This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
Contributions for the week of September 30, 2024
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
Contributions for the week of October 7, 2024
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
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Notes -
Re Dean’s highlighted comment for
Just for the record, @Dean was never able to provide any evidence that Hamas uses pre-teen child soldiers. In fact he refused to even supply a link. You can read the follow up exchange here where he writes —
— after someone noted that he refused to post a source. He actually made me go looking for his own unevidenced allegation, yet I could find zero evidence from any organization that Hamas utilized pre-teen child soldiers in the past decade. The closest was:
So I’m still waiting on Hamas’ “sordid history of child soldiers”. I’m surprised you can get a quality contribution for an empirical claim that you flatly refuse to supply evidence for.
You are welcome to respond to AAQCs, here or elsewhere, but grumping about someone else's award because their comment doesn't reinforce your preferred narrative is obnoxious at best.
This is a mod-hatted warning, and we generally don't dip into substance on that, but Google gave me this (PDF warning) pretty readily, and it was far from the only thing Google gave me on Hamas child soldiers. I have no particular opinion on the reliability of the sources etc. and I'm not going to get into it with you, but your emphasis on "pre-teen" and the way you referenced "the past decade" while quoting Dean referencing "the last few decades" suggest very strongly to my mind that you are not engaging charitably, or even just honestly.
You are uncharitably characterizing my comment here. What I have asserted is that Dean refused to provide a source for his claim, the very claim that is quoted in the quality contribution, when pressed on the claim and asked to provide a source (both of which I linked). There’s a rule that someone should “proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be”. The claim or implication that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers is partisan, and he didn’t even provide it when asked. Yet this earned him a quality contribution, which is surprising to me. (All of this you write off as “grumping because it doesn’t reinforce my preferred narrative”. Brother, I am writing on themotte in critique of Israel in the war, I am well aware that I won’t be finding much agreement. I have never cared about agreement here, but I do care if the standards for quality are reduced to rubble.)
You need to understand the context of the original thread in order to understand this qualification. The NYT specifies pre-teen children being shot in their reporting, so we were never concerned with teen soldiers. Teen soldiers were never part of the conversation. Our only interest is pre-teen child soldiers because the children who were shot were all in that age cohort. This is obvious in the original back and forth which is quoted in the beginning of Dean’s reply
That is the beginning of Dean’s comment. Now, it’s possible Dean simply misunderstood here, but 15-and-younger isn’t preteen. That would be 12 and under. The conflict may see 16yo plant IEDS, which is an example and not a limit case. In other words, because it may be that a 16yo plants IEDS, we look only total preteen dead. And it may even be that a 15yo plants an IED, or 14yo. Etc.
Dean goes on to make clear he really believes that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers in his original reply:
Dean implies two claims here: Hamas is employing those under the age of 10 to lob grenades; and Hamas is employing pre-teens as young as 6 in militarily-useful tasks. This is how it is read, surely, because Dean says the article doesn’t go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers. Now, the only reason to go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers is if there is some reason to believe they are currently in their employ, or recently in their employ. (Certainly, “Hamas used a child soldier once in 1988” would be an insane way to explain away why doctors in Gaza see dead preteen children daily). That is because we are talking about current dead preteen children, not any from decades ago.
— — —
Replying to the rest of your comment:
Again, we are focusing on preteen soldiers, the original subject matter. The only real evidence from this pdf is in the 2021 UN address where it is quoted
And if you read the 2021 report (pdf) it identifies only one “child” (that is, under 18 with no specification of preteen) being “recruited”. This appears to be in reference to their summer camps and not a military use (?), so in other words training, but I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t specify. This does not provide evidence of preteen soldiers, indeed the age isn’t mentioned, neither is the role of the recruit mentioned.
Lmao of course. Well look, Dean provided an empirical claim, for which he received a quality contribution, which does not appear to be evidenced, which he flatly refused to provide evidence of. So, okay, don’t get into sources with me, but is this really the standard you want on themotte? You yourself googled it, and there’s no reference in it to preteen soldier in recent employ by Hamas, at least from my reading. So… yeah.
Hilarious. The heart of Dean’s claim is that there is reason to believe Hamas is employing preteen soldiers. It actually matters if the evidence is from this decade or two decades ago. Is there any evidence from this decade? Or even since 2005?
The PDF I provided explicitly mentions children under 15, and elsewhere distinguishes between "children" and "adolescents," both of which Hamas has recruited in its history, in some cases quite recently. But one of the reasons for me to not get into the substance with you is that you have shown no inclination to actually accept evidence when it is provided to you. I anticipated you would do that, and now you have done it, so there is evidently no reason to continue to attempt to meet your demands. You apparently will not accept any evidence even when it is provided to you (as an aside, you do not seem similarly inclined to demand precise evidence when Hamas makes dubious claims--interesting!).
I think that, at best, you have actually failed to understand what Dean's post was really about. What you identify as its "heart" seems non-central on my reading. I suspect that you are doing something worse, though: I suspect that you are demanding rigor in isolation, in order to excuse your own uncharitable engagement.
Well, you are under no obligation to like Dean's post, or to accept his or my evidence of anything. You are under no obligation to like or agree with any of this. What you are under some minimal obligation to do, is not to engage in ways that degrade discourse here. The way you have chosen to grouse about this particular AAQC does not meet that threshold.
Moreover, about a year ago, I warned you that your engagement on the topic of Israel was verging into "single-issue poster" territory. It's clearly something you care about a lot, for reasons I cannot fathom. I am hesitant to impose a topic ban on you, but I am pretty protective of the AAQC process, and the discussion we're having right now is doing a lot to persuade me that I should simply ban you from discussing Israel anymore.
Yes. Dean is an excellent poster with an absolutely stellar history of making quality contributions to the Motte. He is probably in the top 5 userbase favorites. You, too, have made some good posts in the past, which is one of the reasons I haven't banned you yet. But if you're gonna rain on the AAQC parade any time your ox gets gored, I'll count it against you.
The OP is aware of this because the OP was told so at the time, in the response to the response to the AAQC.
To quote myself-
The issue of child soldiers was raised as was a definitional dispute, and as an omission not addressed by the NYT editorial that served as the OP's basis of posting. Moreover, child soldiers had nothing to do with the majority of arguments in the post nominated for the AAQC, and it was only one of three opening arguments of omissions from the first third of that argument's post. The concluding arguments didn't even raise child soldiers as a basis for the children being shot when listing a half dozen competing hypothesis.
Since this clarifying argument was not disputed, challenged, or otherwise responded to, and the entire subject of child soldiers was only used in the AAQC as the introductory lead-in / hook and to establish a relevant topic missing from the NYT editorial, it is possible that the clarification has simply been ignored to further advance criticism of the position, just as the sources discussing to the Hamas youth wing child soldier activity within the last decade that was referenced within your article was also ignored.
For those who haven't read the article...
Nara's article was "Child soldiers in Palestinian groups: forced recruitment and use of minors as a violation of International Humanitarian Law". A Hamas/Gaza relevant section after a global islamic review is the pg. 28 section.
Truzman, 2021 is in turn referring to "Hamas defends its military summer camps for children and teenagers" By Joe Truzman | July 1, 2021 | FDD's Long War Journal, which covers Hamas's military wing's own self-coverage of their camps for children and teenagers. (Notably, these videos may include children younger than 14, though I'm personally uninterested in quibbling over exact frames or individual child assessments.)
From the link in the article, you can in turn watch footage of the camps, originally published by relevant organizations. Here are two videos that were posted on X (formally twitter).
A Hamas al-Qassam Brigade video self-dated from 2021 shows children being trained with weapons for actions from marksmanship, maneuver, and room clearning.
A separate children camp video, this one from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (which is another major Gaza-based group that coordinates with but is not formally part of Hamas, but which is a part of the Oct 7 war) shows children training on hostage taking.
In both of these cases, not only was the material from within the last decade, but the video footage shows the watermarks of organizational channels producing / distributing these videos. These were, in short, self-publicized propaganda pieces, though not intended for an English-speaking audience.
An expressed inability to find these videos is not evidence of absence.
...and this is just on the 'yes, they are training children for combat activities,' by relatively uncontestable sources (i.e. derived from the Gazan groups themselves self-publishing). There are certainly semantic quibbles I'd expect on 'well, that's just training, that's not proof of intent to use them while they're children,' which certainly a take for an ongoing practice in the current war.
A practice that coincidentally aligns with the 2020s intifada-era reporting that was disqualified by the time bounding. A time bounding which also establishes a limit of over a half-decade of Hamas having centralized control over the gaza strip and asserting increasing influence over the gazan media sphere. A media influence done following the late-2000s drubbings the Palestinians received for their use of child soldiers during the Intifada. Media efforts demonstrated in the Hamas 2014 media policy to shape coverage and thus foreign perception of how Hamas conducts attacks, including by limiting showing the preparations of attacks. Policies that have largely remained in effect for non-Isaeli-backed media working from Hamas-controlled territory.
But such takes occurring is the reason that child soldier conventions are very, very clear on military training as the form of induction, indoctrination, and preparation for having trained children on hand able to fight as children. There is no military necessity argument for training children instead of adults if you want adult soldiers.
This is not covering other militarily-relevant roles for children in war, which can include use as observers, couriers, workers, or other forms of aid that remove forms of protection, including the long-recognized Hamas practice of children amongst the human shields. (I particularly appreciate the photo on the bottom of page 9.)
It is also not covering easily-findable but also easily-dismissed-on-account-of-(Israeli-)sourcing from the current war, which includes reports of children-sized explosive belts, children carrying explosives in vegetable bags to hamas ambush points, and of course the role of the child hostages taken in Oct 7 as bait to lead Israelis into ambushes.
(Yes, the last one is complicated. Yes, it also counts. Using children as bait to lure or help trigger ambushes is a form of child warfare. No, the child does not need to be willing, or even there. Child warfare is what children are used in warfare for.)
The definition of “child soldier” is <18, agreed. Ages lower than 18 do not preclude one from classification as a child soldier, agreed. But the NYT focuses on <13 children, and my original post specifies <13. This means we are not talking about legal definitions, but a specific cohort of <13 children. If Hamas is not employing <13 children, then the IDF is not expected to be killing <13 child soldiers. If the IDF is not expected to be killing <13 child soldiers, then we shouldn’t have loads of dead <13 children. Yet there’s evidence that we do have these dead <13 children (NYT+Guardian). So Hamas’ hypothetical employment of teenagers is an immaterial red herring to this topic.
I don’t see why a definitional dispute would be raised at all.
They did not need to address it, because it’s immaterial to their reporting.
It was the quoted line and it was included in your post as an argument. It is what I find most disagreeable, and I don’t have to post everything I find disagreeable.
Right but you included it and it was quoted in the award. Perhaps some other time we can discuss your other arguments if I don’t get banned for doing that.
This is too opaque for me to decipher exactly what you mean.
It was an assertion, and you didn’t prove it was a relevant topic to their reporting.
Not sure what you mean.
Now we are getting close to something. “Hamas youth wing child soldier activity within the last decade”. Wonderful. Is it <13 children and what’s the evidence?
Truzman 2021 is supposed to be evidence that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers. Rather, it’s evidence that there is a military summer camp for teenagers run by Hamas. America also has military summer camps for teenagers. JROTC begins as young as 15, and there are military camps that begin as young as 8. “Hanover and the surrounding districts combine for Young Marines meetings, with a total of around 40 students. Nationwide, the youth group has around 300 clubs. The ages range from 8-18.” They do gymnastics, drills, maybe some shooting practice. Do the tens of thousands of children at American military summer camps constitute clear evidence that America employs child soldiers? No. Of course not. And that’s the same for Hamas. A Hamas summer camp is not the same as employing child soldiers, any more than an American military summer camp is the same as employing child soldiers. Israel has similar summer programs.
Why do both America and Israel do the same thing? From the New York Times
Now you claim that at these camps the “children” (teens) are taught to take hostages. But when Israel takes back PoWs they also put cloth over their head, so you can’t allege allege from this they are being trained in atypical terrorism or something.
This article specifically says that “as young as 14” are attending training, not that they are being employed by Hamas. If I attend JROTC, am I being employed as an American child soldier?
Correct, Israeli wartime propaganda can be dismissed in the same breath as Hamas wartime propaganda. We have third party observers: UN, Amnesty, journalists, doctors. Israel is trying to eradicate third party observers from Palestine, of course. Something Israel can do is take their abundant drone recordings and share to the world examples of child soldiers, right?
I know it's orthogonal, but that NYT piece is pretty thorough. Let me yap about it.
The NYT piece ultimately doesn't really investigate the why schools are mandating enrollment-- and why those schools are often majority minority. It kinda does the journalist thing and quietly alludes to Big Army being behind it, but doesn't provide any evidence for this.
From experience, lots of admin and parental decisions send troublemakers into JROTC with the mistaken belief it will straighten them out. Which I guess is how a school decides to make a program 100% mandatory. Almost universally, troublemakers figure out that JROTC instructors have the same authority and tools as a teacher. Whose authority they have already beaten or frustrated. Some instructors have more talent at discipline having had more practice, but a 100% mandatory enrollment program must be a nightmare. Miserable for any kids with a genuine interest.
Except for a few the program is already perceived by the kids as geeky and uncool enough as is. For those who actually want to be there and those who enjoy it, but won't say as much, it's demoralizing and embarrassing. (There are inter-school events & competitions to be embarrassed at.)
For school admins that have run out of ideas applying the "straighten them out" theory of the unwilling at scale makes sense. So, less about recruitment. I would be interested to see if the mandated JROTC participation has any effect on discipline. I would suspect not. There are definitely some success stories. Some kids do get straightened out or distracted enough to graduate -- enlisting or not. Maybe they would have done the same learning to play an instrument, but the structure does provide some different things than marching band.
A lot of kids that never encounter concepts found in a JROTC program in a more positive light: discipline, self-respect, pride, accountability and so on outside of their urban contexts. Many have a warped view on what respect actually means. Traveling and outdoorsing for kids that had never left the city, or never stepped foot into a forest before.
A good program will offer volunteer opportunities and college admissions bait. Even if you've not an interest in going to an academy/ROTC or enlisting it's a plus for admissions. Giving teens an opportunity to manage large budgets, plan and coordinate trips involving 50+ kids across the country, and possibly fuck it up to learn a lesson is generally good. Active duty folks encountered on trips, mostly enlisted, tend to do a decent job counter-weighting any idealized versions of military life.
Recruiters are never going to be hard to find. You want to volunteer to take the ASVAB? That's gonna be a clear opportunity at least once a year. It's fucking obviously used as a recruitment pipeline. However, for a lot of kids and their families enlistment is seen as an increase in station and a direct path out of the hood. Some moms don't like they babies wearing a uniform, but many others insist that they do. I think it's trivially true that, for a lot of kids at the dysfunctional schools from dysfunctional homes, some years of active duty service are probably their easiest, most direct path to a more stable, functional life. Plenty of them enlist, remain fuck ups, and make the military more frustrating for those around them. Oh well.
Maybe a PIJ camp is the same thing, but it looks pretty different from my experience. JROTC camps are more like "Leadership Course Summer Camp." PIJ camp does look like more fun than the actual military for the most part. They all have that in common I imagine. I don't know anything about the America/Israel, Fuck Yeah, Patriotism Camp. That may be closer to PIJ camp than a huge national program like JROTC. Which has expended a fair amount of effort justifying itself, so it's seen as not-just-a-recruitment pipeline, while remaining a recruitment pipeline.
Sounds like there's a story there. What sort of competitions embarrassed you?
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