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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35324 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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Trump has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, using B2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators. All aircraft have successfully cleared Iranian airspace, and Trump is claiming that all three nuclear sites were wiped out. No word that I've seen of a counter-attack from Iran, as yet.

AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.

My feelings are mixed. I absolutely do not want us signing up for another two decades of invading and inviting the middle east, and of all the places I'd pick with a gun to my head, Iran would be dead last. I do not think our military is prepared for a serious conflict at the moment, because I think there's a pretty good likelihood that a lot of our equipment became suddenly obsolete two or three years ago, and also because I'm beginning to strongly suspect that World War 3 has already started and we've all just just been a bit slow catching on. That said, I am really not a fan of Iran, and while I could be persuaded to gamble on Iran actually acquiring nukes, it's still a hell of a gamble, and the Israelis wiping Iran's air defense grid made this about the cheapest alternative imaginable. I have zero confidence that diplomacy was ever going to work; it's pretty clear to me that Iran wanted nukes, and that in the best case this would result in considerable proliferation and upheaval. Now, assuming the strikes worked, that issue appears to be off the table for the short and medium terms. That... seems like a good thing? Maybe?

I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.

This is a huge W for Israel. And frankly a necessary W for the country. If my generation continues to hold the politics that they hold now as they age, Israel is stuffed in about 20 years. They need to win these wars now, and make peace with the people that they are able to now, or they won't survive when the blue-hairs start being elected to the senate.

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine. I get being against what is happening in Gaza, but so many people seem to be completely ignorant of the history of conflict, perhaps willfully so. I used to enjoy going on /r/stupidpol, but that place has become as cesspit of pro-Hamas propaganda. Even if you think the state of Israeli was a Western colonialist project (debatable at best), the fact is there are 9 million Jews living there now. If Hamas/other Arab nations get their way, those 9 million Jews will either be all dead or displaced. How is that any better than what they think is happening in Gaza and the West Bank? Part of me hopes that most of my generation isn't really thinking about things that way, but based on reactions in my graduate department to 10/7 (immediate pro-Palestine protests despite the fact that ISRAEL was attacked), make me think that a lot of my generation actually just wants Israel gone. Which makes me pretty sad.

I lived in Israel in 2019, and as far as I could see, it was a country that would be worth preserving. The public infrastructure was functional, vast amounts of food are grown on relatively small amounts of land, and best of all the people there actually seemed to believe in something greater than themselves. I spent a bit of time in the north where most of the 1 million Arab citizens live (and also more time in Jerusalem where non-citizen Arabs are), and while they had complaints about their economic situation/racism from Ashkenazi Jews, it seemed like their lives were far far better than their relatives in the West Bank or even in other Arab countries. Heck in Jerusalem there were Israeli soldiers guarding the entrance to the upper temple complex to make sure I didn't go up there as a non-muslim. Would a Palestinian government grant the same kind of protection to a disenfranchised Jewish minority? For some reason, I doubt it.

I'm definitely much more liberal than a lot of people here, but this is one thing I just cannot stomach from my own tribe. It would be one thing if we just disagreed in the abstract, but most organizations on the left seemed to be obsessed with tying support for Palestine for everything. My grad union for example wants to send union dues to Palestine and to bargain to try and get Hopkins to divest from Israeli companies. I didn't fucking sign up for this shit when I signed my union card.

they won't survive when the blue-hairs start being elected to the senate.

I wouldn't be so pessimistic. The senate has a conservative bias - I don't see them electing many blue-haired types in the foreseeable future. I agree that this is probably the friendliest administration Israel is going to have for a while but there's probably a lower limit on how strained the relationship is going to get. Unlike almost everyone else in the region, Israel is an actually useful country that's 90% geopolitically aligned with the US in its goals. What's the alternative to being allied with them?

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.

I assume it's the media environment. Most legacy media is run by progressives, who will side with Muslims against Jews in any conflict, while newer media is either permeated with anti-western propaganda like TikTok or has no guardrails against plain old standard anti-semitic crankery like Twitter.

I lived in Israel in 2019, and as far as I could see, it was a country that would be worth preserving.

I genuinely hope to see you write more about this at some point.

I'm definitely much more liberal than a lot of people here, but this is one thing I just cannot stomach from my own tribe.

Agreed. I'm also more liberal than not (pro-choice, mostly pro-trans, etc) but it seems clear that liberalism as a movement has, IMO, ceded leadership almost entirely to people who don't believe in universalist principles or rights but rather have a strictly hierarchical view of the world (the infamous "progressive stack") where Jews/whites inhabit the bottom rung and black people/muslims are at the top.

I think a lot of the bias in the pro-Muslim direction is a lack of lived experience with this stuff. If you’re a zoomer, you were a baby when 9-11 happened, and you didn’t actually see what the intifada did, or any of the ISIS beheadings or suicide bombings and IEDs in Iraq/Afghanistan. So the impression you’d get from the media is something Like “Muslims were sitting in Palestine, minding their own business when those colonialist Jews showed up and for no reason at all decided to require all kinds of security measures and put up walls.” No, every one of the security checkpoints was because of various jihad and intifada attacks against civilians.

I don’t think Israel is perfect here. The settler movement is making everything worse. Bombing hospitals is not a good thing to do. The list honestly goes beyond this as well.

I think a lot of the bias in the pro-Muslim direction is a lack of lived experience with this stuff.

That probably applies to zoomers, but I don't think it explains why the progressive movement (which is dominated by millenials) axiomatically favours Muslims over Jews. I'm pretty sure AOC remembers 9/11.

If you're an (American - also applies to some degree to other Western countries) progressive Millennial, assuredly one of your chief political formational points was the Iraq War, where, in addition to various other forms of propaganda, you'd be suggested to a huge assay of talking heads, "warbloggers" and the like piously intoning that this is all a part of a battle against Radical Islamic Terrorist and unless you want to support exactly the wars the Bush admin wanted you to support or a course even more radical, it meant that you loved and cherished not only cruel dictators like Saddam but also Radical Islamic Terrorism (and even neglecting to use this specific phrase might mean you're symphatizing with Islamists!) and all of this proved that you were a part of an eternal alliance of Islamists and Leftists and also that you were naive and America-hating and what have you. I'm not talking about the official Bush admin point of view, which tried to avoid direct implication of this being a war against Islam after a few false starts, but the general connected propaganda machine around the WoT.

Then it all went belly-up and Middle East turned into a fire pit and the people who made it happen never admitted anything. I suspect that offered quite an inoculation against similar rhetoric for many Millennials, lasting until now and giving flashbacks right now of similar rhetoric being used by people who were supposed to be a reaction precisely to Bush-era warmongering.

The conflict between various Muslim states and Israel (which, really, is what we're talking about when talking about "Muslims and Jews" here, since there's only one Jewish state) is rather more complex and goes back way more than the 00s War on Terror, but one of the reasons why they get jumbled up is precisely because Israelis themselves worked to jumble them up in the public view when they considered it advantageous to do so.

The conflict between various Muslim states and Israel (which, really, is what we're talking about when talking about "Muslims and Jews" here, since there's only one Jewish state)

Because Muslims treat the Jews within Muslim states so well, right?

I'm not sure if I see the relevance here, considering that there are, for well-known reasons, not a lot of Jews inside the Muslim states at the moment. At this moment, when we're talking about the conflict between Muslims and Jews referred to in the posts above, it mostly refers to Israel-Palestine and secondarily between various other countries that generally operate by supporting Palestinian factions and, in case of Iran (and previously Iraq), sometimes shooting missiles.

I get being against what is happening in Gaza, but so many people seem to be completely ignorant of the history of conflict, perhaps willfully so.

What is an example of a piece of history of the conflict that you think would change people's minds if they were aware of it?

I seem to be coming from a broadly similar background as you (I was a grad student around when you say you lived in Israel, and visited the country around the same time, and am an "alt-left" outlier on this forum), and I see much of the same facts on the ground as you do (Israel is quite livable, Arab-run countries are shitholes, etc.) (though your benchmarking against the West Bank, which is kind of an Israeli-run open air concentration camp, is a bit disingenuous), and yet I'm increasingly falling in the delenda est camp just because the Israelis have proven time and time again that they are unwilling to compromise on their monomanic obsession to capture and subjugate. For me, this does not even come from a particular reflex to support "the oppressed", as I for example am leaning towards kicking all the Islamic refugees out of Europe to the extent achievable under the law. It's just that I do believe in some baseline of human rights including some degree of freedom, bodily safety and self-determination, and the very existence of Israel from the point of its founding seems to just amount to a wanton cruel ploy to deny these to the previous residents of the clay they took.

I think the Palestinians should be allowed to govern themselves in a miserable theocratic shithole, if they are so inclined; if the Israelis want to build a purposeful country with nice infrastructure and great food production, more power to them, but they should have done so on land they obtained fair and square. I'm sure I could run a very spiffy software development startup in tidy quarters where I also cook two delicious meals a day, but would it be acceptable for me to do that by commandeering a random crack addict's shack and keeping the previous owner locked up naked in the basement, subject to regular beatings (frequency and intensity increased if he lashes out against me) if I also sometimes share some of my food with him (surely better than the slop his buddy who got to keep his shack next door eats)?

What is an example of a piece of history of the conflict that you think would change people's minds if they were aware of it?

This is what gets me. At a certain point once the conflict spans generations and over 100+ years, "who started it" is the most useless question/discussion topic.

Every time someone tries to dunk with "well X did Y so the current Z situation is their fault" it is just so laughable.

I for example am leaning towards kicking all the Islamic refugees out of Europe to the extent achievable under the law

That’s only common sense. But what if they refuse to leave, try to stab your women and children every chance they get, and teach their children to stab? At some point, you’ve done enough to preserve their lives, and the subsequent human rights infractions/butchery is not your fault. It’s like mowing down some japanese with sticks who refuse to surrender. That’s not murder.

yet I'm increasingly falling in the delenda est camp just because the Israelis have proven time and time again that they are unwilling to compromise on their monomanic obsession to capture and subjugate

The Israelis withdrew from the Sinai; they withdrew from Gaza as well.

But never their settlements in the West Bank, which do a lot of the heavy lifting in pissing people off.

So their "monomaniac" obsession applies to only one particular spot. It's not settlements in the West Bank which pisses off the Gazans.

idk I'm not the guy above, I just wanted to offer the thought that they don't only retreat

Well the Israeli government tried to do something about it in the 1970s/1980s. But turns out it's mighty unpopular at the ballot box to bulldoze the homes of your own people after you just won a war.

And yet they did so in Gaza, and all they got for it was Hamas on their borders, shooting rockets.

Yeah the Israeli government is acting to its incentives, I get that. Every action has tradeoffs and consequences. This is the action-set that the Israeli people (and by extension their government) have chosen. I don't envy their choice, it's a nightmare.

But the consequences of their choices is permanent conflict around them, and a world (which to an extent they depend on) that is steadily losing sympathy for their plight.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This conflict is so fucking long and there's so much bad blood, I don't ever see it ending unless someone rips the band-aid off and ends it with a final... solution? But that won't happen so instead it'll just limp along. At this point the Israeli's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.

But the consequences of their choices is permanent conflict around them, and a world (which to an extent they depend on) that is steadily losing sympathy for their plight.

It seems Iran has lost international sympathy even faster; Putin shrugged and said there's a lot of Russian-speaking Israelis, and China isn't lifting a finger for them either. (To be fair, China said the UN Security Council should act against the US. Which is a joke seeing as the US has a veto). The consequences of their choices may be permanent conflict, but it does not appear -- aside from ceasing to exist -- that they have options which do not involve that.

Yeah the Iranians are a disaster shit show.

Much like the Russians pre-2022, I thought they were much more sophisticated than they actually were. Then things started exploding and they turned out to be yet another paper tiger.

Praying we get the same twist with China, very worried we will not

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.

I doubt there's a single explanation, but one crystalized point made recently on x was that leftism and islamic radicalism are both ideologies on the (relative) decline. BLM was the high water mark of left and can't win much any more. ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are all basically defunct.

I used to enjoy going on /r/stupidpol

Eternal September comes for everyone eventually.

I really liked that sub, I owe it a solid debt of gratitude for shaping my thinking in some ways. I learned a lot, and also laughed a lot. It was basically antibodies for my intense dislike of the woke mob.

But man, they just cannot stop taking the stupidest most contrarian positions on things purely because the out group likes the other thing. Makes the discussion so lame and predictable.

The current state of R/Stupidpol is against the spirit of everything that the late Comrade General Secretary Dolezal stood for, and all currents of her revolutionary thought as transcribed in the Little Beige Book. I can only conclude the subreddit was covertly overrun and subverted by wreckers, Kulaks, and Gucci-ist counterrevolutionaries.

We still have /r/shitpoliticssays to carry the anti-progressive flag.

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.

This is not a huge mystery. If you're a left-leaning zoomer, you've spent most of your adult life watching right-wing Israeli governments take advantage of the US government to commit human rights violations while aggressively snubbing the Democrats and boosting the Republicans. You can invoke the history of the conflict or the gruesome spectre of a Hamas victory all you like, but you're contrasting ancient history* and lurid hypotheticals to current reality. If Israel had pursued a measured response to the Oct. 7th attacks (and especially if they weren't also constantly nibbling away at Palestinian territory), they would have been able to garner a lot of sympathy. Not from everyone - there are indeed people who think Israel can do no right - but from most. After all, it seemed like a vindication of the aforementioned lurid hypotheticals. Israel, however, does not do measured responses. And if the IDF's conduct isn't quite the war of annihilation their most vocal critics claim, it's still increasingly hard to argue that Israel isn't waging a war against the Palestinian people rather than simply going after Islamic terrorists.

Even if you're not left-leaning or otherwise sympathetic to the Palestinians, it's easy to feel like this is an incredibly one-sided relationship.

*which is not always especially favorable to the Israelis in any event.

I think it's simpler than that even. It just clearly fits the left's fixation on victims. Israel has power, Gaza does not. In the west jews hold disproportionate positions of power, muslims do not. They've been brought up on that oppressor / oppressed narrative and see every part of the world through it.

On the right it's like a reverse of that, they're anti-idpol as it's been used as a cover to be openly racist against white males for decades now. Jews also play the same identity politic games that blacks, muslims, etc. do. This is why they don't hate Israel as strongly (and dont' support palestine at all), they dislike them generally and in some cases if they've been radicalized (groypers) they hate them, but mostly they want them and their influence out of the country along with all the other minority groups manipulating the system for spoils.

I think it's simpler than that even. It just clearly fits the left's fixation on victims.

This is just a less nuanced (and less charitable) articulation of what I said. The Israeli defense of their conduct is, essentially "if the situation was reversed, they'd behave even worse." This is almost certainly true, but also immaterial because the situation isn't reversed and is extraordinarily unlikely to be (and if it is, it will be because Israel systematically alienated every potentially sympathetic party). Which is to say, Israel postures like it is responding to an existential threat, but it isn't. In the here-and-now, the Israeli boot is up the Palestinians' ass and it's pretty clear that a significant share of Israelis are down for ethnic cleansing.

The mere fact that there's a power asymmetry is not sufficient - historically, Palestinians have struggled to win western support, and this was in large part because they've historically made poor victims while Israel could tout being the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. However, the recent war has completely eclipsed prior phases of the conflict in terms of both overall casualties and the general lopsidedness of outcomes, badly eroding any sense of moral high ground. The personage of Benjamin Netanyahu hasn't helped in this regard either.

The basic reality is that Israel is fighting an uphill battle on the PR front, given the raw optics of the current conflict, and zoomers don't have the entrenched preferences of older generations.

On the right it's like a reverse of that, they're anti-idpol

The right is not anti-idpol, so I don't think anti-idpol explains right-wing views on Israel. White identitarians tend to have conflicted views because they tend to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic/anti-Arab. Old school conservatives tend to be uncritically pro-Israel both for some of the same reasons old school liberals do, as well as weirder reasons like millenarianism .

Which is to say, Israel postures like it is responding to an existential threat, but it isn't.

Hamas alone does not present an existential threat to Israel, agreed. But for most of Israel's history, they weren't just facing a threat from Palestinians, but from the entire Arab world; and even today, as little as two years ago they were facing a combined threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar and Iran. I think it's fair to say these four belligerents combined constitute an existential threat to Israel.

I think it's fair to say these four belligerents combined constitute an existential threat to Israel.

I think this is true, but only because Iran is on that list. Hamas and Hezbollah are occasionally deadly nuisances, but even that is substantially attributable to Iranian support. The actual existential threat to Israel is a nuclear-armed Iran, and that is not a problem remedied by bombing Gazan apartment buildings.

Yeah, that's fair.

There is no law of war which says you can't make war unless you're faced with an existential threat. Israel is not obliged to merely ignore rocket attacks (which in fact they were doing), let alone raids, simply because those attacks do not present an existential threat.

Proportionality is a principle in the conduct of war, as are injunctions against reprisals and collective punishment.

Israel is not obliged to merely ignore rocket attacks (which in fact they were doing), let alone raids, simply because those attacks do not present an existential threat.

I didn't suggest that they were. I am suggesting that Israel is pursuing what amount to reprisals against Palestinian civilians.

If Hamas was an existential threat to Israel, matters might be different, but Hamas isn't an existential threat and is exceedingly unlikely to become one. (It still wouldn't justify reprisals, but it would at least change the calculations on proportional use of force).

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Palestinians have struggled to win western support, and this was in large part because they've historically made poor victims

In the modern era the palestinians don't need to find ways to be good victims, when plenty of leftists are eager to totemize them and make excuses on their behalf. Egypt blocks the border with Rafah and its leftists who say 'its to keep the Palestinian dream alive'. Hamas shoots its own people and 'its to fight Israeli-armed looters'. And thats all without the pure conspiracism that the left favors like 'the Israelis actually killed their own people'. The worthiness of the Palestinians as victims stems purely from their ineptitude as successful insurgents - failure is met with even greater support. Its the same reason leftists now cheer for Iran, because the failure of Iran to strike against the hated Jew oops Zionist is further proof of the iniquity of the vile Zio. Hamas and the Mullahs are happy to keep the torture of their own people like uncovered women displayed only to internal stakeholders, and the left is busy whitewashing that to keep Hamas and Iran morally pure angels.

What of course is eternally funny to me is that literally every islamist regime in that hellpit immediately turned on their commie socialist allies the very second the state apparatus lost its grip, and every single walking stereotype of Road To Wigan Pier will be immediately up against the wall faster than they can settle on the name for their fully automated luxury space communism utopia. To be fair, that name generation alone could probably take several centuries before agreement is made.

The basic reality is that Israel is fighting an uphill battle on the PR front, given the raw optics of the current conflict, and zoomers don't have the entrenched preferences of older generations.

So perhaps it is then worthwhile for Israel to press the attack now, while they still have foreign support to enable such a thing- also because if Iran gets a nuclear weapon the places launching conventional weapons into Israel right now will be functionally invincible, and Israel doesn't stand a chance against Iran without Roman American support simply due to having 1/10th the population of Iran, having a small fraction of the manufacturing capacity, and being dependent on certain fragile Jew magic for continued survival (desalinization facilities are vulnerable to attack from the sea for obvious reasons).

Israel could tout being the only liberal democracy in the Middle East

And they still had Muh Holocaust in living memory. It's not in living memory any more.

I don't know that this works. LGBT folks in Egypt or Indonesia are powerless victims, their majority-muslim societies are their oppressors. You don't see the left fixated on them.

My extremely gay leftie friends whined about Fordow being hit and how Trump is uniquely evil for killing so many, then when I pointed out the Nigerian and Sudanese murders of Christians or their total silence when the Sri Lankan bombings or Maute Group took over an entire city to systematically slaughter Christians, they pivoted to ad hominem attacks on me for only caring about Muslim crimes. By observed outcome the left doesn't actually care about victims, they only care about castigating their preferred oppressor and piggybacking off real tragedies where possible. Conflating the LGBT cause with Palestine makes the LGBT relevant again, whereas without Palestine or Iran the LGBT has to confront how the T is the only cause actually left to fight for.

It's never the oppressed's fault if they also oppress. Same with blacks committing crime at high rates and what not in the west. It's the west and Israel's fault.

It is important when discussing Israel vs Palestine with someone to figure out if they're an underdog fetishist.

https://www.themotte.org/post/737/israelgaza-megathread-3/155650?context=8#context

Actually, not just Israel/Palestine. It matters for a lot of issues around crime and geopolitics.

What a funny though, this is so true.

They've been brought up on that oppressor / oppressed narrative and see every part of the world through it

This feels kind of reductive when this is one of the most clear cut dynamics of oppressor / oppressed in the world right now.

At this point almost two years in, how many times has the population of Gaza needed to walk to the north/South of the area so that Isreal can flatten another part of the half they just left?

They have 0 control over the amount of calories their population receives.

Definition of the word "oppressed" is "subject to harsh and authoritarian treatment." It's hard to think of examples of a more oppressed group right now, aside from gamers of course.

I don't think anyone really disputes that the Palestinians, collectively, are oppressed. Where we differ is who we blame for oppressing them (the modal leftist pins the blame solely on Israel, whereas I would say that the Hamas leaders, the broader Arab world and Iran bear some of the blame); what the fact of their oppression implies for the moral rightness of their behaviour (the modal leftist believes that, because Palestinians are oppressed, they cannot be held accountable for their actions in the same way an oppressor could; I disagree); and what the fact of their oppression implies for the pragmatic pursuit of their goals (the modal leftist believes that, because Hamas was morally justified in committing the attacks on October 7th or firing rockets at Israel more or less indiscriminately, that therefore implies that doing so was a sensible goal; I disagree, as I am unable to fathom a hypothetical turn of events by which gunning down revellers at a music festival brings Palestinian statehood an iota closer).

Oh I see, in that case yeah

This conflict is so funny in that it seems to turn people's brains off way harder than other ones (on both sides).

It's so nakedly partisan if someone isn't blaming every side for the 100+ years of tit for tat revenge.

I used to think there was a solution and I don't anymore. The Isreali's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.

I do assign Isreal a larger share of the responsibility to end it these days though, given they have so much more power. There's also something so amazing about saving them from the Holocaust only for them to immediately go start kicking someone smaller than them, you'd think of all the people they'd be marginally more sympathetic lol.

I've never found comparisons between how the Nazis treated the Jews and how the Israelis treat(ed) the Palestinians to be even remotely persuasive. The Holocaust was cold-hearted systemic murder on an industrial scale, whereas the Israel-Palestine conflict looks exactly like every other interminable conflict in the Middle East or North Africa for the last ~100 years. Even the much-ballyhooed apartheid legislation in Israel, in which Palestinians are subject to different legislation to Israelis, is also true of e.g. Syria.

The Holocaust was obviously worse. It just contrasts extremely poorly when part of the founding mythos of the country is "we need a save haven for our people, who have suffered greatly" and then you look and Gazans are dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases purely because the Isreali's won't let food in.

History doesn't repeat, but it's definitely rhyming.

Random not very related thought, but the exact same logic applies more broadly to the hardcore lefty's, who are also the more irrational pro-palestinians. They all claim they hate the structures of power that perpetuate racism or sexism , but they don't actually dislike the structure, they just want their people at the top of it. Makes it hard to take them seriously.

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Yeah, zoomers are brainrotted with tiktok slop and think the genocidal jihadis are oppressed. It's not a mystery, it's just a grim reminder we should have banned tiktok ages ago.

You’ve consistently dropped in with short, maximally-inflammatory comments casually dismissing anyone with whom you disagree. This is neither constructive nor suitable for a discussion forum.

One day ban. Please use the time to familiarize yourself with our rules.

the genocidal jihadis are oppressed

I think it's very possible for them to be both genocidal and oppressed. I also think being genocidal has made them oppressed, and being oppressed guarantees they stay genocidal.

To pre-empt "you're a bleeding heart lefty", if I were dictator of my country, I would absolutely ensure a Palestinian refugee diaspora did not form in my country. This does not go well for the hosts typically.

However, half the Gaza strip is under the age of ~20. They've grown up living lives of poverty in a ""country"" that you can walk end to end in about 8 hours, and it's not easy to leave. I'm sure they grow up hearing stories of friends/family/neighbors who've lost loved ones, been injured, or lost their homes to isreali strikes.

If you or I were born there, we'd hate Jews too. I have a very hard time holding teenagers accountable for the beliefs they were born into.

If I were designing an environment to incubate terrorists I don't think I could do much better than the Gaza strip, it's basically a terrorist factory.

I'm pretty black pilled on the whole situation. I think both sides are too deep and too stubborn to ever resolve it. I think they deserve each other.

However, half the Gaza strip is under the age of ~20.

One can't help but wonder at the natalist implications of this.

I mean, compare to South Korea. Both of these cultures grow up under the specter of the overwhelming firepower of an undying nuclear-armed foe, yet one of them is dissipating into despair and the other is bursting with life. And the less-overwhelmed one is the one that's despairing!

Gaza also bans abortion and IIRC limits birth control pretty heavily, in addition to promulgating pro-natal memes, even if they are "eventually outnumber the [redacted]."

I'm sure they grow up hearing stories of friends/family/neighbors who've lost loved ones, been injured, or lost their homes to isreali strikes. If you or I were born there, we'd hate Jews too. I have a very hard time holding teenagers accountable for the beliefs they were born into.

Proportionally more Germans and Japanese folks lost loved ones to Allied bombing and yet 20 years later both of them were singing god bless America.

Perhaps a Japanese teenager during Hiroshima would be justified in hating America. Perhaps he saw his siblings die a slow death of radiation poisoning. I wouldn't judge his hate as unnatural or misplaced, only as counterproductive to his (individual and national) well being.

Understanding that one's reaction to events is not intrinsically true and that one's immediate inclination may not be wise is one of those critical mental milestones.

Proportionally more Germans and Japanese folks lost loved ones to Allied bombing and yet 20 years later both of them were singing god bless America.

The Germans and Japanese weren't displaced, had their lands settled and permanently occupied. Well ok, Germany lost ethnic German land, but they still have a sizeable country. But Germany and Japan were also aggressive expansionist empires, while the Palestinians, from their own perspective, were just minding their own business when a bunch of Jews moved in. That all probably makes a big difference.

They didn't know that in 1944! There were proposals to carve Germany up into 4-5 States. Same with Japan, it wasn't clear upon surrender that the US would eventually allow it to regain its independence.

Moreover, the Arabs were aggressively expansionary for centuries. They didn't end up being an ethnic & religious majority in North Africa just by accident. Saying "from the perspective of a guy that came as part of an expansionist empire but whose specific family lived in the area for generations" doesn't do much work.

I agree. Also helped they were part of an actually productive civilization that had ethics and values which pushed them into prosperity

Also also they got shitloads of money to rebuild, which I think always softens attitudes somewhat.

Didn't Trump offer Gaza shitloads of money?

Trump, a famously reliable counter party

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I don't think you're a bleeding heart lefty. But I do think this sentimentality is actively worse for the long-term health of the region than my lack of it. So, yes, I'd suggest being less of a bleeding heart. The world is unfair. It sucks the Palestinians grew up in these conditions. It sucks the world broke them.

But they are broken. Israel can coexist in a way they can't.

I'm not sure if I'm sentimental, I just have a hard time feeling mad at them. I also have a preference for less human suffering in the world.

It's like having trashy neighbors who loudly fight and domestic each other. I get why they're both hurt, but I'm not going over there to facilitate couples' counseling. They can spend the rest of their lives making each other miserable if they want. I'd prefer they made up so I didn't have to hear it, but it's not that annoying.

Part of me wonders if everyone would have been better off if the Isreali's had just ripped the band aid off back in the day and just straight pushed them out/completed the ethnic cleansing. The displaced Palestinians would still be salty, but they'd be a few generations into moving on by now, and they'd probably get bombed way less.

Part of me wonders if everyone would have been better off if the Isreali's had just ripped the band aid off back in the day and just straight pushed them out/completed the ethnic cleansing. The displaced Palestinians would still be salty, but they'd be a few generations into moving on by now, and they'd probably get bombed way less.

I mean, obviously, if you don't finish the job, the remnants will continue to be a problem for you. But if the only way to ensure long-term peace for Israel was complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, maybe the whole project should never have been attempted in the first place (especially over such dumb sentimental reasons as "our mythology says this is our homeland" and then hoping that the people already living there would be understanding).

maybe the whole project should never have been attempted in the first place

Episode #1052 of "the British Empire setting up geopolitical nightmares for the world in 100 years"

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Part of me wonders if everyone would have been better off if the Isreali's had just ripped the band aid off back in the day and just straight pushed them out/completed the ethnic cleansing. The displaced Palestinians would still be salty, but they'd be a few generations into moving on by now, and they'd probably get bombed way less.

I will in fact explicitly state my belief that ethnic cleansing ~80 years ago was the most moral option, and would have led to an integrated Palestinian cultural remnant by now that's been broken up and assimilated into all the other regions -- including Israel itself. Instead, the world's accepted that Palestine is never going anywhere, but also accepted that Palestine will never stop trying to refight the conflicts it continually loses.

You break the country and the people decisively, and you relocate the survivors, and a few generations later you have a rough peace. Otherwise, you let every single generation re-radicalize and commit gradual violent suicide against Israel (and whatever Muslim neighbors offend them that day).

You break the country and the people decisively, and you relocate the survivors, and a few generations later you have a rough peace.

I'm not sure what aspect of horseshoe theory is at play here, but I never thought this would be the topic that we both agreed on

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The Israelis TRIED the Ethnic Cleansing, by offering Gaza and the West Bank back to the Egyptians and Jordan in exchange for peace! The genius of the Egyptians and Jordanians is that they REJECTED the inclusion of Gaza and West Bank into their territories and made peace anyways!

Israel could have at the tail end of its MANY wars with the Arabs just marched a division of troops through the capitals to prove decisively that their worldview was broken and that the Israelis were capable of fighting back without US support - the overwhelming bulk of Israeli equipment in 1967 was purchased French/Western European equipment, not US purchased/provided arms. The greater dynamics of cold war tensions is what caused the Arabs to cease hostilities on the recommendation of Soviet advisors, because otherwise the Arabs were continually believing that they were winning.

The Egyptians still celebrate the Yom Kippur War as a national holiday https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/172q5t3/who_really_won_the_yom_kippur_war_egypt_or_israel/ despite the evidence to the contrary and it just proves that without comprehensive defeat you can imagine you actually won even as your armies lay shattered.

Israels major achievement of peace is that the leaders of Arab nations all collectively like the money peace brings in to buy property in London and New York, and the indulgences of ostentatious consumption and degenerate whoremongering in the Gulf Arab states. The incentive for Arab leaders to wage war on Israel is much lower than the desire fermenting in their downtrodden populations, but that problem for once isn't Israels responsibility to manage or to have incited - the alliance with the Mullahs is all the fault of the Arabs themselves.

Again, Israel should just migrant fleet across the world for 4 years after sealing Jerusalem in a giant gelatinous cube. The region will fall apart entirely by itself without western intervention to keep peace, and the world will be better for it.

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it's just a grim reminder we should have banned tiktok ages ago.

As opposed to brainrotted Boomers who think women and minorities are oppressed.

They didn't need Facebook to come to that conclusion yet arrived at it anyway, so the problem rests with the people, not the technology.

As opposed to brainrotted Boomers who think women and minorities are oppressed.

I mean, they were back the last century. At best, they're just slow to update and relying on cached thoughts from when they could last think independently. In that sense, it's less like rot and more like calcification/ossification.

back the last century

If by 'last' you mean 'the 19th', sure, I'll grant that. At no point past 1920ish was this true for women (so no woman born/raised in the West knows what it's like to be uniquely oppressed- that it happened once upon a time is their origin myth, just like it is for the Indians); for minorities, at no point in Boomer living memory (post-childhood, so 13+: someone born in '45 would be post-Brown v. Board at that age) were they really oppressed.

It's something their parents and grandparents had reason to take seriously; what we're seeing now is the echoes and turbulence of a once-truth so widely held industry sprung up around it reaching its sell-by date. (This is also why, if LGB organizations did not embrace and pump up T, they'd have faded away like MADD did: their original grievances don't exist any more, hence the lie that they do must be defended ever harder.)

Goesaert v. Cleary: “Only when the owner of the bar was a sufficiently close relative to the woman bartender, it was argued, could it be guaranteed that such immorality would not be present.” 1948. Overturned in 1976.

Schulz v. Wheaton Glass: it turns out making identical job listings but paying the women’s jobs less actually counts as discrimination. 1970.

US v. Virginia et al.: no, spinning up a second school to allow male/female segregation is not, in fact, separate but equal. 1996.

I find it obvious that second-wave feminism was legitimately fighting oppression. The same is doubly true for racial minorities. There are plenty of reasons why the Civil Rights Act was significant, rather than a formality.

US v. Virginia et al.: no, spinning up a second school to allow male/female segregation is not, in fact, separate but equal. 1996.

And yet women-only colleges survive.

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Discrimination in education and employment was de-jure legal through at least the 60s and de-facto for even longer.

But anyway, this is a continuum, there was no single date in the 20th century when those grievances went away. It suffices to highlight that we agree that in 1960 it was generally so and that by 2010 it largely wasn't without having to bicker about the precise point. The echoes of that truth are indeed relevant, and the boomers formed much of their thinking that way.

Disagree. Historical evidence is strong that being a housewife in deracinated, suburban 1950s America was pretty damn miserable. Consider that it was their daughters in particular who became second-wave feminists - in open repudiation of their mothers’ lives. Why would they do that if it were something to look forward to?

Disagree. Historical evidence is strong that being a housewife in deracinated, suburban 1950s America was pretty damn miserable.

What's the evidence? Progressives used to like bringing up Valium and the like, but drug consumption among women has, if anything, only gone up since.

Consider that it was their daughters in particular who became second-wave feminists - in open repudiation of their mothers’ lives. Why would they do that if it were something to look forward to?

Because society requires active maintenance and not just mere inertia, and propaganda based around sowing resentment towards specific subgroups is quite effective.

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At no point past 1920ish was this true for women (so no woman born/raised in the West knows what it's like to be uniquely oppressed- that it happened once upon a time is their origin myth, just like it is for the Indians)

While I'm broadly sympathetic to the idea that women are less oppressed than is commonly claimed, I do take issue with your claim here. In the United States, The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974, and was the bill that allowed women to get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative. I would argue that lack of access to credit in one's own name is a form of oppression, even if it could be counterbalanced by paternalistic or progressive benefits.

It is also worth pointing out that families and social expectations can function as "tiny tyrannies", even if people are theoretically free according to the law. My mom grew up in a fairly patriarchal household, and when my aunt got into the Air Force Academy her dad (my grandpa) said "no, you're staying right here with the family" and my aunt meekly accepted his word as final. On the other hand, my mom got into MIT and when my grandpa told her she couldn't go, she basically said, "I wasn't asking for permission, I'm going to MIT." My mom was also the most stubborn of her sibllings, and I don't think it's a coincidence that she was the one that left the state they all grew up in and became an upper middle class engineer, while the rest stayed nearby like grandpa wanted and mostly didn't do as well (except for the one aunt who got into real estate and banking.)

Women are higher in the Big 5 trait of Agreeableness, and I think that means that even in legal regimes that are relatively favorable to women, they can still get "stuck" in a tiny tyranny through mere social pressure alone. The women who escape are either unusually low in Agreeableness for a woman (like my mom), or autistic/weird enough that they naturally drift away when given the chance (like Aella.)

Bitches in the Jo freeman sense. Makes sense that career women got a reputation for being difficult and shrill. Also competent.

In the United States, The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974, and was the bill that allowed women to get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative.

No, this was the bill that made it a Federal legal requirement that women could get credit in their own name without the signature of a husband or male relative. The idea that the opposite was universally the case before 1974 is a recent fabrication.

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As opposed to brainrotted Boomers who think women and minorities are oppressed.

Those people are also morons, yeah. When the boomers have died off, we'll be living in a crazy world.

They didn't need Facebook to come to that conclusion yet arrived at it anyway, so the problem rests with the people, not the technology.

It's both. A better people would perhaps not be susceptible to TikTok propaganda, but we don't have a better people.

Peculiar that despite the damage its been doing to young minds we only decided to ban it after it became a problem for Israel. Peculiar that despite all the anti-American and anti-white hate that flourished on college campuses we only decided to step in when it became anti-Israel.

Surely it makes no sense to blame TikTok for anti-white, anti-male, or anti-American attitudes on campuses? TikTok was first available in 2016, and I believe its popularity only really started to shoot up in 2018. Campus nonsense well predates that.

Yes, the Jews are unduly influential. The Muslims are also violent savages. These are not contradictory claims. The Palestinians have alienated every single one of their neighbors, ruined every chance at peace they ever have, and maintained the world's biggest victim complex while being the world's sorest losers. The average Palestinian is a regressive piece of shit who supports the cruelties of his people -- he's just mad he's losing.

And the Iranians? Olympic champions of terrorism.

They're feral dogs. Israel manipulates, but they're at least capable of peaceful coexistence. One wants to leech off a system, another would tear it to pieces.

The Palestinians have alienated every single one of their neighbors single one of their neighbors, ruined every chance at peace they ever have, and maintained the world's biggest victim complex while being the world's sorest losers. The average Palestinian is a regressive piece of shit who supports the cruelties of his people -- he's just mad he's losing.

Ok, now I’m convinced you’re an intentionally anti-Semitic troll. The belligerent Israeli act was straining credulity already but this is just a 4chan screed about Jews that you’ve Cntrl find+replaced with “Palestinian”. You’re even playing up the Goebbels stereotype about Jewish projection.

Ok at this point I’m convinced you’re an intentionally anti-Semitic troll.

I'm not an anti-Semite.

The belligerent Israeli act was straining credulity already but this is just a 4chan screed about Jews that you’ve Cntrl find+replaced with “Palestinian”.

I'm also not Israeli.

Muslims just suck, man. It's not any kind of conspiracy or act. They're a wretched people, and I've supported exterminating the lot of them since I was a teenager decades ago.

Israel manipulates, but they're at least capable of peaceful coexistence

While I agree that fundamentalist Muslims make probably the worst National neighbors, this is pretty generous to the Isreali's

Their history of perpetually expanding their settlements in the West Bank (at least they left Gaza) shows they're not particularly interested in totally peaceful coexistence.

Sorry, I meant they can coexist with America / the western world. A world better off for not having Palestinians in it, so I appreciate Israel's expansion -- though it should have happened decades ago, no one ever should have let a bitter, vengeful minority dig in roots. The net human suffering would be so much lower if they'd just totally conquered & displaced generations ago. Their greatest moral failure has been half-assing it.

Sorry, I meant they can coexist with America / the western world

Ahhhhh, in that case, yeah

Their greatest moral failure has been half-assing it.

Seriously, it's very similar to the state of native Americans (and Australians). That at least has an end. Assimilation will win eventually I think.

I'm not sure I really understand why so many zoomers are so rabidly pro-Palestine.

Because Israel is white and neo-colonialist. In their view. And that's pretty much the worst thing you can be.

Because Israel is white

Jews, Schrodinger's race

What's fun is you have factions on the left who deeply believe that they're white, and ones who take great offense to that.

There's also factions on the right who very much think they're white, or who think they're very much not.

And all for different reasons too, lots of fun

Well maybe people would make up their mind if the Jews themselves could, but there's so many examples of individuals trying to play both fellow white and oppressed minority at once that it's a meme.

The truth is that Semites are genetically closer to Caucasians than any other race but can still be meaningfully distinguished as a separate genetic cluster if you're willing to engage is sophisticated enough racism.

None of that matters to lefties of course, for whom whiteness is a cultural affair of domination and colonialism and Israel specifically is quite close to a central example of that category.

This is just idle speculation on my part, but I feel like I'd read before, on the subject of Iran, that one of the giant, deep gulfs within the Democratic party at the upper echelons is the issue of the relative power of blacks, and the relative power of Jews. Just as a matter of deeply important sub-coalitions floating around. I think I saw this discussed specifically in the context of Obama, and important parts of his elite posse, so to speak - a bunch of them deeply resented how much power and coddling Jewish power got within the Democratic party (according to them), and they wanted to see the Jewish part of the coalition taken down significantly.

The last 15 years has been an unrelenting window in to how those groups take other groups down a peg - #metoo puts men on the back foot, #blm puts whites on the back foot, non-stop Pride month puts unsupportive religious people on the back foot. It's always about raising the salience of some public issue, forcing attention on it, and framing the split in ways that foregrounds a specific group and disfavors them. I'm not saying this is entirely astroturfed, either - I think it's something like a savvy awareness of how mass politics actually works. Smart, well-connected activists lay the ground work for narratives, plant the seeds, agitate in the right places, and then if they've done their job well and have luck on their side, other people organically pick up the threads and the whole thing snowballs.

I'm not saying, exactly, that this is all there is to the Palestinian issue. But I am saying, at the very least, that it does pattern match to a preexisting split in highly placed circles that is highly useful to certain powerful people. That's my impression, anyway.

While I'm much less white-identitarian than most people on here, it's entirely possible that among the specific set of 'young blue tribers who never leave the ivory tower bubble of academia' the position really does boil down to 'white people have no right to exist'. As it applies to the USA this is basically a luxury belief- the serious antiwhite racists are mostly a subset of AADOS(+a few natives) who are begrudgingly tolerated by their coethnics. In Israel, on the other hand...

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