This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is actually extremely credible - have you heard of the Sde Taiman rape protests? Sexual abuse and humiliation is a well-attested and confirmed feature of Israeli incarceration, to the point that when prison guards are arrested for rape there are pro-rapist protests held to ensure they can continue to rape prisoners. Government ministers referred to the rapists as "our best heroes" and led efforts to ensure they were set free. The statistics we have regarding sexual abuse of foreign women in Israel are pretty nasty too - https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/israel-a-new-report-reveals-100-of-thai-agricultural-workers-were-sexually-assaulted/
I don't feel like it is stretching the bounds of credibility to say that a country which sexually abused 100% of their female foreign agricultural workers and had protests to protect their ability to rape prisoners would have sexually abused a female prisoner. For the record, I don't think they rape because they're idiots, but because they believe they are immune from consequences (and for many of them, that's been true so far).
You don't need to say it twice - your comment has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand and no relation to the story itself. This doesn't even reach the level of a counterargument, and even if I simply accept your claims it doesn't refute my point at all. I can understand not wanting to read, but next time please just say that instead of pretending to engage with the argument.
...what exactly makes starving children more morally acceptable if they were born with a genetic disease? The actual starving isn't in question at all, and it has been an explicit Israeli policy going back decades. We can even go back to 2006 when an advisor to the Israeli PM spoke about how they were planning on putting the Gazans on a "diet" by reducing the food they allow in.
You can say it all you want, it ain't. Even if the Israelis were the ogres you claim, it wouldn't be credible that they'd mistreat someone as visible and with friends as powerful as Greta Thunberg.
I found the original report this claim supposedly comes from. It has few statistics and says basically nothing at all (it doesn't even make that claim).
The child wasn't starving; its appearance was due to the disease. And yes, the actual starving is in question.
She has come out and directly, unequivocally claimed that they mistreated her - and nothing happened. Who exactly is this mysterious power that will punish Israel for sexually assaulting an autistic girl who is widely mocked and insulted by the conservatives who are already firmly committed zionists? I don't understand why you think they'd be afraid of mistreating her when she has made the exact same claims she would have made if they actually did assault her and there have been no consequences whatsoever beyond me mocking antisemitic rightwingers who made sexualised jokes about her by saying their behavior is spiritually Israeli.
Have you seen the photos? Do you really want to claim that cerebral palsy is responsible for the appearance of Yazan's corpse? Here's a photo of someone in the west who has cerebral palsy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJ_Mitte#/media/File:RJ_Mitte_by_Gage_Skidmore_3.jpg and here's the photo of Yazan's corpse after he died of starvation https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/Death_of_Yazan_al-Kafarneh.jpg
Are you really going to tell me that the same condition which RJ Mitte has is responsible for the conditions seen in Yazan's corpse? If you've got an expert who can explain how cerebral palsy lead to that, I'm all ears. I've known people with cerebral palsy in real life, and I have never seen them looking like that.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/29/nx-s1-5483520/gaza-famine-hunger
This was from July 29 - how exactly do you have 20 000 children with acute malnutition and a surge in hunger-related deaths among children without a famine? If there's no starvation and famine, why were Palestinians so desperate to go to aid distribution sites run by the GHF who gunned them down for trying? Why is every major international body warning about the famine in Gaza? Even when I take a dispassionate look at the evidence, I can't see how you can possibly claim that the starvation is even in question let alone fictional. It was official Israeli policy for decades!
Edited because I accidentally deleted a paragraph in my post and didn't realise it:
This isn't the report that the claim comes from - it cites the report that the claim comes from, but the link is now broken. When I checked it at the time the link was functional, but that was quite some time ago and I don't have any archives. Nobody at the time of publication made this objection anywhere, and the rest of the report is really nasty as well - this objection doesn't really damage the point at all even if we just assume that the number wasn't 100%.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link