The numbers were reported by Hamas. The UN merely used those numbers.

Tell me why we should put blind faith into anything published by Hamas?

Not all iMessage features can be mapped to RCS, so unless Apple brings iMessage to other platforms, non-Apple phones will always be associated with an inferior messaging experience.

Because the IDF reported those numbers, and if the IDF reports those numbers, that means you were right?

Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified

The reaction from Apple users is to blame Android users - which is entirely unjustified.

But of course, post purchase rationalization and brand loyalty play a big part in why people want to externalize blame rather than questioning their own decision or blaming their favorite company for providing a shitty cross-platform messaging experience.

You mean we should believe the numbers when the IDF is reporting them?

Beeper already deregistered the numbers, but it takes 24 to 36 hours for Apple servers to forget the deregistered numbers.

The two things go hand in hand, though.

Degraded messaging gets branded with green bubbles. Green bubbles - i.e. non-Apple phones - get associated with degraded messaging. Non-Apple phones get pidgeon-holed as crappy phones for messaging. People get bullied into buying iPhones.

These must be those death panels Republicans warned us of when the Affordable Care Act passed…

Because I don’t think Hamas are democratically chosen in Gaza.

That’s true for the majority of nations in the region, though, isn’t it?

Nobody elected the House of Saud to rule Saudi Arabia. Nobody democratically chose the House of Al Thani to rule Qatar. Nobody voted on having the House of Maktoum rule Dubai.

Gaza is not a country. It’s an open air prison created by Israel.

Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza, it evacuated Jewish settlers, it tore down illegal Jewish settlements, it handed over Israeli assets to the Palestinians, it effectively completely handed over control.

It didn’t open its borders to Gaza, just like Egypt didn’t open its borders to Gaza.

If Gaza is an open air prison, isn’t Egypt to blame, too?

People there lack basic freedom.

People there primarily lack basic freedom because they’re being ruled by an Islamist terrorist organization that claims for itself to be the official government of Gaza.

But how is that different from other nations like Saudi Arabia or Dubai or Qatar or Bahrain or Abu Dhabi - other than the fact that those totalitarian regimes are swimming in money, and Palestinians aren’t (ignoring the fact that Hamas leadership managed to squirrel away $11 billion for itself)?

I should have also been more specific, my problems are not the government of Gaza, but the militant side of it.

I find it hard to draw a line, since the official government of Gaza often just echoes the exact same language used by its terrorist wing.

But let’s say it were possible to draw a strict line: would you then be willing to do the same for Israel as well? Are you explicitly drawing a distinction between Likud and e.g. Shas or Labor or Hadash-Ta’al? Or between militant settlers building illegal settlements in the West Bank, and people practicing communal socialism in a kibbutz in Israel proper? Or between people who have been demonstrating for months against the Netanyahu government, and people voting for and supporting Netanyahu?

Or do you just not care, and you’ll simply condemn all and anything under the label of Israel?

So again, I want to ask, do you condemn Israel SPECIFICALLY?

That’s REALLY kind of predicated upon your answer to how you would define Israel or draw distinctions between groups within Israel.

But let me ask you: why do you appear to be so unhappy with a position that condemns any and all violence against innocent civilians? Given how many different sides and factions are committing so many different atrocities, isn’t that a reasonable position?

It’s probably just a definition thing.

To me, constructive criticism means that the criticism doesn’t just point out failure, but that it then also shows how to correct that failure.

By itself, “you’re doing it wrong” is just destructive: it takes something apart, it destroys it. Without a subsequent “and here’s how you would do it right,” it doesn’t become constructive, it doesn’t help in putting things back together in the correct way.

Sure, as a first step, “you’re doing it wrong” is completely justified when something is actually wrong.

But without the second step - the constructive part - it just doesn’t constitute constructive criticism. By itself, it’s just criticism.

Is saying “you’re doing it wrong” really constructive?

I condemn any atrocities committed by any side against innocent civilians.

Doesn’t matter whether it’s Hamas or the IDF or Islamic Jihad or militant settlers in the West Bank or Hezbollah or Huthi rebels firing rockets into Israel.

Can I ask you why you would say that you condemn Hamas rather than saying “I condemn Gaza” - given that Hamas is being treated as the official representation of the people of Gaza, that Hamas has majority approval in the population of Gaza, that the October 7th attackers came from Gaza, that the rocket attacks are being launched from Gaza, etc?

Exactly.

So why are people not calling out Gaza, which is ruled by a terrorist organization that commits mass murders, mass rape, infanticide and terrorism?

Ah yes, poor genocidal Israel is being held to “a different standard” after killing more children and journalists within a month than has ever happened in recorded history.

You’ve never actually opened a history book, right?

Poor souls, clearly everyone is only criticising them because they are Jewish, not because they are an apartheid ethnostate (and since fucking when are ethnostates a good thing).

We’ve just been over this.

Your argument would hold water if people criticized other nations doing the exact same thing in the exact same way they criticize Israel.

That’s not the case - so something has to be different.

I think you are delusional.

I think your hatred for Israel blinds you.

You’re really puzzled that a nation founded as a Jewish ethnostate is being held to an entirely different standard than virtually any other nation in the world? And yet you’re here, commenting on the Palestinian-Israel conflict?

Nah, you have a brain, you know why.

Dude, we’re having a personal, one-on-one conversation. If I didn’t want to hear your opinion, I wouldn’t have bothered asking you a question in the first place.

I’m just interested in why people have a radically different standard for Israel than for Gaza or Hamas or Palestine. I’m interested why people are a-okay with saying “fuck Israel” or “Israel is a terrorist state” or “Israel is committing genocide,” but then don’t have the heart to use the exact same standards for Gaza/Hamas/Palestine.

And clearly, you don’t.

When asked a fairly straightforward question, instead of saying something like “if Hamas does the exact same thing that the IDF is doing, then they deserve the same label,” it seems that you’re getting all defensive. As if you simply don’t have it on your heart to say something like “fuck Hamas.”

I may be wrong, but that’s certainly how it comes across. And I don’t mean to pick on you personally, either. There’s a ton of people around who will say “Israel is a terrorist state because they’re murdering innocent civilians,” but those same people just can’t bring themselves to say anything negative about Hamas, even when it’s pointed out that Hamas has absolutely zero problems murdering hundreds of civilians and even though Hamas keeps loudly telling everyone that they will keep on murdering innocent civilians in the future, and that anyone who murders innocent Israeli civilians is a hero.

I think that’s worth noticing.

Because Israel always gets held to a different standard.

Now the question is: why is that?

Saying Fuck Gaza is like saying fuck Wyoming, so sure why not? We say fuck Texas, or fuck Florida all the time.

The West Bank is ruled by Fatah. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, partly because after Israel withdrew from Gaza, removed all Israeli settlers in Gaza, tore down illegal Israeli settlements and handed over other Israeli infrastructure to the Palestinians, Hamas got into power and never held elections again. Oh, and they also murdered Fatah members and instituted a de facto dictatorship.

So it makes sense to look at Gaza separately from the West Bank.

Saying fuck Palestine would be the equivalent to Saying fuck Israel.

Well, all right then: are you okay with people saying 'Fuck Palestine" if they just dislike Hamas?

Just because no one said that about America doesn’t mean this one isn’t genocide. Just because one nation got away with it in the past does not make this any less genocide than it is.

That’s right.

However, if incredibly different standards are being used depending on the nation in question, that certainly raises suspicions that people are not actually criticizing the act (a military intervention to combat a terrorist organization), but rather the nation itself.

If two countries can have the exact same experience (a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of its citizens), react to that in the exact same way (a military intervention determined to root out there terrorist organization at any cost, willingly accepting that thousands of civilians are being killed as “collateral damage”), but one gets accused of committing genocide while the other one gets celebrated (remember “Mission Accomplished” or the spontaneous celebrations when bin Laden was killed?), doesn’t that warrant the question why identical actions get treated so differently?

It took decades to build a strong case against genocide in Israel. It’s not a word people toss around lightly.

America occupied Iraq and Afghanistan for decades. Why wasn’t the same “strong case” never built against America? Why are people accusing Israel of genocide for killing thousands, but nobody has ever bothered accusing America of genocide for causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands?

You say that America is to powerful, that nobody could stand in it’s way - but that shouldn’t have stopped human rights organizations from saying that America is committing genocide, that shouldn’t have stopped the UN from accusing America of genocide, that shouldn’t have stopped people to demonstrate in the streets with Iraqi or Afghan flags demanding “free Afghanistan.”

Why did none of that happen?