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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27425 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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But how is starving babies supposed to deal with Hamas?

Starving babies is incidental to the overall strategy. There is no way to starve Hamas without starving babies (that we have found) because Hamas rules the territory, thus Hamas always eats first, and second, and third, then maybe a few babies get some morsels.

With something this complicated it is incumbent on critics to offer at least the skeleton of an alternative proposal so that it can be critiqued. Just saying something is bad is woefully inadequate. Do you think Israel hasn't had a meeting where someone brought up the point that starving children is not good optics (at the very least, if not also brought up the morality of it)? Of course not. They've had hundreds of such meetings. Notably the people who were giving aid to Gaza before didn't really even try to ask the question of "how do we get food to civilians without paying and feeding Hamas?" They just were like "here Hamas here is a buffet and some rocket assembly materials."

Ethics aside, it makes sense as part of a carrot-and-stick approach to making Hamas go away, although it would be a lot more workable if there was an escape hatch available for people to leave Gaza and move anywhere else in the region. Theoretically, a bad enough famine would depopulate the entirety of Gaza and eliminate Hamas that way, but this would be very bad for Israel's international standing compared to a scenario where Gaza is depopulated in a less deadly way.

I agree that simply killing every Palestinian would entail eliminating Hamas, but I am not convinced that killing, say, 10% of Palestinians will do that. I am especially doubtful that starving Palestinian babies will bring an army to its knees, on account of babies not being part of the army.

Are you seriously suggesting that Israel is purposely targeting babies to starve? I thought it was a figure of speech to dramatize the ones suffering the most from general failure to distribute food in enough quantities.

In the case of it being a figure of speech, starvation has long been a legitimate tool to bring armies to their knees. The problem there is that Hamas is not an army and likely has a large stockpile that will outlast the entire population of Gaza, unless Israel can figure out how to feed the civilian populace and not feed Hamas, somehow. Since facts are lacking and there is an information war happening, I don't know if that's what they're trying to do. I usually doubt it when people are trying to convince me that Israel is actually just full of moral monsters who like being evil. That's not even true when it comes to amoral more-evil-than-good regimes like most colonial powers in the early 20th century or modern day China. I don't know that the populace is united enough to implement genocidal tactics, either.

But that's not really what interests me. If you think starvation is a bad tactic for dealing with Hamas, that's totally fine, and I think I probably agree with you. I just wonder what tactics would be good for dealing with Hamas. What should Israel do?

Are you seriously suggesting that Israel is purposely targeting babies to starve?

I think the best case scenario here is that Israel is criminally negligent when it comes to avoiding starving babies. Certainly there are starving babies.

starvation has long been a legitimate tool to bring armies to their knees.

Agreed, but again, how is starving babies going to bring an army to its knees?

But that's not really what interests me. If you think starvation is a bad tactic for dealing with Hamas, that's totally fine, and I think I probably agree with you. I just wonder what tactics would be good for dealing with Hamas. What should Israel do?

There's only three options I see here. The first is to kill the Palestinians, which would be a horror that Israel would not recover from. The second is to move them, which is impossible because nobody is foolish enough to take millions of Palestinians.

The third:

When Kahane wasn’t condemning normie Zionists for having contempt for the Arabs, he liked to call them dogs. Not the most original metaphor, but vivid enough, so let’s run with it. Imagine a dog, not a Pitbull (that’s racist), but a Belgian Shepherd or similar. We observe one person who tries to reason with the dog, discusses with him the categorical imperative, and performs random unsolicited acts of kindness to appeal to its better nature. Another, swarthier person enters, perplexed at this cringe European, and pushes him to the side. He takes a good long look at the dog, walks over and kicks it square in the nuts, returning to high-five his friends. Rinse and repeat for three decades. Who is surprised that the dog is deranged?

What you do with a dog, obviously, is you train it. You don’t respond to its barks and snarls by getting down on all fours and barking back because ‘this is the yard’ and that’s what is done here. How do you train the dog? Well, go find someone who’s good at it, and ask him.

What does this look like? I don't know. But directionally, perhaps it's something like the British Raj. A civilizing mission is basically the only way to turn things around.

What does this look like? I don't know. But directionally, perhaps it's something like the British Raj. A civilizing mission is basically the only way to turn things around.

Who would do such a thing? Would it even be effective? India, after all, is still a neigh-ungovernable amalgamation of warring peoples. The US just got done trying something like that in Afghanistan and Iraq, to miserable failure. In my opinion your hypothetical Raj would have to be significantly MORE brutal on the population than the current military operations conducted by Israel are to have any hope at success.

You seriously exaggerate the ungovernability of India, your description fits Afghanistan better. Modi has a 75% approval rating. America is way more fractious.

In my opinion your hypothetical Raj would have to be significantly MORE brutal on the population than the current military operations conducted by Israel are to have any hope at success.

The key distinction is that a civilizing mission has an obvious aim that can guide decisionmaking. There is no obvious aim that drives Israeli decisionmaking right now except kicking the dog in the balls. It is entirely not obvious how this is supposed to lead to a long term solution.

The reason it looks aimless is because we are preventing them from taking effective measures though. You're presenting a catch-22

Which effective measures are we talking about?

Full blockade of all supplies. Bombing of any building with credible intelligence that a fighter or weaponry is in. Creeping artillery barrages of the entire territory. Things like that

Israel has been doing all those things for months. The vast majority of structures in Gaza are destroyed or damaged.

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Agreed, but again, how is starving babies going to bring an army to its knees?

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here. Has there ever been a method devised that starves everyone except for exclusively babies? How is throwing every piece of a cow into a meat grinder going to make ground beef if there are bones inside the cow that don't make ground beef?

What does this look like? I don't know. But directionally, perhaps it's something like the British Raj. A civilizing mission is basically the only way to turn things around.

From where I'm standing, that looks literally impossible. Some dogs are just impossible and dangerous and they get put down, kind of a downer for this metaphor. You'd have to specify what that looks like instead of gesturing vaguely at it for me to take it seriously. How do you get from "kill all Jews which we hate with religious zealotry and take back the Holy Land which they stole from us 70 years ago" to "yeah 2 states are okay, I'm okay with giving up my important holy sites now"?

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here. Has there ever been a method devised that starves everyone except for exclusively babies?

I admit I'm not an expert in siege tactics. However, one modest proposal might be to not order soldiers to fire on people trying to acquire food. That seems like the kind of thing that might cause starving babies on the margin.

From where I'm standing, that looks literally impossible.

I believe the three options I listed are exhaustive, so I'm curious if you think there is a fourth that I missed or if you think one of the other two that I thought was impossible is actually possible. Or perhaps you think they are all impossible?

Some dogs are just impossible and dangerous and they get put down, kind of a downer for this metaphor.

Indeed, but as the article suggests, there are people who have managed to train this particular dog.

You'd have to specify what that looks like instead of gesturing vaguely at it for me to take it seriously. How do you get from "kill all Jews which we hate with religious zealotry and take back the Holy Land which they stole from us 70 years ago" to "yeah 2 states are okay, I'm okay with giving up my important holy sites now"?

The Germans famously also wanted to kill (all?) Jews and now they perhaps kowtow excessively. Japan was raping Nanking and now they produce anime. It is possible for a foreign power to change culture, drastically.

I believe the three options I listed are exhaustive, so I'm curious if you think there is a fourth that I missed or if you think one of the other two that I thought was impossible is actually possible. Or perhaps you think they are all impossible?

I can't think of a fourth option that wouldn't just kick the can down the road. The first two are technically possible, but not many people would opt for it, as it's basically a worst case scenario.

The Germans famously also wanted to kill (all?) Jews and now they perhaps kowtow excessively. Japan was raping Nanking and now they produce anime. It is possible for a foreign power to change culture, drastically.

Those both involved a huge amount of death and destruction and both of those nations ended up surrendering. If that's the solution we're going with, how much of a limited amount of your first option would you tolerate? Shooting people acquiring food is absolutely on the table for that one. I guess the end state there is an impromptu group of civilians form and say that they're tired of getting bombed and that they will become the government and carry on the policing of their radicals, including any Hamas remnants, so that terrorist attacks stop happening.

Those both involved a huge amount of death and destruction and both of those nations ended up surrendering

My back of the envelope calculation suggests Gaza is somewhere between the relative death tolls of Japan and Germany. I doubt Hamas is going to surrender if you kick them harder in the balls.

I guess the end state there is an impromptu group of civilians form and say that they're tired of getting bombed and that they will become the government and carry on the policing of their radicals, including any Hamas remnants, so that terrorist attacks stop happening.

This is simply impossible given the Palestinian psychological makeup. I don't even think the Israelis are banking on this. Happy to place bets on this not happening.

This is simply impossible given the Palestinian psychological makeup.

So, yeah, that's a serious difference from your examples of Japan and Germany. Japan and Germany did actually dislike getting kicked in the balls enough to stop, and the Japanese did believe it enough to stop their radicals (Japanese holdouts, random people armed with swords who wanted the country to go a different direction) from inflicting damage on society.

If the Palestinians can't do that, then the permanent solution is just going to be options one or two, if anyone ever hates the state of affairs enough to commit them. The Germans and Japanese had to come to the table to be "tamed".

Japan and Germany were centralized states. The centralization that made it coherent to talk about Japan or Germany surrendering was what allowed Japan to quash the holdouts, and that lack of coherence is what makes it difficult to imagine a Hamas instrument of surrender.

Has there ever been an insurgency quelled by immiserating the population? Successful counterinsurgency campaigns I can think of usually revolve around convincing the citizens that they are better off the supporting the state than the insurgents. A little hard to do that when the citizens blame the state for starving them.

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