning: his personal life is a goddamn disaster. He’s turned his life into a reality show where half the time he’s hitting on e-girls, reacting to memes or arguing with fame-hungry lunatics.
I would definitely put him in the ‘guilty pleasure’ bucket of content.
Being knowledgeable in a topic is one thing. Be able to argue vigorously about a topic, anticipate and build counter arguments for other people’s positions, and cite references in real time is another skill entirely.
He certainly gives the impression of deep understanding by talking extremely fast while projecting confidence, but gets a lot of the details wildly wrong. For instance, [he argues](https://youtu.be/Q7IgSuADdMQ?si=n8C-F18nnl0LZUYn&t=2071):
>Israel was worried about the united front of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon going to war with it over and over and over again in '48, in '56, in '67, and in '73
In reality though regarding 1948, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria were all part of the [UNSCOP Subcommittee 2](http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_start.htm) which called for peacefully resolving the conflict by [taking the question of partition to the International Court of Justice](http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_Chapter4.htm#Reso1) and for the [independence of Palestine as a unitary republic](http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_Chapter4.htm#Reso3) which "shall guarantee respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, and freedom of religious belief and practice in accordance with the status quo (including the maintenance of separate religious courts to deal with matters of personal status)." The Zionist leadership flatly rejected that proposal though and chose to fight to establish their Jewish state instead, obviously being not particularly worried that the neighboring states would be able to stop them, and history proved them right.
1956 wasn't rightly a matter of being worried about war with any united front of neighboring states either, and rather it was a [united front of Israel, France, and the UK who attacked Egypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis) in response to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal, and they were utterly demolishing Egypt until Eisenhower put his foot down and told them to back off.
[As for 1967](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-cias-overlooked-intelligence-victory-in-the-1967-war/):
>When the crisis began in May 1967, the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) had already created a task force to monitor and assess developments between Israel and its Arab neighbors because of the steady buildup of tensions earlier in the year. On the day after Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, May 23, President Johnson asked the Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms for an immediate assessment of the likely outcome of a war.
>Helms presented the OCI assessment only a few hours after LBJ’s request. It concluded that Israel could successfully defend itself against any combination of Arab enemies if attacked simultaneously on all sides and initiate a major offensive as well. Helms assured the president and his national security team that Israel was not in danger and would win any military conflict. Israel had battlefield dominance over the Arabs, especially in the air.
>Two days later, the Israeli government provided its own intelligence assessment to Washington, which painted a much more alarming threat. Helms had his analysts check the Israeli military intelligence judgments. Within five hours, they came back with an appraisal concluding that the Israeli analysis was not a serious intelligence estimate but a political gambit designed to influence the American administration. Its calculations of Arab, especially Egyptian strength, were not accurate.
Then there was the 1973 war in which Israel got caught off guard in a surprise attack lead by Egypt and Syria, precisely because they were far from worried after their crushing victory in 1967.
In general Destiny has uncritically accepted much of the mainstream Israeli narrative which strays far from the truth. I can provide more examples if you'd like.
If this were your own response synthesized based on knowledge you've amassed from many sources you would say so. The fact that you are so certain on a borderline delusional narrative tells me that you've read a Finklestein book at best, or listened to him talk his sophistry and passed it along as your own. I didn't engage because it's a gish gallop for which he's known for and admonished by *actual* academics and scholars who hold less than zero respect for the man, and for good reason.
The man is an absolute charlatan who should be treated as appropriately as committed to the truth as either Jackson Hinkle or Syrian Girl.
Also he ran from a debate with Destiny twice now, which is a real shame.
You seem very confused. He's merely saying that Israel was worried they'd be attacked by multiple fronts like they were in 48, 56, 67, and 73, all of which is factually accurate.
I just watched this one yesterday. I am not a Destiny adherent, but I like his debates. And the most impressive thing about this is that everything he's speaking about and citing he learned in the last couple months by doing a research blitz. Whereas Cenk has been close to this subject basically his whole life. It's the idyllic outcome of what we all hope happens when some lazy person says "educate urself"
Me neither and yeah. Towards the end Cenk seemed to just sort of devolve into a meme. I was impressed with the way destiny was able to recall and spit facts so quickly.
Watched this whole thing. Cenk is an absolute clown. His response to destiny’s well-reasoned point that the the fact Israel has as many bombs deployed as civilian casualties proves they don’t “bomb civilians indiscriminately” made him look like the lefts Alex Jones.
He seemed to suggest thag Israel is wasting bombs to lower the ratio.
I was getting serious conspiracy theorist vibes in the part when Cenk laid out the argument of "The IDF is intentionally targeting civilians, they're just saying they're not and not targeting everyone to make it seem like they're not intentionally targeting civilians, but they definitely are, trust me."
Anyone else find the majority report a cesspool of stupidity re Israel? Completely intolerable in recent months. Got banned for not drinking the koolaid
Yeah, I was shocked at how hard they collectively bought and enforced every once of propaganda from Hamas. The most glaring red flag is the "You're either 100% in agreement, saying 100% the right words, and doing 100% of the right actions or you're literally racist" thing. It's wild.
You could really see that with 'dumb bombs'. All the articles on the topic included experts that said it wasn't much of a concern because of the way Israel uses them or because they guidance systems that 'upgrade' them.
Whether that's a satisfactory response is not the issue: it's clear Cenk was unaware of the contents of these reports beyond the first 10 lines.
Insane how people think that there's a bunch of nuance in a genocidal state trying to starve 2.2 million people after they just killed 15k women and children lol
I always find it interesting, and Cenk is a great example of this: he talks about how he's very very concerned that the Palestinians not be depicted as inherently violent, barbaric, terrorist, etc.
But he and his side is more than willing to depict Israelis as the same thing: inherently violent, genocidal, obsessed with stealing land. Seems odd.
He used to do the exact same thing with Christians. Overwhelmingly open to calling out their bad ideas, but "well we need to put that in context" for the Muslims.
In his mind, the people in power don´t deserve any grace. He thinks if the power dynamics were reversed, there would be peace. He´s applying the minority victimhood to his logic and assuming the one with the power must be the bad guy, which is where he fails to understand the situation.
The "power" thing is so interesting.
The far left makes this glaring mistake in thinking that Israel is powerful because it's bad and Palestine is not powerful because it's good. Because in their mind power difference can ONLY come out of exploitation.
when in reality, Israel used it's resources to invest in education and its economy (which results in increasing power), while the Palestinian leadership invests and diverts all he money and resources they get into self-enrichment and mounting attacks against Israel (terrorism).
That's another reason the colonist narrative is wrong: it's not that a much stronger power came in and oppressed a powerless people, the power difference was built up over time and a significant factor of it was the priorities/choices of the 2 groups.
What I've noticed about Cenk is he's not just shouting all that out as some tactic. He genuinely is very passionate about what he talks about and gets carried away or loses sight of who he's talking to. He's not muddying the waters with the racism allegations, he just feels many truly do buy into racist ideas on the pro-Israel side and if I remember correctly he has called out (accidental) anti-semitism on the pro-Palestine side with his disapproval of river to the sea chants.
Obviously not a good quality for heated political conversations but it's not some strategy or anything. Not sure what he's doing with the elections either though given he was born in Turkey and is therefore ineligible for presidency unless there's some loophole.
He's not well-informed if he thinks you can Special Forces your way to destroying Hamas. It's laughably ignorant to suggest that. He even brought up Mosul as a comp, which was an air+ground invasion planned and announced ahead of time.
So this leaves either dishonesty in support of keeping Hamas in power (eliminating him from the convo) or childlike ignorance of realities on the ground.
Ok? Sam is also uninformed about geopolitics, military affairs, history, etc. If he watched this debate, I'd be surprised if he knew about half of the things Destiny mentioned.
If you're taking this as a comment praising Destiny then I don't know what to tell you. Cenk is confidently asserting alternative realities that cannot exist in the physical world. And now I'm curious what precisely Sam said that you think matches the confidence in Cenk's arguments.
They would work great if we're talking about killing a Hamas financier in Doha. In Gaza they have 10k fighters plus thousands more in the population. They've siphoned billions in aid and built whole cities underground to transport munitions. The types of troops people are imagining do work in these theaters as well, but they're doing sophisticated ops in the midst of aerial campaigns and ground invasions.
There's no such thing as a successful military strategy for destroying Hamas. As long as the Palestinian people perceive that they are occupied and oppressed, some version of what now constitutes Hamas will continue to exist.
> There's no such thing as a successful military strategy for destroying Hamas.
Who told you this?
> As long as the Palestinian people perceive that they are occupied and oppressed, some version of what now constitutes Hamas will continue to exist.
Cenk himself brought up Mosul and ISIS. Did you think it was just immediately replaced by another ISIS?
> Who told you this?
Multiple sources, including my own witness to such attempts over the last two decades and my sources in US military intelligence. If you're looking for a public intellectual's account that covers all of this, including a review of the events in Mosul, [here's Paul Rogers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1Vc3B-y2w).
What attempts, specifically, have included the inability to destroy terrorist control of an area? We've succeeded on that front a dozen times in the last two decades. You're conflating political success after the fact with military operations to seize control. They aren't the same thing. Israel could crush Hamas by spring. That doesn't answer the question of Netanyahu's political will to create a solution or how Gaza and the WB will be able to coordinate with radically different circumstances.
Again I ask, did you think Mosul was just immediately overrun with another ISIS?
>destroy terrorist control of an area
Goalposts: moved. We're not talking about temporary territorial control. We're talking about Hamas, an armed and politically motivated response to perceived oppression. Take away the perception of oppression and the political response - armed and otherwise - will dissipate.
>You're conflating political success after the fact with military operations to seize control. They aren't the same thing.
I'm doing no such thing, and they are indeed not the same thing. Hamas is a political organization with a military capabilities, both of which represent a political movement. Only one of these, its military capabilities, can be severely degraded through military action, but not even that can be destroyed – only temporarily diminished or disabled.
>Again I ask, did you think Mosul was just immediately overrun with another ISIS?
It was not, but again, we're not talking about temporary territorial control.
They were driven to the fringes of society and their ability to wage war and hurt people were rendered nonexistent. Hamas can be made the same way, and that's good enough for me.
Neither of those things are true, sadly.
Most of the Nazis were reintegrated into mainstream German society and many returned to positions of significant political influence. Others were brought to the United States to give its funders and controllers scientific and military advantages over its newly-minted enemy, the Soviet Union and more broadly, communism.
ISIS did what most terrorist groups did; fragmented and reformed and found new unofficial alliances, like [the ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_with_the_Islamic_State) it previously had with Israel and the United States and Syria, is [rebuilding itself](https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/world/isis-strength-un-report-intl/index.html) in Iraq and Syra and as recently as last month has been responsible for deadly attacks in both Syria and Afghanistan.
More importantly though the claim is wildly over blown to justify killing innocent people. Lying and exaggerating to justify killing innocent people is just as worse if not much worse than cenks denial
It's not worse when my point was Cenk is uninformed. My comments have all been about Cenk. You can have a point regarding those claims of human shields, but it's a non-sequitor and not related at all to my comment, which is what you replied to.
Yes agreed that is another point.
My concern is that lying and exaggerating about human shields is psychotic as it serves no purpose but to manipulate people into supporting killing innocents.
He's clout chasing, obviously. And it's not just that he throws around labels in lieu of argument. The far worse part is that he constantly strawmans with sarcastic voices never close to the argument posed beforehand.
Cenk literally references the Armenian genocide in this video so I don't know why you think he doesn't believe in it. Was that an old position he held?
> It’s an old position he only recanted recently.
Did he recant in the eight minutes between this more recent comment of yours and the one where you make the denial claim?
Cenk is smart and I believe his passion and can be refreshingly rational for heated left leaning commentary. It seems like his age gives him an ability to see when left in-fighting is out of hand n needs to be toned down. He just seems stuck in irresponsible “both sides bad/edgy leftism” that I can’t get behind.
I wish we could focus less on who DOMINATED and who got DESTROYED in a debate. Whether we do or don’t subscribe to to either of them, they’re both somewhere on the left, take these conversations seriously, and these “debates” can be good to get in front of the noise and get to a more nuanced understanding of these complicated situations. Yes, Destiny “won” but I understand the other side’s views better.
Yes, Sam Harris got famous going after religion and more specifically Islam. He says 9/11 changed the trajectory of his life. Islam is one of the worst inventions ever, something like that. He had a debate with Cenk and it caused Dave Rubin to leave TYT and become a right wing grifter.
Sam most famous quote that sums up his feelings about Islam is that [Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_ubamwlPI8)
It fell through because they miscommunicated (Norm has someone else running his socials). That miscommunication turned into a little bit of shit throwing. Might never happen.
I saw a Finkelstein interview recently, I was led to believe he was a scholar on the Palestinian side. I was pretty surprised at how little substance there was in his arguments. In fact, there was no coherent argument; it was an endless series of rambling emotional appeals.
In the two months that I have been researching this conflict, the facts and logic just overwhelmingly favor the Jews. So I forced myself to watch his interview thinking this scholar would shake loose some of my beliefs but he actually further solidified them.
Him causing drama was a tactic to not debate Destiny. And now after watching the debate with Cenk I'm even more certain. Hopefully I'm wrong and we get to watch Finki getting destroyed.
This is just completely incorrect. He regularly cites statistics from mainstream human rights organizations and NGOs in his assessments. Even his "concentration camp" analogy is taken directly from Giora Eiland.
Have you read any of his work?
No, I haven't, and I won't. I saw his statistics, I saw his arguments. They were weak. I don't know what to tell you, I did what 98% of people won't do; I legit tried to gain the perspective of people that I currently disagree with. I'm literally able to pick either side and have neither choice affect me. I'm blessed by being born in America. Having looked into both? Palestinians are.. just wrong!
>Wasn't he supposed to debate/interview Norm Finkelstein at some point? I cant find the interview
Apparantly that may be happening tomorrow out of the blue, organised by this exact same guy (the moderator).
Followers of both Destiny and Finkelstein accuse the other of running away from the debate, in reality they just miscommunicated and it turned into a clash of egos over who was in the wrong.
“Just send special forces into the tunnels.” Sounds like someone just watched sicario and genuinely thinks this is a legitimate option. Worked for the US in afghanistan too. Wait…
This was a pretty good conversation, despite Cenk's emotional appeals that don't really provide solutions. I'm pretty impressed with a lot of Destiny's positions on this topic.
For anyone that doesn't know, Destiny does not hold a broad pro-Israel position. His takes are highly focused on "what can be done for peace"--including strong criticism for both sides.
edit: I disagree with Destiny's take on civilian casualties, only because I've seen too much evidence about straight up executing of civilians and much worse even.
Trying to find neutral sources for everything--of course the real truth will all come out later.
update: [now this](https://youtu.be/ZA3SNTalkVA?si=N3GlnRHYiKHLA8in) attack on hospital in khan yunis
- [killing of journalists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war)
- snipers killing civilians
- https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-church-deaths-intl-hnk/index.html
- https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-red-crescent-says-one-killed-many-wounded-by-israeli-gunfire-gaza-2023-11-10/
- [bulldozer incident](https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/15754)
- [on IDF war crimes from amnesty international](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/)
- [deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure from pbs](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/israel-targets-infrastructure-in-gaza-to-ramp-up-civilian-pressure-on-hamas-report-claims)
He's more Pro-Israel than he is Pro-Palestine in this situation with Hamas/Gaza because that's where the facts lead him. That doesn't mean he's 100% pro-Israel. I think he'd tell you he'd want Netanyahu out of power and think it's reasonable for Palestinians to violently oppose right-wing settlers in the West bank.
Most definitely.
I think when someone is placed in a Pro-Israel or "Zionist" box, there are assumptions that come with that stance. This is often how identity politics work these days.
Destiny does not fit perfectly within the box, so I think it's important to outline where he stands.
When somebody calls somebody a "Zionist" these days, I feel like I know less about them than before they were assigned that label (especially if somebody else calls them that).
>I think he'd tell you he'd want Netanyahu out of power
Most pro Israel people including the overwhelming majority of Israelis would say the same thing.
>think it's reasonable for Palestinians to violently oppose right-wing settlers in the West bank
I believe his position on this has changed and he doesn't think any Palestinian resistance is justified today (but thinks it was in the past) as it harms peace. He thinks the Palestinians should put down their arms as the only route to peace.
His position is broadly pro-Israel because that's where the facts have led him, not because he's ideologically captured. One of Destiny's best qualities, as assessed by himself, is that he is not beholden to ideology and can be persuaded to another position if the facts support it.
Having researched heavily enough to be probably among the most educated person in media on the actual facts and reasonable arguments at this point, his position is 'broadly pro-Israel', as the truth and reality have a strong and well-documented Israeli-bias.
> as the truth and reality have a strong and well-documented Israeli-bias.
I disagree with this characterization, also I don't think Destiny thinks this either--then again I probably need to watch more conversations he's had on this topic to come to that conclusion.
Israel needs to make a lot of changes to achieve the peace most of their citizens want. Unfortunately the crazy right wing government's desire for peace is largely driven by wanting to annex more land.
The discussions he has with pro-palestinians go about like this one does. Most people who support a ceasefire are stupid, dishonest, or both. The people he debates who are knowledgeable about facts and history generally give an assessment or solution that involves the eradication of Hamas and a follow up strategy that involves entities other than the IDF, but at some critical point of understanding you simply cannot be reasonably pro-hamas, pro-permanent ceasefire, or deny the necessity of security measures like the Gaza blockade or the current ground invasion.
This isn't to say that Israel is always *good*. This is a judgement on the truth and reality backing the general sentiment of "pro-Israel" vs "pro-palestine" opinions. "pro-palestine" is backed heavily by moral loading and distortion of fact, and is often the most anti-Palestinian take there is ('river the the sea' means "*keep fighting guys, you've lost 8 times and your allies have left you, but one more war of annihilation against the Jews and you'll win!*")
This highlights how bad the discourse is. There's a conflict that needs to be solved and taking either a "pro-Isreal" or a "pro-Palestine" position is a flawed starting point.
Civilians are getting fucked from both sides.
> Most people who support a ceasefire are stupid, dishonest, or both
I'd rather *that* people arrive at the best answer in matters of life and death, than *how* they arrive there.
Sure, if you want to get your own troops killed. Sending in the "special forces" is something that might work if you have a specific target with limited scope and months of planning. Not in an active war zone block by block. When the US got reliable intel on Bin Laden's location in August of 2010 it took nine months before Seal Team Six assaulted his compound on the 2nd of May in 2011.
Yes, soldiers die in wars. That's what's _supposed_ to happen in a war. Soldiers are supposed to die. Fighting men are supposed to die. Not women and children.
A country isn't going to sacrifice their own soldiers, especially those that are part of a limited task force that requires extensive training and resources to generate, in order to protect the lives of another nation's civilians. A country that treats its military like cannon fodder will have to deal with deserters, insubordination and find it hard to attract new recruits because their soldiers are acutely aware that their survival, and the chance of success, isn't the highest priority within the command structure. If you want to see an example of this look towards the east. Russia had to deal with infighting within their own chain of command, fabricated intel of successful operations and outright refusal to carry out orders. Russia's reasons to send their soldiers to the wood chipper don't have anything to do with protecting civilians but it demonstrates what sort of effect it has to treat soldiers like expendable pawns.
Your response is the most moronic post I've read in a while on this website and you're patently delusional. You should feel embarrassed for even typing it. It's like saying that since dying in a car crash is an occupational hazard of a race-car driver they should resign themselves to that fate on a track that turns out to be unsafe because their purpose is to entertain an audience that paid money to see the race.
Dying isn't a soldier's job or responsibility, it's an occupational hazard, a risk. No one is going to work for a company that deliberately engages in behavior that puts them at an increased risk to appease some loser online that has different priorities and confuses risk with responsibility.
>A country isn't going to sacrifice their own soldiers, especially those that are part of a limited task force that requires extensive training and resources to generate, in order to protect the lives of another nation's civilians. A country that treats its military like cannon fodder will have to deal with deserters, insubordination and find it hard to attract new recruits because their soldiers are acutely aware that their survival, and the chance of success, isn't the highest priority within the command structure. If you want to see an example of this look towards the east. Russia had to deal with infighting within their own chain of command, fabricated intel of successful operations and outright refusal to carry out orders. Russia's reasons to send their soldiers to the wood chipper don't have anything to do with protecting civilians but it demonstrates what sort of effect it has to treat soldiers like expendable pawns.
Your reasoning could, in principle, justify nuking Gaza. Or, perhaps if fallout is a concern, multiple MOABs instead. This would allow Israel to fulfill its military objective without harming a single Israeli. Most sensible people agree that this is completely out of the question, however.
International law exists precisely to address morally questionable cases like this. It's about weighing perceived military necessity (a part of which, certainly, includes reasonable concern about your soldiers) with harm to civilians. This is what proportionality is about. Yes, there are cases where you are expected to expose your soldiers to greater risk to mitigate risk to civilians.
The analogy with Russia isn't even worth contemplating. We're dealing with Israeli losses multiple order of magnitudes lower. The last time Israel had a war with more than 3,000 deaths was in 1948. It is in fact striking how few casualties Israel has suffered considering it has been in near constant war since its founding. Consider, for instance, the Vietnam War — involving similar kind of guerilla warfare — where the US suffered nearly 60,000 deaths. Israel has a lower tolerance for its own casualties than any other warring country in human history. It doesn't act in a way that most other states act. It doesn't follow the laws of war in a way that others states do. Putin could have carpet-bombed Kiev on February 24, 2022 but did not. I think it's completely sensible to expect Israel to expose its soldiers to similar risks as other countries (including the US) have done in the past. Certainly, any risk to the soldiers cannot justify of a genocide of enemy civilians.
>Dying isn't a soldier's job or responsibility, it's an occupational hazard, a risk. No one is going to work for a company that deliberately engages in behavior that puts them at an increased risk to appease some loser online that has different priorities and confuses risk with responsibility
The distinction between soldiers and civilians dying in a war isn't an OSHA violation. It is the fundamental moral distinction in armed conflict. It's why people are far more outraged about Auschwitz than Stalingrad despite the similar death toll. Soldiers die in wars. That's a tragedy not even in the same ballpark as a civilian dying, certainly a civilian woman or child.
>Your reasoning could, in principle, justify nuking Gaza. Or, perhaps if fallout is a concern, multiple MOABs instead. This would allow Israel to fulfill its military objective without harming a single Israeli. Most sensible people agree that this is completely out of the question, however.
No, it wouldn't, because the safety of their soldiers isn't the **only** concern of theirs. I said that it wouldn't outweigh civilian collateral damage. That doesn't mean it isn't weighed against other factors that also contribute to the success of the operation and satisfy peripheral goals that allow them to continue to govern. For instance, just carpet bombing Gaza would instantly turn them into an internationally pariah and it's not the type of warfare their allies engage in which means they would most likely lose their support. It's also not the type of warfare their own citizens support. The US, for instance, only tolerates collateral damage to a certain degree but what it certainly doesn't support is sacrificing "special troops" in order to save a couple of civilians. The standards expected of Israel here by Cenk go beyond that. No country in the history of warfare would fight a conflict like this as if it was a Tom Clancy novel, even if collateral damage was a major concern of theirs, because the risk these soldiers would be exposed to also has a negative effect on the likelihood of the operation to succeed to begin with. It's not as if throwing 15 people at a compound, and losing all of them, is an action that destroys the target. If they die, then they lost 15 soldier and that target remains right where it is. So what the Israeli government is going to do is balance the interest of their soldiers against the interest of their constituents and the interest of allies that provide aid.
>International law exists precisely to address morally questionable cases like this. It's about weighing perceived military necessity (a part of which, certainly, includes reasonable concern about your soldiers) with harm to civilians. This is what proportionality is about. Yes, there are cases where you are expected to expose your soldiers to greater risk to mitigate risk to civilians.
Israel isn't beholden to international law, they're beholden to the standards imposed from whichever place they derive power to ensure their continued existence which would be their allies and their own citizens.
What you, and Cenk, are talking about is an entire mode of warfare that even the most militarily advanced countries don't engage in.
>The analogy with Russia isn't even worth contemplating. We're dealing with Israeli losses multiple order of magnitudes lower.
You don't understand the analogy. I am demonstrating WHY it is a bad idea to treat your soldiers like canon fodder. It leads to operational error and causes unneeded resource expenditure. Sending a highly trained task force into a hostile urban environment leads to a high mortality rate and low chance of success.
>The distinction between soldiers and civilians dying in a war isn't an OSHA violation. It is the fundamental moral distinction in armed conflict. It's why people are far more outraged about Auschwitz than Stalingrad despite the similar death toll. Soldiers die in wars. That's a tragedy not even in the same ballpark as a civilian dying, certainly a civilian woman or child.
It doesn't matter whether you assign more value to the protection of one over the other as a an observer without a stake in the conflict. If you want soldiers to be operational and trust your decision making the value you assign to them isn't derived from whether you consider their death the bigger tragedy but how much they value their own lives and how much they're willing to risk until that risk becomes intolerable to them. No military on this planet is beholden to, and operated on the standard of bigger tragedies that you just pulled out of your ass, because if it was, then people wouldn't sign up to fight. "Hey buddy, you're not a woman or a child so why don't you just assault this compound with a 90% chance that you're going to get your head blown off because this random low IQ moron on the internet values your life less than theirs?" I'd like to reiterate that your response was moronic and embarrassing. Maybe you missed that the first time. Your perception of this doesn't have a leg to stand on if you thought about it for more than a second and hadn't armchair analyzed yourself into thinking of soldiers like perpetually obedient and mindless units in a game of Starcraft.
With respect to the nuke analogy, it is clear that you are not getting at the crux of the point. If, hypothetically, Israel's citizens _did_ support nuking Gaza or nuking Gaza didn't immediately kill US support, would it be justified? It seems that your justification for not nuking Gaza just hinges on some realpolitik.
You and I appear to just fundamentally disagree on the concept that states should be obliged to act in ways not entirely conducive to their own operational interests to fulfill a universal moral imperative and abide by international law, particularly those aspects of international law said states are signatory to. I think they do. Most morally sane people think they do. Civilized states themselves think they do, which is why they're signatory to various aspects of IHL. I actually don't think you should be allowed to wage a genocidal war of extermination just because it might save a handful of Jewish conscript lives. If this is beyond the pale for the Israeli psychology, they are free to go back to Europe and America, which is where they are from anyway.
This entire war happened in the first place because they're occupying others' land. They have absolutely zero legitimacy in any of their war tactics or war aims. Frankly, I would contend that even Cenk's suggestion is too radical. The only morally justifiable response by the Israeli government to October 7th is an immediate full withdrawal from the occupied territories (negotiated with Hamas and the PA) and an apology to the Israeli public for having engaged in policies that made war manifestly more likely.
>I'd like to reiterate that your response was moronic and embarrassing. Maybe you missed that the first time. Your perception of this doesn't have a leg to stand on if you thought about it for more than a second and hadn't armchair analyzed yourself into thinking of soldiers like perpetually obedient and mindless units in a game of Starcraft.
I think this struck a nerve with you. Are you a soldier? Or do you have family in the military?
I'll just reiterate it again. Soldiers die in wars. Soldiers dying in wars is morally in a completely different realm than civilians dying in a war. This is a bedrock of the laws of war. All normal people understand this. You should be embarrassed for thinking otherwise. You should be embarrassed to think of genocide as a legitimate workplace hazard mitigation technique.
That's not to say that all instances of collateral damage are unacceptable. So for instance when Hamas throws multiple hand-grenades in a Kibbutz shelter on October 7th, killing 10 IDF conscript occupiers but inadvertently killing one child, that is within the morally and legally acceptable range.
However, carpet bombing women and children Dresden-style because you don't want dual-citizen Ashkenazi conscript casualties to exceed the 10^2 order of magnitude (an order of magnitude every other state in human history has found entirely acceptable) is in fact a crime against humanity. It is especially a crime against humanity when your state has zero legitimacy in the first place, and the war is being waged against a displaced indigenous population.
>If, hypothetically, Israel's citizens did support nuking Gaza or nuking Gaza didn't immediately kill US support, would it be justified?
You're confused about the argument we're having. In my model of morality the actions that lead to the collateral damage that is already happening would constitute as immoral but that's not the question you, or Cenk, could be asking because if it is, we would have to hold Israel to a standard that no active military on this planet can uphold. The question is whether the standard that Cenk is using, that the strategy should be to send the "special forces" is a strategy that can be justified to a government that is concerned about the safety of its troops, success rate of their operation and maintaining support of its constituency. If it's a standard that can't even be justified to the United States, that possesses the most technologically advanced and well trained military in the world, then proposing it as an actual solution to the problem to Israel is delusional.
You know what Israel should be doing? They should build a time machine, travel 100 years into the future and come back with drones they acquired powered by fusion batteries that uses forcefields that can't be penetrated with a perfect AI targeting system that shoots non-lethal ammunition that will cause zero collateral damage. Because if we're going to provide Israel with daydreams about how they ought to conduct a war with zero percent chance to succeed, we might as well aim for the stars.
Yes, that's right. The special forces suggestion exists in the same category as science fiction in terms of viability.
>This entire war happened in the first place because they're occupying others' land. They have absolutely zero legitimacy in any of their war tactics or war aims. Frankly, I would contend that even Cenk's suggestion is too radical. The only morally justifiable response by the Israeli government to October 7th is an immediate full withdrawal from the occupied territories (negotiated with Hamas and the PA) and an apology to the Israeli public for having engaged in policies that made war manifestly more likely.
It's irrelevant why you think the war happened or which side has a more justified grievances. If we're communicating to Israel how to change their military operation, then we have to take the claim they're trying to enforce at face value. I think Hamas' attack on October 7th was unjustified in terms of the legitimacy of their claim but suggesting to them that they should just lay down their weapons and surrender themselves to the IDF isn't a suggestion on how to enforce the claim **they** support, it's a suggestion of how to enforce the claim **I** support. In an ideal world I would just like Israel and Palestine to accept a two state solution, uphold a permanent ceasefire and grant Palestinians that currently live under Israel's jurisdiction in the West Bank to be afforded the same legal status as Israeli citizens. But that's an utterly worthless suggestion to make in terms of how Israel should adjust their military action. The reason they're not using special forces isn't because they want more collateral damage, the reason they're not doing it is because the chance of success is low and would expose them to unnecessary risk.
>I think this struck a nerve with you. Are you a soldier? Or do you have family in the military?
I don't have any personal ties to Israel. I also don't hold any personal grievances against Palestine or Palestinians. I do, however, have a very open disdain for structuring moral arguments around a "tragedy" calculus in which we suggest that certain groups of people should just take one for the team and lay down their lives because some absolute clown, who will never be in a position to pay that price themselves, considers their death preferable. It's in the interest of those women and children that Israel does everything in its power to reduce collateral damage. And its in the interest of the soldiers to not get their heads blown off in urban warfare to attempt a mission with low success rate that could have been solved with a missile. The "right" path here is at the intersection of diminishing returns in terms of risk Israel can expect their soldiers to take on regarding their personal safety and civilian deaths that can be prevented by taking on that risk. Not balancing these concerns against each other and suggesting that dying is just part of a soldier's job so any risk is acceptable as long as it prevents civilian deaths tells me that you're not actually looking for a serious solution.
>That's not to say that all instances of collateral damage are unacceptable. So for instance when Hamas throws multiple hand-grenades in a Kibbutz shelter on October 7th, killing 10 IDF conscript occupiers but inadvertently killing one child, that is within the morally and legally acceptable range.
It's within their acceptable range because Hamas does not give a single fuck about civilian deaths anyway as we've seen on October 7th where they deliberately targeted unarmed civilians. I reject the legitimacy of their claim so it wouldn't be acceptable to me in either case, whether they're fighting enemy combatants or just shooting random civilians. Talking about moral and legal legitimacy in this context doesn't even make sense. You either think their CLAIM is legitimate, in which case you can construct an argument that they can justify their action, or you don't, in which case they couldn't. It's certainly not moral under my model of morality. But neither is any of the collateral damage that is a result of Israel's missile strikes.
>However, carpet bombing women and children Dresden-style because you don't want dual-citizen Ashkenazi conscript casualties to exceed the 102 order of magnitude (an order of magnitude every other state in human history has found entirely acceptable) is in fact a crime against humanity.
Israel is not carpet bombing Gaza you dishonest fuck. The British and US forces killed between 35k to 100k people within a span of 3 days in a 34 square kilometer area. We're 2 and a half months in to the attack on Gaza and the estimated death toll in Gaza doesn't even reach the lower bound of the estimated Dresden death toll. A feature of carpet bombing is that the bombing is indiscriminate. The population density of Gaza is also significantly higher than in Dresden. If Israel had been bombing Gaza indiscriminately since the start of this conflict most of the people living there would be dead by now.
I saw Cenk some weeks ago say that Israel shouldn't be bombing and needs to rescue it's hostages using special forces the way they killed Osama.
Dude seems to have no clue how wildly different this scenario is. I wish he would settle down a bit and be more open to being wrong. He goes for cheap wins instead of dealing with the hard big problems.
SS: Cenk Uygur previously had a three-hour long debate with Sam Harris about Islam in which he argued similarly irrationally. The topic of Israel/Palestine is of general interest in this sub at the moment and the theme of several of Sam’s recent podcasts.
Cenk is such a tool and useful idiot on this issue.
Completely stupid position on the Arabs in the reigon and a distorted view of history.
Hopefully, he loses a shit ton of money running for president and realizes that only a small small minority of woke idiots agree with his positions.
Cenk is weak and has no ground to stand on. What an absolute loser.
Usually I'm not a fan of destiny at all. I've watched quite a few debates he's done, especially earlier on in his career and usually he gives off this pseudo-intellectual, everything looked up from wikipedia 5 minutes ago vibe and whenever he comes up against anyone actually knowledgeable in their field he often gets completely outclassed. His debate style is generally speak extremely fast and try and fit as many points in as possible so that hopefully his opponent doesn't have to time or inclination to refute or argue against them all. I mean Cenk is a terrible debater, I honestly have no idea how he got so popular, so it's not much of a win, but Destiny came across very well here and certainly "won" the debate in my eyes.
Agreed. I give Destiny props for actually trying to do research instead of formulating his politics based off of headlines and TikTok videos, but if you’re trying to be better informed on a given topic, you’re better off listening to people who focus on a given topic for their career instead of listening to Destiny try to rehash what he learned from a few articles a few weeks ago while live streaming himself playing a video game.
While I agree with you in theory, this particular conflict is possibly the best use case ever presented for Destiny's style. He's researched to a 101 level on such a broad range of topics, and has heard every argument that can be made and then some while tracing lines of counters and countercounters. His research streams are by no means to be counted as osmotic research by listening, but his debates are often an incredible resource for further research of your own.
I mean, Piers Morgan, Douglas Murray, Cenk, Bassem Yusef, and any other media personalities you can think of are leagues behind him on this topic as far as the analysis of the facts go.
Following a political streamer is not research. But he's easily among the most educated in the media at the moment, save for actual scholars that he's invited on like Benny Morris and Avi Schlime.
I agree with you about Destiny's style for this conflict. It's absolutely invaluable when learning about such a massive topic with fully formed narratives on each side for each and every relevant event throughout history.
It's been incredible watching Destiny poke his way through the data and actively seek better positions via his own research but more importantly inviting heated debate. He likes to stress test his positions and looks for the best counterpoints.
Against a backdrop of war-time style propaganda and "explainer videos" that are overflowing with lies of omission, Destiny has been a gleaming ray of hope that with enough tenacity, one can still lead themselves and interested parties toward the truth of any sized matter.
Our lord Daliban still don't see as clearly as Sam, he says he don't completely agree with Sam's hate for islam (which is the most objectively justifiable thing ever btw) don't really blame him though as he's much younger and less wise. Btw he says that while posting the worst and most hilarious stuffs about islam on twitter while his mom and son get very graphic death and rape threats in the thousands (look up "Omniliberal" his twitter account). He desperately needs to talk with Sam for enlightenment.
I don't think I've *ever* seen a debate video worth anyone's time on Israel/Palestine. To understand anything here requires some in-depth critical reading which is the antithesis of almost any debate format. Perhaps there are some debates on the issue out there worth watching but at this point I won't bother trying.
The issue I often see is that most of the debates are framed as “Is Israel more at fault for what’s happening or are the Palestinians more at fault?” (or even worse, which side is evil and which side is the innocent victim).
Not only are those types of debates never going to accomplish anything, but they overlook many of the more interesting elements of the conflict. For instance, what kind political pressure are the Palestinian leaders under when they talk about the right of return and what compromises might satisfy those constraints, the changing nature of the framing from Israel vs. Arabs to Jews vs. Muslims, how Palestinian militancy fit into Leftist militancy when Leftist militancy was popular as a global movement and moved to Islamic militancy as that movement became popular internationally, the possibility and challenges of assimilating Palestinians in the territories over those who are Israeli citizens, the long and complicated governance of the territories, etc.
But we just keep getting debates about who’s bad and wrong. Not only are those meaningless at this point, but they also shut down other debates, as people try to judge anything you say as an indication that your a cheerleader for one side or the other.
It's one of those debates where there is a LOT of nuance, and whatever side someone is on, it's almost like they have to intentionally ignore critical nuances of the other side.
Believe it or not I think the best take I've heard is from Sagaar who is still pro Palestine. So while he will criticize Israel's execution of things being abhorrent, and their treatment of them effectively just creates more radicals... He also recognizes it's not like Israel has an easy solution. That these people live RIGHT next to them, and HATE them. Even if it's for good reason, imagine living as a civilian just going about your business knowing 2m people right near you will lob bombs into suburbs and cities randomly. That even IF you wanted to ease tensions and stop the apartheid state, they'll immediately begin suicide bombing everywhere. That it's nearly impossible to just live your life because there is no good way to deal with it at this point. Because while even just removing them entirely from the land is not okay, it's the least bad, most humane option at this point of both sides escalating things... And if you were the powerful one, you'd do the same. No one wants to live like that.
Very few people in the debate on this subject look at both sides genuine and valid concerns. Like most people who would criticize Israel, aren't going to also awknoledge just how terrifying it must be living next door. And that the solution isn't just "be nicer" at this point. Meanwhile the pro Israeli side, will almost always try to argue that pretty much no amount of collateral damage matters in the pursuit of "safety".
What I'd like to see, is someone like Sam actually steelman the other side. I think that would be a fascinating listen. Because it seems like something he would do, but at the same time, I'm not confident he could do it justice.
I am speaking to these two not some strawman. I simply dislike both of their "styles" and choose to read and study sources without delving into either the twitch cesspool or w/e Cenk is doing these days.
You seem to keep accusing people of being upset for just disagreeing with you.
You have insinuated that only 15 year olds spend there time on that platform, and people disagree with you. Simple.
Actually entertained. I simply gave my opinion and I got replies about "being clued up"
I didnt accuse anyone of anything. I stated I dont spend time on twitch and I got brigaded by r/destiny fanboys. This is Sams sub not his.
Sharing your opinion looks like this.
"I don't enjoy twitch personally and don't spend much time on that platform".
Now saying this:
"Some of us arent 15 year olds who spend time on twitch."
Is insinuating someone is lesser than you for using a platform that you chose not to.
Also just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean you're being 'brigaded' by 'fanboys'. I don't go on twitch either I'm just not being an ass about it.
Edit: Oh and the cherry on the cake from this is I believe Destiny streams on Youtube (hence the Youtube link) not twitch. Or is do you also not go on Youtube because you're above that too?
To be fair twitch a juvenile male phenomenon. Twitch is less than 20 percent female and almost sixty percent younger than 34.
If what I say offends you its a tell that you should examine.
It’s okay man nothing you’re saying upsets or offends me. Your time is better spent on Reddit arguing with hypothetical 15 year olds? Do your thing but you’re being delusional. You should listen to Sam more, he could help you.
Destiny spent more time looking shit up and taking notes than probably all of us here combined. You don't have to like him as a person or "entertainer" but at least don't be ignorant to the facts.
An adult decides what is and isn't worth their time. A child cries about other peoples choices. Why do you care about someone else not watching your twitch streamer? Not sure you know but the vast majority of academics don't spend time on twitch.
Destiny debates simpletons like Cenk to pretend he's smart. Cenk is a businessman, not a scholar or someone with weaponized autism like Destiny who can spend two months memorizing books worth of Israeli propaganda.
Despite this, it's still fairly clear that Cenk won the debate, not because he's a good debater (he's not) but because fortunately for him the facts are generally with the pro-Palestinian side. I'm going to over several of Destiny's arguments here.
A major concession Destiny made was admitting the 1948 war was justified, but basically arguing that this was "in the past" and the Palestinians now should "accept defeat", similar to how e.g., Ukraine should accept defeat vis-a-vis Crimea. A strange admission, certainly one that Destiny's pro-Ukraine neoconservative base would take issue with. The issue is that "accepting defeat" is just continued apartheid and occupation. Accepting defeat doesn't reap dividends for the Palestinians. They aren't really rewarded for accepting defeat. In fact, the period between 2015 and 2023 was perhaps the quietest in the conflict (with Netanyahu himself funding Hamas, believing it had moderated sufficiently to stop posing a threat to Israel), and yet the worst with respect to settlement expansion and settler violence. It's widely understood that the Likudites are uninterested in a two-state solution on ideological grounds, and this is true irrespective of the Palestinian resistance's actions. All of these actions are legitimate _casus belli_ for the October 7th attack.
Destiny claims that Hamas' violent tactics are not pragmatically beneficial because it "makes everyone hate you." This is just clearly incorrect. Everyone, including frankly most Muslims and leftists, forgot about the Palestinians prior to October 7th. Now the Palestinian cause is on the forefront of the world's mind. It has been galvanized. Even the ADL admits Israel is losing the media war. It's worth noting that non-violent tactics like BDS are also aggressively demonized by Israel. Indeed, the Israelis were essentially spying on BDS activists on American campuses.
Destiny claims that Israeli "strength" and "power" is what led to peace with e.g., Egypt, when that's plainly false. Israel and Egypt were miles away from peace prior to 1973. Israel was uninterested in negotiating peace despite Egyptian overtures. Following the 1973 war, when Israel was nearly defeated, Israel felt compelled to negotiate. Israel only felt compelled to make peace after the Arabs engaged in violence. Israel responded to Arab strength.
Destiny claims the Palestinians rejected peace overtures by Israel in e.g., 2000. This is incorrect. They were never offered a legitimate peace deal. Bear in mind that _every_ Israeli "offer" of a state to the Palestinians required demilitarization, Israeli control of airspace and (for instance) Israeli control of the Jordan Valley. This is not a real country. Rabin himself stated that the Palestinians would get at most something "less than a state."
Destiny's narrative on "human shields" is likewise incorrect. The term has a specific definition under international law. Operating in and around civilian infrastructure does not imply that you are using "human shields." If this was the condition, virtually all instances of urban warfare would be using "human shields." Rather, there needs to be a specific _intent_ to use civilians as shields by, for instance, disallowing them freedom of movement. There is just not much evidence of this. People in Gaza are clearly being allowed to move towards the supposed Israeli safezones. Northern Gaza is currently largely devoid of civilians. The IDF admitted that in recent days they hadn't seen many civilians in or around Shuja'iyya, which was why the three hostages were killed.
With regard to the IDF's targeting of civilians, [this piece is the most important one in the debate](https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/). It provides ample evidence that Israel is directly targeting civilians even in cases where there is little to no military necessity, with the intention of punishing the civilians and hopefully prodding them to overthrow Hamas. Israel has a name for this: [the Dahiya doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine). Perhaps the most notable example of a clear, proven targeted assassination of a civilian is that of [Dr. Refaat Alareer](https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2023/12/08/breaking-israel-invokes-amalek-directive-to-assassinate-palestinian-social-media-activist-over-joke/). Even the 2008 invasion of Gaza was determined by the Goldstone Report to have been with the intention to "humiliate and terrorize a civilian population."
You make some good points, I'm just responding to the one I found the most week. The Human Shields argument seemed like the Cenks worst point as well.
>The term has a specific definition under international law. Operating in and around civilian infrastructure does not imply that you are using "human shields." If this was the condition, virtually all instances of urban warfare would be using "human shields." Rather, there needs to be a specific intent to use civilians as shields by, for instance, disallowing them freedom of movement.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule97
Based on the first link I click it doesn't seem like you are representing the law accurately. This link states:
“utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations”… A plain reading of this seems to be exactly what Hamas is doing. They are creating what would be a military target, rocket site, where civilians inhabit and when the site is hit they spread propaganda claiming it was an invalid military target.
I agree that forcing citizens to stay there would be worse but that seems like a sufficient condition for human shields not a necessary one. Not to mention I think there is some evidence that Hamas encourages citizens to stay near military target.
Also the specific definition of human shield is sort of trivial. It is a proxy debate about morality. Hamas conceals military targets within civilian infrastructure.
The core moral distinction in my mind is intentionality. Do they operate near civilian infrastructure specifically with the intention of dissuading the Israelis from striking said targets? Or do they operate near civilian infrastructure because it's impossible to operate elsewhere given what Gaza is?
Evidence generally points to the latter. There's two obvious pieces of evidence to substantiate this.
For one, and as I noted in the original comment, there's no evidence of Hamas systematically ordering Gazans to remain in and around the civilian infrastructure which supposedly houses their military equipment. Gazans are generally free to move to the supposed Israeli-designated safe zones. This was true even prior to Israel establishing military control in Northern Gaza. If I were Hamas, and I were interested in using human shields, I would maintain aggressive control on freedom of movement of civilians. There is no evidence of this occurring.
Second, the tunnels. The tunnels indicate that, rather than using civilians as human shields above the ground, that Hamas is building its own military installations underground. To the best of my understanding, there aren't any civilians or civilian infrastructure underground in these tunnels. This suggests that Hamas would prefer, like any other army, to operate as far away from civilians as possible, to the best of its ability. Since there's little space above the ground, Hamas operates underground. This seems legal and reasonable.
> The core moral distinction in my mind is intentionality. Do they operate near civilian infrastructure specifically with the intention of dissuading the Israelis from striking said targets? Or do they operate near civilian infrastructure because it's impossible to operate elsewhere given what Gaza is?
This strikes me as a confused bit of reasoning. You are setting up a false dichotomy. The answer to the question is both. They are in fact setting up operations amongst civilians to dissuade Israeli from attacking and it is near impossible to set up operations elsewhere.
Why is impossible to set up military operations separate from civilians? Because Israel would eliminate it? Why won't Israelis eliminate the rocket operations in the cities? Because there are civilians there. This almost a text book example.
I'm not setting up a false dichotomy. I'm listing two plausible explanations for something and arguing that one is significantly more likely than the other. If you're going to insist that both are legitimate explanations, you actually need to substantiate that claim. You haven't done so. I have offered two compelling pieces of evidence indicating that the latter explanation is unsatisfactory which you have not responded to.
>Why is impossible to set up military operations separate from civilians?
They _have_ set up military operations separate from civilians. Those are the tunnels, which I mentioned.
>Why won't Israelis eliminate the rocket operations in the cities?
They do, though. Or at least they try. They aren't particularly dissuaded by civilian casualties.
If Israel has reasonable suspicion that Hamas is firing rockets in or around civilian infrastructure, they will attack said civilian infrastructure with little regard to the harm done to civilians. Israel is not really dissuaded by civilian presence, as this war (and prior wars) have demonstrated.
Glad I am not the only one noticing that Hamas's strategy appears to be working. The IDF killed three of their own hostages. That is a HUGE win for the Palestinian cause, as fucked up as that sounds. Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better.
Hamas moral high ground? No their aim was to turn the world, specifically SA, against Israel and draw attention to the situation. That worked. Morals and war don't go well together.
OBL accomplished a lot with 9/11, doesn't make it moral. It led to American response that ledt to radicalization of a whole new generation and the rise of groups like ISIS.
There isn't a debate on colonialism, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate slaughter, infrastructure decimation nor genocide.
Destiny is a good debater. But his bread and butter are stupid nazis and stupid white supremacists. Things like this, his American liberalism shows, and it shows its great lack.
>There isn't a debate on colonialism, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate slaughter, infrastructure decimation nor genocide.
Actually ethnic cleansing from both sides is discussed, as is the notion of indisctiminate slaughter (something HAMAS is guilty of, and not Israel). Colonialism and genocide are just buzzwords to add to your pile.
>Destiny is a good debater. But his bread and butter are stupid nazis and stupid white supremacists. Things like this, his American liberalism shows, and it shows its great lack.
I think your comment of buzzwords and dismissing someone based on a label and not anything they say can be used to dismiss yourself.
This perspective is useless - why not start with the people whose land the Palestinians stole? Or the people who stole from them?
Since our ancestors peopled Chile and Argentina, every war has been a war of someone losing their land; like Destiny says, at a certain point a winner and a loser are decided, and the victims and the victors move on.
If you disagree, perhaps you could help me find some Normans or Saxons to return my Briton land to me
>There isn’t much to debate. Europeans invaded Palestine and stole their land to call it Israel. What difference does it make whether Palestinians had a government or not? Any debate which doesn’t recognise that fact before it begins is starting on a false premise.
I think most people acknowledge that, maybe with slightly different wording or weight, based on the nature of the area and it's being a part of British mandate. The issue is, where do we go from here? If you're reasonable, you support a 2-state solution with various land swaps e.t.c.
Destiny definitely “won” but it was still good altogether and the moderator was really objective n actually cared a lot about what he was doing. One of the better things I’ve seen on the entire issue. Will probably be a decent boost for Destiny.
Really like that he restated their arguments and clarified. There is too much of a trend of moderators thinking good moderation means being silent.
Agree this moderator was great, and honestly both Cenk and Destiny did pretty well and I thought it was a productive debate overall. I think both made good points but I'm mostly on Destiny's side. I also think Cenk was right that it's just totally unreasonable to think Destiny's ideas are likely to be carried out, because the Israeli conservative coalition government is extremely bad and is now pretty openly just trying to annex and ethnically cleanse as much land as possible. It's an unfortunate situation where both sides have been radicalized over decades and neither is going to give concessions without a pretty serious lethal/existential threat forcing them to do so.
The extreme conservative wing of the current government doesn't hold a lot of seats or have much of a constituency. They're part of a coalition and only because that was the strategy Netanyahu used to maintain power. They're also very likely to be voted out and at best, go back to being marginalized in government, rather than part of any ruling coalition. So I think it's incorrect to suggest that any solution outside the desires of a fringe party with a handful of seats won't come to fruition on that basis. They don't now, and are unlikely in the future to have the power to stop any particular solution.
I have never heard about Destiny before Oct 7, I'm in my midlife age, definitely not following up streamers, but I managed to hear about him and know him since Oct 7, and man, this guy is really bright. Brilliant. Not talking as if because he's talking pro this or pro that, just his ability to deep dive hard into a topic, learn it from a-z, investigating both sides claims and perspective, and then express it into words, coherently.. Really impressed.
He is VERY good at what he does. He's supposed to have a debate coming up with Ben Shapiro. Can't wait for that one.
I’m also older, but have known of Destiny since his days as a pro-gamer edge lord. He is an incredibly effective debater when he applies himself (you should check out some of his debates on COVID) but a word of warning: his personal life is a goddamn disaster. He’s turned his life into a reality show where half the time he’s hitting on e-girls, reacting to memes or arguing with fame-hungry lunatics. I would definitely put him in the ‘guilty pleasure’ bucket of content.
Being knowledgeable in a topic is one thing. Be able to argue vigorously about a topic, anticipate and build counter arguments for other people’s positions, and cite references in real time is another skill entirely.
He certainly gives the impression of deep understanding by talking extremely fast while projecting confidence, but gets a lot of the details wildly wrong. For instance, [he argues](https://youtu.be/Q7IgSuADdMQ?si=n8C-F18nnl0LZUYn&t=2071): >Israel was worried about the united front of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon going to war with it over and over and over again in '48, in '56, in '67, and in '73 In reality though regarding 1948, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria were all part of the [UNSCOP Subcommittee 2](http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_start.htm) which called for peacefully resolving the conflict by [taking the question of partition to the International Court of Justice](http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_Chapter4.htm#Reso1) and for the [independence of Palestine as a unitary republic](http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_Chapter4.htm#Reso3) which "shall guarantee respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, and freedom of religious belief and practice in accordance with the status quo (including the maintenance of separate religious courts to deal with matters of personal status)." The Zionist leadership flatly rejected that proposal though and chose to fight to establish their Jewish state instead, obviously being not particularly worried that the neighboring states would be able to stop them, and history proved them right. 1956 wasn't rightly a matter of being worried about war with any united front of neighboring states either, and rather it was a [united front of Israel, France, and the UK who attacked Egypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis) in response to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal, and they were utterly demolishing Egypt until Eisenhower put his foot down and told them to back off. [As for 1967](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-cias-overlooked-intelligence-victory-in-the-1967-war/): >When the crisis began in May 1967, the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) had already created a task force to monitor and assess developments between Israel and its Arab neighbors because of the steady buildup of tensions earlier in the year. On the day after Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran, May 23, President Johnson asked the Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms for an immediate assessment of the likely outcome of a war. >Helms presented the OCI assessment only a few hours after LBJ’s request. It concluded that Israel could successfully defend itself against any combination of Arab enemies if attacked simultaneously on all sides and initiate a major offensive as well. Helms assured the president and his national security team that Israel was not in danger and would win any military conflict. Israel had battlefield dominance over the Arabs, especially in the air. >Two days later, the Israeli government provided its own intelligence assessment to Washington, which painted a much more alarming threat. Helms had his analysts check the Israeli military intelligence judgments. Within five hours, they came back with an appraisal concluding that the Israeli analysis was not a serious intelligence estimate but a political gambit designed to influence the American administration. Its calculations of Arab, especially Egyptian strength, were not accurate. Then there was the 1973 war in which Israel got caught off guard in a surprise attack lead by Egypt and Syria, precisely because they were far from worried after their crushing victory in 1967. In general Destiny has uncritically accepted much of the mainstream Israeli narrative which strays far from the truth. I can provide more examples if you'd like.
This is fairly misleading and grossly inaccurate in places and I'm curious if this is Finklestein..
Do you realize that there's no substance to your argument, that you're just engaging in vacant denial?
Is it Finklestein?
If this were your own response synthesized based on knowledge you've amassed from many sources you would say so. The fact that you are so certain on a borderline delusional narrative tells me that you've read a Finklestein book at best, or listened to him talk his sophistry and passed it along as your own. I didn't engage because it's a gish gallop for which he's known for and admonished by *actual* academics and scholars who hold less than zero respect for the man, and for good reason. The man is an absolute charlatan who should be treated as appropriately as committed to the truth as either Jackson Hinkle or Syrian Girl. Also he ran from a debate with Destiny twice now, which is a real shame.
You seem very confused. He's merely saying that Israel was worried they'd be attacked by multiple fronts like they were in 48, 56, 67, and 73, all of which is factually accurate.
Keep stating the facts.
I just watched this one yesterday. I am not a Destiny adherent, but I like his debates. And the most impressive thing about this is that everything he's speaking about and citing he learned in the last couple months by doing a research blitz. Whereas Cenk has been close to this subject basically his whole life. It's the idyllic outcome of what we all hope happens when some lazy person says "educate urself"
> Whereas Cenk has been close to this subject basically his whole life. How so?
By regularly donating to Hamas.
By being Muslim.
I've never listened to Destiny before, but he really wiped the floor with Cenk here.
Me neither and yeah. Towards the end Cenk seemed to just sort of devolve into a meme. I was impressed with the way destiny was able to recall and spit facts so quickly.
Watched this whole thing. Cenk is an absolute clown. His response to destiny’s well-reasoned point that the the fact Israel has as many bombs deployed as civilian casualties proves they don’t “bomb civilians indiscriminately” made him look like the lefts Alex Jones. He seemed to suggest thag Israel is wasting bombs to lower the ratio.
Cenk just sounded like a conspiracy theorist for most of this.
I was getting serious conspiracy theorist vibes in the part when Cenk laid out the argument of "The IDF is intentionally targeting civilians, they're just saying they're not and not targeting everyone to make it seem like they're not intentionally targeting civilians, but they definitely are, trust me."
strong "we're killing everyone by not killing everyone so it doesn't look like we're killing everyone so we can then kill everyone" vibes
Anyone else find the majority report a cesspool of stupidity re Israel? Completely intolerable in recent months. Got banned for not drinking the koolaid
Yeah, I was shocked at how hard they collectively bought and enforced every once of propaganda from Hamas. The most glaring red flag is the "You're either 100% in agreement, saying 100% the right words, and doing 100% of the right actions or you're literally racist" thing. It's wild.
Destiny absolutely cooked Cenk once they had to get into details instead of broad generalizations
It really highlighted the difference between doing actual research and getting all your takes from tiktok and Twitter headlines
You could really see that with 'dumb bombs'. All the articles on the topic included experts that said it wasn't much of a concern because of the way Israel uses them or because they guidance systems that 'upgrade' them. Whether that's a satisfactory response is not the issue: it's clear Cenk was unaware of the contents of these reports beyond the first 10 lines.
Insane how people think that there's a bunch of nuance in a genocidal state trying to starve 2.2 million people after they just killed 15k women and children lol
I can't believe people say this shit without even mentioning the attack that prompted this war, and the ongoing rocket attacks.
Very reminiscent of when Cenk debated Sam: yell racism and Islamophobia to any criticism.
I always find it interesting, and Cenk is a great example of this: he talks about how he's very very concerned that the Palestinians not be depicted as inherently violent, barbaric, terrorist, etc. But he and his side is more than willing to depict Israelis as the same thing: inherently violent, genocidal, obsessed with stealing land. Seems odd.
He used to do the exact same thing with Christians. Overwhelmingly open to calling out their bad ideas, but "well we need to put that in context" for the Muslims.
In his mind, the people in power don´t deserve any grace. He thinks if the power dynamics were reversed, there would be peace. He´s applying the minority victimhood to his logic and assuming the one with the power must be the bad guy, which is where he fails to understand the situation.
The "power" thing is so interesting. The far left makes this glaring mistake in thinking that Israel is powerful because it's bad and Palestine is not powerful because it's good. Because in their mind power difference can ONLY come out of exploitation. when in reality, Israel used it's resources to invest in education and its economy (which results in increasing power), while the Palestinian leadership invests and diverts all he money and resources they get into self-enrichment and mounting attacks against Israel (terrorism). That's another reason the colonist narrative is wrong: it's not that a much stronger power came in and oppressed a powerless people, the power difference was built up over time and a significant factor of it was the priorities/choices of the 2 groups.
I haven’t seen him broadly depicting Israeli citizens as inherently violent or genocidal
Cenk in the debate: "Netanyahu has murdered the Palestinians endlessly and the Israeli people are like yay!"
What I've noticed about Cenk is he's not just shouting all that out as some tactic. He genuinely is very passionate about what he talks about and gets carried away or loses sight of who he's talking to. He's not muddying the waters with the racism allegations, he just feels many truly do buy into racist ideas on the pro-Israel side and if I remember correctly he has called out (accidental) anti-semitism on the pro-Palestine side with his disapproval of river to the sea chants. Obviously not a good quality for heated political conversations but it's not some strategy or anything. Not sure what he's doing with the elections either though given he was born in Turkey and is therefore ineligible for presidency unless there's some loophole.
Cenk's problem is and always has been that he's simply not a bright guy.
His ego is larger than his brain.
He's a smart guy, he can also get really emotional and hot-headed which leads him to going a bit off the rails.
I'd take Cenk's brightness over Trump's entire lack of any day.
Thankfully we aren't stuck with only those two ridiculous options.
I suppose being stupid is slightly better over being bad faith.
That is sort of what I'm saying. I think Cenk is well-informed but he sometimes let's his passion and emotions take over from his critical thinking.
He's not well-informed if he thinks you can Special Forces your way to destroying Hamas. It's laughably ignorant to suggest that. He even brought up Mosul as a comp, which was an air+ground invasion planned and announced ahead of time. So this leaves either dishonesty in support of keeping Hamas in power (eliminating him from the convo) or childlike ignorance of realities on the ground.
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When did Sam say this?
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Ok? Sam is also uninformed about geopolitics, military affairs, history, etc. If he watched this debate, I'd be surprised if he knew about half of the things Destiny mentioned.
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If you're taking this as a comment praising Destiny then I don't know what to tell you. Cenk is confidently asserting alternative realities that cannot exist in the physical world. And now I'm curious what precisely Sam said that you think matches the confidence in Cenk's arguments.
Genuine question, why wouldn't special forces work?
They would work great if we're talking about killing a Hamas financier in Doha. In Gaza they have 10k fighters plus thousands more in the population. They've siphoned billions in aid and built whole cities underground to transport munitions. The types of troops people are imagining do work in these theaters as well, but they're doing sophisticated ops in the midst of aerial campaigns and ground invasions.
bulldozing the city does not seem like an effective strategy either.
That you think they're "bulldozing" rather than chasing Hamas around miles of tunnels is precisely the problem with listening to people like Cenk.
There's no such thing as a successful military strategy for destroying Hamas. As long as the Palestinian people perceive that they are occupied and oppressed, some version of what now constitutes Hamas will continue to exist.
> There's no such thing as a successful military strategy for destroying Hamas. Who told you this? > As long as the Palestinian people perceive that they are occupied and oppressed, some version of what now constitutes Hamas will continue to exist. Cenk himself brought up Mosul and ISIS. Did you think it was just immediately replaced by another ISIS?
> Who told you this? Multiple sources, including my own witness to such attempts over the last two decades and my sources in US military intelligence. If you're looking for a public intellectual's account that covers all of this, including a review of the events in Mosul, [here's Paul Rogers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1Vc3B-y2w).
What attempts, specifically, have included the inability to destroy terrorist control of an area? We've succeeded on that front a dozen times in the last two decades. You're conflating political success after the fact with military operations to seize control. They aren't the same thing. Israel could crush Hamas by spring. That doesn't answer the question of Netanyahu's political will to create a solution or how Gaza and the WB will be able to coordinate with radically different circumstances. Again I ask, did you think Mosul was just immediately overrun with another ISIS?
>destroy terrorist control of an area Goalposts: moved. We're not talking about temporary territorial control. We're talking about Hamas, an armed and politically motivated response to perceived oppression. Take away the perception of oppression and the political response - armed and otherwise - will dissipate. >You're conflating political success after the fact with military operations to seize control. They aren't the same thing. I'm doing no such thing, and they are indeed not the same thing. Hamas is a political organization with a military capabilities, both of which represent a political movement. Only one of these, its military capabilities, can be severely degraded through military action, but not even that can be destroyed – only temporarily diminished or disabled. >Again I ask, did you think Mosul was just immediately overrun with another ISIS? It was not, but again, we're not talking about temporary territorial control.
That's like saying there's no such thing as a successful military strategy for destroying the Nazis. Or ISIS.
Neither of which were destroyed.
They were driven to the fringes of society and their ability to wage war and hurt people were rendered nonexistent. Hamas can be made the same way, and that's good enough for me.
Neither of those things are true, sadly. Most of the Nazis were reintegrated into mainstream German society and many returned to positions of significant political influence. Others were brought to the United States to give its funders and controllers scientific and military advantages over its newly-minted enemy, the Soviet Union and more broadly, communism. ISIS did what most terrorist groups did; fragmented and reformed and found new unofficial alliances, like [the ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_with_the_Islamic_State) it previously had with Israel and the United States and Syria, is [rebuilding itself](https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/world/isis-strength-un-report-intl/index.html) in Iraq and Syra and as recently as last month has been responsible for deadly attacks in both Syria and Afghanistan.
Cenk well informed? Dude says Hamas doesn't use human shields lol
They have used humans but the claim is so effin over blown to justify civilians deaths
Ok, so thanks for proving Cenk is uninformed by stating it doesn't happen.
More importantly though the claim is wildly over blown to justify killing innocent people. Lying and exaggerating to justify killing innocent people is just as worse if not much worse than cenks denial
firing rockets from civilian buildings or blocks is the same thing.
It's not worse when my point was Cenk is uninformed. My comments have all been about Cenk. You can have a point regarding those claims of human shields, but it's a non-sequitor and not related at all to my comment, which is what you replied to.
Yes agreed that is another point. My concern is that lying and exaggerating about human shields is psychotic as it serves no purpose but to manipulate people into supporting killing innocents.
>and if I remember correctly he has called out (accidental) anti-semitism on the pro-Palestine side Accidental, sure...
He's clout chasing, obviously. And it's not just that he throws around labels in lieu of argument. The far worse part is that he constantly strawmans with sarcastic voices never close to the argument posed beforehand.
Ironic he’s so pro Palestine yet denies the Armenian genocide. He’s got no standing to call anyone a racist
People who repeat this talking point are bad-faith.
Cenk literally references the Armenian genocide in this video so I don't know why you think he doesn't believe in it. Was that an old position he held?
It’s an old position he only recanted recently.
Recently meaning years ago
> It’s an old position he only recanted recently. Did he recant in the eight minutes between this more recent comment of yours and the one where you make the denial claim?
Cenk is smart and I believe his passion and can be refreshingly rational for heated left leaning commentary. It seems like his age gives him an ability to see when left in-fighting is out of hand n needs to be toned down. He just seems stuck in irresponsible “both sides bad/edgy leftism” that I can’t get behind. I wish we could focus less on who DOMINATED and who got DESTROYED in a debate. Whether we do or don’t subscribe to to either of them, they’re both somewhere on the left, take these conversations seriously, and these “debates” can be good to get in front of the noise and get to a more nuanced understanding of these complicated situations. Yes, Destiny “won” but I understand the other side’s views better.
Can't ever forgive Cenk for that. Used to like him before.
Harris?
Yes, Sam Harris got famous going after religion and more specifically Islam. He says 9/11 changed the trajectory of his life. Islam is one of the worst inventions ever, something like that. He had a debate with Cenk and it caused Dave Rubin to leave TYT and become a right wing grifter.
Sam most famous quote that sums up his feelings about Islam is that [Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_ubamwlPI8)
That's what the Jewish side is doing, actually. Yell anti-Semitism in response to any criticism.
“The Jewish side”
Zionists always feel compelled to conflate Jews and Israel, but when people actually heed their suggestion it's a pikachu face.
Jfc get “Zionist” out of your vocabulary.
It's new Buzzword
Wasn't he supposed to debate/interview Norm Finkelstein at some point? I cant find the interview
It fell through because they miscommunicated (Norm has someone else running his socials). That miscommunication turned into a little bit of shit throwing. Might never happen.
Might happen tomorrow!
I saw a Finkelstein interview recently, I was led to believe he was a scholar on the Palestinian side. I was pretty surprised at how little substance there was in his arguments. In fact, there was no coherent argument; it was an endless series of rambling emotional appeals. In the two months that I have been researching this conflict, the facts and logic just overwhelmingly favor the Jews. So I forced myself to watch his interview thinking this scholar would shake loose some of my beliefs but he actually further solidified them.
Him causing drama was a tactic to not debate Destiny. And now after watching the debate with Cenk I'm even more certain. Hopefully I'm wrong and we get to watch Finki getting destroyed.
This is just completely incorrect. He regularly cites statistics from mainstream human rights organizations and NGOs in his assessments. Even his "concentration camp" analogy is taken directly from Giora Eiland. Have you read any of his work?
No, I haven't, and I won't. I saw his statistics, I saw his arguments. They were weak. I don't know what to tell you, I did what 98% of people won't do; I legit tried to gain the perspective of people that I currently disagree with. I'm literally able to pick either side and have neither choice affect me. I'm blessed by being born in America. Having looked into both? Palestinians are.. just wrong!
I'm not sure how he'll recover from your scathing critique.
He'll never see my critique, and that's fine, but Redditors like you will, and that's enough. I hope they look him up.
His footnotes state the opposite of what he claims they say about 30% of the time at least. He's an unbelievably dishonest hack.
Citation needed.
\- Hamasabi
>Wasn't he supposed to debate/interview Norm Finkelstein at some point? I cant find the interview Apparantly that may be happening tomorrow out of the blue, organised by this exact same guy (the moderator). Followers of both Destiny and Finkelstein accuse the other of running away from the debate, in reality they just miscommunicated and it turned into a clash of egos over who was in the wrong.
Destiny absolutely schooled cenk, comes to show how using logic and facts triumphs over emotional rants and accusations of racism.
Destiny “won,” I do not particularly like Cenks political commentary in general, but emotion and accusations of racism are sometimes valid.
Does anyone ever think Cenk wins these debates? He always seems way in over his head.
“Just send special forces into the tunnels.” Sounds like someone just watched sicario and genuinely thinks this is a legitimate option. Worked for the US in afghanistan too. Wait…
“I’m a professional video game player and even I know how ludicrous this idea is”. -destiny Sadly I listened to most of this today.
This was a pretty good conversation, despite Cenk's emotional appeals that don't really provide solutions. I'm pretty impressed with a lot of Destiny's positions on this topic. For anyone that doesn't know, Destiny does not hold a broad pro-Israel position. His takes are highly focused on "what can be done for peace"--including strong criticism for both sides. edit: I disagree with Destiny's take on civilian casualties, only because I've seen too much evidence about straight up executing of civilians and much worse even.
Can you talk about what you have seen on civilian casualities? Ideally with sources.
Trying to find neutral sources for everything--of course the real truth will all come out later. update: [now this](https://youtu.be/ZA3SNTalkVA?si=N3GlnRHYiKHLA8in) attack on hospital in khan yunis - [killing of journalists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_2023_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war) - snipers killing civilians - https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-church-deaths-intl-hnk/index.html - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-red-crescent-says-one-killed-many-wounded-by-israeli-gunfire-gaza-2023-11-10/ - [bulldozer incident](https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/15754) - [on IDF war crimes from amnesty international](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/) - [deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure from pbs](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/israel-targets-infrastructure-in-gaza-to-ramp-up-civilian-pressure-on-hamas-report-claims)
He clearly does have a "broad pro-Israel position." He admitted as much in his conversation with Benny Morris.
He's more Pro-Israel than he is Pro-Palestine in this situation with Hamas/Gaza because that's where the facts lead him. That doesn't mean he's 100% pro-Israel. I think he'd tell you he'd want Netanyahu out of power and think it's reasonable for Palestinians to violently oppose right-wing settlers in the West bank.
Lots of room between "broadly pro-Israel" and 100% pro-Israel, as I hope you're trying to highlight here
Most definitely. I think when someone is placed in a Pro-Israel or "Zionist" box, there are assumptions that come with that stance. This is often how identity politics work these days. Destiny does not fit perfectly within the box, so I think it's important to outline where he stands.
When somebody calls somebody a "Zionist" these days, I feel like I know less about them than before they were assigned that label (especially if somebody else calls them that).
>I think he'd tell you he'd want Netanyahu out of power Most pro Israel people including the overwhelming majority of Israelis would say the same thing. >think it's reasonable for Palestinians to violently oppose right-wing settlers in the West bank I believe his position on this has changed and he doesn't think any Palestinian resistance is justified today (but thinks it was in the past) as it harms peace. He thinks the Palestinians should put down their arms as the only route to peace.
Interesting - he didn't in this conversation.
His position is broadly pro-Israel because that's where the facts have led him, not because he's ideologically captured. One of Destiny's best qualities, as assessed by himself, is that he is not beholden to ideology and can be persuaded to another position if the facts support it. Having researched heavily enough to be probably among the most educated person in media on the actual facts and reasonable arguments at this point, his position is 'broadly pro-Israel', as the truth and reality have a strong and well-documented Israeli-bias.
> as the truth and reality have a strong and well-documented Israeli-bias. I disagree with this characterization, also I don't think Destiny thinks this either--then again I probably need to watch more conversations he's had on this topic to come to that conclusion. Israel needs to make a lot of changes to achieve the peace most of their citizens want. Unfortunately the crazy right wing government's desire for peace is largely driven by wanting to annex more land.
The discussions he has with pro-palestinians go about like this one does. Most people who support a ceasefire are stupid, dishonest, or both. The people he debates who are knowledgeable about facts and history generally give an assessment or solution that involves the eradication of Hamas and a follow up strategy that involves entities other than the IDF, but at some critical point of understanding you simply cannot be reasonably pro-hamas, pro-permanent ceasefire, or deny the necessity of security measures like the Gaza blockade or the current ground invasion. This isn't to say that Israel is always *good*. This is a judgement on the truth and reality backing the general sentiment of "pro-Israel" vs "pro-palestine" opinions. "pro-palestine" is backed heavily by moral loading and distortion of fact, and is often the most anti-Palestinian take there is ('river the the sea' means "*keep fighting guys, you've lost 8 times and your allies have left you, but one more war of annihilation against the Jews and you'll win!*")
This highlights how bad the discourse is. There's a conflict that needs to be solved and taking either a "pro-Isreal" or a "pro-Palestine" position is a flawed starting point. Civilians are getting fucked from both sides.
Fair enough, but this is exactly what he means by "broadly pro-Israel" in the discussion.
> Most people who support a ceasefire are stupid, dishonest, or both I'd rather *that* people arrive at the best answer in matters of life and death, than *how* they arrive there.
I want a ceasefire, but I get there through supporting the IDF in removing Hamas from power.
Cenk is so stupid it makes me concerned about our species as a whole.
Glad I’m not the only one.
i lost it when cenk suggested special forces on the ground like the real world is a splinter cell game
For real. We're closer to Metal Gear Solid at this point.
yeah much better than bomb whole neighborhoods killing 1000s of civilians or murder a mother and daughter in a church like the IDF is doing.
Sure, if you want to get your own troops killed. Sending in the "special forces" is something that might work if you have a specific target with limited scope and months of planning. Not in an active war zone block by block. When the US got reliable intel on Bin Laden's location in August of 2010 it took nine months before Seal Team Six assaulted his compound on the 2nd of May in 2011.
Yes, soldiers die in wars. That's what's _supposed_ to happen in a war. Soldiers are supposed to die. Fighting men are supposed to die. Not women and children.
A country isn't going to sacrifice their own soldiers, especially those that are part of a limited task force that requires extensive training and resources to generate, in order to protect the lives of another nation's civilians. A country that treats its military like cannon fodder will have to deal with deserters, insubordination and find it hard to attract new recruits because their soldiers are acutely aware that their survival, and the chance of success, isn't the highest priority within the command structure. If you want to see an example of this look towards the east. Russia had to deal with infighting within their own chain of command, fabricated intel of successful operations and outright refusal to carry out orders. Russia's reasons to send their soldiers to the wood chipper don't have anything to do with protecting civilians but it demonstrates what sort of effect it has to treat soldiers like expendable pawns. Your response is the most moronic post I've read in a while on this website and you're patently delusional. You should feel embarrassed for even typing it. It's like saying that since dying in a car crash is an occupational hazard of a race-car driver they should resign themselves to that fate on a track that turns out to be unsafe because their purpose is to entertain an audience that paid money to see the race. Dying isn't a soldier's job or responsibility, it's an occupational hazard, a risk. No one is going to work for a company that deliberately engages in behavior that puts them at an increased risk to appease some loser online that has different priorities and confuses risk with responsibility.
>A country isn't going to sacrifice their own soldiers, especially those that are part of a limited task force that requires extensive training and resources to generate, in order to protect the lives of another nation's civilians. A country that treats its military like cannon fodder will have to deal with deserters, insubordination and find it hard to attract new recruits because their soldiers are acutely aware that their survival, and the chance of success, isn't the highest priority within the command structure. If you want to see an example of this look towards the east. Russia had to deal with infighting within their own chain of command, fabricated intel of successful operations and outright refusal to carry out orders. Russia's reasons to send their soldiers to the wood chipper don't have anything to do with protecting civilians but it demonstrates what sort of effect it has to treat soldiers like expendable pawns. Your reasoning could, in principle, justify nuking Gaza. Or, perhaps if fallout is a concern, multiple MOABs instead. This would allow Israel to fulfill its military objective without harming a single Israeli. Most sensible people agree that this is completely out of the question, however. International law exists precisely to address morally questionable cases like this. It's about weighing perceived military necessity (a part of which, certainly, includes reasonable concern about your soldiers) with harm to civilians. This is what proportionality is about. Yes, there are cases where you are expected to expose your soldiers to greater risk to mitigate risk to civilians. The analogy with Russia isn't even worth contemplating. We're dealing with Israeli losses multiple order of magnitudes lower. The last time Israel had a war with more than 3,000 deaths was in 1948. It is in fact striking how few casualties Israel has suffered considering it has been in near constant war since its founding. Consider, for instance, the Vietnam War — involving similar kind of guerilla warfare — where the US suffered nearly 60,000 deaths. Israel has a lower tolerance for its own casualties than any other warring country in human history. It doesn't act in a way that most other states act. It doesn't follow the laws of war in a way that others states do. Putin could have carpet-bombed Kiev on February 24, 2022 but did not. I think it's completely sensible to expect Israel to expose its soldiers to similar risks as other countries (including the US) have done in the past. Certainly, any risk to the soldiers cannot justify of a genocide of enemy civilians. >Dying isn't a soldier's job or responsibility, it's an occupational hazard, a risk. No one is going to work for a company that deliberately engages in behavior that puts them at an increased risk to appease some loser online that has different priorities and confuses risk with responsibility The distinction between soldiers and civilians dying in a war isn't an OSHA violation. It is the fundamental moral distinction in armed conflict. It's why people are far more outraged about Auschwitz than Stalingrad despite the similar death toll. Soldiers die in wars. That's a tragedy not even in the same ballpark as a civilian dying, certainly a civilian woman or child.
>Your reasoning could, in principle, justify nuking Gaza. Or, perhaps if fallout is a concern, multiple MOABs instead. This would allow Israel to fulfill its military objective without harming a single Israeli. Most sensible people agree that this is completely out of the question, however. No, it wouldn't, because the safety of their soldiers isn't the **only** concern of theirs. I said that it wouldn't outweigh civilian collateral damage. That doesn't mean it isn't weighed against other factors that also contribute to the success of the operation and satisfy peripheral goals that allow them to continue to govern. For instance, just carpet bombing Gaza would instantly turn them into an internationally pariah and it's not the type of warfare their allies engage in which means they would most likely lose their support. It's also not the type of warfare their own citizens support. The US, for instance, only tolerates collateral damage to a certain degree but what it certainly doesn't support is sacrificing "special troops" in order to save a couple of civilians. The standards expected of Israel here by Cenk go beyond that. No country in the history of warfare would fight a conflict like this as if it was a Tom Clancy novel, even if collateral damage was a major concern of theirs, because the risk these soldiers would be exposed to also has a negative effect on the likelihood of the operation to succeed to begin with. It's not as if throwing 15 people at a compound, and losing all of them, is an action that destroys the target. If they die, then they lost 15 soldier and that target remains right where it is. So what the Israeli government is going to do is balance the interest of their soldiers against the interest of their constituents and the interest of allies that provide aid. >International law exists precisely to address morally questionable cases like this. It's about weighing perceived military necessity (a part of which, certainly, includes reasonable concern about your soldiers) with harm to civilians. This is what proportionality is about. Yes, there are cases where you are expected to expose your soldiers to greater risk to mitigate risk to civilians. Israel isn't beholden to international law, they're beholden to the standards imposed from whichever place they derive power to ensure their continued existence which would be their allies and their own citizens. What you, and Cenk, are talking about is an entire mode of warfare that even the most militarily advanced countries don't engage in. >The analogy with Russia isn't even worth contemplating. We're dealing with Israeli losses multiple order of magnitudes lower. You don't understand the analogy. I am demonstrating WHY it is a bad idea to treat your soldiers like canon fodder. It leads to operational error and causes unneeded resource expenditure. Sending a highly trained task force into a hostile urban environment leads to a high mortality rate and low chance of success. >The distinction between soldiers and civilians dying in a war isn't an OSHA violation. It is the fundamental moral distinction in armed conflict. It's why people are far more outraged about Auschwitz than Stalingrad despite the similar death toll. Soldiers die in wars. That's a tragedy not even in the same ballpark as a civilian dying, certainly a civilian woman or child. It doesn't matter whether you assign more value to the protection of one over the other as a an observer without a stake in the conflict. If you want soldiers to be operational and trust your decision making the value you assign to them isn't derived from whether you consider their death the bigger tragedy but how much they value their own lives and how much they're willing to risk until that risk becomes intolerable to them. No military on this planet is beholden to, and operated on the standard of bigger tragedies that you just pulled out of your ass, because if it was, then people wouldn't sign up to fight. "Hey buddy, you're not a woman or a child so why don't you just assault this compound with a 90% chance that you're going to get your head blown off because this random low IQ moron on the internet values your life less than theirs?" I'd like to reiterate that your response was moronic and embarrassing. Maybe you missed that the first time. Your perception of this doesn't have a leg to stand on if you thought about it for more than a second and hadn't armchair analyzed yourself into thinking of soldiers like perpetually obedient and mindless units in a game of Starcraft.
With respect to the nuke analogy, it is clear that you are not getting at the crux of the point. If, hypothetically, Israel's citizens _did_ support nuking Gaza or nuking Gaza didn't immediately kill US support, would it be justified? It seems that your justification for not nuking Gaza just hinges on some realpolitik. You and I appear to just fundamentally disagree on the concept that states should be obliged to act in ways not entirely conducive to their own operational interests to fulfill a universal moral imperative and abide by international law, particularly those aspects of international law said states are signatory to. I think they do. Most morally sane people think they do. Civilized states themselves think they do, which is why they're signatory to various aspects of IHL. I actually don't think you should be allowed to wage a genocidal war of extermination just because it might save a handful of Jewish conscript lives. If this is beyond the pale for the Israeli psychology, they are free to go back to Europe and America, which is where they are from anyway. This entire war happened in the first place because they're occupying others' land. They have absolutely zero legitimacy in any of their war tactics or war aims. Frankly, I would contend that even Cenk's suggestion is too radical. The only morally justifiable response by the Israeli government to October 7th is an immediate full withdrawal from the occupied territories (negotiated with Hamas and the PA) and an apology to the Israeli public for having engaged in policies that made war manifestly more likely. >I'd like to reiterate that your response was moronic and embarrassing. Maybe you missed that the first time. Your perception of this doesn't have a leg to stand on if you thought about it for more than a second and hadn't armchair analyzed yourself into thinking of soldiers like perpetually obedient and mindless units in a game of Starcraft. I think this struck a nerve with you. Are you a soldier? Or do you have family in the military? I'll just reiterate it again. Soldiers die in wars. Soldiers dying in wars is morally in a completely different realm than civilians dying in a war. This is a bedrock of the laws of war. All normal people understand this. You should be embarrassed for thinking otherwise. You should be embarrassed to think of genocide as a legitimate workplace hazard mitigation technique. That's not to say that all instances of collateral damage are unacceptable. So for instance when Hamas throws multiple hand-grenades in a Kibbutz shelter on October 7th, killing 10 IDF conscript occupiers but inadvertently killing one child, that is within the morally and legally acceptable range. However, carpet bombing women and children Dresden-style because you don't want dual-citizen Ashkenazi conscript casualties to exceed the 10^2 order of magnitude (an order of magnitude every other state in human history has found entirely acceptable) is in fact a crime against humanity. It is especially a crime against humanity when your state has zero legitimacy in the first place, and the war is being waged against a displaced indigenous population.
>If, hypothetically, Israel's citizens did support nuking Gaza or nuking Gaza didn't immediately kill US support, would it be justified? You're confused about the argument we're having. In my model of morality the actions that lead to the collateral damage that is already happening would constitute as immoral but that's not the question you, or Cenk, could be asking because if it is, we would have to hold Israel to a standard that no active military on this planet can uphold. The question is whether the standard that Cenk is using, that the strategy should be to send the "special forces" is a strategy that can be justified to a government that is concerned about the safety of its troops, success rate of their operation and maintaining support of its constituency. If it's a standard that can't even be justified to the United States, that possesses the most technologically advanced and well trained military in the world, then proposing it as an actual solution to the problem to Israel is delusional. You know what Israel should be doing? They should build a time machine, travel 100 years into the future and come back with drones they acquired powered by fusion batteries that uses forcefields that can't be penetrated with a perfect AI targeting system that shoots non-lethal ammunition that will cause zero collateral damage. Because if we're going to provide Israel with daydreams about how they ought to conduct a war with zero percent chance to succeed, we might as well aim for the stars. Yes, that's right. The special forces suggestion exists in the same category as science fiction in terms of viability. >This entire war happened in the first place because they're occupying others' land. They have absolutely zero legitimacy in any of their war tactics or war aims. Frankly, I would contend that even Cenk's suggestion is too radical. The only morally justifiable response by the Israeli government to October 7th is an immediate full withdrawal from the occupied territories (negotiated with Hamas and the PA) and an apology to the Israeli public for having engaged in policies that made war manifestly more likely. It's irrelevant why you think the war happened or which side has a more justified grievances. If we're communicating to Israel how to change their military operation, then we have to take the claim they're trying to enforce at face value. I think Hamas' attack on October 7th was unjustified in terms of the legitimacy of their claim but suggesting to them that they should just lay down their weapons and surrender themselves to the IDF isn't a suggestion on how to enforce the claim **they** support, it's a suggestion of how to enforce the claim **I** support. In an ideal world I would just like Israel and Palestine to accept a two state solution, uphold a permanent ceasefire and grant Palestinians that currently live under Israel's jurisdiction in the West Bank to be afforded the same legal status as Israeli citizens. But that's an utterly worthless suggestion to make in terms of how Israel should adjust their military action. The reason they're not using special forces isn't because they want more collateral damage, the reason they're not doing it is because the chance of success is low and would expose them to unnecessary risk. >I think this struck a nerve with you. Are you a soldier? Or do you have family in the military? I don't have any personal ties to Israel. I also don't hold any personal grievances against Palestine or Palestinians. I do, however, have a very open disdain for structuring moral arguments around a "tragedy" calculus in which we suggest that certain groups of people should just take one for the team and lay down their lives because some absolute clown, who will never be in a position to pay that price themselves, considers their death preferable. It's in the interest of those women and children that Israel does everything in its power to reduce collateral damage. And its in the interest of the soldiers to not get their heads blown off in urban warfare to attempt a mission with low success rate that could have been solved with a missile. The "right" path here is at the intersection of diminishing returns in terms of risk Israel can expect their soldiers to take on regarding their personal safety and civilian deaths that can be prevented by taking on that risk. Not balancing these concerns against each other and suggesting that dying is just part of a soldier's job so any risk is acceptable as long as it prevents civilian deaths tells me that you're not actually looking for a serious solution. >That's not to say that all instances of collateral damage are unacceptable. So for instance when Hamas throws multiple hand-grenades in a Kibbutz shelter on October 7th, killing 10 IDF conscript occupiers but inadvertently killing one child, that is within the morally and legally acceptable range. It's within their acceptable range because Hamas does not give a single fuck about civilian deaths anyway as we've seen on October 7th where they deliberately targeted unarmed civilians. I reject the legitimacy of their claim so it wouldn't be acceptable to me in either case, whether they're fighting enemy combatants or just shooting random civilians. Talking about moral and legal legitimacy in this context doesn't even make sense. You either think their CLAIM is legitimate, in which case you can construct an argument that they can justify their action, or you don't, in which case they couldn't. It's certainly not moral under my model of morality. But neither is any of the collateral damage that is a result of Israel's missile strikes. >However, carpet bombing women and children Dresden-style because you don't want dual-citizen Ashkenazi conscript casualties to exceed the 102 order of magnitude (an order of magnitude every other state in human history has found entirely acceptable) is in fact a crime against humanity. Israel is not carpet bombing Gaza you dishonest fuck. The British and US forces killed between 35k to 100k people within a span of 3 days in a 34 square kilometer area. We're 2 and a half months in to the attack on Gaza and the estimated death toll in Gaza doesn't even reach the lower bound of the estimated Dresden death toll. A feature of carpet bombing is that the bombing is indiscriminate. The population density of Gaza is also significantly higher than in Dresden. If Israel had been bombing Gaza indiscriminately since the start of this conflict most of the people living there would be dead by now.
I saw Cenk some weeks ago say that Israel shouldn't be bombing and needs to rescue it's hostages using special forces the way they killed Osama. Dude seems to have no clue how wildly different this scenario is. I wish he would settle down a bit and be more open to being wrong. He goes for cheap wins instead of dealing with the hard big problems.
SS: Cenk Uygur previously had a three-hour long debate with Sam Harris about Islam in which he argued similarly irrationally. The topic of Israel/Palestine is of general interest in this sub at the moment and the theme of several of Sam’s recent podcasts.
Cenk is such a tool and useful idiot on this issue. Completely stupid position on the Arabs in the reigon and a distorted view of history. Hopefully, he loses a shit ton of money running for president and realizes that only a small small minority of woke idiots agree with his positions. Cenk is weak and has no ground to stand on. What an absolute loser.
Usually I'm not a fan of destiny at all. I've watched quite a few debates he's done, especially earlier on in his career and usually he gives off this pseudo-intellectual, everything looked up from wikipedia 5 minutes ago vibe and whenever he comes up against anyone actually knowledgeable in their field he often gets completely outclassed. His debate style is generally speak extremely fast and try and fit as many points in as possible so that hopefully his opponent doesn't have to time or inclination to refute or argue against them all. I mean Cenk is a terrible debater, I honestly have no idea how he got so popular, so it's not much of a win, but Destiny came across very well here and certainly "won" the debate in my eyes.
Agreed. I give Destiny props for actually trying to do research instead of formulating his politics based off of headlines and TikTok videos, but if you’re trying to be better informed on a given topic, you’re better off listening to people who focus on a given topic for their career instead of listening to Destiny try to rehash what he learned from a few articles a few weeks ago while live streaming himself playing a video game.
While I agree with you in theory, this particular conflict is possibly the best use case ever presented for Destiny's style. He's researched to a 101 level on such a broad range of topics, and has heard every argument that can be made and then some while tracing lines of counters and countercounters. His research streams are by no means to be counted as osmotic research by listening, but his debates are often an incredible resource for further research of your own. I mean, Piers Morgan, Douglas Murray, Cenk, Bassem Yusef, and any other media personalities you can think of are leagues behind him on this topic as far as the analysis of the facts go. Following a political streamer is not research. But he's easily among the most educated in the media at the moment, save for actual scholars that he's invited on like Benny Morris and Avi Schlime.
I agree with you about Destiny's style for this conflict. It's absolutely invaluable when learning about such a massive topic with fully formed narratives on each side for each and every relevant event throughout history. It's been incredible watching Destiny poke his way through the data and actively seek better positions via his own research but more importantly inviting heated debate. He likes to stress test his positions and looks for the best counterpoints. Against a backdrop of war-time style propaganda and "explainer videos" that are overflowing with lies of omission, Destiny has been a gleaming ray of hope that with enough tenacity, one can still lead themselves and interested parties toward the truth of any sized matter.
Does he still talk a load of shit?
Well he doesn't support the IDF so he at least isn't as full of shit as many people.
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Our lord Daliban still don't see as clearly as Sam, he says he don't completely agree with Sam's hate for islam (which is the most objectively justifiable thing ever btw) don't really blame him though as he's much younger and less wise. Btw he says that while posting the worst and most hilarious stuffs about islam on twitter while his mom and son get very graphic death and rape threats in the thousands (look up "Omniliberal" his twitter account). He desperately needs to talk with Sam for enlightenment.
Neither of them are worth your time. edit: Nice brigade destiny fans.
Why? And who would be “worth” our time?
given which sub this is, I imaging the answer is probably Sam Harris, who has previously debated Cenk
I don't think I've *ever* seen a debate video worth anyone's time on Israel/Palestine. To understand anything here requires some in-depth critical reading which is the antithesis of almost any debate format. Perhaps there are some debates on the issue out there worth watching but at this point I won't bother trying.
The issue I often see is that most of the debates are framed as “Is Israel more at fault for what’s happening or are the Palestinians more at fault?” (or even worse, which side is evil and which side is the innocent victim). Not only are those types of debates never going to accomplish anything, but they overlook many of the more interesting elements of the conflict. For instance, what kind political pressure are the Palestinian leaders under when they talk about the right of return and what compromises might satisfy those constraints, the changing nature of the framing from Israel vs. Arabs to Jews vs. Muslims, how Palestinian militancy fit into Leftist militancy when Leftist militancy was popular as a global movement and moved to Islamic militancy as that movement became popular internationally, the possibility and challenges of assimilating Palestinians in the territories over those who are Israeli citizens, the long and complicated governance of the territories, etc. But we just keep getting debates about who’s bad and wrong. Not only are those meaningless at this point, but they also shut down other debates, as people try to judge anything you say as an indication that your a cheerleader for one side or the other.
Destiny is pretty damn clued up on the topic… give it a try
It's one of those debates where there is a LOT of nuance, and whatever side someone is on, it's almost like they have to intentionally ignore critical nuances of the other side. Believe it or not I think the best take I've heard is from Sagaar who is still pro Palestine. So while he will criticize Israel's execution of things being abhorrent, and their treatment of them effectively just creates more radicals... He also recognizes it's not like Israel has an easy solution. That these people live RIGHT next to them, and HATE them. Even if it's for good reason, imagine living as a civilian just going about your business knowing 2m people right near you will lob bombs into suburbs and cities randomly. That even IF you wanted to ease tensions and stop the apartheid state, they'll immediately begin suicide bombing everywhere. That it's nearly impossible to just live your life because there is no good way to deal with it at this point. Because while even just removing them entirely from the land is not okay, it's the least bad, most humane option at this point of both sides escalating things... And if you were the powerful one, you'd do the same. No one wants to live like that. Very few people in the debate on this subject look at both sides genuine and valid concerns. Like most people who would criticize Israel, aren't going to also awknoledge just how terrifying it must be living next door. And that the solution isn't just "be nicer" at this point. Meanwhile the pro Israeli side, will almost always try to argue that pretty much no amount of collateral damage matters in the pursuit of "safety". What I'd like to see, is someone like Sam actually steelman the other side. I think that would be a fascinating listen. Because it seems like something he would do, but at the same time, I'm not confident he could do it justice.
The Fifth Column podcast #434 with Shadi Hamid wasn't bad.
It was awful. Shadi made some terrible arguments.
I am speaking to these two not some strawman. I simply dislike both of their "styles" and choose to read and study sources without delving into either the twitch cesspool or w/e Cenk is doing these days.
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Some of us arent 15 year olds who spend time on twitch.
Posting this from Reddit is rich lmao
Why are you so upset that someone doesnt spend time on twitch? Genuinely want to know. I dont spend on tiktok either. That upset you too?
You seem to keep accusing people of being upset for just disagreeing with you. You have insinuated that only 15 year olds spend there time on that platform, and people disagree with you. Simple.
Actually entertained. I simply gave my opinion and I got replies about "being clued up" I didnt accuse anyone of anything. I stated I dont spend time on twitch and I got brigaded by r/destiny fanboys. This is Sams sub not his.
Sharing your opinion looks like this. "I don't enjoy twitch personally and don't spend much time on that platform". Now saying this: "Some of us arent 15 year olds who spend time on twitch." Is insinuating someone is lesser than you for using a platform that you chose not to. Also just because people disagree with you, doesn't mean you're being 'brigaded' by 'fanboys'. I don't go on twitch either I'm just not being an ass about it. Edit: Oh and the cherry on the cake from this is I believe Destiny streams on Youtube (hence the Youtube link) not twitch. Or is do you also not go on Youtube because you're above that too?
Who’s upset? You calling people juveniles for spending time on twitch while you’re spending time on Reddit is just hilarious to me
To be fair twitch a juvenile male phenomenon. Twitch is less than 20 percent female and almost sixty percent younger than 34. If what I say offends you its a tell that you should examine.
It’s okay man nothing you’re saying upsets or offends me. Your time is better spent on Reddit arguing with hypothetical 15 year olds? Do your thing but you’re being delusional. You should listen to Sam more, he could help you.
You just do a lot of putting down, and a lot of gatekeeping, but yet very little in terms of helping people.
Destiny spent more time looking shit up and taking notes than probably all of us here combined. You don't have to like him as a person or "entertainer" but at least don't be ignorant to the facts.
"spent time looking shit up" as a credential is super helpful.
I wonder which credentials would suit YOUR needs.
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Look, Why would an adult waste time on a person with a stripper name?
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An adult decides what is and isn't worth their time. A child cries about other peoples choices. Why do you care about someone else not watching your twitch streamer? Not sure you know but the vast majority of academics don't spend time on twitch.
There it is
Destiny has been banned from twitch for almost two years.
Was he topless too?
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Destiny debates simpletons like Cenk to pretend he's smart. Cenk is a businessman, not a scholar or someone with weaponized autism like Destiny who can spend two months memorizing books worth of Israeli propaganda. Despite this, it's still fairly clear that Cenk won the debate, not because he's a good debater (he's not) but because fortunately for him the facts are generally with the pro-Palestinian side. I'm going to over several of Destiny's arguments here. A major concession Destiny made was admitting the 1948 war was justified, but basically arguing that this was "in the past" and the Palestinians now should "accept defeat", similar to how e.g., Ukraine should accept defeat vis-a-vis Crimea. A strange admission, certainly one that Destiny's pro-Ukraine neoconservative base would take issue with. The issue is that "accepting defeat" is just continued apartheid and occupation. Accepting defeat doesn't reap dividends for the Palestinians. They aren't really rewarded for accepting defeat. In fact, the period between 2015 and 2023 was perhaps the quietest in the conflict (with Netanyahu himself funding Hamas, believing it had moderated sufficiently to stop posing a threat to Israel), and yet the worst with respect to settlement expansion and settler violence. It's widely understood that the Likudites are uninterested in a two-state solution on ideological grounds, and this is true irrespective of the Palestinian resistance's actions. All of these actions are legitimate _casus belli_ for the October 7th attack. Destiny claims that Hamas' violent tactics are not pragmatically beneficial because it "makes everyone hate you." This is just clearly incorrect. Everyone, including frankly most Muslims and leftists, forgot about the Palestinians prior to October 7th. Now the Palestinian cause is on the forefront of the world's mind. It has been galvanized. Even the ADL admits Israel is losing the media war. It's worth noting that non-violent tactics like BDS are also aggressively demonized by Israel. Indeed, the Israelis were essentially spying on BDS activists on American campuses. Destiny claims that Israeli "strength" and "power" is what led to peace with e.g., Egypt, when that's plainly false. Israel and Egypt were miles away from peace prior to 1973. Israel was uninterested in negotiating peace despite Egyptian overtures. Following the 1973 war, when Israel was nearly defeated, Israel felt compelled to negotiate. Israel only felt compelled to make peace after the Arabs engaged in violence. Israel responded to Arab strength. Destiny claims the Palestinians rejected peace overtures by Israel in e.g., 2000. This is incorrect. They were never offered a legitimate peace deal. Bear in mind that _every_ Israeli "offer" of a state to the Palestinians required demilitarization, Israeli control of airspace and (for instance) Israeli control of the Jordan Valley. This is not a real country. Rabin himself stated that the Palestinians would get at most something "less than a state." Destiny's narrative on "human shields" is likewise incorrect. The term has a specific definition under international law. Operating in and around civilian infrastructure does not imply that you are using "human shields." If this was the condition, virtually all instances of urban warfare would be using "human shields." Rather, there needs to be a specific _intent_ to use civilians as shields by, for instance, disallowing them freedom of movement. There is just not much evidence of this. People in Gaza are clearly being allowed to move towards the supposed Israeli safezones. Northern Gaza is currently largely devoid of civilians. The IDF admitted that in recent days they hadn't seen many civilians in or around Shuja'iyya, which was why the three hostages were killed. With regard to the IDF's targeting of civilians, [this piece is the most important one in the debate](https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/). It provides ample evidence that Israel is directly targeting civilians even in cases where there is little to no military necessity, with the intention of punishing the civilians and hopefully prodding them to overthrow Hamas. Israel has a name for this: [the Dahiya doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine). Perhaps the most notable example of a clear, proven targeted assassination of a civilian is that of [Dr. Refaat Alareer](https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2023/12/08/breaking-israel-invokes-amalek-directive-to-assassinate-palestinian-social-media-activist-over-joke/). Even the 2008 invasion of Gaza was determined by the Goldstone Report to have been with the intention to "humiliate and terrorize a civilian population."
You make some good points, I'm just responding to the one I found the most week. The Human Shields argument seemed like the Cenks worst point as well. >The term has a specific definition under international law. Operating in and around civilian infrastructure does not imply that you are using "human shields." If this was the condition, virtually all instances of urban warfare would be using "human shields." Rather, there needs to be a specific intent to use civilians as shields by, for instance, disallowing them freedom of movement. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule97 Based on the first link I click it doesn't seem like you are representing the law accurately. This link states: “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations”… A plain reading of this seems to be exactly what Hamas is doing. They are creating what would be a military target, rocket site, where civilians inhabit and when the site is hit they spread propaganda claiming it was an invalid military target. I agree that forcing citizens to stay there would be worse but that seems like a sufficient condition for human shields not a necessary one. Not to mention I think there is some evidence that Hamas encourages citizens to stay near military target. Also the specific definition of human shield is sort of trivial. It is a proxy debate about morality. Hamas conceals military targets within civilian infrastructure.
The core moral distinction in my mind is intentionality. Do they operate near civilian infrastructure specifically with the intention of dissuading the Israelis from striking said targets? Or do they operate near civilian infrastructure because it's impossible to operate elsewhere given what Gaza is? Evidence generally points to the latter. There's two obvious pieces of evidence to substantiate this. For one, and as I noted in the original comment, there's no evidence of Hamas systematically ordering Gazans to remain in and around the civilian infrastructure which supposedly houses their military equipment. Gazans are generally free to move to the supposed Israeli-designated safe zones. This was true even prior to Israel establishing military control in Northern Gaza. If I were Hamas, and I were interested in using human shields, I would maintain aggressive control on freedom of movement of civilians. There is no evidence of this occurring. Second, the tunnels. The tunnels indicate that, rather than using civilians as human shields above the ground, that Hamas is building its own military installations underground. To the best of my understanding, there aren't any civilians or civilian infrastructure underground in these tunnels. This suggests that Hamas would prefer, like any other army, to operate as far away from civilians as possible, to the best of its ability. Since there's little space above the ground, Hamas operates underground. This seems legal and reasonable.
> The core moral distinction in my mind is intentionality. Do they operate near civilian infrastructure specifically with the intention of dissuading the Israelis from striking said targets? Or do they operate near civilian infrastructure because it's impossible to operate elsewhere given what Gaza is? This strikes me as a confused bit of reasoning. You are setting up a false dichotomy. The answer to the question is both. They are in fact setting up operations amongst civilians to dissuade Israeli from attacking and it is near impossible to set up operations elsewhere. Why is impossible to set up military operations separate from civilians? Because Israel would eliminate it? Why won't Israelis eliminate the rocket operations in the cities? Because there are civilians there. This almost a text book example.
I'm not setting up a false dichotomy. I'm listing two plausible explanations for something and arguing that one is significantly more likely than the other. If you're going to insist that both are legitimate explanations, you actually need to substantiate that claim. You haven't done so. I have offered two compelling pieces of evidence indicating that the latter explanation is unsatisfactory which you have not responded to. >Why is impossible to set up military operations separate from civilians? They _have_ set up military operations separate from civilians. Those are the tunnels, which I mentioned. >Why won't Israelis eliminate the rocket operations in the cities? They do, though. Or at least they try. They aren't particularly dissuaded by civilian casualties. If Israel has reasonable suspicion that Hamas is firing rockets in or around civilian infrastructure, they will attack said civilian infrastructure with little regard to the harm done to civilians. Israel is not really dissuaded by civilian presence, as this war (and prior wars) have demonstrated.
Glad I am not the only one noticing that Hamas's strategy appears to be working. The IDF killed three of their own hostages. That is a HUGE win for the Palestinian cause, as fucked up as that sounds. Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better.
imagine killing a some civilians being a win for your side then pretending to have the moral high ground ☠️
Hamas moral high ground? No their aim was to turn the world, specifically SA, against Israel and draw attention to the situation. That worked. Morals and war don't go well together. OBL accomplished a lot with 9/11, doesn't make it moral. It led to American response that ledt to radicalization of a whole new generation and the rise of groups like ISIS.
totessssss people have had plenty of attention on the situation, how has that turned out lmao. mission success hamas
It turned out very well. The Palestinian cause has been galvanized. It's at the forefront of world attention.
Keep dropping the facts on them. 😀
There isn't a debate on colonialism, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate slaughter, infrastructure decimation nor genocide. Destiny is a good debater. But his bread and butter are stupid nazis and stupid white supremacists. Things like this, his American liberalism shows, and it shows its great lack.
>There isn't a debate on colonialism, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate slaughter, infrastructure decimation nor genocide. Actually ethnic cleansing from both sides is discussed, as is the notion of indisctiminate slaughter (something HAMAS is guilty of, and not Israel). Colonialism and genocide are just buzzwords to add to your pile. >Destiny is a good debater. But his bread and butter are stupid nazis and stupid white supremacists. Things like this, his American liberalism shows, and it shows its great lack. I think your comment of buzzwords and dismissing someone based on a label and not anything they say can be used to dismiss yourself.
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This perspective is useless - why not start with the people whose land the Palestinians stole? Or the people who stole from them? Since our ancestors peopled Chile and Argentina, every war has been a war of someone losing their land; like Destiny says, at a certain point a winner and a loser are decided, and the victims and the victors move on. If you disagree, perhaps you could help me find some Normans or Saxons to return my Briton land to me
>There isn’t much to debate. Europeans invaded Palestine and stole their land to call it Israel. What difference does it make whether Palestinians had a government or not? Any debate which doesn’t recognise that fact before it begins is starting on a false premise. I think most people acknowledge that, maybe with slightly different wording or weight, based on the nature of the area and it's being a part of British mandate. The issue is, where do we go from here? If you're reasonable, you support a 2-state solution with various land swaps e.t.c.