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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected
Trump declared repeatedly that if the remaining Israeli hostages weren't out by his inauguration there would be 'hell to pay'. Most people assumed this meant that MIGA Don would fully back more aggressive Israeli military action, but instead he's willing to pressure Israel into a deal they don't want. Israeli finance minister Smotrich called it a 'catastrophe' and if he quits the government it would collapse Netanyahu's coalition.
Details of the proposed plan can be found here:
The agreement includes provisions for Israeli forces to remain in the Philadelphi corridor and maintain an 800-meter buffer zone along the eastern and northern borders during the first phase, which will last 42 days. Israel has also agreed to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including approximately 190 who have been serving sentences of 15 years or more. In exchange, Hamas will release 34 hostages. Negotiations for the second and third phases of the agreement would begin on the 16th day of the ceasefire.
Presumably, the Palestinian prisoners were not getting 15 years for nonviolent protests.
Take Sinwar:
The correct utilitarian response would have been not to exchange 1026 prisoners for an Israeli soldier, and it would certainly not be to exchange 34 hostages for 1000 prisoners now.
How is this anything but an almost total Hamas victory?
To me it reads like a very dehumanizing admission from Hamas, and a natural corrolary from the idea that Israel will retaliate more than ten-fold against attacks on its population. It enshrines the idea that Israel has such a social, technological, military, political advantage on Palestine that its people's lives, even just civilians and common soldiers, are worth orders of magnitude more than Palestinian lives. And Hamas agrees with that.
If it was plausible for Hamas to claim it was because they are kicking Israeli ass so much on the battlefield they forced them into negociating an unfavorable exchange, then maybe it would be a Hamas victory. But the only way Hamas is winning is that they getting killed so hard that Israel has to pull its punches for it not to look like they're outright massacring the helpless.
I feel like pointing out that Israel is very much not pulling their punches, to the point that "Israel is outright massacring the helpless" is the default position among the youth, and among most people outside the US' sphere of influence. This is a gigantic contributor to the massive rise in antisemitism (well, in combination with the conflating of anti-Israeli sentiment with antisemitism). IDF soldiers and members of the Israeli government are currently unable to travel to huge portions of the world without being arrested due to the belief(and evidence) that they are outright massacring the helpless.
It seems like that's largely owed to the fact that any amount of striking buildings that house Hamas and also (by Hamas' design) house the helpless is going to look like massacring the helpless. The only way to not massacre any helpless in this case is to stop doing anything, or invent magical weapons like that one scene from Iron Man where he takes out terrorists with micromissiles while sparing every hostage they had.
Granted, but at some point if you have any humanity you have to say, 'the number of helpless people we're massacring is not worth the number of terrorists we're killing".
The point of killing terrorists is usually not to kill terrorists for the sake of it, but to protect the helpless people that are close to you.
Perhaps at some point it would be "humane" to give up and let the terrorists do what they want because they have too many human shields. I do not believe that point has been reached, or that Hamas can ever hold that many people hostage.
Yes, of course, that was implicit.
You seem to be saying that the number of people killed in Gaza is well below the number you feel would be worth ensuring that no Israeli is ever again killed by Hamas, and that this number is not de facto reachable given the scale of the current conflict. That, to me, seems to indicate that you believe the appropriate number is greater than the number of helpless civilians remaining in Gaza. And yes, I do find that abhorrent. If I said three decades ago that killing all the Irish would be easily worth it to stop the depredations of the IRA you would think I was a maniac, and rightly so.
The wall basically works. The Iron Dome basically works. What happened on Oct 7th was awful, and I feel sympathy for the Israelis who worry about rocket attacks, but neither of those things justify slaughtering far greater numbers of Gazans.
I do not believe that Israel can indefinitely protect itself from Hamas and its other hostile neighbours with purely defensive tactics, and moreover, I do not believe they are obligated to restrict themselves so.
If you said killing all the Irish was worth it to stop IRA, I would call you a maniac because by all accounts I know of, IRA's goals were not like Hamas', and IRA's tactics were not like Hamas', and IRA's reliance on putting their own citizens under enemy fire for the sake of martyrdom was, if at all existent, not like Hamas'. IRA was not, as far as I'm aware, making the English pick between their own destruction and killing innocent Irish along with IRA soldiers.
If Gazans have any agency, the onus is on them to drive the militants who are martyring them for "free Palestine" out. If they do not have that agency, I find that I cannot feel more sympathy for them than for those who can and will defend themselves [or are defended by their government].
To condone Gaza indefinitely bombing Israel because Israel can (mostly, for now) take it because stopping them would take more Gazan lives than Gaza currently takes Israeli lives is far too close to the concept of utility monsters for me.
"There's a third option: just leave." - yeah, because that worked so well 109 times before. At least, that's the number Israel's opponents cite sometimes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link