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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21817 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Apparently his manifesto is here: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-israel-embassy-shooter-manifesto

A word about the morality of armed demonstration. Those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity. I sympathize with this viewpoint and understand its value in soothing the psyche which cannot bear to accept the atrocities it witnesses, even mediated through the screen. But inhumanity has long since shown itself to be shockingly common, mundane, prosaically human. A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger, capable of moral strength at times when it suits him and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same. Humanity doesn't exempt one from accountability. The action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane. I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.

I suppose for context, here’s something published in Haaretz-Israel yesterday (auto translated): https://archive.md/yI4Dy

In the eyes of Israeli-Jews from all walks of life, thirsting for a "solution" to the Palestinian problem, a survey conducted in March, which sought to examine a series of "impolite" questions, whose place we would not recognize in surveys that are regularly conducted in Israel, shows this. The survey was conducted by one of the HMs at the request of Penn State University, among 1,005 respondents who constitute a representative sample of the Jewish population in Israel. To the question "Do you support the claim that the IDF, when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, that is, kill all its inhabitants?" 47% of all respondents responded in the affirmative. 65% of those surveyed responded that there is a contemporary incarnation of Amalek, and of these, 93% responded that the commandment to wipe out the memory of Amalek is also relevant to that modern-day Amalek.

About two months ago, Supreme Court Justice David Mintz rejected the petition of the "Gisha" organization to oblige Israel to ensure the supply of humanitarian aid to the Strip, stating that this is a "biblical war of commandment," and in effect authorized the denial of food, water, and medicine to millions of Gazans. The ruling by Mintz, a resident of the Dolev settlement, who was joined by President Yitzhak Amit and Judge Noam Solberg, from the Alon Shvut settlement, is already taking its toll.

Researchers of the education system point to a sharp shift in the nationalist, ethnocentric direction in the curriculum since the second intifada, and this process has led to high support for deportation and extermination, especially among those who completed their studies in the last 20 years. 66% of those aged 40 and under support the deportation of Arab citizens of Israel, and 58% want to see the IDF do what Joshua did in Jericho

I'm sure a lot of people would have said the same thing about Nazi Germany as about Jericho. This mostly tells you how bad Nazi Germany is, not the Jews.

Polling from the WWII era disagrees —

https://x.com/gen0m1cs/status/1913800277792039250

Only 25% of active soldiers “really hated” Nazis. 31% felt no personal hatred and 38% thought they were “pretty much like we are”. Among those 25% who “really hated Nazis”, perhaps some amount of them would want to genocide every German, but I doubt it’s more than a few %. And only 29% thought that America shouldn’t supply aid to Germans. Those polled were active soldiers, not the general population like in the Israel polling. So not even an America soldier who literally fought against the Nazis feels the way an Israeli civilian feels about Gazans.

So a quarter of American soldiers - who had suffered zero effects back home, other than a bit of minor rationing - still "really hated" Nazis. And that wouod be, to my understanding, before really being too aware of the Holocaust. Imagine if the Nazis had committed the same atrocities to Americans on American soil as Hamas did on 10/7.

They had Pearl Harbor, but Americans didn’t hate the Japanese much either, from 1940s Gallop polls you can find online. Of course they did use nuclear weapons at the end, which would be a fair comparison.

Imagine if

Or we can just look at 9/11? America didn’t bomb every Iraqi dwelling until every member of the Taliban surrendered. That would be sociopathic. And this caused more casualties than in Israel.

In an alternative universe where Al Qaeda was the government of Iraq, and Iraq carried out an attack on the US that killed ~40,000 people (same proportion of population) then yes, the US would be quite willing to flatten Iraq. And if, in this alternative timeline, Iraq chose not to surrender even after an overwhelming military defeat, the US would continue the flattening until the surrendering improves.

I see, per capita deaths. You don’t see anything wrong with Israel killing, at minimum, 36,400,000 “Chinese civilians” worth of Gazans? I mean, as a per capita equivalent to Gaza. I think that if you’re continuing to kill so many innocent people when they pose zero continuing threat to you, that you are a sociopath. Especially when you were the ones whose oppression led to the attack. How many “Chinese citizen” per capita equivalents should Israel kill? All 1.4 billion?

chose not to surrender

They are willing to surrender, but Israel refused to accept conditions.

I see, per capita deaths.

If considering how a country might react to being attacked, scaling up the attack to match the scale of the country is useful for understanding effects. In New York after 9/11, it was often understood that everyone knew someone who knew someone who at least worked in the towers, if not was killed. In Israel, that instead applies to the entire country, something that might be the case in the US if an attack lead to the deaths of ~40,000 people.

You don’t see anything wrong with Israel killing, at minimum, 36,400,000 “Chinese civilians” worth of Gazans?

The government of Gaza already maximally wants to kill Israelis. We don't need to debate the hypothetical of how their opinions might change if they took casualties equivalent to 36,400,000 Chinese civilians. Their answer to whether they want to wage unrestricted warfare against Israel on October 6 2023 is "yes" and their answer to that question on 24 May 2025 remains "yes".

In WW2, the US was quite happy to kill 2-3 million Japanese in retaliation for Japan killing 2,400 at Pearl Harbour. Japan could have suffered a lot less casualties by choosing to surrender on December 8, but decided instead to fight a war and lose.

They are willing to surrender, but Israel refused to accept conditions.

An unconditional surrender is always an option.

The aerial campaign over Japan was because 100k died in the Pacific Theater and a ground invasion would have resulted in up to 1 million casualties.

unconditional surrender is an option

Actually it’s not, because Israel would prop up their own proxy government who would immediately cede the land to Israel, dispelling the Palestinians to another country. This is the problem with fighting a genuinely genocidal country like Israel: you can never surrender because they admit they want to replace you on your land. Hamas is making the only decision available to them. But peace was possible through a mediation that allows continued self governance of Palestinians.

in Israel, that instead applies to the entire country, something that might be the case in the US if an attack lead to the deaths of ~40,000 people

Is there a number that you would for pin for “maximum amount of casualties” permitted in response? What informs this number and how can we compare it to any previous conflict in Western history? For instance, when Zionists killed 100 British during the King David bombing, how many random civilians was Britain permitted to target in the 1940s as a punitive measure? Infinite?

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