I always thought this 'problem' was bullshit - not because I dreamed of being some special snowflake 'outside the box' little shit who just wants to bypass the difficulty in question, but because the answer is so obvious. If you have perfect certainty that you can either save 1 life or 5 lives, then that's the same as choosing to kill 1 person or 5 persons. Perfect certainty makes inaction as culpable as action. It's only in reality, where there's uncertainty, that you can balk at taking action.

In the same way I find the moral dilemma of killing Hitler as a baby to be ridiculous. If you, as a time traveler from 2016, balk at the idea of going back to 1889 to kill baby Hitler, but you're fine with going back to 1939 to kill adult Hitler and maybe prevent WW2, then you essentially want hundreds of thousands of people to die in concentration camps just to make you feel good about your murderous action. Ridiculous.

"After all, if we take them at face value, they admittedly were in charge of two concentration camps that existed to exterminate their people."

wat.

I'd eat you and your baby in a heart beat if it meant survival for me. But the fact is almost nobody on this planet is currently in that situation, probably never will, and the more people that become vegan, the less likely that is to happen as well.

So yes, people that have made a conscious decision to not do cruel things while they are unnecessary are superior. Just like in the way you don't go around murdering people for shoes right now, even though in the apocalypse you would, makes you a superior person compared with some thug that does that now. You would probably steal food from people that need it, but you aren't doing that now, so you're definitely superior to people that do steal unnecessarily now too. But you don't see anyone telling people who don't steal to get off their high horses.....

There is no humor because the situation is so serious, not because it's puncturing a balloon of superiority. Or do you think that people who opposed concentration camps where simply doing so to feel superior too?
The other thing that makes it totally not funny is because I've heard this ignorant and false stereotype stuff so many times it makes my eyes roll. Vegans are as a diverse group of people as can possibly be, with the only thing in common is their compassion for animals, and care of the environment.

I'm also not a lion or a chimp, I don't copy their other behaviors like throwing poo or licking my own ass, so I don't see why I'd copy their carnivorous behavior either. It's a good thing I have a frontal lobe and can use reason to make decisions based on my understanding of the consequences.

Also while I would eat meat for survival, I would not be eating it for the taste. It sounds to me like you're under the impression that vegans are like ex-heroin addicts, always being tempted by that next hit. It's not like that all, taste buds adjust dramatically over time, in fact they adjust second to second - eat an apple after a swig of soft drink. It'll taste sour. Yet do it before, and the apple is sweet. I honestly find the thought of meat revolting now, just like you would if you had to eat something like a dog or rat. I feel the same way about milk the way you do about drinking human breast milk. I'm not just saying this to be dramatic or superior, I'm saying it to give you an example how easily your taste buds are influenced.

1)As if they DID know what the future would hold when they left? EDIT: Those things you mention had not happened when the Jewish people invaded Palestine in the 30's, and NO ONE KNEW what was coming 10 years later.
2)Yes. The European Jews invaded FIRST. Before that, the Arabs and Jews lived peacefully in the region from all history I can find. There was no 'civil war', it was a war against invaders coming from all over Europe in an effort to 'create' a nation.
3)The Jewish population was not growing in relation to the Arab population, so it was still <8% when the European Jewish invasion began, an invasion of foreigners, not a native population boom which the Arabs had. Duh.
4)'standing army' is hardly a measure of applicable force. If it were, we would be Iraqis today. They had far more men in their army when we walked over them with advanced technology, exactly like the Jews did. I've been over that. We (the US) supplied them advanced weapons making enlisted numbers meaningless...
...also, you ignore that ALL 'Israeli' are in the army, 100%. The 'standing army' number is only the professional soldiers, not the entire force by far.
...AND....The Jews didn't need to mount any defense if they had not invaded.
5)What should they have done? Much better minds than mine have failed on a solution that pleases everyone, but stealing another people's property using deadly force, and then subjugating the survivors for decades to the stone age in concentration camps is absolutely NOT the right answer.
That said....If they were truly 'refugees', they should go to refugee camps (as should the Syrians, I don't get why they are spreading all over Europe, but I digress) until they can either be assimilated in other cultures or return home. Period.

Once again...things being bad at home does not give one the right to just move in on someone else's land and push them off. That's what Israel is, a land theft by overwhelming force, and an expansion of that theft continuing to this day. EDIT: It's akin to me stating 'my brother abuses me at home, so I'm moving into your house and you're moving out, and my buddy's with big guns gave me some to force that to happen.' Is that OK? If so, what's your address?

6)Have you seen the stuff right wingers used to wright about Jews...how about the KKK? How about Palin and her cohorts? If some idiot spouting hatred is a reason to run, the entire planet would be on the run all the time.
Would you support blacks invading any European countries they choose because they are treated poorly here in the US? With money and arms? Displacing the current residents and subjugating any that stay as sub human non citizens? I doubt it. EDIT: Would you also make the argument then that it's OK because the invaders are a smaller military than the country they invade, even though they have far better weapons and more of them? What's the difference?

Um...no
The Jews that invaded Palestine were illegitimate because they were illegal immigrants invading what was essentially a British 'colony'.
That has nothing to do with the fact that the USA didn't take as many as we might have. Those are two separate wrongs.
Palestine was not invaded because it was 'safer'..it was invaded because they wanted to own it. If it was about safety, they would have illegally immigrated to the multiple neighboring countries, not one single place all the way across Europe....kind of like the Syrian refugees are doing. If the Syrians all went to Belgium, installed their own laws and government supplanting the local Belgians', made the Belgians non-citizens, took their lands and properties, pushed them into one small corner ghetto, then complained about how bad the Belgians are...we would laugh at their faces as we blasted the shit out of them...why did we support Jews doing the EXACT same thing without a gun forcing (edit: most of) them out of their homes like the Syrians had?
Palestine did NOT have a SIZEABLE Jewish population, it was close to 5% before the invasion. It also wasn't closer by far than any other country in Europe. It only made perfect sense because their religious leaders told them to go there and 'take back their ancestral homeland'.

I never said those in the 40's were not that desperate, nor did I ever suggest we 'change history'. You need a reading comprehension refresher. I said those illegally invading in the 30's had little to flee (unless you are saying they had a time machine and KNEW what was coming). I also say those in the 40's after the war and all those coming after that had NOTHING to flee.

The difference being that the Arabs had been there for centuries, living peacefully with a small Jewish population as part of their 'country', yes, peacefully. It wasn't until the Brits ignored their own immigration laws and allowed the Jews to invade by the thousands that conflict broke out. Today, non Jews are not full citizens in the land that the Palestinians lived on for eons, and what's left of the native Palestinians are held in a concentration camp.

If things being bad where you live is a legitimate reason to take another country, all of Africa should be taking Europe today, along with much of Asia. In fact, we may as well forget countries if that's the metric, all countries treat some group poorly.

The invaders gained more land than they had at the outset (they had NONE at the outset, they lived in what had been British ruled Palestine, and was now reverting to Palestinian rule...) but the Jews wanted their own Jewish country and stole it from the people who had never had an army, using American weapons purchased mainly with American money (or given to them for free) while the Palestinians were barely supported by their neighbors, who had never been their allies. It was not "civil war' it was an invasion. Those fighting came from elsewhere to steal the land, it was not just the native Jews fighting, it was mostly invading Jews.

Yes, of course they refused. If Mexico took Texas, then the UN said "OK, it's yours, just don't take New Mexico", yet the Mexicans were already settling in New Mexico with their army protecting the settlements, I really don't think the US would accept the UN plan either. It was ridiculous and a plan based on stealing from Peter to pay Paul back for somethin Ringo stole. WTF?!?

Yes, that counts as 'stealing land' using overwhelming force, then fighting over it, then stealing MORE land, then subjugating and dehumanizing the locals, then stealing MORE land, and more land, and more land, and whining and crying that they're the victims.

The alliance of Arab nations that fought them was much SMALLER militarily, you know this.
When a 'smaller' invading force uses it's international contacts to become a violent racist bully, uses it's overwhelming force to steal land for decades, pushing the locals into the sea or concentration camps, kills tens of thousands and imprisons millions in horrendous conditions for decades and claims they want peace, yes, they need to return all the land they gained with their evil behavior or expect the leftovers of their genocide to strike back until one side is wiped out.

They were not a nation when they did this. They were an invading horde of Europeans trying to create a religious nation on someone else's land.

And while Australia and the US have an abysmal record on refugees, NZ is worse.

While at least we're not sending them to concentration camps, er, "detention centers", this is the first time I've ever felt truly ashamed of my adopted country.

The concept of the joke is on target, but I can't get behind using that actual footage for humor, especially from the concentration camps.

That's a black hole for comedy and just inappropriate.

Fucking hilarious

Its worse in Israel, they had enough and have started putting blacks in camps until they can be deported. Course our news won't report it as USA licks Jews ballsacks, but Israel had enough with the crime, higher thefts among them.

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/israel-‘protect-its-jewish-nature’-building-concentration-camp-10000-african-“infiltrators”

I wonder what sort of stuff would be on american television if they were imprisoned and illegally settled by another people? Are we also to call le resistance terrorists too? Polish ghetto uprising? They are similar to Hamas. But fortunately, that occupation didn't last long enough for children to grow into lifeless, soulless terrorists who had every shred of humanity ripped from them when they saw their childhood friends, pets, family ripped to pieces by indiscriminate shelling. God, if you didn't hate "the people" who did that beforehand, you would after. I don't support Hamas, but you can't possibly try to suggest they wouldn't exist anywhere else given the same circumstances. And furthermore you can't act like Israel's death tally is anything but an investment in MORE TERRORISM.

The numbers matter though - the numbers you see represents a massacre. If you took time to look it up, you'd find the majority of those killed in Palestine were women and children - something like 700, and it's rising, so even if you counted every Palestinian male above 18 was a terrorist using a child as a literal human shield, that's still more Palestinians than terrorists. This "human shield" thing hasn't been proven in any kind of article i've seen anyway, and i suspect it's simply to dehumanise them for western palatability.

It's the world's biggest concentration camp. Even the UN are beginning to say words to the effect now, do you think they go against American interests for fun?

Given the balance of women and children killed to men, and even allowing every man to be considered a terrorist, how can you think that 700 women and children to two is a matter of equality in everything but weaponry, and how can that be used to justify continuing on this path of destruction? Surely 700:2 has to be a good argument for a different approach?

I'm not after an argument here man, i'm trying to explain the other viewpoint.. More PEOPLE are dying by Israeli weapons than combatants, that is not a good way to end the hatred that leads to terrorist attacks..

Russell provided a good deconstruction of Hannity's tactics to further Fox News' propaganda campaign. In the follow up in the sift's comments section, its ironic to learn that the Israel army has basically turned Gaza into a concentration camp for Palestinians.

OK, neither do I, which is why I find "my god is better than your god" is not a rational argument for attacking others, but many if not all religious people do think it is, and this war is being perpetrated by religious interests on both sides, and even you can't stop claiming it's an anti Muslim thing, so I'll continue to go there.
It's odd that you see Israel's right to defend itself against useless attacks, but can't fathom the Palestinian's right to do so against brutal, neighborhood flattening, needlessly indiscriminate, repeated innocent child murdering attacks.
Please explain how a displaced, ghettoized, concentration camp imprisoned, reduced to stone age people are the aggressors and the land grabbing, native displacing, expansionist, imprisoning, infinitely more powerful, completely protected, Israel is the poor little baby that's been picked on.
Fuck all Zionists in general.

Not so in any meaningful way.

Israelis are the expansionists....aggressors.
Israel bombed first this (and many other) round(s)....aggressors.
Israel has many other less harmful methods of obtaining their 'stated' goals but prefer indiscriminately bombing civilian populations and shelters, then lying about it and blaming the victims....aggressors and liars.
Israel is safe as long as the iron dome system works, and it's working fine against the fireworks, but they still claim their offensive military campaign is defensive....aggressors, liars, and assholes.
Israel has done to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them, namely force them into ghettos, then a giant concentration camp where they are randomly killed, but Israel still thinks they somehow hold the high moral ground (in large part because of people like you who will tell them so, in the face of all evidence to the contrary)....evil, history forgetting aggressors.
I think that's enough to say you are dead wrong in the first part of your statement....but they are getting their butts kicked. To me, that's a statement about the inhuman willingness of Israel to repeatedly and viciously attack a defenseless, imprisoned population rather than a slight against Palestinians.

It's the epitome of ignorance to jump to the conclusion that because one sees one side being far worse than the other, that person must be promoting the 'lesser evil'.
It's just as ignorant to jump to the conclusion that empathy for the Palestinian civilians trapped in the giant concentration camp that is Gaza is tantamount to all out support for Hamas and it's tactics. That's a total straw man argument made by those that can't answer the actual issues of an expansionist Israel flexing it's significant military muscles against a trapped, helpless, completely defenseless population that has already been ghettoized into the stone age without qualm, using the blatantly ridiculous excuse of 'defense' for a purely offensive military campaign against a civilian 'quasi-refugee' population. It seems to me that people who make that argument have made the ignant (a stubborn kind of ignorance that can't be cured by education) decision to buy into the (quite well produced, I must admit) Israeli propaganda machine and ignore the indisputable facts.
Both sides are at fault, wrong, bloodthirsty, and bad, one side IS FAR MORE at fault, wrong, bad, and bloodthirsty...or if not more bloodthirsty then at least far better at blood lust sating without conscience.

More philosophical wank citing junk analogies (lol, blowing up peoples houses with them still inside = drunken manslaughter in a bar fight?) to justify a position directly contradicted by people who should know...

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-auschwitz-borders-revisited/7847

"The late Tommy Lapid, justice minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, caused an uproar in 2004 when he said that images of an elderly Palestinian woman in Gaza “crouching on all fours, searching for her medicines in the ruins of her house” demolished by the Israeli army reminded him of his own grandmother who perished at Auschwitz. Lapid compared the Israeli army’s writing of numbers on the arms and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners to the Nazi practice of tattooing concentration camp inmates. “As a refugee from the Holocaust I find such an act insufferable,” he said in 2002."

"Lapid, who was chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, also likened the routine harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron to the anti-Semitism of pre-World War II Europe. “It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us,” he said in 2007, “but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn.” Lapid did not live long enough to see Hebron settlers attempt to burn down a house with a large Palestinian family trapped inside, an act witnessed on 4 December by Avi Issacharoff, reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who called it “a pogrom in the worst sense of the word.”

or perhaps:

http://youtu.be/qMGuYjt6CP8

"Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

I'll take the word of people who lived through the Holocaust and the formation of Israel over you... = P

I do understand that the purpose of Godwin's law is to reduce the worst kinds of hyperbole, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

Whatever you think about Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians, referring to it as extermination only shows that you haven't taken the time to understand anything about the current conflict and you are just reacting emotionally to the terrible horror of war. Extermination is the total elimination of a certain population by killing, and such an action is so far beyond the state of oppression we see in Gaza today that I just can't take your comparison seriously.

The only way you bother to support these outlandish statements is by telling me that death is death - no matter what the cause - as if that mindless tautology is enough to render two wildly different sets of circumstances and tactics equivalent.

Should we also call all murders murders and not bother to make distinctions between first degree, second degree, involuntary manslaughter, etc? Should we treat the serial killer the same as the drunken brawler who hit someone too hard in a bar fight?

Of course not. As thinking people we analyze factors such as intent, quantity, severity, remorse, and perhaps most importantly, we consider what measures can possibly be taken to correct the underlying cause. All of these elements are wildly different in the different degrees of murders, and having an honest grasp of these differences helps us understand how we as a society should react to each degree, both in terms of punishment and rehabilitation.

To similar ends, it is very important that we consider analogous distinctions in the different degrees of atrocities between nations or ethnic groups. The fact that it is obvious that I would much rather be in Gaza today than a concentration camp in 1943 is very much so relevant to this sort of analysis. The fact that there is no Israeli intent to exterminate the Palestinians is also relevant.

But if you want to leave the depth of your understanding at "dead is dead" then I guess that's your choice.