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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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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I just don't see how you can hold these positions at the same time. Heck, later on you say:
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 don't see how you find those inconsistent.
Their points you quoted, in order and summarized:
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.
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
the IDF cutting off food to people who need food is an incredibly shitty move
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...
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.
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