FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
5mo ago
I'm not saying the Hannibal directive isn't real. I'm saying I find it very suspicious that the primary context in which it's brought up is to reflexively dismiss any and all claims that certain groups have mistreated the Israelis. I'm sure if you look at the ratio of "Israeli civilians killed by groups which are hostile to Israel" vs. "Israeli civilians who were intentionally killed by the IDF as part of the Hannibal directive", it would be extraordinarily lopsided - maybe 9:1 or higher. But critics of Israel seem to have decided that, because the Hannibal directive exists and has ever been employed, therefore they can dismiss all claims that Hamas or whoever murdered Israeli civilians by saying "eh, they probably did it to themselves". But of course, they're aware that this looks really bad, unserious and conspiratorial (perhaps even bearing a family resemblance to that great woke sin, "victim-blaming"), so rather than explicitly asserting "I believe that Israel is lying when they claim that Hamas killed these Israeli civilians, and they were in fact deliberately killed by the IDF", they'll just wave their hands and say "Hannibal directive, look it up", hoping the reader will join the dots themselves.
It's a cowardly, dishonest style of argumentation. If you believe in conspiracy theories, at least have the balls to be upfront about it.
At a cursory inspection, 1 million was the cheapest I could find, but far from the average: many houses were a significant multiple of that. Rathgar is posh but admittedly not as posh as, say, Foxrock.
I thought there was a tech driven housing crisis.
There is, although I prefer the term "shortage" to "crisis".
FtttG
5mo ago
Before 10/7, the slightest hint of anti-semitism was instantly denounced.
I don't know what world you were living in before 10/7, but it seems to be a very different one from the world I was living in.
the "Jewish State" will not pull all the stops to save your life but will instead attempt to murder you to prevent you from being used as a bargaining chip
I've seen countless crypto-Hamas supporters citing the existence of something called the Hannibal Directive as if they're masterfully laying down a trump card; in some cases, explicitly claiming that Hamas killed literally zero civilians on October 7th, and that 100% of the Israeli civilians massacred on that day were in fact killed by the IDF. These people seem to be engaged in a kind of curious doublethink: on the one hand, they want to express their support for Hamas and the broader Palestinian cause - but on the other hand, on some level they're aware that this means tacitly endorsing some rather monstrous and brutal tactics. The "solution" they've hit on is to assert that Hamas is entitled to fight back against oppression and colonialism, up to and including murdering unarmed Israeli civilians - but in point of fact, 100% of the unarmed Israeli civilians in question were actually murdered by the IDF themselves! How convenient - for a moment there I was worried I might have to confront legitimate moral ambiguity, acknowledge that this conflict isn't as black-and-white as I would like to pretend, or do something facially grotesque like actively endorsing the slaughter of music festival attendees. What a relief that I can instead fall back into the warm, comforting embrace of that isn't happening, and it's good that it is. (See also "Denial by a thousand cuts".)
But for all that such people are keen to cite the existence of the Hannibal Directive, they are generally strangely reluctant to cite specific cases in which they believe it was actually used by the IDF. The intention seems to be to conjure up a free-floating miasma in which all claims of Israeli suffering are responded to with reflexive suspicion, a permanent asterisk over any and all Israeli casualties in this conflict, while being careful to avoid specific (and hence falsifiable) assertions that this specific Israeli was in fact killed by the IDF. "Yes, yes, Israeli civilians being murdered is bad - but hey, did you know there's this thing called the Hannibal Directive? Sure is interesting, huh? Now, I'm not saying the IDF intentionally murdered their own people and then Mossad created some AI-generated footage to frame Hamas for the massacre as a casus belli - but I'm not not saying that. At the end of the day, I'm Just Asking Questions."
FtttG
5mo ago
Their CEO had actually floated the idea of coin-operated toilets a while back, but was stymied by airline regulations.
Michael O'Leary is famous for playing the media machine like a fiddle, making outrageous announcements for Ryanair's latest cost-cutting measure which he has no intention of enacting but which get the company's name in the papers for a press cycle.
FtttG
5mo ago
I've heard it's considered such an accurate representation of UK politics that some of its phrasings have entered the vernacular e.g. "omnishambles".
I'm getting a 403 from the website
I wonder if it's a region-locked thing. Annoyingly, Internet Archive doesn't have it. Here's the full text anyway.
can we get a check on Coulter's law? The quoted parts seem a bit cagey about the identity of "the assailant".
Yeah, I'd be curious about that myself. I would be surprised if the assailant turns out to be a white Irishman, but I can't say it's wholly outside the realm of possibility.
FtttG
5mo ago
Does the existence and behaviour of Israel/Mossad etc. push more people further towards such behaviour? Also yes.
How exactly does one Irish Jew minding his own business on a Dublin bus bear any responsibility for the actions of Netanyahu and Mossad? The implication that all Jews are collectively responsible for the actions of any individual Jew is about as close to a textbook definition of "racism" as I can envision.
About a year ago, in a discussion of Ireland's rabid support for the Palestinian cause, I argued that it's primarily caused by misguided post-colonial solidarity and that "I've never gotten the feeling that Ireland is an antisemitic country".
That's a position I'm now revisiting:
A Jewish man was hit by a stranger shouting antisemitic insults on a Dublin city bus on Friday [the 18th of July], according to a video circulating on social media. The assailant shouted “genocidal Jews” and other slurs at the man.
He also said he recognized that the man was a Jew “because of his face.” The Jewish man – who recorded the incident – can be heard saying, “I get used to it; they are all like this.”...
The assailant then slapped the Jewish man in the face and tried to take his phone.
Comments on social media said the driver called the police and that the man was arrested.
An officer told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it does not comment on material circulated online by third parties but confirmed that “shortly after 11 p.m. on Friday, 18 July 2025, [police officers] from Rathmines responded to reports of a disturbance on a bus in Rathgar, Dublin.”
For reference, Rathgar is a very posh suburb, with houses going for €1 million at the minimum.
A few weeks ago, my dad quoted some Israeli politician (whose name escapes me) at me who supposedly claimed that his proudest achievement was drawing an equivocation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the public consciousness. I accept that the two are not strictly equivalent, but I don't think anyone can dispute anymore (in Ireland or anywhere else) that the former can often serve as a cover for the latter. I am quite confident that the assailant made no effort to ascertain his victim's political affiliation (i.e. whether or not he was one of the "good Jews") before harassing and assaulting him.
As an aside, I can't help but marvel at how self-defeating this behaviour is. Whenever you assault someone because they look like they might be Jewish, you are precisely demonstrating Israel's entire raison d'être, the moral necessity of its existence.
Free by Lea Ypi, a memoir of the author's childhood in Albania as it transitioned out of the USSR out of socialism and into a liberal democracy. Unsurprisingly, it presents living in a socialist country in a very negative light. Comparisons with My Brilliant Friend are apt (Albania in the late 80s/early 90s seems about as economically deprived as Naples in the 60s), even though this one is marketed as non-fiction. Very readable, and I'm glad the focus is mainly on the politics and the disruptions the author's parents had to cope with, rather than endless trite anecdotes about the author's interactions with her primary school classmates or whatever.
Otherwise, we kind of move towards a world where everyone dons a disguise out in public just to maintain some semblance of anonymity.
Perhaps the political valence of wearing a facemask in public spaces will do a complete 180. Or better yet, burqas for everyone, not just women.
For the most part the only anime I watch are movies, rather than TV shows. The one exception was Paranoia Agent, which I adored (helps that it was created by a director, Satoshi Kon, whose cinematic work I'd previously loved - Perfect Blue which was the inspiration for Aronofsky's Black Swan, and Tokyo Godfathers which might be my favourite Christmas movie). A bizarre and blackly comic mashup of police procedural, psychological thriller, fantasy and social satire which I cannot recommend highly enough.
FtttG
5mo ago
The US courts are surprisingly willing to accept that defence
It's been successfully deployed by both Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson, also.
FtttG
5mo ago
and with a country that is attacking all its neighbours?
As I've already pointed out in this thread, such a description applies to a significant chunk of Middle Eastern nations, which hasn't stopped them from signing peace agreements with each other in the recent past.
FtttG
5mo ago
go into Gaza with the goal of occupying it for a few decades (in the knowledge that they will get a lot of their soldiers killed in the process)
Isn't that pretty much what they're doing now?
FtttG
5mo ago
That's all true, but doesn't change the fact that routine acts of military aggression against your neighbours or your own people have been the norm in pretty much the entirety of the Middle East for the last century. It's also plainly obvious that many of the acts of aggression you cite were defensive in nature.
FtttG
5mo ago
created a functioning society in which many protestants live
The way this is framed suggests to me that you didn't realise the Protestants were the ones holding the whip at the outset of the insurgency.
Subjegating Palestinians is never going to work as the conflict isn't going to end if there is no deal for the Palestinians to accept.
On at least three occasions, the Palestinians have been offered deals significantly more generous than that offered to Northern Irish Catholics in 1998. They have refused all of them because they refuse to compromise, to their own detriment more than to that of the Israelis.
Let's have a look. In the last hundred years, and excluding the second world war (for the reason illustrated by its title), by my count:
- Bahrain has been involved in 2 conflicts, one involving Saudi Arabia.
- Egypt has been involved in 6 conflicts (including several civil wars) variously involving Israel, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
- Iran has been involved in 16 conflicts (including several civil wars/revolutions) variously involving Azerbaijan, the no-longer extant Kurdish republic, Kuwait, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
- Iraq has been involved in 22 conflicts (including several civil wars, insurgencies etc.) variously involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait and Israel.
- Jordan has been involved in 3 conflicts variously involving both Israel and Palestine.
- Kuwait has been involved in 2 conflicts variously involving Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
- Lebanon has been involved in 11 conflicts (including numerous civil wars) variously involving Syria, Israel and Palestine.
- Saudi Arabia has been involved in 11 conflicts variously involving Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Iran and the UAE.
- Syria has been involved in 14 conflicts (including numerous civil wars) variously involving Lebanon, Israel and the no-longer extant United Arab Republic.
- Turkey has been involved in 5 conflicts (including civil wars, revolutions etc.), one involving the Iraqi Kurds.
- Yemen has been involved in 17 conflicts (including numerous civil wars) variously involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Israel.
"A state that is in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them" seems to describe the modal Middle Eastern country pretty well. Given the base rate of conflict and strife in the region, Israel really doesn't strike me as much of an outlier. It's almost unique in the region in having underwent zero civil wars or violent revolutions (attempted or successful) in the last hundred years i.e. since its founding. Contrary to the claim that responsibility for Middle Eastern instability ultimately rests with the Great Satan Israel, the majority of the conflicts listed above didn't directly involve Israel in any capacity.
As an aside, can I just say that "Arab solidarity" is like "military intelligence": a contradiction in terms.
FtttG
5mo ago
Israel is a... state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.
I note that this is a description which applies equally well to literally every country in the Middle East, and yet for some reason you're only calling for the Israelis to find a new home.
FtttG
5mo ago
The British counter insurgency in Northern Ireland was far more effective.
By what metrics are you basing this assertion on? I believe this is not the first time you've made this comparison. The counter-insurgency concluded with a power-sharing agreement between Protestants and Catholics, the unconditional release of all imprisoned IRA members, a recognition of the right of Northern Ireland to secede from the UK if a plurality of its residents approved, and the dissolution of the Northern Irish police force in favour of a new police force which was required to employ Protestants and Catholics in equal numbers. Is that what an effective counter-insurgency looks like to you?
FtttG
5mo ago
My second draft is well underway. So far I've cut out 18% of the first draft, representing over 15k words - more, actually, as while cutting I've been adding in some details as I go. Would love to have the second draft ready by the end of the month, but it may not be until the end of the first week of August.
Even saying "very unsafe" is an example of exactly the kind of thing I'm complaining about. In an actuarial table of how Israelis met their ends since the founding of the state, would "being intentionally killed by the IDF to prevent them from being taken hostage by groups hostile to Israel" even crack the top hundred most common causes of death? The top five hundred? The top thousand? No, obviously not. And yet critics of Israel have this obsessive fixation on the Hannibal directive as evidence of how uniquely barbarous the nation is - when in reality, a counterfactual world in which the Hannibal directive didn't exist would only mean a tiny handful of Israelis would still be alive.
Let me put this in terms that you might find more agreeable: being shot dead by a police officer is a live possibility for black Americans in a way it isn't for black Britons, or indeed black citizens of just about any European country. But if you were investigating the causes of the reduced life expectancy among black Americans relative to other ethnic groups, "risk of being shot dead by police officers" shouldn't even enter into the equation. It's evidence of a mindset warped by political partisanship.
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