This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Isn't this just dodging the point that I made? I don't want to be sucked into a tedious litigation of this or that example. The central point for me is that, regardless of whatever moral judgement you choose to make overall, Israel has been aggressive, both militarily and diplomatically.
I could pick some examples, but I suspect that is an attempt to lure me into a tedious back-and-forth, and I don't think you can refute a general point by zooming in on whatever the weakest of my three examples is and quibbling a detail until I get tired. I'm guessing that you follow the Gaza conflict and Israel's wars significantly more closely than I do. Suffice to say that I believe there are plenty of examples of Israel behaving brutally, that if I googled 'Israeli atrocities of the 2020s' I would find plenty (indeed I do), that you know this, and that you are prepared to nitpick any example I give until the cows come home. None of it would be germane to the general point.
Well, let's assume for the moment that (1) Israel's aggression, such as it is, is entirely defensive; (2) Israel's aggression, such as it is, is more restrained than one would expect from most other countries; and (3) contra your claim, Israel has not been behaving "very badly."
Earlier, you said this:
Wouldn't you agree that the added context -- that Israel's aggression is restrained, defensive, and reasonable -- is also something which should be considered in evaluating Iran's aggressive behavior?
It's an attempt to scrutinize your claim that Israel has been behaving "very badly."
No, that won't suffice. Because I don't know what you mean by "brutally" and you haven't actually offered any examples to be scrutinized.
If by "nitick," you mean "scrutinize," then yes, of course. For example, if Israel attacks a hospital, it's hardly nitpicking to point out that the hospital was being used as a base of operations for militants. If Israel mounts a ground invasion of Lebanon, it's hardly nitpicking to point out that Lebanon was being used to stage terror attacks against Israel.
Are you prepared to concede for the sake of argument, then, that Israel has, in fact, NOT been behaving "very badly."?
Certainly it's possible to morally evaluate Israeli and Iranian attacks - bluntly, if I zoom out and look at them in a bigger context, I find plenty sympathetic in both cases. Israeli fear of attack is an understandable reaction to having been surrounded by states determined to destroy it. Iranian hatred of America, going back decades, is an understandable response to unilateral Western and later American aggression against them. There's a sense in which I think Israel is right to oppose its neighbouring Arab states, much less Iran, and in which I think Iran is right to oppose America.
In this case specifically, I just don't want to waste your or my time scrutinising this or that specific claim about an Israeli action. Take, say, Gaza. If we trust wiki around 73k Palestinians have been killed, of which 80% are civilians, so let's say 58k civilian casualties. Let's also for the sake of argument assume that figure is heavily inflated, so let's cut it in half and suppose there are 29k real casualties. Let's also be maximally generous to Israel and cut it down again, since maybe a lot of that number is Hamas human shields or somesuch. So let's suppose that Israel has killed 15k or so innocent people in Gaza.
Is that enough to count as 'behaving badly'? Let's compare this to some other conflicts. The Azerbaijanis took Artsakh and killed a few hundred people. The recent South Yemen offensive seems to have also killed something in the range of hundreds. Those are significantly less. Wiki gives post-2024 casualties in Syria as around 10k overall, which is comparable to our minimal guess at Gaza - am I allowed to say that any of these groups are behaving badly? When the Russians fought that insurgency in Chechnya, they killed a few thousand people - can I say that the Russians behaved badly? How many dead civilians are necessary? I think my threshold is set at a pretty reasonable level.
I think that Israel is behaving more-or-less comparably to its neighbours in similar situations. I don't think it's behaving uniquely badly, but I do think it's fair to say that, overall, it is killing enough civilians that the word "bad" is merited.
If (1) you refuse to back up your claim that Israel has been behaving "very badly,"; and (2) you refuse to concede, for the sake of argument that Israel has NOT been behaving "very badly," then there is nothing more to discuss. All I can tell you is that you are wrong.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link