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I didn't really participate in the Israel-Gaza megathreads while they were live, for the same reason I don't participate in threads about crypto or YIMBYism: it wasn't a topic I knew much about, and I wasn't especially interested in educating myself. As an undergrad I'd attended a pro-Palestine march or two, and harboured some lingering vague, passive, semi-ironic anti-Zionist sentiment as a consequence; I was vaguely aware of the general contours of the history of the Israeli state (Six-Day War, USS Liberty, compulsory military service for men and women); I'd seen Waltz with Bashir many years ago; I recognised the names Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat and PLO; and was under the general impression that a two-state solution would be in everyone's best interests, although I had absolutely no idea what this would look like in practice. While the megathreads were live, the word "Nakba" would have meant nothing to me, and I can't even say with confidence that I knew at the time that Gaza and the West Bank were non-contiguous.
I think my attitude of willing blissful ignorance changed when @ymeskhout posted his article "The Jewish Conspiracy to Change my Mind" and its followup. Like me, he approached the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a position of relative ignorance, and after doing some research came away far more sympathetic to the Israelis than the Palestinians.
While Israel-Gaza may not have had much staying power on the Motte as the Current Thing™ (there were only four megathreads posted a week apart), it's been a fairly durable Current Thing™ in the popular discourse, and looks to remain that way for the foreseeable, perhaps at least as long as the Ukraine war did before it. As a result of this, it's hard to avoid encountering new perspectives on the conflict, and I'm finding myself reading countless articles about it every week. Wary of echo chamber dynamics, I'm making a conscious effort to force myself to read articles which are less sympathetic to the Israelis. I've found Freddie deBoer's takes unnecessarily combative and employing some rather queasy Fanon-esque mental gymnastics, but found Sam Kriss's articles on the topic to be some of the best of his I've read. I admire that he's demonstrated an ability to do what so many outspoken anti-Zionists seem unable or unwilling to do: express deep-seated sympathy for the Palestinian cause, up to and including denying the right of the state of Israel to exist, while also acknowledging the shocking brutality of Hamas's combat tactics and condemning them without reservation.
One such Kriss post, "Against the Brave", takes as its thesis that both the Israelis and Palestinians should be ashamed of the horrific, unspeakable cruelties they've inflicted on one another over the decades, and that a shared acknowledgement and a shared shame is the only path towards reconciliation. I noticed that this post was liked by @ymeskhout himself, which got me wondering if, seven months into this conflict, his attitudes have changed since he wrote his "Jewish Conspiracy" posts. More broadly, have any of you changed your minds on any key aspects of the conflict since October 7th? Did any of you think a two-state solution was viable within a generation, but no longer think so (or vice versa)? Has the conflict changed your opinion of Netanyahu, for better or worse?
I continue to read books about the subject, watch Arabic and Israeli news channels, and talk to Arabs.
I have come to the same conclusion as you, more or less - I am broadly more sympathetic to the Israeli position, but I reject the elimination sentiments of the most strident pro-Israeli voices (the ones who believe essentially all Palestinians are Hamas supporters who deserve what they get) and believe the current government (and specifically Netanyahu) has cynically and intentionally subverted any possibility of peace.
The Palestinians did have many opportunities for peace; they rejected them because they found the terms degrading and unjust. Whether or not they were justified in feeling that way (I think they kind of were, but a rational people would have accepted defeat and an honorable peace), here we are.
Lately I have been practicing my Arabic by researching the words سبية ("sibiya") and صبية ("Sabiya"). The first means, basically "captured girls" or "sex slaves," the second means more innocuously, "girls." Etymologically they have different roots, but to a non-Arabic speaker, they sound almost the same.
These are the words being disputed on Twitter by pro- and anti-Zionists after this video was published.
My Arabic isn't good enough to determine what exactly the Hamas guy is saying, but I've seen native Arabic speakers on Twitter insisting he's just calling them "girls" and other native Arabic speakers saying he's clearly referring to them as "sabiya," which was historically used to refer to women captured in war.
Does it matter? Probably not. Israel doesn't really have an endgame here. They will continue to immiserate the Palestinians, and the Palestinians will continue to hate them enough to die rather than make peace.
Can you explain more about how this possibility would proceed? All explanations I've seen involve an implicit step consisting of "and then the Palestinians decide to stop hating Israel with such passionate intensity that they'll sacrifice their own wellbeing to harm Israel and Israelis" and I genuinely don't understand, mechanically, how that step is supposed to be achieved.
My more-or-less-unconditional support for Israel in this conflict is rooted in the seeming impossibility of durably appeasing the Palestinians at any reasonable cost.
A large segment of the Palestinian population is irrationally motivated by hate and intergenerational grievances, and their leadership has always been corrupt. I don't believe peace would ever be "easy" or smooth. That said, it's also simplistic to think they are literally all irredeemable vengeance-monsters. Any peace process will necessarily have to be a long term and painful one - the current generation isn't going to suddenly stop wanting to kill Israelis, but there have been efforts by some Palestinians to change things. It will only work in a staged way where the next generation has things better and is less inclined to become martys.
Sometimes these efforts are undermined by their own people (the conflict between Fatah and Hamas is complicated, and not entirely Israel's fault but Israel isn't innocent of responsibility either), and sometimes very deliberately undermined by Israel. If the Israelis take your attitude: "We'll have peace only if and when every last Palestinian renounces violence and accepts the status quo, and until then, we'll keep bombing," no, there will never be peace. At the moment, that does seem to be Israeli policy.
Just to cite one example where I do blame the Israelis, the West Bank settlements are literally the "settler colonialist project" that gets thrown at them a lot. It's explicitly a project to displace Palestinians and fuck them over. Gaza is a hellhole and probably can't be anything else in the foreseeable future, but the West Bank could be the start of an actual Palestinian state with cooperation between them and Israel, but Netanyahu has (IMO) intentionally made the West Bank a sore spot and another conflict front.
Israel's current attitude is "We have the power, so suck it." I can't say I blame them (especially after October 7) but I also can't say I blame Palestinians for hating them. A "peace process" would have to start with the Israelis acknowledging the Palestinians have legitimate grievances instead of just saying "This is 100% all your fault." Clearly they are not going to do that. So here we are.
The details of the Oslo process and why it failed, the Camp David accords, Clinton's peace efforts (whatever else you believe about Bill Clinton, he made a genuine effort with Israel and Palestine) are very complicated. The popular narrative right now is "It was all undermined by Arafat," and honestly, I'd say that's only about 60% true.
Who gets the other 40% of the blame, if you don't mind me asking?
Mostly the Israelis, but also other Palestinian factions (notably Hamas).
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