site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   27428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing” on Sunday, Iranian state television reported, without immediately elaborating.

Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, state TV said, but had been hampered by poor weather condition in the area. There had been heavy rain reported with some wind.

Edit 6:14 GMT: Reports that three members of the Red Crescent search team have gone missing in the search area.

Edit 6:17 GMT: Iranian government claims it has made contact with two passengers at the crash site.

Edit 3:25 GMT: Iranian sources have confirmed that the President and all other people on board died in the crash.

Helicopters in rough terrain and bad weather is uncomfortably close to rolling dice with your life on the line.

Unconfirmed reports israel thinks he’s dead.

Oil to the moon

Link?

It was a prediction (slightly joking). If there is any instability or use of the instability to expand the Israeli conflict, then oil will go up.

Is it instability if Israel just wins? Do any Iranian officials really want to spearhead a new anti-Israel campaign? Sounds like a death wish.

  1. Don’t know the internal politics within Iran.

  2. Interregnum periods are often chaotic.

  3. We don’t know if the crash was an accident or a foreign op. If latter, Iran may escalate or internal faction may claim foreign op to effectuate its own goal.

  4. Doesn’t need to be with Israel but could expand for example support of Yemen in proxy war with Saudi Arabia.

Betcha it trades down on Monday. Punters betting on Middle East chaos have always lost, this time won't be different. The galaxy brain move is to short oil here. It's worked every other time.

(Note: I also subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the oil price is manipulated by Western government actors).

Edit: Oil opened down but is now up 0.19% as of 11:00pm eastern. Middle East news is either neutral or negative for oil prices.

Edit 2: Oil now sharply down after some Fed guy pontificated.

Personally, I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the oil price is manipulated by middle eastern government actors.

They try, but they're just so bad at it. Part of it is unavoidable. The U.S. is the world's top oil producer now.

But also, these governments are clown-level incompetent, and are always backstabbing each other to avoid their quotas. In other news, apparently one of the helicopters sent to aid the rescue of the Iranian President has crashed with multiple casualties.

But also, these governments are clown-level incompetent, and are always backstabbing each other to avoid their quotas.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Western governments are not above bribing them to backstab each other.

The recent discussion about Red Lobster (link) focused on analyzing how the $20 all you can eat shrimp bankrupted the company because it was too good of a deal and analyzing the declining social trust to keep it afloat.

Everyone in the comments has fun linking this to their favorite hobbyhorses. Here's mine talking about a cool idea for a legal system I was thinking about.

Great story everyone. But one question, is this actually true?

Some Xsocial users are linking the company's demise to private equity:

Quote https://x.com/windcomecalling/status/1790889866844422528

while this is a very funny idea, the reality is much more depressing: they made like $2 billion in revenue that year. the loss from endless shrimp was basically a rounding error—the thing that actually bankrupted them was private equity

Hmm.

Quote https://x.com/edzitron/status/1790493687572754654

Their ceo is a lawyer-MBA and they were bought by a Thailand-based private equity group that makes most of its money selling canned seafood, and they've been downsizing the company consistently since Thai Union Group took control in 2020

They also launched an insane permanent all you can eat shrimp deal that killed revenue. Thai Union basically ran the company into the ground.

Seems like the private equity group is deliberately running the company into the ground, and using the unlimited deal as a cover story. Another case of corporate greed destroying a profitable company and generally being evil.

Great story. But one question, is this actually true?

This analysis is another interesting angle on it, quote https://x.com/cunha_tristan/status/1791807133886861317

Golden Gate bought Red Lobster for 2.1 billion, and then sold off a bunch of real estate for almost that much. Although at one point they actually bought back a little bit of it, which is weird.

But then after selling the real estate, they sold the restaurant business to new investors. They sold the initial 25% of it for over $500 million.

Which seems to show that the real estate and the restaurant businesses were more valuable split up than together. It seems like the restaurants owning their real estate was dragging down the value of the real estate, it was worth much more split off. Which would make sense if the restaurants were poorly run, that business was being subsidized by the real estate portfolio.

The land was more valuable than the company. Private equity bought the company to sell the land to someone who could make more money with it.

This is.... Georgism???

Great story. But one question, is this actually true?

I honestly don't know.

Here's a 2015 article showing Golden Gate Capital made the transaction the last tweet is talking about:

Golden Gate Capital, which bought Red Lobster from Darden Restaurants Inc. for $2.1 billion, and then sold that real estate to VEREIT for $1.5 billion, has now agreed to acquire $204 million of Red Lobster real estate back from the firm.

The narrative seems plausible and would be an interesting twist. But perhaps it's too good of a story.

Does anyone have more source/knowledge of this kind of corporate dealing? Is private equity delivering the Georgist promise?

Fast food chains like McDonald’s make most of their money by picking really good real estate locations. Red Lobster may have been doing the same, and once their mediocre business stopped being profitable they decided to simply transition to real estate. The “losses” may be beneficial in terms of tax deductions for the parent company, the business being maintained for that reason while they are in it for the real estate. From some googling,

Red Lobster's customer base tends to be older, with a significant portion of their customers falling into the 50s and 60s age range

Okay, so the writing was on the wall. That was 10 years ago. They made their business decision to maximize how much money enters their pockets. The idea that the chain’s demise was caused by unsavory bottom feeding prawns proles is a silly WSJ (the opposite of SJW) fiction that allows the corporation leaders behind the scenes to shift blame to, I don’t know, poor people who like sea food deals. Gah, if only there were a way to prevent them from sharing shrimp! That didn’t smell fishy to anyone? Hook line and sinker people fell for it.

McDonald’s is in part a ‘real estate’ business because of its franchising system, wherein it acts as landlord to franchisees. McDonald’s therefore both makes money the usual way franchised restaurants do and on rent for those same franchise owners.

Red Lobster was not franchised. When it was sold in 2014, every single Red Lobster restaurant was owned and operated by the company itself. From an article from the time:

…Golden Gate, which bought the chain for $2.1 billion in 2014. At that time, virtually all of the real estate under Red Lobster restaurants was owned by the chain, which has no franchisees.

McDonald’s’ model isn’t typically attempted by most modern restaurant chains, even those that do franchise, because shareholders tend to prefer that excess profits are reinvested in growth or returned to them rather than used to buy commercial real estate which the investors could buy exposure to themselves to the extent that they want to.

Looks like the private equity is the “real estate company” and Red Lobster is the leaser*

https://www.businessinsider.com/red-lobster-endless-shrimp-bankruptcy-private-equity-debt-real-estate-2024-5

In 2014, amid flagging sales and pressure from investors, Darden sold Red Lobster for $2.1 billion to Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco private-equity firm. To raise enough cash to make the deal happen, Golden Gate sold off Red Lobster's real estate to another entity — in this case, a company called American Realty Capital Properties — and then immediately leased the restaurants back

"The thing that private equity does is just unload assets and monetize assets. And so they effectively paid for the purchase of Red Lobster by selling the real estate," he said. "It'll probably be fine, generally, but there's going to come a time in which your sales fall, your profitability is challenged, and your debt looks too bad, and then suddenly those leases are going to look awfully ugly."

"Once they sell the real estate, then the private-equity company is golden, and they've made their money back and probably more than what they paid," she said, noting that this was a common theme in other restaurants and retailers and adding: "The retail apocalypse is all about having your real estate sold out from under you so that you have to pay the rent in good times and in bad."

Yeah, but the whole reason this approach is even viable is because when Red Lobster was both real estate company and restaurant operator, investors valued it at less than the sum of its parts. Since the late 1980s conglomerates have fallen out of fashion because asset managers of all kinds prefer to deal with pure play companies (especially outside big tech) and to handle allocation themselves. The big Japanese conglomerates often trade at very poor multiples compared to Western businesses not only because of the state of the Japanese economy but because when you buy into one you’re buying into like 15 arbitrary and often barely related business areas. By contrast in the American equity market an investor can more easily measure and tailor their exposure to real estate, oil, railroads, video games, b2b SaaS and so on. Those looking for a preset diversified portfolio can buy an index or buy big holding companies like Berkshire or the public PE firms that have exposure to many different kinds of business.

Private equity is just the corporate raiding/hostile takeover meme of the 1980s updated for the 21st century. Most medium and large private companies are very poorly run, the same way most major corporations were until the late 1980s. A combination of M&A and MBB consulting (mock them freely, but the sad thing is they were once necessary) dealt with most of the low hanging fruit in public markets, and takeover defense is now much better anyway, but in private companies things are still bad. PE is not typically a bad thing, and makes for more successful businesses that do more business and employ more people more often than not. Purely extractive moves still happen, but they’re disproportionately subjects of reporting and PE is now so well developed that (especially with higher rates) an extract what you can, sell-for-parts approach is less and less of a viable way to invest clients’ capital.

That said, selling corporate owned real-estate is a good thing for most businesses. There’s a reason why almost no major corporations other than super rich tech companies in the suburbs own their own corporate headquarters; when you own your premises, you’re a real estate company in addition to doing whatever else you do. Conglomerates are almost always undervalued by markets, it makes more sense for most companies to sign long leases, to focus on their core business as a pure play, and to leave real estate to asset managers and real estate developers who are valued on that basis and have expertise in that market.

when you own your premises, you’re a real estate company in addition to doing whatever else you do.

You say that like it's a bad thing! Real estate in major American cities has been one of the most profitable investments of the last 50 years!

A big business like Red Lobster could even do some weird things to manipulate the market. Like

  1. open a business that attracts a lot of loud, low-class customers to lower the value of nearby real estate
  2. buy up all that real estate
  3. close the red lobster and start a fancy coffee shop or art gallery instead
  4. profit!

This is awesome! I think we've found a new business model for Chuck-E-Cheese.

Red Lobster isn’t located in the areas with strong real estate markets. Those are all Gateway markets (defined as NYC, San Fran, LA, Boston, Miami) mostly coastal. Not 4th tier cities and exurbs where Red Lobster largely operates.

I’m not sure large pubcos are that much better run. Instead, I think unfortunately Marty Lipton convinced Delaware that anti takeover measures were somehow consistent with shareholder primacy when in reality they just protect management ensuring it can screw the shareholders.

I think the raw classical economics argument for prohibiting most forms of takeover defense isn’t completely wrong, but it also isn’t entirely correct. Im based in the UK which bans many of the major tactics used in the US, and I don’t think UK pubcos are run better than American ones on the whole, but I think to me the biggest issue I have with US public companies is super voting shares. These were illegal in London until about 5 years ago; every share had to have the same voting power to be (in practice) eligible for a primary listing in London and for inclusion in indices. They changed it under pressure from the government because British tech companies were IPOing in the US to preserve founder control. I think it’s a hugely negative development in ECM for shareholders, banks and the wider public.

Of course, there are a lot of other restrictions on UK pubcos. That is, there is more differences between UK pubcos compared to say Delaware ones. Also, would be interesting since some UK pubcos are England and Wales PLCs whilst others are Jersey.

That said, selling corporate owned real-estate is a good thing for most businesses. There’s a reason why almost no major corporations other than super rich tech companies in the suburbs own their own corporate headquarters; when you own your premises, you’re a real estate company in addition to doing whatever else you do. Conglomerates are almost always undervalued by markets, it makes more sense for most companies to sign long leases, to focus on their core business as a pure play, and to leave real estate to asset managers and real estate developers who are valued on that basis and have expertise in that market.

Would I be correct in saying that’s mostly just the west? My impression is that in Japan at least, and maybe other Asian countries too, vertical integration is much higher. I would be surprised if Toyota/Panasonic/Yamato etc. don’t own their own land. Certainly they used to: during the bubble Sony’s real estate holding were worth more than the rest of the company put together.

I would be surprised if Toyota/Panasonic/Yamato etc. don’t own their own land.

Toyota's most recent annual SEC filing indicates that it owns land worth 1.4 billion dollars, or 1.9 percent of its assets. "Of Toyota's principal facilities and organizations, all are owned by Toyota Motor Corporation or its subsidiaries. However, small portions, all under approximately 20 percent, of some facilities are on leased premises."

In comparison, GM owns land worth 1.3 billion dollars, or 0.47 percent of its assets. It has "rent expense under operating leases" of 350 million dollars per year, or 0.20 percent of its revenue.

Slight nitpick. But using listed real estate value on SEC findings will not be accurate. Those will be at historical costs not current market value and is depreciated. It’s a lot like prop 13 in California. If Toyota bought the land the factory sits on in the 1970’s then the land will be listed at 1970 prices.

It’s also obvious in this discussion that companies that need physical footprints will have exposure to real estate. There are many different flavors of corporate leases but many of them are functionally no different than owning real estate. A 300 year lease with pass thru of maintenance, property taxes, etc is in terms of economics no different than owning the property with a mortgage.

Leases have a mathematical property that is a lot like delta in options. Options are not the same as owning equity but delta is a measure of the options price movement to the underlying equity. Similar shorter term leases have little exposure to the underlying real estate while longer term leases can be indistinguishable from owning real estate. Most of these leaseback deals are long term and would essentially have a lot of delta.

Is midtwit leftist Twitter that bad?

They “made” $2 billion. No the had revenue of $2 billion.

It’s just looks like a constant gotcha with no desire to understand what is going on.

The real estate deal had nothing to do with Georgism. If you google the deal it’s just as sale-leaseback. A sale lease-back is much more like taking out a mortgage on your real estate than a true sale. For various reasons corporations like to do these things. Red Lobster took property they owned and then sold it to someone else but then had to make rent payments and usually these type of deals would have RL paying most operating costs and property taxes. A sale leaseback is a little bit like debt most of the time for the buyer of the real estate and occasionally turns into owner real estate (like if Red Lobster goes bankrupt then the buyer of the sale-leaseback suddenly own a bunch of real estate without a tenant they need to figure out how to reposition). Basically a corporate bond collateralized with real estate.

If the leases have actual value as in the real estate went up in value and someone would rent it for a higher price you occasionally see the leases resold for profit to (Red Lobster in this case) a new business (in this case an expanding restaurant chain) but most of the time the landlord takes a big L and has a pain point of figuring out what to do with the property.

My opinion would be reading those tweets actively makes you less intelligence and gives you zero information on what is actually going on.

It’s just looks like a constant gotcha with no desire to understand what is going on.

Yeah.

The real estate deal had nothing to do with Georgism.

If the leases have actual value as in the real estate went up in value and someone would rent it for a higher price you occasionally see the leases resold for profit to (Red Lobster in this case) a new business (in this case an expanding restaurant chain) but most of the time the landlord takes a big L and has a pain point of figuring out what to do with the property.

I see a similarity between them:

Georgism incentivizes maximizing profit over real-estate by increasing the rent. Low income usages can't pay the rents. Some implementations (??) make the land owner set the price they're taxed on and they'd be forced to sell to any purchaser at that price.

But here someone bet the land was under-utilized, bought the company with the goal of selling hte land to someone who can make more money with it. I'm not sure about the implementation of whether the previous owners of Red Lobster knew this was the plan and were okay with it.

Overstated it seems. Hyperion commented on this take, do you have a similar view to them?

The firm who bought the real estate almost certainly took a giant loss on the deal.

People who buy NNN leases are buying cash flows tied to the leases betting that Red Lobster will stay in business and pay rent for probably something like 30 years. The buyers of these are much more like a mortgage bank than they are a land speculator. These are basically now junk bonds in default where the owner of the leases now own a bunch of restaurants without tenants they are going to need to spend a lot of money renovating (Tenant improvements) to recover any value.

I don’t know how many times I need to say this but in the real estate world these things are not “owning” real estate the same way a normal person would think about it.

These are the same people who would buy bonds backed by Pepsi but Pepsi just went bankrupt and your trying to figure out what you can liquidate to recover some value.

I think Georgism is silly. Private markets are always trying to redevelop properties into better use cases that increase rents. I think Georgism fails because develops largely profit by pushing for projects that will increase the value of their land and therefore increase rents. By taking away that profit developers have less incentive to be boost land values.

Good summary of the competing narratives.

My take... What's with all the talking points about how it's somehow evil to buy a company and then sell it for parts? Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail? Or more, accurately, if I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it.

Is Red Lobster such a valuable institution that owners must be forced to prop it up with infusions of capital? You know, for the good of society.

We need more zombie corporations going under, and less hand-wringing when they do. Failing companies failing is the engine of creative destruction, and therefore growth.

I think it depends on the details. For example, is the company actually failing right this minute or not?

Doing productive things with a doomed business deep in the red is different from strip-mining a struggling company's assets because you think you could make more money speculating on their real estate value. Or taking a company with a reputation for high quality products, reducing the quality, and profiting off the reputation that the previous owners built up.

Some companies deserve to die (I work for one). But in general people admire building things and disapprove of destroying them.

Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail?

Sounds fine, until your area loses its hospital because PE came in and did something similar (it's a growing problem in healthcare). Lots of organizations you wouldn't want to lose are sitting on valuable real estate and operating with razor thin margins or other similar sins.

Sure, hospitals are different. As always there are specific exceptions to general principles.

There is no need, however, to protect a failing Red Lobster as a cultural institution.

Is it? Maybe hospitals suck. I wonder if you really need a maternity war combined with a cancer war combined with an ER.

Maybe splitting some of these up into smaller offices would better in the long run.

I think people haven't fully grappled with the implications of Evolution. And maybe don't understand how capitalism works. I barely do either.

Here are some talking points I see:

Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail?

There's the inconvenience of being reorganized. All the employees on the healthcare plan, who've moved across the country for this job for their family, who've put effort and sweat every day to make the company better (and other such sympathetic narratives), are suddenly shuffled into the labour market without their consent.

Particularly when the company is on net-profitable. A narrative that this perfectly fine business that's meeting people's needs is deemed "unvaluable" by corporate spreadsheets and then gutted to make room for some high-end fancy business. Rich people are willing to pay more than poor people, and now this veers into gentrification arguments.

if I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it

There's also aesthetic quality to this.

Buying a rare painting from a private collector and then burning it is legal and unimpeachable, and yet I still feel there is something lost, an aesthetic duty to the commons. Memories, sentimental memories lost to the wind. Perhaps less so with a property like Red Lobster.

There's the inconvenience of being reorganized. All the employees on the healthcare plan, who've moved across the country for this job for their family, who've put effort and sweat every day to make the company better (and other such sympathetic narratives), are suddenly shuffled into the labour market without their consent.

If the company isn't making money, there's an argument that these people's working lives are being wasted. Moving across the country with family, effort and sweat every day to make the company better, all in service of something that is valued as a net negative to society. It's not a charity, it's not a social cause, this isn't a job that gives society virtues immeasurable. It's a mid-casual restaurant chain that could be easily replaced with another. It's losing money because it isn't worth anything, and I hope workers get to work at places that are worth something, even if they're mid-casual restaurant chains.

There are other practical problems here, kicking people off insurance and making them find new jobs and all the hardship and drama. But that's not really the responsibility of the PE guys. Ideally, the government taxes those guys on the wealth they've freed up and made more efficient, and we use those tax monies to provide for the social good of the people effected. Something like this even happens in real life, we just spend a tremendous amount of money on all the wrong programs and welfare.

Buying a rare painting from a private collector and then burning it is legal and unimpeachable

In the UK there is a system for protecting beautiful old houses, fully or partially. You are permitted to do whatever you like with a ‘listed’ house provided that you don’t damage the listed parts of the building. So you can knock down and rebuild the back of the building but you can’t damage the Georgian facade, for example.

There are occasional shenanigans but in general the system seems to work quite well, and strikes a good balance between ownership rights and protecting the public heritage. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were similar systems for notable works of art.

The united States has such deed restrictions as well, and changes require historical society approval.

This sucks when there is a roof leak, and directly contributes to why historical buildings rot away.

I can't speak for the US, but I haven't heard of such cases in the UK. Obviously old buildings can get damp, but I've never heard of somebody not being able to repair their house because it's listed. Might cost a bit more, but listed houses are usually expensive and owned by richish people in the first place.

This is.... Georgism???

No, it's just regular arbitrage. arbitrage would work the same Georgism or not. The whole point of Georgism, is that, if done perfectly, it only has distributional effects, it doesn't change the economic efficiency of the outcome. It is a pure transfer with no distortionary effects.

Ah, I have a very shallow model of Georgism.

Specifically I got it confused with the argument that it pushes low-value companies out of high-value land (as a pro).

pushes low-value companies out of high-value land (as a pro).

If by 'value' you mean a market value people are willing to pay for, then that is true. But, this is a distributional effect. It's like how if we had let the plains Indians own all that prime farmland on the prairie, it could just be used by them to hunt buffalo, but if they had to pay a land tax, they could never afford it. Both outcomes are Pareto efficient, under certain extreme, frictionless, assumptions. However, the distributional consequences are very different, with the land owners rents being totally redistributed to the tax collecting government and these distributional consequences determine what is produced, it's just both outcomes are as economically efficient.

But, this is a distributional effect. It's like how if we had let the plains Indians own all that prime farmland on the prairie, it could just be used by them to hunt buffalo, but if they had to pay a land tax, they could never afford it.

You know, I think you just made one of the most powerful arguments against Georgism I've seen. At least for leftists that I've seen that support it.

What would giving native's back their land matter if the land value was all taxed away? I guess if they were their own nations that didn't have to share with white people it would be different, but you can't get to that scenario now without ethnically cleansing white people or allowing minority rule by the natives. Both things allegedly the worst crimes imaginable for the left if white people do them, but somehow righteous if 'indigenous' people do it.

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/15/congress-is-preparing-to-restore-quotas-in-college-admissions/

Apparently, there's a new privacy bill in congress, with a maximally bad attachment to it, and quite likely to pass. (what kind of monster would be against privacy? )

Almost all kinds of decision making (anything that involves computers seems like) are classed as an algorithm.

If your 'algorithm' causes disparate impact, it's bad and you must change it or you're open to lawsuits. Yearly review of the 'algorithm' is mandatory, first review in 2 years after bill is passed..

Covers: every bigger business (iirc 750 employees+), all social networks and...??all nonprofits using computers to process 'personal data' to submit yearly evaluations if they're not causing 'disparate impact'. Excepted: the entire finance industry, government contractors.

It also explicitly allows discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristics (race, sex etc) for the purpose of

27 (ii) diversifying an applicant, participant, or customer pool;

Here's a bigger excerpt:

Here's how it works. APRA's quota provision, section 13 of APRA, says that any entity that "knowingly develops" an algorithm for its business must evaluate that algorithm "to reduce the risk of" harm. And it defines algorithmic "harm" to include causing a "disparate impact" on the basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability" (plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"). APRA Sec. 13(c)(1)(B)(vi)(IV)&(V).

At bottom, it's as simple as that. If you use an algorithm for any important decision about people—to hire, promote, advertise, or otherwise allocate goods and services—you must ensure that you've reduced the risk of disparate impact.

The closer one looks, however, the worse it gets. At every turn, APRA expands the sweep of quotas. For example, APRA does not confine itself to hiring and promotion. It provides that, within two years of the bill's enactment, institutions must reduce any disparate impact the algorithm causes in access to housing, education, employment, healthcare, insurance, or credit.

No one escapes. The quota mandate covers practically every business and nonprofit in the country, other than financial institutions. APRA sec. 2(10). And its regulatory sweep is not limited, as you might think, to sophisticated and mysterious artificial intelligence algorithms. A "covered algorithm" is broadly defined as any computational process that helps humans make a decision about providing goods or services or information. APRA, Section 2 (8). It covers everything from a ground-breaking AI model to an aging Chromebook running a spreadsheet. In order to call this a privacy provision, APRA says that a covered algorithm must process personal data, but that means pretty much every form of personal data that isn't deidentified, with the exception of employee data. APRA, Section 2 (9).

Always amused and astonished how determined most western governments are to make any economic activity apart from finance and working for the government totally impossible.

Disparate impact is only an Anglo thing. It's almost completely ignored in Europe, where we only have to contend with environmental laws and bureaucratic bullshit.

Also you made my heart rate spike to cca 150 for a sec. In other thread I posted a photo of a girl calling herself 'Pasha'. I log back in, what do I see. Uff.

lol. I still can’t believe I got stuck with such a retarded stereotypical username

I believe it's a diminutive of Paul and Paula in Russian. Not that stereotypical esp not on English language internet. It's just rare.

Yes, it's diminutive of Pavel (Paul) in Russian. Paula is extremely rare in Russian

You can change it anytime you want btw, unless you're worried about people not recognizing you.

Spend a few weeks as "The X formerly known as Pasha"

It's less surprising when you look at the professions in Congress. The majority of these people have done their level best to never spend a single day of their lives producing any good or service that anyone would willingly purchase.

Wouldn't this apply to almost all universities that require faculty applicants to submit DEI statements?

I'm quite that practice has a disparate impact.

There are exceptions for:

  • self-testing to mitigate unlawful discrimination
  • diversifying
  • advertising things to underrepresented groups

But I think you're right that what you said isn't any of those?

Since diversifying in one direction (racially, LGBTQ) will almost certainly run contrary to diversifying in another (political party registration) the law would appear likely to be inherently contradictory. All smart whites/asians/indians will quickly register as Republicans (whether they vote as such or at all is of course irrelevant).

What does a college do when faced with the direct trade off between hiring Democrat (overrepresented) black (underrepresented) faculty and hiring Republican (underrepresented) white male (overrepresented) faculty, if both types of rejected applicant threaten to sue?

This bill should pass because it will lead to SCOTUS having to bring down disparate impact or literally paralyze the entire American civil legal system.

All smart whites/asians/indians will quickly register as Republicans (whether they vote as such or at all is of course irrelevant).

Hmm, this could theoretically apply to everyone: a queer black woman Republican would check a lot of boxes. It would be ironic if this backfires and moves the Republican party leftward. ("Polls show that over 60% of Republicans believe...")

These would just be legal. They'd be allowed to do it because they're diversifying. They don't have to worry about it because their action fell into one of the exceptions.

At least, that's how I read it.

Then everything counts as diversifying. You get sued for hiring too many white males? You’re diversifying politically. You get sued for hiring too many liberals? You’re diversifying racially. It effectively abolishes disparate impact anyway. Even progressive corporations will just use whatever excuse their lawyers tell them to.

The circle will be squared the same way it usually is. Disparate impact against unfavored groups will be ignored by setting up extremely high standards for it to be proved and carving out easy exceptions. Disparate impact against favored groups will have little burden of proof and few if any exceptions will be tolerated. Want to discriminate against Republicans? "Oh, republicans just are too stupid to be in academia, see we have a study here showing that". Don't want to discriminate in favor of black people? Too bad.

As for SCOTUS, you can barely get John Roberts to make a decision; he certainly won't enforce it.

You and I are usually on the same page with regards to this particular black pill, but this legislation seems so obviously stupid (because the mitigating algorithms will have to be stated clearly) that it transcends my usual pessimism in its idiocy.

Yes, it’s a contradictory law because being ‘equal’ in terms of political party registration is going to unequally favor, say, white men for many jobs that are mostly done by liberals, since for example almost all potential Republican college professors (if political party is part of disparate impact) will be white males, and so correcting that would have a disparate impact on women/poc.

Yeah, I just don’t see it happening.

GOP leadership seems to be completely capable of messing things up so maybe this bill does reach a point where it might pass. Then it won’t and we will see headlines about how Trump killed a bill to protect your privacy online. I think a lot of us on the right are becoming quite happy to have Trump as the sin eater. Granted it should not get to this point where the GOP is considering passing it. It should just be a bill that never gets to a vote in Congress

COVERED ALGORITHM.—The term “covered algorithm” means a computational process, including one derived from machine learning, statistics, or other data processing or artificial intelligence techniques, that makes a decision or facilitates human decision- making by using covered data, which includes determining the provision of products or services or ranking, ordering, promoting, recommending, amplifying, or similarly determining the delivery or display of information to an individual.

I wonder how that would apply to dating apps; would they now be required to design algorithms such that an Asian man, black woman, or trans woman all get equivalent number of matches to their privileged counterparts? Or is that not discrimination?

This could be really interesting.

  1. Adding political party registration as a protected class could end up changing the character of many institutions and organizations. For example, forcing universities to hire Republicans would have major long-term effects on the values of future college graduates.
  2. This law conflicts with the principles of freedom of association and equal protection. It'll force the issue up through the courts (no way it doesn't get an instant challenge up to the Supreme Court) and with this Court the result could be something wild like reversing Griggs v Duke entirely.
  3. Even if it stands, it will bring quotas to the fore as a political issue and make the public conversations more clearly about group spoils vs. overall efficiency. It adds such onerous requirements for businesses to make any useful predictions about people that there will be tons of examples of waste and inefficiency due to the law. In an accelerationist way this could be good for getting back to a more reasonable set of laws.

Adding political party registration as a protected class

I'm unclear on how "political party registration status" will be interpreted. Does it mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, etc.? Or does it merely mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on people who are registered and people who aren't registered?

"Original public meaning" is failing my poor spectrum-y brain.

Currently disparate impact has a carve-out for business critical reasons (which is why Google can’t be successfully sued for the fact that fewer than 15% of software engineers are black, for example). If that is maintained, then a college could argue that, say, only 5% of qualified candidates for an English literature professor job are Republicans and so they don’t actually do anything wrong if 95% of the English faculty are Democrats.

Reversing or at least heavily limiting disparate impact seems inevitable with this court. Roberts and ACB will be unhappy with it but if something as ridiculous as this happens they won’t really have a choice because of the sheer volume of litigation it would unleash.

If college admissions were determined by “algorithm” (paper or digital) then that algorithm would be obtainable in lawsuit discovery. If that algorithm involved rectifying disparate impact (to apply this law) by bolstering eg. black and Hispanic scores, it would directly contravene not only last year’s SCOTUS judgment but also the previous judgment that ruled direct quotas explicitly unconstitutional. It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.

Yes, but the lower courts could just ignore that. Maybe in another 10 years the Supreme Court will finally take a case and issue a wishy-washy decision that the lower courts could then ignore again.

It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.

Is there no way for Democrats to make the court more favorable ? E.g. by say, packing it with wise latinas?

The Democrats could technically pack the Supreme Court by abolishing the senate filibuster and using a 51 seat majority + the presidency to do so, sure. I suspect that at least several senators would balk at it, though, such that their current majority is insufficient. If they got back to 56/57 seats it would be viable, although of course as soon as the GOP had a President and senate majority it would be immediately neutered by them doing the same.

I believe the scotus size was set by statute, meaning that the house is required to consent to an expansion of the court size. If only the senate and president had to conspire to add additional justices, I figure it would have happened already.

Yes. There's some !!fun!! questions about what happens if the Senate and the President does it anyway, but (probably?) not a target.

Nah, Manchin and Sinema both objected even when the Dems had the House.

I’m unsure the scotus would seat the new justices under a separation powers approach.

plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"

There seems to be an interest, possibly growing, on the center-right in these strictly-neutral laws like the Civil Rights Act and Title IX. They're not without success: a number of male students successfully challenged universities for anti-male bias in applying Obama-era sexual assault investigation policies, there's an ongoing likely-to-succeed suit (props to Trace) involving FAA ATC hiring, and those are just the first examples that come to mind. I've seen at least a few universities explicitly table student motions regarding BDS because the adults in the room are concerned of potential legal trouble (presumably under the Civil Rights Act). It'd be unsurprising to me if a bunch of pro-Israel Jewish academics sue, for example, Columbia over alleged institutional bias in hiring or hostile workplace environments.

Sneaking in political registration presumably enables new fronts in culture lawfare: suddenly a left-leaning institution that uses "algorithms" to sort resumes, college applications, and the like can be taken to task for why their system spits out disparately low numbers of registered Republicans. Is the bias of The Algorithm on social media deprioritizing certain political views? Was this bias intentional? It doesn't matter under a disparate impact standard!

I don't know that I like the law as you've presented it, but I can see where the legislatures are coming from. And in today's political climate, it sadly feels like state-enforced colorblindness is, if anything, a win for my preferred liberal pluralist society, even if my libertarian sympathies disagree.

Although this seems the first example of a truly opt-in class being adopted in this fashion, which might lead to some interesting results if people start registering novel political parties specifically to form a protected class.

That's interesting. At first glance, I thought "why would Republicans support this law".

It seems like it would be better to get rid of group preferences. The problem is that, even when group preferences are banned, corporations, governments, and universities just go ahead and do them anyway.

Perhaps it's better to simply enshrine Republicans, conservatives, and Christians as new protected classes allowing the possibility of torts (or the threat of torts) to keep people from discriminating against them.

Since we can't stop disparate impact from being used as a cudgel, it's time to arm both sides of the culture war. Universities need to be sued for the fact that less than 5% of professors are Republican.

I mean, technically ‘white people’ are already a ‘protected class’ under the law as a racial group, and states like California make political ideology a protected status too (which is seemingly why Damore was able to negotiate a nice settlement with Google). What is more relevant is practice; since almost all major white collar economic activity occurs in deep blue states and cities, activist progressive judges and district attorneys can always selectively apply these laws to favored groups. It’s very rare for criminals who attack whites to be charged with racially aggravated offenses.

The funniest thing would be, if they truly wanted to address 'disparate impact' meaning proportional representation in everything desirable, that'd de facto be a return of the Jewish quota too. Despite falling off a bit due to intermarriage Jews are still over-achieving quite a bit over basic whites, so any legislation that'd truly remove disparate impact would be in essence also a quote on Jews, if they chose to identify as such, no ?

Progressives have proven to be adept hypocrites, rules-lawyering their way into opportunities unavailable to them by their own 'principles'.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-kaling-brother-affirmative-action/index.html

Other examples like Dolezal and the Canadian professor who pretended to be native are also extant, and this is before the narrative-flipping progressives engage in whenever they are called out: decry any attempt at scrutiny as sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/islamophobic.

Conservatives have been racking up brute force victories in courts via judge packing, but the progressives will remain adept at gaming the system to their benefit. The most ironic part is that I think the progressives aren't aware that they're hollowing out their words with their actions, they seem to really believe carveouts for themselves are just part of playing the game.

Harrison Butker's commencement speech (transcript) is probably the most politically incorrect public exposition I've ever heard from a (relatively) public non-political figure. Butker is the Kansas City Chief's placekicker, and a devout Catholic. He hits nearly all the culture war hot topics: abortion, pride month, women's role in society, the Covid response, and Biden's leadership or lack thereof.

While the mainstream and new media are universal in their condemnation of this speech, the NFL up to this point is merely "distancing" itself from Butker's viewpoints. If Butker's career can survive intact, this seems to be further evidence in favor of the "vibe-shift". Indeed, he may have shifted the Overton window himself: he mentions his "teammate's girlfriend" (Taylor Swift); and simply by being on the same team as Travis Kelce, Butker's beliefs has the potential to be platformed to the millions of women who have started following the Chiefs.

Courage is contagious: the more people who stand up to the regime, the easier it becomes for others to do so. In my own small way, I signed a petition in support of Butker under my real name. While this seems a small risk to take, it isn't one I would have countenanced four years ago.

It's quite interesting how even the Catholics in the US are Protestants in spirit. Butker says again and again you can't choose your faith, but at the same time is eager to criticize the priests and the bishops and I think he would gladly criticize the Pope himself if he could get away with it. Butker, your discontent is profane in nature, while their ordainment was divine. How can a sheep criticize his shepherd? What good is a shepherd that accepts runaway sheep into his flock instead of sending them back?

Butker's speech has got so many people up in a frenzy about the content that over 200,000 people have signed a "petition" on Change.org to get him removed from the Kansas City Chiefs.

What do these articles or the descriptions on change.org have in common? Creating a strawman of the content of his speech. The change.org petition description literally doesn't even give any examples of what he says, it just characterizes his speech as "sexist, homophobic, anti-trans, anti-abortion and racist."

Graduation speeches are for the people who are graduating, not for the entire world. He was giving a speech at a Catholic college to Catholic students, who presumably have Catholic values. The biggest criticism against his speech is in regard to his statement about women:

For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I'm on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.

This statement is literally followed by a huge round of applause, so clearly, the audience listening to the speech, which includes women, was very responsive to his message to them specifically.

He never says women should only be a homemakers. In fact, he even acknowledges women can have successful careers. All he does is praise women who choose to be a homemaker and a mother. Butker is absolutely correct in his statements about women being lied to that pursuing a career is much more worthwhile than motherhood, based on the behavior and happiness of actual women.

I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.

Based and C.S. Lewis pilled:

“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus. But it is surely, in reality, the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, mines, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavour’. We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist.” - Narnia dude.

What I’ve never understood is why exactly this sort of thing makes sense to the left. The man is a kicker on a football team. He doesn’t really get paid to be a spokesman for anything beyond the usual shilling for products. I don’t understand why a person isn’t allowed to hold contrary opinions especially when those opinions have absolutely nothing to do with his actual job and he doesn’t seem to be much of an activist at all.

Because he spoke heresy. And in fairness if Butker he wouldn't be a principled defender of free speech either.

What surprised me most in the reaction was this amusing line:

Butker’s statement explicitly argues that there’s a correct way to be Catholic, even though in reality, most Catholics are supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Well... yes.

Yes, there's a correct way to be Catholic. It involves believing and acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, which is very clear on some of those subjects.

How is that controversial?

It also involves listening to the Argentinian socialist in Rome, which American Catholics often seem to chafe at.

No, it does not involve any of that even if you talk about papal infallibility doctrine that was so far used twice in history. Catholics do not have to listen to whatever pope says in some interview. So far Catholic Church is against gay marriages in line with Persona Humana doctrine. Just couple of excerpts:

At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.

But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.[18] This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.

The church is certainly still against both gay marriage and abortion, nevertheless the official position is still more conciliatory on many of these social issues than US tradcaths are happy with.

The extent to which Catholicism requires agreeing with the pope is regularly contested along partisan lines.

Usually one side argues, "The pope is the vicar of Christ and visible leader of the church, from whom we learn and to whom we have an obligation to listen, and his words should be taken to heart by all Catholics", and the other side argues, "The pope is a human being and capable of error in ordinary circumstances, and there have been shockingly bad popes in the past. Respect for the papal office does not entail unthinking obedience to every off-the-cuff statement a pope makes, and good Catholics can and should, in obedience to sacred tradition, disagree with him where necessary".

And the two sides switch depending on whether or not they like the current pope or not. There is very little consistency.

Across the board, Butker's sin is holding up a mirror. Yes, most women would be happier supporting their successful, loving husband than drudging through a fake email job. Yes, you're a bad Catholic if you support the commission of grave sins.

Yes, there's a correct way to be Catholic. It involves believing and acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, which is very clear on some of those subjects.

At least as an empirical matter, no one seems to actually do this. Culture-war Catholicism seems to center around deciding which portions to ignore.

Yes, that's where you'll find the majority of culture war Catholicism. What is the Catholic Church? Is it what Catholics actually do or believe? Is it the doctrine of the church? What is the doctrine of the church, and who defines it, and that way lies a whole debate around tradition, magisterium, the papacy, and more.

I tend to think those things are secondary and partisans tend to flip flop on them whenever it suits them.

Take a look at the left wing catholic framing of the church’s teachings on capital punishment and compare it to their approach to teachings on the family.

All those debates about magisterium seem very contingent to me.

I read the speech and I have to say it almost made me want to convert to Latin Mass Catholicism.

What I was especially drawn to was the image of traditional values winning vs. how I personally tend to wallow in more negative news.

Butker seems to be almost perfect. I assume the media is desperately searching, so he's likely been faithful to his wife and probably hasn't said "nigger" within recording distance. As Nybbler points out, he's got literally a gigachad look. It might be cooler if he were a tight end, but he's arguably one of the best kickers in the game with three Super Bowls. He's not perfectly articulate, but articulate enough, and his speech avoided some of the pitfalls conservatives love to jump into. It was very digestible if anyone wanted to watch the whole thing and more coherent than Margery Taylor Greene or Trump can be. It also helps that he kept things straight Catholic; going all in against Catholicism is attacking a lot of Latinos.

Conservatives should spend a lot of time figuring out the things he got right.

It might be cooler if he were a tight end, but he's arguably one of the best kickers in the game with three Super Bowls.

Even this part has had a pretty funny element, with dumpy, unathletic haters suggesting that being a kicker means he's not very athletic. In reality, he was a D1 soccer player at Georgia Tech, indicating a high level of dynamic athleticism and conditioning. He's also one of the most fashionable guys in the league (google "Harrison Butker suits" for examples).

At the same time I think evangelicals are probably thinking "based trad cath" and I'm not sure how true this is across trad caths but for the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen cousin in the family he is a straight theocrat that what would violently suppress all other denominations if he could. If his beliefs were common among pre-Vatican II Catholics I can see why they were discriminated against.

Liberal Democracy is basically only possible if people are some sort of creedal, Reformed Christian. You can have any creed you want, Episcopalian, Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Atheist, etc. but you have to conform to the social and theological norms of Reformed Christianity. Shariah Law and Halakah just aren't compatible with Western society and can only be tolerated when they are tiny minorities.

Yes, prior to Vatican II and especially prior to 1900 or so, the traditional Catholic position was basically that the state should formally endorse the Catholic Church, obey directives from the Vatican, and tolerate other religious positions either provisionally or not at all. Integralism is, broadly speaking, the traditional Roman position. If you ever get interested in the last two centuries of Spanish, French, or Italian history you will notice this causing a great deal of trouble. It's also responsible for a lot of traditional American (and Anglo in generally) anti-Catholicism. Taken seriously, it is the position that leads to drama like this.

However, Catholics, partly because of how extreme this position seems today, have largely been running away from it in the West, or have been looking for ways to reconcile Catholicism with American liberal values. Some have been more or less successful with this.

But anyway, if you dig into the European history a bit, 'discriminated against' is underselling it. This is/was a position that causes civil wars.

The CMRI are fringe nut jobs who bought holy orders from the mafia and consider other tradCaths apostates.

Many tradcaths seem to consider other tradcaths apostates especially because there’s a big gradation in terms of their relationship with the actual church as an institution (see FSSP vs SSPX), views on the pope and so on.

The CMRI are particularly hardline sedevacantists who result from a schism in a group that was rejected from joining the SSPX due to their leadership’s insanity, and then split in two, to reunify after one side’s leaders were literally arrested for arms trafficking and the other side’s had their episcopal ordinations arranged by the mafia. Even by the standards of sedevacantists, who are themselves a fairly small fringe group among IRL tradCaths, they’re cult-y and on the fringe.

As for the SSPX-FSSP split, both sets of leadership hype it up to the media for realpolitik purposes and the recent trend seems to strike a less-hostile tone towards one another in internally-directed communications, and de facto have long ignored their congregations tending to go back and forth. SSPX couples marry at FSSP parishes more often than at their own(for obtuse canon law reasons), for one example. Particularly since williamson’s departure, the SSPX and its dependent groups/the FSSP and similar groups are closer to each other than either is to anyone else. And together they make up an enormous supermajority of tradCaths.

I love how social and mainstream media pearlclutching over Butker has pretty much catapulted him to being the third most famous Chief via the Streisand effect. I’d never heard of him before this.

I still have no interest in listening to his speech, looking into his opinions (they’re probably kind of stupid), or watching him or the NFL in general, but he’s making the usual insufferables seethe so I like him. I’ll just donate my ki from afar like he’s Goku charging up a Spirit Bomb.

It helps that most of his fellow NFL players have greater idpol protections and hold views that are even more politically incorrect about women and 2SLGBTQIA+ (views that are sometimes physically expressed to the former in a fiery, but mostly peaceful manner). However, they just don’t have the desire or ability to introspect on a worldview and go around giving speeches. So Butker likely enjoys some low-key solidarity.

The Chiefs as Superbowl champions in an OT victory and the biggest hotbed of off-field drama, gossip, and lolcowery? Maybe the NFL is indeed fixed like boxing, instead of real like pro-wrestling.

Yeah, what is it with Chiefs-related news lately? They're also the team for whom a Deadspin reporter went to a game and decided to defame a 9-year-old in team colors bodypaint, and got Deadspin sued as a result. All these things happening all at once, and centered around people and events conspicuously connected to this one team ... would be an interesting coincidence.

Butker was already the third most famous chief, albeit by more distance; he scored the OT points for two superbowl victories and had been in the news for some feel-good society pages stories.

It’s like the inverse of the Mitch Hedberg joke. “I’m now the third most famous player on the Chiefs. I already was before, but I still am now, too.”

He's almost got the face of the gigachad. He had to have done that on purpose.

I got a couple upvotes on reddit replying to a post “with bad guy Butker whose the evilest player in the nfl”

Good Guy: Butker Bad Guy: too many to name

I am not sure if the Overton window of NFL player conduct has really changed that much. I think most Americans have always had some support for traditional values and even more support a religious community to do their own thing. Explicitly stating this publicly though was banned for a while.

This also has me thinking about the right to free association. Which has largely been deleted from the U.S. constitution. I largely support a right to free association but it feels like it does need some limits. I would like a company to be able to fire some one for any reason they want. If you get promoted to CEO and your personal view is that Indians are smelly vile creatures and want to fire them just because they are Indian I want you to have that right. And ideally those Indians you don’t like get scooped up by your competitor and build a better product.

Butker’s case provides the counter-point. If the NFL decided they don’t want Catholics playing in their league who do real Catholic things and fired Butker it would cause him real harm. Go start your own football league is not viable. This happens with a lot of product too. If Microsoft decided no Jews can use excel that would be an irreplaceable loss. Jews of course could build their own excel software, but since every other organization uses excel the Jewish excel would not be compatible with the Gentile Excel used by everyone else. They could not be accountants or investment bankers because all their clients would be using Gentile Excel.

Of course Courts can come up with tests to distinguish the difference for when giving free association is non-viable. The issue here is that if you are the wrong group at the time let’s say a Catholic kicker the court could declare it is viable for him to start his own NFL to be a kicker, but also find it’s completely not viable for Jews to create their own excel.

If the NFL decided they don’t want Catholics playing in their league who do real Catholic things and fired Butker it would cause him real harm.

Of course, he's earned 18 million already, so, assuming he's saved it, he'd still be quite well off.

Yeah, but he's a 29-year-old elite kicker. He probably has $40 million left on the table with a normal career trajectory.

I’m sure that if he gets fired he’d have a professional conservative job paying 7 figures in less than a year.

An articulate NFL player who gets fired for being socially conservative has a professional social conservative speaker job already waiting for him.

Like most things, the solution is freedom in normal situations and government regulation in monopoly situations.

Agree. The broad strokes are obvious.

Doing that in practice is hard. Most businesses have some market power and even Americas tech firms have some competition. Excel is actually a great example. Some time around 2010 MSFT stock was trading in the 20’s and conventional wisdom was it’s a value trap and going out of business. Googlesheets were invented and free. Eventually people realized there are a lot of 50+ year old bankers and accountants that would rather write a check to Microsoft every year for $100 than learn a similar but slightly different software. Which is rational by those bankers as writing a Microsoft check for about $2k the rest of the career is a lot cheaper than learning new software (at $200 an hour that’s 10 hrs of work). And since the old people wouldn’t switch all the young people had to be compatible. At one point conventional wisdom was Excel was not a monopoly but I would say today it is a monopoly.

Even a fairly basic cake making business has a little market power. As it’s a pain point to travel an extra 15 minutes to find another baker.

I would say Excel = restricted Baker= not restricted most people would say is fair. But the exact line is far messier.

An interesting current case is the Tapestry/Capri merger. A quick synopsis is Tapestry is buying Capri which is basically a roll-up of mid-tier luxury brands. Handbags and shoes. I think these markets are highly competitive and fairly easy to enter (honestly Temu seems to have a lot of cheaper products that look the same). The Biden administration is suing to block the mergers saying antitrust/monopoly. I think this market is clearly in the baker category.

Disclosure: long and wrong. It’s trading $36. Deal closes at $56. If it breaks your probably talking a puke close to $20 and eventually trading around $25. I think the economics are clearly in favor of it closing. But it’s in a NY Court with a Biden appointed judge which is outside my personal Overton window of knowledge and I deeply distrust blue enclave courts now.

Based on the steady torrent of Israel-Palestine threads, the general impression I get is that a majority of people here is quite solidly pro-Israel in this conflict. I would like to understand the pro-Israel position better; in particular, I wonder if there are arguments for the Israeli position in the current war that don't mostly rest on one of the following:

  • An arbitrary cutoff of historical reckoning either shortly before the most recent Hamas attack, or else somewhere in the early '90s following the general Western mode of thinking about other geopolitical conflicts. Unilaterally declaring all scores settled is not a persuasive or universalizable moral principle.

  • Invocation of inherent superior qualities of Israeli Jews relative to Palestinians, be it intelligence, education or general "civilizedness". You would almost certainly either need to cut out a very contrived set of conditions to make the principle only apply to this case, or accept some hypothetical corollary you probably don't want that involves similar abuse being heaped on morally/intellectually/civilizationally inferior people that you care about or feel kinship to.

The way I see it, the moral case for Palestine is pretty clear, and unlike some seem to assume does not require you to subscribe to a lot of oppressed-are-always-right slave morality (though you do need to stop short of maximally might-makes-right master morality). The present ruling population of Israel mostly moved to that territory in the late '40s, and from the start has continued violently expelling the ancestors of present Palestinians from their homes to acquire their land for themselves. I do not think that Palestinians' stupidity or backwardness or whatever are so great that they can't be afforded what we otherwise consider basic human rights to property and safety, even if the people who want to take those from them for themselves were all literal Von Neumanns.

I don't think that this original wrong has been made right to the Palestinians, and the argument that some Palestinians submitted and got to live better lives under the Israelis than they would have had in an independent Palestine does not morally convince me either. If Bill Gates steals the plots some rednecks built their houses on, builds a mansion in its place and then offers them lavish jobs as domestic servants, do the ones who don't accept forfeit their right to complain about the theft? Another counterargument seems to rest on something like statute of limitations (like, the Palestinians and Israelis alive nowadays are not the ones who got robbed and their robbers), which would be more persuasive if Israeli settlements were not still expanding, and there weren't still Palestinians who are quite directly being made to suffer at the hands of the Israeli men with guns for no other reason than that they do not accept the "become Bill Gates's domestic servant" deal. It seems pretty clear to me that there is no recourse left to the Palestinians who do not want to to take this deal that preserves their human dignity - their conquerors certainly won't hear them out themselves, and they are backed by the US machine which not only could produce a personal cruise missile for every Palestinian if it put its mind to it but also has enough intellectual and propaganda firepower that they could make even the Palestinians doubt that they are themselves humans with rights.

If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you. To claim otherwise, to me, seems to amount to claiming that you can be absolved for arbitrary wrongs if you just amass enough power to make effective resistance impossible, and I don't like that even before we start taking into the account that the targets of Hamas terror were intended and more often than not happy beneficiaries of the original wrongs committed. (If you have been driven out of your house and into a corner at gunpoint by the mafia, the mafia boss's kid stands by watching the show and mocking you, and, seeing an opening, you shoot the kid, I will find it hard to fault you for the murder even though the kid is technically innocent of the misfortunes that befell you and this did absolutely nothing to help your situation. As a bonus, the corrupt police (my country) is then called in to arrest you, after sharing a smoke with the mafiosi.)

Though I said that the moral case for Palestine is clear, this is emphatically not to say that I rule out the possibility of a clear moral case for Israel existing at the same time. "They're both justified to continue murdering each other" is a sad reality of a lot of tribal conflict. However, in this particular case, I actually do not even see that case, or at least what I have seen seems much weaker to me, given that Israelis still have the option to leave Israel at any time as a large part of the world would welcome them with open arms (while the anti-Palestinians like reiterating that not even other Muslim countries want to take in the Palestinians, as if that helps their case), and even though in some sense they would also then be "driven from their homes" it's not like they are usually unaware of those homes' provenance.

edit: Thanks for everyone's responses, there were certainly a lot of interesting points to think about there. I'm too overwhelmed with the volume to respond to everyone, though to the extent there were some overlaps between the points I would be grateful if you could check my answers to sibling posts.

The problem with positing an "original wrong" is that the 1948 war was started by the Palestinians and their Arab allies, and subsequently they lost. So the search for an original wrong already has a wrong that came before that origin. Yes, you can arguably repeat this process for pre-1948 wrongs, but the "original wrong" you suggest is definitely not correct.

Another counterargument seems to rest on something like statute of limitations (like, the Palestinians and Israelis alive nowadays are not the ones who got robbed and their robbers), which would be more persuasive if Israeli settlements were not still expanding, and there weren't still Palestinians who are quite directly being made to suffer at the hands of the Israeli men with guns for no other reason than that they do not accept the "become Bill Gates's domestic servant" deal.

Stopping the settlers would fall far short of Palestinian aims. It has repeatedly failed to be a sufficient concession in prior peace talks. And even when tried unilaterally by Israel, made things worse, not better.

If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you. To claim otherwise, to me, seems to amount to claiming that you can be absolved for arbitrary wrongs if you just amass enough power to make effective resistance impossible, and I don't like that even before we start taking into the account that the targets of Hamas terror were intended and more often than not happy beneficiaries of the original wrongs committed.

Do you apply this principle evenly? Does it apply to Germans expelled from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII, for instance? Are they entitled to carry out unrestrained acts of revenge in Western Poland in response to being expelled? And since this applies to any arbitrary wrong, as you have written it, to beat my usual drum, are victims of vaccine mandates and lockdowns entitled to carry out unrestrained non-hypothetical fedposting? Are Trump supporters wronged by being under the wrong government, as Palestinians living under Israeli rule would be, and thus entitled to fedposting? And, of course, does this apply to Israelis who are wronged by Palestinian attacks and, therefore, entitled to seize justice by committing their own revenge?

Maybe you do think this. In which case, this position is just more might makes right (despite you objecting to might makes right), using arbitrary violence instead of precise violence to try to maximize the might they can exert from the weaker position.

More likely, you do not think this. But if so, you are missing any particular reason why Palestinians are uniquely entitled to engage in unrestrained terror tactics, and I'm yet to hear a good one. If it's the degree of political repression, then the majority of the world's countries including many western countries are on the fedpost list for some form of repression or another. If it's being ruled over by the wrong ethnic group, then it's ethnostate for thee but not for me, because I am also ruled over by a Prime Minister of a different ethnicity, and I'm not entitled to kick out all the foreigners. If it's that Arabs were turfed out by Jews after they legally purchased the land from absentee Ottoman landlords, consider the ethnic makeup of London and the financial impossibility of living in London for many natives. For every justification I've heard, there's been a parallel elsewhere where any resistance was considered unthinkable, let alone random acts of terror.

It seems to me that every single one of your arguments again places a convenient cutoff point on history. The 1948 war was preceded by massive Jewish immigration into Palestinian lands, terrorism by armed groups representing it, and them leveraging their ties to the international community to secure support for plans that already amounted to mass expropriations of Palestinians; the post-WWII Germans had just finished doing WWII (and as far as I can tell the expatriate ethnically German populations were friendly with the Nazis wherever they encountered them on their drive east); presumably "fedposting" implies things that are not proportional to vaccine mandates and lockdowns (but I have to say that if anti-lockdowners created a compound where they kept loudly pro-lockdown individuals under house arrest, I would not feel like an injustice is being committed).

The particular reason why Palestinians are more entitled to engage in unrestrained terror tactics than these groups is that they have been subjected to unrestrained terror tactics first and continuously.

It seems to me that every single one of your arguments again places a convenient cutoff point on history.

I quite deliberately mentioned that you can keep finding earlier original wrongs. "repeat this process for pre-1948 wrongs". The point is that the origin mentioned by OP is definitely incorrect because these earlier wrongs exist.

The 1948 war was preceded by massive Jewish immigration into Palestinian lands

Massive immigration fits most of Europe and Europeans are generally not considered to be entitled to commit random acts of violence.

terrorism by armed groups representing it,

Same.

and them leveraging their ties to the international community to secure support for plans that already amounted to mass expropriations of Palestinians

The housing crisis in many major cities in Europe has this same de facto outcome.

The particular reason why Palestinians are more entitled to engage in unrestrained terror tactics than these groups is that they have been subjected to unrestrained terror tactics first and continuously.

And this would also apply to Israelis, who also believe that they were subjected to unrestrained terror tactics first and continuously. So once again we end up with no special reason why Palestinians are uniquely entitled to do this.

If you add up Israel and Palestine population Jews and Arabs are basically equal in number, so I don't think that this arrangement will lead to genocide. In the current circumstances the most humane thing for Israel would be to just annex Palestine, create some kind of reconstruction zones and to deradicalize Arab populace. Politically Jews can make an alliance with Arab Christians. This move also will stop far-right israelis from getting power so I guess we won't see it.

Last time Israel tried to support Arab christians as a faction against crazy islamists we got the Lebanese civil war which is still ongoing. If anything jewish support for ANYTHING delegitimizes it in the eyes of the local polity: see how aggressively Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia downplay their positive relations witb the jews, lest the muslim brotherhood rear up again.

The Maronites were patrician intellectuals whose French-educated elite thought they could continue the colonial system indefinitely after colonialism. If they had agreed to let Israel help them build a Christian state in the late 1950s it would have been fine and they’d literally be living in a rich modern country by now. Their hubris destroyed them, a similar situation played out in South Africa with the Boers.

I accept that the maronites were much more educated and sought to perpetuate their position of relative privilege in the system, but specific to the last decade I believe the maronite insanity in their banking policies is what lead to Lebanons modern version of ruin. That is however a topic for another thread.

Certainly the Maronites are substantially responsible for the banking crisis, but that’s just what happens in highly fractured low trust countries with major sectarian disputes, every group is out for itself. I don’t think an independent 75% Christian Lebanon would be Switzerland or Denmark (or indeed secular Israel) but it would probably be a moderately corrupt Med country on the level of, say, Greece or Malta. They got away with it in part because every tribe there is corrupt and self-serving in its own way.

Almost all Palestinian Christians left (many long before Israel’s founding) so there aren’t really many left.

Politically Jews can make an alliance with Arab Christians

Why would they PO their ultra-orthodox wing to win over like 2%(admittedly a disproportionately wealthy, educated 2%) of the population?

I'm pro Israel as a matter of practicality. I don't believe there is some universal obligation of the world at large or of people of the present to somehow make right wrongs of the past. This is a thing that may be worked out between an individual injured party and and their injurer, but Palestinians have a lot of different opinions about what they are owed and the center of mass of those opinions is something like a complete right to return to familial properties and a single state. Israel of course never can grant that.

Palestinians are also completely incapable of governing themselves in a way that makes them an acceptable neighbor. You can argue that Hamas doesn't represent Palestine (despite being elected), and yet if your average 22-40 year old Palestinian wanted to enforce some order other than Hamas, they could band together and govern themselves and do so. They could organize, police, enforce order. Eventually keep things calm until Israeli hearts soften and a two-state solution is back on the table. This would all be achievable were it what they wanted. They do not want it or incapable of achieving.

And so you're left with a Israel having essentially ungoverned barbarians on their border that they have been prevented from dealing with due to intense international pressure for decades. This is not a stable state of affairs. It seems clear to me that the best thing for Israel to due is to scatter them to the wind, and the best thing for the world to do is to force Arab countries to take Palestinians in as refugees, each an accordance to what they can assimilate, and then quickly assimilate them. No ghettos. No extended families kept close together. And no weird second-class citizenships or eternal refugee status. Utter assimilation. End them as a people, as the old testament would command. Dragging this on has been good for no one.

Personally I favor formal recognition of Palestine as a single unitary state, then letting Fatah-Hamas war 2.0 kick off. It'll be like the Pakistani Civil War, except without any external intervention. Kick out all settlers and let the Palestinians decide what sort of state they really want: one where it enjoys the freedom to starve without Israeli supplies. If Palestines borders are sovereign so are its trading partners, who are under no obligation to supply food or electricity to a neighbour, much less a hostile one.

Israel can’t allow Palestinians to rule themselves before being pacified because Israel has no strategic depth. The Iron Dome vs Gaza is one thing, the risk of an October 7 repeat shoots up hugely if they get full control of Area C.

True. If Palestine is a formal state then retaliatory actions are more justified: its not an oppressed minority in your borders, but a hostile yet weaker neighbor

You've lampshaded that your question isn't that well-defined, but that doesn't absolve you of actually asking a clear question. I don't see you clearly answering this down-thread either, but if you did then it bears repeating in the OP. What actual position do you want to see defended?

I don't think that this original wrong has been made right to the Palestinians

Nor has the wrong Russia did to Hungary or Czechoslovakia.

more persuasive if Israeli settlements were not still expanding

To the extent that this is the goal, the continuation of terror/rocket attacks only fuels the right-wing Israeli government which in turn fuels those settlements.

The only climate in which Israel was politically capable of curtailing the settlers (for a bitter example, when they sent their own soldiers to violently evict settlers from Gaza) was that of peace and quiet. Doing so is already a huge lift, it's unthinkable in conditions like these. And of course the shadow and chaos of 10/7 has absolutely been used to accelerate these things.

Maybe the underlying difference in moral intuition is this: the presence of a moral imperative is not a license to ignore empirical cause and effect. For example, you write:

seeing an opening, you shoot the kid, I will find it hard to fault you for the murder even though the kid is technically innocent of the misfortunes that befell you and this did absolutely nothing to help your situation

Well, I have two kids. If someone killed them both, I might consider this as an option.

OTOH, if a mafia boss killed one, and I had the option of either killing him and dying myself or living with the shame & pain in order to raise the other, that's the obvious choice. Morally it might be better to off him and take the L myself, but I'm not about to orphan my only living child for it.

If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you. To claim otherwise, to me, seems to amount to claiming that you can be absolved for arbitrary wrongs if you just amass enough power to make effective resistance impossible, and I don't like that even before we start taking into the account that the targets of Hamas terror were intended and more often than not happy beneficiaries of the original wrongs committed.

Our moral intuitions differ on this a lot. I am not per se against actions whose only purpose is to depress the enemies utility function. If the only move you have is to break into Hitler's villa and destroy all his paintings just to piss him off, I will not hold it against you if you do that.

But when you target third parties such as civilians, reality is typically more complex than that, because they are not only terms in the utility function of the enemy, but also of other's utility functions, such as their own or mine.

In my mind, there is a ton of difference between accepting some collateral damage and intentionally targeting civilians. If Hamas targeted IDF bases with their rockets but accepted the possibility that they might miss and blow up a school instead, or if the IDF decides to blow up 50 people to get one Hamas commander, that can still be viewed as evil because it assigns so little utility to the civilians, but it is very different from expressing a preference for killing civilians, as Hamas did on Oct 7.

If Hamas had targeted shot IDF personnel without offering surrender, I would not have liked this either, but I would also have recognized that there was some military utility to their action.

Instead, they elected to go after civilians. Intentionally. As I have written elsewhere:

Hamas leadership know that they their organization will never defeat Israel militarily. Their best chance to achieving their dream of wiping Israel from the map is a broad alliance of Arab countries who defeat Israel together. The way they get there is public Muslim outrage at Israel. And the best way to generate such outrage is dead Palestinian kids. In my opinion, their attacks were militarily completely pointless, but served the important strategic goal of getting Israel to bomb Gaza down. This will likely throw a wrench into Israel's diplomatic efforts to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors.

In short, the Gazan war is not an acceptable price for Hamas to pay for their day of impotent vengeance on Oct 7, but the motivation for Oct 7 was to get Bibi to blow up a lot of Gazan kids.

I firmly believe that an organization acting like this should be wiped from the face of the earth.

On a broader scale, the problem with the Palestinians is that they don't know how to lose.

Wikipedia has this helpful list. The overall effect is reminiscent of that black knight scene in Monty python: "You have destroyed our ability to fight you in the open? No matter, we can still do suicide bombings. You have walled in Gaza? No matter, we can still fire rockets".

Israel is evidently not incompatible with continued Palestinian existence, so absent a road to victory, resisting them seems counter-productive.

Sometimes it is better to accept accept a peace which feels unjust than fight on forever. When the Alsace became French in 1945 again, a lot of the German-speaking people living there were probably not happy about it. But somehow, the proud tradition of fighting a war every few decades about that region was never revived. It surely helped that nationalist fervor was depleted a bit on the German side after the Nazis, but I still consider this an outcome vastly better for everyone than the alternatives.

"They're both justified to continue murdering each other"

From where I stand, this seems a totally bizarre statement. If two sides fight about a thing, then whatever metric you use to decide who is right and what you would consider a fair distribution of the land or whatever, the rightfulness of all sides summed up has to be less than unity. Only if you optimized for conflict instead of post-conflict outcomes could you prefer both sides to fight each other.

In summary, I am not pro-Bibi, but I am really anti-Hamas. After Oct 7, Hamas needs to be crushed, and as Biden has not volunteered, it falls to the IDF to do the job. I don't think that the way the IDF wages this war is actually all that great, and I am very concerned that nobody has a plan to offer the Gazans a credible alternative. I also think that Israel should destroy the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and arrest the settlers who destroyed that Gazan aid convoy on charges of attempted murder.

Yeah, it sounds like our moral intuitions are really greatly different. I don't know what was the trigger for that, but I felt visceral disdain for the whole notion of innocent civilians in a democracy for as long as I can remember - the whole thing just seemed like some sort of pickpocket's attention trick with moral responsibility where a large swath of people elects politicians to enact their will and serve their interest, but the voters refuse to take responsibility for their government's actions because they're just civilians and politicians refuse to take responsibility because they are just following the voters' will. As I see it, conscripted military in a democratic country are the ones who it is least just for someone attacked by that country to retaliate against, because they are coerced into doing what they do and often are not even allowed to leave before completing their service. The civilians who vote and their elected representatives, and to a lesser degree even those who don't vote but freely choose to stay and benefit, should be fair game.

From where I stand, this seems a totally bizarre statement.

Is it really that bizarre? As an intuition pump, what does the total morality thing say about obligatory meat consumption? Does the wrongness of the Inuit hunter who tries to kill the walrus to feed his family and the walrus that gores the hunter trying to kill it sum up to >=1? I would consider dodging this question by saying that the walrus can not be a moral subject to be a copout.

As I see it, conscripted military in a democratic country are the ones who it is least just for someone attacked by that country to retaliate against, because they are coerced into doing what they do and often are not even allowed to leave before completing their service.

Well, draft dodging is a thing in most democratic countries, as few countries provide the kind of coercion which would get people to assist a serial killer.

In my mind, there is a kind of pyramid of responsibility.

On the lowest rug is the taxpayer. Most democratic countries do not wage total wars most of the time, so it is likely that only a small fraction of their productivity goes towards sustaining the war. Intentionally targeting these civilians is generally considered a war crime, but they may become collateral damage.

The next rug are people working full time for the war effort in low end jobs. This includes the conscript but also the person who works in a munitions factory or writes software documentation for killer drones. Killing them during their work seems a legitimate tactic to me.

Then you have the specialists, like fighter pilots, star programmers of smart munitions and so on. I think these might be legitimate subjects of targeted elimination.

Then you have the leadership, like generals and politicians. Legitimate targets.

(Note: I am not a lawyer or ethics expert, please consult with your lawyer and spiritual guidance provider before killing anyone.)

Ideally, you would want to achieve your tactical and strategic goals with minimum loss of life. Practically, the easiest way to neutralize enemy infantry is to shoot them, which is why every army in the world has weapon systems for that purpose. Sometimes (e.g. WWI), the best strategy is to to feed your men into the meat grinder and hope the enemy runs out of people first. Sometimes, it is mostly about taking out high tech materiel or leaders and any grunts killed are only collateral. Sometimes people decide to go for the tax base of their enemy, but we have thankfully agreed that the military benefits are too low to justify the costs in human lives and call these people "war criminals".

I will grant you that if Hamas had killed a thousand IDF conscripts on Oct 7 instead of civilians, that would not have achieved any strategic or tactical goals either. Still, I think the distinction of "unarmed civilians" and "soldiers" forms a very useful Schelling fence.

Is it really that bizarre? As an intuition pump, what does the total morality thing say about obligatory meat consumption? Does the wrongness of the Inuit hunter who tries to kill the walrus to feed his family and the walrus that gores the hunter trying to kill it sum up to >=1? I would consider dodging this question by saying that the walrus can not be a moral subject to be a copout.

I think in that case I might be okay with the outcome of the struggle for life.

If I were a follower of Odin who thinks that battle is good, I might say the warriors of tribes A and B are both totally justified in trying to murder each other, because I like the resulting outcome (war).

Instead, I am a normalish modern Westerner who thinks that modern war is terrible, an inadequate equilibrium to be avoided almost all of the time. There are a small number of cases where war may be justified to remove vast amounts of negative utility, e.g. by liberating Auschwitz. But if the argument for side A being justified hinges on "if they win the war, this will create a better world than if they lose it", then the argument can not be true for both sides at once.

I felt visceral disdain for the whole notion of innocent civilians in a democracy for as long as I can remember

The feeling of visceral disdain debaters have and targets of their disdain hardly are evidence whether the argument is worthy.

I think there exists plenty of theoretical literature on whys and hows why our laws of war are such as they are, if one would search for it. My personal intuition is that it comes down to cold raw game theory calculus from Clausewitz and has only a little to do with fairness. The purpose of the war is to achieve goals, and such goals are political in nature, like everything else in the affairs of states. If you attack the enemy's military forces (name that is latched to their primary war capabilities) and win, you render your enemy less capable to achieve their political goals, including their ability to resist your ability achieve your own goals. After a decisive battle or a series of them and utter destruction of enemy's capability to fight, you have control over territory and the population. You may redraw borders, force a change of government, force evacuation of population or property, all because you have territorial control and thus can install an occupying force to enforce your will. It makes the attacks against military targets appear neutral: what you do after victory depends on what you will. The aim and goals of victr may be just, unjust, or in between, they are are up to decision makers of respective belligerent. The method of war itself is much more constrained by the technological capabilities.

A terror attack against soft civilian targets alone, at the usual levels of seriousness and scale, won't itself affect the enemy's primary capability fight a war, which makes it capricious. You will not achieve territorial control with a regular terror attack against civilians, because by definition, the civilians have not military capability to oppose you and the enemy's hardened military capability has not lost a battle, thus it is still present. You are essentially no longer fighting the enemy but blackmailing the enemy, betting that they won't stomach the slaughter and cede the political goal out of their own volition from their moral considerations. Thus terror attacks against civilians appear ethically distasteful by the method alone. (Specifying "usual level" as weapons of mass destruction or conventional means taken to extreme level, to destruction of whole economic base or genocidal destruction of population, can have military effect, but such effects are difficult to achieve without involving military forces. And if you start including military targets, logistics and industries in your terror attack, then it is properly called a guerilla campaign, and it is considered more acceptable in laws of war, though the line is murky and propagandists' brush wide.)

The laws of war offered one thing missing from all previous wars: a means for a loser to have a just peace. Adversaries who win justly allow a faction in the losing party to sell peace to their populace. Vae victus and all, but woe turns to bitterness morphing into revanchism instead of acceptance when the war is prosecuted 'unfairly'. Russians didnt give that much of a shit about Afghans that ground down soldiers, Americans seem fine with Vietnam and even Iraqis despite COIN being a fucking shitfest, even Jordan and Egypt are cool with Israel now. That is because the 'winning' entities did not (at large scale) engage in indiscriminate and militarily dubious acts we term 'war crimes'. However if we were to go to parties with long standing grudges, the things that always stand out are 'unjust' massacres against civilians. Palestinians now against Israelis, Ukrainians against Russians, everyone in Eastern Europe against Russians, like 40% of Arab tribes against the goatfuckers in the next valley.... thats a grudgin.

Oh, as for direct military value: ambushes are fine, ambushes from within civilian areas are bad because the ambusher gets civs killed by removing the nominal protection otherwise offered. Chem and bio warfare are mutually destructive. Only one that needs a major update is dazzlers, but I can assure members of this board that dazzler tech has reached levels WP level of fuckery. Next big ones gonna be a doozy.

I would consider dodging this question by saying that the walrus can not be a moral subject to be a copout.

"Answering the question is a copout."

You can't just declare something to be a copout and thus make it so.

'Rationalism' always makes way for 'moralism' when the ingroup starts taking too much flak. The quantifiers and metricians who usually like to count things and make grandiose utilitarian arguments to figure out the best course of action suddenly just can't even. The conflict is just too messy, there are no simple answers here, and so on.

In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end. Taking up any position other than this collapses every other position 'rationalist' or 'progressive' people hold. As you are no longer rational or progressive. You're just another nazi taking up the cause of your people. 'The barbarians are at the gates and something must be done.' Except we have tied ourselves up a little too much in rationally disciplining the outgroup so now we have to cover our tracks somehow.

It reminds me of Sam Harris' Moral Landscape. An entire book written by a man in an effort to convey an 'ought' without using the word. We have a few people in a very similar spot here. To them 'jews and Israel > The rest'. But getting to that point would break their own perception of themselves so we get to play this game of words instead. Where, like Harris, if we space our very transparent intentions far enough apart from one another, using just enough words, we can proclaim that by the ordained will of science, morality or whatever else, Israel must survive above all else.

In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end.

But what if it's self-induced suffering, gamified to achieve victory on the scale of "who suffers the most?" Is that still "The End?"

That's been the program so far.

No one asks these questions in any other context. I mean, isn't a lot of suffering self inflicted? No one forces the third worlders to continually make mistakes. We just keep giving them money and privilege them in our first world societies. Their populations keep growing and we just accept more immigrants for the greater good.

The pro-Israel narrative doesn't compute with the rationalism or moralism behind all the other oppression narratives. People are continuously trying to carve out some special clause that allows us to ethnically cleanse the browns just this once. The inconsistency is glaring and the ethnic motivation behind it transparent, as this is only being asked because it's jews and Israel.

Is it ethnically cleansing them when they are so eager to do it to themselves? If the civilized world pulls back entirely from the middle east and africa, their bloated populations would kill each other first before starving to death. For all the criticism of white people committing genocide none have been so effective as what these people do to themselves.

I don't disagree. I just wonder why that criticism of the white mans burden is only pushed when the topic of jews, Israel and Palestine are on the docket. Outside of that you would only hear it from ethno-nationalists. Yet the people pondering these things now don't consider themselves as being ethno-nationalists. At least they don't advertise themselves as such. So what gives? Does it just happen to be that in this case we can actually genocide the browns for the greater good and not the other way around?

I mean, just as a point of honesty, for how long could anyone back in 2016 or so uphold the idea that they were just rational skeptic centrist logic lords whilst constantly railing against the white mans burden? Wouldn't everyone just see that they are white nationalists? Isn't that transparently obvious?

(My below is solely from my time spent in, strictly speaking, retarded discords where I kill time and hint at black/dog cucking just for shits and giggles so my insight should be treated as pondscum for the below, but spaces for actual bigbrain white nats aren't online in any form and only comes about as Hidden Power reveals by inference.)

Honestly the white nats barely talk about white mans burden being a Good Thing. That seems to be at best a poor osmosis of blackpilled IDW arguments, and white nats frame the white mans burden as one of ingratitude rather than justification. The evolution of the more IDW type of race realism seems to be a reluctant but inexorable blackpilling by virgin liberals who found their race blind utopias crushed by the real world after leaving college, and their intellectual solidarity being found only in the redpilled heterodox academy types. That would account for the sanethrashing (opposite of sanewashing) of IDW arguments, and their relative incoherent yet visible presence in 2015+.

Niall Ferguson is a very widely read and famous popular historian who has made a living defending the British Empire. Sure, many leftists don’t like him for it, but they typically don’t like Israel either, and Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg and Newsweek so can hardly be considered cancelled by the mainstream. In general neoconservatives broadly defend the legacy of European (especially British) imperialism while acknowledging some limited atrocities.

And? Douglas Murray also exists. Fielding a similar point of view. His wiki page is filled with a similarly long list of 'controversial comments'. None of them go against the bigger elements of the white mans burden. All of them hold to the typical conservative ideals of 'family values are the reason the browns are the way they are' or 'Islam is the problem'. If they even stepped a foot near total expulsion of the brown or flirted openly with the ideas you have entertained their heads would be on a spike.

I’m saying that defenders of Western imperialism don’t only defend Israel but also Euro colonialism on the same grounds. Many are also upset about eg. South African whites being attacked and so on. I never claimed they were dissident right or wignats, indeed quite the opposite - I said these were mainstream center-right people.

More comments

In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end.

That’s entirely irrelevant even when making a utilitarian argument in this war, since the hypothetical is about who would suffer more if the other side achieved its military aims.

The phrasing used here is running away from the problem. No utilitarian argument needs to confine itself to an either or of total Palestine or Israel victory. That's only done on the prerogative of the person making the argument.

What other positions are under consideration?

The west comes in and does whatever it wants. They're paying for everything after all.

I read you as saying that Israel should be acting differently. Was that a misreading?

If so, what is your proposed course of action for them?

I don't care to propose any actions for them beyond what actions have been proposed for Europeans by them. Be that a new crusade or open borders and ethnic suicide.

I think that is only fair. If Israel thinks the rules of the western democracies are unfair then I'd be more happy to play by Israels rulebook and expunge every jew into Israel and make it into the Greater Gaza Strip. Should I think different?

I read that as you saying that you think they are acting inconsistently, by wanting European powers to (I don't follow the crusade part) open borders, while simultaneously wanting to keep outsiders away.

I don't find this a compelling narrative. Here's the problems with that I see:

First, I assume you have something similar to "the left is led by Jews, Jews are Israel, therefore, Israel causes leftism everywhere" going on, motivating your saying "what actions have been proposed for Europeans by them." Correct me if I'm misreading you. But I don't think that is compelling, as a lot of leftist influence is not by Jews, and Israel itself is currently not very leftist. So I don't imagine that your typical American (or wherever) Jew is representative of Israel. (Nor should we trust ethnic representation in general; I would not be happy with Karl Marx or whoever being considered a mouthpiece of my personal opinions, just because we're both white.)

Second, Israel is not ethnically homogeneous. In Israel (not Gaza/West Bank), there is still about a fifth of the population who are Arab, who also are citizens, live in Israel, have voting rights, etc. I have not heard anyone propose expelling those 2 million or so people.

Third, the situations are rather different with immigrants. The modal Palestinian is in favor of genociding Israelis. The Palestinians as a people have a history of doing so. I suppose I don't know where you are, but my sense is that that is rather more extreme than the typical group of migrants. My sense is that most people coming to the United States, even illegally, still appreciate the country, rather than being hostile. That may be less true for Europe, but I would still venture that the average immigrant to Europe does not hate the nations in Europe.

Additionally, I'd be curious as to what rules Israel is breaking.

I'm not too huge a fan of what's going myself. I only really see a solution in making all the Palestinians leave, but no one wants them as refugees. But nothing is likely to change while Israel remains in the range of Gazan rockets, and so I don't really know what should be done, exactly.

More comments

In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more.

I just want to point out that this is true, but it's completely unrelated to the validity of the grievances or whether anything should be done about it. Might doesn't make right, but neither does suffering and oppression.

My point would be that the selectiveness in application of when might is right or when suffering and oppression count will be transparently self serving to an undeniable degree.

When was the last time people weren't cheering for the brown and oppressed? That seems like the default. Suddenly that's just obviously up for contention when it's Israel? Are we really still just trying to be 'less wrong' or whatever? I find that hard to believe.

I don't know why you keep dunking on rationalists when most people here are not rationalists and don't claim to be. But I don't think even rationalists would claim that "the side that suffers more" automatically carries greater moral legitimacy.

We have a few people in a very similar spot here. To them 'jews and Israel > The rest'. But getting to that point would break their own perception of themselves so we get to play this game of words instead.

A strange observation. I can see who you think you're talking about, but I cannot see the actual arguments you are describing. I do find it ironic that you speak of "transparent intentions," given that you speak with shuddering horror of Palestinians crushed beneath rubble and yet, I must admit I find myself having a very hard time believing that you really care overly much about Palestinian lives per se.

I don't know why you keep dunking on rationalists when most people here are not rationalists and don't claim to be.

I don't know why you reply to my comments when I do. I also don't know why people here rail against their outgroup when most of them are not here. Yet that's been happening forever... A strange observation.

But I don't think even rationalists would claim that "the side that suffers more" automatically carries greater moral legitimacy.

I didn't say they would. I said they stop employing reason in favor of moralism when their ingroup is at risk or when it is otherwise needed. The voice of centric reason only applies to the neutral observer when it suits him.

I do find it ironic that you speak of "transparent intentions," given that you speak with shuddering horror of Palestinians crushed beneath rubble and yet, I must admit I find myself having a very hard time believing that you really care overly much about Palestinian lives per se.

I don't feel the need to earmark a 6 year old with missing legs as anything in particular to feel revolted by the suffering on display. Are things different for you?

I don't know why you reply to my comments when I do. I also don't know why people here rail against their outgroup when most of them are not here. Yet that's been happening forever... A strange observation.

You were clearly directing your comment at other people here. I think you understand the distinction and the point of my observation.

I don't feel the need to earmark a 6 year old with missing legs as anything in particular to feel revolted by the suffering on display. Are things different for you?

No, I'd actually have a different impression of you if I believed you were genuinely distressed by the suffering of 6-year-olds regardless of where in the world they are and who caused it.

I believe nations main principal should be vae victus and hate the modern worlds glorification of victims. Child victims should be a stain on the honor of the government who was supposed to be defending them not a way to rally support to their cause. I view Hamas as something like an abusive father. I view Israel the same way on Oct 7th.

I rather doubt most Israel supporters would go "vae victis" if the Arab countries actually managed to unify under a hardline regime, destroyed Israel and expelled the Jews.

Yes, but in practice that would be it, since once reclaimed by the Arabs Jews would likely never again be able to win it militarily.

Also, the moment the Arabs defeat the jews the arabs will fight each other. Part of why 1948 failed was the jockeying between Syria and Egypt for the supposed spoils of war. There will be no time to mourn the jews when their massacre/expulsion is merely the first act of a neverending conflict.

Probably not, but I only speak for myself

No one says this immediately today. The question is what is the statute of limitations on historical land grievances? We discourage conquest and colonization today, but we cannot roll back or atone for every conquest that ever happened.

(This is why I find the Israelis' argument that Israel was "theirs" 2000 years ago to be completely irrelevant.)

How do you say "ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ" in modern Hebrew? The Arabs have tried that before; it did not go well for them.

Translated directly “בוא תיקח” sounds weird rather than defiant, so I’d go with translating the meaning rather than the words. “בוא נראה אותך” is “let’s see you (try)” works, or maybe “תנסה ותראה” which is “try and see (what happens if you do)”, akin to “fuck around and find out”. You’d have to change it to fit the speaker and subject, though.

The Persians did, in fact, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ in the Battle of Thermopylae.

Eh, the Arab expulsion of jews from the greater middle east and the Algerian civil war don't elide much irredentism. If the Arabs got good enough to unify and crush every jew, pearls may be clutched for a day, then it'll be forgotten. No one cared about the Armenians, no one cares about the Rohingya and Masalit, and no one will care about the Hazara Kurds or Uighur. If the Arabs git gud enough to kill every jew, we won't care either after the requisite pearl clutching.

Eh, the Arab expulsion of jews from the greater middle east and the Algerian civil war don't elide much irredentism.

Why would it? It was basically a jackpot for the Zionist movement, insofar as getting the settlement of Israel properly going went.

Sure. I still don't exactly see the French agitating for the return of Algiers or the Poles demanding Lviv (despite Moscows rhetoric). Irredentism is temporary to living memory, and the more who die the less who remember.

I've been reading a lot about this conflict, and the history of Israel and Palestine. I've read books by Israeli historians and by Palestinian historians and by American historians and journalists. I've followed pro-Israeli channels and pro-Palestinian channels. I've also spoken to no small number of Arabs (since I am studying Arabic).

It's messy and complicated all around. What strikes me in every narrative is that most of them tell a more-or-less accurate version of known historical events, but always leaving out a few bits that make their side look less noble and less like the victim. The Israelis talk endlessly about how five Arab nations declared war on them the day after they declared independence, and they offered full citizenship rights to those Palestinians who stayed instead of fleeing (in the expectation that the Jews would soon be exterminated and they could return home). They don't talk about how there were explicit plans to remove even peaceful Palestinians and some of those expulsions were performed under presumed military necessity and with the full foreknowledge that they were uprooting locals from their land. They don't talk about some of the outright terrorist actions of their predecessors, and some of the atrocities that Israelis committed. (It was war, the Israeli army mostly conducted itself in a modern, disciplined fashion, but there were some civilian massacres, and other war crimes. The Israelis will retort that the Arabs did far more and far worse, which is probably true but doesn't make what they did not happen.)

The Palestinians talk endlessly about the Nakba and how 750,000 Palestinians were forced off their land. They don't talk about the fact that yes, many of them did explicitly leave so the Arab armies could exterminate the Jews, and thus they obtained the fate of a people who lost a war they started.

Dig into that event, and then you have to dig deeper - why did the Jews arrive in the first place, who was behind it, did they acquire land legally or did they forcefully occupy it? (They mostly acquired the land legally by purchase, prior to 1948, but Palestinians will then retort, accurately, that the Jews often bought the land from wealthy absentee Turkish (former Ottoman) landlords and then expelled the villagers who'd been living on that land for generations.) Was the Zionist movement an organic Jewish nationalist movement or was it a "Colonialist-Settler project" by Europeans whose motivation was essentially to get Jews out of Europe? (Answer: a little of all this and more.)

"It's complicated." People who want a clear right-and-wrong narrative hate that phrase, but it is. Move forward into all the many failed peace processes; Israelis claim Palestinians have been handed opportunities for peace over and over and rejected them. Palestinians claim all those peace offers were either made in bad faith or were very bad deals for the Palestinians. Who's right? A little of both. Palestinians have turned down deals that would have been objectively far better for them than what they have now, or have ever had. These agreements have also always been, at best, offers of divided rump territories with very little chance to ever develop into real countries. Many Palestinians feel that the offers themselves are fundamentally illegitimate because Palestine was stolen from them and only full restoration can make things right again. Regardless of whether you think this is a morally correct argument, it unfortunately carries the logical conclusion that there is literally no peace agreement they will accept that allows Israel to continue to exist. No matter how convincingly you argue that your people and your ancestors were screwed over and robbed and are entitled to reparations, if it ends with "... and therefore Israel must cease to exist," it's just a non-starter. But Palestinians (and many of their supporters), either out of stubbornness, or a belief that somehow either Hamas and Iran will actually succeed in destroying Israel, or else Israelis will somehow all be persuaded that they must dissolve the nation-state of Israel, persist.

You basically have three options: one state, two state, no state. The latter ("no state") is basically one side exterminates the other. Israelis are being accused of trying to do this now. I don't really think that's true, but certainly some elements of Israeli society and the government would not mind literally wiping out the Palestinians if they thought they could get away with it. Hamas is pretty explicit about wanting to eradicate Israel. Some of their more savvy apologists will say no, they just don't want Israel to exist "in its current form." Usually, if you pin them down, what they propose is something like the "one state" solution, where "From the river to the sea," the entire country becomes a multi-ethnic non-Jewish state with Jews and Arabs having full equal citizenship rights. Essentially, merge Israel and Palestine into one country. In theory, doesn't sound like a terrible idea (as long as you're not a Jew who is invested in a Jewish nation state), but it just sort of assumes that at that point, all the Palestinian Arabs (who outnumber the Jews considerably), who for generations have been openly calling for the literal extermination of all Israelis and claiming that every last Israeli is living on stolen land that must be given back, will say "Okay, we're cool now, you can live here with us. Let's all build a progressive multicultural society together." Let's just say I cannot blame the Israelis for considering that a non-starter.

That leaves the two state solution, which was fraught and unlikely before October 7 and pretty much impossible now, at least for a generation or two. The various schemes to apportion land to a new Palestinian nation have always struggled with Palestine being divided between Gaza and the West Bank - obviously not much of a country if you're divided between two regions with a historically hostile neighbor controlling all the land and travel between them. Also there's the problem of whether the Palestinian nation gets to have its own military, and build whatever they want in the way of weapons. Israelis have pretty good reasons to say hell no to that, at least until maybe we have a generation or two of peace convincing them that any new Palestinian army will not promptly start lobbing rockets and artillery shells at them. So the Palestinians argue (with some justification) that every offer they've been given has been for a fragment of a country that will still for all practical purposes be a protectorate under the military control of Israel, and the Israelis argue (with some justification) that the Palestinians have to prove they aren't going to keep trying to kill Israelis before they can have more.

Bringing us to today. Most people in the West are more sympathetic to the overall perspective of the Israelis, because we can see that yes, historically the Arabs really have been trying to kill them for decades now, and the Israelis have made at least some attempts to ease up on the Palestinians and let them try to build a society, and every such easing up has resulted in more suicide bombings or October 7. Leftists say, well, the Palestinians are an oppressed people, they are entitled to armed resistance. I always try to get them to say the unspoken part, to reveal their power level (just like I do with our friend @SecureSignals): okay, what is the end goal? Tell me what you really, really want to happen if you "win"? Most leftists won't come out and say "I want Israel to be destroyed." Some of them will give some sort of pie-in-the-sky one state answer, like above. But the reality is that the literal destruction of Israel is the only real "win condition" for them.

For those people like you (@4bpp) who I assume does not actually want the destruction of Israel, what do you see as a solution? Besides just "Stop the bombing now," which I can sympathize with, but let's say Israel stops the war in Gaza today and withdraws, and promptly allows unlimited international support in to rebuild. What happens next? What I think happens next is that Hamas grabs as much of that as they can and plans the next October 7, which will happen sooner rather than later. As much as I would like to see Gazan civilians not being bombed (and I do not care if "80% of them support Hamas," which is a frequent justification for why, essentially, we should not feel bad about them being slaughtered), I can understand why Israelis are not willing to accept a stopping point that just returns to the status quo and another October 7.

The more peaceful leftists will then say "They should cease fire now and then negotiate a real peace that gives Palestinians a real state so there is no need for Hamas etc etc etc." Okay, great idea. Everyone's been trying to do that for decades. See above.

So, simply saying "The Palestinians have a clear moral case," even if you're right, does not solve the current problem. Unless you are willing to bite the bullet and say "Yes, actually, I think Israel needs to cease to exist." Followed by either how you think peaceful coexistence between former Israelis and Palestinians will be accomplished, or your plan for forcibly resettling all the Israelis to another continent. Some would at this point show their power level and say "Yeah, actually, just let them slaughter all the Jews, they have it coming." But that would make the Palestinians' clear moral case a little less clear.

Leftists always like the idea of a racially and religiously tolerant unitary state with jews and muslims living peacefully together. That this is literally impossible does not seem to register, and pointing to current muslim nations killing themselves over internal sectarian divides is always met with 'but we won't know until we try!'

Tell me what you really, really want to happen if you "win"? Most leftists won't come out and say "I want Israel to be destroyed." Some of them will give some sort of pie-in-the-sky one state answer, like above. But the reality is that the literal destruction of Israel is the only real "win condition" for them.

Hear, hear!

For those people like you (@4bpp) who I assume does not actually want the destruction of Israel, what do you see as a solution?

I honestly think that either of the two no-state solutions might be long-term preferable to the perpetual continuation of what we have now. Most of the Jewish population of Israel would find its bearings in the West very quickly, and I think that a future repeat of Nazi Germany or conditions in other countries around then seems exceedingly unlikely; on the other hand, giving Israel free hand to completely wipe out the Palestinians would be the solution that in German idiom one would call a "horrible end, instead of a horror without end", and certainly would make for an interesting addition to our collective consciousness.

In more realistic and less edgy terms, I think that radically redrawing the borders of Israel and Palestine for a two-state solution that hurts both of them, perhaps surrendering half of Jerusalem and everything to the south of a line linking Gaza to it to a Palestinian state in return for everything north of it, performing full population transfer and deploying international troops enforcing the border (and possibly also a temporary "colonial regime" to "dehamasify" the Palestinian state, run not by the Israelis but by some far-removed and suitably ruthless third party like the Chinese, or even the Saudis), would in fact be achievable and likely solve the problem. The problem of Israel and Gaza as I see it is that Israel can not actually curb its cupidity towards Palestinian lands, Gaza as a state is geographically unviable (unlike the West Bank), and the Palestinians are forced to interact with Israelis for key needs as they do not have a fully independent state or economy, producing resentment-breeding interactions such as Palestinian workers having to undergo daily invasive searches as they leave their open-air prison settlement to work on non-autonomy land and in turn getting to scam and sass the Israelis in their cheap car repair shops. (Both things I've observed when visiting Israel.)

Israelis have made at least some attempts to ease up on the Palestinians and let them try to build a society, and every such easing up has resulted in more suicide bombings or October 7.

The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years. Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis. Yet this is somehow being painted into an emotional picture of the Israelis trying to make peace, as the Palestinians escalate and push for war. It is very hard to avoid the temptation to interpret this reframing as stemming from an underlying feeling that in terms of weregeld an Israeli is worth about a thousand Palestinians.

The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years. Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis. Yet this is somehow being painted into an emotional picture of the Israelis trying to make peace, as the Palestinians escalate and push for war. It is very hard to avoid the temptation to interpret this reframing as stemming from an underlying feeling that in terms of weregeld an Israeli is worth about a thousand Palestinians.

Why would anyone consider "going by raw numbers" if they hadn't already made up their mind to be pro-Palestine? Its a silly measure when one side is incredibly cautious with the lives of its own citizens and the other side treats fatalities to its own citizens a win.

performing full population transfer and deploying international troops enforcing the border (and possibly also a temporary "colonial regime" to "dehamasify" the Palestinian state, run not by the Israelis but by some far-removed and suitably ruthless third party like the Chinese, or even the Saudis), would in fact be achievable and likely solve the problem.

Let's inject the number one strategic enemy of the west and/or a ruthlessly authoritarian monarchical regime into the most sensitive geopolitical spot on earth. The UN will also deploy troops to great effect; just look at their track record in Africa.

Is this a serious proposition, or am I missing some deeply nested online sarcasm and irony?

The Saudi Option, whether @4bpp knows it or not, is actually not off the table at all, although not to the level of generosity that he proposes. Kushner strongly implied it was the central option discussed with MBS. It would likely take the form of a colonial Palestinian regime under Saudi control, perhaps as some kind of quasi-independent (in theory) ‘emirate’ ruling much of the West Bank, perhaps almost all of it (but in practice granting Jewish settlements full internal autonomy). In exchange Saudi Arabia could administer large parts of East Jerusalem, would gain official control over Al Aqsa (meaning all three core Islamic holy sites would be under Saudi Arabia) and there would some kind of joint funding deal for peacekeeping. The Muslim world would turn a blind eye to harsh secret police tactics used against the Palestinians by the Saudis, and Israel would officially recognize the “State” of Palestine under Saudi guardianship. This is also the most likely near term solution, though I wouldn’t say it’s likely in an absolute sense.

Details matter, and your outline of Saudi custodianship / colonial admin at least makes plausible sense. The idea that the Saudis will commit thousands of boots-on-the-ground troops to try to hold some sort of man made artificial border over/between southern Israel is nonsense.

The milestone to look out for, imho, is any of the major Arab states (so really just Saudi or Qatar ... the latter being very, very unlikely) endorse a relocation of Gazans to the West Bank.

The west bank doesnt want gazans in the west bank. Any saudi or UAE or qatari intervention will be resisted by the palestinians, likely on the pretext of the jews having compelled the arabs into betraying the ummah with the promises of money. That the saudis will be less restrained in their clamping down on palestinians is likely the most optimal outcome the world can hope for, but only if the saudis dont shit the bed militarily like they did with Yemen.

Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis.

This just seems like a fundamentally dishonest framing. Hamas fires dozens if not hundreds of rockets at Israel every year. These rockets are slapdash affairs with no guidance system to speak of, and the Iron Dome renders most (but not all) of them ineffective. Without the Iron Dome, it's obvious that Israel's casualties would be an order of magnitude higher at least.

Describing Hamas firing hundreds of rockets at Israel (most of which miss or are shot down before they can hurt anyone) as Palestine "de-escalating" the conflict - I mean, really? If you repeatedly shoot at someone, the fact that you're a lousy shot and/or they were wearing full body armour does nothing to exculpate you.

Yeah, as I already said in several parallel responses I'm already regretting reaching for that piece of polemic hyperbole. I don't actually believe that Hamas was de-escalating; I just think that any claim that Israel deescalated or showed restraint looks ridiculous on the face of it, in the "I only broke one arm of the angry toddler" way.

Palestinians arent angry toddlers and i bet they'd not appreciate being compared to such. you give them cover they never asked for and deny them even the limited agency they are able to exercise. that the palestinians are failing to escalate the conflict is a sore point for them, not a deliberate act of restraint. they were calling for hezbollah and jordan and syria to strike the jews at their moment of weakness on oct 7, not celebrating the completion of their objective.

The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years.

You... do know that the proportionality argument of international law is about the proportional size of the bombs used to kill people, not the relative proportions killed between factions, right?

Going just by raw numbers, in the back-and-forth of action and reaction, it really looks a lot like the Israelis are constantly escalating and the Palestinians are constantly deescalating - there is not a single instance of Palestinians killing Israelis that was not followed by Israelis killing more Palestinians, and no single instance of Israelis killing Palestinians that was not followed by Palestinians killing fewer Israelis.

Why are you going by raw numbers of casualties, rather than raw numbers of attack attempts or missiles fired?

That someone tries to kill often, but is bad at it, doesn't mean that an increase in attempts at killing that get worse over time is a de-escalation of killing intent.

I thought we had enough previous interactions on other similar topics before that you'd know that I find the notion of "international law" to be somewhere in the class of Mohammad (PBUH) claiming that he received a revelation from God saying that Mohammad is his prophet and you must obey him, and so certainly whatever proportionality argument I make would not be intended as a reference to a "proportionality argument from international law".

Re: the other question, I think I responded to similar ones in parallel threads already. I leaned too far out of the window there and don't actually believe the Palestinians were de-escalating; I just don't think the Israelis were either.

I thought we had enough previous interactions on other similar topics before that you'd know that I find the notion of "international law" to be somewhere in the class of Mohammad (PBUH) claiming that he received a revelation from God saying that Mohammad is his prophet and you must obey him, and so certainly whatever proportionality argument I make would not be intended as a reference to a "proportionality argument from international law".

Then your position makes less sense, and holds even less moral sway, as it becomes even more divorced from any coherent ethical system regarding conflicts.

Re: the other question, I think I responded to similar ones in parallel threads already. I leaned too far out of the window there and don't actually believe the Palestinians were de-escalating; I just don't think the Israelis were either.

Why do you think that a fraction of the air strikes in retaliation for the thousands of rocket attacks, as opposed to the ground incursions that have occurred both historically and in most other contexts where one side bombarded another, isn't a de-escalation?

Most of the Jewish population of Israel would find its bearings in the West very quickly

Maybe, but why should they accept being turned out of their country to become refugees somewhere else? In what world would a people who won every war waged against them surrender to their defeated enemies and abandon what is now their homeland? What other descendants of colonists are ever asked to do this? Even Americans are told we should make reparations to Native Americans, not all pack up and move back to Europe. This just seems like a very non-serious proposal.

And this is just taking your premise at face value, that anti-semitism in the West is basically over and 4 million Jews would quickly be assimilated and their new hosts would be happy to have them. I'm sure our Joo-posters here would have some things to say about that.

In more realistic and less edgy terms, I think that radically redrawing the borders of Israel and Palestine for a two-state solution that hurts both of them, perhaps surrendering half of Jerusalem and everything to the south of a line linking Gaza to it to a Palestinian state in return for everything north of it, performing full population transfer and deploying international troops enforcing the border (and possibly also a temporary "colonial regime" to "dehamasify" the Palestinian state, run not by the Israelis but by some far-removed and suitably ruthless third party like the Chinese, or even the Saudis), would in fact be achievable and likely solve the problem.

Again, this is the sort of solution that works if you are King of the World and can wave a wand and make it happen. It's not something that can happen in the real world where Israelis actually have something to say about this. At some point you need to accept reality on the ground: Israel has enough power that telling them "You've won every war ever fought against you, but you should do the right thing and hand over your power to people who hate you" is just not a serious proposal.

The "easing up" looked like thousands of Palestinians being killed in retaliation for a single-digit number of Israelis killed every few years.

The "disproportionate response" argument has never seemed very relevant to me. There is no Rule of War that you're only "allowed" to kill a similar number of people in response to some of your people being killed. Palestinians only kill fewer Israelis because they have fewer weapons - you can bet if Hamas could level Tel Aviv they would. It's not "deescalation" when they simply don't have the capability to kill as many Israelis as they would like.

Of course thousands of civilian deaths is bad, but if you accept that Israel and Hamas are at war, wars always kill a lot of noncombatants. What is Israel's alternative win condition? Other than your fanciful idea that they should, essentially, surrender?

Yet this is somehow being painted into an emotional picture of the Israelis trying to make peace, as the Palestinians escalate and push for war.

I think this picture is largely accurate. Not universally - certainly some Israelis really don't want peace, and some Palestinians do, but if you look at history, it's mostly been Israelis saying "How can we make a deal?" and Palestinians saying "Fuck you."

It is very hard to avoid the temptation to interpret this reframing as stemming from an underlying feeling that in terms of weregeld an Israeli is worth about a thousand Palestinians.

Palestinians seem to think so, since they typically demand hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian prisoners be released for each Israeli (a price Israel has paid in the past). If that's the price you set, unfortunately you set yourself up for the same equation in war.

Even Americans are told we should make reparations to Native Americans, not all pack up and move back to Europe.

Native Americans don’t want us to leave, they want our money and to have better conditions for themselves.

Few natives are left but in many cases I do think they’d vote emotively for settlers and descendants to leave. See the New Caledonia situation right now; the natives benefit tremendously from French rule but still want France and French people to leave.

The Cherokee and Kashada- the two tribes I’ve had more contact with- are mostly white or sometimes black passing themselves and don’t particularly want their land back, although they very often want a better deal within the existing system for themselves.

I think natives have known for centuries now that the idea of settlers leaving is ridiculous and would never happen, so they see the world in that way. And like you say, most modern natives are mixed-race. If you went to parts of Alaska, Hawaii or northern Canada I imagine you could find plenty of people who would happily say they’d like all Europeans to leave.

Probably, yes, and I'd imagine if you spent the several years of full time study required to become fluent in navajo you would be able to find someone with the sentiment. I don't doubt that, I just think that outside of native Hawaiians and maybe the Eskimos it's probably a pretty small minority, even if definitely a presence in some of these places.

In reality, yes. But the comparison is frequently made (because all "indigenous" folks are the same), to the extent that some leftists on Twitter have said things along the lines of "Actually, Native Americans would totally be justified if they started suicide bombing white people."

Palestinians seem to think so, since they typically demand hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian prisoners be released for each Israeli (a price Israel has paid in the past). If that's the price you set, unfortunately you set yourself up for the same equation in war.

Well yeah, I figure everyone involved feels like this. That doesn't mean it's a good state of affairs.

Maybe, but why should they accept being turned out of their country to become refugees somewhere else? In what world would a people who won every war waged against them surrender to their defeated enemies and abandon what is now their homeland? What other descendants of colonists are ever asked to do this? Even Americans are told we should make reparations to Native Americans, not all pack up and move back to Europe. This just seems like a very non-serious proposal.

I mean, the premise of the entire debate is that right now we are being told that it is our moral imperative to pour large quantities of arms and equipment into Israel and also invest further resources and subvert our (codified or apparent) principles to help it break the backs of any Palestine supporters on our territory. I think there is a gap between "tell them to surrender when they are winning" and "stop doing whatever it takes to make sure that they keep winning" that you are glossing over here, and I'm advocating for the latter, not the former.

Again, this is the sort of solution that works if you are King of the World and can wave a wand and make it happen.

Not quite - I am assuming for the sake of argument that Israel actually needs the support that they demand from us. If they can win just as well without us giving it to them and we don't actually have any leverage, why are we still giving it to them? Conversely, if Israel can't survive without Western support in the long term, as both Israel and the Western governments seem to assert in public, why can't we dictate terms to them?

US financial aid to Israel alone is around 3 billion USD a year. Considering that the US occupation of Afghanistan only cost about 20-40 billion per year according to estimates, I'm sure that a colonial administration of Palestine, which is much smaller and easier to reach, could be implemented for the same sum, and Palestinians would surely be an easier population to work with than Afghans.

The "disproportionate response" argument has never seemed very relevant to me. There is no Rule of War that you're only "allowed" to kill a similar number of people in response to some of your people being killed. Palestinians only kill fewer Israelis because they have fewer weapons - you can bet if Hamas could level Tel Aviv they would. It's not "deescalation" when they simply don't have the capability to kill as many Israelis as they would like.

Calling what the Palestinians did deescalation was admittedly polemic, but I do mean to insinuate that it is strange to call what Israel does deescalation. If an angry baby kicks you wiuth murderous animal intent (achieving nothing), are you, as an adult, "deescalating" if you merely break the baby's arm instead of throttling it as you easily could? Most people would surely say no; both intended and achieved/achievable damage have to figure into what is considered an escalation.

Since when is allowing Israel to crush the Palestinians against the principles of the west? Last time I checked the west has long been a colonizing power. I am not going to accept that because some academist and leftist are against it that the west is anti-colonialism. I’m very pro-colonialism and believe that fits with the deep roots of the west.

I think western values are perfectly in-line with full eviction of Palestinians from the region which is my preferred path at this point. There is no reason we should keep fighting this war and we should end it for all time.

I don't particularly mind colonialism, but I think colonialism is not the appropriate term for what Israel is doing here. The central example of colonialism is when you turn up somewhere and bribe the authorities with shiny trinkets until they willingly relinquish their power to you, whereupon you are now in charge of their former subjects. Nothing delta-immoral happened unless you claim a moral right to be ruled over/oppressed by your coethnics rather than someone else. When you turn up to someone's home and violently seize it with force of arms, that's not colonialism but invasion. To come back to an example I mentioned earlier - would a bunch of Harvard graduates with PhDs, accepted to be moral and socioeconomic superiors by most Westerners, seizing the house of some redneck and building highly civilised institutions like a Gender Studies study circle in it be an instance of colonialism that you cheer for?

I do recognise that the Spanish seizure of the new world looks more like that, but if you magnify it enough even there the usual mechanism was actually more that they insinuated themselves with some local faction in the shiny-trinkets way, helped that faction defeat all the others, and then bought up what was left of the faction's autonomy with more shiny trinkets. Spaniards might not have violated the law of the locals directly that much at any point.

The majority of settled land in the white settler colonies (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Argentina) was not directly purchased from natives. Even prominent supposed historical sales, like the purchase of Manhattan, are not actually confirmed, just rumors written about later by other travellers. In Israel much land was purchased by Jewish settlers, much wasn’t. As in the other settler colonies, much of the territory was also simply claimed, or was purchased from absentee foreign landlords, or allocated by or purchased from other colonial authorities at that time. The Jews did insinuate themselves with ‘various local factions’, not least the legal administrators of the territory (the British) under the legal treaties that ended the First World War and which determined the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

helped that faction defeat all the others

British Jews played an extremely prominent role in the expansion of the British Empire and ultimately in victory in WW1. Cecil Rhodes and other highly prominent British imperialists were agents of British Jewish families like the Rothschilds. British Jewish financiers funded the expansion of Empire and in part the defeat of the Triple Alliance powers. On the eve of the defeat the British began the process of agreeing to an eventual Jewish state in Palestine. This does not appear too dissimilar from those Spanish American examples.

Didn’t the Jews buy their land from the Arabs so it’s essentially trinkets for land? (Granted often absentee landlords).

Colonialism honestly wouldn’t be bad for the Palestinians. The end result is they would the richest non-oil Arabs.

Jews clearly have some right to exists in Israel and it certainly seems like the Palestinians are blocking that.

The traditional way western society would deal with this is kill them all. We wouldn’t have a conflict if Palestinians didn’t believe the west had gotten soft. They would fall in-line.

Of all the arguments against Israel, the most 'sympathetic' one is 'let these fools fight why are my tax dollars going there'. I will ignore the fact that those tax dollars unspent on LockMart USA will not result in tax breaks following and simply focus on the presumed moral culpability of supplying Israel with weapons, as if the 1040 declares that '5 bucks here killed little Aisha, this is your fault'.

The specific reason this argument falls slightly short is that Israel has this thing called an economy, and plenty of means to build its own weapons and buy from others. The first suppliers of Israeli arms were communist Czechs, and literally anyone who sold weapons found Israel a willing buyer. American involvement in Israeli arms exports is more a function of balancing Saudi and even modern Iraqi interests: a fully unrestrained Israel is far more dangerous to the region than one which is constrained by a paltry few billion in aid. General Dynamic is the preferred supplier for Israeli munitions now, but Hanhwa and even Roketsan is in the background ready to backstop inventories at a moments notice, much less entities farther afield like Avibras and even Norinco. US aid to Israel is ultimately a state department containment operation, not an AIPAC invention.

I don't know of anyone claiming Israel is deescalating. Obviously they aren't.

And personally, I'd be fine with the US reducing its support for Israel. But that isn't what you were asking.

I don't know of anyone claiming Israel is deescalating. Obviously they aren't.

I could swear I was responding to someone somewhere in the thread who was all but asserting that, at least in the form of claiming that they silently tolerated Palestinian rocket attacks without retaliating proportionally until Oct 7th. Unfortunately I can't find it now.

And personally, I'd be fine with the US reducing its support for Israel. But that isn't what you were asking.

What was I asking? I started the thread with asking about whether there is a moral case to be made that Israel's cause is as just or more so than the Palestinian one, but I thought I clarified in lots of responses that the reason I asked this was to counter the demand that I support Israel because its cause is more just.

The fact that the numbers are skewed can't be used to show escalation or deescalation because otherwise the less effective or less technological able will always look like they are de-escalating when they are actually just killing as many as they reasonably can and if their capabilities change, so will the numbers they kill.

If a weaker person punches you as hard as they can and you deck them as hard as you can in return and break their jaw, then you didn't escalate, you just retaliated proportionally. You aren't obligated to only match the level of your response to their weakness. If they shoot you with a .22 and you have a .45 you are not obligated to find a smaller gun to shoot back with. They should have considered that before attacking you. Don't poke the bear is advice for a reason.

Now I still agree Israel is far from blameless here. There is plenty of things they have done which are problematic. And so has Hamas. But just because one is weaker and therefore can't kill as many is not an issue, especially because Israel can argue the only reason Hamas kills fewer is because they heavily blockade them and prevent them getting more missiles etc.

If a weaker person punches you as hard as they can and you deck them as hard as you can in return and break their jaw, then you didn't escalate, you just retaliated proportionally.

If you are a bodybuilder, and a woman/child punches you as hard as they can, breaking her jaw would be declasse, to say the least.

Sure, declasse perhaps. But that is because we give special dispensations to kids and historically to women, though these have been eroding. But legally, if you were struck first by a woman then she assaulted you.

But none of these apply to nations anyway. The UK didn't have to allow Argentina to invade just because their GDP was less. We don't really have the concept of child countries where they are not accountable.

But legally, if you were struck first by a woman then she assaulted you.

Legally, sure (well, maybe -- I think that guy who stabbed the kids attacking him in the river went down for murder) -- but everyone will think you are an asshole and be on the lookout for anything else they can pin on you. Which is kind of what's going on with the (less-extreme) anti-Israel sentiment ATM.

But none of these apply to nations anyway.

Again, legally correct -- international law (as Dean points out over and over again) is not really a thing.

But countries that behave in such a way as to turn international sentiment in the direction of "they are kind of assholes all the time, hey" will (may) eventually suffer consequences from that.

But countries that behave in such a way as to turn international sentiment in the direction of "they are kind of assholes all the time, hey" will (may) eventually suffer consequences from that.

That's a different metric though, than claiming it is an escalation. If you want to say you have to weigh your response (and how you spin your response) for real politik reasons, that is absolutely true. But whether it is factually an escalation is different.

"Feelings don't care about your facts" is probably more accurate in politics (which this is) than the obverse.

More comments

  1. Palestinians are part of my enemies (more broadly religious Islam).

  2. I’m not really opposed to colonialism. I think most places that were colonized were better for all involved under the colonial power. Generally the colonized people (with certain political restrictions) ended up with more freedom.

  3. The argument against colonialism (self determination) are never generalizable (eg should my state be able to split off, should my city, should my house?). It just seems like special pleading to say “west bad” when in reality “west was good.”

I’m not really opposed to colonialism. .... Generally the colonized people (with certain political restrictions) ended up with more freedom.

I agree. Anti-colonialism, as practiced in the real world, is the belief that groups have rights but people do not. That it's better to be a slave under people who look like you, then free under a white person.

At least the foot inside corrupt boot i'm licking looks like mine. Perhaps one day I could wear this boot myself

Palestinians are in a sucky situation and Israel treats them badly(although partly their situation is also sucky because they just can’t stop behaving badly), but in this particular case Israel tried treating them as well as can be historically expected- Israel withdrew from Gaza and left them to govern themselves, they elected literal terrorists who prioritized shooting at Israel over their people’s well being, Israel still didn’t invade until they launched a ground invasion of Israel that everyone who isn’t crazy could tell you they were going to lose.

I’m a Catholic and the part of just war that people keep leaving out is ‘reasonable chance of success’. In a world where Hamas had conventional parity with Israel, they would probably be justified to invade Israel and seek to seize territory. But that isn’t what they did, they ran around raping and kidnapping, and also they had to know they were going to lose in the long run.

Israelis have no more inherent right to the land than Palestinians, and Palestinians have no more inherent right to the land than Israelis. They’ve been fighting over it for 80 years; Israel isn’t the bad guy because they’ve been consistently winning. Some of their treatment of the West Bank could stand to be softened, but Israel’s harsh policies exist for a reason, and the Palestinians need to get over having lost.

I don't take super strong sides on the conflict. It seems to have been a game of tit for tat that the Palestinians have always kept playing despite being very bad at it.

The present ruling population of Israel mostly moved to that territory in the late '40s, and from the start has continued violently expelling the ancestors of present Palestinians from their homes to acquire their land for themselves.

This is not a reasonable summary of events. I'll give a slightly more broken down version from my understanding, if I got something wrong let me know and I'll probably update it:

  1. There were always some Jews in that region
  2. The Jews are having a bad time as minorities basically everywhere they are and recently had an attempt at genocide committed against them so they are anxious to establish a state where they are the majority.
  3. the Ottoman empire needs money so they establish the right of land ownership and a number of Arabs end up living as poor tenants under absentee Arab landlords
  4. Jews buy up ~5% of this land and kick the tenant Arabs off this land (I do think this was a wrong committed but not terribly out of step with the morality of the time) They set up kind of leftist Kibbutzim on this land
  5. The Ottoman empire collapses and Britain takes over the area which is now called Mandatory Palestine which includes bits of modern day Jordan and Syria. The Mandatory system is kind of where Britain rules for a while and after the mandatory period ends they intend to draw up state lines and hand the reins over to whatever state(s) form.
  6. There are some small scale Massacres of jews leading to the jews forming some militia like groups, the largest of which is mostly reasonable but there was at least one smaller militia that did its own massacres.
  7. Tit for Tat escalations continue the brits are pretty unhappy with the whole thing
  8. Mandatory period is supposed to end in 1948 but a single peaceful state doesn't seem like something either the Arabs or Jews of the region are interested in.
  9. 1947 there is a UN plan to establish two states Palestinians don't send representation and deny the legitimacy of the plan.
  10. Israel is declared a state and surrounding Arabs immediately attack.
  11. Israel surprisingly wins the war and takes lands beyond even the 1947 proposed borders, many Arabs are expelled at this point and this is what is referred to as the Nakba.
  12. at the same time as Arabs are being Expelled from Israel the Jews are being expelled from the surrounding Arab nations and mostly going to Israel.
  13. From then to today a pattern repeats of Israel very obviously wishing it could take over the whole region and expel the rest of the Arabs but they never actually need to instigate this because the Arabs in the region reliably attack them and provoke retaliation.

I'm left thinking there isn't a clear "good team" here, the Palestinians did get screwed over but usually in ways where they were at least somewhat to blame. Israel's settlements in the west bank are really ridiculous and should probably be dismantled. It's true that Israel isn't giving Palestinians full autonomy in their region but this is understandable given than Palestinians are nearly constantly lobbing rockets at Israel. Israel seemed, at least before Oct 7th, to be willing to go down a de-escalatory path but the Palestinians Seem totally unwilling to walk that path instead harboring the delusion that they're going to some day expel all the Jews and take all the land.

Given this I will say I do mostly side with the Israelis. They're more western and seem to at least attempt to minimize their atrocities in a way that I don't expect the Palestinians to do. A war where Palestinians were wearing the shoes of the Israelis would be an actual Genocide.

This largely tracks my understanding, although I think the religions involved. For Jews, not only is this a safe harbor, but from the point of view of Jews, this is *The Land”. They believe Israel is a holy place given to them by God himself. For Muslim Palestinians, Al-Aqsa is a holy site in Islam, and Islam in general doesn’t have a place for themselves being ruled over by anyone who isn’t a Muslim. Add in the concept of Jihad, and they’re all in on taking back the land. There’s no way either religion can compromise here. Jews aren’t going to give up their holy land especially given what happened when Jews didn’t have a safe harbor in Israel. Palestinians aren’t giving up because they believe that this is their land that they took over and giving it up would be bad.

I never know what to do with the religious aspects. My feel is that they influence on big picture things like why the zionists picked that area in particular and they have a special part in making Jerusalem hard to make work with partition plans but most of the time when we're evaluating just resolutions it doesn't seem that important because we're analyzing it from a secular lens.

I see this as a blind spot for most of us simply because we are secular and live in a secular culture. To them, religion is a very deep very powerful personal thing. And trying to see this through a secular lens when those involved see it through the lens of religion seems like a mistake. To me, the fact that one person is catholic and another is baptist doesn’t mean much, nor does it mean much to those people. If we’d go back to the time of the reformation, this becomes the most important thing to know about them.

In MENA, religion is not just a sort of interesting thing that is just sort of one of dozens of ideas and hobbies and interests a person might have. It’s important and one of the cardinal things about how that person sees the world. And for that matter it’s a big part of how others see them and they see others.

This largely tracks with my understanding of the history of the region (plus a few new details), except:

Israel surprisingly wins the war and takes lands beyond even the 1947 proposed borders, many Arabs are expelled at this point and this is what is referred to as the Nakba.

My understanding was that the Arabs largely left voluntarily upon request by the surrounding Arab nations, who expected to wreak total destruction on those pesky so-called Israelis (in their opinion), and didn't want them to be in the crossfire. Possibly there was some small-scale local hostility and encouragement, but not anything that could be called a proper expulsion.

the willing flight narrative has been thoroughly taken apart by israel's "new historians". here's a thorough review of the historiography: https://www.zochrot.org/publication_articles/view/51011/en?Were_they_expelled

Like the Irish journalist Erskine Childers before him, Morris found no evidence of instructions or directions by the Arab Higher Committee, or any Arab government for that matter, to the local population of Palestine to leave the country. All he could trace was instructions by the Arab Higher Committee to local commanders to secure the evacuation of women, children and old men from the areas of danger.

some other examples:

israel's secret campaign of poisoning arab wells, countenanced by david ben gurion

deir yassin massacre

benny morris, who certainly is no bleeding heart leftist: "In truth, however, the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and PoWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948, and noted that only 6 out of 392 towns and villages that he examined were abandoned due to Arab orders

Israeli new historians, like all intellectual dissidents, use intellectual solidarity with the far enemy (Arabs in this case) as weapons to attack the proximate enemy (the established intellectual/political order of the current moment). Without mass annihilation of dissident intellectuals like what all communist and most fascist regime's did, these new waves ALWAYS cherry pick their data to support their arguments, because destroying the near enemy matters more. Note that Morris himself has recanted from his earlier 'Arabs have always been peaceful victims of my ancestors violence' following the second intifada: perhaps once the far enemy makes its intentions more clear it becomes unwise to continue advancing their cause.

I find it especially disingenuous to presume innocence in Arab intentions. Jewish cruelty has to transformed out of the fog of war, but Arab genocidal intentions are always downplayed. Azzam Pasha gleefully called for the genocide of Israel at 1948, and intellectuals sympathetic to palestine have to morph this somehow into Azzam being a pro peace champion of Palestinians, ignoring that the Arabs started the war and were busy trying establish success to divide up the spoils.

Israel is certainly no virtuous lamb innocent of sin, but the endless attempts to castigate Israel by ascribing unlimited moral virtue to explicitly genocidal Arabs is loathsome even to casual normies. For members of this board who have a few more brain cells than average (108 iq gang rise up!) the Palestinian cause is the meme of the bike guy tripping himself over.

benny morris changed his political views and said "transfer/expulsion is good actually", but he is still willing to call it such.

Why would I listen to him more than to British or American or Australian ‘anticolonialist’ historians who are also fundamentally ideologically motivated to hate civilization.

morris's view is basically the same as yours - Both sides did awful things, which is what happens in wars. The Arabs were the losing side and my view is that if people commit major mistakes in history they pay for them and perhaps that’s how it should work out. The Palestinians should have agreed to a two-state solution.

Generally speaking once a historian/academic/intellectual exposes themselves a reflexive contrarian their opinions can be dismissed on first order principles for being intellectually disingenuous. After a certain point you will always see the same few names pop up as an appeal to intellectual authority, as if their name alone is enough to carry the weight of an argument. Chomsky is the top of my mind for this cadre of notables, but journalists such as Herman and Pilger are thrown about by tankies too. Once these names pop up uncritically as justification for a pet cause, they can be ignored.

Benny and his fellow travelers are postmodernists that sought to subvert how reality itself is understood by spuriously dismissing countervailing evidence as 'biased' and spinning motivations out of fairy farts. That Benny adjusted his position after his pet palestinians turned out to be the violent assholes they always said they were is merely an inconvenient blip on his quest to tear down the oppressive political/academic climate preventing them from ascending to their natural state as intellectual gods to be feted by proles.

i don't know what postmodernism has to do with this. it seems entirely possible to determine what in fact happened in 1948, whether arabs left because arab leadership told them to leave, or because they were afraid of being massacred, or because they were forcefully expelled by jewish soldiers, or for any other reason. motivations are more nebulous but you can look into official idf documents (plan D) and what leaders such as ben gurion wrote.

Ideologically motivated historians have unearthed Azzam Pashas genocidal statements, Khaled Azm (president of Syria in 1949) said that the Arabs themselves exhorted the Palestinians to leave first, the Jordanian papers blamed Arab generals for making such declarations... all this evidence is dismissed by postmodernists because it is 'manipulated', with only Plan D (why D instead of earlier plans) being proof of the evil of Israel. I think it is far more likely that people panicked and left of their own volition in the face of an advancing enemy, like what is happening to Ukrainians and Masalit, than it is a deliberate strategy crafted by the adversary. A coincidental benefit, but hardly any more deliberate in intent compared to the more pressing objective of killing armed combatants.

More comments

The present ruling population of Israel mostly moved to that territory in the late '40s, and from the start has continued violently expelling the ancestors of present Palestinians from their homes to acquire their land for themselves.

You and SecureSignals can keep telling yourselves that, but it's a strange narrative that ignores the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the first time the Arab states tried to push Israel into the sea.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The people promptly elected Hamas as their champions, and Hamas used that power to make war on Israel by firing rockets. Israel basically just withstood this (and built Iron Dome) for many years, until October 7.

You and SecureSignals can keep telling yourselves that, but it's a strange narrative that ignores the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the first time the Arab states tried to push Israel into the sea.

I wasn't intending to ignore it (and I reject whatever you are trying to hint at by lumping me in with SecureSignals), but looking at the Israeli-side list of "commanders and leaders" on Wikipedia, some two thirds of them were straight up born in Europe, and the remaining ones were born during the British administration to parents who are listed as such. This parses as invaders being expelled, not as people defending their homes.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The people promptly elected Hamas as their champions, and Hamas used that power to make war on Israel by firing rockets. Israel basically just withstood this (and built Iron Dome) for many years, until October 7.

I am quite aware of this, but as I think I argued at length I don't see any moral obligation on the people Israel crammed into Gaza to not elect a government that loathes Israel and will lob rockets into it. This list does not look like "basically just withstood this" either; the list is punctuated with fantastically disproportionate statements like "Israel launches a 22-day military offensive in Gaza after rockets were fired at the southern Israeli town of Sderot. About 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed before a ceasefire is agreed upon.".

"Disproportionate" does not mean "the enemy gets to kill as many of us as we do of them, or else it's disproportionate".

I have yet to see anyone argue that the US and Canadians inflicted disproportionate casualties on the German army and French civilians during Operation Overlord.

If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you.

Then unless you fall into your own bullet one above, you've got your justification not just for Israel's extremely restrained and humane war, but for actual full-on retaliation. Palestinians literally are the criminal mafia you use metaphor to compare to Jews, they are actively and currently targeting Jewish civilians for the purpose of unrestrained murder, so by your reasoning, we should be pro-Israel and support them because they are, by and large, not shooting Palestinian children because they imagine them to be related to mob bosses and mocking them.

There is no ethical principle other than "Whites bad" (or other general Who, Whom?) that condemns Israel while not condemning not just the Palestinians, but the vast majority of the Arab countries for their historic displacements and exterminations of Christians and Jews. If "That screaming child I just killed was related to people who have wronged me." is understandable justification for said killing, then Israel is justified seven times fucking seventy; if that is not a principle you are willing to endorse generally, then you are starting from the position that the acts of violence that the Palestinians are committing are unjustified and monstrous, and you have a practical answer.

As a calibration question, I'm curious what you think of the Allies's campaign in WWII. Do you sympathize with the modern Neo-Nazi arguments that the firebombing of Dresden was an abomination, that the mass destruction of civilian life is never justified, and thus Nazi resistance to Allied occupation was justified then and justified now? Were the lives of the German civilians that died in Dresden precious enough that the war effort should have been forestalled?

I recognize that Nazi comparisons are emotive and can shed more heat than light, but I also recognize that the "Jews are literally all organized criminal gangsters, down to the children." is ticking boxes off of my Historical Anti-Semitism bingo card I did not expect to see in ${CURRENT_YEAR}, and feel that the potentially-inflammatory barn door is opened.

Then unless you fall into your own bullet one above, you've got your justification not just for Israel's extremely restrained and humane war, but for actual full-on retaliation.

This description of the war does not match with my perception of reality, either based on casualty figures or the pictures that I see. Even the most dedicated pro-Israelis concede that Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones, but Israel's war is the "extremely restrained" one?

Either way, I think there is a basic asymmetry between unjustified violence and retaliation. If person A chops off person B's arm and everyone else around looks away and says that A is in their right to do that, then B has been wronged. If B then chops A's arm off in retaliation, B was justified in doing so. If A chops B's other arm off in retaliation for that, this is not justified, because justified violence does not beget a similar right to retaliation.

There is no ethical principle other than "Whites bad" (or other general Who, Whom?) that condemns Israel while not condemning not just the Palestinians, but the vast majority of the Arab countries for their historic displacements and exterminations of Christians and Jews.

Please exercise the minimum of good faith to grant me that I am not approaching this from an ethnic perspective. I don't see where Christians come into this, but historical wrongs committed by Arabs against Jews seem like a better candidate for something that would justify the actions around Israel's establishment. This is an area where I have to admit relative ignorance, but my sense was that the scattering of the Jews of the Levant was largely at the hand of "Western" powers, starting with the Roman empire, and that actually Arab suzerains treated them better throughout history than the crusaders that would occasionally insinuate themselves into the region; and either way, any hostilities experienced by remnant resident Jewish population were out of proportion with the injustices visited upon the resident Arabs by the invading European Israelis. Because of the disconnect between the principal agents of Jews' displacement to Europe (the Romans) and the current "targets of retaliation" (the Arabs), who moved into the post-Roman vacuum much later, I find it hard to accept that the latter would have any moral culpability for what the Jews suffered in the European diaspora.

As a calibration question, I'm curious what you think of the Allies's campaign in WWII. Do you sympathize with the modern Neo-Nazi arguments that the firebombing of Dresden was an abomination, that the mass destruction of civilian life is never justified, and thus Nazi resistance to Allied occupation was justified then and justified now? Were the lives of the German civilians that died in Dresden precious enough that the war effort should have been forestalled?

No, not particularly, because as I said above there is an asymmetry between first-mover violence and retaliation. Since I don't accept the Nazi argument that starting WWII was proportionate retaliation for Versailles, they are the ones who moved first, with the civilian population as both an intended beneficiary and enthusiastic supporter of their actions. I would go even beyond the publicity-friendly rationalisation by military need and say that the Allies would morally not be so wrong to murder those civilians out of pure revenge. (Though actually still a bit less so than the Gazans, because they had more options to make Germany and Germans pay available to them at the time than the Gazans had wrt Israel!) To dispel any attempts to put a racial angle on this, I would say the same about the firebombing of Tokyo.

"Jews are literally all organized criminal gangsters, down to the children."

Ugh, I didn't anticipate that using that particular metaphor would invite this interpretation. The only reason I reached for it is that mafia/police collusion was the first trope I could think of where the protagonist is subjected to injustice and can't get succour. What matters for the metaphor is not even the collusion among the mafiosi, but the collusion between them and the police (the US + vassals). Would you be happier if I changed the stand-in for Israel to be a single guy who has a small frontier town's police and judges in his pocket, with a single pampered daughter who had a cushy upbringing thanks to what he racketeered from some townspeople?

No, not particularly, because as I said above there is an asymmetry between first-mover violence and retaliation.

Which just leads to an endless game of temporal gerrymandering. Israel says that Hamas started the current war on October 7th, ergo Israel is entitled to retaliate. Hamas would have a rather different view of who really started it. Who should we believe? Personally, I'm inclined to lean more towards the Israelis.

Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones

It’s not for lack of trying, though.

Hamas appears to be limited more by Israeli tech and funding advantages than by its own morality. Israel…it’s less clear. I would argue they are operating further from their maximum capability than Hamas. Whether that’s due to conscience or to realpolitik, I’d still call it “restraint.”

Or to put it another way: if Hamas wanted to cause more casualties among Israeli civilians, what would it do differently? Because I get the impression it’s taking all the opportunities it can. The scarcity of such opportunities, and the horrific penalties it pays in return, doesn’t excuse much.

Even the most dedicated pro-Israelis concede that Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones, but Israel's war is the "extremely restrained" one?

It’s ridiculous to suggest that developing defensive technology that reduces your civilian casualties means you no longer have the right to respond to attempted acts of war against civilians to the same degree.

Does this argument generalise into one against animal rights/welfare?

(It doesn't seem so ridiculous to me. Noblesse oblige.)

I don’t think the argument translates the way you imply. Nevertheless, if we can obtain truly identical animal products (meat, leather etc) without harming animals I would consider it morally justifiable to wind down the process of farming them. Similarly, it is fair to acknowledge that without the Iron Dome Israel would likely have killed far more Palestinians than it has in order to prevent Israeli civilian deaths. October 7 shows the limitations of this strategy, however, such that the relevant analogy (that of, say, not beating the shit out of your toddler who keeps punching you) is not wholly fair.

Israel can prevent some Palestinian attacks. Nevertheless, the genocidal urge remains and it is transparently impossible to prevent (at this time) all Palestinian anti-Jewish violence with solely defensive means. This justifies ongoing violent retaliation without significant concern about ‘proportionality’.

Even the most dedicated pro-Israelis concede that Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones, but Israel's war is the "extremely restrained" one?

Being good at defense does not mean you're not allowed to kill the enemy. Palestinian casualties have exceeded Israeli ones because Israel's defense is good, not because they're going light on trying to kill Israelis.

Also, Israel doesn't build military bases in hospitals in order to increase its own casualties. A lot of the Palestinian casualties that "exceeded Israeli ones" are a result of deliberate Palestinian action.

As a Brit, and very much not a neo-nazi, my understanding is that the bombing of Dresden specifically was not particularly necessary for the war effort. The tide of war had already turned against the Germans, and Dresden was of little military significance. It was generally regarded as retaliation for the bombing of Coventry in England, although this article argues that it was done to help the Russian offensive. Either way, Churchill didn't approve:

“Churchill’s head of Bomber Command, Air Marshal Harris, seemed to think German morale might still be broken by bombing, but Churchill rebuked him after Dresden, and again, just as strongly for bombing Potsdam shortly thereafter. His mind had already turned to how the Allies would govern and occupy Germany; the time for destroying it was passing.

On a separate note, while I agree with your sentiment that

There is no ethical principle other than "Whites bad" (or other general Who, Whom?) that condemns Israel while not condemning not just the Palestinians, but the vast majority of the Arab countries for their historic displacements and exterminations of Christians and Jews.

there seems to be a significant strand of pro-Israel support that doesn't condemn Israel at all and regards the killing of tens of thousands to be entirely justified. I don't think one has to be an anti-semite to feel discomfort at the scale of death for dubious gain.

the present ruling population of Israel mostly moved to that territory in the late '40s, and from the start has continued violently expelling the ancestors of present Palestinians from their homes to acquire their land for themselves.

This is true to a point. It is also true that Israel was once far larger than it is today. The Israelis captured huge swathes of land through force of arms in defensive wars, and has mostly returned that land peaceably. The Israelis left the Gazans to their own devices in 2005. The common narrative that Israel is constantly expanding is ahistorical.

If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself, including ineffectual and vile acts of revenge such as murdering the women and children of those who wronged you.

I see this logic - not that I agree with it, but I see it. What I don't see is how your logic is not fully generalizable to the Israelis. They have also been wronged by Palestinian actions. How can it be in your paradigm that Palestinians have the right to invade Israel and kill every Jew they see, but then the Israelis do not have the right to bring indiscriminate death down upon the Palestinians in retaliation? (for the record, I do not believe either of them have the right to do this, nor do I believe that Israel's response has been indiscriminate.)

If you have been driven out of your house and into a corner at gunpoint by the mafia, the mafia boss's kid stands by watching the show and mocking you, and, seeing an opening, you shoot the kid, I will find it hard to fault you for the murder

While I don't think the analogy is particularly fair, I will point out that there is only one moral paradigm in which the shooter in your story is unambiguously justified, and that is blood feud. That is inherently a might-makes-right morality. The shooter will soon find out the hard way that that the Mafia have no more scruples than he when it comes to killing children.

This is true to a point. It is also true that Israel was once far larger than it is today. The Israelis captured huge swathes of land through force of arms in defensive wars, and has mostly returned that land peaceably. The Israelis left the Gazans to their own devices in 2005. The common narrative that Israel is constantly expanding is ahistorical.

I don't accept "defensive" (would you label Russia's Ukraine war thus as well? After all, Ukraine was constantly attacking Russia's acquisitions in the Donbass), and if you keep seizing x units of land and then returning x/2 of them as a "gesture of goodwill" when settling with a thoroughly defeated adversary, this doesn't register as things being a wash regarding your expansionism.

I see this logic - not that I agree with it, but I see it. What I don't see is how your logic is not fully generalizable to the Israelis. They have also been wronged by Palestinian actions. How can it be in your paradigm that Palestinians have the right to invade Israel and kill every Jew they see, but then the Israelis do not have the right to bring indiscriminate death down upon the Palestinians in retaliation? (for the record, I do not believe either of them have the right to do this, nor do I believe that Israel's response has been indiscriminate.)

As I argued in a parallel response to @RobertLiguori, I perceive an asymmetry between initating unjustified violence and retaliating to it. If the Palestinian actions that wronged the Israelis were morally just, then any given act of retaliation for them is at least significantly less just than if the prior action were not. On top of all of this, even just looking at casualty figures, the Israeli retaliation for any Palestinian action is wildly out of proportion - generally, any conflict seems to look like "Palestinians killed n Israelis; thereupon Israel killed 100n Palestinians, with another 5n Israeli soldier casualties".

While I don't think the analogy is particularly fair, I will point out that there is only one moral paradigm in which the shooter in your story is unambiguously justified, and that is blood feud. That is inherently a might-makes-right morality. The shooter will soon find out the hard way that that the Mafia have no more scruples than he when it comes to killing children.

Why are blood feuds might-makes-right, except for the trivial sense that if you don't even have the might to take a potshot at the enemy team's weakest spot then you are really left with no recourse? Either way, blood feuds seem to have been the default mode of justice for functioning human societies for the overwhelming part of human history. I understand that they are questionable from the perspective of someone living in a functioning modern state and we have found approaches to justice that work better, but all of these presume that there actually is a functioning state that is willing and able to mete out non-blood-feud justice. The whole conundrum of the Palestinians is that there isn't - nobody could judge the Israelis for driving them out of their homes, levelling their cities or killing them in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Any candidate sovereign that could force the parties into court by force of arms is making a show of looking away and whistling. In this setting, blood feuds empirically seem like the best social technology that humanity has discovered.

I don't accept "defensive"

A defensive war means you were attacked. It does not mean ‘you were attacked for no good reason’. I’m sure there were plenty of Nazi propagandists who could have developed an excellent reason for their invasion of France: “The Versailles treaty was such an evil, it might as well have been an act of war!”

I perceive an asymmetry between initiating unjustified violence and retaliating to it.

I think you need to flesh out your idea of what exactly constitutes ‘initiating’ and ‘unjustified violence’. I am willing to grant that the initial Zionist colonization of Israel was an injustice to the Palestinians living there, though not a particularly unique injustice historically speaking. I do not see how this gives Palestinians moral carte blanche to assault Israel from now until the end of eternity. At some point they need to accept the facts on the ground. I do not think the Germans would be justified in nuking London in 2024 because in their moral calculus the WW2 bombing of Germany was immoral. I do not think the Turks need to give Istanbul back to the Greeks.

History is a continuum. Nobody ever really ‘started it’

the Israeli retaliation for any Palestinian action is wildly out of proportion

I see this as a category error. America killed half a million Japanese civilians in response to a surprise attack on a military installation which killed 2,500 sailors. Was this wildly out of proportion? The question doesn’t really make sense. There is no version of WW2 where the USA says “right boys, we gave the Japs a good drubbing at Midway, now we’re even stevens.”

Israel is not looking for ‘even stevens’, they are seeking to disarm an enemy which has declared war on them. Any amount of violence is justifiable to achieve such a goal, as long as reasonable efforts are made to direct that violence away from civilian targets.

Why are blood feuds might-makes-right

Because they never end. Both parties think they are in the right, that their escalation is justified. They only finish when one side dominates the other into abandoning their claim.

blood feuds empirically seem like the best social technology that humanity has discovered.

Be careful what you wish for. Gazan culture (in the broadest possible interpretation of the term) is totally unfit to survive. They cannot exist on their own, and are kept alive only by massive infusions of resources provided by a world which has developed 20th century morality and understands the term ‘humanitarian crisis’. No regional power before the 20th century would ever suffer to have such a dangerous neighbor. Rome, for example, would never have tolerated an aggressive barbarian tribe 100 miles from the capital; They would have been annihilated.

To be clear, if Israel subscribed to your morality, then they would grind Gaza to nothing; Scatter the population to the 4 winds and kill any who resist. We would not be talking about 1% dead as if it were a big number. Such a thing is, historically, the norm.

To be clear, if Israel subscribed to your morality, then they would grind Gaza to nothing; Scatter the population to the 4 winds and kill any who resist. We would not be talking about 1% dead as if it were a big number. Such a thing is, historically, the norm.

I feel like I have to reiterate this too many times, but I don't mean to implore Israel to stop; I just want to implore my country (/the Western countries) to stop helping Israel. It can't be helped if people put their self-interest over morality, but as I see it we have no interest in the well-being of Israel.

(Same for your Rome argument; if Rome built its capital in Barbarian territory and got annihilated, sucks for them, but my neck of the woods is not obliged to send them aid.)

Because they never end. Both parties think they are in the right, that their escalation is justified. They only finish when one side dominates the other into abandoning their claim.

Uh, I think that in the ideal case the blood feud ends when both parties recognise that they have done approximately equal damage to each other, and does a greater deal to discourage blood being spilt to begin with. The ancient Scandinavians had a system of blood feuds, but outside of some degenerate cases like Iceland their society survived and prospered.

I think you need to flesh out your idea of what exactly constitutes ‘initiating’ and ‘unjustified violence’. I am willing to grant that the initial Zionist colonization of Israel was an injustice to the Palestinians living there, though not a particularly unique injustice historically speaking. I do not see how this gives Palestinians moral carte blanche to assault Israel from now until the end of eternity. At some point they need to accept the facts on the ground. I do not think the Germans would be justified in nuking London in 2024 because in their moral calculus the WW2 bombing of Germany was immoral. I do not think the Turks need to give Istanbul back to the Greeks.

Again, I'm viewing this from my perspective, not some Kantian "I must deem the Israelis/Germans wrong and stop helping them <=> the Israelis/Germans must realise they are in the wrong themselves and take the boot to the face" universal-or-bust one. If the Germans actually thought the WW2 bombing of Germany was immoral and kept suffering from the consequences, then yes, they should go ahead and nuke London. I would think they are wrong and the Brits are right and send aid to the Brits in that case, without thinking that the Germans are committing any moral mistake beyond just getting the initial moral calculus wrong.

History is a continuum. Nobody ever really ‘started it’

I think Israel-on-Palestine is almost as close to Israel having unambiguously started it as any of those things get in history. Their ancestors were driven out of Israel by Romans almost 2k years ago, the ancestors of the Palestinians always universally treated the Jews that stayed behind or made it back better than any other major power of the day, and the invading Israelis had no meaningful cultural ties to the area remaining apart from a carefully nursed religious belief. Then some Germans go genocidal on the Jews, and the answer of the allied powers that defeat Germany is to... enable the Jews to invade and displace the Palestinians? In what world was this a sane and just solution, as opposed to the obvious choice of carving out Israel from the defeated Axis powers? With some care you could even have used a part of Italy, finally avenging the original sin from two thousand years ago.

I am trying to understand your position, so please let me know if I have got this right:

• Israel is inherently bad/unjust, by the nature of it's creation.

• Because of this, there is nothing that Israel can do that would be good/just, excepting perhaps to dissolve itself.

•Similarly, there is nothing that Palestinians could possibly do to Israel that would be bad/unjust, and no Israeli response to any Palestinian action (excepting perhaps to just take a bloody nose) could be good/just

•You do not implore Israel to stop. I think this is not because you think Israel is justified in any moral sense, (i.e. blood feud) but because you acknowledge that asking Israel to behave justly under your model would be asking the impossible. You simply ask that uninvolved actors act according to the 'Israel is inherently bad' idea

Is this fair? If so, what separates Israel from all previous historical colonisations, or even conquests? Why don't the Turks have to give Istanbul back to the Greeks? Would Aborigines in Australia/Canada/America be justified in waging war against their colonisers? Would their colonisers be justified in defending themselves?

If not, what actions could Israel take, short of dissolving itself or losing its identity as a Jewish state, that would allow it to achieve the status of a state which is allowed to defend itself, in your eyes?

Arabs suck at war, news at 11. Israeli defensive tech and policies prevent palestinians from easily driving on a road to run over jews or stab kids or have missiles rain down. It is absolutely ridiculous that a neoghbouring state would be allowed to rain missiles on your civilians without retaliation, much less how they celebrate it. The presumption that the palestinians are acting with restraint is bullshit, their feeble kill rate is a function of their incapability, not lack of desire. If the palestinians want a better kill ratio, get good.

It is absolutely ridiculous that a neoghbouring state would be allowed to rain missiles on your civilians without retaliation

Apart from this sentence being almost perfectly constructed to invite the "which of the two do you mean, now?" response - allowed by whom? I don't mean to presume to tell the Israelis what they can and can't do, but the main thing being discussed is whether I (as a non-Israeli) am supposed to send money to help the Israelis, Palestinians, both or neither.

Either way, what would happen if the Palestinians "got good" is a fully unexplored counterfactual. If we assume things are operating on blood feud logic, it wouldn't be surprising that if they actually managed to level the kill count and get their 100ksomething kills of Israelis, the Palestinians would consider the debt settled and be willing to negotiate earnestly. (Of course, 100k dead Israelis would likely make Israel go nuclear, with the US paying and delivering the nukes.)

100ksomething kills of Israelis, the Palestinians would consider the debt settled and be willing to negotiate earnestl

This is so bafflingly wrong that I cannot believe you said this earnestly. is this what the palestinians say they themselves want, or is this what you hope they are saying because you are steelmanning a case (poorly) for them. The hamas charter calls for the genocide of all jews, the houthis call for the genocide of all jews, daily arab twitter and telegram calls for the genocide of all jews. To presume that all the Arabs have to do is kill just 100k more jews and they'll negotiate DOWN from their starting position is illogical and presumes incompetence at basic decision making capabilities that even the most smooth brained retards would find offputting.

As I argued in a parallel response to @RobertLiguori, I perceive an asymmetry between initating unjustified violence and retaliating to it. If the Palestinian actions that wronged the Israelis were morally just, then any given act of retaliation for them is at least significantly less just than if the prior action were not.

Why is ‘justice’ the framework through which to view tribal land ownership? Throughout history many different tribes have occupied this land, have migrated in and out, have been destroyed or vanquished or assimilated.

"Justice"/moral right is what I mostly see being invoked to convince populations of third-party countries including ones I live and pay taxes in to support Israel, transfering things of value and exposing themselves to risk. This is why I see the need to argue against it. If I am asked to sacrifice for a cause for the sake of justice, I would like to know if the cause is actually just.

Military aid to Israel is not actually about justice, though. Politicians prefer to pretend that their acts of rational realpolitik are justified, but they make their decisions based (mostly) on strategy.

The west in general and the USA in particular have several key interests in the region, like the Suez Canal. Israeli intelligence and military power are useful leverage on those interests. Back when he was a senator, Joe Biden famously said Israeli aid is the best investment the USA makes and that if Israel did not exist, America would have to create it to preserve its interests.

So what is actually the realpolitik argument there? How can Israel keep the Suez canal open in a way that the US other powers in the region couldn't? The assertion that there is actually some convoluted realpolitik reason for whatever the US middle east policy of the day is - as opposed to blindly doing whatever the lobbyists of the day demand because their similarly short-sighted investors will make their stock value go up if it happens - looks a lot like a series of all-caps hail-mary "trust the plan"s. In the meantime, approximately every major problem that the Americans face in the Middle East themselves is their own creation. If the politicians of the cold war were given a crystal ball that told them of the future of Iran and Afghanistan, with all their implications for American interests, as a consequence of the interventions that they were advocating for then, I'm sure some of them would have managed to concoct a speech about how the Islamic Republic and the Taliban are also necessary to preserve American interests.

Israel keeps one of America’s #1 enemies, Iran, in check. Israel provides an overwatch that prevents Hezbollah, a very anti-American power, from dominating Lebanon. The Israeli military has in the past carried out strikes on anti-American regional powers that America was no doubt very pleased with, eg against Syria.

Does this necessarily mean that Israel is worth the price tag? No, but there’s genuine geopolitics reasons to play nice with them.

Would Hezbollah even be anti-American without the American support for Israel? The situation may be different from Iran whose present political system emerged as a direct reaction against past American chicanery, but on the other hand even Vietnam, which got treated a lot worse than Iran, is basically friendly to the US nowadays, and the Taliban are also acting all conciliatory since their comeback. I'm sure that if the US wanted to be friends with Iran in a post-Israel world, they could do so quite easily by just promising to keep Saudi Arabia on a leash and pushing them to agree on mutually acceptable spheres of influence. The barriers would actually be on the US side, since it seems like the deep state can nurse very old grudges over matters such as BP and the embassy hostage taking.

More comments

I don't know the full extent of what Israel's intelligence services do for the west because they obviously don't advertise it. We know that they have one of the largest and best-funded intelligence services in the world. Whatever it is they do with that money, Joe Biden clearly thinks the USA is getting their money's worth.

Since all of this stuff is top-secret one of the only things I can point to is a joke from an old British TV show. Yes, Minister and its sequel series Yes, Prime Minister were infamous for portraying the government of Britain so accurately that the actual government thought the show's writers had a spy on the inside feeding them stories. Yes, Prime Minister once did a joke about the British Foreign Office hiding strategic intelligence from the PM, and the Israeli ambassador passing that same intelligence to the PM in a secret meeting.

That's just a script from an old TV show, of course. But it's not like Mossad is going to come out and explain what they do for the governments of the west in exchange for all that money. All we can say is that whatever it is they do, the governments of the west are apparently satisfied with their performance.

For what it's worth, the writers of Yes, Minister had at least two regular sources of information that were highly placed within the actual government--one Tory and one Labour, as I recall. A number of the minor side plots, usually the more insane ones, were references to actual events.

In one episode, the major characters went on a trip to the fictional nation of 'Qumran', and were aghast that their Islamic hosts would not be serving alcohol at the party. So they devised a strategem where alcohol would be stored nearby in a 'secure transmission room' and each member of the diplomatic team would take it in turns to 'confer with London' and refresh his drink. This actually happened, though the Islamic nation in question was not Arab, as depicted in the show.

The present ruling population of Israel mostly moved to that territory in the late '40s, and from the start has continued violently expelling the ancestors of present Palestinians from their homes to acquire their land for themselves.

My understanding is that prior to the '40s, said present ruling population (or their ancestors) had themselves been violently expelled from their homes, in some cases by the present Palestinians/their ancestors, or other related groups. It feels odd to me to acknowledge the Arab/Muslim claims on the territory and ancestral lands while pretending all Jews are interlopers. Kind of like if we recognized England as "Ancestral Norman land".

My understanding is that the present ruling population, that is, Eastern European Jews (as seemingly everyone on Wikipedia's list of Israel's leaders in the 1948 war was), derive from a population that was expelled from the Levant by the Roman Empire. The Romans don't strike me as particularly ancestral to the Palestinians; even if you find some genetic signature, sociologically and culturally they were if anything also in the enemies-of-Rome camp.

As far as I know, genetically the Palestinians can be traced back to pre-Roman-era populations of the area (the namesake Philistines? Canaanites?), so the comparison with Normans in England does not work. If you want to create a British metaphor, the closest I could think of is if after a St Patrick's Day celebration in Boston gone particularly awry, Irish-Americans decided to invade Scotland and push the resident Scots into reservations, arguing that the Celtic part of the British Isles is their ancestral homeland, there were already some Irish people in Scotland (true) and the Scots got thoroughly culturally assimilated by the foreign Norman invaders anyway.

By that same argument the only thing that makes a land the ancestral homeland of someone is conquest + time. So, if the Israelis just continue on this path another couple centuries they will own their land just as much as the Scots, English, or Palestinians do now.

(P.S. Your account of the genetic and cultural history of the Jews and Palestinians is very off. I can send you some of Razib Khan's substack posts if you actually care, but I don't think you do.)

(P.S. Your account of the genetic and cultural history of the Jews and Palestinians is very off. I can send you some of Razib Khan's substack posts if you actually care, but I don't think you do.)

By all means please do. I don't understand why you think I wouldn't care, unless you pegged me as running my argument due to some ideological stance that is very different from my actual one. The studies cited in this Wikipedia article seem to be broadly in line of what I believed, though.

So, if the Israelis just continue on this path another couple centuries they will own their land just as much as the Scots, English, or Palestinians do now.

That is not particularly at odds with my moral intuitions, though it is not quite equivalent to what I said - I think that direct descent from conquered and conquerors gives you moral license to reclaim much further into the future, and in the Palestinian case that descent is broken because the Jews only have this license against the Romans, who have long been expelled. The future is not now, though; the Israeli invasion is still very fresh.

Palestinians are the Jews and Christians who converted to Islam (or kept Christianity.) Many are descended from Jews expelled elsewhere - I personally know multiple Palestinians who have gotten Spanish citizenship after proving their ancestors were expelled in 1492 for being Jewish along these lines: https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-refugee-gets-spanish-citizenship-after-discovering-jewish-roots/

Based on the steady torrent of Israel-Palestine threads, the general impression I get is that a majority of people here is quite solidly pro-Israel in this conflict.

Remember that there are a decent amount of people not interested in discussing any particular thing. I've been largely staying out of it, for instance, because I've already come to a conclusion on the best policy of the West (get the fuck out, at least as far as military assistance, to avoid making enemies by backing Israel and avoid getting nuked by openly backing Palestine), it doesn't seem especially likely to blow up in a way that leads to WWIII (unlike Taiwan, which I check the news on every week or so), and I'm not enough of a masochist to keep soaking my brain in the endless stream of atrocities without some actual benefit to doing so.

I would like to understand the pro-Israel position better

Coleman Hughes puts the case for the Israel beautifully in this 2 minute video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHekt7WLo

I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict can be understood without considering the facts that (1) Hamas, and the Palestinian people in aggregate, are strategically committed to genocide against the Jewish people, and (2) Hamas, with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian people, deliberately embeds themselves into the civilian population in such a way that their operatives cannot be brought to justice for acts of terror without high civilian casualties. If you don't believe those two things, then the occupation looks unjust, and the Palestinian civilian casualties like a moral outrage that can be blamed on Israel. If you do believe those things, then Israel is taking just and necessary steps to defend themselves, and the Palestinian civilian casualties look like a moral outrage that can be blamed on Hamas. By analogy, suppose someone broke into my house and started killing members of my family, and he was holding his 1-year-old daughter in front of his chest as a human shield; I take a shot and accidentally hit the girl. The death of that child is his fault, not mine. In a similar case where his daughter is 10 years old and is deliberately acting as a human shield for him as he continues to stab members of my family, her death on him and her, but not me.

My opinion is that Israel has the right to defend itself by waging war against Hamas -- and also that, since Israel has overwhelming military superiority, they have an obligation to do this with the lightest touch they safely afford to. But Oct. 7 showed that Israel has heretofore been applying a lighter touch than they can safely afford to -- and so a heavier touch, so to speak, is called for. This "heavier touch" means that thousands of Palestinians will be killed, some of whom are completely innocent -- and the blame for that catastrophe lies entirely with Hamas and their civilian collaborators.

The objective of genocide against the Jews is stated in Hamas's 1988 charter. In the early 2000's, the ruling party of Palestine was Fatah, a terrorist organization. Before the 2006 elections, Fatah renounced terrorism as a tactic, but Hamas did not. Subsequently, Hamas became more popular and they won 74 seats in Palestinian parliament, a majority, compared with Fatah's 45. Since then, Hamas has controlled the schools and media in Gaza and the Palestinian population has become even more fanatical in their genocidal hatred of Israel. The analogous situation in the US would be if the KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood were the two major political parties, the KKK renounced terrorism, and as a result the AB pulled ahead in the polls and won majorities in both houses. But it is still not analogous because the AB doesn't strategically target black noncombatants. Hamas is morally worse than the KKK and the AB; they are more comparable to the Nazis, but they have much broader public support in their home country. They even use the same pretext as the Nazis: those people perpetrated a grievous historical wrong against us, and so we want them all dead, whether they individually had a hand in the alleged wrong or not.

If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself,

In the abstract, this is the case for Palestine. If you look at it in the abstract and in a vacuum, it makes sense, but I don't think we should look at it in the abstract and a vacuum. Instead, we should compare the response of the Palestinians to the way they have been treated to the responses of other groups who have been treated badly. We didn't see this kind of terrorism from the counties occupied by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. Are the Palestinians being treated worse than the Ukrainians were in the Holodomor? (Hell no) Ukraine's ancestral homeland was occupied, and, unlike the Palestinians, they were really targeted for genocide. We didn't see this behavior from 1st Century Christians in the Roman Empire (who, in the latter case, were really targeted for genocide). We don't see it by Armenians against Azerbaijan, we didn't see it when France and Poland were occupied by Germany; We don't see it from the Comanches or the Sioux today; etc., etc., etc.

When somebody says, "how would you feel if...", the very fact that they have to make up this hypothetical means that they cannot think of a historical example of a morally justified campaign of terror against a civilian population by an allegedly oppressed civilization. And the reason there are no examples is that in the real world, civilized people do not respond to oppression with campaigns of murder of civilians on the other side. In a hypothetical, you might imagine that they do, or that you would -- but they don't and you wouldn't.

If you want to argue in the direction that my historical examples above aren't comparable to the Palestinian case, then that itself demonstrates that you cannot make a moral case for Hamas. If you wanted to (validly) argue that the Palestinian response is moral, you would have to either (1) assert that the Palestinians have gotten shafted worse than any other group in history ever has, or (2) point to historical examples of morally justified campaigns of homicide against civilians, morally comparable to that of Hamas in terms of their justification and methods (e.g., in their use of human shields, the degree to which they preferentially target civilians, and their stated objective of genocide). You might argue, for example, that (A) IRA terrorism is or was morally justified, and that (B) the tactics of the IRA are morally comparable to those of Hamas. Or you might argue that the French Underground in WWII was comparable to Hamas in their justification and in their tactics. Would you make one of those arguments, or any other such argument based on a historical example rather than a hypothetical or an abstraction? You have all of recorded history to choose from.

Coleman Hughes puts the case for the Israel beautifully in this 2 minute video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHekt7WLo

This is missing something important that can strengthen the case, because this is not an ad-hoc argument used exclusively for Israel-Palestine, but instead has precedent. One much stronger than analogy. Consider child soldiers. Killing children in war is wrong. Willfully killing children is a war crime. Along comes some military genius who decides that because you're not allowed to kill children, he should recruit them into the military, and use the power of their anti-child-killing war-crime-fields to make them invincible. They can shoot you. You are not allowed to shoot back. Genius.

The typical policy on this, however, is that child soldiers are offered no special protections, and that the use of child soldiers, rather than their killing, is the war crime. This is because to allow for special protections for child soldiers would act as a perverse incentive for their use, beyond the morale effects that fighting against child soldiers already has. The ideal world is one in which child soldiers get gunned down with complete indifference, just as any other soldier would be, to deter their use.

Similar must apply to a state that treats the lives of it's own civilians not just with total disregard, but as a currency that could be spent for generating sympathy. It's a perverse incentive. There's just no more direct parallel because not even some of the worst regimes in history have attempted this (and even if they tried, getting e.g. Japanese civilians blown up even more would have generated very little sympathy).

In 1945 no one gave a shit if all of Japan were to be glassed and given what we see of Japan today I would say that total annihilation of their fundamental cultural model was a good thing. The japanese today are conscientious productive cooperative participants, and the world accepts them as such only after they renounced whatever bullshido weeb shit Tojo and his fuckfaces spun hp. The modern islamists, especially in their palestinian incarnation, revel in the genocidal rhetoric espoused in their holy book and have in fact carried it out to their maximal, albeit low, capability whenever they could. If the muslims desire to matyr their children to destroy the great satan, then it is their fault that the great satan has bullets.

I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict can be understood without considering the facts that (1) Hamas, and the Palestinian people in aggregate, are strategically committed to genocide against the Jewish people, and (2) Hamas, with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian people, deliberately embeds themselves into the civilian population in such a way that the cannot be brought to justice for acts of terror without high civilian casualties. If you don't believe those two things, then the "occupation" looks unjust, and the Palestinian "civilian" casualties look morally outrageous. If you do believe those things, then Israel is taking just and necessary steps to defend themselves. So everything hinges on those questions of fact.

Did you ignore the part of my post where I said that I accept those facts and think the Palestinians are morally in the right to do that? It is not just to defend yourself against justified self-defense.

And the reason there are no examples is that in the real world, civilized people do not respond to oppression with campaigns of murder of civilians on the other side.

I'd consider the Israeli retaliation to be a campaign of murder of civilians on the other side just the same (I mean, even without getting into the weeds of how much the civilians they kill when allegedly going after Hamas seem to be treated as happy accidents by them, we have concrete cases of Israeli soldiers sniping Palestinian women and children for sport).

(A) IRA terrorism is or was morally justified

Yes, in my opinion. (Also the ETA and a lot of other examples like that) I think I'm generally much more sympathetic to terrorism than the socially accepted median, and find the idea that civilians inherit no culpability for the actions that a state they elected, supported, voluntarily cheered for and in turn benefitted from to be distasteful and self-servingly promulgated by people who stand to benefit a great deal from such exculpation.

I'm slightly overwhelmed with the number of responses, but I think a lot of them bring up similar points (e.g. the "Israel right to take revenge in turn for Palestinian actions?" ones). Please look at them for detail.

(A) IRA terrorism is or was morally justified... Yes, in my opinion. (Also the ETA and a lot of other examples like that

This is only half of the argument, my friend. The reason (A) was given a label is because it was conjoined with (B): the IRA's tactics and objectives are morally comparable to those of Hamas. That would entail that the IRA maximizes civilian casualties on their own side tactically, targets primarily civilians on the other side, and has the death of all Englishmen as a persistent and publicly stated objective. I assume you don't assert those things but I could be mistaken.

Sorry, I didn't quite grasp the structure of the argument there. I don't know enough about the IRA to answer this with confidence, but my vague understanding is that a lot of the IRA bombings certainly looked like they were maximising English civilian deaths.

maximizes civilian casualties on their own side tactically

This is such an extreme claim about Hamas that I would want to see evidence from it, ideally not just consisting of opinions from pro-Israel sources - unless you stretch the definition so far that it applies to any case of "use civilian infrastructure for cover so you are harder to eradicate with anything short of omnicidal measures [which you figure your enemies won't take]", in which case this seems to cover Ukraine as well (a bridge that I imagine people who are going to argue for "American foreign policy is basically good" are not willing to cross).

Absolute bullshit on IRA maximizing deaths. IRA car bombings were violent and killed but the IRA never focused on civilians the way Hamas has. 60% of PIRA kills were security targets, compared to 70% civilian Israeli casualties on Oct 7 alone not to mention the intifadas which focused on killing civilians. To equivocate the two reverses causality: seeking evidence for IRA, moral victors, being as bloodthirsty as Hamas to give Hamas cover.

As for Hamas aiming to maximise its own kills of civilians for the purpose of making Israel look bad, you have automatically excluded any piece of evidence that contradicts that statement.

But here, evidence: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2023/10/hamas-terror-attacks-and-international-law/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-tells-gaza-residents-stay-home-israel-ground-offensive-looms-2023-10-13/

https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns-placement-rockets-second-time-one-its-schools

There is PLENTY of evidence provided by non-Israeli sources of Hamas loading up schools and civilian areas with weapons and fighting within it. It is deliberate policy by Hamas to exploit lawfare to cry foul when Israel strikes back, yet Hamas places all its military infrastructure in built environment. Furthermore the Gaza strip is not an urban metropolis there sre plenty of open spaces as csn be seen by the first search o google maps. Your refusal to consider the evidence is not because the evidence doesn't exist, its because your first order principle is Hamas has no choice and you are working backwards from there.

This is such an extreme claim about Hamas that I would want to see evidence from it,

This claim of fact isn't central to my point and if you don't accept it I withdraw it. The point is this:

If you wanted to (validly) argue that the Palestinian response is moral, you would have to either (1) assert that the Palestinians have gotten shafted worse than any other group in history ever has, or (2) point to historical examples of morally justified campaigns of homicide against civilians, morally comparable to that of Hamas in terms of their justification and methods (e.g., in their use of human shields, the degree to which they preferentially target civilians, and their stated objective of genocide). I would be wary of applying an abstract moral principle to a controversial case, if there is not a single factually comparable case to which it can also be applied.

So do you want to (validly) argue that the Palestinian response is moral? If so do you accept that you would have to agree to either (1) or (2), and if so, which do you agree to?

If you claim, for example, that (A) the IRA is generally justified in how it prosecutes its campaign and (B) the IRA's methods and objectives are morally comparable to those of Hamas, then we have something to talk about. But if there is no such claim you would make about any organization in history other than Hamas, then that would be notable.

I read your post and you mentioned "vile and ineffectual resistance" but I don't see where you mentioned genocide as a strategic objective. That is to say Hamas and a critical mass of the Palestinian citizens want all of the Jews dead as an ultimate objective, whether they have a state or not. You assent to that as a matter of fact and think it is a morally defensible position?

I appreciate this comment, but I do have one historical nit:

We didn't see this behavior from the Jews themselves when they were occupied by Rome

As I mentioned during a previous discussion, this isn’t true. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews’ treatment of the Greeks and Romans was rather similar to modern-day Palestinians’ treatment of Israelis, except far more deadly.

Quoting my previous comment:

If the ancient Roman historians who wrote about the war are to be believed, the Jews went far beyond just rebelling, they outright slaughtered the Greeks and Romans wherever they could.

The Jews… waged war on the inhabitants throughout Libya in the most savage fashion, and to such an extent was the country wasted that, its cultivators having been slain, it’s land would have remained utterly depopulated, had not Emperor Hadrian gathered settlers from other places and sent them thither, for the inhabitants had been wiped out.

Dio Cassius also records that they gruesomely murdered 220,000 Greeks and Romans in the area, while Synesius writes in one of his letters that the Jews were “fully convinced of the piety of sending to Hades as many Greeks as possible.”

This is something akin to the Haitian genocide, not a mere rebellion.

After researching your sources, I found enough evidence to withdraw the example from the post -- though implicitly I was referring to the Roman occupation in the Second Temple Period rather than the Kitos War.

It would be nice if you cited your sources more precisely, by author name, date, and document name, preferably with a link. I notice you did not name the document by Cassius Dio, or quote it, which is peculiar because it is pretty juicy in support of your point:

Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators [Cassius Dio (c .30BC): Dio's Roman History, Chapter 70 passage 32]

I think the current consensus (right or wrong) is that that quote makes Dio less credible, and in any case that is also my opinion. I don't find the other sources credible in their details either -- but I agree they are enough to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the Jewish rebellion in the Kitos War was tactically targeting Greek and Roman civilians.

I don’t know why you’re assuming that Israel advocates necessarily believe that Palestinian resistance / violence / revenge is “morally wrong”. I certainly don’t. I fully agree that the Palestinians have a ‘right to resist’ settler colonialism (which is what Israel is) to no lesser degree than the American Indians or Australian aboriginals or indigenous Hawaiians did and do.

Nevertheless, part of waging this kind of war ought to be an implicit acceptance of vae victis, of victor’s justice. The Palestinians have waged three failed wars against the Jews. If they are crushed, utterly, if they are oppressed now then that, too, is the law of the jungle. Their honor prevents them from accepting the peace that some other native peoples once did; so be it. The Palestinians are not the first people to be replaced in their corner of the Levant; they may not be the last. So it goes.

I don't think that this original wrong has been made right to the Palestinians

Has the original wrong been made right to Native Americans? Remember, “they got a lot of welfare/casino money/etc” is an unsuitable argument according to you (eg. Bill Gates’ servant), and their participation in democracy (ie the right to vote/US citizenship) is also laughably insufficient given their tiny minority status at 2% of the population means that they are effectively under permanent rule by Europeans and other settlers, and have next to no say in national politics.

The truth is that Churchill was right about settler colonialism. It is the law of the universe, it is no moral harm. The perverse thing is not population replacement, which is historically commonplace, it is the replacement of a successful, high performing population with a less successful, lower performing one. You seemingly consider this argument illegitimate; it is not. Is it wrong for Donald Trump to support Norwegians migrating to the US but oppose Somalis doing so? I don’t think so.

‘right to resist’ settler colonialism

I find it difficult to square such a blanket "right to resist" with moral demands that immigration be considered an unalloyed good. I personally don't have a strong opinion in either direction on the issue, but I worry if progressives can't define a coherent reason why violent opposition to [Jewish] refugees fleeing political violence and warfare in 1948 to the Promised Land is acceptable, but opposition to asylum seekers at fleeing political violence and warfare to the Economic Promised Land (America) is completely unjustifiable, then we'll end up with some worse-than-Trump rightist candidate running on a platform of "based 1948 Palestinian immigration policy: more machine guns at the Southern Border" that could be difficult to argue against. And while you can point to how the violence up to and after '48 has been, to a nontrivial extent, mutual, I'm sure populists can drum up enough examples of "immigrants driving up rent, leading to state-sanctioned violence in the form of evictions" or just "immigrant does violent crime" to sway more people than I'm comfortable with. If there is a blanket "right to resist", should that not apply to the Klan's Reconstruction-era actions against Carpetbaggers and Catholic immigrants?

It's not a good platform, and I don't endorse it, but there needs to be a more clear moral principle than "кто, кого?". I don't have a particular line in mind, and I do personally find examples in history where resistance seems justified (I can't really fault the Plains Indians for taking umbrage at westward settlements, or Ukraine's right to defend its internationally-recognized borders), and others where it's not (see the Klan example above), and quite a few more morally ambiguous examples: how many newly-independent nations have used their first autonomous actions to engage in ethnic cleansing their colonial powers were forestalling?

I'm quite willing to listen to other suggestions, but from where I sit, the clearest line seems to be to favor generic liberal pluralism and peaceful coexistence, which probably betrays my most common sentiment on the issue, with an acknowledgement that all states fall short of the platonic ideal there.

I find it difficult to square such a blanket "right to resist" with moral demands that immigration be considered an unalloyed good.

I’m a conservative and fundamentally don’t think that immigration is an unalloyed good.

Yes, anti-Catholic activists like Lewis Levin were completely correct that large scale Catholic immigration irreparably damaged America. Men like Philip Hart and Ted Kennedy are in substantial part responsible for a lot of the negative consequences mass immigration has had on the US. I don’t consider any of this a particular topic of dispute.

I mostly agree with what you said, except your last paragraph seems like a bit of a category error to me. I'm not particularly concerned with which outcome would be more perverse here, but it does concern me that wherever I go, the government and influential parts of local society seem to assert that Israel is in fact in the right and it is our (and by extension my) moral obligation to support them with actions and treasure. It is this chain of reasoning that I want to argue against. Even if I accept the premise that I have a duty to contribute to right moral wrongs everywhere on the planet at all (and I don't!), I am not convinced that helping Israel is directionally correct to right moral wrongs. On top of that, it is not even instrumentally beneficial for me or the countries I live in, as helping Israel makes it a more likely target of spite and retaliation by the supporters of Palestine and produces a steady stream of low-human-capital immigration from the fallout, and, well, has a cost in actions and treasure. On the other hand, if Israel were actually obliterated, its high-human-capital people would probably emigrate into one of the same countries and contribute positively to living conditions here!

I don’t think Americans are under any moral obligation to ‘support Israel’ (monetarily, militarily, or merely ideologically). It’s not a hugely interesting conflict in that it’s the kind of situation that happens all over the world, all the time. Its unique popularity as a topic of political discussion is entirely for two reasons: the first being the unique success of Jews as intelligent market dominant minorities in Western countries, and the second being the growing centrality of the conflict to global Islamic identity and in particular, in recent decades, to the extensive global propaganda effort the Iranian Shia movement has attached to its support for the Palestinian cause with the global ummah. So you have two billion Muslims, some of whom are involved in fighting their own proxy conflict, against a small but very wealthy, influential and intelligent population who see the conflict as an existential war (something few non-Palestinian Muslims do). This elevates a run of the mill tribal conflict to something of greater interest for many people. Then there are secondary factors which are not mostly responsible for people caring but which add intrigue like nuclear weapons, Christian views on Israel and Jewish eschatology, US-Russia-China great power conflict in the wider region and so on.

Well, I'm not American, but as a matter of fact Americans are currently made to support Israel in those three ways (same e.g. for Germany, whose citizenship I have), and the argument fielded for it is primarily moral. (I haven't seen convincing materialistic arguments, and that doesn't seem to be a domain a great deal of effort is poured into by anyone.) It's not like I'm not aware of all these factors you mention, but I get the sense that they would not withstand the load that they would have to bear if the moral pillar disappeared (soft power of "the only democracy in the Middle East" is discredited, geopolitical implications are lazily reasoned, millenarianism is no longer as influential as it was during the Bush years and anyhow they'd actually cheer the war if you convinced them Iran/Palestine is Gog and Magog...).

I think different American groups would still take sides, no differently to how they have over Russia. Israel would not collapse or be immediately destroyed if the US decided to treat it as a neutral third country.

I'm "Pro-Palestine" in the sense that I find the most defensible solution to the conflict would be two states on 1949 borders, PA in charge of the whole State of Palestine (undemocratically if necessarily), right to return to those who actually have been expelled but not to descendants, resettlement with compensation to descendants in their current countries of habitation, and international security guarantees to the two countries in a suitable way. Furthermore, I find that Israel and its policy of settlement are chiefly responsible for this not being achieved and the onus would be on Israel to take most of the steps to actualize this.

I do not base this on any moral claims on either party but simply on my understanding of what would be the most consistent solution in lieu of the international law; clearly no matter what historical injustices were perpetrated to establish Israel, its existence is fait accompli at this point, and the forceful ending of a generally internationally recognized state would have drastic international consequences. At the same time, the one question I've never seen Israel defenders answer in a proper way is; considering that Israel has in fact never claimed that West Bank and Gaza belong to it, who do they belong to? Israel still, in some weird vague way? Then why isn't it claiming them, or offering the inhabitants citizenship? Egypt and Jordan?

But those countries recognize them as a part of the State of Palestine. To some "Hamastan", in case of Gaza? Hamas is not claiming independence for Gaza. Are they completely out of jurisdiction by any state? This does not apply to any other part of the Earth apart from Antarctica, covered by an international treaty, and has not itself been defined by a treaty, so clearly this claim is just an attempt to create a new international status to some territory for the specific purpose of benefitting Israel.

The only answer that seems consistent would be that the territories are already a part of the State of Palestine, the Western countries are hypocritical in not recognizing it, and the only task would be making this situation into an internationally accepted reality. At the same time, it seems unlikely that this would happen strictly in this form, but one has to have some starting point to try and figure it all out.

At the same time, the one question I've never seen Israel defenders answer in a proper way is; considering that Israel has in fact never claimed that West Bank and Gaza belong to it, who do they belong to? Israel still, in some weird vague way? Then why isn't it claiming them, or offering the inhabitants citizenship? Egypt and Jordan

@Dean did an AAQC that answered this point: Israel actually did not want Gaza or West Bank, but stomped the Egyptians and Jordanians so hard in 67 and 78 that the Egyptians and Jordanians both renounced their claim/administrative right to Palestinian territories while ceding to Israels demands for peace/ceasefire and political recognition. Opponents of Israel state that the 1948 borders mark out Israeli territory, which is true. But 1948 borders also indicate what is Egyptian and Jordanian territory: Gaza and West Bank. Till now the Egyptians and Jordanians refute any claim, administrative or historical or ethnic, to Gaza or the West Bank, and the failure of the PA to govern their territory much less articulate what territory they actually claim is a reflection of Palestinian intransigence as opposed to Israeli oppression.

Jordan and Egypt renounced their claim to the territories when they recognized te State of Palestine, no?

Not really. Or at least, there are ulterior motives/incentives at the least.

For the Egyptians, it was likely to avoid having to take responsibility for the Palestinians in Gaza, and to keep an irritant in Israel's side that they could stoke or cool as a matter of leverage. Israel offered / tried to return Gaza to Egypt with the rest of the Sinai, and Egypt refused. If it was simply about recognizing a state of Palestine, they could have accepted and transferred authority to a SoP figure, but that would have entailed responsibility on economic/political/diplomatic fronts.

For the Jordanians, the renunciation of claims on the West Bank was a consequence of the aftermath of Black September, and as a way for the Monarchy to disempower the legislature. Most remember Black September as a civil war- and it was- but fewer remember that the Jordanian parliament was dominated by Palestinian interests because it was seating Palestinians based on the territorial claims of uncontrolled West Bank. By renouncing the claims, the Jordanian Monarchy was able to cut the Palestinian faction of the Parliament down to size and no longer the political threat it was.

Isn't it rather more important that they have recognized the State of Palestine than whatever their exact motivations were?

No?

The original question is who the territory belonged to. The answer, in most legal contexts, is no one, because there isn't a formal Palestinian state. It would have belonged to Egypt and Jordan if they'd taken it back. That they didn't want it back doesn't mean their recognition of Palestine at different times for different reasons didn't create a de jure Palestinian state. It may be de facto Palestinian territory, and will likely be de jure Palestinian territory in any future negotiated system, but until there is an actual Palestinian state, it's in many respects just stateless territory. The difference between it and other de facto states is simply that no one really claims it, not that the people who actually live in de facto states are also real states too.

You thought it a silly comparison probably, but the Antarctica treaty isn't the worse comparison. Another are the spaces in the middle of the great oceans. While it is indeed extremely uncommon on land, if no recognized state exists in an area, it belongs to no state.

Obviously the circumstances of the Palestinian territories that trying to treat it as empty terrain would be considerably different, but the constraints on that are much more a matter of politics and humanitarian law than sovereign territory law.

This does not apply to any other part of the Earth apart from Antarctica, covered by an international treaty, and has not itself been defined by a treaty, so clearly this claim is just an attempt to create a new international status to some territory for the specific purpose of benefitting Israel.

The internationally recognized status of Gaza and the West Bank were hammered out in the Oslo Accords. This status does not match the facts on the ground, but that's not actually Israel's doing -- it's that the Palestinian Authority was driven from Gaza, by Hamas. Gaza is (or was, until the current offensive) an unrecognized (including by Egypt and Jordan, who I believe recognize the Palestinian Authority) but de facto independent state. This is not some novel status; it happens every time some separatist movement becomes strong enough to hold territory. For another current example, there's Somaliland.

This is not some novel status; it happens every time some separatist movement becomes strong enough to hold territory. For another current example, there's Somaliland.

Not getting to whether the "de facto" actually means that much insofar as international law is concerned, the obvious difference would be that Hamas has never actually claimed Gaza to be an independent state, unlike the Somaliland government.

The proper response to the Hamas occupation of Gaza should be the Palestinian Authority, probably backed by an international coalition, asserting its de facto jurisdiction over Gaza, by force if needed. Of course there is a great variety of reasons why that's not happening, but the clear majority of those reasons are, when it gets to the roots, "Israel".

It is quite risible for Israel supporters to refer to confusion and chaos in Palestine when it's obvious that Israel isn't in any way willing to have the internationally recognized authority of the State of Palestine act as states normally attempt to do when some group is occupying a part of their territory, or have the armed forces that could even theoretically attempt it.

When looking at Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, I'm reminded of the 20th century history of the Indian subcontinent, wherein a war drew borders between India and (a combined) Pakistan, which then had a second conflict dividing it into the two Muslim-majority states of Pakistan and Bangladesh. I haven't seen a "three state solution" seriously proposed by anyone in power, but it doesn't seem implausible to me.

The problem with the three-state solution is the same as the problem with the two-state solution -- how to keep the Arab states from immediately making war on Israel and sending us right back to the start.

Personally I feel the entire anti-colonial case is entirely overblown. Independent Palestine likely equates to Lebanon 2.0, or another oil-poor Arabic mediocrity. Whilst I think it'd be better for all involved if Israel were located in Madagascar or the Northern Territory of Australia, that is not the case. They're certainly acting in a way inconsistent with modern Western ethics, but the vast majority of pro-Palestine Westerners would find living in independent Palestine to be a lot harder than living in 2024 Israel.

I also feel that if a return to a sufficient level of realpolitik and putting Western interests first is ever going to be pulled into the Overton window at this point, it's going to be through supporting Israel and hoping that the media eventually pivots away from the anti-colonialist meme. I fail to see the personal good of supporting Palestine, I fail to see how independent Palestine is a better lifestyle for practically anybody involved and I feel that this is potentially the lynchpin issue that will help to restore sanity to the world as a whole.

I also feel that if a return to a sufficient level of realpolitik and putting Western interests first is ever going to be pulled into the Overton window at this point

What we have seen up to this point in the spread of wokeness (including anti-West, victim-class politics) is unfathomable craziness and stupidity, but not material threats to the safety and comfort of the upper middle class and the wealthy. I would guess that those threats are coming soon (within a generation, or two at the most), and I think that could change the Overton window dramatically. If you've read the Old Testament, it is a familiar pattern (substituting "wokeness" in current events for "idolatry" in the Hebrew Bible).

I am not particularly optimistic (as, say, Vivek Ramaswamy is) about what will come next after that; it might be right wing tyranny. (If you had visited Germany in the early 1920's you might have thought, "What a zoo! Look at all these Marxists rioting in the streets, and all this open sexual deviance!). But I do agree with Ramaswamy that wokeness is likely to eat itself as its material consequences begin to be felt by the new oligarchs.

I suspect the fragility of modern technology will accelerate this timeline dramatically. We're already getting "we can't keep the traffic lights working because fentanyl zombies steal all the copper wire."

This society wasn't built to handle a completely dysfunctional population.

This society wasn't built to handle a completely dysfunctional population.

No, it was not. Now feed that insight back into the conversation around this post.

Our society is fragile. The current structures are pretty clearly not going to survive long-term.

A big chunk of Lebanon’s problems are due to the different ethnic groups being at each other’s throats, though I suppose that’s partially made up for by the HBD advantage of 1/3 of the population having an average IQ of 100 instead of 80.

I just don't think Islam is particularly viable to run a successful modern economy/society unless you happen to be sitting on a large oil deposit.

Sharia law is not a great way to run a society, if produces broken people who can’t take initiative.

On the other hand, Turkey is a very nice place by middle income standards, and Islamism may well prove a fad.

A big part of the pro-Israel case rests on the (asserted) status of the Jews as an ethnically-distinct group under constant persecution. Basically, the claim is that even though occupying Palestinian territory isn't great, Israel is the only place the Jews will ever be safe. Whereas the Palestinians are basically just standard Arabs who could fit in anywhere if they gave up their grudge.

I think this is a pretty self-serving argument, but it has a grain of truth and probably comes closest to the real belief of a lot of people (rather than being a justification).

My honest guess is an overrepresentation of jews and they are overrepresented in the posts on the conflict. Add on to this a large overrepresentation of Americans who have grown up in a society that is almost religiously pro Israel. I think a lot of the justifications for Israel starts with support for Israel and then the arguments are constructed to justify the belief. It is more akin to the support of a football team than a political position.

I have met people who are pro Israel because they want to own the libs. How being on the same side as the ADL and JIDF owns the libs is beyond me.

Israel support is also a safety valve for ventilating anger towards non whites. Back in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars era I met several people who signed up just because they wanted to ventilate their anger caused by immigration. That the wars ended up causing mass immigration to Europe didn't seem to bother them. We get this sentiment a lot in Europe. People who would never say the word repatriation and talk about how migrants have to come here legally will happily cheer on bombing Gaza because they just want to see the cousins of their migrants get killed. Advocating for doing 2% of what Israel does in the suburbs of France isn't politically acceptable so we can bomb their relatives in the middle east causing another refugee crisis.

Insofar as I've seen it here, the three main reasons to be pro-Israel are:

  • religiousness (religious right might not be a potent force here but there are a number of people matching that category, and they tend to be evangelical and fervently pro-Israel)
  • owning the libs (nobody cares who ADL or JIDF are here, of course, or even knows them - it's mainly that the left has traditionally been pro-Palestine for anticolonial/(post-)pro-Soviet reasons, so the enemy of my enemy thinking has quite naturally directed right-wingers to be pro-Israel
  • related to above, pro-Americanism and the idea that to be America's best pal, especially now, also requires supporting Israel.

As /u/2rafa says below the Israel supporters tend to be center-right or right-wing, even among the center-left the sort of fervent Zionism one might encounter in Democrats or Labour is basically non-existent here and the explicitly anti-semitic far-right is a minimal force.

Most of our religious people are not evangelical. We have religious Jews, Mormons, and tradCaths, but no evangelicals that I know of.

Evangelicals are very rare in both rationalist and reactionary spaces. One sometimes finds other Protestants, there are the Episcopalian/Anglican equivalent of tradcaths (many of which are now formally or semi-schismatic from the Church of England), the occasional Germanic Lutheran, some of the weird other Protestant denominations. But Evangelicals are rare. Aspects of Evangelical Zionism have now filtered down to some other US Christian denominations, though, I’ve met Catholics who are very pro-Israel and consider Israel to have some kind of special eschatological role, even if Rome says otherwise.

Hey man, like what about justice man?

I do mean this seriously however. Don't underestimate how many people on both sides are incensed due to their understanding of the facts on the ground and feel like the situation is untenable. In the case of the pro-Israel side you'll find people from all over the word who interpret events as "I have no particular interest in or affection for jews, but I see Hamas as terrorists and terrorism can't be allowed to flourish, out of either a sense of justice, or out of fear for what may later happen to me and mine if people find this valid."

related to above, pro-Americanism and the idea that to be America's best pal, especially now, also requires supporting Israel.

On that front, there's also this, Palestinians celebrating 9/11. Americans may not be able to hold a grudge the way Middle Easterners can, but it's been less than 25 years, not over 2000.

I find it baffling that people even here do not ask what the Arabs themselves say they want. Even the laziest retard (me) can join an Arab telegram group and click 'translate' to see what shit they say. The Arabs repeatedly make it clear that they want to sibjugate the jews and america. Its even on the fucking houthi flag (worst flag design ever btw, breaks al rules)! Yet even HERE people seem disinclined to give Palestinians agency for their own actions, treating them as some oppressed animal that had no choice but to rape teenagers and livestream their murders to their adoring fans. Maybe, just MAYBE, the Palestinians who say they want to kill all jews mean it. I mean, what level of fucking crypto fascism is this, declaring it in the open.

Feigned ignorance of Islamist motives is approximately the official position of law enforcement in Britain so it shouldn't be too surprising for it to be widely espoused.

Magic UK dirt did not in fact morph islamist ultraconservatives into progressive liberals even after 3 generations. Right now the UK like all of Europe is just playing for time, hoping that the animating energy of Islamist hate stops spreading out of the middle east. Fools, the call is coming from inside the house!

I'm not sure that anyone is denying that such Telegram groups exist here. However, the history is full of examples of states in struggle against each other fomenting literally genocidal levels of fury aimed at each other turn, only for all of that to be turned to a much cooler variant of mutual distaste or even eventual careful friendship once a peace has been achieved and been in force for some years. Israel supporters tend to treat it as obvious that that couldn't happen with Palestine, that even a mere suggestion that it could happen is some sort of a gross form of la-la-land naivete, even though Israel and Jordan - the "state of Palestine that already exists", according to Zionists - are close enough currently for Jordanians to shoot down drones aimed at Israel.

The egyptians and jordanians established relations to let things thaw out. The PLO kind of did in 1993, but the second intifada in 2000 killed the momentum for peace and the Fatah-Hamas war buried it concretely. @Dean mentioned that a unilateral withdrawal by Israel from Gaza resulted in renewed hostilities from an unrestrainrd Hamas, and it is on the Palestinians to show that they aren't interested in stabbing the outstretched hand before the Israelis remove their gauntlet.

That doesn't make much sense to me. The dancing Israelis on 9/11 are one of the most widely known conspiracy theory-esque ideas in the United States. It seems like a direct counter example to your argument.

The dancing Israelis, if indeed they were dancing, may have been a bunch of cynical scum -- the story is they were happy because they figured it meant the US would go to town on the Arabs. But there weren't street celebrations in Israel proper, the way there were among Palestinians in East Jerusalem (and also Jersey City).

owning the libs (nobody cares who ADL or JIDF are here, of course, or even knows them - it's mainly that the left has traditionally been pro-Palestine for anticolonial/(post-)pro-Soviet reasons, so the enemy of my enemy thinking has quite naturally directed right-wingers to be pro-Israel

This works both ways, and for any point between the extremes. I really don't think there's a position on the issue that you can take, that doesn't own the libs in some fashion.

The Iraq and Afghan wars weren’t major drivers of mass immigration to Europe. The demographic/sectarian situation in Syria was inherently unstable before Saddam’s overthrow because of the Alawite control of the system, increasing overpopulation and rising immigration from the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa were well underway, Maghrebi immigration to France was a many decades old phenomenon, as was Turkish, Kurdish and Albanian immigration to Western Europe and Pakistani and Bangladeshi migration to the UK and some other Western European countries.

People who would never say the word repatriation and talk about how migrants have to come here legally will happily cheer on bombing Gaza because they just want to see the cousins of their migrants get killed.

Most hardcore pro-Israel supporters in Western Europe are on the center or hard right. I suppose they’re often not radically pro-repatriation/remigration which is a relatively niche policy position as of today, but most people who are implicitly for it (like Zemmour) are also pro-Israel.


What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats