This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How does Israel make Jews safe?
I've seen it suggested that having a Jewish state creates a refuge that isn't dependent on the goodwill of non-Jews. Yet the past several years have demonstrated that Israel isn't actually self sufficient and that it is, in fact, totally dependent on trade with Europe and aid from America for it's continued existence. Israeli Jews would hardly be any safer than American Jews in a scenario where their primary patron went anti-semitic.
Yet even in a world where America does unconditionally support Israel I can't help but think of anyone who takes Aliyah as a certified moron. Modern Israel is not a safe place for Jews, it's a place where thousands of Jews can be killed or maimed in a day and hundreds kidnapped. If you are kidnapped, the "Jewish State" will not pull all the stops to save your life but will instead attempt to murder you to prevent you from being used as a bargaining chip. If you survive that then your best hope is that public pressure will eventually force Israel to free some mass killing gigaterrorists in exchange for your life, since Israel has demonstrated that it is incapable of rescuing hostages by force after more than 2 years of intense combat against the weakest militia on it's border.
All this for the low, low price of North Korean taxes, mandatory conscription, reserve service, and getting arrested if you choose to vacation anywhere outside of the US
Even for non-Israeli Jews who don't care about Israel either way, the brutal yet failed campaign to destroy Hamas is a giant anti-semitism producing machine. If the ghost of Hitler possessed Netanyahu with the goal of empowering a new generation of anti-semites then he could hardly have done better. Before 10/7, the slightest hint of anti-semitism was instantly denounced. Today, when the giga-normie Nelk Boys interview Bibi the next day they're forced to go on an apology tour with all the big name internet anti-semites like Nick Fuentes and Sneako. The shift in the public perception of Israelis and Jews is so downright seismic and probably couldn't be replicated in a world without a "Jewish state" soaking up bad press.
Do you think we live in such a world? I am American and can assure you we do not. We are the primary constraint on Israel's conduct during this war. Without American restraint there already would be no one alive in the Gaza strip and the annexation of all the land towards the Jordan would have begun. And it would have been done with fewer Israeli casualties than the current war, and it would probably have been over 3 decades ago.
Yes indeed, as a result of "humanitarian" causes the US and Europe impose on Israel.
The post 10-7 war can hardly be described as intense combat. Kid gloves at best.
Lack of punctuation aside, this is just incorrect. All that antisemitism already existed. I knew about it on 10-6, we saw it on 10-7 before they launched a single counter-attack.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, that's the bet all western jews are making. They think Israel is going to fall someday, and their political opinions are often a sublimation of that basic choice. Some take it one way, some take it the other, but it's just pre-survivor's guilt.
This is how the jewish people have survived thousands of years without a country.
While I am sure that there are some Jews who carefully select their country of residence based on minimizing the chances of being genocided, I am positive that for many, other factors (employments, economics, existing relationships) play a more crucial role.
My subjective mental model of the median US Jew is not "these fools in Israel will get themselves murdered again" but "having a state which is guaranteed to accept Jewish immigrants in a world where countries sometimes expel their Jewish citizens is a nice fallback solution, and we should support Israel for that reason even if we do not have a compelling reason to move there."
I don't know any Jews well but those that I'm acquainted with are very concerned about escaping the genocide that is just around the corner despite all evidence. Maybe Jewish history has naturally selected for having a backup plan.
More options
Context Copy link
I know a Jewish family that has carefully acquired and maintained multiple passports across generations rather openly based on the lived experience of their parents (and grandparents, and great grandparents) during WWII. The cynics would say "rootless cosmopolitans" here (and maybe there is an element of that), but having heard their Holocaust stories second-hand, I see why they care so much.
WW2 affected more people than just jews.
This brings up feelings similar to when I see news stories from Ukraine of all their African migrants fleeing the country. A bunch of brown fighting age men who suddenly aren't Ukrainian like the others. All rhetoric of unity and shared humanity thrown out the window for a train ticket out of there. So they can, presumably, do the same song and diversity dance someplace else.
Are you suggesting German Jews should have proven their loyalty by fighting for the Reich? That wasn't really on the table for them.
They weren't migrants, they were German citizens, until they weren't, and they weren't given the option of proving how German they were.
No. How did you reach that? The point where jews could make inroads with Germans had long passed them by.
I'm suggesting that Russians, Lithuanians, Poles, Latvians and Ukrainians for example, don't carry 12 different passports in case of another war, despite being victims of WW2.
There are no "inroads" they could have made with people who hate Jews for being Jews. You are implying there was a rational reason for Germans to hate them and want them removed or exterminated.
That's because they have a country that isn't going to suddenly decide they don't belong there.
A convincing case has yet to be made that Jews are simultaneously unreasonably paranoid, disloyal, and also do not deserve to be considered fellow citizens and got what was coming to them.
Except, you know, that millions of eastern Europeans literally did find themselves in that situation at various times between the end of WWI and 2022.
I get what you're trying to say but altered borders so that Russians find themselves outside Russia, or Poles outside Poland, has been a pretty constant problem.
More options
Context Copy link
You are implying the people in question were simply deranged and hated jews for being jews. Which is a sort of backhanded otherization rhetoric that would not fly in any other context. Most principally for being an obvious lie. But also for just being silly. Denying others a theory of mind to make your case just means you don't have a case.
Historically, this is just not true. And more pertinent to the topic, sometimes it's not their own nation that's doing the deciding. Acting like the predicament many jews found themselves in during WW2 is any worse than that of many civilians in the aforementioned nations is invalid.
You can't both be a citizen and also exempt from service to the nation if the concept of a national is supposed to hold any relevance. This rings especially loud after decades of diversity propaganda where everyone is touted as an equal national. If your alleged co-nationals are hoarding passports they certainly do have a different view on the nation and their membership. If you want to verbalize recognition for that fact using hyperbolic thought ending rhetoric... fine. But you are certainly not looking for rational discourse when doing so.
More options
Context Copy link
For one, citation needed. Eastern Europe might be behind the current trend, but the current trend definitely is that Europeans have no particular claim to Europe and deserve less rights than immigrants.
For another, this reminds me of the claim that gay men are so prone to promiscuity because they've been denied marriage, and that giving it to them will moderate their behavior. Hasn't worked out for gay men, and the results for Jewish people are kinda mixed. I don't think Israel as a country or Israelis as a group, on average, can reasonably be described as "not paranoid".
NGOs like ADL are also not helping the perception about Jewish people living in other parts of the world. Admittedly this skews results quite a bit, since normal Jewish people aren't going to open an NGO devoted to showing how normal they are, and how they just want to get in with their life. Either way I don't see it as straightforward as you're describing it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Israel actually makes Jews less safe!" as a statement by itself is almost always concern trolling, and the rest of your comment basically confirms that's what you're doing. But for what it's worth, here's why this is straightforwardly incorrect:
1/ There were hundreds of thousands of Jews living in mandatory Palestine prior to Israel's war of independence that the Arabs tried to slaughter as soon as the Brits moved out. Establishing the state of Israel was the process of not allowing this to happen. On a pure lives saved vs lost basis, this by itself justifies the existence of Israel even considering all Jews killed worldwide since then.
2/ Israel makes Jews unpopular, but Jews have always been unpopular, so once again this is concern trolling. The idea that Jews might have reacted to the holocaust by thinking "maybe we shouldn't establish a sovereign state, because then people will really not like us" is hard to entertain with a straight face.
The idea that the only choices were "no sovereign Jewish state" and "sovereign Jewish state that is approximately akin to the present-day institution", which seems to be the premise of your second point's interpretation, is a false dichotomy.
By 1945, about any land suitable for human settlement had a local population, including Madagascar. British Palestine still had a rather low population density (1922: 30/km^2, contrast with Germany 1925 @ 133/km^2). Seasteading just was not an option.
The area around Jerusalem was an obvious Schelling point. Picking another place would have meant splitting the project of a Jewish state into two, because some were likely determined to settle in their ancestral homelands or die trying.
The other alternative would have been North America, but I do not think that a truly sovereign state would have been in the cards there. Even if they had convinced the USG to sell them land, they would still have depended on having good relations with them because the US could have invaded them at leisure at any time.
I think the actual best option, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been to carve out a New Israel US state somewhere around Nevada (1920 population density: 0.27/km^2) or New Mexico. I think the only point where a Jewish state would really require sovereignty by design would be to allow Jewish immigrants from all over the world in, which in the US would be a federal matter. Something along the lines of "Jewish migration is unrestricted, but the migrants will not become full US citizens and are restricted to their state (with birthright citizenship still in effect)", would alleviate most of the concerns the rest of the US might have with allowing immigrants in while also being sufficient to allow refugees shelter.
In short, some similar deal to what the Mormons have in the form of Utah.
Sure, New Israel would have had to keep on the good side of the US for survival. But this is not very different from present day Israel. Only that it is much more popular for the US to leave a desert state like New Israel or Utah to its own devices and rather unpopular to send Israel tons of military aid.
I have argued before that the morally obvious solution after WWII would have been to create the state on the territory of the Axis powers. The Gdansk/NE German corner would have been the obvious choice given how much of a Jewish homeland the South Baltic already had been, and the German population was already getting purged from there either way, but if Soviet buy-in could not be obtained, then Holstein (putting them on the bloc border as a tripwire) or even Swabia (putting them next to neutral Switzerland) would also have been a reasonable option.
(I know @Southkraut hates this idea for obvious reasons, but there is a causal path from Israel in its current borders to US Middle East policy to refugees being generated and from insufficient direct German atonement after WWII to German self-loathing to refugees being accepted. Would giving some clay to the Jews back then really have been worse than slowly giving all the clay to the Arabs now?)
Besides, even for broadly the current location, there would have been better solutions (proper ethnic cleansing followed by the establishment of a firm border, not the current slowly expanding blob with partially incorporated territories).
(Also @ZanarkandAbesFan)
Honestly, if we had just donated Berlin or, fuck it, all of Germany north-east of and including Berlin to the Jews and considered ourselves quit of any debt after that, sure, fine, that'd have been a good enough deal in retrospect. Better than the near-century of guilt-mongering we had instead. But I doubt it. The propaganda game has taken on a life of its own even as far back as WW1, and Germany was going to be the villain for some time yet no matter what. With the Soviet propaganda and infiltration machine doing its thing during the cold war on top of the earlier propaganda, the WW2 propaganda, the holocaust narrative and the profound jewish self-interest in maintaining Germany as obliged to pay infinite reparations forever, there was no way in hell Germans could have gotten off with paying no matter how high a one-time price. Too many parties did too much to ensure that we would not be left off the hook. And, yeah, okay, I can kinda see their reasons for it too.
But in the end I stand by this: Giving away German clay to no matter who wasn't worth it, because Land - they're not making it anymore. And once you sell, you're never getting it back. And Germany wasn't going to be buying its way out of German Guilt in any event.
Even if the guilt tripping had happened either way, I think it is plausible that it would not have translated into so many Middle Eastern refugees - both because American entanglement in the region would have been lower, and because admitting them is now also seen as part of our duty towards Israel (I have seen multiple instances of "Israel should expel the Palestinians and we should take them all in" in the deep-green comment sections of German papers at this point).
Also, under some versions of the idea, not that much clay would even have to be taken from Germany - Poland was already shifted far more west than it had to be, at the expense of Germany. It's counterintuitive from a modern perspective just how Jewish the Bloodlands used to be - percentages in the typical larger city ranged from 10 to 40.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Or Sonora, per the Cooper Plan?
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks for getting me to ask ChatGPT, "how many Jews could survive on South Georgia Island?" which definitely didn't put me on a list somewhere. (The answer is 5-10 thousand btw)
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like this is missing some obvious "thirteenth tribe" joke, maybe in reference to the great Mormon work of literature Battlestar Galactica.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not really, unless you want to broaden the scope of the debate to include possibilities that I doubt OP had in mind like the Jews having a sovereign state in Madagascar (which I do think would have been preferable but has not been a viable choice for about a century).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Antisemitism was always extremely high in the Muslim world (moreso since 1947) and was rising in the West long before October 7.
Charlottesville with the ‘Jews Will Not Replace Us’ chant was in 2017. Online antisemitism exploded after 2015/6, although it was growing on /pol/ and in conspiracist parts of YouTube many years before then. Polling suggested rising antisemitism too.
I think the response to the war in Gaza accelerated things, but it was very clear things were heading in this direction long before then. A combination of a new reactionary right and mass immigration from the third world (the latter accelerating the former) meant a renewed antisemitism was long inevitable. Maybe if October 7th had never happened (or had been thwarted in advance) things might be 3-5 years behind.
The chant is "you will not replace us"; you can hear it very clearly on video. "Jews will not replace us" was made up by the media.
Who were they claiming wanted to replace them?
More options
Context Copy link
This sounds like "Jews will not replace us".
The two are, notably, similar sounding. Like all of the vowels are the same, 80% of the consonants are identical, and the initial consonants are both palatal.
Yeah, I listened several times, but to me there's an unmistakable "sss" sound at the end of the first word.
I mean to make things even more complicated, youz/youse is recognizable as a slang term for 'yall' even if it isn't totally normal.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there were more than one group of people saying more than one phrase. It was called the "Unite the Right" rally, there had to be different groups there.
What I think happened, just personally, is that someone started a "You Will Not Replace Us!" chant, someone heard the 'Jews' version and started chanting their version. Or vice versa, although I don't think even at that point someone would be ballsy enough to start with the Judenhass-version. Once they thought they heard someone else say it, sure, but not out of the gate.
Because those guys in the first video were definitely saying 'You', and the second post was, I think pretty clearly, 'Jews'.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but I don't see a real or workable idea that results in the dissolution of Israel for those reasons.
A significant portion of Israel's population, along with its ruling class, seem to me to fully embrace tribalism to an extent that the Western mind can barely comprehend anymore, let alone embrace. What's fair or beneficial in the grand scheme of things is secondary to their survival. Israel clearly demonstrates this over and over, and so many Westerners (having had their tribalistic instincts redirected to focus on things like social, gender, or racial power dynamics and "fairness") are just completely baffled by it.
From what I can see, it's not about them being the most safe place, or the most fair, or making the rest of the world as prosperous as it can be. It's about Israelis' survival instincts being far more easily triggered than most Westerners can begin to imagine, and thus anything that can even be perceived as being a threat to that survival is dealt with, harshly.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree with it. Israel has clearly engaged in disgusting tactics, acts of violence, manipulation, etc. I guess what I'm saying, or rather asking is "What is your realistic alternative?"
More options
Context Copy link
The State of Israel makes it safe for Jews to live in the Land of Israel. That is the whole point. Living as a Jew in Jerusalem is a higher level of Jewishness than living as a Jew in Brooklyn. It just is. Yahweh did not promise Abraham and his descendants that they would live in New York. You cannot analyze the Israeli conflict from a purely secular lens. Both sides are fighting for the same magic dirt.
Strangely, it looks to me like very few early Zionists seemingly actually justified Zionism in Palestine in terms of Yahwe and high level of Jewishness etc. These were mainly secular socialist/liberal/masonic people. Yet the emotional pull of the religious land seems to have had overridden any cerebral secularism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's true for most countries. But as long as you have friends somewhere and don't become a pariah state, you'll be able to continue existing.
Even "pariah states" have friends somewhere; e.g. North Korea and the PRC.
North Korea is backed by two giant nuclear superpowers directly bordering it. Its main adversary is literally at the other end of the globe. Israel is in quite a different situation
Israel has(unofficially) quite good relations with Jordan and Egypt, and its main adversary is Iran.
Israel has good relations with the current dictators of Jordan and Egypt, both held in place by enormous American aid and effort so that they would keep having good relations with Israel. It always has to face the possibility that in an Arab-spring like event or a US withdrawal from Middle East, it will be once again bordered by very hostile governments.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unless I've been reading maps really wrong up to this point, North Koreas main adversary is immediately to its south and connected by a land border.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is Israel anymore dependent on trade than other developed nations? My understanding is that its economy is quite diverse and ranks very high in innovation. As for US aid, it's not insignificant, but Israel would still be wealthy – it's the 16th largest economy by GDP per capita – without any aid at all. It seems like a stretch to say that Israel is "totally dependent" on the US to survive. Certainly this isn't the case for its economic survival.
The more relevant question is how Israel would fare in a region-wide war against it if the US suspended all military support. I don't know enough to say.
I'm very skeptical that online anti-Semitism has or will translate into real-world (right-wing) anti-Semitism in the US. X has created the impression that there are millions of Nazis actively living among us, but the vast majority of the public are and will remain normies. However, the emergence of a legitimate anti-Israel bloc in the Democratic Party is a real possibility.
Of course it could be replicated; anti-Semitism was far more visceral and violent before Israel existed. But the justifications for hating Jews in the past – they control the banking industry, they're culturally incompatible, they're communists – are no longer salient in the West, or really most places in the world. For example, Europe is far more "degenerate" now than it was when it had way more Jews.
Look, I live among the offline hardline right wing in the US. Trust me when I say Israel and Jews in general have seen a giant decrease in popularity over the past year and a half or so. It's one of those huge increase over a trivial base things but it's real.
I wouldn't say it's over Gaza- all of these people think Mohammedans deserve it- the media person who thinks Russians are inferior savages, Israel is proving that 'judeo-christian' was a lie, and the nineteenth amendment was a mistake is more upset over Israel manipulating us to not pay its own bills. But right wing antisemitism went from a twitterati thing to a real thing during the time period.
I'm not totally following. I get the anti-Israel sentiment, but what exactly are they angry at American Jews for? Because this
is just as readily a left-wing complaint.
I'm saying these people who hate Russia on barely-concealed-racial grounds, think Mohammedans can't not deserve something(and have trouble feeling sorry even for the children), are upset about Jewish manipulation to spend money on Israel(which after all is a wealthy country that could just pay for its weapons) are often enough the same people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wall Street Journal literally 2 days ago:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/washington-struggles-to-rein-in-an-emboldened-israel-14fa3a74
A senior administration official said the White House coordinates closely with Israel and has considerable influence over Netanyahu because the prime minister knows that “the United States literally is the sole reason the state of Israel exists.”
The idea that the US assistance is not crucial because Israel is a high income country on paper is either extremely motivated reasoning or just an indication of knowing pretty much nothing about the situation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know what world you were living in before 10/7, but it seems to be a very different one from the world I was living in.
More options
Context Copy link
I've seen countless crypto-Hamas supporters citing the existence of something called the Hannibal Directive as if they're masterfully laying down a trump card; in some cases, explicitly claiming that Hamas killed literally zero civilians on October 7th, and that 100% of the Israeli civilians massacred on that day were in fact killed by the IDF. These people seem to be engaged in a kind of curious doublethink: on the one hand, they want to express their support for Hamas and the broader Palestinian cause - but on the other hand, on some level they're aware that this means tacitly endorsing some rather monstrous and brutal tactics. The "solution" they've hit on is to assert that Hamas is entitled to fight back against oppression and colonialism, up to and including murdering unarmed Israeli civilians - but in point of fact, 100% of the unarmed Israeli civilians in question were actually murdered by the IDF themselves! How convenient - for a moment there I was worried I might have to confront legitimate moral ambiguity, acknowledge that this conflict isn't as black-and-white as I would like to pretend, or do something facially grotesque like actively endorsing the slaughter of music festival attendees. What a relief that I can instead fall back into the warm, comforting embrace of that isn't happening, and it's good that it is. (See also "Denial by a thousand cuts".)
But for all that such people are keen to cite the existence of the Hannibal Directive, they are generally strangely reluctant to cite specific cases in which they believe it was actually used by the IDF. The intention seems to be to conjure up a free-floating miasma in which all claims of Israeli suffering are responded to with reflexive suspicion, a permanent asterisk over any and all Israeli casualties in this conflict, while being careful to avoid specific (and hence falsifiable) assertions that this specific Israeli was in fact killed by the IDF. "Yes, yes, Israeli civilians being murdered is bad - but hey, did you know there's this thing called the Hannibal Directive? Sure is interesting, huh? Now, I'm not saying the IDF intentionally murdered their own people and then Mossad created some AI-generated footage to frame Hamas for the massacre as a casus belli - but I'm not not saying that. At the end of the day, I'm Just Asking Questions."
You seem to be claiming that Hannibal directive (or more broadly an IDF strategy of killing hostages if necessary to stop hostage taking situations) isn’t real but then instead of explaining yourself you just prose about some crypto Hamas supporters.
When I talked to Israelis about this topic pretty much all seemed to take the existence of such a strategy as given and necessary because Middle East. Do you have any evidence that this is a made up conspiracy?
I'm not saying the Hannibal directive isn't real. I'm saying I find it very suspicious that the primary context in which it's brought up is to reflexively dismiss any and all claims that certain groups have mistreated the Israelis. I'm sure if you look at the ratio of "Israeli civilians killed by groups which are hostile to Israel" vs. "Israeli civilians who were intentionally killed by the IDF as part of the Hannibal directive", it would be extraordinarily lopsided - maybe 9:1 or higher. But critics of Israel seem to have decided that, because the Hannibal directive exists and has ever been employed, therefore they can dismiss all claims that Hamas or whoever murdered Israeli civilians by saying "eh, they probably did it to themselves". But of course, they're aware that this looks really bad, unserious and conspiratorial (perhaps even bearing a family resemblance to that great woke sin, "victim-blaming"), so rather than explicitly asserting "I believe that Israel is lying when they claim that Hamas killed these Israeli civilians, and they were in fact deliberately killed by the IDF", they'll just wave their hands and say "Hannibal directive, look it up", hoping the reader will join the dots themselves.
It's a cowardly, dishonest style of argumentation. If you believe in conspiracy theories, at least have the balls to be upfront about it.
That’s a lot of words for saying “I don’t like the people who mention bad thing so I will make up an imaginary argument in my head and win it”. Congratulations I guess.
The OP uses the Hannibal directive as an example of how Jews are very unsafe in modern Israel in a way they aren’t in pretty much any other modern country. This is trivially true no matter how much you foam about the true intentions of the people who mention this uncomfortable fact.
Even saying "very unsafe" is an example of exactly the kind of thing I'm complaining about. In an actuarial table of how Israelis met their ends since the founding of the state, would "being intentionally killed by the IDF to prevent them from being taken hostage by groups hostile to Israel" even crack the top hundred most common causes of death? The top five hundred? The top thousand? No, obviously not. And yet critics of Israel have this obsessive fixation on the Hannibal directive as evidence of how uniquely barbarous the nation is - when in reality, a counterfactual world in which the Hannibal directive didn't exist would only mean a tiny handful of Israelis would still be alive.
Let me put this in terms that you might find more agreeable: being shot dead by a police officer is a live possibility for black Americans in a way it isn't for black Britons, or indeed black citizens of just about any European country. But if you were investigating the causes of the reduced life expectancy among black Americans relative to other ethnic groups, "risk of being shot dead by police officers" shouldn't even enter into the equation. It's evidence of a mindset warped by political partisanship.
This is nonsense in the same way that people argue terrorism kills less westerners than sharks or lightning strikes and therefore caring about terrorism exposes some bias or ignorance. With your same logic, one can show that traffic accidents or obesity is much more dangerous to average Israeli than any hostile action as well. What are you arguing about then? Let’s get cutting the IDF budget for healthy eating campaigns.
But of course this is all atrocious nonsense. Just like how you should of course care many orders of magnitude more about a sentient adversary trying to kill you compared to random accidents, your own state security forces murdering you knowingly to avoid an awkward situation for the politicians is something again many orders of magnitude worse and more troublesome.
Sure, it's more troublesome. But as I've gone to great lengths to argue and contrary to your and the OP's framing, Israelis are not "very unsafe" because of the existence of the Hannibal directive. Ostensibly, this thread isn't about how "troublesome" the Israeli government is, but how safe Israelis are relative to peer nations.
Is the Hannibal directive a troublesome policy for which the Israeli government ought to face criticism? Of course, I've never suggested otherwise. Should it factor into any honest, disinterested discussion of how safe Israelis are relative to peer nations? No, obviously not. Surely no one would dispute that a random Israeli civilian is orders of magnitude less likely to die violently than a randomly selected civilian of any other Middle Eastern country - and none of those countries, to my knowledge, have any official policy analogous to the Hannibal directive. I'd even go so far to say that, given the rate of civil war, ethnic cleansing and political repression, a randomly selected civilian in any other Middle Eastern country is vastly more likely to die at the hands of that country's security forces than a randomly selected Israeli civilian is.
Israel is not supposed to be “a Middle Eastern country”. It’s supposed to be a European colony situated by historical coincidence in Middle East, offering safety to a minority religious group of Europeans who deemed themselves too vulnerable in Europe. If the best you can say in favour of this country that it offers its citizens better survival rates than the civil war Iraq or Syria, then it’s quite a failed project. This is of course not a fringe remark, there is a reason why vastly more Ashkenazim live in the US than in Israel and Israel is turning into a madhouse of the most lunatic religious Ashkenazim and low human capital Mizrahi Jews.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Israel is a first world nation trying to survive in the third world. There have been a smattering of experiments in this regard, South Africa, Rhodesia, maybe others I'm not aware of. To maintain first world standards of civilization, they more or less all had to resort to the same methods of keeping the savages out, and disenfranchising as many of those that made it "in" as they could. Also violence. Lots and lots of violence. Because violence truly is the universal language, no matter what anyone tells you.
It's a shame South Africa and Rhodesia didn't have a Jeffrey Epstein to take whatever measures were necessary to make sure they maintained the support of their essential trade partners and patrons in the face of global disgust at how the third world behaves, and the measure that are required to survive in the face of it. I suppose Jews don't have higher measured IQ's for nothing.
I am of the opinion that as far as securing the US support for Israel, Epstein is not even in the top ten, and possibly not in the top 100.
Most politicians have a thing were they accept campaign donations from special interest groups in exchange of political consideration. Some US Jews are very rich. At the risk of sounding like an antisemitic conspiracy nut, I think political donations are the main way that the US position towards Israel is influenced. (For the record, there is also Christian Zionism to consider, as well as the fact that Israel sometimes just is a good ally to the US.)
Nor is it only Jews who can lobby. United Fruits certainly influenced US policy, for example.
By contrast, blackmailing politicians with videos of them fucking underage girls is much riskier. If such an operation was traced back to Mossad, it would create an existential threat for Israel. And even then, a politician bound to your will through blackmail will likely resent you and try to undermine your cause, while a politician who sees you as a big donor will proactively try to keep you happy.
When Epstein was active, few people cared really about Palestinians. "No political donation could convince me to send bombs to Israel, but faced with the threat of the blackmail material being revealed, I am willing to kill a few Palestinian kids" was very much not the stance.
And even if Mossad had wanted to blackmail senators, having a single "Pedophile (sic!) Island" seems a strange way to go about it. Once you reveal the first bit of footage and the first senator 'fesses up, the cat is out of the bag and Epstein is implicated. What you would want to do instead is to target the politicians independently, so you can reveal any slice of evidence without compromising your whole operation.
Mohammedan nations have spent and spend far more on lobbying than Israel. This is of necessity a crude measurement, but it's also necessarily as close to objective as you're going to get.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Israel treats its non-Jewish citizens and residents far better than South Africa treated its black citizens.
But they exercise a great deal of authority over Gaza and the West Bank, and treat those people far worse. Israel exercises all the power over Palestinians that a national government would, but denies them any representation in that government.
Just off the top of my head, they perform law enforcement, control trade and the flow of goods (including a naval blockade of the Gaza strip), control the movement of people, collect taxes... All the traditional responsibilities of a state.
Uh, how do you think the national party treated Bophuthatswana?
More options
Context Copy link
Israel's relationship to the West Bank is that of a military occupier. Gaza is largely occupied now, but from 2005 until 10/7 was not occupied. A blockade is not occupation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yet it's happened hundreds of times for thousands of years across different civilizations, cultures, eras of technological progress. These are the fruits of the Jewish state and Jewish civilization, and nobody can say it's unfair to identify Israel as such.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link