I literally started my response by saying the death of that child is an absolute, heartbreaking tragedy. Pretending I didn't say that just because I refused to use your exact script is a transparent debate tactic.
I never said 'Israel can do no wrong,' nor did I ever claim this was a war of 'holy vs. unholy people.' Those are emotional strawmen you are inventing because you cannot address the actual history and security data I laid out.
I am looking at this through the lens of international law and military strategy, not theology. International law written by the global community, not Israel is based entirely on intent. Pointing out the foundational legal and moral difference between a tragic operational error and deliberate target selection isn't claiming perfection; it is stating a basic fact of modern warfare.
You completely ignored the factual realities I brought up: the active Hamas and PIJ strongholds in Jenin, the historical consequences of the Oslo Accords, and the necessity of unconditional surrender before rebuilding.
If your only response to hard strategic history and security facts is to accuse me of thinking I'm 'holy,' then you've run out of arguments. You can keep trying to turn an existential survival reality into a moral purity test, but the facts on the ground remain unchanged

Yet so simple and human a phrase as thine own condemnation of such a villainy passed thee by, did it not?

Let me put it another way:

If the IRA (Say Hamas) killed a child, I would condemn it, because it is wrong. If the Irish Army (Say the IDF) killed a child, I would condemn it, because its wrong.
You have just demonstrated that if Hamas kills someone, it must be condemned, but if the IDF kills someone, its a tragedy.

This reminds me of a Northern Ireland Joke from 20+ years ago. I don't know if you will get it but maybe you will:

The Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley asked some school children to give him an example of a tragedy.

First child: "If someone fell off a tree, that would be a tragedy."
Paisley: "No, that would be an accident."
Second child: "If a bus full of children were to drive off a cliff, that would be a tragedy."
Paisley: "No, that would be a disaster, but not a tragedy."
Third child: "If you were in a helicopter and it crashed, that would be a tragedy."
Paisley: "Absolutely right! How do you defend that definition?"
The child replied: "Because it would not be a disaster, and it certainly would not be an accident."

This post was edited by ferdia on Jun 8 2026 06:14am

The irony of your Northern Ireland analogy is that it actually completely proves my point.
During the Troubles, if the IRA left a car bomb in downtown Omagh specifically to terrorize and kill civilians, it was a brutal act of terrorism. If the British Army or the Royal Ulster Constabulary engaged in a firefight with active IRA gunmen, and a civilian was tragically caught in the crossfire, the British government didn't celebrate it they investigated it as a horrific operational failure. The civilized world treated those two events completely differently because intent matters.
Your joke relies on the idea that the helicopter crash was secretly a good thing or a hidden intent. But international law and basic legal systems worldwide aren't built on forum jokes; they are built on the strict distinction between murder and manslaughter.
When I say a civilian death caused by the IDF is a tragedy, I am using the precise legal and moral definition: an unwanted, unintended, and horrific consequence of targeting a legitimate military threat. When Hamas kills a civilian, it is a success metric for them. They literally film it, celebrate it, and pay stipends to the killers' families.
If your moral framework cannot separate an army making a fatal error during an active military operation from a terrorist network whose explicit objective is the maximum slaughter of innocent people, then you aren't just ignoring military reality you are erasing the very concept of intent from human morality

Writing like an old playwright doesn't hide the fact that you're just copying Ferida's homework.

I explicitly called the death an absolute, heartbreaking tragedy. The fact that you two are treating a horrific loss of life as a linguistic game of 'gotcha' demanding a specific, politically loaded keyword before you'll allow a point to stand says a lot more about your debate tactics than it does about my humanity.
If you or Ferida want to actually address the Geneva Conventions, the concept of military intent, or the terrorist infrastructure in Jenin, I’m right here. If you just want to grade my vocabulary and post old memes, carry on

you keep missing the point. whether it is a tragedy or not is not relevant. what is relevant is that a child was killed and you refuse to say the words "i condemn the killing / death of that child". you do not understand our point, or you do understand it and refuse to condemn the killing regardless (presumably based on ideological grounds). I have no problem (as you know) talking about Geneva Conventions or Terrorists or discussing politics or even conceding points. We are NOT arguing about vocabulary here, and Norlander is not posting old meme's, he is highlighting a point i made.

This post was edited by ferdia on Jun 8 2026 08:29am

when you view palestinian children as no more than dogs all you can muster is "thats a tragedy". but at the end of the day a child to him is just a living obstacle between him and an objective that he needs fulfilled. the goal will never be compromised, and worse yet it's increasingly vague. remember when it was all so simple as "get the hostages back"? boy those were the days. Now its more akin to "stop Hamas from ever operating in any way ever moving forward until the end of time". well that's not even a goal you can accomplish, but it you just tell your people you have to keep trying you get a nice "moral" forever war.

If you think the distinction between an unintended tragedy and a deliberate execution isn't relevant, then you don't actually want a discussion based on the Geneva Conventions.
Under international humanitarian law the exact framework you claim you're willing to discuss the legal and moral vocabulary matters entirely. The Geneva Conventions explicitly use terms like 'collateral damage' and 'proportionality' to address the horrific, unintended civilian deaths that occur during lawful military actions against embedded enemy forces. The law does not demand a 'condemnation' for an operational tragedy; it demands adherence to the rules of targeting.
By contrast, the law uses terms like 'war crimes' and 'terrorism' for the deliberate targeting of civilians.
I don't refuse to use your script out of 'ideology.' I refuse it because your script deliberately erases the legal and moral boundary between a military force making a catastrophic error while targeting terrorists, and terrorists whose entire mission is to murder babies.
You stated you have no problem discussing the Geneva Conventions or admitting when you're wrong. If that’s true, then acknowledge the actual law: does international law treat unintended collateral damage during a military strike the same way it treats a terrorist executing a civilian? Yes or no?

this is a flippant use of "unintended collateral damage". you're basically suggesting you can bomb and area that has known civilian targets embedded with military targets and then call all of the dead civilians unintended. you can't fire a gun into a crowd and then claim you were only trying to hit 1 person when 10 people die.

The absolute desperation it takes to jump into a thread and accuse me of viewing children as 'dogs' is pathetic, the⁠snipa⁠. It shows that when you completely lack a factual counter-argument, your only remaining option is to fabricate a grotesque smear.

Yes, the goal is to permanently stop a genocidal terrorist organization from ever operating on our border again. If you think dismantling a fascist regime that launches massacres is an unaccomplishable 'forever war,' then you must think the Allies should have given up on Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany after a few months because the goal was too hard.
And ⁠Ferida⁠, this is exactly why your linguistic trap is so dishonest. You claim you aren't playing vocabulary games, but your partner ⁠snipa⁠ just exposed the entire play. You are demanding a specific keyword so you can pretend I admitted to a war crime, while your echo chamber uses it to launch vile personal attacks.
I’m done letting you two substitute emotional compliance tests and disgusting insults for actual substance. If you can’t handle a debate based on international law, military intent, and the strategic reality of defeating an embedded terror network, just say so. The fact remains: Israel fights for its survival, and no amount of forum posturing changes the law or the facts on the ground.