omw_68
34m ago
the stated goal of Israel was to create a Jewish state in that territory, which implies expelling the Palestinians or at least codifying their status as second-class citizens in their own home,
I tend to disagree with that given that the original British partition plan (which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected) was to create a majority Jewish state and a majority Arab state by drawing lines on the map.
I think "Israel's stated purpose entails expelling the Palestinians"+"Israel takes actions that have the shape of expelling the Palestinians" is a pretty compelling and plausible motivation for Oct 7th.
Would you mind pointing to three of these actions and statements?
Because the thing is, as far as I know (1) Israel has never expelled any Arabs from Gaza but instead expelled all the Jews in the early 2000s; and (2) as mentioned above, the original British partition plan (which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected) didn't entail any expulsions as far as I know, but rather was about drawing lines on a map so as to create a majority Jewish state and a majority Arab state; and (3) when Hamas took over Gaza, its leadership refused to allow the descendants of Arabs who fled Gaza in 1967 to move there from refugee camps in Jordan.
All of this seems to contradict your hypothesis, however it would be helpful for me to understand your hypothesis if you could identify 3 actions Israel has taken that "have the shape of expelling the Palestinians" so I can better understand your position. TIA
omw_68
11hr ago
Wasn't Gaza Egyptian at one point, though? But I don't recall anyone declaring Egypt controlling it as having been an act of war.
Actually, if I am not mistaken, at one point before 1967 the PLO formally announced that it was not making any claim as to Egypt-occupied Gaza. The claims that Gaza was part of "Palestine" didn't start until after Egypt left and Israel came in.
This may seem like an obscure fact, but I think it sheds light on the revealed motivations of the Palestinian Arabs as a group. Simply put, they don't actually want to have Gaza; or J+S; etc. Rather, what they want is for there not to be a Jewish state anywhere in the area.
As another example, one can consider their attitudes towards refugees. For example, Palestinian Arabs who live in Lebanon or Jordan. The Palestinian Arabs have announced that if they were to get a state, such refugees would not be absorbed or granted citizenship. Again, this sheds light on their motivations.
omw_68
15hr ago
I for my part find it extremely frustrating to deal with the recurrent tendency of Israel apologists, and you in particular in this case, to treat Oct 7th as having happened in a vacuum, as opposed to being another iteration in a long chain of action and reaction.
I think that even if this is true, it's not a valid excuse to omit the context of the October 7 attacks themselves when discussing (and criticizing) Israel's recent activities in Gaza.
Moreover, the phrase "long chain of action and reaction" suggests that the October 7 attacks were a response to some misbehavior of Israel. It seems pretty clear to me that this is not the case. My main evidence for this is that (1) from the beginning of its existence, the stated goal of Hamas has been the destruction of (Jewish) Israel and the killing of all Jews everywhere; (2) Hamas acted aggressively towards Israel immediately following the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; and (3) there was never strong objection among Palestinian Arabs to the Egyptian occupation of Gaza before 1967. Probably there is more evidence for this.
To put it another way, if you would like to point to some alleged misconduct on the part of Israel which you believe provoked the October 7 attacks, I am pretty sure I can point to evidence which shows that this is not the actual reason for the attacks but rather a rationalization.
omw_68
17hr ago
I think it is more understandable
I don't think I would use the word "understandable," because it implies something about the mindset of Hamas' leadership which I am pretty sure is inconsistent with reality. I'm pretty confident that even in the absence of a blockade (especially in the absence of a blockade) Hamas would have viciously attacked Israelis given the opportunity.
I think if people genuinely want to understand the situation, they need to take this into account. That Hamas doesn't want to just be left alone to to run Gaza in peace; they want to destroy (Jewish) Israel and kill all Jews everywhere. (Edit: For starters, my evidence for this claim is the Hamas charter.)
Such a murder didn't come out of nowhere, and it would be silly to say that the wife in such a case "started it" with the murder,
Perhaps not, but if the wife's perception of mistreatment was wildly at odds with reality and was mainly a result of her selfishness and narcissism, it might be reasonable to assign full responsibility to her.
omw_68
18hr ago
Wasn't Gaza under blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007?
I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes." And as someone who is on the pro-Israel side of things, I have no objection to including this as context in discussing the October 7 attacks and Israel's response. From my perspective, the main issue here is not that Hamas struck at Israel, but rather that Hamas deliberately engaged in the murder, sexual assault, and hostage-taking of civilians on a large scale.
omw_68
18hr ago
I don't think it excuses violence against women.
I'm not sure "excuse" is the right word, since (in my opinion) it's not a matter of deciding whether, on balance, whether something is right or wrong; justified or unjustified; etc. Rather, in the mind of the wokie, it's a matter of weighing whether something is a viable target for an outrage campaign. So for example, there is a significant problem with honor killings of women in certain cultures. Progressives (which includes feminists) don't make a big issue out of this. It's not a question of whether these honor killings are excusable, but rather what to do about them in light of the realities of coalition politics.
From that perspective, it's reasonable to ask whether the reaction to this commercial would have been the same had a token black been included. Or better yet, if the golfing party had included a multi-racial cast of characters. I don't know if that would have been enough to tip the scales, but I'm pretty sure it would have been a factor.
I don't get why it's a big deal. It's a play on the horror movie trope where people are drawn to evil objects that possess them and stuff. I guess if he was pushing a man nobody would care, reddit will be reddit.
But you actually got the characters mixed up. The owner of the driver pushes the woman away, telling her not to touch it. Then another different man tries to touch the driver, the owner tries to stop him as well but is unable to, and it's shown that the second man is possessed by the item. It's kind of a humorous reversal, the first man is made to just be an overprotective asshole at the beginning, but then it's revealed that touching the driver is dangerous, and he was partly doing it to protect her from its effects.
The only continuity gap is how the owner manages to retain his sanity while the driver causes issues for everyone else who touches it.
Thanks for posting this. I had to watch the commercial a couple times to kind of figure it out and I still was a bit confused until I saw your explanation.
Anyway, to answer your question, I would guess the problems are as follows:
(1) the commercial depicts a man engaging in violence towards a woman.
(2) the commercial depicts a man's agenda prevailing over that of a woman (i.e. she wants to try the golf club; he doesn't want her to try it)
(3) the commercial doesn't have the obligatory token black in it somewhere.
I think (3) is a bigger problem than it seems on the surface. Including a token black in a commercial is a way of demonstrating your fealty to the Church of Woke.
As far as (1) goes, here's a thought experiment: Imagine if the commercial showed a man shoving a child in the same way. You would find it objectionable, right? Ok, well feminists (and therefore progressives) see women as being entitled to the special protections our society gives to children. Or to put it another way, progressives see women as children, but only when it serves their agenda.
And (2) reflects a long-standing unwritten rule: In a commercial, when there is a conflict between a man and a woman, the woman should prevail in the end. In the past, I have seen the occasional beer commercial which violates this rule, but even that I haven't seen in a while.
Edit: I think an additional problem is that the commercial is difficult to understand. I think that wokies tend to judge first and ask questions later, so to speak. I have seen this sort of thing happen multiple times. For example, a person is making fun of racism; says something which is a caricature of what a racist might say; and the person gets attacked by wokies for uttering something racist.
omw_68
1d ago
I would like your argument that there is nothing expressed in that comment but isolated anecdotes of no relevance to our understanding of the broader social context.
For what it may be worth, I'm not taking a position on the group responsibility / shared identity issue, at least for now. Except of course that I object when people are inconsistent in a partisan way.
omw_68
2d ago
I think the basic rule of thumb is:
(1) if a member of the outgroup misbehaves, it reflects badly on the entire outgroup. The fact that the misbehaving person belonged to Group X needs to be emphasized.
(2) if a member of the ingroup misbehaves, it's just an isolated incident. The fact that the misbehaving person belonged to group X is not relevant.
If instead of misbehavior we are talking about a positive accomplishment, the standards flip.
I guess I'm trying to understand if there's some underlying logic, some theory of demographic-based moral responsibility I'm missing?
I think it's just ordinary who/whom partisanship.
omw_68
2d ago
I've heard unsourced claims that the black-white interracial rape gap is on the order of 100-1. Which seems just impossibly large. But I don't think its impossible. This is not because black people are 100x as criminal as white people. That would indeed be absurd.
ven adjusted for weight, black women are perceived as less desirable than white women.
Well there are a few issues floating around. Is the disparity in crime uniform across different types of crime? (I tend to doubt it.) Is white on black rape so rare that it's difficult to get statistically significant numbers? (Possibly.) And yeah, it's very common for white men to find black women to be sexually unattractive.
omw_68
2d ago
Is it hatred of Israeli Jews specifically? Or Jews as an ethnic group? Or hatred for Judaism itself and its practitioners?
Let me clarify: I am talking about hatred of Jews in general. For example, suppose Hamas had the opportunity to blow up an arbitrary synagogue in New Jersey or an arbitrary Jewish community center in Argentina. I am pretty confident that Hamas would take that opportunity. (Note that Iran and Hezbollah really did blow up a Jewish community center in Argentina.)
Is it hatred of Israeli Jews specifically? Or Jews as an ethnic group? Or hatred for Judaism itself and its practitioners?
I see strong evidence for the first, and much less for the third.
Well do you agree that over the years, anti-Israel terrorists have targeted non-Israeli Jews?
Not to say that full on genocide is the only bad thing that can happen to a people, I'm just pointing out how much lower down the aggression meter things were for a long time, which you would not expect if Islam and Judaism were mortal enemies the entire time.
A casual search reveals the following attacks on Jews in the Muslim and/or Arab world
1033 Fez Massacre
1066 Granada Massacre
1290 Bagdhad Massacre
1785 Tripoli Pogrom;
1805 Massacre of Algiers
1815 - Massacre of Algiers
1864 - Marakesh massacre
All of this took place long before the modern Zionist movement.
I'm just going off the point that this seems like a turf war more than a religious war at its core.
Well here's the question:
If it's about "turf," why is it that the Palestinian Arabs didn't make a fuss about Egypt and Jordan's occupation of Gaza and J & S between 1947 and 1967? Why did they focus their energies on the lands occupied by the Jews?
But I am not accepting the facial assertion that an an act of war/aggression on Israel implies hatred for all ethnic Jews or even a form of religious rivalry.
It doesn't imply it in the same sense that correlation does not imply causation. But in a lot of contexts, correlation is strong evidence of causation. The most extreme example is white supremacists who care only about white people, unless it happens to be Palestinian Arabs at issue.
When it comes to Israel, the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that -- generally speaking -- anti-Israel sentiment is informed heavily by Jew hatred.
But (religious/ethnic) Jews in the U.S. will hammer their ethnic connection to Israelis AND their religious connection to American Christians to channel the assertion that an attack on Israel is a direct attack on American Jews too and necessitates American action to protect all Jews as a class
Can you give me a couple specific examples of this to help me understand your point?
omw_68
4d ago
Which one(s), specifically, are the Israelis claiming that Hamas was motivated by, and how does that compare to the stated motivation of Hamas themselves?
I'm not a representative of Israel, but I am pretty sure Israel would claim that it's Jew hatred.
This is apparently from the original Hamas charter:
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Of course, anyone can say anything about their motivations, and people (obviously) have a strong tendency to engage in whitewashing when describing their motivations. It's pretty likely that if you asked Hamas leadership today about their motivations, they would insist it's just about "fighting Zionism."
But consider that (1) Egypt occupied Gaza for many years; and (2) Egypt blockaded Gaza for many years up to and including the present day. What did the Palestinian Arabs do to resist this "occupation"? Practically nothing. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, back in the day the PLO issued a statement to the effect that it was not contesting Egyptian control of Gaza or Jordanian control of J+S.
I mean help me out here, even in the Muslim Ottoman Empire days the Jews were not targets for elimination on racial or religious grounds!
The phrase "targets for elimination" seems oddly worded to me. As if the person who wrote that phrase is trying to create a misleading impression. Do you believe that there was significant religious persecution of Jews in the Ottoman Empire?
Like literally the Jews wanted a homeland badly enough to start fighting off the other nations in their newly formed country's vicinity and lord bless them, they won, repeatedly. THAT is a sufficient explanation for why they created so many enemies in a short period of time,
Can we agree that there were significant attacks against the Jews in the area before 1948? Can we agree that numerous Arab countries formally declared war on Israel before being defeated in the 1948 war? It seems to me that if you include this context, it appears that the Arabs created themselves as enemies before being defeated in the 1948 war.
omw_68
4d ago
The culture war element here is that there are women going on the defense for Lindsay Clancy because she is a woman and because they want to defend the people who think like them. It's a combination of insane empathy coupled with identity politics that makes this what it is. It’s mostly the same crowd that demands full agency for women who are now pivoting to "women have no agency, so it's not her fault" to defend one of their own.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with this 100%. I don't have a strong opinion about the case itself -- quite possibly she really did have a psychotic break. My objection is to people (mainly women) who automatically side with her because she's a woman. And to this idea that women get to pivot back and forth between being children and adults depending on what's most convenient. And to this idea that women should never be held criminally responsible for anything. (Admittedly, the last two sentences exaggerate the feminist position a bit, but it's really not that much of an exaggeration.)
omw_68
5d ago
Perhaps what you are trying to argue is that all things equal a larger amount of black crime would be interracial compared to white crime?
It seems to me that this would apply equally to both perpetration and victimization, so @Jiro 's point still doesn't make any sense.
So for example, suppose there are 100 blacks and 100,000,000 whites in society. If crime is randomly distributed, one would expect that if a black person is involved in a crime, almost certainly the other participant is white (while at the same time, if a white person is involved in a crime, almost certainly the other participant is NOT black).
But critically, this point applies equally to both black perpetrators AND black victims. So that if one looks only at interracial crimes, the ratio should still be equal.
Here's the point that was being responded to:
nearly all cross-race rapes between Whites and Blacks involve a White female victim
The argument that @Jiro made -- about relative sizes of populations -- doesn't explain this at all.
omw_68
5d ago
Damn, are we even breaking arithmetic and/or algebra to carry water for blacks now?
FWIW I agree that @Jiro's math is nonsensical. It doesn't matter what the relative population sizes are, because a smaller population size means fewer potential rapists and fewer potential victims, which should precisely balance out (assuming even distribution of criminality and random victim selection).
that does mean that black men are more prone to committing rape than white men and/or are more likely to commit interracial rape.
Part of the issue, which came out during the Duke Lacrosse hoax, is that white on black rape is so rare as to be practically unheard of. This is a fact which causes liberals to freak out almost as much as other, more talked-about, racial disparities. And probably it's part of the reason why hoaxes like Duke Lacrosse can get so much traction.
omw_68
5d ago
I read "nearly all" to be a statement about ratios, not absolute numbers
Even so, your math is completely wrong. In a hypothetical world where (1) blacks and whites are equally likely to be rapists; and (2) victims are chosen at random, one would expect the ratio to be 1:1 as between black on white rape and white on black rape.
omw_68
6d ago
There isn't much of an opposite side on the Russian invasion of Ukraine
I tend to disagree with this, but in the interest of avoiding a culture war skirmish, perhaps you can give me a few examples of popular views on the Latest Thing for which you would agree there is an opposite side?
omw_68
6d ago
Sadly, I've spoken to enough friends in real life to know that it isn't astroturfed.
Are these friends the sort of people who more or less go along with the Latest Thing? For example, how did they feel about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine?
If your friends are real independent thinkers, then fine, but in my experience such persons are pretty rare. And if they aren't independent thinkers, the fact that they oppose data centers (arguably) is not evidence one way or another on the astroturf issue.
Perhaps I am misusing the word "astroturf" here. I don't dispute that there are a lot of real people out there who are opposed to data centers. I just get the feeling that there is some institution or government entity which is quietly rousing and encouraging the opposition. It reminds me of the anti-nuke campaigns in the 1980s
The in-group, of course. As far as I can tell, the rules are this:
(1) If the Palestinian Arabs successfully seize control over and ethnically cleanse an area (for example Hebron or Gaza City), it is forever "Palestinian Land," which means that, as a group, it is their property forever and they have the moral and legal right to exclude Jews and anyone else.
(2) By contrast, if Jews live in an area for generations, their claim is forever tainted by any alleged misconduct of their forefathers. The area will never be "Jewish Land." Even if their forefathers came peaceably and paid for the land fair and square, it's still not Jewish Land. At best, those specific Jews have some right to stay there but the land does not belong to Jews as a group.
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