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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26438 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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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.

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