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 -
Trump, breaking with Netanyahu, acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza. Reddit discussion.
This makes him the first right winger I've seen say anything about starvation after something happened recently that made lots of places start talking about it, maybe the move to GHF food distribution? I can't really trust the UN when they talk about it, since they may have been still pissed that Israel cut UNRWA out, plus I heard it was only two dedicated Gaza writers putting out statements of that kind. I can't really trust leftists when they post about it, because they fail to show me their homework and seem to argue a very motivated stance. But Trump talking about it... I don't know about that either. He has spoken off the cuff before. But it brings me to ask: how bad is it? What footage did he see and is it reflected in the data?
Supposing that there is starvation: is that Israel's intention? What is Israel's strategy going forward? I thought that making camps to move civilians into was a good idea, and then once everyone's out, painstakingly clear the whole place, but I think that the international community wouldn't accept that because it's technically ethnic cleansing. There isn't actually anything the international community would be satisfied by except for total ceasefire and return to October 6th. But I don't actually know what the intention is, is the intention to draw Hamas out of hiding to get to the food somehow? I have a hard time discerning what is true about the war and what isn't.
To me there seems to be, or perhaps should be, a kind of reciprocity of honor in wartime. The Germans and British and French in the First World War wanted to take or defend disputed territory, become the first power in Europe, seize some of each others foreign colonies and perhaps effect a change of civilian government. They did not particularly wish to ethnically cleanse their opponents from the vast majority of their metropoles (a few pieces of disputed territory aside). In the Kaiser’s wildest fantasies (and they were his) he did not imagine replacing Welshmen with Bavarians and driving the former out to the sea. The war was brutal, with civilian casualties and endless military ones and war crimes, the Rape of Belgium (truth or fiction) and so on. But it was not a war to the death or to exile for every last German, every last Englishman, woman, child.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews in Israel/Palestine is not such a conflict. It is a tribal war. The Arabs have sought to ethnically cleanse the Jews (or at least all but a token handful, but probably all) from their full territory since 1948 or indeed well before given the history of violence that began during the earlier colonial waves of migration. The Jews were of mixed opinions but have now increasingly, after 70 years of violence, come around to the same opinion about the Palestinians (views on Arab Israelis are more complicated although there are plenty, it must be said, of religious zionists who would kick them out too).
Only America is powerful enough, now, to impose a two-state solution on both sides. To do so would cost trillions, require a permanent US presence of perhaps a hundred thousand or more troops on the border, and would subject the Americans to endless criticism abroad, intermittent violence by militant Muslim and likely also eventually militant Jewish terrorists, and would commit the country forever, for if columbia were to leave, the conflict would simply resume where both sides left off.
Since that will not happen, it is now increasingly clear that one side will ethnically cleanse the other. A Jewish victory would probably, although not necessarily, be permanent; the Muslim world might still accomplish a Reconquista. A Muslim victory would be permanent, at least until the arrival of the messiah, ye of little faith, or failing that another two millennia. The people of Gaza suffer and have suffered. A more intelligent Zionist movement would have settled somewhere else but, then again, without the deep, atavistic lure of Zion, it would probably never have accomplished anything.
If the Gazans surrendered, their suffering would stop. But they cannot surrender, unlike the marranos not even temporarily. They belong to a faith and tribe that conquered a quarter of the world by the sword, without mercy, without self-doubt. They submit only to God. Should I pity them?
There have only ever been three options: ethnic cleansing, ethnic cleansing, or forever war. Pick one. All are terrible and wrong.
You know, the more I learn about Palestinians the more I'm convinced it was a bad idea to move ethnic cleansing into the category of "never under any circumstances even thinkable actions". Palestinians are brazenly explicit about their refusal to ever accept Jews living in the region and their commitment to "resistance" under all circumstances - a state of affairs practically unique in history because just about every other society to ever exist has known full well that the rewards for being even a fraction as belligerent would be getting wiped out. If they've shown after nearly 80 years they're still not going to behave, maybe threatening to move them somewhere else is the only thing that will get them reconsider their attitude.
The world made a rule that ethnic cleansing was never justified under any circumstances. Unfortunately, the Palestinians evolved a culture to exploit that rule. If they could only be so belligerent that the only way to defeat them would be by ethnic cleansing, then they win by default no matter how militarily superior their opponent. This is effectively the propaganda game they play with the West. It's almost like they're daring Israel to ethnically cleanse them, and then double-dog daring them, and then triple-dog daring them. They know that if Israel breaks the one rule against trying an ethnic cleansing, then they'll lose Western support. They intentionally do not want Israel to have another option. There is no peace, no two state solution, no compromise. If Hamas can just persevere and stay the course then they'll eventually win. Israel can either carry on essentially at war with Hamas for the foreseeable future, or it can just take the risk and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. The latter might be a Pyrrhic victory if the rest of the world turns against Israel.
A much more basic way to frame this moral precept would be:
All people who live within your borders are, and of right ought to be, citizens of your state, and the government of your state has equal responsibilities to them as to any other citizen. You can exclude people from entering your country, you can expel parts of your country (Malaysia/Singapore, India/Pakistan), but you can't treat certain people living in your country as non-citizens.
Israel has tried to find its way around this by creating two Palestinian bantustans and keeping them split, the non-viable non-contiguous territories providing a shred of cover that those living there will never have to be integrated into Israel's population, despite Israel's permanent control of the external policy of each enclave.
My point being that Israel has another path: re-educating and reconciling with the Palestinian civilian population such that they no longer support Hamas (or whoever).
Hamas doesn't get to do its permanent-war bit on its own. It requires mass support among Arabs, undermine that and there's no more Hamas.
But why would they do that? If I were a Palestinian, I'd want revenge--terrible, horrible, unconscionable revenge forever, and I'd still go to heaven.
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