Opinion: I'm an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn't war

[-] ashar@infosec.pub 154 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

“On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head.”

How much of a shitty person do you have to be, to snipe little kids in the head?

[-] Count042@lemmy.ml 34 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That's the point of 'The Banality of Evil' and the Milgram experiments.

There is nothing special or different about the Israelis, or for that matter the Nazis. They were normal people.

The only silver lining about the Milgram experiments is that they showed that if people were aware that the default nature of human beings was to follow orders, no matter how horrible, they would be inoculated, somewhat, to following those orders.

Please note, Israel is committing an unjustified horrible fucking genocide. None of this is an excuse for that. But you better recognize that there isn't too much that differentiates you from those snipers, because if you don't recognize that then you could be one of them in the future.

[-] Sidyctism@feddit.de 9 points 8 months ago

Reminds of that interview with US drone-operators. "Cutting the grass before it grows tall", "fun-sized terrorists". Pure evil

[+] DaDragon@kbin.social -62 points 8 months ago

Less a necessarily bad person, and more an ideologically influenced one, I’d wager. Sure, there’s probably a couple psychopaths mixed in too

[-] llamapocalypse@lemmy.world 88 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'd argue that if ANY ideology can convince you it's ok to shoot children in the head, you're already a shitty person and/or psychopath.

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 55 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

No, that's the scary thing about ideology. Nearly anyone can be convinced to become a killer. Psychopathy isn't required.

A psychopath can kill a child and be fully cognizant of their innocence and humanity. They know it's wrong and just don't care. That's not what most are doing.

Ideology acts as a buffer, so these occupation soldiers don't even acknowledge the children as innocent or human. Just "animals" - the soldiers truly don't believe they're doing anything wrong.

They all deserve to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but they aren't psychopaths. They're just like us and you have to reconcile with that.

[-] llamapocalypse@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Yeah you're not wrong, that's why I put the "and/or".

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 22 points 8 months ago

I guess I can't argue that they're shitty people, cuz like, they are. That kinda dodges my point about ideology, though! They're normal people and that's what's scary about fascism - they grew up learning to hate Palestinians and dehumanize them, and now they're acting on what they learned.

They need deprogramming. Preferably in prison.

[-] llamapocalypse@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

I guess part of my stance is that my definition of a "shitty person" includes those who would rather outsource their thinking to someone else, whether that's a political, religious, or some other figure. Although a lot of that does get down to good education (whether formal or not), which not everybody has access to. Even with my relatively privileged upbringing I've had to unlearn a lot of crap over the years, and not everybody has that luxury.

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago

Ideology is actually an internalized process. They think for themselves, they aren't just mindless fascist zombies, but their ideology makes their thinking take this shape. It would certainly require a lot of unlearning!

Also, their ideology acts as a shield against the trauma of their own actions. Someone who snipes children needs that ideology to survive, because without it they'd likely kill themselves (or frag a superior officer, like sometimes happens when soldiers empathize with civilian victims)

[-] speck@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago

Human history begs to differ on that

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

You should read about the Milgram Experiments. And the Stanford Prison Experiment.

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot be easily duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes into work every day and has a job to do.

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

[-] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 8 months ago

For what it's worth the Stanford Prison Experiment was basically a lie. More than merely suffering from psychology's massive replication crisis (which is enough of a problem on its own), the study was heavily manipulated by those conducting it in order to get the outcome they wanted. Its outcomes really shouldn't be pointed to as evidence of anything.

As far as I know Milgram is still good and successfully reproducible, however.

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[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago

The best defense against Nazism is to recognize that Nazis were ordinary people like ourselves. The scary thing about Nazism is not that Nazis were unusual monsters but that they were not. No society is immune to fascism, and no person can be sure they are. The same goes for military brutality and war crimes. The people who do it are for the most part like us, not unusual psychopaths.

[-] DaDragon@kbin.social -2 points 8 months ago

Fair, but that argument stops working when it’s a large portion of a society. Our understandings of right and wrong are somewhat a social construct, and so subject to social change. All it really requires is a variation of ‘us v them’ mentality for most people to accept it as fact.

[-] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 7 points 8 months ago

that argument stops working when it’s a large portion of a society.

Not the person you responded to, but I'd disagree with that. I'd say that if a large portion of a society can be said to be insane, then that doesn't change the standard for sanity - it just means that the society itself is insane.

Our understandings of right and wrong are somewhat a social construct, and so subject to social change.

Only reasonably within a particular range. There are points beyond which societal notions of right and wrong become self-defeating, and thus irrational at best.

For instance, if one holds that the killing of innocents is such an egregious wrong that it justifies the killing of innocents, then one has created a closed loop in which every purportedly justified killing in turn becomes a wrong that purportedly justifies the next killing, which in turn becomes a wrong that purportedly justifies the next killing, and so on, endlessly.

That's rather obviously irrational at best, and arguably insane, since it justifies that which it condemns and condemns that which it justifies. And that's the case entirely regardless of how many or how few people believe it.

[-] Evkob@lemmy.ca -3 points 8 months ago

Have you considered the possibility that the majority of people are shitty and/or psychopaths?

Like most people will hear about companies using child slaves in impoverished countries and the biggest reaction is what, a boycott? Even that's a minority of people, most just keep on truckin' as if we don't live in a disgusting fucked up world.

When's the last time you heard about that Apple factory where people were regularly committing suicide? Why does Nestlé still exist despite widespread public knowledge of all the horrible shit they've pulled?

[-] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

majority of people are shitty and/or psychopaths

Bruh, that sound like either projection or very bad place you live in.

[-] thebuoyancyofcitrus@beehaw.org 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If the influence of ideology is enough to convince you to snipe children in the head, you're still a bad person. Weird take to be presented with children who were shot by a weapon that's purpose built for accuracy and rush to defend the person that pulled the trigger. Edit: grammar

[-] DaDragon@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago

It’s the same way I can’t completely blame Hamas fighters for everything they did on them being bad people, either.

It’s a way of acknowledging that the difference between me/you and them is not their actions themselves, but primarily their targets.

It’s why simply removing the ‘problematic’ individuals on either side can’t fix anything, and we should keep that in mind lest nothing can change.

[-] speck@kbin.social 2 points 8 months ago

I don't view the people here as defending those people so much as acknowledging some realities about our species

[-] the_post_oftom_joad@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Less a necessarily bad person, and more an ideologically influenced one, I’d wager.

What does 'bad person' even mean?

he asked rhetorically

[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Less a necessarily bad person, and more an ideologically influenced one,

[-] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 63 points 8 months ago

This is as much America's genocide as it is the Zionists. They are providing all the weapons and giving the political cover for Israel to act with total impunity.

[-] dbilitated@aussie.zone 10 points 8 months ago

right. imagine what would happen if people stopped feeding them weapons

[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 40 points 8 months ago

I'm glad bro made it back in one piece considering he was Hamas the moment he arrived to help.

[-] Onihikage@beehaw.org 25 points 8 months ago

Ctrl-f: genocide
Phrase not found

It's frustrating that so many who even talk about this are apparently too chickenshit to say what it actually is. Israel is openly committing Genocide. History will not be kind to Benjamin Netanyahu or the IDF.

[-] livus@kbin.social 4 points 8 months ago

@Onihikage we have been calling this a genocide for months now and we have multiple articles on it a day. We can't say "genocide is genocide" on every single post about the genocide.

This community is talking about morality in relation to those who kill children. On one of the other lemmys this article is posted, they are trying to decide what the food is in the picture.

[-] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It took this fucking long for mainstream media to finally fucking call it what it is; a genocide, and they didn't even use the fucking word once.

[-] TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml -3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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