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 -
The gap in this thinking is where Americans are obligated to support Israel as the modern, moral, side of the conflict.
If this were an African conflict I was just being introduced to by an Economist podcast today, I'd tend to say let's stay out of it, they both seem like evil groups.
If America gets to "let's stay out of it" Israel is doomed.
How so? Israel is at the point it can kick all of its neighbors asses in perpetuity so long as America is not hostile to it. If we are merely willing to sell them goods at market prices, they can win forever. The only risk for them is if we treat them like Apartheid SA (along with Europe doing the same, which would, given current trends precede the US).
If we merely treated the conflict like an African conflict, Israel could be killing babies intentionally, on video, every day, and no one would care.
Israel's material support from the US is offset by our caring, probably to such an extent that they would be better off if we treated the region like a black box.
More options
Context Copy link
I mean, if Israel gets fewer precision munitions from America, that just means they'll have to use things that have a higher error ratio/cause more collateral damage. And if the Iron Dome and other missile defense systems get depleted, they'll be forced into greater offensive action. I think Israel will still come out alright, but everyone in the region including Israel will have a worse time of it than otherwise.
They've already been bombing Gaza intensively, that's not what a precision air campaign looks like.
Israel just isn't a big country. They don't have the resources to engage in constant wars with a much larger bloc without US subsidies and support. Cut the military aid and they'll have to come to the negotiating table for the first time, as opposed to the old status quo of 'US proposes a treaty where Israel gets everything they want and calls it a balanced, fair deal'.
What is Israel supposed to do against the Houthis? Israel doesn't have any navy worth caring about. The US navy, bigger and better in every way, has proven totally unsuccessful at beating the Houthis or bombing them into submission. They can just fire off missile after missile at Israeli airports and airlines won't fly there for insurance reasons. Israel's high-tech economy will shrivel up and die.
At the end of the day, they're a fundamentally small power with a foreign policy that presupposes access to vast resources that don't actually belong to them. Pakistan has nukes too, Iran probably does. They're hugely outnumbered. Israel needs to get more realistic in their aspirations. They can't escalate out of this.
More options
Context Copy link
Particularly since one of the obvious- immoral, but obvious- ways to mitigate the need / use for bombs in Gaza is to push the Gazans into the Sinai.
Would this be ethnic cleansing? Yes. Would it result in fewer Gazan deaths than continued war? Also yes, if you believe the claims from the last years that the war itself was genocidal in terms of casualties.
Would the Egyptians or anyone else go to war to shove the gazans back into Gaza? Almost certainly not.
Very disruptive, very destabilizing, very, very immoral and amoral both. But also far more likely than any sort of 'Americans and Europeans cutting ties to the Israelis leads to the Israel succumbing to the intifada.'
Almost certainly yes. Egypt's government and citizenry already detest the appearance of being pushed around. There isn't really a better casus belli then preventing having your countries territorial integrity flagrantly violated by an external state, and also preventing an ethnic cleansing.
Palestinians have proven themselves as a destabilizing population (just see Palestinian behavior in Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon). Egypt is already over-populated and financially drowning trying to ensure an adequate quality of life for its citizens. If Palestinians are moved into the Sinai, the cost-benefit analysis would skew heavily towards open warfare, since such a population displacement would literally cause a life or death crisis in Egypt itself. At that point, its either war or state collapse.
Egypt can lodge a strongly worded note, push the Gazans into a hard desert to die(minus the ones they want to keep, of course), and quietly accept a bribe.
That deal would work out very well for President Al-Sisi, at least for the 45 minutes he had before his own people hung him from a bridge. He already has very low popularity in Egypt and is seen as cuck to American-Israeli interests. That would put him over the edge. Which is why he was resisting the idea of taking Gaza’s refugees so hard. He’s not trying to be an obstinate jerk, he has to for his survival.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The cost case and not wanting responsibility of the Palestinians is a strong reason against war. War against Israel ruins the Camp David accord security assistance/entitlement from the US, all-but-certainly disrupts the Suez Canal revenue stream, and various other issues. These cost issues occur win or lose, and even in victory the Egyptians would need to either completely overthrow the state of Israel to provide a place for the gazans- thus risking the nuclear issue- or establish some sort of Egyptian civil control of 'just' Gaza, which renders the war premise of war moot.
Rather than a war against Israel, the far cheaper option is to push the Palestinians on to other areas. Whether it's further west to Libya, to Europe, to other muslim states, or otherwise. Egypt has more options for not-absorbing the Palestinians other than war with Israel.
IIRC Israel has tried to offload Gaza to Egypt at least a few times before, and Egypt isn't interested (nor is Jordan in the West Bank, despite both having held those territories in the last century). My read on this is that nobody likes the Palestinians, even those trying to use them as moral bargaining chips. That said, the three-state solution with those annexations is one of the few outcomes I can imagine achieving long-term stability on the region.
More options
Context Copy link
Right. Because Egypt has so much leverage with Libya, Europe and other Muslim states. It is not realistic to expect Egypt to be able to pass along the Palestinians to other areas. Other Muslim areas wouldn't accept them, and Libya quiet literally doesn't have the ability to keep Palestinians inside it.
I reiterate that war with Israel in the event of a Palestinian expulsion becomes the only viable choice, regardless of its downsides. It does not matter how much Egypt loses out in terms of money from the US or from the Suez canal; money is infinitely cheaper than wholesale civil breakdown. Plus, in the event of Palestinian expulsion, in terms of international law, there is nothing stopping rich Gulf states from funding Egypt themselves; that war would be both legal and justified.
If Egypt completely overthrows the state of Israel and risks the nuclear issue, that would still be preferable to keeping them in Egypt. Nukes can only do so much damage; over-population could feasibly destroy the entire country.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What does "push" mean here, concretely? Generally, in cases of ethnic cleansing, it means "threaten people with lethal violence unless they move", which is why the term is often just taken to be mostly equivalent to genocide. If the Gazans say "hell no, we won't go", what happens to them?
They continue to be crossfire. But people who don't have such strong views are encouraged/facilitated to leave.
The policy of everyone in the region- regardless of of nominal sympathies- may have been for the Gazans to be stuck in Gaza rather than let into their own country, but that hasn't really a demonstrated desire by the Gazans when border restrictions to Egypt get relaxed. Where the Gazans can buy their way out, non-trivial fractions of the population have, with around 5% of the estimated gazan population- 100,000 of about 2 million- doing so in the war so far. And that has been against Egyptian efforts.
Historically- and in previous iterations earlier in the war- the Gazans saying 'hell no, we won't go, we'd rather fight to the death' are also the ones shooting the gazans who would rather leave. And the Egyptians up-to-literally push back Palestinians caught breaking into the Sinai, occasionally even handing them back to Israelis if the Israelis seize the border checkpoints to mitigate overland smuggling. Israel normally accepts this because of geopolitical preferences that were dominant before October 7.
In the grimmer alternative (for everyone but the Palestinians who don't want to be there), the Israelis shoot the 'hell no' Gazans keeping the would-be refugees in, but don't accept Egyptian push-backs, and then variously open the border crossing gates / ferry willing departees to the gates / even facilitate ways around the gates if the Egyptians are particularly adamant. Short of shooting the Israelis, there's not much the Egyptians can do if the literal gates are closed behind the refugees, and the nature of that firefight is that it probably ends with the Egyptians pushed back to a point where they can no longer push back Gazans who walk through.
This is also partly why Egypt has been categorically denying reports of any consideration of 'temporary' relocation of Gazans into the Sinai as of earlier this year. One of the numbers mooted- half a million- would be about a quarter (25%) of the estimated gazan strip population. If 25% were able to leave- not even 'willing,' but 'able'- then it is very, very hard to prevent the next X% from doing so if they want to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think this is actually the case. If America wasn't involved and Israel didn't care about appeasing western sensibilities at all they'd just behave like the other powers in the region and genocide their troublesome minorities.
I hope we never find out, but I suspect that taking off the gloves will prove less salutary in modern warfare than many suspect.
Why do you think it would go worse than expected for a casualty-insensitive modern military facing an enemy it totally outclasses and a hostage population?
Cause, in the recent cases of Western militaries tangling with such groups that come to mind, those foes have things (friendly geography, the ability to cross into a nuclear-armed Pakistan of dubious reliability) that Gazans simply don't.
I don't think it's a win-now button that Israel has refused to press to this point.
It isn't a win-now button because Israel wants American backing and adequate relations with the sunnis, not because it wouldn't serve their interests.
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. But that could be because it leads to a total loss on the political front in both the West and with its neighbors which might vastly outweigh any benefit to being more effective at killing Hamas.
I took the claim to be that it'd be militarily less effective than people tend to imagine.
More options
Context Copy link
It’s not a win now button because they want good relations with the Sunni Arabs, particularly the Gulf Arabs, and there’s only so far you can push them before the domestic situation kills any chance of full rapprochement for another 30 years. The current conflict probably delayed it five years already, which was of course Hamas’ intention.
That good commercial relations with the Arabs would be good for Israel, though, doesn’t mean the whole state would be doomed if things went biblical though, at least not immediately.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would think it would prove more salutary, they have air, sea and ground superiority and countermeasures against massed barely armed troops not present in the past. Of course a smaller version of the Palestinian strategy of being killed so hard and publicly that western people stop out of pity may work on Israel itself but I just can't see how Israel loses this one. Of course once that's on the table a lot of other actors might change their tune.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That depends what ‘stay out of it’ means. If it’s just ending military aid (but still allowing weapons sales, the same way the US does to many neutral nations, and preserving the trade relationship) then no, Israel is not doomed. It would likely force a settlement with the Arabs much sooner for economic and political reasons, but it is not the threat of US intervention that prevents Israel from being invaded.
Sanctions and a prohibition on weapons sales could doom it, but that isn’t non-intervention (it is very much intervention of the standard State Department kind). Even in that event Israel is probably still safer than it was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it had less of a technological advantage, less of a population advantage, less of an IQ advantage (it was much more Mizrachi before massive high IQ Russian Ashkenazi immigration) and when the Arab world was much more united against it.
Israel’s main problems are that Ben Gvir and a number of other intellectually unimpressive mizrachim have actually managed to seize a degree of political power (something the country’s ashkenazi founders fought a long, valiant, losing battle to prevent happening) and - even more importantly - that the ultra orthodox situation now threatens to spiral fully out of control as their population continues to expand.
That whole worldview (America as moral crusader) is dying anyway. Growing anti-Israel sentiment is the consequence of rising antisemitism among whites and blacks (whose growth predates October 7 and has little to do with Israel), large scale immigration from the third world, particularly from Muslim countries in Europe and on the left third-worldist sentiment that always sides with the browner, weaker party.
What sort of settlement are you thinking of? It's hard to imagine Israel giving up much control over the West Bank, much less a full 2SS at this point.
Might there be a silver lining to this? The ultra orthodox are mostly Ashkenazi, as I understand it, so their growing population might produce a high IQ demographic reservoir of sorts to offset other dysgenic trends I've heard the country is experiencing. This of course assumes there comes to exist a mechanism by which they start to participate more in secular Israeli society.
Depends on how bad the economic crisis is. People forget that Israel was very poor by Western standards until the 1980s and became a rich country relatively recently, with huge growth in living standards over the last 25 years (kind of like Ireland, but without the very harsh years the Irish had after the financial crisis). If things get a lot worse quickly I think there’s potential for significant political disruption.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You'd think so. But, on the one hand, Trump criticizes regime change and social engineering and moralism in foreign policy and then litigates DR fascinations like South Africa and white genocide.
Perhaps we're just in the age where Americans don't even pretend that moral crusades are anything but domestic culture wars by proxy.
The South Africa thing isn’t moralist, it’s catering to white racial activists in America who have wanted this for years and who people like the VP follow on Twitter. That’s not a criticism, by the way, and I have no issues with Afrikaner migrants, who are unlikely to have any deleterious impact on America’s social fabric. But it’s not a universal human rights thing, any more than Israel encouraging Jewish immigration is a universalist human rights thing; it’s particular, it’s in-group loyalty, it’s importing more people assumed (regardless of their actual politics) to be in the core white anti-woke ethnos around which the GOP is increasingly built.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link