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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.

God, I absolutely hate attempts to subsume so many different things under "ethnic cleansing" or genocide.

Gaza is a smoldering ruin. The US gov is, as far as I can tell, not indicating a desire to send its remaining denizens to a gas chamber. It seems they're being relocated, presumably with enormous amounts of US aid and direct support, with US forces probably being more palatable to the locals than Israelis would be, the place is being rebuilt from the ground up, at which point I presume return tickets might be booked.

If this is "ethnic cleansing" in a manner that deserves to be condemned, so am I when I do a bad job with my laundry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethnic-cleansing

  • attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups

  • the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous

The Likud party platform calls for the Jewish state’s control over Gaza. Le Monde’s editorial board calls it ethnic cleansing. From the BBC:

Under international law, attempts to forcibly transfer populations are strictly prohibited, and Palestinians as well as Arab nations will see this as nothing short of a clear proposal aimed at their expulsion and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.

Ethnic cleansing is a term developed in the 80s, so it is obviously not defined by events before that. The assertion that Trump is rebuilding if for Gazans to return is… more than fanciful. If Jewish Israelis want to ethnically cleanse Gazans, they should do it themselves — with their own blood, money, and reputation.

Ethnic cleansing is good, actually. You want your places clean, after all.

Multiethnic countries don't work, or don't work for long.

The two countries that will be carrying out the ethnic cleansing have been multiethnic since their inception, though largely of one faith.

America has not been multi-ethnic since its inception.

Enslaved Africans (and indentured servants from, among other places, Ireland) have been here since before the arrival of the Puritans in New England, and only about a decade after the establishment of Jamestown. Even if you exclude the Amerindians (which, fair enough, so do I) it’s simply a fact that a substantial portion of non-Anglo-Saxon people have always been a sizable part of the populace of this country, even if they were not integrated into the political fabric of society.

It's not like I'm ignorant of that fact. I excluded them, just as you did the Indians.

The country itself was very clear that they were excluded, too, when it was founded.

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