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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26696 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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No specific news item for this culture war post, but perusing the comments on the various Iran war takes, I'm consistently baffled by people's attitudes towards Israel that I think are willfully uncharitable and blind to the history of the Middle East in general.

  1. First, there's this idea that Israel is the primary/principle cause of all instability in the region, and that if we suddenly removed all the Jews and gave back the land to the Palestinians, we would have peace. This is absurd. The violence in Lebanon between shiites/sunnis/christians, the question of the Kurds, and the Sunni/Shiite Cold (I guess hot now) war are all conflicts that have their origins long before the founding of Israel. Heck if Israel wasn't there to focus hatred on, the Arabs would probably fight among themselves even more.

  2. Secondly, it's extremely impractical, if not impossible to remove 6 million Jews from land they've now lived on for (at least) three generations. A second Nakba to correct for the first Nakba doesn't exactly seem just to me, and it's not like many of those Jews can actually go back to where they were from before emigrating to Israel. The Arab countries forcibly expelled all Sephardic Jews in 1948 after Israel won its independence (also weird how this was totally okay but Israel actions during the 1948 war are "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing". Israel also hasn't actually lost a war yet, and they won in 1948 without any outside help except for some weapons for the Czech Republic, so this would be an extremely hard sell to a population that really doesn't want to leave.

  3. Thirdly, it's not like Israel hasn't tried to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine question or with its neighbors. Rabin actually signed the Oslo accords (before he was assassinated) and it looked like the Palestinians would be able to move towards self governance. Unfortunately, every government the Palestinians have elected have made it their central platform to destroy Israel, so it's somewhat logical that Israel decided that they couldn't self-govern (similar logic to why Israel and Iran are fighting). When I was living in Israel in the summer of 2019 (not a Jew, just doing research), it looked this might be changing, but unfortunately October 2023 changed all that. In terms of its Arab neighbors, Israel has repeatedly given up territory for peace. Of course unfortunately neither Jordan nor Egypt want the West Bank/Gaza (and also refuse to treat second, third and even fourth generation Palestinian refuges as citizens).

  4. Fourthly, there's a (somewhat true) idea that Israel has an outsized influence in US politics. But the US also has an extremely outsized influence in Israeli politics. Up until the mid 1970s, Israel was heavily socialist country that had far more ties to the Soviet Union than the US wanted. Market liberalization similar to what happened under Reagen/Thatcher destroyed the Israeli Kibbutz system economically (among other things, I have a very long essay on my blog about this) that completely destroyed the Israeli left. Netenyahu is the logical result of this.

  5. Fifthly, the claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza seem to be greatly exaggerated and very selective when it comes to comparisons of other actual genocides going on in the world right now (Sudan). I've been hearing claims of genocide for at least ten years now, but somehow there are more Palestinians in Gaza now than there were then? If the Israelis are trying to genocide the Palestinians they're clearly not very good at it (might be more effective to give out birth control). Claims of apartheid are more fair, but are no different from how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries. Why the special criticism of Israel?

Maybe making a Jewish state in the Middle East wasn't a great idea. So what? We live in the world where that's been the case for nearly 80 years and it's not going away without another ethnic cleansing. Israel does cause a lot of chaos and conflict in the region, but 90% is in direct response to its neighbors wanting to destroy it and kill its entire population. Why is the answer to somehow endorse that, rather than admit that maybe its time for the Palestinians to give up claims to land they haven't lived on since WW2, and the population of the Middle East to accept (as their leaders by and large have) that Israel is here to stay.

If the Israelis are trying to genocide the Palestinians they're clearly not very good at it

I roughly calculated that, before the ceasefire, it would have taken the IDF over 100 years to kill everyone in Gaza, assuming no population growth. Which must be the least competent genocide in history, given that the IDF is a modern military and their targets are kettled into a tiny coastal strip.

https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

The first three conditions are already fulfilled. so the only relevant question left is whether Israel intends to destroy the Palestinians / views this current act as a stepping stone to get there or not.

Looking at Israeli actions in a modern context, the question is not whether they 'physically' could, since we know they could, but how a modern nation would go about genociding a population. Given a modern nation would understand that overtly killing a lot of people at once would garner a drastic response they could potentially not afford.

So if you had credible evidence that there was a great plan for something similar to 'lebensraum' in the area, and a population or political class with firm belief in a distinct and exclusive ethno supremacist identity, along with a healthy doze of otherizing rhetoric from public officials, then you certainly have a recipe.

That being said, I would not care if we use the word genocide or 'ethnic cleansing' or 'politically motivated mass murder on an industrial scale' to describe this. But I would want some reconciliation over the fact that one side is trying to amplify what is going on whilst another is trying to do the opposite.

The first three conditions are already fulfilled

The first two are met, but then they could also apply to literally any violence in any context whatsoever. The killing of Trayvon Martin was an act of genocide according to those definitions.

The third one:

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

If the Israeli government is 'deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Gazans', then why haven't they brought about their destruction in whole or in part? You yourself admit that they could inflict a genocide, and simultaneously claim that they want to commit a genocide, and yet somehow they haven't committed a genocide. They haven't even come close. The number of Gazans is higher now than it was before the war.

That being said, I would not care if we use the word genocide or 'ethnic cleansing' or 'politically motivated mass murder on an industrial scale' to describe this.

Words mean things. For the same reason that I'm opposed to the term 'white supremacism' shifting from what the KKK believed to disagreeing with Ta-Nehisi Coates. What's going on in the West Bank could reasonably be described as low-level ethnic cleansing, but nothing in the Holy Land could be described as genocide.

But I would want some reconciliation over the fact that one side is trying to amplify what is going on whilst another is trying to do the opposite.

All the more reason to try and describe things accurately instead jumping on the bandwagon of whoever has the most hysterical rhetoric.

If the Israeli government is 'deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Gazans', then why haven't they brought about their destruction in whole or in part?

I mentioned why in my comment:

Looking at Israeli actions in a modern context, the question is not whether they 'physically' could, since we know they could, but how a modern nation would go about genociding a population. Given a modern nation would understand that overtly killing a lot of people at once would garner a drastic response they could potentially not afford.

The argument being the only reason to do something like this is to kill the people there, force them out of the land, permanently disperse them and then take the land and eventually have no one left to make a claim to it as the dispersed population loses its identity and disappears.

You can already see the reasoning in comments here, to a lesser extent:

Why is the answer to somehow endorse that, rather than admit that maybe its time for the Palestinians to give up claims to land they haven't lived on since WW2

"Genocide" is commonly used without meaning total elimination. Not ideal for words to be vague, but hardly a new problem. Israelis were not single-mindedly going for total elimination.

"Genocide" is commonly used without meaning total elimination

Surely the term has to mean something stronger than 'lots of civilians died in a war'? Because if it doesn't, then every large war prior to (and including) WW2 was a genocidal war, as well as many afterwards.

There's a reason we talk about Hitler committing genocides against the Jews, Slavs and Romani, but not against the French, British and Americans, even though the Nazis bombed London and shelled French cities (and the Allies committed similar violence against German civilians).

Activists aren't using the word 'genocide' because it is a meaningful description of what is going on in Gaza. They're using it because it's the worst word they know.

Surely the term has to mean something stronger than 'lots of civilians died in a war'?

Activists aren't using the word 'genocide' because it is a meaningful description of what is going on in Gaza

Yes, it means something stronger then "lots of civilians were killed in a war", but not necessarily total elimination on a tight schedule. It can be used as a meaningful description for what is going on in Gaza, since Israelis seek more than military victory (neutered, maimed population, intentionally degraded conditions that make emigration more likely, both by push and pull). Fewer eyes on them, less qualms as demographics change, cover of a big war, and Israelis would go harder. All debatable, of course, and I don't care to, it's all been already said better than I can hope to.

My point was, no tight schedule does not completely defuse the accusation.

since Israelis seek more than military victory (neutered, maimed population, intentionally degraded conditions that make emigration more likely, both by push and pull)

I am rather skeptical of this claim, and would request evidence, except you also say:

All debatable, of course, and I don't care to

So be it.

Activists aren't using the word 'genocide' because it is a meaningful description of what is going on in Gaza. They're using it because it's the worst word they know.

Agreed. You could say that there is motte genocide and bailey genocide, motte feminism and bailey feminism; motte trafficking and bailey trafficking; etc.

Basically every word used by social justice types has a motte meaning and a bailey meaning.

I've yet to find a definition of "genocide" that includes the most recent round of the Gaza conflict, but excludes the US Civil War.

I believe at one point there were at <1 death per bomb dropped, which is... significant.

This reads like a fever dream.

As a foreword, I don't like reading quoted lines being rebutted one by one as it can drag on and become incoherent, but in this case there is sometimes so little argumentative weight within the paragraphs I think we can get away without it. But not everywhere.

  • 1

It is obviously absurd to think peace and prosperity for all will come if Israel were to vanish. Is this absurd belief popular? Not really, right? So who are we arguing against?

Heck if Israel wasn't there to focus hatred on, the Arabs would probably fight among themselves even more.

There's no evidence presented for this claim or rational given for why this would be the case. The opposite can just as easily be presented as equally plausible.

  • 2

Secondly, it's extremely impractical, if not impossible to remove 6 million Jews from land they've now lived on for (at least) three generations

Again, who is this directed towards? Is geociding every Palestinian a more practical solution? Probably not, so why not hash out what an actual practical solution might be?

  • 3

Rabin was assassinated by another Israeli. In what Wikipedia found remarkable enough to note to probably be the most successful political assassination in history. So what is the point here? What's the argument? Israel wanted peace, demonstrated by Rabin signing the Oslo accords. OK. But other factions in Israel were so against that signing that they killed Rabin. This assassination and the fact that the political landscape of the country moved away from the Oslo accords demonstrates what? That they still want peace?

I'm not stating this as a 'gotcha' proof of anything. A relevant portion might still have wanted peace. Just that your line of reasoning here is clearly going nowhere.

Unfortunately, every government the Palestinians have elected have made it their central platform to destroy Israel

This is not true. Who else signed the Oslo accords? Is that signing not an equal demonstration of wanting peace? The Palestinians didn't even assassinate their guy(written half jokingly). I hope this justifies my likening your post to a fever dream.

  • 4

What is the relevance of the US also having outsized influence in Israeli politics? Much of the criticism laid against Israel is by Americans who feel Israel has too much influence in their politics. Why would they have a problem with America having influence over Israel? There's no contradiction there. Again, where this is going? It just reads like a complete non-sequitur. Beyond that, surely we could reason why the US would have more influence in Israeli politics, given the power disparity, right? But that's a tangential argument.

Up until the mid 1970s, Israel was heavily socialist country that had far more ties to the Soviet Union than the US wanted.

So the US made a covert effort to subvert the naturally leftist state of Israel towards capitalism? The way I remember my history Israel came naturally towards the US as it became clear the Soviet Union wasn't completely ready to play ball with Zionist demands. Demonstrated in USSR support for Egypt and Syria. With increased tensions during the Suez Crisis, and with the USSR dropping all formal diplomatic contact after the Six Day War.

Am I completely off base here?

Netenyahu is the logical result of this.

Seems more like Israel had goals that could not align with the greater USSR vision of a somewhat united front against the west in the ME. Netanyahu is just as much a further expression of that impulse, rather than a consequence of some US ploy to win over Israel.

I feel point 5 has been adequately discussed in different comments.

In closing:

If this were a formal debate, I'd call what you are doing a Spread. Not so much with regards to the speed, but in that you are directing the debate towards a certain direction. My problem with your spread is that it's not going anywhere relevant. It's just a bunch of off ramps towards easy joo apologia that circumvent the meat and potatoes of a lot of criticism regarding Israel.

I find the idea that one genocide is bigger than the other is somehow capable of disqualifying the smaller one as a genocide as pretty facially ridiculous. As is the claim that genocide requires complete elimination of the targets or that somehow high birth rates also are disqualifying. This is not a genocide thread nor do I think it should become one, but you should do yourself a favor and don't include a bullet like #5 if you aren't going to be serious about it. The question of outsize attention to Israel is pretty self-evident despite this all, I think even the most strident pro-Palestine Westerners would probably even agree if pressed that Israel gets more political attention than you'd normally expect (for different reasons of course, but the point stands).

Now obviously I agree with your central thesis; I'm the one who believes in a sort of international statute of limitations, which is about 40-50 years, after which holding grudges is stupid and mutually harmful (most of the instigators are dead by then anyways and anyone in power now very rarely would have been in power then). In that light it's obviously dumb to think that Israel should just go away. And if you look within that window, Israel's efforts at peace have been much more lackluster. Unfortunately the spate of assassinations and other developments around the turn of the century are at least partially responsible. I still personally believe that despite a lack of goodwill all around for the last 2+ decades, it's incumbent on Israel as a nominally free democracy to 'be the bigger man' and at least gesture at a solution, but it feels like there isn't even lip service paid to the idea anymore.

It's worth noting that at least many of the liberals I know usually tend to blame the post-WWI-ish semi-arbitrary drawing of boundaries as the "original sin" of Middle East instability. As the argument goes, there were large pre-existing rivalries and grudges, etc. but because ignorant Western boundary-drawing ignored them, yet at the same time enforced them and gave them weight, these conflicts were nearly inevitable. This is, to be sure, at least a little ironic given some of these same people are very pro-integration including internationally, but 'I think everyone can get along in multicultural societies' isn't actually a core liberal belief, it's mostly just useful feel-good messaging that occasionally gets press-ganged into a political point. (Even some neoconservatives adopted a variant of it for a while there)

Anyways, I probably should spend more time looking for other countries, but for example this survey in Saudi Arabia last year found: 40/33/16/9 split in very negative/somewhat negative/somewhat positive/very positive attitudes toward Hamas. 41/19/27/11 for strongly/somewhat disagree/agree that "the Palestinians will be able to defeat Israel someday". Although with that said, attitudes toward normalization and stuff like the Abraham Accords are viewed very negatively still, they equally DGAF about Iran relations improving.

My point is that even the population in the region basically know Israel is here to stay even if they remain unhappy about it. Internet comments, once again, != reality

Overall a very solid comment. There is one particular point which I think actually goes a bit deeper into how most westerners view states/governments/counties, which I think is relevant to analyzing the middle east:

It's worth noting that at least many of the liberals I know usually tend to blame the post-WWI-ish semi-arbitrary drawing of boundaries as the "original sin" of Middle East instability. As the argument goes, there were large pre-existing rivalries and grudges, etc. but because ignorant Western boundary-drawing ignored them, yet at the same time enforced them and gave them weight, these conflicts were nearly inevitable. This is, to be sure, at least a little ironic given some of these same people are very pro-integration including internationally, but 'I think everyone can get along in multicultural societies' isn't actually a core liberal belief, it's mostly just useful feel-good messaging that occasionally gets press-ganged into a political point. (Even some neoconservatives adopted a variant of it for a while there)

I think an assumption of the liberal view, really the dominant implicit western view, is that states/countries should be commonwealths. By that, I mean states should represent both the desires of the population and act in the interests of the population. A clear implication of this view of what a country is is nationalism: if the government is supposed to represent the people, the people have to be a community/nation. This can be defined in different ways: ethnocultural nationalism in historic Germany is one way and civic nationalism in the US and France another way (simplifying things). There are other ways to define a nation as well, and most nations are a mix of definitions to a degree.

Popular sovereignty was historically not how most states worked. In general, the modern view that sovereignty came from the people started with the Atlantic Revolutions from 1775-1825. There were historic exceptions, such as many Greek city states and the Romans, but the Enlightenment is where the modern ideology proximately arrived. In both Christendom and the Islamic world, relevantly including the Ottomans, sovereignty came from god to the sovereign. The Sultan was just your boss, and unless you overthrew him that was that.

Ironically enough, this allowed a lot more cultural diversity than the commonwealth model gives. In the commonwealth model, since the nation is sovereign you have to define the nation and, to a greater or lesser extent, force everyone to identify with the nation and culturally adhere to certain national values. "We have made Italy, now we must make Italians." is a great quote about this. Same with the French eradicating their minority languages in the 1800s. If the Sultan/King is your boss, you don't need to go through those steps; just pledge loyalty to them, and you can identify/care about whomever you want. The millet system in the Ottoman empire was a great example of this; the different religions basically got to live in parallel societies, so long as they submitted to the Sultan.

This was the environment that most of the middle east came from. It went from loyalty to the sovereign, be it the Ottoman Sultan, Iranian Shah, or whomever, to trying to make commonwealths out of these states. The problem was simple: with few exceptions, the peoples of the new nations hated each other way more than they had any incentive to cooperate. While you got some 'successful' nation states, like Turkey and Iran, most states really are just some subset of the population, such as Saddam's tribesmen in Iraq or until recently Alawites in Syria, basically dominating the rest. Rhetoric aside, you have the old 'separate communities united by loyalty to the Sovereign' with the sovereign being a local potentate. I'll also note that the creates of the 'successful' nation states often involved horrific violence: Turkey being the obvious example.

Tying all of the above together, the liberals are correct that much of the middle east is an example if failed nation building. The issue with their viewpoint is that it assume the nation/commonwealth model is the best and universal model, when really that's not the case. Creating a nation is hard, involves forced conformity into the national ideal, and often involves pretty savage oppression and violence. Instead of a commonwealth government, maybe the better path would be trying to find the least offensive ersatz-king and promoting them would be the best way to promote the welfare of both middle easterners and those who deal with them. Nationalism/popular sovereignty actually demands a lot of a people, psychologically, materially, and socially, and for most of the middle east it seems the juice just ain't worth the squeeze.

This is a segue, but I think the lesson here also applies to the west to a degree. Many groups want to simultaneously tear down culturally the notion of a shared community, while still asking the inhabitants to consider each other as part of a shared community and act accordingly. I think this contradiction causes a lot of the political and social conflicts we see in the west today, although tbh wealth anesthetizes things over so it may remain a relatively minor deal.

Many groups want to simultaneously tear down culturally the notion of a shared community, while still asking the inhabitants to consider each other as part of a shared community and act accordingly.

Well, some wish to build a sentiment of worldwide community for the Human Race - the planet Earth as one big commonwealth, with countries and borders as an administrative tool not different from a country itself dividing itself up into Länder or counties or regions with varying degrees of local government.

You might think this is utopian, but it's not a contradiction - and I think this was genuinely the dream of many in the late 20th century, explicitly or implicitly, with the infrastructure of the EU and UN as steps towards implementing such a thing. The hope was that national identity would simply become irrelevant to fostering civic spirit as progress and globalization and the Internet built up a sentiment that we're all in this together. People would genuinely become citizens of the world in their hearts, and vote for the good of their countrymen as a special case of voting for the good of Homo sapiens in the same way that you vote for the good of your town as a special case of voting for the good of your country.

I think, then, that the current malaise results from resurgent (or simply stubbornly-not-fading-away-on-schedule) nationalist sentiment making itself known loudly enough in various parts of the world that what was once merely optimistic now looks genuinely unreachable in the short term.

Well, some wish to build a sentiment of worldwide community for the Human Race - the planet Earth as one big commonwealth, with countries and borders as an administrative tool not different from a country itself dividing itself up into Länder or counties or regions with varying degrees of local government.

I agree with the notion that all humans do owe each other some things. Off the top of my head, non-aggression and a degree of respect for one example. I this all national identities, both ethnic and civic, are contingent on history and convenience. I don't think a global identity is any more or any less invalid philosophically than a national identity from first principles. I think that internationalism has actually had a decent amount of success both materially, pax-Americana has been the best time to be alive in human history, and ethically, most people agree in the value of the international community to a greater or lesser extent. At the same time, I think nations are a Chesterton's fence that we should be careful about rapidly changing, now that they exist.

You might think this is utopian, but it's not a contradiction - and I think this was genuinely the dream of many in the late 20th century, explicitly or implicitly, with the infrastructure of the EU and UN as steps towards implementing such a thing. The hope was that national identity would simply become irrelevant to fostering civic spirit as progress and globalization and the Internet built up a sentiment that we're all in this together. People would genuinely become citizens of the world in their hearts, and vote for the good of their countrymen as a special case of voting for the good of Homo sapiens in the same way that you vote for the good of your town as a special case of voting for the good of your country.

I think, then, that the current malaise results from resurgent (or simply stubbornly-not-fading-away-on-schedule) nationalist sentiment making itself known loudly enough in various parts of the world that what was once merely optimistic now looks genuinely unreachable in the short term.

I think the problem comes as follows: what happens when the interests of yourself/your family/whatever relevant community you are a part of conflict with those of the nation or, in this case, the human race?

Ever single nation has had to deal with that question: there are always parts of the nation that get elevated and other parts that get shafted. It can be as personal as sacrificing your wellbeing in a war for that of a nation, or as abstract/community based as your language being suppressed like in the case of Occitan vs French or your religion being seen as seditious or semi-seditious such as in the Kulturkampf in Germany or Catholicism to many regimes in France. I think the recent surge of the populist right is less about a pro-active increase in national sentiment and more about subsets of different nations feeling culturally and/or economically shafted by the recent economic and social changes in their countries.

The reason I feel it's doomed is because a shared group identity, a "us", can only exist in a contrast against a "them", otherwise it's amorphous and fails to inspire. Which is why I believe a united earth will only realistically happen when there will be something else for it to be contrasted against, be it other human colonies or aliens.

Could the 'them' be Nature, which has beset us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys, struck down half of our children from the dawn of time until two centuries ago, and, if Charles Murray's observations are accurate, is an unrepentant racist to boot?

Human efforts to bring Nature to heel: arrogant hubris, or the Moral Equivalent of War?

I don’t understand your definition of a genocide. Genocide means an elimination of an entire race. If the population of a race is increasing in an area it’s not a genocide, or at least it’s a very bad one. What’s happening in Gaza looks very different from actual intentional genocides in the past, which involved deliberate mass murder of civilians. What the Israelis are doing looks much more like war, with a lowered tolerance for civilians casualties.

From what I've seen, IDF tactics have not been any more offensive than US WW2 tactics. One could make the argument that this war overall is immoral, or the overall strategy is needlessly extending it, and thus the civilians casualties are immoral since the war is unjust either wholly or partly. I think that's a serious argument which I'm not fully rejecting or accepting due to uncertainty.

While some Israeli leaders are talking pretty harshly, the actual conduct of the IDF is not that of a genocidal army. I'm not a fan of what I see as pro-Israeli interests distorting US policy, but I do sympathize with the Israelis since they are outnumbered in a very bad neighborhood and are dealing with a population, Palestinians, that due to both popular sympathies and the spoiler effect seem unwilling and incapable to actually stick to any halfway reasonable bargain.

I feel like I'm living in some parallel universe to posters here, but things coming out of the IDF recently look worse than Azeri conduct in Armenia a few years ago. I had to actively block all war accounts on Twitter after the recent "8 month baby torture video" which I don't think I've ever seen any military do, ever. Don't get me started on videos of beating up old people in literal, currently ongoing pogroms in the West Bank. Machine gunning down hundreds of civilians intentionally in Gaza etc. This happened along a steady stream of Israeli officials literally calling for the murder of their enemies children, btw. Calling this "talking pretty harshly" seems genuinely bewildering to me.

I feel like I'm living in some parallel universe to posters here, but things coming out of the IDF recently look worse than Azeri conduct in Armenia a few years ago. I had to actively block all war accounts on Twitter after the recent "8 month baby torture video" which I don't think I've ever seen any military do, ever. Don't get me started on videos of beating up old people in literal, currently ongoing pogroms in the West Bank. Machine gunning down hundreds of civilians intentionally in Gaza etc. This happened along a steady stream of Israeli officials literally calling for the murder of their enemies children, btw. Calling this "talking pretty harshly" seems genuinely bewildering to me.

I'm extremely skeptical of your claim. For starters, can you (1) post the videos of the IDF "machine gunning down hundreds of civillians intentionally in Gaza; and (2) specify exactly what you mean by "ongoing pogroms in the West Bank"

ignorant Western boundary-drawing

Ignorant? They knew exactly what they were doing. You know what's nice? When you have to pull out of somewhere, but you don't want it getting all strong and independent because you'd still like to exert influence over the area.

So, you set up lovely borders that incite ethnic/religious conflict and let it rip!

The USSR/Russians did the same with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The West also drew some odd boundaries in the West, post WWI, but the Treaty of Versailles was more a mess of conflicting priorities and petitions than it was "let's set up European ethnic/religious conflict!"

The Brits leaving Palestine was like the Americans leaving Afghanistan. We’d been through two gruelling wars, we under constant lethal attack from both Jewish (the Stern Gang) and (I think) Arabic terrorists who made it extremely clear they wanted us to get the hell out of there, and we did. The fact that the area is full of bloodthirsty maniacs isn’t our fault - it’s been like that since the Old Testament days and all we’d ever been able to do was keep a lid on it.

The USSR actually tried incredibly hard to create logical boundaries in Central Asia. They did not deliberately leave minorities places. But Soviet ethnographers did not always access groups accurately because of ignorance on their part and lack of national consciousness on the populations part. Or more commonly because these groups were all mixed together and it was impossible to draw clear lines. Regardless if you read the commission on nationalities (headed by one Joseph Stalin) they were not intentionally leaving minorities anywhere but rather a clean national delineation was just impossible. The jigsaw boundaries and enclaves and exclaves were an attempt to gerrymander clear nations where there were none.

As someone who has recently posted about Israel, I agree with your first and second point.

Regarding your third point, Rabin was a bit before my time, but he seemed like a decent guy. My problem with the present government of Israel can be summed up in that they seem to share Yigal Amir's regard for the Oslo accords and civil conduct.

Oct-7 showed that Hamas was pure evil. If Israel had decided to occupy Gaza and deny them the right to self-determination for a generation or two, I would have been fine with it. Instead, the IDF used bombs to go after Hamas with complete indifference to civilian casualties. Obviously they did not go for an Endloesung.

But apathy to civilian casualties is its own kind of evil, and they certainly had plenty of that. Killing 50 bystanders to get one commander might be acceptable if that immediately ends the conflict (e.g. the commander is Genghis Khan), but the IDF did accept that collateral damage ratios for minor victories which did not change the strategic landscape.

Likewise, we can debate if the IDF used hunger as a weapon in Gaza. I doubt that many Hamas members went hungry, and as you point out if their intent was genocide they did a terrible job of it.

However, I do believe that feeding hungry kids in Gaza -- whose government can not be trusted to do so because they very much prefer them killed by Israel to score propaganda points -- is a collective responsibility of the civilized world. I am sure that some food trucks were smuggling in weapons for Hamas. If the IDF wanted to sift through every pack of flour, I would understand that. But by simply stopping the trucks from entering Gaza altogether, Nethanyahu defected from civilization.

Hamas did not achieve any strategic objectives on Oct-7, nor was that ever their plan. Even if they managed to pull that off a hundred times, they would not make a dent in the Israeli population.

The path to Hamas victory is paved with the corpses of dead Gazan kids killed by the IDF, resulting in the loss of international support and isolation. Nethanyahu's government strode proudly along that path.

And I find Hamas strategy working on myself. I was very willing to stomach some dead kids while the IDF rid the world of Hamas, but what I got was long on the dead kids side and rather short on the wiping out Hamas side.

I would like to think that my attitude to Israel is based on their behavior. If the Troubles had flamed up again in 2023, and Boris Johnson had responded to the IRA killing a thousand protestants by killing 70k Catholics in Northern Ireland through bombs and deprivation, I would likewise stop caring about the fate of the UK as a state. (Obviously I am a utilitarian, so I care about the fates of humans anywhere, but currently I also consider the UK to be a net positive, and would support defending it if it was attacked by vikings or whatever.)

You are right that there are certainly worse regimes than Nethanyahu's in the world, but I would not feel obliged to defend Russia or Iran or Saudi Arabia either if they came under attack.

Nethanyahu's latest attempt to set the ME aflame together with Trump is basically just the icing on the cake at this point.

Hamas did not achieve any strategic objectives

I can't speak for them (or can I, maybe this is a Hamas leader shit posting account) but it seems like they did? Israeli to Arab government normalization deals/process got fucked and delayed, and it turned the people in the West way more against Israel than they were before. Israel was kind of losing control of the narrative before, and are totally losing it now.

If you don't care about the shocking amount of human suffering, which the leaders of Hamas clearly do not, then I'd imagine they'd consider the whole thing a rather pleasant strategic success.

Wait another 10-20 years, let Israel get lax (happens every time, it's human nature), use that time to dig some more tunnels, do it all again! And that'll cement Israel as a pariah state, especially because gen Z, who really don't like Israel, will be in many positions of power by then

It's like "mowing the grass" but the grass is actually... Mowing you?

My point is that the strategic objectives which Hamas achieved were indirect, and actually caused by Israeli retaliation. In that Hamas was tremendously successful. Basically, Nethanyahu did everything Hamas could hope for.

Oct-7 showed that Hamas was pure evil. If Israel had decided to occupy Gaza and deny them the right to self-determination for a generation or two, I would have been fine with it. Instead, the IDF used bombs to go after Hamas with complete indifference to civilian casualties. Obviously they did not go for an Endloesung.

But apathy to civilian casualties is its own kind of evil, and they certainly had plenty of that. Killing 50 bystanders to get one commander might be acceptable if that immediately ends the conflict (e.g. the commander is Genghis Khan), but the IDF did accept that collateral damage ratios for minor victories which did not change the strategic landscape.

Likewise, we can debate if the IDF used hunger as a weapon in Gaza. I doubt that many Hamas members went hungry, and as you point out if their intent was genocide they did a terrible job of it.

However, I do believe that feeding hungry kids in Gaza -- whose government can not be trusted to do so because they very much prefer them killed by Israel to score propaganda points -- is a collective responsibility of the civilized world. I am sure that some food trucks were smuggling in weapons for Hamas. If the IDF wanted to sift through every pack of flour, I would understand that. But by simply stopping the trucks from entering Gaza altogether, Nethanyahu defected from civilization.

I just don't see how you can hold these positions at the same time. Heck, later on you say:

The path to Hamas victory is paved with the corpses of dead Gazan kids killed by the IDF, resulting in the loss of international support and isolation. Nethanyahu's government strode proudly along that path.

You are letting yourself be tricked! Just like dont be tricked? The kind of occupation you are talking about would involve more violence and more casualties than the post 10/7 campaign Israel conducted. It would require brutal authoritarian suppression operations to have a chance of working. We are talking decades of Tienaman square for the whole Gaza strip, monitoring of all internet and phone traffic. Checkpoints every 6 blocks with stop and frisk for bombs & guns. Again for decades, and even then it would have a low chance of working? Why? Because while you and I agree Hamas is an evil organization, you know who disagrees? Supermajorities of Gazans. Hamas won the only election they ever had by a big margin, and all reliable polling indicates they would win again if fair elections were held. Gazans want total war with Israel, the only reason they dont get it is because of Israeli self-restraint.

I just don't see how you can hold these positions at the same time.

I don't see how you find those inconsistent.

Their points you quoted, in order and summarized:

  1. They think Hamas is awful, and also think Israel should try to fix this in a permanent (final, if you will) way than just breaking everything. We know that breaking everything has never fixed this conflict, because it's rapidly approaching it's 100th birthday.

  2. killing a bunch of civilians to kill enemy combatants in an unfortunate part of war, and their opinion is the IDF is a bit too comfortable with their enemy:civilian casualty ratio

  3. the IDF cutting off food to people who need food is an incredibly shitty move

  4. the IDF cutting off food to people who need food is an incredibly shitty move, and you shouldn't blame children for the sins of their parents. They didn't choose to be born in Gaza, and it's not like they can leave...

It would require brutal authoritarian suppression operations to have a chance of working. We are talking decades of Tienaman square for the whole Gaza strip, monitoring of all internet and phone traffic. Checkpoints every 6 blocks with stop and frisk for bombs & guns.

I genuinely believe this is a more compassionate move at this point. The Uyghurs obviously aren't having the best time, but it's a way better time than Gaza.

I genuinely believe this is a more compassionate move at this point.

Or, as Clausewitz put it,

Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.

This is a great quote and I love Clauswitz but I don't see the relevance here.

The IDF can win 100/100 wars against Gaza. They do! That's not their problem. The problem is there is literally no way to resolve this into a lasting peace without some light genocide (although given this isn't happening in France, we have to call it a "sparking ethnic cleansing")

Facts:

Neither side is willing to give an inch

Israel isn't going anywhere

Israel mogs every nation around it in terms of military power

Because of international norms regarding human rights, Israel can't make the Palestinians move away, which would actually solve this by ending the conflict.

So that's why I think doing some sort of Marshall plan + Uyghurs combo is the best way. The Gazans won't leave, Israel can't leave. So we need to stop both sides from chimping out. And until the Gazans aren't dirt poor, they'll have nothing to lose. And as long as they're allowed to educate their kids, they'll keep making more people willing to sacrifice their lives to pwn Isreal.

I know it's not a great solution, but it's not like anyone can do better lol

After several years of being a part of this website my position is that >90% of Israel-critical takes are straightforwardly motivated by antisemitism. Those that don't make direct references to Jews being evil and conniving etc. are almost universally either bad faith ("Israel is evil because they can't guarantee zero civilian deaths among their enemies"), quite obviously false ("The Muslim world would love America if not for Israel") or complete non-sequiturs ("Jews should never have been there to begin with!")

There are a number of issues on which I have different positions from most users on this site where I still feel I could fairly reasonably steelman the alternative point of view. The general attitude towards Israel here isn't one of them. I know it's trite to equate criticism of Israel (or "Anti-Zionism", which I think is a dumb concept in this day and age but I digress) with hatred of Jews, and on the left I think it's probably more due to general Third-Worldism than anything else, but on the Motte it's really the only explanation that makes any sense to me.

You're not wrong. I just don't think there are many good reasons to truly hate Israel, as it's a democratic country that generally respects human rights, in direct contrast to all of its hostile neighbours. (Like Bill Maher says, "one side is accused of genocide but doesn't do it, the other side actually would love to do it.") You can disagree with its politics, and hold it accountable when it crosses over the line (which it certainly has done occasionally - being constantly at war sucks). But I don't think the anti-Israel posters here are capable of that level of restraint - I've just seen too many barely-filtered rants about how the US is being controlled by their evil Israeli mind-control overlords.

I think it's more a result of the gaping hole here of anything resembling a mainstream liberal. There's plenty of non-anti-semitic anti-Israel people that exist, but this place is kinda warped.

There's plenty of non-anti-semitic anti-Israel people that exist, but this place is kinda warped.

I think third-worldism is the animating factor among those people (to be clear, I'm talking about politically engaged people, not normies).

I think third-worldism is the animating factor among those people

If by "third-worldism" you mean what I think you mean, I would say that this is is also a kind of anti-Semitism. In the same way some Leftist college professor hates white people, he also hates Jewish people and for pretty much the same reasons. It's more socially acceptable to openly express disdain for white people (anti-Semitism is typically disguised as anti-Zionism), but it's basically the same playbook: In any conflict between advanced people and primitive people, the Leftist sides with the primitive people, thereby (implicitly) claiming that he is morally superior to the advanced people.

The Arab countries forcibly expelled all Sephardic Jews in 1948 after Israel won its independence (also weird how this was totally okay but Israel actions during the 1948 war are "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing"

Not particularly more weird than the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after WWII, if you are willing to accept the founding of Israel as a great injustice.

This seems like a general problem with public opinion about conflicts everywhere - the disagreeing sides each have a long laundry list of grievances against each other and discount most of the respective other side's list, which seems shocking and insurmountable, but actually the two lists contain very few "morally independent variables": the same event is interpreted vastly differently depending on whether it is done by the "righteous" or the "unrighteous" side, and the initial determination of which side is which ultimately reduces to opinion about some trigger event (charitably; uncharitably, it just flows from tribal affiliation, and is later rationalised with whatever events are available).

Of course, the weight of latter "morally dependent" events does wind up killing the ability to see nuance even in the original trigger; see also LW? SSC? posts on "trapped priors". The Ukraine war is ultimately downstream at least from the gas transit scuffles in the early 2000s, which were objectively messy, but try to find people who don't have retrospective moral certainty about them now.

First, there's this idea that Israel is the primary/principle cause of all instability in the region, and that if we suddenly removed all the Jews and gave back the land to the Palestinians, we would have peace.

They aren't the cause of all instability but they certainly are the primary anchor that keeps American politicians dedicated to expend seemingly endless blood and treasure on pointless wars in the Middle East.

The US invaded Afghanistan because we had to do something over 9/11 and stayed there due to inertia. We invaded Iraq for oil and it was actually a strategic victory. The Syrian and Libyan interventions were Obama trying to spread liberalism.

Philip Zekilow, someone who would know more than anyone about the true motivations for the war, admitted it was just for Israel:

https://archive.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2004/0329israel.htm

Third. The unstated threat. And here I criticise the [Bush] administration a little, because the argument that they make over and over again is that this is about a threat to the United States. And then everybody says: ‘Show me an imminent threat from Iraq to America. Show me, why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?’ So I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is, and actually has been since 1990. It’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it’s not a popular sell.

We are replaying many of the soundbytes used for Iraq: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

  • seeking nuclear weapons

  • supports terrorism

  • practices terror against its own people

  • “possesses ballistic missiles”

Why is this narrative making the rounds? Yes, okay, Netanyahu and a few of his allies wrote articles supporting an Iraqi invasion, and Israel shared some intel with us, but there's also a pretty large body of evidence suggesting that a lot of Israelis (especially government officials as opposed to pure politicians) felt like it was a distraction from the 'true threat' of Iran, the Axis of Evil member they cared a lot more about. No one seriously believed that toppling Iraq would weaken Iran, after all. And as history proved this notion was indeed idiotic; Iran profited greatly from Saddam's downfall and Israel pretty directly suffered as well as Iran-sympathetic militias and religious groups gained greater control. On the whole there's really no good argument that Israel puppeteered us into Iraq.

Afghanistan? Sure, Israel supported it (happily). So did almost everyone though (at least in general). Other countries and their populations disagreed about how militaristic the response should be (and how quickly the US should have reached for that option), and certainly weren't as gleeful, but the notion that Israel effectually egged us on is extremely skimpy on evidence. In Afghanistan we had invoked Article 5 with NATO, had UN backing, had an obvious grievance, etc. and it's absurd to suggest Israel possibly could have meaningfully moved the needle there.

If Israel wanted to bring us to war with Iran the most, yet could only get us to invade Iraq at the least, then they bear a portion of responsibility for bringing us to war all the same. The reason it is “making the rounds” is because it is the assessment of impartial experts who have investigated the topic, for instance Mearsheimer’s the Israel Lobby, which articulates that the Israel Lobby was a critical element bringing us to war: https://appext.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=209

You can find their influence in contemporaneous reporting, where they sought to fabricate a connection between the anthrax attacks and Iraq: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-oct-27-mn-62270-story.html

Israeli intelligence officials also reportedly have been pushing the possibility of an Iraqi connection to the terrorist attacks. It could be in Israel’s security interests to see the U.S. take a more aggressive stance against Iraq.

Germany’s mass-circulation Bild newspaper Thursday quoted unidentified Israeli intelligence sources as saying Atta received anthrax spores from Iraqi agents in Prague.

We also have contemporaneous evidence of Israeli lobbyist groups promoting propaganda against Iraq before the war:

AIPAC did take positions and provided talking points for its members to lobby members of Congress on the Iraq War. It removed evidence of these activities from its website but Archive.org has the evidence, showing that AIPAC’s leadership is misleading journalists about support the group provided for the war and the bad intelligence justifying military action.

A “briefing book” for AIPAC’s membership and Congressional offices - viewable on Archive.org in snapshots from December, 22, 2001, until December 2004 — the period in which the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution was approved by Congress and the Iraq War began — argued in favor of regime change in Baghdad, in apparent contradiction to what AIPAC’s leadership claims.

The document said, “As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, any containment of Iraq will only be temporary until the next crisis or act of aggression.” That’s not the only example of AIPAC appearing to push for war. AIPAC’s newsletter, Near East Report, led with a lengthy “editor’s comments” on October 7, 2002, repeating the George W. Bush administration’s erroneous claim that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda and is “maintaining contact with the vile perpetrators of 9/11.”

FDD was founded in April 2001 as EMET (Hebrew for “truth”) “to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.” Clifford May, its founder, quickly went about pushing for war. In April 2002, he described Iran and Iraq as “terrorist-sponsoring regimes attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction.”

And in January 2002, May wrote, “That Saddam still has weapons of mass destruction cannot be seriously doubted,” in National Review Online.

According to Lawrence Wilkerson the chief of staff for Colin Powell, Mossad was in Douglas Feith’s office 24/7 in the lead up to the Iraq invasion (7:00), and was so influential at the Pentagon that Rumsfeld once reportedly complained that Mossad was running the whole office (7:30). Feith was the number three at the Pentagon and was once investigated for leaking classified information to Israel via AIPAC. Feith was responsible for fabricating the false intelligence about Iraq.

It’s the threat against Israel

I think this is a factor, but certainly not the only factor or even the biggest factor. Western nations have been getting involved in the sandbox for centuries before Israel came into existence. It's a place with oil resources and a travel route for a preposterous amount of commerce and a geography that lends itself to sectarian conflict. If israel was established in brazil or wherever else they were considering I think we'd still be seeing conflict in that region and I expect the US as hegemon would be involved.

uhh I think we would do this without Israel pretty readily because oil.

Secondly, it's extremely impractical, if not impossible to remove 6 million Jews from land they've now lived on for (at least) three generations.

Is it? The Israelis didn't seem to have much problem expelling the Palestinians from land they had inhabited for much longer.

The Palestinians left on the promise the Arabs would kill all the Jews and then they'd go back. Didn't work out so well. I don't see Israeli Jews falling for that.

This is one of those claims that not only conflicts with the facts on the ground but doesn't even really make sense on its face. Why would they need to leave for the "Arabs" (are Palestinians and Arabs different population now?) to kill the Jews? Wouldn't they stick around, participate in the genocide and partake of the loot?

If you're going to fire the halo rings it's better to be in a shield world.

Because no-one wants to get stuck in the middle of a war zone. Same reason there were refugee columns out of Belgium and northern France during the early days of WWI.

(are Palestinians and Arabs different population now?)

Non-Israeli Palestinians seem to be a generally hated (by other Arabs as well as by Israeli Jews) subpopulation of Arabs.

Well they aren't very productive citizens.

They produced a lot of unrest in Jordan and Egypt.

Don't forget Lebanon. The whole mess in the 1980s was caused by Palestinians.

You can describe any war refugee exodus like this. Most of Mariupol's population evacuated due to the war. Zelenskyy keeps talking about retaking Ukrainia territory. Does this mean that the refugees left on the promise that the Ukrainian army would kill all the Russians and then they'd go back?

More likely the refugees left on the grounds that whether the Ukranians ever recovered Mariupol or not, they'd be better off in Ukranian-controlled territory than Russian.

Arguably true for Palestinian refugees as well. There was no way to tell ahead of time that the Arabs remaining in territory conquered in 1948 would (eventually) be granted full citizenship in the State of Israel, but that Arabs remaining in territory conquered in 1967 would live the rest of their lives under military occupation or blockaded rump states.

That is not why they left.

A couple factors that make it much more difficult

  1. Israelis have the bomb.
  2. 6 million is a lot more than 750k, especially when almost every single person has significant military experience.
  3. Who's gonna do it? The Arabs? They've never won a war against the state of Israel. The West? Good luck dealing with the optics of destroying the only functional government in the Middle East to appease some Blue-haired leftists and Neo-nazis.

Israelis have the bomb.

6 million is a lot more than 750k, especially when almost every single person has significant military experience.

So did South Africa.

Who's gonna do it?

The US after the 2028 or 2032 election at the hands of an AOC, Mamdani, or Fuentes-like figure.

Imagine that instead of American carriers providing protection to Israel they instead imposed a Gaza-style blockade. Imagine that instead of paying Israel's neighbors to play nice they were instead paid to keep their borders closed. Imagine if the cargo planes full of munitions went to Israel's enemies instead. Imagine if, instead of providing veto protection from the UN, the US were a hostile force, imposing international sanctions and embargoes. Now imagine that an exception is made for outbound flights from Ben Gurion airport, so that Israeli Jews always have a golden bridge to escape across.

How long do you imagine Israel would last under such conditions? My guess is about a month.

How long do you imagine Israel would last under such conditions? My guess is about a month.

I'm pretty confident that the answer is "indefinitely." I think that Israel-haters don't really understand or appreciate what Israel could accomplish if its gloves came off.

Considerably longer than a month out of a combination of bloody-mindedness and their neighbors being incompetent at warfare

Getting the Jews to leave would be difficult. But the logistics of leaving would be trivial. But might makes right. They wanted their historical homeland. And to be honest most of the elites in the ME now like the Jews and find them as useful allies.

For Jewish wealth and ability to expand as a tribe there are likely better places for them to be. They could probably find better land in S America. Argentina doesn’t seem overpopulated. And legally their is an interesting provision in the Argentina constitution that would basically guarantee the right of Israel en masse to immigrate: Article 25 “The Federal Government shall encourage [or foster] European immigration; and it may not restrict, limit, or burden with any tax whatsoever the entry into Argentine territory of foreigners whose purpose is tilling the soil, improving industries, and introducing and teaching the sciences and the arts.”

European and good at science you say?

It would be much easier to find a place in Argentina to grow Israel to 50m people than in Israel.

European and good at science you say?

Among Israeli Jews, 45% are Mizrahi, who are about as European as the Arabs are. I'd hazard a guess that if I conducted a survey in which I showed respondents a photo of a Mizrahi Jew and a Palestinian Arab without telling them which was which, people would perform no better than chance at identifying them. 3% of Israeli Jews are Ethiopian. Less than half are Ashkenazi or Russian.

The idea that the Israel-Palestine conflict reduces to anything as simple as "white settler-colonialists oppressing brown people" is a ludicrous fantasy.

Correct. Sometimes we forgot that not all Jews are Ashkenazi. In America and in global affairs it’s always an Ashkenazi.

European and good at science you say?

"Israelis are European" is more a slur by leftists than it is truth.

It's funny because, arguably, the winning left-wing critique is that Israelis act like Middle-Easterners, which is unacceptable for a Western nation.

I though all DNA test on specifically Ashkenazi have shown 50% European DNA and they lived in Europe or Russia for the past 1000 years.

Calling them European would seem to be significantly factually correct. We aren’t going back to the old days where truth telling is a slur or racists.

But Ashkenazim are not a majority, or indeed plurality, of Israeli Jews.

Most recently study I see - Israel was 44% Ashkenazi and 8% mixed. So about half and shrinking. They were the founders and basically until today the only ones that matter in the country.

The Nakba is estimated to have expelled 750k Palestinians from their land i.e. 7.4% of the current total population of Israel. From a purely pragmatic, logistical perspective, expelling 10 million people is going to be a lot harder than expelling 750k people.

Also, rather importantly, the Nakba was (for the most part, albeit this is controversial) Palestinians fleeing their homes willingly because of the war, and then later being refused right of return after Israel's victory.

It is a lot messier to force people out of their homes when they do not wish to leave of their own volition.

There were some high profile massacres to, um, encourage, the others to leave. Terrorism, basically.

If America wished it would be absolutely trivial to make Israel a country in which nobody would ever want to live.

Is it? The Israelis didn't seem to have much problem expelling the Palestinians from land they had inhabited for much longer.

There is a myth that Palestinian Arabs are some kind of ancient people who was in the area for a long time. In reality, the majority of Palestinian Arabs are descendants of people who immigrated to modern day Israel from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. In large part due to economic activity spurred by early Zionists. That's why so many Palestinian Arabs have names like "Al-Masri" which means "Egyptian"

As far as expulsions go, those were limited to a few key areas. Which is why to this day Israel has a substantial Arab minority.

In any event, I think that by "impractical," what was meant that (1) the Jews in Israel will never voluntarily agree to it; and (2) they are sufficiently strong militarily that as a practical matter nobody can make them do it.

Palestinians have 2x the proportion of ancient Levantine DNA as Ashkenazi (European) Jews, who make up most of the Israeli population

Palestinians have 2x the proportion of ancient Levantine DNA as Ashkenazi (European) Jews,

The Levant includes all or part of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. This area was all part of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800s. So even if Palestinian Arabs have 100% Levantine DNA, it doesn't contradict my point: Most of the Palestinian Arabs moved to what's now Israel from other parts of the Ottoman Empire around the time of the early days of Zionism. That's why it's very common for them to have names like "Al-Masri" which means "Egypt."

who make up most of the Israeli population

I think this is inaccurate, I am pretty sure that Ashkenazim are a minority. I certainly agree that Ashkenazim lived in Europe for many generations before returning to Israel.

But the point is that the Palestinian Arabs are not some ancient people who has lived in the area of Israel since time immemorial. Rather, they are one of many many groups. The area has been conquered, invaded, settled, annexed, and lost probably dozens of times over the last few thousand years.

returning to Israel

So you're saying that the Eastern Euro Jews originated from Israel? Is there evidence for this?

Modern DNA studies strongly suggest that Ashkenazi Jews are descended patrilineally from Levantine Jews and matrilineally from Italians, likely local Roman women who were converted to Judaism by Jewish merchants and other emigrants from Palestine in the final centuries of the Western Roman Empire.

After the Empire collapsed they slowly migrated north, into Frankish lands, then the Rhineland, then slowly eastward over the following millennium, but there was relatively little intermarriage with natives through this time (or rather if and when there was, those people left the tribe and assimilated into the local gentile society). Modern ‘pure’ Ashkenazim (meaning those who don’t have recent non-Jewish ancestry due to intermarriage over the last 100 years or so, as many eg ex-Soviet Jews do) who have a Jewish mother and Jewish father tend to have little or no Slavic ancestry for this reason, even if their ancestors spent 500+ years in Slavic lands.

So you're saying that the Eastern Euro Jews originated from Israel? Is there evidence for this?

Yes. Are you seriously skeptical that such evidence exists?

Yes! I was asking genuinely. I did not know this. For most Russian Jews I know, they have Russian ancestors too.

Yes! I was asking genuinely. I did not know this. For most Russian Jews I know, they have Russian ancestors too.

The evidence I am aware of is follows:

  1. Oral and written tradition says that Jews originated from the land of Israel. In fact, the word "Jewish" comes from "Judea."

  2. Modern DNA evidence which connects Eastern European Jews to other groups of Jews such as Mizrachi and Sephardi. If all Jewish groups are connected, it's reasonable to conclude that there is a common place of origin.

  3. Modern DNA evidence (apparently) says that Eastern European Jews have some degree of Levantine genes. Again, the reasonable conclusion is that Israel is the source.

To be sure, it's pretty obvious that the various groups of Jews have admixture from other areas. Just looking, you can tell that European Jews look more European than Sephardi or Mizrachi or Ethiopian Jews.

Ashkenazi (European) Jews, who make up most of the Israeli population

Untrue. Ashkenazi Jews only make up 32% of Israeli Jews, or 23% of Israel's population. The single biggest Jewish demographic in Israel are the Mizrahi Jews, representing 45% of Israeli Jews or 33% of the population of the country.

Okay but isn't the categorization used here... pretty odd? It differentiates Ashkenazim from "Soviet Jews", who presumably are either Ashkenazi or even more European, and it doesn't appear to differentiate Sephardim from Mizrahim, even though Sephardim (afaik?) are also quite European in ancestry. Also, some of those in the "Mixed" category would presumably be, like, Ashkenazim/"Soviet" mixed, if these are really the categories used.

I wouldn't differentiate the two. My bet is the "Soviet Jews" here are genetically quite similar to the Ashkenazim.

It's more of a chronological categorisation than an ethnic one. Ashkenazim who emigrated to Israel around 1948 would presumably have a lot of ancestry in common with Russian Jews, but the Russian Jews are mostly those who emigrated from the USSR in a large influx around 1989. Because of this, they're a distinct cohort in terms of culture, language and history, if not ethnicity.

It is surprising that they don't mention Sephardim etc. anywhere in the article. Maybe there really aren't that many of them?

The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, not Ashkenazi.

I believe there is a theory that Palestinians are the Jews who were bad at reading. Judaism requires a large amount of reading sacred text so the ones who were bad at reading left the tribe. NYC folks and West Virginia folks dislike each other so the conflict makes sense.

But New Yorkers and the red tribe elite also dislike each other- indeed far more than thé red tribe elite and hillbillies.

Palestinian Christians in particular (a genetically-distinct subpopulation of Palestinians) are the closest DNA match to ~2nd century Galilean DNA according to Global25 Coordinates.

Only a tiny minority of Palestinians are Christians. Its why its so disingenuous when rightists show the far below 1% tiny minority of Gazan Christians as somehow central figures and victims in that conflict. The truth is that Arab Christians have been fleeing the Levant for the West since the 1800s, long, long, long before Israel’s founding, and largely fleeing persecution by people of the same faith as 99% of modern day Palestinians.

Describing Palestinian Christians as central victims of Israel is like saying the primary victims of Israel and America’s bombing of current day Iran are Iranian Jews.

My understanding is that Palestinian Christians are so rare as to be irrelevant, save occasionally when used as a propaganda tool, and are generally even worse off than Muslim Palestinians.

By contrast, Arab Christian Israelis are, I believe, the most successful non-Jewish group in Israel? It's not a paradise for them either, but they are doing pretty well by regional standards.

Palestinian Christians and Israeli Christians are both essentially thé economic elites of their local Arab communities. They’re not ‘worse off’ in a meaningful way.

I'm not an expert, but my sense was that there are various forms of low-level discrimination in Israel? It's not particularly bad, especially considering the region, and there's the joke that Arab Christians are 'the Jews of Israel' (i.e. a highly-educated over-achieving minority), but if the question is just "is it worse to be an Israeli Christian than an Israeli Jew?", the answer is yes.

Only being 2x a bunch of random European Ashkenazis seems less than expected

The proportions are quite high (80% vs. 40%)

I gotta ask, do you honestly expect this to be even slightly convincing to anyone who isn't already on board? You sound like every denier who has ever had to justify something unjustifiable.

And, if you wanna go for right makes right morality, then surely you'll be perfectly fine if one day the shoe is on the other foot and the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?

And, if you wanna go for right makes right morality, then surely you'll be perfectly fine if one day the shoe is on the other foot and the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?

Call of hypocrisy go both ways, if this comes to pass surely you likewise would be outraged if the Palestinians expelled the jews or had a legal system that treated them differently to the Palestinians?

Yeah, of course I would.

This might come as a shock to you but my stance against ethnic cleansing is principled. I am not a conflict theorist on this issue. It is the thing itself I take issue with, not merely that it is being done to the wrong people.

then surely you'll be perfectly fine if one day the shoe is on the other foot and the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?

If the Palestinians have the whip hand they will rape, torture, dispossess and genocide the Jews regardless of anything Israel has or hasn’t done at any point since its founding. They did this before Israel, they will do it after it.

They did this before Israel, they will do it after it.

???

My understanding is that the Jewish population of Palestine was small before the Zionist movement, and relations with their Muslim and Christian neighbors were not particularly problematic.

I am referring more generally to the long history of persecution in Muslim lands. You’re right that for most of the last 500 years the population of Palestine was very low. It’s also why I don’t really entertain claims the the Jews are “native” to the land, this is a cheap and halfhearted Zionist comeback - Israelis should be proud of being settler colonialists, like many great historical peoples.

if one day the shoe is on the other foot and the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?

I'll believe it when I see it.

the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?

They'd have to have more schools than weapons depots, and maybe not rip out water mains installed by bleeding hearts to convert into weapons.

Flying pigs will convert to Judaism first.

I gotta ask, do you honestly expect this to be even slightly convincing to anyone who isn't already on board?

Yes. But I think what you are asking is whether I expect to convince anyone who is an Israel-hater. The answer to that is "no."

then surely you'll be perfectly fine if one day the shoe is on the other foot and the Palestinians achieve military supremacy?

Apparently you are not aware that the Arabs (this was before "Palestinians" were invented) expelled the Jews from Gaza City, Hebron, and many other places. And, as a supporter of Israel, I would have been okay with letting it go if they had stopped there instead of trying to wipe out all of Israel.

But in any event, to answer your question, if (1) the Palestinian Arabs achieved military supremacy; and (2) there was a Jewish minority in or near "Palestine" that constantly engaged in aggression and terrorism with the idea of wiping out all the Palestinian Arabs; then (3) those Arabs would be justified in expelling that portion of the Jewish minority that was causing problems, justified in occupying Jewish territory for defensive purposes, etc.

Well, I'm glad you admitted to being in favor of ethnic cleansing at least.

"Ethnic cleansing" plus 50 years is just a normal border.

Well, I'm glad you admitted to being in favor of ethnic cleansing at least.

I think it would be more fair to say that I'm not categorically opposed to ethnic cleansing. As another poster pointed out, there are scenarios where it is the least bad option.

Perhaps more importantly, if there was an ethnic cleansing at some point in the past, I don't necessarily believe that there is a categorical imperative to undo it.

Are there no circumstances where something like ethnic cleansing is not the least bad option? I think I'm in favor of ethnic cleansing the same way I am in favor of abortion.

Dizzy, do you believe that apartheid ethnostates are morally acceptable in the present age, or do you believe that all lawful residents within a country's borders are entitled to equal rights and equal treatment under the law? (Note that this is not a question about immigration, or a question about birthright citizenship)

Dizzy, do you believe that apartheid ethnostates are morally acceptable in the present age

Yes, the gulf arab states are perfectly legitimate, regardless of their appalling track record towards "migrant workers."

Israeli Arabs do have equal rights under the law. Palestinians are not lawful residents of Israël.

To call Israel an apartheid state requires pretending Gaza is part of Israel, which it isn't.

You can argue it *should" be, but there's the tiny problem that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians want that. What the Israelis would like is for the Palestinians to flourish in their own state that won't dedicate itself to destroying Israel. That's not on the table. What the Palestinians want is largely why we are where we are.

At this point, "Israel is an apartheid state" is exactly the tell I was talking about because it requires imposing criteria that aren't used anywhere else in the world. You can look at Arabs who actually are living in Israel and see that they are not apartheided.

The Bantustans weren't part of South Africa either. Though I think the West Bank is the better example. Israeli Arabs aren't apartheided you are right. But Jewish and Arab settlements are treated very differently in the West Bank. As well that the expansion of settlements has created an intertwined society with very different rights depending on race and religion. The actions of settling the West Bank are making a Palestinian state impossible.

I have said before I think Israel should be pressured to rein in the West Bank settlers and stop victimizing Palestinians there. However, even if Israel pulled out of the West Bank right now and ceded all of it to the Palestinians, I do not think this would lead to a viable Palestinian state. A viable Palestinian state requires a Palestinian population that wants a viable state more than they want to destroy Israel.

At this point, "Israel is an apartheid state" is exactly the tell I was talking about because it requires imposing criteria that aren't used anywhere else in the world. You can look at Arabs who actually are living in Israel and see that they are not apartheided.

Actually, the South Africans, literally the prototypical example of "apartheid", had a plan pretty similar to that of Israel where they would cram all of the inconvenient blacks into tiny plots of land called "Bantustans" that gave South Africa all of the cool benefits of sovereignty without all the lame obligations that come along with it like "citizenship" or "human rights".

For some reason, though, nobody fell for this trick when the South Africans tried it. I wonder why that is?

You can argue it *should" be, but there's the tiny problem that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians want that. What the Israelis would like is for the Palestinians to flourish in their own state that won't dedicate itself to destroying Israel. That's not on the table. What the Palestinians want is largely why we are where we are.

On the contrary, this is what the former head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group notable for being even more hardline than Hamas, had to say:

We have lived together in peace for centuries. And if Netanyahu were to ask if we can live together in one state, I would say to him: "If we have exactly the same rights as Jews to come to all of Palestine. If Khaled Meshaal and Ramadan Shalah can come whenever they want, and visit Haifa, and buy a home in Herzliyah if they want, then we can have a new language, and dialogue is possible.

So even the most hardcore terrorists have said that they'd be perfectly willing to accept a "South Africa" solution and that they actually wouldn't mind officially considering Gaza to be a part of a unified Israel-Palestine. The Israelis are the reason such a solution isn't on the table, not the Palestinians.

I think a one-state solution would in theory be ideal, but I also think it's delusional to think it would work, and I think the Israelis are not wrong to doubt the ingenuousness of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hamas or the Ayatollah's words for public consumption insisting all they want is peaceful coexistence, just dissolve the borders and dismantle your security, everything will be cool bro, honest.

The thing is, the Israelis have a lot of people who speak Arabic, so they can hear and read what Palestinians say in Arabic to each other, not just what they say in English to a Western audience.

Unlike Israël, apartheid SA’s citizen body wasn’t 20% black.

So even the most hardcore terrorists have said that they'd be perfectly willing to accept a "South Africa" solution and that they actually wouldn't mind officially considering Gaza to be a part of a unified Israel-Palestine. The Israelis are the reason such a solution isn't on the table, not the Palestinians.

Their actual actions suggest they'd immediately set about random suicide bombings and whatnot

South African example is also absurd when the African population wasn't even that particularly native to the area and largely descended from the North chasing the economic affluence created by white settlement. Of course, many such cases, but doing anything at all to trace the movements of local peoples beyond 'they're not white and they happen to be there, clearly true custodians from time immemorial' would require actually thinking somewhat about one's positions.

I think they could make a one-state solution work. The suicide bombings would dissipate when the Arab children found themselves 20x more wealthy than their recent ancestors. Israel would need the stomach to take some shots without over-retaliating.

Israel was trying economic diplomacy via work permits prior to October 7. I don’t think the solution to preventing October 7 was just "well, should have paid more!"

Economic integration is positive sum

it requires imposing criteria that aren't used anywhere else in the world.

In fairness, Gaza's situation is in itself pretty unique. I don't think classifying it as an apartheid state is especially helpful, but there isn't really any truly analogous situation elsewhere in the world that you can point to and say "aha, but by this definition, wouldn't [X] be an apartheid state too?". It's just a one-of-a-kind clusterfuck that people struggle to squeeze into a round hole.

Taiwan and mainland China are the closest comparison I can think of, and they aren't a close comparison at all.

I do not believe in apartheid, but the status of Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel is unclear. Arabs in Israel have full rights, but Gaza and the West Bank are still occupied territories under martial law. If that were to change and Palestinians were not granted full rights, I would consider it apartheid.

The Israelis in the West Bank have full rights and their towns are fully integrated with Israel.

do you believe that apartheid ethnostates are morally acceptable in the present age

I know the question wasn't directed at me, but you can't stop me, so here's my answer: Hell yes. In so far as there remain any ethnicities that can even agree on who belongs and who does not, let them have their proper nation-states that aren't just economic zones for anyone who manages to cross the border. I for one accept them. Or would, if any still existed.

Israel is ~20% muslim arab palestinian, with full civil rights, representation in the Knesset and socioeconomic outcomes above average.

What you're calling an "ethnostate" is only because palestinians and jews are the same ethnicity.

What you're calling "apartheid" is the former residents of Jordanian and Egyptian occupied territory, which were never given citizenship nor a homeland by their former overlords either. And because Israel won't resettle an armed and hostile people who live beyond its borders within its borders, you call it apartheid. Every nation on earth that isn't resettling terrorist groups inside their country is an "apartheid state" by this measure.

Every nation on earth that isn't resettling terrorist groups inside their country is an "apartheid state" by this measure.

Last I checked the Native Americans were given full citizenship nearly a century ago despite also constituting an "armed and hostile people who live beyond its borders within its borders". This arrangement where land is kept in a permanent state of occupation because it would be demographically inconvenient to annex it formally is entirely unique to Israel; I'm sure the Mestizo regimes of South America would have created "Indioland" and "Negroland" to shove all of their inconvenient minorities into as well if they thought that was a real option.

The Native Americans did not equal ~40% the US citizenry when their citizenship was granted. If they had, you can be assured reasons would have been found not to do it. They were demographically irrelevant and presented no threat to the security or character of the United States.

Insisting that any country extend citizenship to millions of violently hostile antagonists who have demonstrably no interest in sharing a country with them is so wildly unreasonable I struggle to imagine anyone suggesting it in good faith. If Palestinians want to be Israeli the onus is on them to act like non-insane humans one can conceivably share a country with. Which starts, at a bare minimum, with accepting the legitimacy of the polity they wish to join. But of course they don't want to join it. They never did. They want to replace it. And you're surprised when Israel is disinclined to go along with that.

The Native Americans did not equal ~40% the US citizenry when their citizenship was granted. If they had, you can be assured reasons would have been found not to do it. They were demographically irrelevant and presented no threat to the security or character of the United States.

It's worth pointing out that one of the last US territories to be granted statehood was Arizona. And the reason is pretty obvious -- the US wanted to wait until there was a non-Indian majority.

FWIW I think that Israel should do the same thing with J & S / WB -- the Jewish population there is exploding, and once there is a solid majority, it can be annexed.

Amerinds were granted citizenship after thé fighting stopped and the old war chiefs were mostly dead.

Peaceful, functional Arab Israelis who don't dabble in Deathcultism have quality of life far greater than surrounding similar populations. The only arabs that beat them out are the Oil lottery winners. The QALY maximizing solution for the Gaza issue would be for the Palestinians to cease their nonsense, as even if they win independence they'd produce Lebanon 2.0.

I notice that you didn't answer the question. Are you ashamed of your answer, even within this august body?

Why? Here’s why South Africa failed where Israel until now has succeeded, and it has nothing to do with the specific ethnicities involved:

White South Africans refused to become Israel. All the Boers (and the English) had to do is retreat to the Western Cape, which could have easily become an 80%+ white + cape colored + Asian ethnostate in perpetuity, just like most of Israel proper is by far supermajority Jewish. Why didn’t they? Because white South Africans were (and are) addicted to cheap black labor. They didn’t want to give up the farms or replace cheap workers with vastly more expensive white ones. They wanted a society where even a member of the white lower middle class had a gardener and a maid and a nanny to look after the kids. Israel, of course, supported and backed South Africa until the end.

They could have preserved it, they chose not to. It is what it is (claims of their immense suffering are largely overblown, not that I’m a huge fan of modern South Africa). Posts like this just symbolize a certain kind of bitterness that isn’t backed by historical fact. The wider question is even more ridiculous, because ethnic and tribal preference, which is what “apartheid ethnostates” do and are, are common around the world.

Malaysia explicitly privileges ethnic Malays over Chinese and Indians in every facet of public life, state contracting, welfare, housing, jobs, and politics. Brazil under socialist government privileges black over white for medical school places, for government jobs. America did too for a long time. Gulf Arab countries have Arab migrants (let alone Indian and Pakistani and Bangladeshi) who have lived there for generations without citizenship or political or other representation, officially stateless. These are all on a spectrum. Palestinians in the West Bank lead lives that are not particularly poor compared to others of their background in the rest of non oil rich Arab lands. They do not suffer the way that North Koreans or Eritreans do.

do you believe that all lawful residents within a country's borders are entitled to equal rights and equal treatment under the law?

Almost nobody believes this and almost no country practises it. Not America, not India, not Brazil, not China, not Russia.

The original proposal for Apartheid in South Africa involved giving black populations their own countries (on admittedly shitty land) and allowing them to come to South Africa on worker's permits/visas with limited rights. The first part of the program was never implemented, only the second half, making black South Africans effectively second class citizens in their own country.

Given that Gazans and West Bankers have their own countries (issues with international recognition, Jewish settlers, and Israeli military occupation aside) the comparison between the status of Palestinians and the status of black South Africans has always struck me as extremely disingenuous. Especially when you consider the large amount of Arab Israelis that have full rights under the law in Israel.

They did actually implement the first part and nominally give them their own countries in four cases. The West Bank is less of a country than the independent Bantustans were all imports and exports are controlled by Israel. Palestinians only rule disconnected towns surrounded by the Israeli military and settlements.

The West Bank is a bantustan, on the South African model.

Look at this map and tell me it's a real viable country

It's so shot through with barriers, roadblocks, checkpoints, and settlements that a Palestinian cannot travel freely within the state. There is no future in which this area can become a country, particularly as Israel intends to continue to control all imports and foreign policy.

The West Bank is a fakakta country that exists so that Palestinians can belong somewhere else.

The fall of actual Apartheid is a pure bad for all but a small minority of the African populace who had sufficient seniority in the new state of South Africa to pocket sufficient to cover for the massive downgrade in QOL for everybody else. Similarly, a 'liberated' Palestine would not produce a functional state and their elected representatives are continually jabbing forks into the light socket of consequences.

Sure, but there were alternatives to Apartheid other than giving the black population full rights immediately. Rhodesia had educational and other requirements for voting rights, but no racial limitations, and didn't create special representatives in parliament for the black population until Britain pressured them into doing so as a precondition for independence.

First, there's this idea that Israel is the primary/principle cause of all instability in the region, and that if we suddenly removed all the Jews and gave back the land to the Palestinians, we would have peace. This is absurd. The violence in Lebanon between shiites/sunnis/christians, the question of the Kurds, and the Sunni/Shiite Cold (I guess hot now) war are all conflicts that have their origins long before the founding of Israel. Heck if Israel wasn't there to focus hatred on, the Arabs would probably fight among themselves even more.

As I pointed out 8 months ago, since the end of the second world war, the average Middle Eastern state has been involved in 10 conflicts, including civil wars and revolutions. My interlocutor characterised Israel as a state which is in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them, but this seems to describe pretty much every Middle Eastern state, and Israel is actually the outlier in having undergone zero civil wars or revolutions since its founding.

Israel is now an acceptable mainstream target for left-wingers (who don't get that many acceptable targets) so they'll go full 15 minutes hate on them. Many such cases

who don't get that many acceptable targets

In what sense do you mean this?

Liberal normies don't get to go for many groups at risk of being called out for whateverism. Thus whenever a target like Antivaxers or MAGA or Israel recently they tend to channel a ton of suppressed anger into a rare conduit

See also: me being somewhat terrified by my normielib friends who seem to have lots of latent violent cruel nationalism suddenly unlocked after Russia invaded our neighbor. No, I don't want to watch the video of a man failing to run for his life from a drone, or getting blown up by a grenade in a trench, I don't find it exhilarating.

normielib friends who seem to have lots of latent violent cruel nationalism suddenly unlocked

Jingoism is the natural state of society. We forget this because it hasn't happened for a long time, but the latent-violent-cruel-nationalism is very much alive in Western countries, typically by the 65+ crowd. It's usually accompanied by some slogan related to a stereotypical national past-time, perhaps "elbows up", and lots of said crowd claiming they'd be more than happy to pick up a weapon.

It was radicalizing to see it happen in real time, even among those who nominally aren't particularly interested in even having a military; should these people get the violent conflict for which they were agitating, it wouldn't be them on the front lines.

As a former normie lib, lots of them have this pain in their heart re politics, watching the right lap them over and over and over for 50 years while the people supposedly on their side shrug their shoulders and allow it, just as the right has a similar pain in the social arena.

The right got to have their cake and eat it with trump and the various vulgar cons in europe, I foresee that libs getting a similar opportunity in the next cycle or two. They've seen that yes, the state CAN actually do shit, it was just decades of libs laying down for their ideological enemies (We can't raise taxes, we can't just dip out of the middle east, we can't punish the fossil fuel lobby, we can't interfere with private institutions, etc etc., we need to do thatcher or regan but with a rainbow flag on it).

That is already a rather large pool of targets, relatively speaking, compared to the situation of conservative normies.

In terms of its Arab neighbors, Israel has repeatedly given up territory for peace

Yet Israel's territory has grown larger over time? They gave Sinai back to Egypt after taking Sinai off Egypt, OK. They didn't give back the Golan heights to Syria, they've recently taken more land off Syria. They've been busily taking land off Palestinians in the West Bank for years now, knocking people's houses down or just stealing their houses. Right now they're going into Lebanon perhaps looking to seize more land.

They have this comically villainous strategy in the 'mosquito protocol', using Gazan civilians as human shields, making them enter buildings ahead of IDF troops to clear out explosives or booby traps.

Or they just take potshots at peaceful protestors in Gaza, back in 2019: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/03/one-year-on-from-protests-gaza-civilians-devastating-injuries-highlight-urgent-need-for-arms-embargo-on-israel/

They had huge protests rallying behind soldiers who were briefly arrested for raping prisoners, in support of that kind of activity. You can actually watch video of the Israeli soldiers forming up in this cluster around a prisoner with shields on their backs to block the camera from seeing exactly what happens. There's actual video of an Israeli govt minister saying 'for them, anything is permitted' with regard to sodomizing prisoners with metal objects. The pro-rape faction seems to have decisively won, with the soldiers being freed of all charges.

Why the special criticism of Israel?

Countries are formed by taking land, that's how it works. The essence of warfare is inflicting pain and suffering to reach a political goal. But Israel behaves in an especially egregious way for a supposed liberal democracy. Simultaneously they whine and bitch about anti-semitism and claim to be the victim whenever anyone criticises them. Amnesty international is apparently antisemitic, the UN is antisemitic, that American girl they ran over with a bulldozer was probably antisemitic, along with the USS Liberty survivors who maintain they were deliberately attacked. All these Palestinians were born into this world with hatred of Israel in their hearts, we are led to believe. It takes two to tango.

The Israelis go around complaining about Hamas using human shields while they do it themselves. They complain about the terrorism of others when their country was founded by terrorists - they shot a UN-appointed Swedish diplomat Bernadotte for being too pro-Arab, they captured and executed British troops, planned false-flag attacks against the West in Egypt and run a uniquely murderous intelligence agency in Mossad. It's a very obnoxious way for a country to behave. And yet their cheerleaders in the West like PragerU will say that the IDF is the 'most moral army'.

The hypocrisy upsets lots of people. Israel should be treated with the same naked contempt and grasping opportunism they treat other countries. They should be left to fight their own wars, use their own weapons, pay for them too. America has just plunged the world into a major economic crisis over their obsession with Israel, it's not at all a minor issue.

hey've been busily taking land off Palestinians in the West Bank for years now

As a side note, this is untrue. J & S / WB belongs to Palestinian Arabs only in the sense that (1) the Arabs successfully ethnically cleansed Jews from the area in the 1930s and 1940s; and (2) under the principles of anti-Israel types, once the Arabs ethnically cleanse Jews from an area, it becomes Palestinian Land forever. So that if Jews return, they are "stealing" land.

They have this comically villainous strategy in the 'mosquito protocol', using Gazan civilians as human shields, making them enter buildings ahead of IDF troops to clear out explosives or booby traps.

Are you just as confident in this claim as you are confident that it was Israel that attacked the girls' school in Iran?

People in the West Bank should have equal rights. Israel should either annex it and give everyone citizenship or withdraw. Creating an interlocking jigsaw of Jewish and Arab towns with the Jewish ones fully integrated into Israel and the Arab ones surrounded little Bantustans is not sustainable or stable.

I am skeptical that the person you are replying to has a sincere interest in discussing this issue with objectivity in mind. He is mixing up the actions of Jordan in 1948 with the Palestinians as a whole. Anyone claiming that Jews get to steal the whole West Bank because 1% of the West Bank prior to 1948 was Jewish (many having arrived only a few years earlier at that), and thus their flight during the war retroactively grants them full ownership of the West Bank (?), is probably not arguing in good faith. Because that’s a genuinely insane line of argument to make.

People in the West Bank should have equal rights. Israel should either annex it and give everyone citizenship or withdraw.

That would inevitably lead to a lot of bloodshed. If Israel withdrew, the then almost certainly (1) the Palestinian Arabs would refuse to accept having a Jewish minority in the way that Israel has an Arab minority, rather they would viciously persecute any Jews there; and (2) J & S / WB would be used as a staging ground for terrorist attacks against Israel, except that they would be in a position to cause far more carnage.

I think annexation + citizenship is a better option, but Israel needs to wait until there is a Jewish majority so that Israel's political system won't be overwhelmed with hostile elements who want to destroy the state.

Creating an interlocking jigsaw of Jewish and Arab towns with the Jewish ones fully integrated into Israel and the Arab ones surrounded little Bantustans is not sustainable or stable.

Why not?

The Israelis could do to the West Bank what they did with Gaza -- withdraw all the Jewish settlements by force and let the PA run the whole thing. Why in a million years they would consider doing so given their experience with Gaza, I don't know.

Notice that completely identical line of reasoning applies to Russian action in Southern and Eastern Ukraine, Although both sides there are leading a much more modern war when it comes to treatment of civilian populations.

Err, no it doesn't, because before the Russians came in the Ukrainians were in no way the Russian's problem.

As a side note, this is untrue. J & S / WB belongs to Palestinian Arabs only in the sense that (1) the Arabs successfully ethnically cleansed Jews from the area in the 1930s and 1940s; and (2) under the principles of anti-Israel types, once the Arabs ethnically cleanse Jews from an area, it becomes Palestinian Land forever. So that if Jews return, they are "stealing" land.

This is false. If the Israelis are going in, knocking down houses or just taking them, then that is stealing land. QED. Again, Israel has been expanding in territorial size. Neccessarily this means it must be taking land off of other groups.

Whether it was Israel or America that attacked the girls school in Iran is not of great importance. I recall you were the one implying that it was somehow the Iranians who attacked their own school. Now going 'acktually it was America not Israel that blew up this specific war in an Israeli inspired war against Iran' does not advance any kind of serious position, it's just a lame Parthian shot.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/24/israel-investigates-use-of-palestinians-as-human-shields-by-its-forces-in-gaza

https://x.com/Seanchuckle/status/2034303334044069982

This is false. If the Israelis are going in, knocking down houses or just taking them, then that is stealing land. QED. Again, Israel has been expanding in territorial size.

No, you are wrong. There is no nice way to put this: You are a liar. You are lying about this just like you lied about Israel attacking a girl's school in Iran. (Technically, you were probably bullshitting not lying.)

Whether it was Israel or America that attacked the girls school in Iran is not of great importance.

It's of great importance for assessing your credibility. You claimed that it was Israel without any supporting evidence, i.e. you lied. (Technically, you were probably bullshitting.) Just like you are lying/bullshitting about Israel using Gazans as human shields and stealing land.

I recall you were the one implying that it was somehow the Iranians who attacked their own school.

Please show me where I did this. Please QUOTE me. Failing that, please admit I said no such thing and apologize.

I notice that people on both sides of the conflict are very selective about which 90 year old atrocities are a causus belli excusing violent action today.

I notice that people on both sides of the conflict are very selective about which 90 year old atrocities are a causus belli excusing violent action today.

FWIW I did not bring up the ethnic cleansing of Jews in the 1930s and 40s as a casus belli. Rather, I brought it up to point out how silly it is to claim that Israel is, in essence, stealing land.

Their "horrible atrocities that justify our actions today" versus our "totally justified actions as a result of their historical attrocities"

It's much, much, much simpler than that. I think you and others are thinking too deeply about this.

The history of the region, the legacies of Operation Ajax and Kermit Roosevelt Jr. are not known or cared about by most Americans. They see all this stuff America is doing and personally see zero benefit from it. That's literally it. The argument for strong allies in the ME no longer holds; thanks to fracking and BigAg America is basically food and energy secure, the petrodollar is losing ground to the petro... yuan.. even if Americans personally wish they paid less at the pump due to oil being traded globally and therefore being subject to higher costs elsewhere.

So what they see is America getting into another ME mess for benefits they don't see, spending taxpayer money and lives for reasons they don't care about or understand. Meanwhile the benefits for Israel are pretty obvious to anyone who can even find it on a map and can guess at approximate drone and missile range.

There's also some people I'm sure wish for carveouts, exceptions, and advantages for the strong ingroup bias they personally have, and seeing Jews get away with it without being pilloried makes them do that thing with the monkey and the grapes.

  • I don’t think it would be kumbayh in the Middle East if Israel suddenly disappeared, but historically the most common political arrangement in the Arab world is for there to be a large caliphate or empire dominating the region. Geographically, Israel splits the Arab world in two, preventing such an entity from forming. It might be good for the current great powers to keep the Arabs from coalescing into a single world power, but it does increase regional instability.

  • You’re right that Israel is not committing a genocide. I do think it’s apartheid though. Maybe apartheid is okay in certain circumstances (ending it didn’t work out particularly well for white South Africans), but this is not a political system that is typically tolerated in the civilized world. Something like the Gaza War would have happened if one of the apartheid-era bantustans had openly declared war on White South Africa.

  • I think there is an option for South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation. It would be difficult after October 7 and the Gaza War, but I think it is still possible. Israelis don’t want to do this, for understandable reasons, but they could if they collectively wanted to.

  • Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. He was killed by an Israeli for the explicit reason that he was willing to make peace with the Palestinians and hand over occupied land to them. This and the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre by Baruch Goldstein were massive escalations by Israeli extremists to torpedo the peace process.

  • I was a lot more sympathetic to Israel as an ethnostate proof-of-concept before they dragged my country into a major war. There is a criticism of ethnonationalism that since every ethnic group considers itself God’s gift to humanity, ethnostates will be especially prone to lash-out and start wars when they don’t get the respect they think they deserve. Israel has spectacularly failed to disprove this criticism.

There is a criticism of ethnonationalism that since every ethnic group considers itself God’s gift to humanity, ethnostates will be especially prone to lash-out and start wars when they don’t get the respect they think they deserve.

How many wars have Japan, Korea and Liberia been involved in recently?

Even if Israel is an ethnostate, it's more diverse than several of these nations e.g. the 2 million Arab Israelis.

The Korean War has never officially ended, so depending on how you define "conflict" that might qualify. To a lesser extent, the Soviets declared war with Japan in 1945 but never officially ended the conflict.

I should have said "how many wars have Japan, Korea etc. started recently?".

Fair, although Japanese militarism in the 20th century was a distinct consequence of ethnonationalist supremacist policies, so "few wars, except for that really big one quite a long time ago".

Almost certainly just a conflation of the revisionist fascist states of WW2 with ethnostates in general to better discredit the latter. At least, that's always been the purpose this criticism has served when I run into it.

Which is why the murderous and expansionist nature of the Soviets doesn't discredit propositional nations, nor is the theory debunked by the also-common criticism of the empires in WW1.

I do think it’s apartheid though. Maybe apartheid is okay in certain circumstances (ending it didn’t work out particularly well for white South Africans), but this is not a political system that is typically tolerated in the civilized world.

I have found that in discussions of Israel, those who criticize Israel are reluctant to define terms like "apartheid." I think the reason for this is that it's not possible to define these sorts of terms broadly enough so that they apply to Israel while at the same time narrowly enough so that they don't apply to large numbers of other countries.

Would you be willing to provide a definition? Given your (tentative?) conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state, I think it's reasonable that you should explain what you mean by "apartheid."

Geographically, Israel splits the Arab world in two, preventing such an entity from forming.

Looking at the map, I would have to disagree. Israel is on the very edge of the Levant. Besides, in 1947 pretty much the entire Arab world was united against Israel and pan-Arabism fizzled out. If they are not able to unite with a clear common enemy, it's difficult to see how they would unite without one.

I'm curious how am apartheid definition could be applied to other countries/what other countries you have in mind, so I'll bite for your trap.

To establish a baseline:

  1. "Apartheid (meaning "separateness" in Afrikaans) was a legally enforced system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination.

  2. I would consider the West Bank to be part of Israel. I don't really care about de jure "ownership" because Israel clearly control access to the West Bank and maintains a monopoly of force over it. Same with Gaza. If they successfully gave those areas away to Egypt/whoever, then it won't be Israeli land. But until then it is.

So why is it apartheid?

  1. both people in Gaza and the West Bank are wildly unable to travel to various parts of Israel, or even within those territories (segregation).

  2. they have absolutely 0 control over their governance or laws (discrimination).

  3. not just geographically segregated from Israel at large, they are also economically discriminated against in terms of allowable employment, trade, etc. (segregation and discrimination).

  4. I realize that Israeli settlements in the WB (and they used to do them in Gaza too!) don't really fit into an "apartheid" definition, but they pretty clearly demonstrate the power and rights disparity between the Israeli government and the people who live in WB/Gaza. The Israeli government keeps nibbling on the WB, creating more and more places where the people of the West Bank are not allowed to go (segregation AND discrimination).

Now, do I think they should just tear down all the walls and make one happy state? No. The Palestinians are nightmare neighbors. There's a reason Egypt doesn't want Gaza lmao. But the Palestinians can both be awful neighbors and still be subject to apartheid. Theyre partially awful neighbors BECAUSE of the apartheid.

I don't have a proposal to a turnkey solution, and frankly I think there's so much bad blood this will just... never end until one side or the other gets genuinely ethnically cleansed and this gets put to bed.

But I'm pretty happy calling this a form or derivative of apartheid!

Now spring your trap! What other countries can be grouped by this?

Theyre partially awful neighbors BECAUSE of the apartheid.

How so?

Because both sides hate each other with deep passionate pools of hate which causes both sides to inflict attrocities on each other which makes both sides hate each other more, repeat!

Now spring your trap! What other countries can be grouped by this?

Lebanon, China, the fantasy state of Palestine, the UK before 2002, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, even Norway. Probably a lot more.

Theyre partially awful neighbors BECAUSE of the apartheid.

I would have to disagree with that. For 19 years before 1967, Israel had no control at all over Gaza or J & S. And yet the Palestinian Arabs were still "awful neighbors." Interestingly, those areas were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. And yet the aggression was directed against the Jews.

Lebanon, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, don't know anything about them in this context but I believe it. I have no love for Islamic nations, I think their cultures and beliefs are toxic and regressive.

China, Uighurs? Agreed

the fantasy state of Palestine, don't understand you here. Like they keep the Jews out? Tentative agree but they're also kind of like the little brother with an unplugged controller in terms of being able to control... Anything

the UK before 2002, very curious about this one

Even Norway, very curious about this one

the fantasy state of Palestine, don't understand you here. Like they keep the Jews out?

Yes.

the UK before 2002, very curious about this one

Roughly between 1962 and 2002, people born in places like Hong Kong were not allowed to live and work in Great Britain.

Even Norway, very curious about this one

People in Svalbard don't get Norwegian citizenship, even if born there.

China, Uighurs? Agreed

Also Tibetans.

the UK before 2002 (fulfils these four criteria)

I’m sorry, the fuck?

If this is some gag about the Commonwealth, or about not immediately giving every non-citizen a passport and a vote the moment they roll up on the shore but require a process and some show of commitment first, then

a) it is almost certainly wrong b) to the extent it is true it is massively tendentious and you know it b) it does not correspond to the situation between Israel and Gaza, which again you know perfectly well

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I would like to see some proof, please.

I’m sorry, the fuck?

Roughly between 1962 and 2002, people from places like Hong Kong were subject to British Rule but could not live and work in Great Britain - not without special permission.

it does not correspond to the situation between Israel and Gaza, which again you know perfectly well

That's a different question. The question is which countries are apartheid countries.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I would like to see some proof, please.

Well do you agree that from roughly 1962 to 2002, British Dependent Territory Citizens (e.g. people from Hong Kong) were not free to just live and work in Great Britain, that they needed special permission?

I would consider the West Bank to be part of Israel.

You can call a tail a leg, but that don't make it so.

both people in Gaza and the West Bank are wildly unable to travel to various parts of Israel, or even within those territories (segregation).

If you consider the West Bank part of Israel (see above), then there are Israeli Jews who are ALSO unable to travel to various parts of Israel.

You can call a tail a leg, but that don't make it so.

The Jewish towns in the West Bank are totally integrated into Israel and function just like Israeli towns inside the "official" borders do.

You can call a tail a leg, but that don't make it so.

What would you call the WB then? It's obviously not a sovereign state, as it lacks... sovereignty.

If you consider the West Bank part of Israel (see above), then there are Israeli Jews who are ALSO unable to travel to various parts of Israel.

I genuinely don't know what you're referring to here, but I'd love to know more?

What would you call the WB then? It's obviously not a sovereign state, as it lacks... sovereignty.

It is occupied territory.

I genuinely don't know what you're referring to here, but I'd love to know more?

Israeli Jews are forbidden from entering Area A of the West Bank.

It is occupied territory.

Okay so if I change my comment above to: "I would consider the West Bank to an occupied part of Israel. I don't really care about de jure "ownership" because Israel clearly control access to the West Bank and maintains a monopoly of force over it. "

I even said "I don't care about de jure ownership" and was focusing on effective control, which Israel clearly maintains over the area.

Israeli Jews are forbidden from entering Area A of the West Bank.

Why? I assume because there's a genuine fear of them getting lynched?

Idk if "the dominant power of the area doesn't let it's otherwise free citizens into that area because it's concerned they'll be mobbed by the people they're apartheid-ing" really proves its not apartheid.

I don't think anyone would have gone "oh in that case it's fine" if the south African government said "oh it's not apartheid, we don't let the whites into the ghettos either!"

Okay so if I change my comment above to: "I would consider the West Bank to an occupied part of Israel. I don't really care about de jure "ownership" because Israel clearly control access to the West Bank and maintains a monopoly of force over it. "

No, it is not an occupied part of Israel; that would imply almost the opposite (e.g. South Lebanon is now an occupied part of Lebanon, not Israel). It is an occupied land for which no permanent sovereign exists, which is a strange state, certainly, but distinct from being part of Israel.

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Same with Gaza.

This is absurd. Hamas rules Gaza, and controls everything that happens to the people there that is not directly related to borders.

My city has a mayor, who gets to make lots of local decisions. The federal or state level government, at any point it wishes, can basically do whatever the fuck it wants to the city, no matter what the mayor thinks.

Yes there are laws that limit fed/state power over the city, and there would definitely be lots of lawsuits! But at the end of the day, the mayor only gets power because the higher levels of government allow them to have it, and they can take it away on a whim.

Hamas is the "mayor" here.

Sure, Israel obviously does not play a day to day role in Gaza. But "controlling the borders" is like... 95% of sovereignty. Whoever controls the borders of a place is quite literally the de facto owner of that place, regardless of the legal tricks they play to claim otherwise.

Israel could work as an ethnostate. But they'd have to give up the Palestinian areas they control. If they'd turned over the West Bank and Gaza to the PLO in the 1990s they'd likely be much more of a stable normal country today.

Israel has repeatedly offered Gaza back to Egypt, and Egypt has always refused. They don't want millions of dysfunctional and violent Palestinians inside their borders any more than Lebanon did.

But they'd have to give up the Palestinian areas they control. If they'd turned over the West Bank and Gaza to the PLO in the 1990s they'd likely be much more of a stable normal country today.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Palestinian areas," but I think it's worth noting that Israel tried leaving Gaza and the result was a disaster. Given that there is very strong anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment among Palestinian Arabs, I doubt that it's a matter of just picking the right organization to be in control.

That's why I said in the PLO 90s. Hamas throws a wrench in things, but it could still work many West Bank towns are under full Palestinian control, the PLO are not as willing to die as Hamas.

the PLO are not as willing to die as Hamas.

That's a problem too. It allows the more radical element to drive things.

That's why I said in the PLO 90s.

Yes, I'm aware. I'm extremely skeptical that would have worked given (1) the extreme anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment among Palestinian Arabs; and (2) the widespread support for terrorism among the Palestinian Arabs.

many West Bank towns are under full Palestinian control

In practice, that's not the case. The Israeli authorities enter from time to time to arrest certain people; if a troublemaker is known to come from a certain town, the Israeli authorities will put pressure on that town in various ways; and probably other things are done which aren't widely publicized.

If Israel just left J & S / WB to fester as was done with Gaza, I'm pretty confident that within a few years you'd have another Gaza. It's worth noting that to a large extent Hamas has enjoyed widespread popular support among Palestinian Arabs everywhere, not just in Gaza.

(1) the extreme anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment among Palestinian Arabs; and (2) the widespread support for terrorism among the Palestinian Arabs

Optimistically, there's something of a chicken-and-egg problem here. Forty years down the line in the counterfactual where a two-state solution was implemented in the 90s, would young Palestinians grow up with such extreme hatred of Israel if they perceived it as simply a neighboring country, and not the oppressor controlling the land they themselves currently live on? I don't know that it would reduce Palestinians' anti-zionist sentiment by a wide enough margin but equally, it would be surprising if it didn't reduce it at all.

Forty years down the line in the counterfactual where a two-state solution was implemented in the 90s, would young Palestinians grow up with such extreme hatred of Israel if they perceived it as simply a neighboring country, and not the oppressor controlling the land they themselves currently live on? I don't know that it would reduce Palestinians' anti-zionist sentiment by a wide enough margin but equally, it would be surprising if it didn't reduce it at all.

The primary motivator is anti-Semitism. When Jordan controlled J & S and Egypt controlled Gaza, the Palestinian Arabs living there focused their hatred on '47 Israel. In fact, the PLO made clear that it was NOT claiming those areas.

Sure, but I do think you might get fewer able-bodied young men volunteering to martyr themselves for the cause when the cause being sold to them by the terrorist recruiters is "I know things are fine around here, but there's all these disgusting enemies of the Prophet who hurt our ancestors over there, let's go attack them" as opposed to "you know how everything around here is shit? it's because of those hated infidels who are currently oppressing and bombing us, so let's kick them out of our rightful fatherland". Observably, stable, independent Muslim nations spend considerably less effort on trying to wipe Israel off the map than Hamas does, even if many of them still have that as one of their long-term goals.

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Israel is not giving up anything.

And being "normal country"? This was the dream of old school Zionists, who imagined "Belgium of the East", cozy Viennese coffee house in the desert of Middle East. Not going to happen.

Current and coming generations have another plans and another dreams.

You are totally right, but as a small country clinging to the coast highly integrated into the global economy they'll have a much harder time going it alone then the Soviets or Iranians. It doesn't seem very stable to me. But it also seems no Islamic power can push them out and also they have nukes. So who knows how it ends.

The Oslo accords, at best, would have required a significant amount of good faith on both sides to be workable. Like what the fuck even is this? It was never a practical means to peace.

And why is the kibbutz crisis attributable to Reagan or Thatcher specifically rather than plain neoliberalism, which was applied in many other parts of the world at the same time and with much harsher results?

Other than that, "Israel doesn't have a right to exist" is pointless navel gazing, and what happened in Gaza is generally reckless disregard for human life rather than true genocide, although the net effect is still a lot of war crimes.

It’s actually worse than that. There is no viable Palestinian state that consists of a tiny densely-populated coastal exclave, plus a much larger landlocked region with no navigable waterways.

Ah, another victim of the urge for a warm-water port.

It’s actually worse than that. There is no viable Palestinian state that consists of a tiny densely-populated coastal exclave, plus a much larger landlocked region with no navigable waterways.

I think the bigger issue is that there really isn't a Palestinian people. The Arabs in Hebron and the Arabs in Ramallah are referred to as "Palestinian" for political reasons, but beyond that there isn't much of a connection, aside from the fact that they are Arabs.

If the situation were somehow reversed and it was Jews who needed to set up a viable state consisting of Gaza and J & S / West Bank, it would be a million times easier.

If the situation were somehow reversed and it was Jews who needed to set up a viable state consisting of Gaza and J & S / West Bank, it would be a million times easier.

Sure, "Gazrael" would be the wealthy and thriving area, and when the Palestinians fell to infighting or attacking their neighbors, the Jews would likely take advantage to seize a contiguous territory.

Sure, "Gazrael" would be the wealthy and thriving area

What, like the Warsaw Ghetto?

I think the bigger issue is that there really isn't a Palestinian people.

Now do Ukraine. Or America for that matter.

Now do Ukraine.

I don't know enough to comment on the Ukraine. As far as America goes, I would put it somewhere between the Jews and the Palestinians. The Palestinians were invented solely as a way of undermining and opposing Israel -- there was never a unique Palestinian ethnicity, language, culture, religion, etc. America does better, although it currently suffers from its own kind of tribalism. It is questionable whether a large American exclave would stay American (query whether Alaska counts).

I think it's pretty disputable whether there was anything unique about American ethnicity, culture, language, or religion either. But I'd also say nationhood is a "fake it 'till you make it" endeavour generally. Even many European nations were kinda fake at the time of their inception.

I think it's pretty disputable whether there was anything unique about American ethnicity, culture, language, or religion either. But I'd also say nationhood is a "fake it 'till you make it" endeavour generally. Even many European nations were kinda fake at the time of their inception.

Of course I agree with this. Nationhood is like paper money -- if enough people believe it in, then it means something.

The trouble with Palestinian Arabs is

(1) they come from a culture which is extremely prone to factionalism, tribalism, violence, splitting, etc. You can see this openly in Lebanon and Syria; and

(2) their entire identity is based around opposing the Jews.

The closest analogy I can think of is that for social justice purposes, on American college campuses, there are groups called "Latino," "Asian," "Black," etc. So that Japanese are grouped with Chinese; Puerto Ricans are grouped with Mexicans; and so on. And there can even be student clubs where these people more or less get along and feel a shared sense of identity. But in the absence of the common cause against white people / colonialism /patriarchy/etc., these identities would largely fizzle out.

The way people think about their identities can change, of course, but for now and the foreseeable future any Palestinian State -- regardless of how its borders were drawn -- would almost certainly either (1) aggressively make war against the Jews; (2) descend into bloody civil war; or (3) some combination thereof.

If you created a tunnel connecting the two with a rail line and highway it could work.

I’ve always been a fan of a three-state solution for exactly this reason

I used to think there were principled arguments against Israel and that it made sense to distinguish between anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. I found it annoying when Jews would equate opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism. It felt very manipulative, playing the "antisemitism" card when we're talking about objections to a nation's policies... And of course Israel is a country, countries are made of people and run by politicians, therefore Israel is often going to do things one can reasonably condemn.

I still believe there are a tiny number of people whose opposition to Israel is rooted in genuine principles. I think their arguments are mostly pretty unconvincing, but the New Historians, for example (a school of Israeli historians who are generally pretty critical of Israel and the Israeli narrative about its founding, but obviously don't literally want Israel to cease to exist... Benny Morris is the most notable one) are examples of "anti-Zionists but not anti-Semites."

But mostly, especially since the latest Gaza War, I no longer take criticism of Israel at face value. Sure, a lot of stuff Israel does is fucked up, a lot of stuff the US does is fucked up, and I would like all countries in the world to do fewer fucked up things. Kumbaya.

But in most places, definitely including here on the Motte, you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews." It's just become very obvious that you don't have to scratch an anti-Zionist too deeply to find someone who hates Jews. It's true out in the public amongst the "Free Palestine" demonstrators, it's true here among the posters who suddenly have deep humanitarian concern for Palestinians and Iranians. Do they have similar concerns for, say, Ukrainians and Russians? Or the participants and victims in any other conflict anywhere else in the world? Of course not.

Since October 7, demonstrators attacking anything remotely connected with Israel, whether it's an Israeli-run bakery or just a synagogue (which can always be accused of being "Zionist" because the number of synagogues that aren't full of Israel supporters is infinitesimal) have pretty much given the game away. When you claim you don't hate Jews, you just hate like 90% of all Jews, well, that kinda looks like you hate Jews to me.

So, your lengthy defense of Israel isn't wrong, but it's beside the point. Almost nobody is actually criticizing Israel because they think the Israelis should negotiate differently or if they just did this or that they could have peace. There are no circumstances in which Israel will ever be "okay" with them. They just hate Jews. Simple as.

But in most places, definitely including here on the Motte, you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews."

I'm an anti-Zionist who's part Jew, whose best friend is a larger part Jew, and who considers himself a follower of Yudkowsky/Siskind/Mowshowitz. Anti-Zionism's just not my cause area, especially not here in Oz.

The whole "Joo hater" thing is just a thought-terminating slur against any reasonable criticism of Jewish behavior. It implies you hate Jews, so you make the criticisms, rather than the genuine problems with Jewish behavior and its consequences forming a rational basis for your complaint. Notably it always acquits Jews of any responsibility from the blowback they receive as a consequence of their own behavior.

Here we are today in a total disaster downstream of all the issues you complain about me raising on this forum, and the "Joo haters" schtick rings more hollow than ever.

I've copped several bans here in my lifetime, for being a jerk and uncivil.

Maybe it's the neurodivergence in me, but civility is not a high value from me. So believe me when I say that I believe in this argument.

Would you agree that a annoying, haranguing rules lawyer who barely scrapes by on the letter of the law, annoying the natives and engaging in disingenuous tribal argument is 'Jewish behavior'? Or, to borrow 4chan parlence, "Okay, Rabbi?"

You are engaging in Jewish behavior. Not that I believe that the definition is valid, or exists, but because you have provided one for me. You can hardly object to your own concept that you've introduced!

You have no grounds to criticize Jewish behavior when you so self-evidentially engage in it yourself!

I don't have a problem with anti-Zionism. I don't have a problem with anti-Semiticism, either! But if you could argue like a white man, instead of resorting to these nebbish forum tricks, I'd be grateful. Post hands, please!

The Jewish Lobby, the ADL, the ultra-warmongering Zionists in our media and our government like Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, AIPAC, Israel, would you acknowledge that is all Jewish behavior? Maybe the problem people have with Jews is caused by the things they do?

Don't change the subject, particularly not with a gish gallop. I have a problem with you and your behavior. I'll acknowledge these things as soon as you admit you are acting Jewishly with your evasions. I admire your glibness of tongue and skill at lying: an observation that others have made before.

Don't really know what I am evading. Going back to the very first comment, all I was doing was disputing Amadan's claim that nearly all criticism of Zionism is derived from a pre-existing hatred of Jews for no reason. Aamadan's comment implied no space for people's perception of Jews to be influenced by the things Jews do. It's a clear argument attributing responsibility to Jews for the way people perceive them, including the negative perceptions that are basically all true.

Amadan's claim that nearly all criticism of Zionism is derived from a pre-existing hatred of Jews for no reason.

I've refuted this several times. At this point it's fair to say you are just lying about what I said.

But in most places, definitely including here on the Motte, you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews." ...

Almost nobody is actually criticizing Israel because they think the Israelis should negotiate differently or if they just did this or that they could have peace. There are no circumstances in which Israel will ever be "okay" with them. They just hate Jews. Simple as.

So in your world there is basically nobody who is critical of Israel or Jews because of the things Israel or Jews do- they just hate Jews. Simple as.

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The more I argued with them, the more I got to know their dialectics. First they counted on the ignorance of their adversary; then, when there was no way out, they themselves pretended stupidity. If all this was of no avail, they refused to understand or they changed the subject when driven into a corner; they brought up truisms, but they immediately transferred their acceptance to quite different subjects, and, if attacked again, they gave way and pretended to know nothing exactly.

Mr. Hitler is providing the exact map of your tactics, and so I will not engage. That you cannot earnestly engage with anyone and resort to wordcel debate tricks is not a superpower.

Why can't you take responsibility for your own behavior, as you so often rail on the Jews for not doing? Why do you pretend oppression when you constantly act in an obnoxious, Jewish way?

You are spiritually Jewish. It is not an insult. It is an observation, and a very funny one to me.

I think it is highly necessary for White people to start behaving more like Jews, in important respects.

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Thanks for raising your hand, bud. Appreciate the support.

What is "Jewish behavior"? What "blowback" do you think the average Jew on the street deserves because of "their" behavior?

You do not distinguish between Israel and Jews except when it's convenient. When it's inconvenient, you are happy to equate Jews=Israel. When it's convenient, you say you are complaining about Israel and that accusing you of antisemitism is a Jewish mind trick.

You complain endlessly about being identified as a Joo-poster, a Jew-hater, it's a "thought-terminating slur," but the one thing you cannot deny is that you hate Jews. It takes some chutzpah (heh) to complain about being called a Jew-hater as you loudly and vocally insist that hating Jews is rational.

The bottom line, the sum total of your presence and reason d'etre, is that you hate Jews. Of course you think your hatred is rational. Everyone thinks they are being rational. No one says "I just hate people for no reason." But you hate Jews and that is the driver behind everything you post. You basically have no other identity or purpose (at least on this forum, maybe somewhere you have a life that doesn't revolve around Jews), but you sure get offended when someone names it.

He is someone who glorifies the Waffen SS and thinks the Holocaust was a good thing, to the extent he admits it happened. He has said so on this forum.

Now he's claiming that it is simply a hollow shtick and a breach of the rules if he be called a hater of Jews.

This is dishonesty to the level of utter contempt for you.

the Holocaust was a good thing, to the extent he admits it happened

It didn't happen though. How could I think it was a good thing and it didn't happen?

I don't think it's a good thing that millions of Jews were tricked into walking inside gas chambers that were disguised as shower rooms, it is something that simply never happened.

Questioning The Holocaust - Why We Believed (Eric Hunt Documentary)

It is significant that Eric Hunt, notable and prominent holocaust revisionist, left the movement and officially admitted that the holocaust happened roughly as described by mainstream history.

He hadn't become "repentant and reformed Nazi", he just found out that holocaust revisionism is not true, and also not helpful at all.

I greatly sympathize with Ernst Zundel, imprisoned for years in Canada and Germany. Zundel was trying to save Germany from the disaster they face today. Merkel-misled Germany is a nation ravaged by rape, murder, and terrorism by Arab and African immigrants flooding into the country by the millions, all induced by a pathological Holocaust guilt complex.

...

In many ways I feel the “denial” issue held me back from tackling other issues essential to the survival of Western Civilization. Especially Nationalism, race realism, and opposing the very real Jewish-led white genocide campaign.

Eric Hunt left Revisionism for a bunch of reasons, internal politics of the movements and such. It's a pretty tough job being a high-profile Revisionist, enormous pressure with little or no pay.

But in the past couple years Hunt has disavowed that article and he is a Revisionist again and he stands by his content, including that video I posted.

Keep in mind he was doing this when nobody else was talking about it, and YouTube basically increased their censorship solely because of Eric Hunt, his content was the very first victim of a high-censorship YouTube. Now that a lot of people on X and such talk about it he's found more satisfaction in the impact of his work. Nick Fuentes cited that video I linked by Hunt as being influential on Nick.

So he's a Revisionist and he stands by that work and he takes credit for the proliferation of Revisionism which he should, he did great work.

But in the past couple years Hunt has disavowed that article and he is a Revisionist again and he stands by his content, including that video I posted.

Interesting. How he answers to his own questions in this article, what is now his explanation what happened to the one million+ deported to the Operation Reinhard camps who were never seen again?

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It didn't happen though. How could I think it was a good thing and it didn't happen?

Because Holocaust deniers (most of them, with the possible exception of the really low information ones) don't actually think it didn't happen.

Maybe you do really believe there were never gas chambers, and that the numbers are inflated, and there are discrepancies in the accounts of what happened in this camp or that camp. There are always question marks and inaccuracies in the historical record and "Holocaust deniers" excel at cataloging these to argue that the whole thing is a hoax. Like 9/11 truthers, like every other conspiracy theorist, it's not that there aren't questions, and things the public believes because they've become widespread knowledge that aren't actually true, or were taken from one particular account (soap made of Jews, for example, or human skin lampshades). So there are always things you can JAQ about.

But "the Holocaust" - a concerted effort to exterminate Jews - happened, and the strategy of the Holocaust denier is to try to convince people that actually the whole thing was fake because record books at Dachau don't match what someone said in an interview, or what have you. The reality of course is that they know the effort was made to exterminate Jews and they think it was a good thing, but they also know that the public is extremely unsympathetic to this and that Jews benefit from the widespread guilt generated by the Holocaust. So it's a political strategy to try to erode belief that the Holocaust happened, not a historical investigation.

This is why every time we talk about the Holocaust, you immediately jump to the specific things you have canned spiels about, like showerheads in Auschwitz and whether Hitler ever signed an order saying "Kill all the Jews." And try as hard as you can to avoid the obvious glaring holes in the narrative, like where did all those Jews go and how are thousands of people, from Nazis to Jews to German civilians to Allied soldiers, lying about what they saw?

If you were actually interested in historical truth it would be pretty interesting to hear you out, but I can't take any of your arguments seriously because to the degree you might have some interesting research about specifics, I know it's always in service of a very specific agenda and that you selectively omit or fabricate details according to whether the narrative serves that agenda.

But "the Holocaust" - a concerted effort to exterminate Jews - happened

No it did not. There has famously never been any written document or order found demonstrating a concerted effort to exterminate all the Jews. Such an order never existed and that was not the German policy.

Some Jews were killed definitely in reprisals etc. But there was no "extermination plan" as claimed, that is a lie as much as the gas chamber story.

You are doing, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, the exact thing that Amadan just criticised you for doing.

You just jumped from "was there an organised attempt to kill all the Jews?" to "was there a specific individual document that said to kill all the Jews?", even though that is not the same question at all, and that is exactly what Amadan just said you would do.

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You complain endlessly about being identified as a Joo-poster, a Jew-hater, it's a "thought-terminating slur," but the one thing you cannot deny is that you hate Jews

No, my complaint is that your argument assumes criticism of Jews is motivated by hatred of Jews rather than criticism of actual Jewish behavior.

Are complaints about Black behavior motivated by some unjustified hatred of Blacks? Or are the complaints about Black behavior caused by Black behavior, and the general opinion of Blacks is downstream from that?

Let's apply your argument: The prevailing complaints about Black behavior are almost entirely derived from racism. There's no truth to any of those complaints, maybe <1% have some truth, but the rest of the complaints and stereotypes are just derived from hatred of black people. Of course you think your hatred is rational. Everyone thinks they are being rational. No one says "I just hate people for no reason", but they in fact hate Blacks for no reason and they deceive themselves into thinking there is a rational justification for their sentiment towards Blacks.

My world: the complaints are almost all true, in fact we vastly understate them in an attempt to be tolerant and smooth social cohesion, maybe <1% of the criticisms are false and derived from racism, and negative opinion of Blacks is downstream from that.

So there's not much to say other than you are wrong, my opinion of Jews is downstream from my analysis of these issues, same as Blacks. If you want to call me a "Black-hater" for concurring with prevailing negative opinions and the reasons for them, that's your prerogative but you're just name-calling.

It takes some chutzpah (heh) to complain about being called a Jew-hater as you loudly and vocally insist that hating Jews is rational.

You can call me a Jew-hater all you want, even though it's against the rules of the forum you moderate. I know that "Jew-hater" means "criticizes Jews in any way", I am not here to contend with the semantics of the insults you use to try to dismiss rational and necessary criticism of important issues.

But you can go ahead and think I hate Mark Levin, Randy Fine, Ben Shapiro, Jared Kushner, Jonathan Greenblatt, Bari Weiss, the ADL, AIPAC, etc. simply because they are Jews I hate for no reason, and my analysis of these issues is just me trying to rationalize my pre-existing hatred. It's your prerogative even though it's very stupid and not true.

So there's not much to say other than you are wrong, my opinion of Jews is downstream from my analysis of these issues, same as Blacks.

Is this an admission that you hate Jews and blacks?

Your argument here, as far as I can tell, is not "I don't hate Jews", but "I hate Jews for good reasons".

To wit, let me ask you plainly: how do you feel about Jews?

The last time we discussed this (ironically, discussing whether you flee debates), I put that question to you bluntly, and you vanished and didn't answer.

Would it be fair to characterise the disagreement, as you see it, along these lines? SecureSignals has a strongly negative opinion of Jews and regularly criticises Jews and Judaism. According to Amadan, this is disconnected from any evidential reasoning, but rather SecureSignals has an abiding prejudice against Jews. According to SecureSignals, this negative opinion is justified by the behaviour of the group he dislikes. Is that what you're clashing about?

No, both the "you are an X hater" are only slurs, like calling someone a heretic in Old Salem. I don't engage in affirmation or denial, I reject the tired playbook of trying to jacket someone with an -ist or an -ism or an x-hater. My opinions on Jews are contained in the sum of my writings, if you want to call me a Jew Hater go ahead it's not something I'm going to contend with, you may as well call me a Racist or a Sinner or a Heretic, it's all the same thing to me.

I reject your notions so totally that I'm not going in your little funhouse to argue I shouldn't meet your definition of Jew-hater, please sir don't call me a Jew-Hater I swear I am not! Please! Not playing that game and am never going to, I reject it, it's nothing more than a cheap slur for building consensus that Antisemitism is caused by everything under the sun except for the behavior of Jews.

No, both the "you are an X hater" are only slurs

No, it's not. A slur is an insulting label that can't be assigned a truth value but is simply a boo-light.

You either hate Jews or you don't. If you don't hate Jews, if you are capable of being friends with Jews, you do not wish harm on individual Jews, you just think Jewish culture is hostile to you or Judaism is a wicked religion or whatever, you could say that. You won't say that because you do hate Jews. You hate Jews for being Jewish, which you have constructed as some nebulous pattern of behaviors that applies to 99% of them, or even if it doesn't, accrues guilt to the rest for not denouncing their fellow Jews and refusing to be Jewish.

This "I refuse to play your game" speech is just evasion. You won't honestly and forthrightly state "Yes, I hate Jews" (which you are allowed to do, it's not like you'd be banned for it) because you know that hating an entire ethnicity for being that ethnicity is something even people generally disposed to agree with you about "Jewish influence" would balk at.

You accuse me of uncharitably projecting motives onto you, but the thing is, you make it as obvious as you possibly can (right down to your SS username) what you really think of Jews and what you'd like to do to Jews, while playing a game of denial. "Yes, Jews are my enemies and Jewish behavior is why everyone should hate Jews but how dare you accuse me of hating Jews!"

When someone calls you out on it or tries to get you to actually be honest instead of playing your constant game of ducking and weaving, evading, ghosting, and describing the Holocaust in a Schroedinger state (it both didn't happen and the Jews totally had it coming) you fan yourself in indignation that you would be accused of a "slur" like Jew-hater.

Can the mods please just ban Securesignals already? He flagrantly violates the single-issue poster rule and offers nothing of value to this community. I applaud the efforts at fair-mindedness that have kept him around for so long, but all he does is talk about da joos in a way that makes it hard for me to recommend this place to wven other dissident thinkers. He's hateful and (worst of all) boring dead weight holding the forum down and it's time he was cut loose.

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Have I ever called Greenblatt a "White-Hater"? Do I think Greenblatt just hates every single white person he knows, has no White friends, and every time he meets a White person Greenblatt secretly wishes he could kill him? Obviously I think there's much more nuance to his identity and political perspective, emotional disposition towards Gentiles, in spite of the fact it is clearly oppositional to me, but you will never accept that my disposition is more similar to Greenblatt but on the other side of the conflict than it is to the cartoon villain you have in your head.

I couldn't imagine having a discussion with him and demanding that he either affirms or denies he's a White-Hater, and not only because such an accusation lacks any currency unlike the accusation of being a Jew-Hater. It's bullshit, but you have to resort to those tactics because there is so much actual substance and implications to the criticisms being made you feel the need to play these stupid games I reject.

Not going in your funhouse, sorry- "I have Jewish friends pls don't call me that name!!!" I reject the power of your slur. It's retarded honestly and more retarded than ever given the state of the world and how relevant the criticisms I have made on this forum have proven to be. Calling everybody who criticizes Jews for the consequences of their own behavior "Jew Haters" is losing currency by the hour, you just look ridiculous at this point to be honest.

Poor Jews, so put-upon for no reason, everybody hates them for no reason, and when people criticize them it's almost always because they hate them for no reason. Antisemitism is the fault of everybody in the world except Jews. And if you think otherwise I am going to call you a Jew Hater. Enjoy the last days of that garbage holding any water!

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I didn't suggest anything negative about you. I asked a very straightforward question, and then attempted to precisify the terms of the disagreement.

It is not a gotcha, a funhouse, or any kind of trick to ask you to clarify exactly what you are debating about. As for the sum of your posting, yes, I am quite familiar with it, but it is useful, when there is an ongoing disagreement, to occasionally try to back up and clarify what the disagreement is about.

In this case, I think that "Does SecureSignals hate Jews?" is a meaningfully different question to "Why does SecureSignals hate Jews?" You don't appear to me to be disputing that you have a very negative assessment of Jews, which would make the dispute about the latter question.

Don't waste time with this flimflam, please. Stating what you actually think is not a high bar, and is in fact required by the Motte's rules.

Are complaints about Black behavior motivated by some unjustified hatred of Blacks? Or are the complaints about Black behavior caused by Black behavior, and the general opinion of Blacks is downstream from that?

Criticisms of black behavior that generalize to "Therefore I hate blacks because all blacks are guilty by association with the worst examples" is rightfully criticized as racial hatred, yes.

Let's apply your argument: The prevailing complaints about Black behavior are almost entirely derived from racism. There's no truth to any of those complaints, maybe <1% have some truth, but the rest of the complaints and stereotypes are just derived from hatred of black people.

Wrong. That's not my argument. You know this.

You can call me a Jew-hater all you want, even though it's against the rules of the forum you moderate.

Is it inaccurate to say that you hate Jews? Am I wrong, incorrect, misrepresenting you?

I know that "Jew-hater" means "criticizes Jews in any way"

That is wrong, incorrect, and a misrepresentation.

But you can go ahead and think I hate Mark Levin, Randy Fine, Ben Shapiro, Jared Kushner, Jonathan Greenblatt, Bari Weiss, the ADL, AIPAC, etc. simply because they are Jews I hate for no reason

In this very thread I have criticized several of those people. I have in the past criticized the ADL and AIPAC. As I said, I know you have reasons for hating Jews. I just think those reasons are irrational and not worthy of respect.

My opinion of Black people is not derived from the belief they are all guilty of every behavior by association, nor is it with Jews. But that doesn't erase the consequences of the way they tend to behave and its impact on society.

So it's a fine parallel.

The important distinction is that criticism of Blacks is caused by Black behavior. Likewise criticism of Jews is caused by Jewish behavior, it is not "for no reason" like you claimed in your post.

My opinion of Black people is not derived from the belief they are all guilty of every behavior by association, nor is it with Jews. But that doesn't erase the consequences of the way they tend to behave and its impact on society.

So, all of them? Most of them? A third of them? With black behavior, I know what you speak of, though it's a clear minority of blacks who do those things. What about Jews? Exactly what percentage of Jews do you think are guilty of subverting Western civilization and trying to destroy white people?

it is not "for no reason" like you claimed in your post.

One more time: I know you have reasons. They just aren't rational reasons and you generalize from "Some Jewish groups do things I think are bad for me" to "Jews are inherently my enemies."

With black behavior, I know what you speak of, though it's a clear minority of blacks who do those things

Well it only takes a very small percentage that do those things to completely enshittify the place they live doesn't it? Places that ought to be the crowned jewel of my community are no longer safe. Things I grew up doing are no longer safe, places I went to closed down because it. None of those impacts are dependent upon the % of the group that engages in that behavior. Obviously if it were small enough to not have those effects then people wouldn't complain about it.

The % of the Jews that are outright spies and traitors (Shapiro, Fine, Levin, Weiss, Kushner, etc.) is small but big and important enough to have disastrous effects on our country, which we are living through right at this moment. The % of Jews that constructively aid the former with political and cultural support is vastly higher even if they aren't directly engaging in the most destructive behavior- that certainly qualifies as subversion. The % of Jews who oppose and criticize it is extremely small but there are a few.

One more time: I know you have reasons.

Yes I do have my reasons, I don't like my country being subverted by foreigners to be led into disastrous consequences for their own benefit.

But in most places, definitely including here on the Motte, you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews." It's true out in the public amongst the "Free Palestine" demonstrators, it's true here among the posters who suddenly have deep humanitarian concern for Palestinians and Iranians. Do they have similar concerns for, say, Ukrainians and Russians? Or the participants and victims in any other conflict anywhere else in the world? Of course not.

I'm an isolationist and my problem with Zionist Jews is that whenever a principled non-interventionist like Ron Paul comes along he inevitably finds himself baselessly slandered as an antisemite by human detritus like Ben Shapiro. A binary choice between the bloodthirsty warmongers and so-called "antisemites" is the easiest choice in the world by such a standard.

Not a fan of Ben Shapiro, and I agree, what he says about folks like Ron Paul is an example of the bad faith "antisemitism" card I complained about above. I've also commented previously about how I stopped subscribing to The Free Press because I got tired of Bari Weiss turning it into a pro-Israel mouthpiece where every single headline is about how Israel is fabulous and crushing Iran is in America's interest and has nothing to do with Israel.

That said, while you find it easy to choose between "bloodthirsty warmongers" and antisemites, the problem is that the antisemites are not actually antiwar. They're only antiwar when Israel is winning. If Iran were kicking the shit out of Israel, you wouldn't see them complaining about what a "disaster" this is. Even if Iran had started the war, even when other countries do start a war against Israel, the antisemites are curiously not antiwar then.

But in most places, definitely including here on the Motte, you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews."

I think this is largely true here (and even so, people, including me, are crawling out of the woodwork to "erm actually" you) and rapidly degrades in usefulness outside of here.

I live in a blue "coastal elite" city, and the majority of my social sphere has no issue with Jews or Judaism (many people in my elementary and middle school were/are Jewish, and I'm friends with many of them to this day). However opinions on Israel are at all time lows. I have a lot of respect for the Jewish people (the # of nobel prizes speaks for itself) and I genuinely believe the human race would be better off if we were all Jewish (I assume) as their culture heavily prioritizes learning and that clearly works.

But I also think Israel is ran by cartoon villans and their people are understandibly bloodthirsty but also seemingly on a perpetual mission to chimp the fuck out and make America foot the bill. Which I really don't like.

I also dislike the overwhelming amount of human suffering in Gaza/the WB, especially because in Gaza ~50% of the humans there are under the age of 20, so I have a hard time assigning them moral responsibility for the situation.

I think that there is no solution to the I/P conflict, there's too much history, too much bad blood, and both sides are too bloodthirsty and stupid to find a common solution, despite the fact it would be massively EV positive for everyone.

I think you might be focusing a little too much on those on the Motte?

My experience is that there are three to five groups of people who are loudly anti-Israel in Western countries.

  1. The right-wing anti-semites. This is the most popular group on the Motte, and you describe them pretty accurately. There are plenty of people who hate Jews for reasons that are more-or-less in the ballpark of far-right or neo-Nazi ideas; usually this comes with a racialist theory where Jews are a uniquely malevolent or parasitic group never acting in good faith, who exert disproportionate influence over Western countries. Often this group has a kind of private admiration for Israel, in that the state of Israel behaves towards Jews the way that they would like their country (or countries) to behave towards whites. Outside places like the Motte, and to an extent even here, this group likes to disguise or misrepresent its motives, usually because they realise that their whole platform is very unpopular in the West. Suddenly discovering empathy for poor Palestinians despite otherwise being heedless of Arab lives is an easy tell.

  2. The left-wing anti-semites. I think you combine these with their right-wing counterparts, but I find it taxonomically useful to distinguish them. These are the ones who go all-in on the idea that Israel isn't really a country and settler-colonial states are inherently illegitimate and chant "from the river to the sea" on campuses. Whether the motive here is technically anti-semitism is debatable, particularly because there is a small but real number of Jews in this group, which the rest like to hold up as symbols, even as they go around loudly demanding that institutions divest themselves from all Jewish groups, or from anything related to Israel, or even just harass ordinary Jews who have failed to clearly denounce Israel. I called these group 'anti-semites' because I think they do associate all Jews (who have not clearly disaffiliated themselves from Israel) with Israel and will attack people just for being publicly Jewish; and because as far as can reasonably be discerned their actual position is that Israel should be destroyed.

  3. (2a?) Left-wing bleeding hearts who haven't updated their beliefs for decades. I run into a lot of these in real life. It's probably fair to view them as the moderate wing of the anti-Israel left, or perhaps the anti-semites as the extremist wing of the anti-Israel left. But basically take the group I described in 2 but dial it down to people who really care about Palestinian lives, support a two-state solution, would be mortified at any implication that they're hostile to Jews, and generally ignore the existence of their more extreme counterparts.

  4. The nationalists. This group largely codes right at the moment, but in the past has been more diverse and I think has room for some leftists in it. It's the one that says basically, "Why are we supporting this small, violent country? What's in it for us?" Unlike the first two, I don't think this one is particularly anti-semitic. Undoubtedly it's true that near-unconditional support for Israel has been a pillar of American foreign policy for decades, and it's understandable for parts of the American electorate to ask why, particularly as Israel seems to, whether intentionally or not, keep dragging America into conflicts that it does not seem in America's interests to fight. They stand out among the other groups for being relatively amoral - they do not care who's in the right, they do not care about Palestinian lives or welfare, and they will not litigate the last eighty years of Israel-Palestine conflict with you. They do not care. They will just ask - why are we involved in this mess?

  5. Migrants. This group is fairly obvious. Some are Palestinians themselves, many are Muslims, many are from countries like Syria, Lebanon, or Egypt, and therefore have very explicable reasons for hating Israel. There's a very common belief in the Islamic world that Palestine is a 'nation of martyrs', and though this sometimes annoys other Muslims who feel that their persecution is downplayed or ignored (Kashmiri, Chechens, Rohingya, Uighurs, etc.), but nonetheless it is pretty universally accepted. I posted about one of these in Australia last year. This group is often significant among their own communities but are trapped in those bubbles and often ignored in the wider discourse, though sometimes one makes it into politics and becomes more widely known.

I'm very much a member of group 4, and have stated my views in this regard multiple times here. If Israel decided to turn Gaza into a parking lot tomorrow, my feelings on the matter wiuld be something to the effect of "It's too bad they couldn't work it out peacefully. Oh well, not my problem." I'm even fine with selling Israel the weapons to do the parking lot making with, I'm just tired of them getting them for free with my tax money.

Whether the motive here is technically anti-semitism is debatable,

It's "anti-successful population," of which anti-semitism is a named subcategory.

Or "anti-Western," for a somewhat broad category of West that might include Korea and Japan. "Anti-civilization" would be more accurate but almost none of them actually conceive of themselves that way.

particularly because there is a small but real number of Jews in this group

Likewise, self-hating Jew is a common enough subcategory of oikophobia that it has its own wiki page.

Left-wing bleeding hearts who haven't updated their beliefs for decades. I run into a lot of these in real life.

Yeah, that's most of the ones I onow: "I heard on the news/social media that Israel just killed a kid! Why can't they just stop killing Palestinians and get along?"

Whether the motive here is technically anti-semitism is debatable

Well, I think that it's anti-Semitism in the same way that white college professors who are anti-white are racist. I think that the basic playbook for Leftist types is to aggrandize themselves by claiming moral superiority over others. Ok, suppose some tribe in some African sh*thole is massacring another tribe. If Leftists make a fuss about it, the message is "we're morally superior to some barbaric tribe in Africa." Which, at some level, they know isn't saying much. It's much more impressive to say "We're morally superior to the Jews!!"

Why are we supporting this small, violent country? What's in it for us?" Unlike the first two, I don't think this one is particularly anti-semitic.

Generally speaking, I agree, although I think a lot of anti-Semites hide in this group. One thing that gives the game away is they are outraged about US military aid to Israel but don't seem to mind that the US spends a lot of resources (both money and personnel) in South Korea, Germany, Bahrain, etc. They are outraged about dual US/Israel citizens but don't really care about dual US/UK citizens. This selectivity suggests that something besides isolationism is motivating their isolationism.

One thing that gives the game away is they are outraged about US military aid to Israel but don't seem to mind that the US spends a lot of resources (both money and personnel) in South Korea, Germany, Bahrain, etc.

I find this pretty rational geopolitically.

South Korea: US forces are there because it's the only way to give SK credible confidence that the USA will protect them with their nuclear umbrella. SK is one of the few nuclear-latent states that could spin (hah) up a bomb pretty fast. Fun fact, Samsung is one of the few private companies in the world that could probably do it on its own.

This will be a recurring theme, but the USA has (correctly) determined that a world with less nuclear proliferation is very good for the USA. So, it puts troops in SK so they don't make their own bomb to hedge against NK/China.

Germany: similar story. Latent nuclear state who was facing an existential military threat up until the ~1980s. USA likes being one of the only big dogs with big bombs. So you put troops in Europe to keep the hoes from being scared.

Also, the USA very much likes the EU in the cuck chair. It's much easier to keep them there when you can go "no no babe, you don't need MLRS launchers and fighter jets, why don't you pay the pensioners more money and drink some soup? Daddy's got this."

Bahrain: having bases in the gulf is SO useful given that its a geopolitical flash point and choke point. this is pure upside for the USA.

Israel: unsinkable aircraft carrier near Suez, great! Constantly drags USA into conflicts with basically 0 upside for the USA that require the expenditure of massive amounts of exquisite weapons which are expensive and built in tiny qualities. What is the upside here again?

What is the upside here again?

"Live weapons test zone" is probably considered more of an upside by American MIC types than you would think. In particular systems like Arrow and David's Sling (which are both co-developed by major American arms manufacturers) are helpful to the US as they increase our technology and (at least secondhand) experience with ballistic missile interception, which is very important to maintaining the relevancy of the US military pretty much everywhere, as ballistic missiles are now a pretty widespread technology.

The US buying Iron Dome (which is now also being co-produced by American contractors) to fulfill their point-defense needs is an example of that dynamic running full circle.

Ukraine was already providing that?

The USA is literally redeploying missile defense systems from Asia (remember when we were pivoting over there?).

The USA is depleting it's interceptor stocks at phenomenal rates, and while it is gently increasing production, it's nowhere near enough to replenish them quickly, especially given we'll need quite literally an order of magnitude more to 1v1 China, which is a credible threat that again, we were supposed to be pivoting to!

In my opinion, Trump's potentially crowning accomplishment was almost single handedly moving the Overton window to "fuck China" and made it basically a bi-partisan issue. When before the neoliberal ghouls were more than happy to mortgage our industrial base (and thus our civilization) to the Chinese in their relentless pursuit of "line go up". And now he's throwing that away... Why again?

Ukraine was already providing that?

Yes, it is, but when the Arrow missile program was launched in the 1980s that was not really anticipated.

We also haven't been able to test Standards in Ukraine, and we have in Israel.

it's nowhere near enough to replenish them quickly

Just on the Navy front, on some quick Googling, the reports are that we're looking to increase production of the SM-6 and SM-3 to a combined total of 600/year. At 100 SM-3s annually, that would allow us to replace our stockpile of around 400 in just four years. At 500 SM-6s annually, that would allow us to replace our stockpiles of 1500 in three years.

As I pointed out in my other post to you, we're increasing Patriot production to 2,000 year, which is pretty eye-watering as far as interceptors go.

especially given we'll need quite literally an order of magnitude more to 1v1 China, which is a credible threat that again, we were supposed to be pivoting to!

Yes, one of the first things I said about this war was that that was a likely fail state.

And now he's throwing that away... Why again?

Well, I am kicking around some theories, but I'm saving them for a top-level post I will never write at this rate.

but the USA has (correctly) determined that a world with less nuclear proliferation is very good for the USA

This is a great justification for attacking a country which (1) has leadership which regularly leads chants of "Death to America;" and (2) maintains uranium enrichment facilities in deep underground bunkers. Agreed? (I am aware that for a lot of people, it's hard to agree with this since damage to Iran is a win for Israel, but still, come on.)

Constantly drags USA into conflicts with basically 0 upside for the USA

So I can understand what you mean by "constantly" and "drags" can you please name the three most recent conflicts into which you believe Israel has dragged the United States?

This is a great justification for attacking a country which (1) has leadership which regularly leads chants of "Death to America;" and (2) maintains uranium enrichment facilities in deep underground bunkers. Agreed?

Yes*

*The load bearing assumption is you can actually finish the job and permanently prevent this.

*Also that other latent nuclear countries don't see this and decide they need nukes asap to prevent this from happening to them.

*Also, there's a very credible argument that Iran was actually quite happy playing the game of "ooooh just you wait were totally gonna make a nuke any second now, ooooh baby it's coming" while never actually doing it. Iran could get 80% of the benefit of nukes (so they thought) for 20% of the cost by always being close but never quite getting there. Or at least that was the most rational move for them, although they're religious fanatics so hard to be 100% certain.

So I can understand what you mean by "constantly" and "drags" can you please name the three most recent conflicts into which you believe Israel has dragged the United States?

  1. shit the bed so hard on security you get Oct 7th'd, resulting in the USA spending large amounts of money and things that go boom to keep you from getting MRBM'd

  2. decide to 12 day war Iran last year, USA gets involved to sucker punch Iran with a (really cool) stealth bomber strike during negotiations. But this was worth it because we destroyed their nuclear program!...

  3. deicide, again, to blow shit up in Iran, sucking in the USA even harder this time, resulting in the current quagmire.

*The load bearing assumption is you can actually finish the job and permanently prevent this.

Either that or set the program back significantly.

Also that other latent nuclear countries don't see this and decide they need nukes asap to prevent this from happening to them.

Or they might see what Iran is going through and decide to avoid the headache.

Also, there's a very credible argument that Iran was actually quite happy playing the game of "ooooh just you wait were totally gonna make a nuke any second now, ooooh baby it's coming"

Given Iran's incessant attacks on Israel through proxies; it's threat to wipe Israel off the map; it's chanting of "death to Israel" and "death to America"'; etc., it's reasonable to think it's pretty likely that Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons and would be pretty likely to use them against Israel given the opportunity.

That being said, anything is possible. Possibly the orbits of the planets are not actually ellipses but instead circular with lots and lots of epicycles. But if one of these isolationists consistently cares only about the US connection to Israel, well, there's a reasonable conclusion to be drawn.

resulting in the USA spending large amounts of money and things that go boom to keep you from getting MRBM'd

This is a good example of what I mean. The US spends a large amount of money and things on various other countries' defense. And yet for some reason, (some of) these isolationists only object when it's Israel.

deicide, again, to blow shit up in Iran, sucking in the USA even harder this time, resulting in the current quagmire.

It was reported in the news that part of the reason the US got involved was lobbying by Saudi leadership. If this turns out to be true (and it seems very likely to be true) I wonder how these isolationists will react.

I can't tell if you're obliquity refering to me as an "isolationist" and then also, amusingly, doing the same thing anti-Semites do where they don't say "it's the Jews" they just do things like (((this))) but instead you're implying I'm an anti-semite.

As an aside, there's a joke here calling someone an (((isolationist))) but I can't quite figure it out.

Anyway. If you want to call me an anti-semite you should, and then we can argue about that :)

Either that or set the program back significantly.

I genuinely hope that they do. Especially now that they've showed Iran the "ooooh I'll build one any day now" isn't an option for them.

My priors are that they won't do a good job at this. Given in June 2024 we did this already and claimed massive victory over their nuclear program and that was a lie.

Or they might see what Iran is going through and decide to avoid the headache.

It's true. We will find out over the next 20 year which way this goes.

would be pretty likely to use them against Israel given the opportunity.

I think we will have to fundamentally agree to disagree here. I have an incredibly hard time believing that after expending such a ridiculous amount of blood and treasure to get nukes, they'd immediately turn around and attempt to land one on Tel-Aviv in exchange for having the Persian homeland turned into an irradiated wasteland. Further, I have hard time believing the 100s of humans required to execute a nuclear launch would all be fine with their moms/dad's/wives/kids/cousins/friends all getting glassed to MAYBE nuke Israel.

I also think Iran getting a nuke is step 1 of a very long chain even if we assume the entire Iranian military complex's only burning desire is getting nuked in exchange for hurting Israel once. Iran having a handful of nuclear devices means they can make scary noises, but they have to deliver them. And so far all I've seen is Iranian missiles get shot down 100 different ways. And Iran is so compromised by Mossad if they were launching a nuke, they know Israel would know very quickly, and they only get 1 shot. So they need, basically at minimum, hundreds of hardened launch sites, significantly more sophisticated re-entry vehicles, and probably MIRVs. All of which are significantly further down the tech tree than "basic nuclear device".

The US spends a large amount of money and things on various other countries' defense.

Yes, and much like Trump used to, I think that it's too much. I remember at one point Trump was making noises about nuclear disarmament.

“You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

He continued, “We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive.”

One of the greatest things he's ever said. I doubt he remembers saying it, but he's right.

US got involved was lobbying by Saudi leadership

Then fuck Saudi Arabia as well. Fight Iran yourself if you want to. Don't drag us into it.

I am a single issue geopolitical thinker. China. China China China. Every single thing we do I look at through the lens of "how does this help our rapidly deteriorating relative strength in the Pacific?"

And right now the answer is "it's massively detrimental because we're using up interceptors, airframes, money, and energy that all will be needed to counter a rapidly powering up China"

I don't have strong feelings towards Israel in a vacuum. I don't have a problem with Jews (if all cultures valued education as much as Jews do, the human race would be WAY better off).

I do have strong feelings of America weakening itself for a country that won't help versus China, for a conflict that will literally never end.

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Latent nuclear state

Once upon a time, yes. Not anymore. Alas.

:(

Your green party might be the stupidest of all the western political parties that call themselves that, and the Canadian one is left by a woman who thinks wifi causes cancer.

Isn't Elizabeth May out?

She had to come back because her replacement turned out to be too insane even in terms of internal cohesion, nevermind electability.

The U.S. Green Party would like a word- it swings back and forth between generic retard left and nutty woo woo granola conspiracy theorists.

The British one seems pretty batshit, what with being somehow both fanatically culturally-progressive and also Islamist.

While they did manage to doom Germany to economic and demographic destruction in the near-future, I don't think it's fair to blame the party. They just carried out the will of millions of voters. And did so very well. So well in fact that they got what they wanted without even being part of the government at the time!

Blame the Germans. They ruined Germany.

Words cannot describe how much the median western voter pisses me off

Maybe all these solar panels can be converted into a giant Archimedes' Mirror?

If they're CSP rather than photovoltaic, well, they're already halfway there.

But when was the last time the UK dragged the US into a war? If the Israelis are causing problems and the British aren't, it makes sense to only be outraged at one of them.

If 25 years ago there were dual US/UK citizens who had the ears of Parliament and the Prime Minister and were advocating for the UK to send troops into Afghanistan and Iraq, I would not begrudge other UK citizens for being suspicious of them and thinking that their arguments are not based on what's good for the UK.

But when was the last time the UK dragged the US into a war?

1917? 1941? Grenada? Arguably some/all of the fallout of the post-WWII drama in the Middle East? The British were involved in putting the Shah in charge in Iran, for example.

ETA: and for your dual-citizens question, Murdoch is a popular target for such conspiracies, owning both US and UK media franchises that were involved in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. There are people that are suspicious of him on both sides of the Atlantic, I suppose.

A lot of leftwingers hate Murdoch as a propaganda tool for the right.

So, ~100 years ago vs under 30 days ago.

Agreed on the drama tho, the British (and French, to be fair) decided to absolutely shit up the middle east/Africa with their borders during decolonization and we've been paying for it since.

US spends a lot of resources (both money and personnel) in South Korea, Germany, Bahrain, etc.

Devil's advocate: Germany is far less likely to result in US forces/materiel being lost. If you assume the "Israeli aggression causes all Middle-east ills" line of thought, which I do not, you can even squeeze Bahrain into the same category as Germany, and I believe Bahrain also provides the US with an important naval port.

Devil's advocate: Germany is far less likely to result in US forces/materiel being lost

At the moment, I agree. Although (1) I note that you didn't mention South Korea; (2) at times during the Cold War, there was much more serious concern about a Soviet invasion of Berlin; (3) there are very few US troops actually stationed in Israel; and (4) the US has formally committed to defending numerous countries if attacked, and this does not include Israel.

I believe Bahrain also provides the US with an important naval port.

But how important is it if you are an isolationist? It seems to me the isolationist position is "just buy oil from whomever is in control and develop our own resources to the point where we don't need foreign oil any more."

I note that you didn't mention South Korea

I don't find NK to be a threat to the South or the troops stationed there, personally, so I'd put it in a similar category as Germany. The SK relationship is (at this point in time) pretty directly anti-Chinese.

Again, doesn't really fly with the isolationist viewpoint, but I could imagine them saying something like "yes, we should be withdrawing from these countries as well, but our relationship with Israel is the most pressing in terms of harm/cost to personnel/materiel."

I wouldn't say that, mind you.

Left-wing bleeding hearts who haven't

I was originally going to agree with Amadan but then you reminded me these people existed - however in my experience they tend to act like information less wokes who can't discuss the situation at all or provide any solutions, only suggest that Israel is bad and should go away. In this way they carry water for the actual anti-semites.

In this way they carry water for the actual anti-semites.

@ymeskhout drew an evocative comparison:

Getting on a soapbox with "We demand that Israel stop trying to get its hostages back from insane terrorists!" is not a winning message, and so they tried to falsely moderate their Jihadi simping. The unabashed loons braying for the complete destruction of Israel could take cover behind the normies who showed up to protests simply because they hated seeing pictures of dead kids on their Instagram feed. Kind of like human shields.

I was thinking particularly of a few people I know in church groups - white people in their 60s who will host viewings of movies about Palestinian issues, or have 'Free Palestine' bumper stickers on their cars, or aggressively recommend books about the issue, and generally seem like they have never gotten past the 90s or early 2000s. I see them get fully behind groups like Kairos Palestine, or boosting people like Munther Isaac.

In my experience these are centre-left voters, think of themselves as multicultural and very sympathetic to Jews and Judaism, and view it as a non-sectarian human rights issue.

I think it is correct that they effectively carry water for real anti-semites (Munther Isaac, for instance, I think is noticeably anti-semitic), but they are largely useful idiots, rather than malicious themselves.

Hmmm yes that makes sense.

I do think you have real room to argue that the water carrying becomes something in truth especially once protesting happens, and sometimes voting - if you vote for the jew-killing party then you share some culpability when they do it, and anti-Israel is a large part of the Dems these days regardless of if they want it. It's not an incidental aspect.

I'd broadly agree with the 1 camp without being anti-Israeli. It's a bit annoying that they've historically been able to conduct themselves in a manner that'd get any equivalent Western nation absolutely pilloried with minimal media/public censure (until they've lost control of the narrative recently) but I believe that in terms of maximizing utilitarian outcomes the world should be more tolerant of actions of that caliber. Plus if in the situation where the Palestinians had a similar level of dominance over the Israelis they'd be acting significantly worse.

I do also feel a certain schadenfraude when it comes to Jewish people who were used to/didn't see the inherent contradiction in the previous social meta of 'Israel is a special case and doesn't get criticized for boundary pushing' and are trying to hammer the anti-semitism meme a bit too hard. Especially when Jewish thinkers/media influence was made to curate an environment where they got given special exemption status instead of a broader laissez faire attitude.

I assume you’re a well-informed poster. You and I and everyone on this board surely knows well that ‘Free Palestine’ groups claim to be anti-colonialist, anti-racist and leftist, plus supporters of the concept of national liberation and also of BLM, for example. Their opposition to Israel’s policies rather obviously stem from this ideology and not from a general hatred of the Jewish people and not from a hard opposition towards the concept of a Jewish state in itself, as they view Israel as a white supremacist, unrepentant, aggressor settler state, and many of their members and supporters are themselves Jews. We can, of course, make all sorts of criticism of them, but this needs to be admitted. I guess we can go so far as to call them anti-white, since they see Israeli settlers and Zionists as white. At the same time, not only is their rhetoric not anti-Semitic, they do not tolerate anti-Semitism either, especially not within their own ranks.

Obviously these groups have existed before October 7th, in fact they have existed for a long time, and their ideological rhetoric against Israeli colonialism was also deployed against the US political system, which they view as structurally racist and neo-colonialist. Back when BLM was more relevant, it was the latter that was getting these activists more media attention, and I can only assume that this made many people forget that these groups are also anti-Zionist, and that accusations of anti-Semitism do not work against them at all, for the simple reason that they genuinely do not see themselves as anti-Semitic and thus do not consider themselves compelled to apologize. It’s similar to the case of the ‘Democrats are the real racists’ narrative, which does not work on Democrats one bit.

To the extent that US political opposition towards Zionism and the Zionist lobby exists outside the leftist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist milieu, I think it’s fair to say that it all stems from isolationism, to the extent that it still even exists. And the common attribute of isolationists is that they wish to isolate the US from other conflict regions in the world as well, not just Israel, so I don’t think accusations of anti-Semitism apply in their case either.

they do not tolerate anti-Semitism either, especially not within their own ranks.

In what ways do they not? Up until being forced by the new administration, elite colleges were quite happy to tolerate anti-Semitism. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan come to mind.

The exception being that any critique of George Soros (or I guess now his son) does get coded as unacceptable anti-Semitic, which is... telling, I think.

It’s similar to the case of the ‘Democrats are the real racists’ narrative, which does not work on Democrats one bit.

Indeed. The truth of the statement doesn't matter. Whether they're anti-Semitic or anti-civilization, neither accusation has an effect; it just slides off the closed ideological defense system.

In what ways do they not?

In a way that agitation against Jews as Jews (that, is based on ancestry and not on Zionist leanings or Israeli citizenship) is a cancellable offense in their eyes, even when black activists do it. That does not mean that those black activists always get cancelled as a result, but anti-Semitic agitation is the one sin they surely can get cancelled for by their comrades.

anti-Semitic agitation is the one sin they surely can get cancelled for by their comrades.

I think anti LGBTQ is also cancellable these days.

It’s similar to the case of the ‘Democrats are the real racists’ narrative, which does not work on Democrats one bit.

IIRC George Wallace in the 1960s claimed that he was not racist, just that segregation was the natural order of things.

I ask you not to be obtuse. The ‘Democrats are the real racists’ narrative originates from the 2000s.

It was more of an analogy to a common strategy deflection when accused of obvious examples of racism/anti-Semitism, claiming instead to be something adjacent and morally superior. "It's not anti-Semitism, it's anti-Zionism" follows both Wallace's logic "it's not racism, it's the natural order of things" or even Nazi anti-Semitism: "it's not Judenhass, it's about eugenics and Volk".

I don’t think it’s a case of deflection. The DRR/DR3 narrative may be effective when directed at the Republican base because it reinforces their priors but it’s utterly meaningless for Democrats because their belief is that racism is a structural evil whereas Republicans think it’s a personal moral failing. So if you accuse Democrats of racism they won’t even react because they’re full convinced that not one of them is guilty. On the other hand, the racism accusations works against Republicans (as evidenced by them always taking such accusations seriously and publicly denying them) for the reason I mentioned i.e. it is conceivable for Republicans that some of their own are actually racists, which makes them afraid of such accusations.

I assume you’re a well-informed poster. You and I and everyone on this board surely knows well that ‘Free Palestine’ groups claim to be anti-colonialist, anti-racist and leftist, plus supporters of the concept of national liberation and also of BLM, for example. Their opposition to Israel’s policies rather obviously stem from this ideology and not from a general hatred of the Jewish people and not from a hard opposition towards the concept of a Jewish state in itself

I tend to disagree with this. For example, it's no secret that Palestinian Arabs living in Lebanon (some have been their for generations) are not allowed to be Lebanese citizens; barred from various professions; etc. And yet campus Leftists don't seem to bother with "Lebanese Apartheid Week." In fact, there are many minority groups all over the world the Left doesn't seem to care about all that much. Heck, I even read that there is actual slavery of black people still going on in 2026 in some places. There is some degree of objection to what China is doing in Tibet and the western provinces, but it's nowhere near the volume of anti-Israel activities.

So it seems pretty clear that, even if one ignores the fact that Jews are actually an indigenous people of the Levant, there is a lot more going on than just generalized opposition to ethnic nationalism, colonialism, and so on.

And yet campus Leftists don't seem to bother with "Lebanese Apartheid Week.

Kind of interesting since Lebanese-Americans almost code as white in modern progressive terms, because so many were Christians that immigrated fairly early and integrated quickly- Jamie Farr and Casey Kasem come to mind.

True. At the same time, nobody is claiming that Lebanon is our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East and the bastion of Judeo-Christian culture.

At least partly because the Lebanese state's military power is just pitiful; they can't even stand up to Hezbollah.

At the same time, nobody is claiming that Lebanon is our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East and the bastion of Judeo-Christian culture.

Ok, and? I mean, why is that relevant? If Leftists are against racism, against discrimination, against slavery, and so on, why should it matter if someone argues (rightly or wrongly) that the targets of their criticism are US allies, democratic, etc.?

The general argument I see is that because US policy/tax dollars support these allies, it's more important to call it out over regimes which, while they may be worse, the US has fewer levers of influence to pull.

The general argument I see is that because US policy/tax dollars support these allies, it's more important to call it out over regimes which, while they may be worse, the US has fewer levers of influence to pull.

If this were true, one would expect that Leftists in Europe or Latin America wouldn't have the same tunnel vision. Which they do.

Not to mention the fact that the US gives billions of dollars in aid every year to Egypt. Where are the demonstrations for Egyptian Christians? For that matter, the US has actual troops stationed in the Persian Gulf countries and has (at a minimum) an informal alliance with Saudi Arabia. These countries do all kinds of things that -- in theory -- should get Leftists riled up.

Before the Lebanese Civil War (1975), IIRC Lebanon had a reputation as one of the more relatable countries in the region: stable, multicultural, mostly Christian. Incidentally, that civil war was in part downstream of regional Palestinian migration and nationalism.

You're absolutely right. That was before 1975 though, as you said.

I reached the same verdict in the UK when:

  1. Some groups organised protests against Israel on October 7/8, when there was no specific Israeli action to protest against, but instead as a seeming celebration of Hamas's attack.
  2. Rather than distance themselves from these groups or refuse to work with them, subsequent larger protests supposedly involving "moderates" let them in on the organization too.
  3. At no stage has there been internal condemnation or exclusion of protesters that go too far by these "moderate" organisations.

Maybe you could claim this is just guilt by association but organised anti-zionism here does not exist as a movement distinct from anti-semitism. In no other area of politics would supposedly very different groups with completely incompatible motives act in lockstep. The National Front doesn't march hand in hand with the Tories, for instance. So I can only conclude they are not, in fact, different. As for the argument that they can't be excluded for strategic turnout reasons, if your hundreds of thousands strong movement needs them that badly to function, then they can't be a minority of bad apples, can they?

And of course theres the issue where effectively every group claiming to be motivated by human rights was demonstrated to be lying back in 2020, but that's more a me thing.

This is a completely rational and a smart way to think and a completely rational and smart thing to say anywhere in the world except in a forum where we agree to deal with each other's arguments as stated and not the nefarious motives we imagine behind the arguments.

What we agree to do is to apply the principle of charity and to assume good faith. If someone says "I don't hate Jews" and then proceeds to explain why Israel shouldn't exist, I should charitably take their argument at face value… at least at first. And indeed, if someone says "I don't think Israel should exist," I (formerly anyway) would at least hear them out and not assume they were motivated by a desire to fuck the Jews.

Some people will make arguments to the effect of "Israel's original creation was a great crime against humanity, sucks for all the millions of Israelis who live there now, but really the only moral thing to do is for them to leave and go resettle somewhere else." I think the vast majority of these people are in fact antisemites and there is nowhere the Israelis could hypothetically resettle that would actually make them happy. If all the Israelis relocated to Alaska and built a state there, I think most of the "Israel should be decolonized" advocates would suddenly become deeply concerned with the environmental impact of all those Jews in the pristine Alaskan wilderness and the Zionists' lack of concern for any Inuit who might have been displaced (even if the displacement happened before the Jews got there). But, I will concede there are some people who genuinely just think Israel shouldn't exist for moral reasons because it was imperialist powers unjustly moving people around. Their conclusions are ahistorical and their solutions are impractical, to say the least, and the kindest thing I can say about them is that they are useful fools, but sure, there is a niche for the sincere anti-Zionist who is not an antisemite.

It's a small niche.

This principle does not require me to refrain from inferences or conclusions, however. We are not required to assume that no one ever has unstated motives, or that everything everyone says should always be taken at face value even if the evidence suggests otherwise. That is not being charitable, it's being a quokka.

Note that the people I'm talking about will rarely even say something as direct (if unconvincing) as "I don't hate Jews." Instead, they will angrily protest against the label of antisemite and complain indignantly about their motives being interrogated, and then list all the reasons why it's perfectly rational to hate Jews (without ever using the words "I hate Jews").

What you would ask of me, then, is to pretend that they don't hate Jews because they didn't type the words "I hate Jews," and what you are accusing me of is, when I observe someone who always applies unprincipled arguments that only ever apply to Jews, not conclude "Hmm, seems like this guy really hates Jews."

We are, in fact, allowed to infer motives behind arguments. Obviously accusing someone of having unstated motives requires sufficient evidence to justify the accusation. You can't just say "I don't believe your argument is your reason for believing that, I think you just secretly hate Jews."

Fortunately (or unfortunately) the evidence is pretty abundant and the Joo-posters don't exactly make a secret of their real motives, whatever tiny fig leaf they try to paste on.

Am I super autistic or just a unicorn or I don’t technically fall under this definition: “ you can map with nearly 100% consistency someone who is "critical of Israel" or "anti-Zionist" to "really hates Jews."

I’m not anti-Zionists. I guess might makes right? I am critical of Israel. I hate the ADL. I hate AIPAC and how they interfere with our elections. I also have many Jewish friends. Tonight I made dinner for an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn. I get concerned that 75% of the largest political donations in the 2020 election were Jewish. I semi-like Larry Ellisons new media empire because I think it will back the right but still concerned that he’s a Jew and could turn on my interests at a future point.

So yes I get concerned that 1% of the population with super high incomes that will generate half of the richest people in my country and 40% of the Nobel Laureates might have interests that disagree with my interests.

Because the move from critiquing institutions like the ADL or AIPAC to gesturing at “Jews” as a coherent bloc with aligned interests is where the analysis tends to degrade. It collapses a wide range of individuals, incentives, and internal disagreements into a kind of ethnic shorthand that explains too much and therefore explains very little. At that point, it begins to resemble the exact pattern Amadan is pointing to when he talks about criticism of Israel bleeding into garden variety joo poasting. I'm not particularly sensitive to charges of antisemitism but it just makes the conversation tiring.

I think most people here would accept these two things:

  1. Most human beings have a loyalty to their own tribe. As thus Jews have interests not shared by other Americans.
  2. Jews likely made up 30-40% of the highest IQ Americans for decades. This may be lower now with the large amount of filtered immigration the US had between roughly 1970-2010.

So I do think a very high in human capital group with their own interests is something the rest of society should notice.

And yes it was a Jew Scott Alexander who made me aware of AIPACs ability to target political races on a small budget. It’s there very high human capital that gives the group an ability to do things like AIPACs political lobbying. So yes there isn’t some Jewish hive mind working in perfect coordination, but Jews do have tribal interests. As does every tribe.

I’ve never met a Jew I didn’t get along with. I think I likely have more than a few Jewish traits. As an Italian American and as genetic testing has improved it turns out Italians and Ashkenazis share a bunch of common ancestors especially on the mother’s side. They are much more my cousins than Anglos.

I'm not calling you anything personally, nor am I implying you engage in that sort of behaviour. I'm largely indifferent to someone's personal prejudices, be it antisemite, anti-Muslim, anti-Indian, anti-apache helicopter. I'm just echoing Amadan's sentiment that this particular discourse, unless heavily moderated, has an extremely high propensity to collapse into a kind of zero-nuance intellectual junk food, where a single reductive heuristic is made to bear explanatory weight for an otherwise complex world. Take Tucker Carlson for instance, he constantly implies that Israel and Israel alone wanted this war to happen, as if Trump did not have any agency here or that the war doesn't reflect his own ideological commitments independent of Israeli/Jewish influence. It's rhetorically potent and emotionally satisfying, but it obscures more than it clarifies. At that point, it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy and even Jewish moderates grow understandably suspicious of any non-Jewish criticism of Israel, reading it through the lens of prior experience rather than in isolation. In turn, those most immersed in that discourse often do tend to display broadly negative priors, which reinforces the cycle. Kinda how black activists who fixate monolithically on institutional racism and slavery probably do signal anti-white proclivities.

I have no interest in going back in time on this issue. We are not going back to a place when any criticism of Jews are called antisemitism.

If somehow we ranked a groups political power. Jews probably control in the neighborhood of 25% of global power despite having a minimal population. If you could some how measure influence, tech, military, etc. So yes we can criticize Jews.

If somehow we ranked a groups political power. Jews probably control in the neighborhood of 25% of global power despite having a minimal population. If you could some how measure influence, tech, military, etc.

Isn't that just the old "white privilege"/"male privilege" argument, but repackaged?

Jews and white men are privileged. We do have higher human capital. But the conclusions are different than the wokes. I don’t believe in DEI.

The problem with the ME are the people. Even many leftist are just admitting you don’t want them as immigrants (unless highly filtered like the US). I believe Yglesias said this week that you don’t want European style unfiltered Middle East immigration and been seeing a few people I think are at least partially left saying it saying it on twitter. I’ve seen a Pakistani friend whose a Doctor go back to Pakistan and say I thought all brown people were smart but this was awful. Yglesias literally wrote a book “One Billion Americans” in 2020. positively selected Muslim immigrants No longer a billion Americans. Just skim the top 1-3% from Pakistan.

I think I’ve heard Yglesias and Noah Smith types are best described as the ones who say wrongthink right before it’s acceptable for people on the left to think something.

I think during the founding of Israel the did things that fit the genocide definition that’s established by a Jew at the UN. Though I don’t believe post Oct 7 actions are genocide but legitimate military action to neutralize military action taken against them.

I think I’ve heard Yglesias and Noah Smith types are best described as the ones who say wrongthink right before it’s acceptable for people on the left to think something.

Indeed! Saw someone call them "Overton Window-washers" and I find that to be a fit-enough name for that role.

Reading your response before reading the quoted part (though I caught the capitalized names in the quote and registered them mentally), I had assumed the phrase was meant to invoke someone laundering the current Overton Window as a way to crystalize it where it is, rather than someone expanding or shifting the current Overton Window. Since we don't have an equivalent job for making windows bigger or moving them around in a wall (though hopefully nanotech will be so cheap in the future that using it for some silly feature like sliding the windows in your home to any arbitrary configuration at any time will be taken for granted), I can't think of a term that I'd find more appropriate.

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