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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   35724 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Trump, in Shock Announcement, Says U.S. Will Take Over Gaza After Permanently Displacing Palestinians

U.S. President Donald Trump made the shocking announcement on Tuesday during a joint press conference with visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will pursue a plan where the U.S. assumes ownership of Gaza, shortly after calling for the permanent displacement of the Strip's residents.

"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we'll do a good job with it too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out and create economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area," he said.

When asked if this meant that Trump would send U.S. troops to Gaza, he said "if it's necessary, we'll do that. We're gonna take over that piece and develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs. It will be something the entire Middle East can be very proud of."

Now there are a few problems with this. One is that Egypt and Jordan, the obvious candidates, are absolutely against it. Second is that it will be horribly embarrassing when an American soldier gets blown up by unexploded American ordnance that was donated to Israel. It's also somewhat incoherent - he's going to make it into some kind of big multicultural party zone?

"I envision the world's people living there. You'll make it into an international, unbelievable place. The entire world will be there - Palestinians also - many people will live there.

The US does have lots of leverage over Egypt though, their economy has been on the cusp of collapse for a while now. So maybe Trump's increased willingness to deploy coercion will bear fruit here.

(1) Making America complicit in ethnic cleansing is a moral stain on us forever, occurring in the 21st century where every nation should know better — this is not the mid 20th or 19th century; as Trump’s continual 1.7 million remark tells us, there are 500,000 dead in Gaza, and if America goes in these bodies will be placed on us and not Israel — the history books will surely be written so that we the ones who did it; (2) Hamas is still in operation, so American blood and resources will be spent on Israel again; (3) if you think Western culture bears the blood guilt of WWII, consider how Arab people will look at us for the next few hundred years — meanwhile, Jews being responsible for displacing* Palestinians would at once delete the holocaust from our whole collective storehouse of political metaphors, as it almost has now for the Left; (4) it’s naive to think America will ever “own” it, we will be responsible for trillions in rebuilding it for Israeli settlers, and then a president will come along whose donors / influences push him to give it away to Israel.

ethnic cleansing

If tomorrow, say, Sweden decided to deport its Somali population, would you consider that a permanent stain upon it as a nation, an affront to civilization?

If Finland deported the Sami, yes. Or if Denmark deported the Greenlandic indigenous. For Swedes, it depends on if they are citizens. If they are not, then it’s a policy choice to deport. If they are citizens, it is better to encourage them leave through (1) monetary enticement and (2) permitting Swedes full freedom of choice in businesses and institutions to exclude them if so desired and (3) enhancing native birth rates (which Israel is doing right now in Israel proper, and I don’t criticize this). It would be honorable for Israel to open up a pathway for Gazans to expatriate, and to pay them an honorable amount for loss of land both now and during the Nakba. How about $1,000,000 each? But would I want America to forcefully deport Native Americans to Mexico, where they are more similar to the indigenous by blood? No, that’s crazy. Not even America at her worst thought they should do that. The amount of land given to the indigenous is about 10 Israels worth in square miles.

it depends on if they are citizens

What if they simply stripped them of citizenship first? States can act. They can just do things. Citizenship is made up, it's a piece of paper, especially for Africans in Sweden.

This is definitely true, but are you really expecting good results from collapsing the whole house of polite fictions that keep us in the Rules-Based International Liberal Order regime?

The Rules-Based International Liberal Order, to the extent that it exists, would not collapse if a state decided to strip citizenship from its members.

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