coldharvest wrote:.....like the Pals give a shit about their kids.
I'm still exercised by this, the notion that because Hamas tries to indoctrinate children in hatred (unquestionably deplorable and to be condemned), somehow it follows that Palestinians in general don't care about their kids. And then to use this as justification for whatever indignity (even if no more) one wants to inflict on them - and their children.
Would anyone accept without caveats what seem to me to be the same sort of generalisations (involving present or recent policies or actions of their authorities):
The Brits are baby-killers (abortion)
The Poles are anti-semitic
The Czechs are racists (Gypsies)
or
The Americans are war-mongers ...
let alone use them to say those whole people deserve what's coming to them?
They're all to a greater or lesser degree dehumanising, and even where there's some objective truth behind them, the application to a whole people can't to my mind be right.
Similarly, but without the government angle, there are indiscriminately applied stereotypes such as:
Gypsies are thieves
French Arabs are
racaille ('scum' - Sarkozy)
which also seem to me reprehensible. And from there it looks to be only a short step to say:
Moslems are terrorists
Catholics are paedophiles
and
Jews are vermin
with all the consequences of that.
One of the first things I learnt when I set to with logic books was about black swans, which I thought would apply here, but I'm told that it doesn't. Since it is a general trait of swans to be white, particular individual exceptions (black swans; non-racist Czechs; honest Gypsies; Palestinians who love their children/don't indoctrinate them to hate Israelis) don't apparently make the proposition incorrect.
It also seems to be a form of the fallacy of guilt by association.
I feel sure if I made an unqualified accusation that Americans in general are war-mongers (which of course I don't think and wouldn't say), I'd be pulled up immediately (and rightly so). So how is it OK to say the Palestinians don't care about their children?
Shes never interfered with me. I have no complaints about her.
Same here.
Mega ditto.
I met her once and I found her to be a nice lady. Not kookey in any way.
Penta has always been gracious, kind and very sane in all my interactions with her.