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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

Consistency. "This must never stand" vs "This must not stand in this particular case only because it negatively affects my group".

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Yes, when you don't care about anything because your ancestors were ousted from the Euphrates delta five thousand years ago, I'm sure consistency will help.

It helps separate principled people from others. Some will say "countries must never be invaded, occupied, or annexed", others will add "... if it's done by Israel, but I'll absolutely ignore/support it if it's done by Turkey, Russia, China".

And the latter group is fundamentally not principled, they are biased to the core, and this is an easy way to tell them apart.

It's like people who are against capital punishment vs people who are against capital punishment when it affects them & their friends.

Maybe my principle is "I should stand up against any current invasion, gradually caring less over twenty years". The two options you present aren't the only two that exist.

Maybe. would be a rare sight, because the anti-israel crowd was primarily celebrating on oct 7th (an invasion), and is silent on russia's invasion of ukraine (because russia is allied with Hamas & Iran). And they trace their grievance back to their failed attempt to drive the jews into the sea, which they call nakba. Far older than e.g. northern cyprus being invaded and occupied (ongoing) by turkey.

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