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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   33109 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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From the survey —

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

This isn't just asking, "do you affirm stories from sacred scripture", it's specifying that it would involve "killing all inhabitants" of a conquered city. Israelis, being familiar with the story of Jericho, would know that this involve killing everyone:

At the edge of the sword they devoted to destruction everything in the city-man and woman, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.

Israeli politicians have brought up the Book of Joshua before in their treatment of Gazans. And this shift precedes the war by many years. From 2017: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-05-16/ty-article/.premium/why-religious-zionism-is-growing-darker/0000017f-e13a-d804-ad7f-f1faf5f90000

Under the plan, the Palestinians will be given three choices to leave the country; to live in Israel with the status of "resident alien," because, as Smotrich made sure to note, "according to Jewish law there must always be some inferiority," or to resist, "and then the Israel Defense Forces will know what to do." When the deputy Knesset speaker was asked if he intended to wipe out whole families, including women and children, Smotrich replied, "In war, as in war."

Smotrich presented the Book of Joshua as the source for his remarks. According to the Midrash, Joshua sent the residents of the land of Canaan three letters in which he set out the three aforementioned conditions. Maimonides explains that if the non-Jews do not flee, they must have limitations imposed on them "so they should be despised and lowly, and not raise their heads in Israel." If they resist, he says, "not a soul must be left among them" - in other words, kill them all. How many of those who sat and listened to these horrible things - learned men and women, Torah scholars and community leaders - agreed with him? It's impossible to know.

The polling may suggest upon the public a religious connection to the act of genocide, but so have influential Israeli ministers.

—

Americans are generally concerned that drone strikes could inadvertently harm civilians. In the polling I posted in a comment above, WWII soldiers who fought the Nazis largely didn’t hate them, despite many of the soldiers polled losing half their company or more. Americans have been greatly concerned about civilian casualties since Vietnam.

You haven't actually rebutted anything, just repeated a claim that religious rhetoric implies something genocidal about Israelis.

American soldiers in WWII hated their enemies as much as any other soldiers do (read contemporaneous accounts of their attitude towards Germans and Japanese), but the political hatred of Nazis as an entity wasn't what it is now.

We have polling done on actual American soldiers in the middle of the war. Only 25% hated German soldiers. [I may have written “Nazis” above but the prompt says German soldiers.] Only 29% wanted to restrict aid, mid-war. I don’t know why this wouldn’t constitute a disproof. Would everyone say the same as Israelis? American soldiers fighting actual Nazis did not say the same things about German soldiers, let alone civilians.

The normals were given the questionnaires during the first 2 weeks of April, just as the major offensive was beginning which was to knock the Germans out of the war in Italy. All the men knew about the approaching offensive, and it is believed that the general expectation was that a tough fight was ahead

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