Israeli assault targets symbols of Hamas power

[Amby 490]

Yes they are. All human life has equal value. Unless someone named You god while I wasn't reading.

Get upset all you like, that I can respect.

That's just nonsense.

A professor's life is worth more than a child molester's.

What if the professor is a child molester?

Still worth more than a dumbass molester.

According to who?

Me. Common sense. Education is worth something.

It is????????????

don't make me tell them you wear pink!

[Chica Yeyé 41]

don't make me tell them you wear pink!

B!TCH

How dare you :crying:

[Amby 490]

don't make me tell them you wear pink!

B!TCH

How dare you

[Tahoma 2,291]

Yes they are. All human life has equal value. Unless someone named You god while I wasn't reading.

Get upset all you like, that I can respect.

That's just nonsense.

A professor's life is worth more than a child molester's.

What if the professor is a child molester?

Still worth more than a dumbass molester.

According to who?

Me. Common sense. Education is worth something.

Are you saying that you didn't learn anything worthwhile after you finished school?

[mawilson 2,133]

Yes they are. All human life has equal value. Unless someone named You god while I wasn't reading.

Get upset all you like, that I can respect.

That's just nonsense.

A professor's life is worth more than a child molester's.

What if the professor is a child molester?

Still worth more than a dumbass molester.

According to who?

Me. Common sense. Education is worth something.

Are you saying that you didn't learn anything worthwhile after you finished school?

I know reading is hard for you, but read carefully and you will understand what I'm saying!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Yes they are. All human life has equal value. Unless someone named You god while I wasn't reading.

Get upset all you like, that I can respect.

That's just nonsense.

A professor's life is worth more than a child molester's.

What if the professor is a child molester?

Still worth more than a dumbass molester.

You can't equate everything in nature to some kind of value scale. What's worth more - the Grand Canyon or the great pyramids of Egypt? Nonsensical.

[Tahoma 2,291]

Yes they are. All human life has equal value. Unless someone named You god while I wasn't reading.

Get upset all you like, that I can respect.

That's just nonsense.

A professor's life is worth more than a child molester's.

What if the professor is a child molester?

Still worth more than a dumbass molester.

According to who?

Me. Common sense. Education is worth something.

Are you saying that you didn't learn anything worthwhile after you finished school?

I know reading is hard for you, but read carefully and you will understand what I'm saying!

I'm just killing time here while you publish your guidebook on everyone's relative worth to one another.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yes they are. All human life has equal value. Unless someone named You god while I wasn't reading.

Get upset all you like, that I can respect.

That's just nonsense.

A professor's life is worth more than a child molester's.

What if the professor is a child molester?

Still worth more than a dumbass molester.

According to who?

Me. Common sense. Education is worth something.

Are you saying that you didn't learn anything worthwhile after you finished school?

Who decides if your life has worth? Because you make a lot of money?

I mean, are you more deserving of being alive than a mentally retarded person. How many criminals or retarded people should be sacrificed to save your life?

We can make such arguments when it comes to desert island survival situations perhaps - when the skills of a doctor are more useful than a high paid banker or wall street executive, but given that we aren't really talking in those terms I wonder how someone actually quantifies the value of a human life. You might want to make sweeping judgements but I really doubt you could justify it ethically.

If you think you can I'm all ears...

[mawilson 2,133]

You can't equate everything in nature to some kind of value scale. What's worth more - the Grand Canyon or the great pyramids of Egypt? Nonsensical.

Not the same category, Steven - the pyramids are man-made structures, while the

Grand Canyon is one of Mother Nature's masterpieces.

You can put a value on people's lives. If you had to kill one of two people -

1) a famous artist/composer/scientist or

2) a lazy, drug-addicted bum who hasn't done anything in his life,

who would you kill?

I'll make it easier for you - if you don't kill one of them, I will kill 1,000 people,

starting with your family.

[HAL 9000 96]

when you are a murderer, in my opinion, your worth becomes nil.

So that must mean the mortal collateral casualties in this latest round of violence are murdered victims. On both sides.

sure if you want to look at it that way. the israelis hit by hamas rockets = murdered. the palestinians dead because of their ruling terrorist governments stupid decision making = murdered.

Yeah... its all one side's fault. Great progress can be made with that mindset, indeed.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I dunno man - for someone who resolutely defends Israel your reasoning on this "value of human" life point doesn't seem too dissimilar to the reasoning behind the concentration camps.

Perhaps I'm wrong here but it seems to me that you're saying that wealth, education and privilege gives you more of a right to be alive than someone who doesn't have these things.

[HAL 9000 96]

I, too, think that many Palestinians believe that they are the rightful owners of the land they lived on for countless generations. I also think that a strong case could be made that there is a basis in reality for this belief. How do you determine whether someone "owns" their land?

In general, there are laws that specifically state who owns what piece of land. If I purchase some land (and build a home on it), I own paperwork which states I am the owner. The Palestinians had no such documents. They were there simply because they could be and that does not constitute land ownership.

Those are quite some absolutes there buddy which more than anything reek of personally biased opinion. That's taking antisemitism to a new level that I frankly don't think even exists unless of course you're in 1940 Germany and its wannabe philosophies of hate.

The only rationally despised perspectives for most of us takes the form of fanatacism, on either side. Obviously one side is much more known than the other. And those perspectives have names: Extreme Zionism and Extreme Islamism.

In between there can and likely (eventually) will be two independent states: Palestine and Israel.

You may believe what you wish, but history has clearly shown there has been -- and always will be -- severe hatred towards Jews. In response to all the ####### the Jews have taken over the last 2000 years or more, the Israelis have become militant. They will not allow such persecution to happen again and I agree with that.

I think the claim that it's just a religious thing and that Muslims just want to hate Jews is just wrong on the face of it; there are Jewish people and Muslims living in the U.S. without firing rockets into each other. Surely part of the problem is the difference in religions/cultures, but no one who wanted to be taken seriously would argue that the U.S. and Israel couldn't be allies because of the often troubled history of Christianity and Judaism, or that since there are hundreds of years of war (literally) between Protestants and Catholics, the only thing to do is nuke northern Ireland.

Politics matters. The rise of radical Islam in the past forty years matters. The end of colonialism post WW-II matters. The way I look at it is that we're paying for a mistake and there are no good solutions. It was a bad decision to decide by fiat that the land that belonged to one group of people should be given to another; but now that it's been done, reversing the decision would be worse. The whole problem makes me sad. Emotionally it's got to be like 9/11 every day, and I can't imagine that anyone is in a good position to think of a rational solution on either side.

Israel and the U.S. are allies for one very important reason: Israel is a westernized nation and can at least somewhat reliably be our eyes and ears in the Middle East. If they lacked such usefulness to the U.S., I doubt this country would care about them at all. Politics dictate who assists whom. This means that alliances can form if one country can benefit the other. If no such possibility exists then there will be no alliance.

Do you have documents proving this hatred is widespread and all around or is that just what you believe? Mind you, antisemitism is a disgusting and quite stupid thing to behold and all... but since you are ready to discredit centuries of real Palestinian residence in Palestine because they don't have deeds to their properties... then you must be ready to admit your logic in the same way is pretty flawed.

I also agree Jews should be prepared to defend themselves. Militance does not necessarily mean being aggressive oppressors.

In general, there are laws that specifically state who owns what piece of land. If I purchase some land (and build a home on it), I own paperwork which states I am the owner. The Palestinians had no such documents. They were there simply because they could be and that does not constitute land ownership.

The Palestinians did have such documents.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/60years...7142130391.html

'They have a land called Palestine'

By Casey Kauffman in south Lebanon

Abu Mamun has lived in Ein el Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon since he fled his

Palestinian village in 1948

The issue of land ownership endures as one of the most wrenching issues for Palestinians who left homes, livelihoods and land behind in 1948.

Al Jazeera's Casey Kauffman travelled to Ein el Hilweh refugee camp in the south of Lebanon where he met one Palestinian man for whom land is a matter of pride and dignity.

Abu Mamun escaped from his Palestinian village, once called Ras al Ahmar, in 1948. As he was waiting on the Lebanese border for the Arab Liberation Army to fight off the Jewish militias, he decided to go back under cover of night for his land ownership documents.

Abu Mamun still has his land

ownership documents

"The Israeli massacre in Safsaf was next to our town. We were scared and we ran away to Lebanon.

"We had nothing. I used to sneak back to my village at night to bring food and other things - like thieves in our homes stealing our own possessions.

"One night I brought all my documents. This is proof that I paid taxes and that the land is mine," he said.

Abu Mamun, who is now 90, has been in Lebanon ever since but has kept his documents and still has clear memories of where he used to live.

"I tell my grandkids they have land and a country called Palestine, so they know they have more than this refugee life here - where we do not have anything," he told Al Jazeera.

World's apart

Ein el Hilweh refugee camp is only 45km away from Abu Mamun's former home in Ras al Ahmar - which is now in Israel. But it is a world apart and one that he cannot return to.

"I always think about being back and farming on my own land in my own country. There is a big difference. I remember what it was like to not be in debt to somebody else," he says.

Leaving Abu Mamun behind in Lebanon, Al Jazeera travelled to Israel to search for his old village.

Saeed stands in the land that was

once Abu Mamun's

There we met Saeed, a 90-year-old Palestinian man who stayed behind in Israel. He used to live close to Abu Mamun's village and knows his whole family and where they used to farm in the Ghazal valley.

He takes us to Ras al Ahmar, which has now been renamed Karem Ben Zimra. Today a Jewish community lives there and there are few signs of the past.

The Ghazal valley where Abu Mamun used to farm is a few hundred metres down the hill from Karem Ben Zimra - but most of the olive trees are now neglected.

Saeed says: "The Ghazal valley is still the same. All the olive trees are here - but they use it as grazing land for their cows - not humans."

When he return to Abu Mamun in Lebanon, we show him pictures of the land he has not seen in 60 years.

"My feelings have changed," he says looking at the pictures. "Anyone who sees his land after all this time will feel different. I am glad I got the chance to see my home again. We used to have all this land - it was all ours."

Abu Mamun says that he could go back and live with the Arab Jews. He remembers how they lived together peacefully before 1948.

But he adds that he would not return home unless the Israelis have left. Until that happens, he will keep farming somebody else's 20-metre patch of land in South Lebanon.

Oh my... they DID have deeds. Woops then to those documents being respected.

I'm not sure I understand how the historical persecution of the jews and "religion" be the deciding factor on finding a solution to this problem.

How can the ideological rationale for the establishment of the state of Israel trump the day to day economic/political realities of living in that region?

I mean... its not too different to saying that because the USA was established via the rejection of British colonial rule, that the US should still hold a grudge against the UK for it. Clearly it doesn't - becase the political realities of the modern time supercede the original conditions.

Zionism 101.

Hey its all good. I say Israel YES. Nothing wrong at all about that.

I just wish they wouldn't have transferred their collective trauma unto others, which, in psychological terms, is what happened. Sad. Truly sad.

[Tahoma 2,291]

You can't equate everything in nature to some kind of value scale. What's worth more - the Grand Canyon or the great pyramids of Egypt? Nonsensical.

Not the same category, Steven - the pyramids are man-made structures, while the

Grand Canyon is one of Mother Nature's masterpieces.

You can put a value on people's lives. If you had to kill one of two people -

1) a famous artist/composer/scientist or

2) a lazy, drug-addicted bum who hasn't done anything in his life,

who would you kill?

I'll make it easier for you - if you don't kill one of them, I will kill 1,000 people,

starting with your family.

If I have to explain the absurdity of this gibberish to you...you wouldn't understand it.

[HAL 9000 96]

You can't equate everything in nature to some kind of value scale. What's worth more - the Grand Canyon or the great pyramids of Egypt? Nonsensical.

Not the same category, Steven - the pyramids are man-made structures, while the

Grand Canyon is one of Mother Nature's masterpieces.

You can put a value on people's lives. If you had to kill one of two people -

1) a famous artist/composer/scientist or

2) a lazy, drug-addicted bum who hasn't done anything in his life,

who would you kill?

I'll make it easier for you - if you don't kill one of them, I will kill 1,000 people,

starting with your family.

If I have to explain the absurdity of this gibberish to you...you wouldn't understand it.

I think he's being coy is all... to be honest I think our brother mawilson is a latte-drinking Palestine + Israel supporter.

[mawilson 2,133]

Who decides if your life has worth? Because you make a lot of money?

We're not talking about monetary worth, so how much money you make is irrelevant.

I mean, are you more deserving of being alive than a mentally retarded person.

Yes. I'm more useful (to society) than a mentally retarded person.

How many criminals or retarded people should be sacrificed to save your life?

Probably none - we don't usually kill people to save other people, but that doesn't

mean that all human life has the same value. It just means that all human life

has *some* inherent value worthy of protection in law.

We can make such arguments when it comes to desert island survival situations perhaps - when the skills of a doctor are more useful than a high paid banker or wall street executive, but given that we aren't really talking in those terms I wonder how someone actually quantifies the value of a human life. You might want to make sweeping judgements but I really doubt you could justify it ethically.

Life can be valued in proportion to a person's potential usefulness to society or other people,

for example.