Borzivoj
3mo ago
It implies also that, if you are not a good Catholic (as everyone else, because we are all sinners) at least you can find salvation by work (helping your communities, joining the public rites etc).
I think there has been a misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine somewhere.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
Thank you for 1-2, those are the sorts of reasons I’d be looking for. 3 seems like a reason for us to neuter them, dominate them, or nuke them ourselves before they can do it. As for 4, if they were somehow driven out of Israel, most of them would probably come here. Unless someone simultaneously nukes Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, we should have plenty of time to evacuate the more useful Ashkenazim during any semi-realistic genocide scenario (obviously if it somehow came to that, I’d support evacuating all of them on moral rather than practical grounds).
Borzivoj
3mo ago
The charges he’s making are too vague to be interpretable (as currently stated), but you’re also not giving a substantive answer. What’s are the concrete benefits we derive from their clientage that justifies the consumption of money and influence on their behalf? I don’t have any relevant background and don’t actually have an opinion on whether they’re worthwhile clients. If there are solid realpolitik reasons to support them, I’d respect that more than the moral arguments.
(Don’t endorse much of what Belisarius said, or only much weaker versions of some of it).
I don’t think we’d have a right to complain if North American Indians pulled an Amish/Hasidim and outbred us. I also don’t think it’s reasonable to begrudge them having resisted our expansion with violence, though without endorsing every single thing they did. (The Palestinian Arabs do have a very bad habit engaging in violence that’s both needlessly indiscriminate and ineffectual - the Cherokee didn’t really have the option of nonviolent resistance, whereas the Palestinians would probably have done much better for themselves with that approach than they did in reality).
One relevant difference between our northern Amerindians and the Palestinians is that the whole Zionist process was needless - some European country was going to roll over the North American tribal societies regardless of what Britain did. But Zionism-in-Palestine was a very complicated and very involved way to not achieve security, normalcy, or the new Soviet Jew renewal.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
Agree it can be anyone willing to take them in, or even anywhere they're strong enough to conquer themselves.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
The opposing argument will be that “Palestinian” as a distinct and/or overriding identity didn’t crystallize until the mid-20th century (there exist people arguing for earlier, have not read, can’t comment on quality of argument). Of course, pre-nationalist identity for non-Jati-like groups* was generally more local/regional than what replaced it, so it still wouldn’t make sense to “repatriate” them to other Arab countries.
To anticipate another counter-argument, there was some migration between Muslim regions (especially at urban and elite levels), so that some Palestinians have surnames indicating, e.g., Egyptian origin at some point. This is accurate, though the scale can be significantly exaggerated. My main complaint about this line of argument is that (except with very recent migrants) it makes about as much sense as “repatriating” all the Slovak Horváths to Croatia.
*Actual Hindu Jatis, but also Bosnian Muslims, Jews, Gypsies, Druze, Zoroastrians, etc. - (at least mostly) endogamous, religiously-defined groups with severe intercommunal purity barriers that reinforce common identity at a relatively early date.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
Broadly on your side in this sub-exchange, but puzzled how ‘thirdly’ fits with the claim that a Jewish state would have prevented the Holocaust. Palestine was not only well within Germany’s reach, but it was right next to their primary goal in North Africa. If the Germans had taken Egypt and the British had withdrawn to Iraq, it seems like the Palestinian Jews would have been screwed regardless of their relative population share - if Anita Shapira is to be believed, the Yishuv’s plan (such as it was) was to cooperate so as not to give a pretext for reprisals.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
I actually disagree with RR’s response here - allowing refugees to return after a war is historically normal, not allowing it is somewhat unusual (though by no means unheard of). Rulers usually didn’t care what ethnicity their subjects were in the past, and usually preferred mass forced conversion to expulsion except in special circumstances. Why not let the expelled Palestinians return (since their expulsion probably wasn’t actually planned)? Democracy creates a very strong incentive to engage in (relatively soft in this case, to the Yishuv’s credit) ethnic cleansing.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
I don’t think we know this - I don’t think Hizbullah & Hamas together can take Israel. Iran would have huge logistical difficulties intervening directly and it is… not obvious that would succeed, even if Israel didn’t have nukes.
Borzivoj
3mo ago
When you’re right you’re right. Though the total population doesn’t seem suitably glorious. Maybe we could vassalize Georgia and Armenia and diplo-annex them in 10 years?
Borzivoj
3mo ago
Who ought we to be conquering if we were appropriately aspirational toward greatness?
Borzivoj
3mo ago
They could send them to Uganda so we could come full circle.
Borzivoj
4mo ago
I gather that trans/furries/trans furries are greatly overrepresented among the relevant nerds.
Borzivoj
4mo ago
I think it’s a political necessity in the sense that one of the political parties needs it to maintain its present coalition.
Incidentally, what’s the AA situation in Nigeria?
Borzivoj
5mo ago
So you’re pro the expulsion of Germans from Hinterpommern and Upper Silesia? I think it was a textbook example both of the nationalist spiral and of people absurdly ‘reclaiming’ land they had no legitimate title to from the descendants of people who’d been there since before the region entered history (the Silesians and Pomeranians having finished Germanizing culturally and linguistically only in early modern times, and presumably being at least 30% descended from Slonzoki and Pomorzonie (as in modern Vorpommern).
I came to history with a pro-Czech and pro-Polish bias (despite being neither) - before I knew enough about history to not be exactly pro-anyone. It was the history of hard and soft ethnic cleansing here the gradually turned me against the nationalist approach despite my initial sympathy.
Borzivoj
5mo ago
… IIRC the U.S. military regretted supporting the population transfer more or less immediately and the officers involved recommended against allowing similar moves in future. If anyone’s still defending this, it’s presumably on the basis of ‘Nazis’ rather than some general principle.
Borzivoj
5mo ago
I can think of several parties more responsible for the Palestinian situation than the new hegemon.
Borzivoj
5mo ago
Second the evil cardiologist point. Don’t agree that Gazans in Gaza are the relevant comparison group - this behavior wouldn’t be as bizarre or noteworthy coming from some Israeli official living in Israel, where it makes more sense for tensions to run hot.
Random related detail - looked up a very prominent IR professor, Bruce Hoffman, the other day due to a favorable reference in another book. His twitter was full of retweets of pictures and videos of people tearing down the missing signs with requests to identify them (still has a similar one as his top tweet as of this writing). Hard to picture what the point of that is if not to encourage targeted harassment, so it’s not limited to this guy. Still just anecdotal though, not hard to evil cardiologist a group in a setting like this.
Borzivoj
5mo ago
Steppe nomads were a special case due to their access to a very large pool of horses, and their mode of subsistence automatically trained them in skills applicable to cavalry warfare. This isn’t the same as ‘hardness’ - the great river-valley cultures pretty well destroyed all the barbarians who didn’t live on a giant horse pasture or in easily defensible mountains (hence, e.g., the Sinification of what’s now southern China, with the residual ethnic fragments confined to hill tracts).
India and China in particular have the congruence of being unable to maintain an adequate population of indigenous, high quality warhorses due to climate and having an extremely populous northern plain that’s suitable for cavalry warfare and accessible from the steppe.
Borzivoj
5mo ago
An interesting component of the Chinese case was that it became so as a matter of state policy. The warring states and especially Qin were terrifying war machines single-mindedly devoted to maximizing military capacity, dissolving pre-existing social relations, land-tenure, taxation, and recruitment in the process. The Han intentionally demilitarized and disarmed the peasantry to reduce the skilled manpower available for rebellion (which is fine as long as the state remains strong - the Han did pretty well against the Xiongnu compared to contemporary empires vs. their own neighboring steppe nomads).
To be fair, it was more or less accurate
More options
Context Copy link