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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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A short prompt of good news for starting the week- the likelihood of the current Gaza conflict ending just got significantly higher today, as Hamas has released at least the first 7 of 20 surviving hostages to Israel, with more expected later today (or maybe already completed), as part of a Trump-mediated peace deal that is excepted to culminate in a regional summit this week.

Big if carried through, and while there was leadup to it last week, there was a fair bit of (and fair grounds for) skepticism on if the deal would actually be followed through. There were questions on if Hamas even could deliver all the living hostages given how the hostages were often not under Hamas's direct organizational control (but sometimes under other groups), and this deal does not address the bodies of the dead hostages, among other things.

There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.

That said- and I think this is good news in general- it's also worth noting this doesn't mean stability or even a lasting peace. While the Yemen-based Houthis have indicated they will stop their Red Sea attacks so long as Israel upholds the ceasefire, this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza. Which remains a huge, unanswered question which could restart this problem all over again, if Hamas remains in power for lack of anyone actively displacing. The NYT is running a piece on how mediators are already signaling this isn't a comprehensive deal for either side.

One thing that isn't in question, however, is that the return of the still-living hostages is going to reshape the underpinnings of Israeli politics, as the post-October 7 war cabinet coalition that kept Netanyahu in power will lose much of the reason for being. This means political instability, for worse or for better, as Israel rebalances. The next election would be no later than late next year regardless, and could come earlier.

Absent some new (and detrimental to all) nonsense, this means that a lot of the people who only supported Nnetanyahu because of the war will likely be more willing to withdraw their support and trigger early elections, which would be no later than about a year from now anyways. This does not, however, mean a general discrediting of the Israeli right, and a decades-belated return of the Israeli left (whose original decline was after the failure of the gaza withdrawal almost two decades ago). The war was a significant polarizing effect on Israeli politics and society, and while I'd not bet on Netanyahu I'd also not bet on any part of the political left seen as opposing the war for pro-Palestinian reasonings.

I'll end it there. While there is plenty of reasons things could yet again get worse, and while I am sure eventually they will, for the moment I'll encourage people to view this new news as good news, which can well make many people's lives better.

This conflict has continued for 70 years and will continue indefinitely until a “final resolution” occurs. Settlers continue to exercise growing power in Israeli politics; while not as fecund as the chareidim they stil have substantially higher tfr than secular Jews. Hamas is re-asserting control of Gaza and still likely has at least 10-20,000 fighters, and very high Gazan fertility rates and a large pool of existing 10-14 year old males means it will have many more in short order.

There are only 4 final resolution states:

  1. Total victory of the Israelis, involving the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, followed by a subsequent peace deal with the surrounding nations that involves some kind of naturalization for Palestinian emigres as full citizens of other nations or another nation. Very unlikely.

  2. Total victory of the Palestinians, involving the ethnic cleansing of Jews (either in a genocidal context or Algeria-style ‘suitcase or coffin’ emigration) from all current Israeli territory and a single Palestinian Arab state. Unlikely for now although less unlikely than scenario 1, and radically more likely if the world enters a period of sustained international upheaval.

  3. A two-state solution imposed by the United States and other powers to Palestine’s benefit. America and other nations sanction Israel or threaten to until it experiences a domestic political crisis and forcibly withdraws settlers from the Palestinian Territories and agrees to a Palestinian state along either 1967 or (less likely) 1948 borders. There is a substantial chance of this turning into scenario 2, although it is theoretically possible with a ‘neutral’ international force overseeing the process. If public sentiment shifts further against Israel in America I think this is plausible in the medium term.

  4. A two-state solution imposed by the United States to Israel’s benefit, which would involve one or more Muslim powers administering a semi-autonomous collection of Palestinian city states in an arrangement with Israel and possibly other global powers, principally America. This was the goal of the Israeli right but seems less likely as time goes on.

The most likely outcome of the current process is that Hamas returns to power in Gaza, the world mostly forgets about the conflict for 5-10-15 years, and then things eventually flare up once Hamas is ready for another big attack.

I don't think 3 has any chance of turning into 2. Even with the 1948 borders the Israeli military would still massively outclass the Palestinian one.

It’s more about the situation in which 3 would occur, namely near-total loss of US support, an increasingly Muslim Europe, China and Russia signing onto sanctions to appease Muslim allies like Pakistan and Iran, and then relatively quickly almost the whole world is against them, the US for residual world peace reasons forces them into this quasi peace, and then maybe Turkey or another coalition of Arab nations decide that it’s just time for the killing blow, there’s a mass Palestinian uprising of the kind that didn’t occur on October 7th etc…

I think you're overestimating how much the broader Muslim world cares about the Palestinian cause, or atleast the adults in charge of other nations.

Obviously the calculus could change if Israel were already weak/vulnerable, but there's a reason most of the other countries in the region try their best to ignore what's going on.

The bulk of the peasantry and proletariat in the region would gladly throw everything at Israel. The leadership refuse because of a number of reasons; the connection between Hamas and other Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to overthrow the Egyptian military regime, those who would destabilize the Jordanian monarchy etc; the fact that the US supports Israel; the fact that the IDF could destroy their militaries leaving them vulnerable to domestic upheaval (see the first reason) and so on.

However, if Israel appears weak, these same governments may be unable to resist popular pressure to give in to the people and mount an invasion. This would be especially true if there was a Palestinian uprising. In addition, Egypt may well eventually fall to an Islamist government.

Also the US gives both Egypt and Jordan over $1 billion a year in aid to prevent them from attacking Israel.

How do you rate scenario 2 as more likely than scenario 1???

The IDF is one of the most formidable militaries on planet earth, who's primary opponents (Arabs) have one of the worst track records of modern warfighting and who's societies/institutions make them absolutely AWFUL at it.

How on earth do you imagine Israel (who also has nukes) losing?

How do you rate scenario 2 as more likely than scenario 1???

Israel needs western support to exist. Europe is going to become very muslim (and also very failed) in the next 100 years. In the US support for israel rests on three pillars: jews, defense contractors and red heifer evangelicals. The evangelicals are dying, the jews are quickly coming to see themselves more as liberals than as jews. On the other hand jews map to white and palestinians map to brown in the woke mind.

Within the next two generations israel needs to either resolve the problem fully, somehow, or find a new partner or they lose.

Within the next two generations, Israel will be significantly larger than today, both in population and land area.

Israeli population growth shows no sign of abating, and, while the world is transfixed to Gaza, ancient biblical land of Bashan is now in the play.

Judea and Samaria and faith accompli, Bashan (and Gilead, when something happens in Jordan) are the next steps. Handmaid Tale fandom could rejoice, their fantasy could soon become real.

the jews are quickly coming to see themselves more as liberals than as jews.

very much the opposite in my social circle. (I'm jewish). There's a lot of "we still don't like Trump, but the left hates Israel, so we'll put up with him" - pithily captured as "Jews went to bed October 6th as Democrats - but woke up Republican"

Within the next two generations israel needs to either resolve the problem fully, somehow, or find a new partner or they lose.

This isn't the first time I've had this discussion on here, but I think you're not just right, you're understating the problem they face. Who is going to be the next imperial patron for Israel? They can't exist without one without a severe reduction in social complexity, and I don't see Russia (currently engaging in deep military co-operation with their greatest adversary) stepping up to the plate. China has absolutely no need to sponsor Israel and they're not going to be vulnerable to the same strategies that worked on America and the broader west. Who's left? India?

Why does Israel need an imperial patron?

In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).

Today they are capable of manufacturing most of their own military hardware except for fighter aircraft and helicopters (the bottleneck on the former likely being engine manufacturing). It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.

So why do they need a patron? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, I'm just trying to figure out the argument that they can't survive without a sponsor. It seems like to me that as long as they can prevent sea access from being cut off they should be just fine on their own. Is there a bottleneck that I'm not seeing here?

Why does Israel need an imperial patron?

Because Israel's geography and productive economy aren't able to sustain their population and current level of social complexity. Their incredibly challenging security environment necessitates immense military investment, and their internal politics require them to support and feed a growing population of useless eaters who just study the torah all day (the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service). Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.

In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).

Do you mean when their imperial patron was the UK?

It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.

A growing population isn't a good thing when you are already importing food - but it becomes ruinous when you have an extremely dangerous security environment which would add significant difficulty and expense to those food imports. Currently, the US is spending a lot of money to make sure the Middle East is survivable for Israel and they can continue to import food, and Israel just isn't capable of stepping up to the plate by themselves to ensure that food security.

But energy independent? LOL

Israel currently produces 5% of their oil consumption domestically, with approximately 220 thousand barrels imported each day. Petroleum is currently irreplaceable as an energy source - there is no alternative with equivalent energy density or existing infrastructure investments that can take its place (i.e. even if they discovered a perfect new energy source which they had in abundance, it would take a long time and huge investment to set up the infrastructure required to distribute and use it). Oil is used in farming, transportation and of course in the military - so if those imports were halted due to a conflict, the food situation would very rapidly become extremely dire and the military would be hamstrung by lack of access to the fuel which powers all of their tanks etc.

Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?

These are the questions which convinced me that Israel would not be able to survive without an imperial patron, and I haven't seen any convincing arguments otherwise.

(the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service)

Interestingly that exemption ended last year.

Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.

What, specifically, can they not make? And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power? The US declining to be Israel's patron doesn't mean, for instance, that the US stops selling Israel aircraft - but if they did, Russia, France and China would all be happy to source anything Israel couldn't domestically manufacture, don't you think?

But energy independent?

Ah, my mistake. They export LNG, but that doesn't go writ large for the rest of their energy.

Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?

Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do." (Now, in point of fact, I think Israel sources their own interceptors - Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow, since they have retired the Patriot.)

Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?

Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella? I do not understand why I should assume that this will happen (let alone why the attempt should succeed) - a lot has changed in the Middle East since the Yom Kippur War. But if I should assume that, I would like to know!

What, specifically, can they not make?

Anything with significant quantities of rare earths - which describes a lot of modern military technology. Israel has plenty of deposits, but they don't have the infrastructure required to refine and process them into usable material. To the best of my knowledge Israel doesn't actually have any mines at all (plenty of quarries, but good luck turning stone into hypersonic missiles or drones), which will make resupplying the metal used for modern military technologies a bit difficult.

And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power?

Who?

China's not going to help - China wants to make sure the Israeli security situation is as miserable as possible, because that means US resources and attention will be diverted there and away from Taiwan. Additionally, the comments made by Chinese officials regarding the current conflict are very much not indicative of future support for Israel - they have explicitly supported the right of Palestine to full statehood and development. France? I wouldn't pin my hopes on France coming to the rescue given their own large internal problems. They can't even supply the Ukrainians with enough materiel to fight off Russia. As for Russia itself? Russia supplies the air-defence systems used by Iran and has been accepting a lot of help from them with regards to drone technology and drone warfare. Russia is the largest military partner of Israel's biggest regional threat - I don't think they're going to be much help.

Who's left? What other nation can both supply advanced modern military materiel, has plenty of said materiel to spare and the capacity to open a secure land route to get that technology to Israel? Without the US guaranteeing global shipping and commercial trade, or paying Egypt to stay friendly to Israel, how exactly does this mysterious nation even get their technology to Israel? Furthermore, how's Israel going to pay for it? Right now they've duped the Americans into paying them to receive free weapons, but that isn't going to work on China. In the same future where the US has abandoned them, there's no doubt going to be a cessation of remittances and other support from American jews to Israel - so the budget is going to be taking a significant hit already.

Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do."

Historically, the way all other nations solved the problem of having an unsustainably large population, 95% reduction in available energy and an economy unable to support their military is by collapsing or experiencing massive famines and starvation.

Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?

The nations surrounding them, and by simply closing their borders to land/air traffic. Iran is more than capable of shutting down their shipping infrastructure, even if they have to send the weaponry to the Houthis to do it.

Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella?

I assume that when the US stops paying them to be nice to Israel, they will stop being nice to Israel. I don't think they'll necessarily attack them, but charging obscene fees to render those imports uneconomical when they don't just sabotage or block them is well within the bounds of what they could do.

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Assuming the UK and the rest of Europe don't deal with their Muslim problem and population replacement continues apace it will not be too much longer before there are a few muslim societies with nukes and modern militaries which are willing to declare war on Israel. I think that is the biggest risk factor for number 2.

Western countries will intervene of 1 appears to be happening. They will not of 2 appears to be happening.

Israel has four neighbors, two of which are borderline failed states and the other two are strong American allies. None of these countries are staging an invasion.

So? Maybe Turkey gets excited. Maybe the US gets taken over by lefties and imposes a blockade.

They might if America itself turns against Israel

I think Israel will change behavior if that happens and act / beg for scenario 3, but as I said, there are many routes by which that leads to scenario 2 anyway.

I think they'll eventually succeed at taking over the West Bank. In part because they want it (it's good land and it's right there for the taking, not to mention the religious motivation to control jeruselum), and in part because they've found a way to successfully "salami slice" it, taking little bits at a time. The rest of the world expresses outrage and indignation but does nothing, and the Palestinian authority can't fight back. There seems to be no shortage of Israeli's volunteering to move in there, and not just soldiers but normal middle-class families. This might take multiple generations, but it'll happen.

I do not think they'll take over the Gaza strip that way, because the situation is totally different. Nobody really wants it, because it's an ultra-dense ghett of bomb-blasted buildings and unexploded ordnance. The people living there are highly motivated to fight back, and there's a ton of world attention that would make a huge outcry if Israel tried to adjust the borders even slightly. There's also no holy city there, no natural resources, limited water... it's not a place any sane person would want to live.

But they haven't yet been able to expel the population and I don't know if they realistically can. So far they've just been settling the gaps and ignoring the Palestinian settlements but this doesn't seem stable.

There have been many instances of palestinian settlements in the west bank being demolished and the people being evicted: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164971

Honestly, three and four don’t work simply because of geography. Israel and Palestine are fighting over pieces of land that in total is the size of New Jersey. Problem being that any missile launched can reach just about anywhere in that land area pretty easily. Which means that if either side ever defects, it’s back to square one. And thus Theres at best the return to form — ceasefire, rearm, and start another war.

The only way to have a permanent peace is to do the suitcase or coffin solution, as nothing less will survive the first defection.

They managed to create a permanent peace with Syria and Egypt even with the Golan heights and no peace agreement and the West Bank has towns under full Palestinian control. I think a State of Palestine would be a lot less likely to just start a war then stateless terrorist groups.

I think a State of Palestine would be a lot less likely to just start a war then stateless terrorist groups.

Gaza was a test of that. It failed.

Why do you exclude South Africa-style reintegration? Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

They were getting welfare out of the international community via things like UNRWA regardless. I'm sure money will continue to roll in.

Why do you exclude South Africa-style reintegration?

Because everyone can look at South Africa to see just how well that goes.

Scott once noticed that the best place in the middle east to be an Arab outside the oil rich states is Israel. Smart Palestinians should be arguing to the world that the just punishment for Israel's actions is that they must annex all of Gaza and the West Bank, make everyone living there full citizens of Israel and provide them with the same access to resources as they do to any other Israeli citizen right now.

Plus full democratic voting rights and there's a big enough bloc to enforce shit over a decent tenure.

Even Hamas would be able to likely keep operating as a guerilla movement and any attempts to oppress the Palestinian Arab population as a result of Hamas agitation would be looked at even more disfavorably than the status quo.

the just punishment for Israel's actions is that they must annex all of Gaza and the West Bank, make everyone living there full citizens of Israel and provide them with the same access to resources as they do to any other Israeli citizen right now.

Are you not aware that this has been the leftist demand the whole time? The problem is obvious. If Israel annexes the whole of mandate Palestine then the Jews will be a minority and swiftly have the mechanism of state turned on them. At best they would be Dhimmi in a shariah state subject to the abuses that have led to there being basically no jews anywhere else in the islamic world and with a reasonably high chance of being subject to massive pogroms that would make the holocaust seem loving by comparison.

subject to the abuses that have led to there being basically no jews anywhere else in the islamic world

I feel like pointing out that the major historical abuse that lead to the jews leaving the arab world was actually the creation of Israel. Even wikipedia makes it clear that there were plenty of jews living in the Arab world up until the creation of Israel, and the descendants of those populations are largely referred to as Mizrahim today. Some of the other "abuses", like the 1950s Baghdad bombings, were almost certainly committed by Israelis in order to encourage Iraqi jews to emigrate to Israel to boot.

They lived in those areas as a persecuted minorities under, ironically given the current accusations, appartide conditions. Subjected to additional taxes, exclusion from official positions, lesser status under the law and the occasional pogrom. There are some few contested incidents like the 1950s Baghdad bombings but many many more straightforward incidents like the Egyptian denationalization and mass asset seizures of jews across the region. The idea that the push factors compelling jews to move to Israel from the middle east were largely fabricated is ahistorical. Certainly Israel wanted to entice jews to move there and sure up their numbers but the woes of the jews across the region were very real.

I in no way meant to imply that life as a minority was a land of milk and honey for the jews in the arab world - but when they have spent over a thousand years suffering those abuses and managed to maintain their own cultural and ethnic identity during that time, you're being a bit misleading when you say that those abuses are why there aren't any jews left in the rest of the region.

It was those abuses plus finally having a place to go that emptied out the rest of the middle east. My point was to explain why Israelis would be unwilling to make themselves a minority in a single Palestinian state.

If a domestic abuse victim moves out because they finally found a safe place to stay instead, it feels weird to say "well, they didn't leave because of the abuse".

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Right. So, rather the Americans should be telling Israelis to move to some corner of Montana and have at it. Because what's happening is not tenable by modern ethical standards, either lording it over a population in that way or having a state charter built on the lord.

Freddie de Boer has this as his preferred solution, but the 'well the Israelis should all become Americans' is a nice logical solution that's completely useless. It's just as unlikely as the right wing version of this ('give all the Palestinians Jordanian/Egyptian citizenship') - a solution you come up with when you realize that neither the Israelis nor Palestinians are going to give up anytime soon, but that you're ethically sensitive enough to still want a solution. But even if President Woke threatened Israel at gunpoint to concede to a maximalist version of the 2SS, we're just going to end up where we are now after the next attack from State-Palestine, whether or not the recognized government attacks, allows an attack, or is too weak to stop one. There's no point in any of this so long as a significant proportion of Palestinian society is willing to beat their own brains out on the border wall.

second best option: extract America from this eternal nonsense as much as possible.

Actually that's the first best option

Well that's fine, but I don't see how you end up anywhere but the exact situation as today, less some Israeli military hardware. Fine, so our hands are clean. If Israel can't fight without our support, they end up in 2rafa's 3rd resolution, which will collapse immediately on the next attack; if they can, maybe they just accept being a pariah and just go to war as they need to for their security, cut a deal with China or what have you. Doesn't seem likely to produce an ethical improvement outside of American feelings.

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If the Palestinians can give up on the pipe dream of driving the jews into the sea then a two or three state solution where both peoples prosper is totally possible. It's essentially the direction Trump's plan pushes things. What you're asking for is a near equivalent to demands all non-native americans leave turtle island and go back to the countries of their ethnic origin, justice by some tortured ethic but simply not going to happen and the sooner the fantasy is dispensed with the sooner real solutions can be tried.

I'm sorry, the Israelis are not going to lay down and let themselves all be killed or expelled from what they believe to be their homeland. If your plan is for them to do that then you need to come up with another plan.

There is no realistic two state solution that does not involve ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jews both. The remaining areas allotted and allowed to Palestinians are so marginal and split up by settlers that there is no contiguous state possible without expelling large numbers of Jews. Otherwise a Palestinian state is unworkable and unviable, certainly not prosperous.

A one state solution is the only non-genocidal solution on offer. Recognize Palestine all they want, the West will lack the stomach to murder the Jewish settlers who drive wedges through any possible Palestine.

A one state solution is plainly genocidal, once you count up numbers and birthrates.

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There is no realistic two state solution that does not involve ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jews both. The remaining areas allotted and allowed to Palestinians are so marginal and split up by settlers that there is no contiguous state possible without expelling large numbers of Jews. Otherwise a Palestinian state is unworkable and unviable, certainly not prosperous.

The term for this when it's done as a deal and mutually agreed upon is population transfers and has been done successfully in the past in other contexts. Realistically there would be a Gaza and separate west bank state. The west bank would ideally just have jewish citizens if they don't want to transfer back to Israel although in practice I expect most of them to.

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Sure and that's reasonable. But the situation in the West Bank is also completely unique and completely untenable long term. If Israel could agree on some sort of border it would work better. But they want the land and not the people and most of the West Bank is essentially fully integrated into Israel ignoring the blobs of Palestinian towns throughout. If Israel drew a line and declared one part Palestine and one part Israel I think they'd get reasonable far many countries have disputed borders. But the West Bank is a millstone around their neck because they want the land but not the people and the occupation prevents them from being a normal country.

I agree that an enduring peace would require abandoning the settlements outside of the ones on the current 67 borders. But I will also point out that what you demand was on offer in 47 and rather than accept them the surrounding Arabs went to war with Israel and lost. It's kind of rich to attempt decades of war to deny an offered border, lose repeatedly, and then demand the original offer anyways. The Palestinians themselves have made no such offer and give every indication of denying one if it was offered without an "unlimited right of return" or a "just settlement of the right of return" which has never been defined and acts as a poison pill that sounds OK to the west but could easily expand to mean enough refugees are shipped into Israel proper to effectively make Israel a Muslim majority.

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In the long term, is that distinct from (2)? IIRC South Africa has had long-term white emigration that at some point starts to look like the "suitcase" option there, or sometimes worse. There was even that drama earlier this year when the current US administration looked to consider it as ethnic-cleansing-adjacent.

White South Africans are still there, the boers are probably above replacement, the shrinking of the white population is mostly due to very high black population growth. And nobody really wants the whites to leave, either- they lay the golden egg for the ANC to then steal.

I'm just glancing at numbers, but it looks like white emigration from South Africa is about 2% per year, as opposed to around 40% per year for the pieds-noirs during 2 years of "suitcase or the coffin". South African white emigration has been slow enough that fertility has kept their population pretty steady over the past few decades in spite of it.

Thanks for looking at the numbers. I guess I was extrapolating from Zimbabwe, which actually did see like 90% of the white population emigrate. Although the most recent stats I've seen actually show growth within the last couple years.

Eventually someone is going to realize that grotesque jihadi violence is counterproductive and that they would get way more stuff if they kept the Jews around to milk welfare out of.

Because that someone will just get killed and replaced with someone else who values killing Jews over everything else.

Actually that person, Marwhan Bargouti, is currently in an Israeli prison being repeatedly tortured. The Palestinians keep trying to get him released and think that he'd be the best possible leader (he convincingly clears every poll for preferred leader), which is presumably why the Israelis are trying to make sure he will never get out.

A brief googling indicates that he is clearly a terrorist and he is popular because of that plus the martyr status of being imprisoned.

If he was released and was a five in Gaza he's quickly be on a pike.

A brief googling indicates that he is clearly a terrorist

Damn that's funny, I did the same and it told me the exact opposite - a brief google, where you are given a curated selection of results designed to cater to your biases, is less than useless in the modern day when it comes to truth-finding. Why don't you do an actual investigation into the circumstances around his arrest and base your opinion on something substantial? Look, even if you do the research and still think he's a terrorist, discussions on these topics are better when you actually do the research and can make an informed contribution.

I mean, its an easy heuristic to read Wikipedia and realize that it represents the most far left case that can be plausibly levied under their rules.

Even so I was alone during 2nd intifada, it was a terrorist campaign supported by all the relevant Palestinian parties in government, so that necessarily includes him and Arafat. If you have a lexis media account you can probably make a better assessment using only transcripts from the trial and contemporaneous media accounts, although even then they were generally Palestinian -leaning, as we see with Arafat winning man of the year

I mean, its an easy heuristic to read Wikipedia and realize that it represents the most far left case that can be plausibly levied under their rules.

No? I am a far leftist and this really isn't the case. Wikipedia is generally pro establishment, and that lines up with the left in some ways and not at all in others.

Even so I was alone during 2nd intifada

My condolences?

terrorist campaign supported by all the relevant Palestinian parties in government, so that necessarily includes him and Arafat.

If you're going to claim that lets you call him a terrorist, you're going to have to admit that the entire Israeli government consists of terrorists as well. If you're willing to make that claim, fair enough, but otherwise it doesn't really mean anything at all - not that "terrorist" is a particularly meaningful political designation these days anyway.

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So they do have a Nelson Mandela?

Yes, Marwhan Bargouti has been referred to as the Palestinian Mandela for quite some time. The Israelis refuse to release him from prison and repeatedly torture him in order to make sure there's no peaceful resolution to the conflict beyond the extermination of the Palestinians (to the best of my understanding - maybe there's an alternative and more charitable explanation, but if there is I haven't found it).

You're just never going to drop the "Israel is committing genocide" thing, are you?

If the prosecutions go ahead and it is determined that the entire thing has been a misinformation campaign or other convincing evidence arises that it was all fake I'll absolutely drop it. But I've seen the videos and comments posted by IDF soldiers, and I've actually read some translated Israeli media - it'll take a vast amount of convincing evidence to make me change my mind, but if you've got it then please lay it on the table. I'd honestly love to be proven wrong and learn that the Hind Rajab and Mohamaed Bhar stories were just a bad dream, or that all those translated comments by Smotrich and Ben Gvir were lies - but I really don't think you actually have the evidence required.

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this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza.

I mean, this is very much understating the extent to which the ceasefire is a chance for Hamas to execute its domestic opposition.

Which, based on fairly gruesome videos circulating on social media, it appears to be doing fairly vigorously right now.

"Palestinians brutally murdered by occupying military forces!... but it's not the IDF doing it, so does anyone really care?"

Or the line right now on Left sides seems to be that Israel armed/supported the parties inside Palestine that are currently being purged so that makes them a sixth column of the evil Zionists and therefore free game, or something.

I don't really see the point of taking this for the Palestinians and I'd consider myself broadly in team Israel. Or atleast I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.

IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force. Inevitably this will kick off again within months or years and the IDF will resume absolutely mauling whatever resistance Palestine can present aside from random civilian terrorism.

Aren't we living under the conditions of an Israeli victory now. They can act as they will and annex what they want. Most of the West Bank is functionally integrated into Israel already and the only reason they don't annex it is so they don't need to give the Palestinian population there citizenship.

I found it odd (perhaps naïvely so) to see headlines, notably the BBC, focused not on the release Israeli hostages, but on the Palestinians: "Palestinians celebrate return of detainees freed by Israel"

That's right below a headline about the hostages on my page.

'You're my life, my hero': Hostages reunite with families after two years

I suppose it's going to appear differently on different feeds, true enough.

IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force.

You want to get out at the top, not ride your bit down.

Pre 10/7, Palestinian hard-liners found themselves being abandoned by their long term backers with no realistic path forward. Free Palestine on the western left was becoming a really niche bumper sticker, like Free Tibet or Zapatista tier. Arab powers were showing a willingness to make peace with Israel without reference to Palestine or even the Arab population of Israel. The Abraham Accords were a major step towards permanent defeat of the Palestinian cause. Israel was looking like a normal country with a thriving economy and no problems which would keep international investors out.

The goal of 10/7 realistically was to reopen the conflct, draw Israel into fighting, denormalize Israeli life and economics, isolate Israel on the international stage. At some point you've maxed out the effectiveness of using dead babies for propaganda, and further dead babies have a diminishing marginal return. And at some point, the destruction wrought onto Gaza is net negative for Hamas, the loss of life undermines their ability to govern and rebuild.

So at some number of dead kids and world outrage, they'll cash out and make peace-noises.

Or at least I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.

The only realistic solution that doesn't involve ethnic cleansing is one state, or effectively one state, containing most of the current populations. How one achieves that without destroying what makes Israel worthwhile is the problem.

Israel's already got a fairly sizeable Arabic population. Of course, adding the Palestinians on top of that and retaining democracy and what makes Israel a successful state is difficult, but even a literal apartheid in terms of voting rights would still likely produce better economic and lifestyle outcomes for the average Palestinian Arab Israeli than the current status quo.

but even a literal apartheid in terms of voting rights would still likely produce better economic and lifestyle outcomes for the average Palestinian Arab Israeli than the current status quo.

Yes, at least until they got tired of the apartheid, agitated for full voting rights, got the "international community" including the US to support them, and took over. At that point your best case is South Africa.

Even without apartheid jews would be in control of the state institutions for decades, decent treatment would be enough to keep non-jewish citizens in check, time would do the rest. Problem is that jews want their state jewish.

And to note, even blacks in South Africa are much better off than in most of the rest of the continent- see the economic migration there(which has been going on for SA’s entire history).

The Palestinians were squeezed between the IDF and the Egyptian/Qatari axis.

I doubt open hostilities rekindle that soon. There's too much graft to be skimmed from the rebuilding/humanitarian operations. Time some fat years.

Are there ascendant political figures to the left of Netanyahu for the country to unify around ? I know new leaders have emerged to the right of Netanyahu, but thought that political space to his left had being choked out after Oct 7th.

I guess there is Yair Lapid, but he struggled to stay in power in the calm before Oct 7. So, I don't have much hope for him.

I don't have a direct reply, but I'm going to piggy back off this post because I'd written up a related issue. I’d like to look at the prisoner exchange ratio.

We’ve looked at this issue various times before on The Motte, with amazement at the disparate ratio of prisoners being exchanged on each side, and the risks involved in releasing terrorists freedom fighters in a prisoner exchange only to have the prisoners commit attacks on Israel in the future.

This time its 20 Israeli hostages against a list of 1900 Palestinian prisoners.

One way of looking at this is that it’s a release of ‘Prisoners of War’ and that all POWs are released at the cessation of hostilities. Except that the hostages were civilians deliberately taken as.. well as hostages, to prevent military advancement and also as leverage in negotiations such as this peace deal.

In addition, the list of 1900 is not limited to ‘POWs’ captured during the latest war, but includes 250 other terrorists freedom fighters that have attacked Israel prior to the current war)

If this peace plan doesn’t hold then Hamas would have bolstered its force by almost 2000 fighters, not for this war, but the future wars to come.

I don't blame Trump and other peacemakers for trying and I am a fan of lasting peace, but this exchange ratio has always been a bugbear of mine and I don't think I'm alone. At a minimum they should stagger out the prisoner release with the 250 non-POWs to be released after the peace holds for 5+ years.

terrorists freedom fighters

If crime-fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part of it, do they?

Humanitarians.

I feel like the political leverage the hostages represented was probably worth a lot more to Hamas than 2000 additional warm bodies. In spite of any Israeli rhetoric to the contrary, I'm pretty sure if the ceasefire breaks down, Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.

Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.

Israel was lining Palestinians up and then crushing them with bulldozers (see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver), on top of torturing people with downs syndrome (Mohammad Bhar) and murdering small children (Hind Rajab). They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think this is them being restrained, you're making the case that Israel needs to be removed from the Earth before they can do this to anyone else.

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Yes but if the boot were on the other foot (assuming somehow the Palestinians were militarily paramount to the same degree, maybe via the act of a warlock) the Palestinians would actually carry out an effective genocide instead of awkwardly trying to ferret out a deeply-buried guerilla insurgency without doing too much damage to civilian populations.

Yes but if the boot were on the other foot

Historically, when the boot was on the other foot, the Palestinians regarded the Palestinian jews as their brothers and lived together for centuries. It was the zionist immigration project which caused hostilities to erupt.

That said, I don't really disagree with you. When you look at the Palestinians and what they've suffered at the hands of Israel, I find it highly likely that they'd take revenge when they were given power - which is one of the reasons why I think that Israel should have actually tried to live and coexist peacefully with their neighbors.

without doing too much damage to civilian populations.

I've seen far too many confessions of deliberate targeting of children, as well as really nasty salami-slicing of exactly who counts as a civilian. I don't believe this is what Israel was doing, and neither do the Israelis if you read hebrew media sources rather than english ones.

Having weak and marginal Jews in your community that paid the dhimmi tax and that you could coerce the beautiful daughters into Islam is nothing like brotherhood, unless you want to tell me that the European ghettos were similar exemplars of tolerance and understanding. The Jews don't want to be dhimmi. No one wants to be a non-Muslim subject in a Islamic country if they can help it. Even the most tolerant Palestinian wants the Jews to live in a box outside of the holy places and be milked for taxes by the bridge troll.

I'm sorry, but your historical read is just wrong. The leftist perspective is simply delusional: too focused, as it were, in the splinters in others eyes to mind the logs in theirs. Your romanticization of Muslim tolerance is historical revisionism at best.

Having weak and marginal Jews in your community that paid the dhimmi tax and that you could coerce the beautiful daughters into Islam is nothing like brotherhood,

How much do you know about Jewish life in Palestine or the muslim world prior to Israel? Who was in charge of the government during the Jewish Golden Age?

The Jews don't want to be dhimmi. No one wants to be a non-Muslim subject in a Islamic country if they can help it.

Do you think the Palestinians want to be non-Jewish subjects in a Jewish country? Hell, I wouldn't want to be a non-Jewish subject in a Jewish country.

Even the most tolerant Palestinian wants the Jews to live in a box outside of the holy places and be milked for taxes by the bridge troll.

I think the last century of events has contributed rather heavily to negative attitudes towards jews amongst the Palestinians.

I'm sorry, but your historical read is just wrong. The leftist perspective is simply delusional: too focused, as it were, in the splinters in others eyes to mind the logs in theirs. Your romanticization of Muslim tolerance is historical revisionism at best.

You might want to check up on your history before you make accusations like that - there were multiple times in history when the Jews fled to Muslim countries because Christian lands persecuted them too heavily. The great antipathy between the Islamic world and the Jews in the modern world is in large part due to the establishment of the state of Israel, and there's a wide variety of historical Jewish sources talking about how Muslim rule was preferrable to Christian rule. While you're right that Muslim tolerance was a far cry from the multicultural societies of the modern west, by the standards of those historical periods that tolerance was actually real - the Christians were treating them far worse at the time, and even some of the earliest Islamic documents (see the constitution of Medina) mention this shared connection with the Jews.

You're not beating the logs-in-eyes allegations. None of anything you said would reflect on how Arabs would treat Jews in a hypothetical one-state solution. The evidence we do have is from the expulsion of Mizrahim from all Arab countries to Israel - a pogrom you blame on Zionism. But they didn't do anything for Israel. They were completely innocent in the matter, but they were expelled and had their property confiscated anyway.

That was, undeniably, ethnic cleansing at the least. Genocide, if you stretch it. And you deny it so pithily, with a single sentence. As if the actions of Jews in Judea and Samaria reflected upon them as a whole.

Why should I trust you accusing Israel of genocide when you downplay the Arab one?

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Exactly. Most of the peaceful era was with a relatively tiny population, the local arabs having fuck all control of their own composition due to the Ottoman empire (which was relatively peaceful so long as you paid the Dhimmi). The history of dominant muslim populations treatment of Religious minorities in the region trends a lot closer to an effective genocide than Israel somehow barely being able to make a dent in the Palestinian population over decades of supremacy.

see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver

"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

... which they deployed over the course of two entire years, as opposed to all of that explosive power being released in one go. And the death toll in that period was between a quarter* and three-fifths** of the death toll of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, making it abundantly clear that the primary function of all this explosive ordnance was not the taking of human life for its own sake, but the destruction of Hamas's tunnel network.

I'm baffled as to how you expect me to be horrified by this metric.

*Assuming a death toll of 246k in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a death toll of 63k in Gaza.

**Assuming a death toll of 150k in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a death toll of 90k in Gaza

"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

I've actually already posted and discussed this particular story on the motte with multiple people - my apologies for assuming that this was just commonly accepted knowledge.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl

making it abundantly clear that the primary function of all this explosive ordnance was not the taking of human life for its own sake, but the destruction of Hamas's tunnel network.

Actually it doesn't make that clear at all - and if that's the case, then the IDF was actually just extremely incompetent, given that the tunnels are still there and they're making noises about how important it is that they be let in to clear out the tunnels. They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals, and there are more amputee children in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. If that was the goal then the IDF is incredibly incompetent - but they've demonstrated enough competence elsewhere that I just can't accept the claim that this was to destroy the tunnels.

I'm baffled as to how you expect me to be horrified by this metric.

Horrified? I'm not expecting that at all. You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back. But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.

They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals

If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.

You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back.

When did I say that?

But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.

How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?

If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.

They didn't. Israel lied and just blew them all up anyway - I haven't seen any confirmation that these hospitals were actually terror bases. Rather, I've seen evidence that the fancy visuals they used to tell people those hospitals were terror bases were largely manufactured out of videogame assets https://www.972mag.com/israeli-army-3d-propaganda-animations/

When did I say that?

My apologies! My posts have been so popular and generated so many replies I didn't realise you weren't actually the person I was replying to.

How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?

Well, first of all, I simply wouldn't institute apartheid - I'd give the Palestinians equal rights and full franchise, giving them an actual path to peaceful and shared co-existence, giving them a stake in a shared society that could lead to mutual success. But assuming that's out of the question because my government coalition is full of bloodthirsty ethnonationalists and if I resign I'll just get killed... I'd either flee the country or kill myself rather than take part.

But if I had to prosecute it... I would implement incredibly rigorous conduct rules and make sure that the IDF became the most ethical and well-behaved army in the world. I'd make sure that there's zero opportunity for hostile propaganda, fill the waves with stories about our brave soldiers helping rescue people from dangerous conditions and improving their lives. Be as brutal as you want with the people actually taking up arms, deploy drones to the tunnels etc... but guerilla forces can only operate with the help and assistance of the people around them. Public perception and reputation is incredibly important to Israel and I don't think the country is sustainable without support from the west - so I'd make sure that whatever I did, there wouldn't be gigantic protest movements against my country all over the world.

I'd make sure that whatever I did, there wouldn't be gigantic protest movements against my country all over the world.

Your phrasing is very telling. Whatever I did. Because I really do get the distinct impression that whatever Israel does, people will be condemning it.

The gigantic protest movements against the country in question had begun in earnest less than a week after October 7th, well before Israel even had the opportunity to commit any war crimes. In New York, there were protests and calls to "globalise the intifada" literally the day after. (The less said about the people at these protests chanting "Allahu akbar" and "gas the Jews", the better.)

Call me crazy, but it kind of seems like at least a significant proportion of these protests have nothing to do with how Israel's military conducts itself, and more to do with the fact that Israel exists at all.

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They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Having better weapons makes you the bad guy? When the Americans fought Nazi Germany, the Americans had way more bombs and planes than the Germans did. Does that mean the Americans were big meanies, or does it mean the Nazis shouldn't have picked a fight they couldn't win?

Palestine supporters do this all the time, and it's never persuasive. Israel fires more bombs, Israel kills more people, as if these are bad things to do in a war. Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.

Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet! How can you set the bar for too many casualties in a war below the number required to win? You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

Having better weapons makes you the bad guy?

No, that's not the point being made.

Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.

Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?

I don't think that argument would convince you to support the nazis, and it isn't going to convince me to support the Israelis.

Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet!

If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?

You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

My position, which I have stated on here, remains that there should be a single state solution which includes the Israelis and Palestinians both.

Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?

The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.

If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?

If they believe that then they're simply wrong. If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time. Ergo, they don't want to. Given that recent history suggests that every Palestinian attack on Israel is followed by an immediate upswing in Palestinian deaths, it is not clear to me how this course of action prevents the Israelis from wiping them out.

If wiping out is on the table, it seems clear to me that starting pointless wars over and over again for decades can only increase its likelihood. If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.

The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.

That is in fact the point of my argument. The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.

If they believe that then they're simply wrong.

Incorrect. Multiple high-ranking people in Israel and Israeli think-tanks have made it clear that they view the entirety of the region as being given to them by god, and that it should be an exclusively jewish homeland. The Palestinians aren't so stupid as to think nothing bad would happen to them when their homes become the exclusive homeland of another people!

If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time.

Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.

If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.

In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.

The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.

When I use the word 'attacked,' I do not refer to the crime of existing while being Jewish. I use the word 'attacked' to refer to that thing where you use guns and bombs to kill people.

If the Palestinians were there first (debatable), so what? The German gentiles were undeniably 'there' before the German Jews. Does that mean the German Jews were 'attacking' the German gentiles with their presence? No. By logical extension, the Israelis are not 'attacking' the Palestinians by existing in their vicinity.

On the other hand, last year the Palestinians launched a literal attack on Israel. Lots of people died. It started a war. Ring any bells?

Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.

Then why are you so concerned that the Palestinians will be 'wiped out'? Since you've just explained why it can't possibly happen regardless of what the Palestinians do, you yourself prove that Palestinian 'resistance' is just a waste of lives. By your own argument there will be no 'wiping out' so what are we even talking about?

In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.

wiped out and dispossessed

I see. When you say 'wiped out' you don't actually mean anyone will be killed. It's a kind of nonviolent 'wiping out' where people lose landownership in a dispute over whose ancestors stole what from whom, but continue living their lives without being bodily harmed in any way. This is one of those irregular verbs, you know, I'm buying a house, you're dispossessing the native population, he's committing genocide.

So in order to prevent the Jews from metaphorically 'wiping them out' (by existing nearby), the Palestinians must heroically resist (by massacring the Jews). I do not like this abuse of language.

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You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.

I feel like the definition of the term "proportionality" as a military/conflict term was one of the major casualties of this war, but I also don't think it matters. If Israel were to have shut down the Iron Dome, so more of its own civilians were being killed, those misusing the term proportionality wouldn't have changed to "well, now it's not genocide/war crimes because the Israeli deaths are closer in count to the Palestinian deaths", it would be "good, that's what they deserve for attacking Gaza." At least, among the die-hards, rather than the normie supporters who hear about a bad thing on social media and take their views/marching orders from it. They'd just go along with whatever the newest talking point was instead.

I feel like it might be a tad uncharitable to have said that, but I've never seen anyone change their mind when confronted with the text or context of the various laws and regulations that cover waging ethical and legal warfare.

I feel like the definition of the term "proportionality" as a military/conflict term was one of the major casualties of this war

"Proportionality" never meant that death counts had to be close or that an ineffective attack has to be met with an ineffective response. That's just something Palestine supporters claim or imply because it's useful for them. Proportionality means that the collateral damage of an attack has to be proportional to its military objective.

Yes. That's the point I was trying to get across. I believe we are in full agreement.

Has there ever been a Middle East deal what wasn't 'cautiously optimistic'. Things can pop off at any moment. There was a long stretch of peace following the death of Yasser Arafat, so who knows..

There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.

This led to some incredibly stupid discussions I've seen with both leftists and rightists assuming that the Machado selection was some sort of a woke Yass Queen finger in the eye towards Trump instead of doing just the barest amount of Googling to recognize that this was very much in the line with the Trump admin foreign policy goals, ie. getting rid of Maduro, which was then confirmed with Machado going out of her way to congratulate and give credit to Trump after the selection.

It’s clear that the Nobel committee for reasons of generic Nordic internationalist liberalism could not stomach giving it to Trump directly (think of the humiliation at parties!) but decided to give it to a Trump-aligned Venezuelan conservative and anti-communist as a kind of consolation and gesture, in that Trump could hardly say she absolutely didn’t deserve it.

There is a little bit of that but giving it to trump also seems very premature, especially given his other proclivities.

giving it to trump also seems very premature

Not least because it's awarded for deeds done before the year 2025. How exactly did Trump advance peace in 2024 when he wasn't even a president?

Yeah, I couldn't imagine them giving a nobel peace prize to a newly-elected president before he'd even done anything. That would be the scandal of the century.

It should have been (and in some ways was!) the scandal of the century. All the more reason such mistake (giving a US president an entirely premature Nobel peace prize) shouldn't be repeated.

Wake me up if Israel/Palestine stop killing each other for more than a few months! I think this is a case where Trump's approach of steamrolling Israel into accepting his terms worked well and good for him, but it also seems way too easy to be real. Also, it is somewhat difficult to evaluate Israel outside of the context of Ukraine, on which there has been no progress toward a peace that doesnt just reward Russia's initial invasion.

Of course, there's another reason why the Nobel committee would be adverse towards granting Trump Nobel right now - there's already a precedent of giving an US president a Nobel for practically nothing (sure, sure, cease-fire and all that, but it's still uncertain how well it holds and the decisionmaking process had already been going on for quite a period at that time) and then getting a lot of flack for it. For American conservatives, certainly, this might seem unfair with Obama and Trump being considered the opposites, but for practical purposes the rest of the world does often tend to consider them to belong to the same category - American presidents.

Some have also pointed out that the Machado decision is generally well in line with other recent Nobel Peace Price decisions - four out of five last years have seen the NPP being at least in part awarded to dissidents from American enemy countries (Dmitry Muratov from Russia in 2021, Ales Bialiatski from Belarus in 2022, Narges Mohammadi from Iran in 2023, Machado now.)

Yes - I was surprised that the line on MAGA Twitter was "Trump woz robbed" and not to congratulate Machado and make hay out of her anti-leftist status (which she was very much up for), possibly along with a call for Trump to be nominated next year for the Gaza ceasefire. (If it holds, he may have actually earned a Nobel Peace Prize. If it doesn't, given the history, he has definitely earned a Nobel Peace Prize).

Trump himself went for the pro-Machado approach, so I don't know why the number of Trump sycophants posting "Trump woz robbed" were doing it. Obvious candidate theories include King Canute's courtiers tier more-royalist-than-the-King competitive uber-sycophancy, back-channel co-ordination to give Trump himself plausible deniability that he was having a bitchfest by proxy about not winning it, and failure of the administration to co-ordinate with its supporters on MAGA Twitter.

I think the actual reason was that despite the fact Trump is ostensibly in charge and agitating for war with Venezuela, it is the exact opposite of what his base wants and voted for. "No more pointless foreign wars" was one of Trump's main selling points, so the Nobel going to someone who wants to start another pointless foreign war isn't actually seen as a good thing for Trump by his base, even if it is a "good thing" for the wealthy ghouls who run the MIC and are actually in charge of US policy.

I think it was just an atavistic reaction, partly to the simple idea of it being the height of wrongness for the God-Emperor to not get what he wants at all times and partly to the "brown foid from a shithole country? Must be a woke commie!" kneejerk assumption.

If you put it to the same standard as Obama getting one for being Brown, charismatic and existing it is a bit of a robbery considering Trump's actually secured Peace in places

What will stop Netanyahu from attacking the Strip again? Now that there are no hostages he can just turn it into fine rubble. It's not like American military and intelligence aid to Israel will stop if he does that.

I mean most likely outcome is that the conflict will kick off again within a few months off whatever random terrorism Hamas can muster

What was stopping him before? Israel had already been accused numerous times of being callous to their hostages' safety, Hannibal Doctrine etc.

What was stopping him before?

Domestic political pressure to bring home as many live hostages as possible.

Yes, Israel had been accused of callousness from without, and Bibi doesn’t seem to care (see e.g. his “super Sparta” remarks). However, his legitimacy and that of his coalition are hanging by a thread and so he is sensitive to political considerations from within.

Thank you for the detailed, succinct write-up. I intended to make a top-level post using the presumptive end of the current Gaza conflict as a jumping-off point to ask a much broader question, namely:

What will the next Current Thing™ be?

In May of last year, I argued that media minutes, column inches and the forefronts of public consciousness follow a Pareto distribution, in which one issue clearly dominates at the expense of all others. In Ireland (and presumably a significant chunk of the Anglosphere and also the entire world), a list of these "primary" issues over the past decade or so looked as follows:

  • Brexit (June-November 2016; intermittently recurs as a secondary topic whenever there's a lull in one of the subsequent primary topics)
  • Donald Trump election and presidency (November 2016-March 2020)
  • Covid (March 2020-January 2022)
  • George Floyd/BLM protests (May 2020-September 2020) [I'm cheating a little bit; while the protests were ongoing they seemed to take up exactly as much space in the discourse as Covid, then after they died down Covid returned as the sole current thing)
  • Russia-Ukraine war (February 2022-October 2023)
  • Israel-Gaza war (October 2023-present)

I'm not saying the Israel-Palestine conflict is permanently over: as a cold conflict which periodically goes hot for 77 consecutive years, it would be very impressive indeed if the imminent cessation of hostilities represented a decisive end to the conflict. But I do think there's a very good chance that it stops being the "primary" issue that dominates the discourse, and retreats to the status it occupied prior to October 7th, 2023. Diehards will still emblazon their balconies with Palestine flags, you have not heard "from the river to the sea" for the last time, there will be periodic calls to boycott and divest — but it will go back to being a page 4 story. I strongly suspect that the era of copycat attacks on random Jewish civilians in First World nations has come to an end.

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be?

Playing the game on Easy Mode, and the answer might be that something which was a secondary issue for the last two years now jumps forward to become the pack leader in the Pareto distribution. Sometimes the easy, obvious answer is the correct one: activists had been complaining about police mistreatment of black Americans for years prior to the murder of George Floyd, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine could not have come as a complete surprise to anyone with even the most passing familiarity with the geopolitics of the region. In this framing, obvious candidates for the next Current Thing™ include AI, the ongoing debate about immigration from the global south, and Orange Man Bad. In the latter case, it's entirely possible that all of the "ceasefire now" people will quickly realise that their moment in the limelight has passed, exchange their keffiyehs for black bloc and get back to partying like it's 2017.

Playing the game on Hard Mode, the answer might be something completely unexpected. In January 2020, who among us could have foreseen that a virus in Wuhan (whether from a lab or a wet market) would determine the course of our lives for pretty much the duration of March 2020-December 2021? In this light, do any of you have candidates in mind for dark horse black swan events which could dominate the discourse for the next two years or so?

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be?

AI. I won't know what the exact angle will be until I see it, but it seems like a good bet it will be AI-related.

I don't think that the Israel issue is over - even though the focus might change away from Palestine, my money on the next major issue in US politics is the US-Israel relationship. The current arrangement isn't sustainable, and the polling I've seen suggests that a majority of Americans want AIPAC and Israel brought to heel. There's no way this particular milk gets unspilled, and none of the normies who supported Palestine because it was the Current Thing are going to forget what they saw Zionists and those funded by them do. The activists are already hard at work on projects like the Hind Rajab foundation and other efforts to make sure the world does not forget what Israel did. The outsize influence of Israel over western governments is being pulled into the spotlight all over the world, and the consequences of that conflict have in no way finished playing themselves out. Given that Israel is potentially going to be restarting the conflict with Iran and drawing the US in to that fight as well, I don't think this particular issue is going to leave "current thing" status barring some other major event (AGI getting achieved, climate disaster, another pandemic, another war, etc).

Well, for my money the Current Thing at the moment is the hot war in Gaza. So assuming that specific war ends and stops being the Current Thing, my question is what will be the next Current Thing other than the hot war in Gaza.

Personally, I am sceptical that "the relationship between the US and Israel" will become the thing that everyone in the Anglosphere is talking about in the way that e.g. the conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, BLM and Covid were. Even if a majority of Americans want something (such as AIPAC being brought to heel), that doesn't mean it'll be the thing that everyone is talking about (indeed, per the toxoplasma criterion, controversial things get discussed more than things about which there is widespread agreement).

none of the normies who supported Palestine because it was the Current Thing are going to forget what they saw Zionists and those funded by them do

I think you greatly overestimate the staying power of Current Things and the degree of emotional investment normies hold in them. I think that, by Christmas, an absolute majority of normies will have completely forgotten about the "genocide" they spent two years performatively condemning. In the US, Google searches for "Black Lives Matter" peaked in June 2020 and had fallen to 6% of the peak by December. Of the people who posted a black square on their Instagrams in the summer of 2020, what proportion of them do you think could name an unarmed black person killed by a police officer since George Floyd? Of the people calling for others to mask up and calling the unvaccinated "plague rats", I suspect that a majority of them believe that literally no one has died of Covid since the lockdowns ended. Out of sight, out of mind.

Think about how much the average American (even the average Democratic-voting American) cared about the Palestinian cause before October 7th, 2023. By January, I think they'll have regressed to the historical mean. Expecting anything else is almost certainly the product of wishful thinking.

Yeah but on the other hand I'd expect the majority of BLM people wouldn't have really changed their minds on the underlying subject, just buried it underneath other issues in terms of primacy.

I disagree. I suspect most of the people loudly chanting "defund the police" in the summer of 2020 would be very embarrassed if you pointed that out to them five years later. And as for the people actually calling to abolish the police, forget it.

Data points: in June 2020, 34% of Americans supported defunding the police. Nine months later, that figure had fallen to 18%. By October 2021, only 15% of Americans wanted police departments defunded at all, of which 9% only wanted them defunded "a little" (Ctrl-F "a little").

In other words, at most one-sixth (probably more like one-twentieth) of the US are progressive diehards, and a further sixth (or perhaps a quarter) will pretend to be progressive diehards so long as they think it's socially advantageous to do so.

If by "change their minds on the underlying subject" you mean "most BLM people think it's bad when the police kill unarmed black people who are not resisting arrest" — that was never the part of the movement that was under dispute. Even MAGA types agreed that this was bad. Even Bill O'Reilly was horrified by the Eric Garner case.

Don't forget "#MeToo" (October 2017 - ~January 2018)

True.

It would be nice if it was the social media digital id thing all the five eyes countries are currently doing to try to ensnare the US and enforce their social media policies.

Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be? ... Playing the game on Easy Mode, and the answer might be that something which was a secondary issue for the last two years now jumps forward to become the pack leader in the Pareto distribution.

Immigration is the duh example, and I'd expect that we'll continue to see a parade of real and imagined oversteps by the Trump admin, along with real and imagined bad behaviors by protestors or state governments in response.

On this side, I think you're going to see trans stuff become much more prominent, quickly. Republicans see a lot of options as 80-20 issues, and a large part of the Dem activist branch isn't willing to Sister Souljah even the clearest nutjobs. But a lot of the political activists have very strong opinions and/or investments in this matter, they've got a massive amount of logistical and big corp support, and there's a lot of things that look like low-hanging fruit to social conservatives that are either hard problems or unacceptable compromises to even moderate Dems.

From the other direction, I expect that we'll have a Mass Casuality Gun Incident (a la Los Vegas) or targeted assassination (... that Dems care about, a la Giffords), and gun control will show up as a major political discussion again. There's a lot of Dems and self-described moderates that are absolutely sure they've got a vast majority of the population on their side, here, and they just need the right salience/terms, and while some of that reflects badly-run poll manipulation and huffing their own farts, it genuinely is a space that a lot of Republicans shoot their own feet.

In this light, do any of you have candidates in mind for dark horse black swan events which could dominate the discourse for the next two years or so?

Serious domestic infrastructure attacks by a coordinated and uncaught adversary. We've seen them in warfront environments, a few nutjobs using them for publicity, and a few dry runs (aka Metcalf) by uncaught (and thus presumably serious) actors, and maybe some arguable cases (aka Florida Oranges), but there's Moore's Law of Mad Science reasons to suspect it to hit in the next ten years. It's bad when 'someone kills dozens at multiple subway stations and gets away with it' is the optimistic version of the problem, but the pessimistic one is much worse, and either version will have obvious direct culture war ramifications as increasingly broad conspiracy theories drop. More critically, it will also have a ton of 'obvious' and wildly contradictory solutions with large-scale impact on the innocent.

Immigration enforcement/concern about trump authoritarianism(real or not, people are worried about it).

Does the Charlie Kirk thing have legs? It's been the Current Thing in our newspapers since before the body was cold.

It might be a local Current Thing in the US for some time to come, but it didn't seem to get much traction in the wider Anglosphere. In Ireland, people had already stopped talking about it by the following week.

In the UK, according to Google Trends, searches for his name peaked the day he was killed and had fallen to one-fifth of their peak by September 13th. Numbers for Ireland, Canada and Australia are practically identical.

I think most the responses here are taking “Current Thing” to mean something like “biggest issue”, but I disagree. To me the Current Thing is what normie women put in their instagram bio. Palestine, Ukraine, BLM, those were current things. The AI bubble deflating will simply never be the current thing no matter how earthshattering it is

You're absolutely right, I didn't mean "the most important issue facing the world right now". I simply meant "the issue that everyone is talking about", regardless of its importance.

A secondary issue that's been smoldering in the background for sure, my guesses from most to least likely:

  1. The economy and the job market, even the out of touch boomers are starting to notice prices just keep going up and their grandkids with a fresh college degree can't get a job no matter how many times they tell them to walk in with a firm handshake and a can-do attitude.

  2. The AI bubble deflating, even if the bet pays off in the end the rate of cash burn is insane at current revenues. I expect it to at least take a major haircut possibly causing a cascading panic pullback when investments slow down and timelines extend.

  3. Trump rapidly and obviously declines physically/mentally like Biden.

  4. Republicans do something truly insane like massive election interference or rejecting midterm results if Democrats are making big gains.

Mass riots over some ICE injustice. In the leadup to George Floyd you could tell the media was agitating for it with Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, it took them about six months of sustained efforts to get the temperature high enough. The media has certainly been trying with ICE, but until somebody gets shot on camera I don’t think they’ll get much traction. They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though

They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though

I have a hard time imagining the whole Black Bodies, People of Color, Black-owned Businesses, Defund the Police thing coming back in full force; we're supposed to be over peak woke. I'd like to believe normies got a little sick of it.

I don't think this is likely. There's definitely agitating for it, but having those sorts of riots depends on the authorities tolerating them, and if it happens Trump is going to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the National Guard before the relevant Federal judge even wakes up.

I can definitely envision nationwide anti-ICE protests in the same ballpark as 2020 BLM next year.

Are you serious that there have been no domestic Irish issues that were the Current Thing in Ireland at any point in the last decade? (I agree Brexit and COVID had pretty large domestic impacts, such that being the Current Thing in Ireland is reasonable).

Domestic issues that have been the Current Thing in the UK over that time period include Brexit (obviously), COVID (obviously), ongoing uncovering of cold case paedo scandals, Partygate, Trussonomics, and small boat immigration.

I may have exaggerated slightly. Prior to Covid, the gay marriage referendum was the thing everyone in Ireland was talking about for the first half of 2015 and several months prior. The campaign to legalise abortion via constitutional amendment was likewise a really big deal for several years prior to its successful legalisation in 2018, occupying discussions almost as much as Brexit and Orange Man Bad (Irish people would put "Repeal the 8th" in their Instagram or Tinder bios, and plain black sweaters with the word "REPEAL" emblazoned on them in all caps sold in their tens of thousands). One sometimes gets the impression that progressive politicians and activists in Ireland were victims of their own success: after both gay marriage and abortion were legalised with massive public mandates, they found themselves at a bit of a loss for what to do next, hence their eagerness to lend their support for foreign causes like Ukraine and Gaza. Neither nebulously-defined "trans rights", nor farcical efforts to portray Black Lives Matter as a movement which has the slightest relevance to Irish politics, scratch quite the same itch. The campaign to amend the Irish constitution to remove any reference to "marriage" or "mothers" was a resounding failure, being rejected even by many who consider themselves progressive. Likewise the so-called "hate speech bill", which was never put to a public vote but which was so controversial that it was shelved.

Other than those two, in the linked post, I listed some domestic Irish issues which were the Current Thing in Ireland — but, as a rule, only for the duration of a single news cycle. For a few weeks in January 2022, everyone was talking about the murder of Ashling Murphy, then promptly forgot about it as soon as her killer was arrested, and immediately started talking obsessively about Ukraine for the next twenty months.

Looking back over the past two years, I sincerely cannot think of any domestic Irish event or issue which captured the public's imagination (or had nearly as much staying power) as much as the conflict in Gaza has. There have been literally hundreds of protests against Israel across the country; both our prime minister and President have weighed in on the conflict several times, as has virtually every recently-minted Irish celebrity (and some less recently minted); our government are considering passing a bill which would make it a criminal offense to do business with certain Israeli firms and so on and so forth. The only domestic issues which even came close to this level of omnipresence were a) the ongoing debate about immigration, and by extension the anti-immigration riots in Dublin in November 2023; and b) the civil rape trial against Conor McGregor, which everyone was talking about from the tail end of last year and early this year.

I do note that the main article currently on the English language section of Yomiuri, a Japanese paper, is about Gaza.

The Palestine situation is not over. Israel is continuing to oppress Christians, is continuing to occupy parts of the west bank, is continuing its war in Syria and is continuing its meddling in other country's policies. AIPAC's absurd meddling hasn't gone away. The US is still wasting billions and billions on Israeli interests in the middle east and Israel is still making it hard for refugees to return from Europe.

  • -12

Israel is continuing to oppress Christians

Can we please proactively provide evidence for inflammatory claims? Or at least a clear explanation of what manner of oppression is occurring?

I know public proselytizing is illegal in Israel. I suppose the claimed oppression is something far harsher than that.

Firing tank shells into Churches, backing jihadists in Syria and occupying Christian territory.

This interview with Tucker is a good intro

Firing tank shells into Churches

That is actually oppression. If done intentionally and regularly.

On July 17, 2025, part of an Israeli tank shell hit the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military expressed regret for the incident and launched an investigation. On July 23, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that the church was "accidentally hit due to an unintentional deviation of munitions" during operational activity.

Okay. So a one-off accident. The actual definition of collateral damage. If anyone is ever going to fire a tank gun or drop a bomb, then there will be some failure rate in targeting. An accident is not what I would call oppression.

Googling more I see other collateral damage examples. A church water tank is broken while the Israelis battle jihadists, etc. The expected occasional screw up when firing tanks and missile striking urban regions. Regrettable, but not oppression.

occupying Christian territory

Between the alternatives of Jewish Israeli control or Palestinian jihadist Islamic control, there's no "Christian territory" under discussion. I get that the small Christian minority is in a tough spot. They don't have territory. If the crusades had turned out differently we'd be meaningfully discussing "Christian territory" in the region. But we aren't.

backing jihadists in Syria

Wisely arming non-jihadist rebel factions in Syria in order to counter Iranian influence. Not that Christians would flourish if Iranian-backed jihadist rebel factions got the upper hand. Arming the mildest rebels as a counter against the Islamist extremists is not oppressing Christians.

Israël seems to have a history of backing credible shots at a Christian state(eg the Maronites), but doesn’t treat Christian’s in its territory any better than other Arabs. This means that there is discrimination against Christian’s in Israël- but Arab Christian’s are one of the world’s genuine high-IQ groups, so they still do very well.

Firing tank shells into Churches

From what I can gather it was a fragment of a single tank shell which struck a single church by mistake. Your hyperbolic condemnation of every single thing Israel does is counterproductive.

I explicitly stated that I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict will come to a complete end any time soon, so I don't know why you're pointing that out. It doesn't seem like a productive contribution to the discussion.

Environmentalism vs Reindustrialzation in the US. For Military purposes we need to reshore rare earth refinement. This will undoubtedly lead to some desert in Nevada getting radiated and risk the extinction of some heretofore undiscovered species of jackalope.

Alternatively, bringing freedom and democracy to Venezuela. The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner was practically begging Trump for it.

Reindustrialization would inevitably entail giving well-paying jobs to universally reviled toxic smelly dudebros. We need to keep that in mind.

You mean the guys who drive pick up trucks and already destroy the environment with their capitalist spending habits? Guys like those will turn Nevada into even more of a wasteland? Anger! Let the culture war commence!

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