The Purpose of Blogging is What it Does

A point I was trying to make earlier - stated intents and motives aren't as important as results. It's like when the US told Kataib Hezbollah "actions speak louder than words". For reference, Kataib Hezbollah has followed up on their words (from January) to refrain from attacking in order to not embarass the Iraqi government by not attacking despite the US assassinating one of their leaders.

Anyways, the US' constant refrain of Israel having to do more to protect civilians while supplying the very bombs being used to slaughter them is one of those examples of bullshitting about motives. As is just about everything that the IDF and Israeli regime says about protecting civilians.

But a lot of people refuse to believe this. They are the "good guys" - how can they be doing the war crimes? Only other people commit crimes, certainly not the Forces of Justice! I mean, Hamas is a terrorist organization - therefore anyone opposing them has got to be good and incapable of doing anything wrong - right? Of course this infantile moronic worldview is ridiculous, but it is also widely accepted.

Here's how I want to refute it. Facts matter. Results matter. And if you accept that, then there are some important consequences:

According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances.

Sure "cybernetician" is a pretty wanky word, but the principle here is a pretty good one. Results matter. If a system is doing something - starving children to death for example - then it can only be one of two things - an "unintended consequence" or it is being done on purpose.

With that, let me note the following:

Israel has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) not to issue emergency orders for it to step up humanitarian aid to Gaza to address a looming famine, dismissing South Africa's request to do so as "morally repugnant". 

In a legal filing to the United Nations' top court, made public on Monday, Israel said it "has real concern for the humanitarian situation and innocent lives, as demonstrated by the actions it has and is taking" in Gaza during the war.

Children have been dying of malnutrition for weeks now. Warnings of starvation were issued by international aid groups last year. What has been demonstrated by Israel's actions is that they are starving children on purpose. If this was an "unintended consequence" - they would have changed their approach a long time ago.

Their excuse for this - the only thing they have to explain their genocidal actions other than just pure eliminationist hatred - is that these are collateral damages in their righteous mission to "destroy Hamas". Just so we are clear - the best case scenario, the kindest take you can have to defend Israel's actions - is that they are intentionally starving children to death over the span of months but that these are acceptable losses.

Israel has now killed more children by starvation in the past month than all children killed by Hamas in any way throughout their entire existence.

And it is only going to get worse.

And this is all intentional on Israel's part. It is what they want to happen.