@Capital_Room comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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oats_son 3mo ago

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?

Context

sarker It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing oats_son 3mo ago

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?

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.

oats_son sarker 3mo ago

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?

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 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.

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.

-1

Capital_Room rather dementor-like sarker 3mo ago

Has there ever been an insurgency quelled by immiserating the population?

Some of Rome's "counterinsurgency campaigns" against rebellions come to mind — most immediately the Bar Kokhba revolt:

…the last and most devastating of three major Jewish rebellions against the Roman Empire. The revolt took place in the province of Judaea, where rebels led by Simon bar Kokhba succeeded in establishing an independent Jewish state that lasted several years. The revolt was ultimately crushed by the Romans, resulting in the near-depopulation of Judea through mass killings, widespread enslavement, and the displacement of much of the Jewish population.

…

The revolt's consequences were disastrous. Ancient and contemporary sources estimate that hundreds of thousands were killed, while many others were enslaved or exiled. The region of Judea was largely depopulated, and the spiritual center of Jewish life shifted to Galilee and the expanding diaspora. Messianic hopes became more abstract, and rabbinic Judaism adopted a cautious, non-revolutionary stance. The divide between Judaism and early Christianity also deepened. The Romans imposed harsh religious prohibitions, including bans on circumcision and Sabbath observance, expelled Jews from the vicinity of Jerusalem, restricted their entry to one annual visit, and repopulated the city with foreigners.

The famous ending of the Third Servile War comes to mind as well.

And then, of course, there's the sort of things the Assyrians did, like with Ashurnasirpal II.

Martin Van Creveld argued that there's basically two ways to successfully pursue counterinsurgency:

In an attempt to find lessons from the few cases of successful counterinsurgency, of which he lists two clear cases: the British efforts during The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the 1982 Hama massacre carried out by the Syrian government to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, he asserts that the "core of the difficulty is neither military nor political, but moral" and outlines two distinct methods.[34]

The first method relies on superb intelligence, provided by those who know the natural and artificial environment of the conflict as well as the insurgents. Once such superior intelligence is gained, the counterinsurgents must be trained to a point of high professionalism and discipline such that they will exercise discrimination and restraint. Through such discrimination and restraint, the counterinsurgents do not alienate members of the populace besides those already fighting them, while delaying the time when the counterinsurgents become disgusted by their own actions and demoralized.

If the prerequisites for the first method – excellent intelligence, superbly trained and disciplined soldiers and police, and an iron will to avoid being provoked into lashing out – are lacking, van Creveld posits that counterinsurgents who still want to win must use the second method exemplified by the Hama massacre. In 1982, the regime of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad was on the point of being overwhelmed by the countrywide insurgency of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Assad sent a Syrian Army division under his brother Rifaat to the city of Hama, known to be the center of the resistance.[citation needed]

Following a counterattack by the Brotherhood, Rifaat used his heavy artillery to demolish the city, killing between 10-25,000 people, including many women and children. Asked by reporters what had happened, Hafez al-Assad exaggerated the damage and deaths, promoted the commanders who carried out the attacks, and razed Hama's well-known great mosque, replacing it with a parking lot. With the Muslim Brotherhood scattered, the population was so cowed that it would be years before opposition groups dared to disobey the regime again and, van Creveld argues, the massacre most likely saved the regime and prevented a bloody civil war.[citation needed]

In short, you can be slow, disciplined, and restrained; or you can be swift, ruthless, and utterly brutal; and the problem is that too many try to do something somewhere in between.

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