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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28659 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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I don't really have a horse in this race, but I think it's worth noting how you can reproduce this entire comment with Israel and Palestine swapped and change... nothing.

For example:

Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Palestinian behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what the Muslim mindset is and that the Muslim view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Israeli strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like.

I wish it were normal to expect enemies not to commit war crimes. Someone ought to have told the Palestinians about that before 10/7.

War crimes are only crimes insofar as both sides can agree to - and actually do - abide by particular rules of warfare, either customary or explicit by treaty. Insofar as one party either verbally refuses to or actually breaches those rules, they lose the protection of the rules and are subject to the whim of whatever the opposing party wants to do them (and can actually do/get away with doing).

Even the Red Cross accepts the concept of reprisal as a means of forcing non-conforming belligerents to shape up and fly right.

Has it? Have the Palestinians acted in any way that is significantly different from any other group? They are not really doing anything to different from any other insurgency.

They have dug the world's largest tunnel network to shelter military personnel, deliberately intermingled it with the civilian population and vital civilian infrastructure, and denied those civilians the ability to shelter in it. They are trying to get their people killed.

So did the Viet Cong.

You really believe Hamas invented the concept of digging tunnels to neutralize airpower? Seriously?

For one, the extent to which Hamas operates from structures (hospitals, schools, etc) which are protected by international law is quite unusual.

I don't have a particularly strong view on the conflict but I do feel that the Israelis have a far greater chance of establishing and running a functional state than the other side.

far greater chance

Might this be a distinction without a difference.

If Hamas have a sufficiently low probability of success doubling, tripling or even 10 x, while a greater chance is still very, very low in absolute terms.

If Hamas laid down their arms and initiated an actual unconditional surrender Gaza would likely be a below-median but perfectly functional part of Israel within a decade. Vice-versa hahahaha.

That horse has bolted. Hard to go 'ok bros we didnt lose but lets try peace anyways' and survive if peace succeeded. The immediate response would be "we could have been ok but we followed you for NOTHING".

To rebuild, the existing foundation must be destroyed root and branch. Total Hamas defeat is in fact a clean starting point for a new Palestinian political conceptualization to emerge. Jordan would be best, but given what happened to the West Bank where the Palestinians chose irredentist claims such an outcome is distressingly remote.

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