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Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.
Okay, I can hear you sighing already. But before you look away, let's talk about Clausewitz.
War is a continuation of politics by other means. In our ideological age, where everything is political, it may not seem profound: but it establishes a commonality between the military and civilian where analogies can be made. Like, 'what if we have no ability to fight a war, but continue it anyway?' Could we just... filibuster, our enemies, until they give us the political ends we desire?
This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.) In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever: it was never at par, even in 1948. Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire. Not to say that they lack the capacity to harm the Israelis, but they have no military capacity to enforce political goals on their enemy. Even now, their demands for a ceasefire are entirely one sided: they are simply outmatched in every conceivable military dimension.
There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention. It is the only card they have to play. But now that Israel has control of the food aid that goes into Gaza with the ousting of UNWRA, time is no longer on their side. Their enemy will never consent to a return to the former status quo, no matter how urgently the international community chastises them.
Not coming to terms and holding on for maximalist goals may seem like a cheat in insurgency warfare. But inevitably, reality and physical limits intrude onto the nationalist fantasy. It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people. This conflict - indefinitely sustained by Soviet leftist dregs of the anti-colonialist cause - will come to an end not through some master stroke of diplomacy, but a famine long in the making.
Hamas sought to use international sympathy as a weapon, relying on the services provided by American and European NGOs so that they could devote all the funds they neglected to invest in their civilians into their military. Now that military is destroyed, they have no leverage at all. The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
As Calgacus would say, "They make a desert and call it peace." Modern problems require Roman solutions. The fatal Palestinian mistake was that they always assumed Israel would come to the negotiating table. After fifty years of fruitless negotiation, the Israelis finally have had enough. There will be no more deals, no more bargains. Just the short, terminal drop to destruction.
Far from it. Missile tech and drone tech is more dispersed than ever. Israel can't even occupy an area smaller than a municipality in almost two years even with exceptional brutality. Israel is a small country stuck in the same quagmire as South Vietnam, French Algeria or Rhodesia. They are never going to be a functioning country and permanently stuck in a state of emergency.
Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like. There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years and having them quoting biblical genocides while massacring starving Christians is an excellent way to bring back the west to our historical view of them.
Millions of Afghans died in the 80s. Millions of Vietnamese died, France was brutal against the Algerians. Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win. The British counter insurgency in Northern Ireland was far more effective.
Doesn't this go immediately in reverse if there's any meaningful Muslim success. Like at the moment it's just very child-level oppressor/oppressed stuff from the majority of Western audiences, but if the boot was on the proverbial other foot it would be even uglier.
I keep talking about the Arab telegram channels that livestreamed slaughter of children to heart eyes and cheers, but it really just seems to be screaming into the void here. Azzam Pasha can declare his intent to slaughter jews, Hamas charter calls to slaughter jews, Quran 5:51 and Bukharin 2925 explicitly call for the distrust and killing of Jews, the list of attacks against Jews in mandatory Palestine is a long chronology of terrorism, Arab states expelled jews and confiscated property the moment Israel was created, but its the Jews who are the evil ones.
No one cares about the Yazidi or Armenians or Copts because they were successfully extinguished as viable populations by muslims. Justice is not the objective, fulfilling the demand for a Recurring Bad Guy like a saturday morning villain matters. Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi are dead so no one cares about islamic terrorism. Wait that example doesn't work Jalani is alive and Bedouin slaughter of Druze is ignored. Islamic fundamentalism exploits the meta of sympathy where grievance is automatically legitimate and self defense is oppression when successful recompense when not.
It really does seem like we’re seeing propaganda at work here.
Sam Harris (who lost his mind in 2016) calling Islam a death cult is the forever correct thing.
Until a time that religion is as neutered as present day American Christianity, they should hold no place at the civilization table.
Islam was kind of ok when appropriated by syncretists who appreciated the latitude offered by simply being Not The Dominant. Mutazilites, Sufiism, Ahmadism, Hui Islam.
This of course all went to shit when the Saudis leveraged their stewardship of Mecca and the Aramco money to turbocharge Wahabism. Maintaining local control by exploiting Islam is one thing, actively exporting it is another. Salafi dominance was only checked by matching ultraconservative evolutions in Hanafi and even Shafi subschools like Deobandism or Dawah. Its an arms race for Who Is The Best Muslim and governments that profited from islamism as a wedge issue now are struggling to tame the beast. Every country that tried to distract from internal failings by promoting religious revivalism always falls prey to even more extreme versions of the religion, and that becomes an impossible trap to escape. Failing regimes are propped up by external aid because the donors suffer more if the regime collapses, not because of the worthiness of the regime. Pakistan getting 40bn of World Bank loans is because its implosion will massively destabilize Western Europe through refugees and nuclear proliferation, not because a milirary dictatorship surviving off Islamist revivalism is a stable polity worth investing in.
This might simply be inevitable. Progressives have a seemingly totally secular ideology with no holy site but they also often coalesce around a certain set of specific totems and doctrines, even across borders.
The world is too connected now, we simply know too much about one another. Many localized forms of Islam - especially the offshoot religions generally considered heretical - will always be put under pressure by people attempting to make them orthodox because it's so much easier to notice and police now.
I come from a seemingly laid-back Muslim background but even we had the sense that there was such a thing as being more devout and strict and people who went that route were praised. The potential for being forcibly realigned with more conservative versions of Islam was always lurking.
You see similar things with claims that evangelicals essentially invented modern homophobia in African nations. Those countries have just as much access to the latest advances in liberal theory. It's their own judgment that the evangelicals better align with the faith that makes them more attractive, not their money or overwhelming control over the American cultural industry. The other side has that. But it can't change that they feel one case is just stronger
I think Michael C. Cook puts it well in Ancient Religions, Modern Politics (albeit using an extreme example):
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