Borzivoj
15d ago
I feel like I only ever see the following messaging these days
This is probably milieu-dependent. The denouncing Israel thing is something I only ever hear of at second hand, typically in media articles that (IMO) massively overstate the risk to American Jews. This is a rare occasion where I agree with Hanania:
What’s notable to me is the combination of a complete lack of violence along with the hysterical accusations of such and hyperbole going back and forth between the two sides. Everyone deep down knows that no one is going to get hurt, not by the police and not by the protestors, but that it is to their advantage to pretend as if this isn’t the case.
This is in a well-to-do professional environment (without many Jews to account for the pattern thanks to being in a nondescript Midwestern city). I was aware of the existence of pro-ethnic cleansing arguments among online ethnonationalist types, but I’d never encountered it in meatspace before last October, let alone from non-Jewish (!) normies.
Conversely, my Brother, who has similar object-level views on Israel-Palestine but works in Brussels, has had to explain that massacring Israeli civilians is bad, actually, regardless of what you think about the overall conflict.
Borzivoj
6mo ago
I’m not a progressive, but I do disagree with some of this and sympathize with the position of the Palestinians (not necessarily with any particular faction and certainly not with Hamas). I do also sympathize with present-day Israelis, while thinking the Zionist movement was a bad idea that led to bad outcomes that ought to have been foreseeable to an ethnic group not known (regardless of the reasons) for warm relations with its neighbors, which was the whole impetus for leaving Europe in the first place.
I’m not going to be defending Hamas - I’m more familiar with modern nationalism and the associated brutality in Eastern Europe, especially Poland and the surrounding countries (despite the handle, I’m not Polish or Czech (also not Jewish or Arab, FWIW). I would compare Hamas to the Ukrainian OUN-B.
Before WWII, Ukraine was divided between the Second Polish Republic (with a well-deserved reputation for ethnonationalist dickbaggery) and the USSR, which had already completed its (relatively) kind and gentle phase and started cracking down on regional languages, cultural organizations, and education in the Ukraine as elsewhere. So one overlord wanted to forcibly assimilate them, while the other wanted to impose communism and suppress markers of national distinctiveness, and also killed a ton of Ukrainians with terrible economic policy. So I’m sympathetic to the Ukrainian position at that time.
During WWII, and after some bitter infighting, OUN-B became the dominant Ukrainian faction in Galicia-Volhynia after overcoming the relatively moderate OUN-A. They allied with the Nazis and actively participated in the Holocaust in the area, which involved rounding up Jews and shooting them rather than transport to camps as in more westerly areas. With the Soviet advance, they deserted the Germans with their weapons and extensive experience with genocidal massacres and proceeded to ethnically cleanse the Poles from the region, with about 40,000 Poles killed in the fighting.
So the OUN-B were the actual worst. They committed atrocities on a much greater scale than anyone in the Israel-Palestine conflict has ever managed. Suppose someone had conducted a valid poll at the time and they had 70% support with local Ukrainians. That would genuinely be bad. But that wouldn’t justify the Polish attempt to forcibly assimilate them and acquire territory through ethnic colonization (most of the Polish population was of long resistance however), nor Soviet attempts to force them into the Soviet Union with all that entailed. Total dickbags can achieve dominance over a movement responding to real injustice.
“The scattered Jewish diaspora suffered unrelenting oppression across millennia virtually anywhere they went” Jews were subject to expulsions and mass violence. I’m willing to believe this was more common and/or severe than with other mercantile minorities (the Armenian diaspora from Poland to India, the medieval Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, the coastal Arab and Persian diasporas), though the people making this argument tend not to have the background knowledge to actually know this (if you are well-informed as to the comparative treatment of pre-modern commercial minorities and the Jews did have it distinctly the worst, this is not meant as a criticism of you).
Now consider the Jews of the former Poland-Lithuania. In interwar Europe, 5.5 million Jews lived in former Polish-Lithuanian territory (3 million in the Second Polish Republic, 2.5 in the Soviet Union), making up about a third of all Jews. During most of the period, they had lived there by invitation and served as a middle-man minority. They had communal self-government, the standard package of obnoxious religious limitations on tolerated minorities (e.g., requiring permission (and often a bribe) to build or repair synagogues), and an intermediate position in the hierarchy between landowning nobles and peasants. Their religion was denigrated and subject to official restrictions. But overall, they had better corporate privileges than peasants, who made up about 90% of the population (due to negotiation based on their economic usefulness). I do not consider these oppressive conditions by the standards of the time. The very reason why there were so many of them was rapid natural expansion under generally favorable conditions. The major massacres occurred in specific wartime or near wartime conditions, such as the Chmielnicki rebellion and after World War I, and were important and horrible but also not constitutive of “unrelenting oppression.”
“The-land-formerly-known-as-Canaan exchanged bloody hands multiple times” This is not a distinctive feature of the region, and would not normally be taken as supportive of ethnic-based in migration in other circumstances (e.g., if Poles organized to move to Germany east of the Elbe because it was Slavic until the late Middle Ages and the land has changed hands a number of times, I think that would be ridiculous). Egypt and the rest of the Levant have similar historical trajectories. Anatolia had an even more dramatic ethnoreligious turnover in the late Middle Ages. Maybe Persia had less, though their language is unrelated to Arabic, so a language shift would have been harder. The bloodiness and hand-changing-quotient or whatever of the region doesn’t strike me as notable or abnormal, and it’s not clear how that would justify a project to create a new ethnic enclave there over the objections of the current occupants at the time.
“the area historically represented the only cogent Jewish political entities to have ever existed.” You may note that the last independent such entity in that region was conquered more than 2 thousand years ago. There were also Jewish ruled states in other locations more recently (most notably the Khanate of Khazaria - one anti-Semitic conspiracy falsely holds that Ashkenazim are descended from them rather than historical Judeans. I always find it odd, because the Khazars were pretty interesting, and I’m not sure what the insult is supposed to be). None of this is either here or there, because again, that was two thousand years ago. Israeli Jews are overwhelming descended from new migrants from the Zionist era. The country was already inhabited. This would be like Greece claiming Sicily.
Regarding the 700,000 of the Nakba. This was half of the local Arab population. It resulted in their dispersal into surrounding countries and to two threatened, difficult to defend enclaves, one of which is slowly being settled by the competing ethnostate. The current bitterness is partially due to these effects, rather than to the absolute number moved.
One notable feature of the Israel-Palestine conflict was the ethnic mix that led to the tension was produced deliberately during the age of nationalism. In many of the other major comparable conflicts (Indian partition, Balkans, former Poland-Lithuanian), the ethnic dispersion pattern was a product of medieval and pre-nationalism modern practices (Muslim invasion of India, Muslim coastal trade, migration of orthodox Serbs into Bosnia and Croatia to escape the Ottomans, city formation by transplanted ethnic groups different from surrounding rural peoples) that bore bitter fruit only under new conditions of nationalism and democracy (which made ethnic cleansing and/or assimilation very important to ensure control of government). I personally would find the whole situation much more murky if a bunch of Mizrahi formed a majority in a weird patchwork in Israel/Palestine and that was just what we had to work with historically. But the reality was a nationalist movement of primarily Ashkenazim and to a lesser extent Sephardim who actively went way out of their way to create the situation.
Apartheid - I don’t know or care if Israel is an apartheid state. The substance of the complaint has to do with expelling enough of the non-Jewish population to ensure Jewish dominance and actively encouraging further Jewish immigration while limiting non-Jewish immigration. Israel can afford to treat its current Arab citizens decently, partially out of self interest, partially because of their own moral standards, while still slow-slicing the West Bank and creating faits-accompli with settlers. But they aren’t going to take any steps that would allow Arabs to have more than minority power, for reasons that are understandable but also are going to be correctly perceived as hostile by Arabs.
The economy is better in Israel. This is true. After half the Palestinian population was expelled during the initial war. Only about half still live in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza. If millions of Americans moved to, let’s say, Sri Lanka, the GDP per capita would rise dramatically. If we expelled half the Sri Lankans in the ensuing fighting, those who remained would wind up with much better pay than their neighbors in South India. Should they desire this outcome? Would South Indians be jealous of their good fortune?
“Colonization” narrative and “settler-colonialism” - I’m torn on this issue. On the one hand, it’s a struggle over who gets to use the affect-loaded terminology, as with “apartheid,” and shouldn’t matter to the reality of the situation. On the other, I don’t understand how it’s not settler colonialism, unless you choose to define that phenomenon very narrowly. The linked article claims, as somehow being contrary to the colonialism claim, that most Jews there today are descended from 1881-1949 arrivals. Yes. They settled there as part of a concerted nationalist movement despite the area already being populated, and consciously pursued policies to establish Jewish-majority areas and then an overall Jewish majority. One of the major Zionist organizations was literally called the Jewish Colonization Association (now Jewish Charitable Association). Is the distinction supposed to be that they weren’t also the sovereign power during most of the period (as opposed to British settler colonies)?
Western culture, functioning democracy aspects - in most respects I greatly prefer Israeli culture to Palestinian or other Arab cultures of the present day. It’s not clear how this should be read as a benefit to Arabs, since the precondition for the situation was their own displacement and subordination. As with GDP - if you moved millions of Americans to a random third world location and expelled half the locals, leaving an 80% American population, the resulting culture would almost certainly be more western and democratic.
One way to describe the Palestinian reaction here is as violent anti-immigrant vigilantism fueled by racial animus.” Whether the Arabs’ conduct at this stage was good, bad, or otherwise, it seems reasonable to point out that the violence arose in protest to an explicit project to create a “Jewish National Home” where they were already living. I don’t think anyone, including Jews, would accept such a project directed at them.
Objections to Zionism - I object to nationalist projects to retake ancestral land that was not in a continual or at least recent state of contestation, and usually even then. Germany had a much better claim on the Sudetenland in the interwar period than Jews as a group had on Israel/Palestine before Zionism (though they pursued it in the most destructive and dickish way possible). Thus I object to the historical Zionism that produced Israel on the same grounds I object to the Czech claim on the Sudetenland, the Polish claim on what is now western Poland (but not on Vilnius, which was reasonable), maximally expansionist claims by Balkan countries, etc. To be fair to the nationalists of the 1800’s and 1900’s, they were looking forward and not backward at the rivers of blood that would be spilled to create all the new national homes purged of electorally threatening proportions of minorities (I am very much not only talking about Israel here).
I object to the arguments that the Jews are entitled to a state. I don’t think diasporas are entitled to a state, especially not when it involves displacing a dense (by historical standards) pre-existing population. I have much less objection if the people displaced are low-density farmer-hunters or the like, not because their displacement is justified (I think it wasn’t), but because those people were totally screwed anyway and Jews are no worse than Brits or Dutch for this. So Jewish subset of what became Argentina would be about the same level of objectionable as actual Argentina, or the U.S., or any of the Latin American countries. (All assuming it was practical to pull this off).
Persistent Palestinian grievances - I think anger over the initial colonization and the expulsion are still valid. Palestinians are either dispersed when there were not before, living as a minority where they were the majority until very recently and where they were displaced as a consequence of a concerted plan to establish a foreign ethnic enclave, or living in one of two non-contiguous statelets. In a period of 70 years, they went from being the overwhelming majority of the population in the whole territory to being in a worse position than the Irish after 800 years of British rule. In addition, their position is still actively eroding due to slow settlement of the West Bank.
Displaced people elsewhere - depends on the circumstances. Numerous peoples (almost all Amerindians, the remnants of pre-Chinese people south of the Yangtze, etc.) have or had it much worse. Much of the ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe has been horrible, even if you ignore the Holocaust, which is the single worst one that was actually carried out. Land grievances can go away when most people who care die off (East Germans, aided by Germany having a great economy), when the overall exchange has some degree of balance, the new status quo is tolerable, and the leadership are committed to maintaining the status quo (that time the whole country of Poland shifted to the left), when the contending groups merge (Bulgars and Bulgarian Slavs - this tends to take hundreds of years), etc.
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.
Hamas is an offshoot of the people the current Egyptian government overthrew a couple years back. Last time Jordan let in a significant number of Palestinians, it led to a civil war.
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
6mo ago
The Greek and Phoenician colonies are also good examples of trading people not being particularly averse to violent conflict.
Borzivoj
6mo 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
4mo ago
Who ought we to be conquering if we were appropriately aspirational toward greatness?
(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
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
4mo ago
They could send them to Uganda so we could come full circle.
Borzivoj
6mo 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).
Borzivoj
4mo 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
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
4mo ago
I gather that trans/furries/trans furries are greatly overrepresented among the relevant nerds.
Borzivoj
6mo ago
I find it extremely unlikely that the octopus carries any of the significance you’re attributing to it. In addition, she’s “tell[ing] you they support killing Jews” in the same sense that one of your opponents might say that people who say “I stand with Israel” or whatever are directly telling you they’re ok with apartheid and bombing children. The argument is silly no matter who uses it.
Disclaimer: I don’t care about Thunberg in general, and am annoyed to he placed in the position of defending a professional activist. Hamas and mass civilian massacres are terrible.
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
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.
The original sin (which isn’t a real thing) was setting up a new ethnic enclave in inhabited territory with ethnonationalist aims. It’s creating a Bosnia/Lebanon/Syria/Kresy-type situation where there didn’t need to be one.
Edit: But yes, that was a crucial contributing factor, and I think that large-scale Muslim immigration to Europe is a potential catastrophe (due to mission creep on the part of immigrants as they gain relative power)
Borzivoj
6mo ago
The analogy you set up differs in important respects from the Israel-Palestine situation. Notably, the Ottomans repeatedly refused mass Jewish immigration to the region, which continued due to their limited state capacity. The temporary period of imperial promotion of Zionism occurred during the British Mandate, which would be more like China taking temporary control of the western United States following WWIII and initially encouraging the foreign immigration before reversing course when the policy provokes a rebellion.
Again, the bad situation arose from the settlement and the whole project. By the 1940’s, partition was a reasonable least-bad option.
It seems what we need here is the Hock.
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