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I’ve been meaning to write out my full thoughts on Israel Palestine for a while, and as rhetoric heats up around election season, I figured now is as good a time as any.
First off, so that I don’t keep anyone guessing, let me state my position right off the bat. I don’t care. I would love nothing more than for the I/P conflict to be treated by the media like the much bloodier Sudanese civil war – a few words of condolence during the rare slow news cycle, then shutting up. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in, and it seems we’re destined to listen to the same hyperbolic arguments from both sides over and over instead of news that’s relevant to our lives. So, that being the case, let’s look at the conflict.
A - There is no peaceful solution. You have two groups of people that have a multi-generational blood feud going. While there might be people on both sides that want peace, there are enough that want war to ensure that war will continue. Short of separating the groups for a generation until the memories of dead relatives die out, there is no way to end this peacefully.
B - Israel is in deep trouble. The original framework of support for Israel was US/Western World in favor (out of a combination of guilt and wanting to spread democracy), communist world against (mainly for reasons of optics/opposing western imperialism, etc).
Unfortunately for Israel, the cold war ended. For the American left, they are an easy scapegoat. The “America Bad” fifth column faction of the left has a long history of hating them for cold war reasons. Given that the factions that have joined together to make up the new left (identity group tribalists + various flavors of communists) don’t have any real reason to oppose this, hating Israel makes a for a great rallying cry among groups that historically have had a REALLY hard time finding common ground (LGBTQ & Muslims, etc). And as the American left goes, so goes Europe and the rest of the Anglosphere.
As for the American right, they seem to have lost any interest in the US maintaining international hegemony. As far as I can tell, the main effect of the social media age on the right has been to break down any sort of trust they once had in American institutions. I will be the first to admit that some of those institutions have been marred by leftist politics. But the net outcome seems to be that the right now sees ALL government peripheral institutions as inherently corrupt and not worth the cost of upkeep (which, to my mind, is the antithesis of conservatism, but that is a different discussion). Needless to say, satellite states are now within the realm of things they no longer want to pay for.
Finally, there’s Israel itself. Its secular population is declining at the same rate as the rest of the developed world. And its fundamentalists are procreating faster than almost anyone else on the planet. Within another generation, they will be the majority. They’ll have full control of everything, including a reputedly large and advanced nuclear arsenal. At which point, I’d imagine that what remains of the secular population will flee, and we will see yet another theocratic state arise in the land of milk and honey.
C - The Palestinians are utterly doomed. There is no scenario where they come out of this well. The BEST case scenario is that they somehow get integrated into the surrounding Arab countries, and are spread thinly enough that there is no repeat of the Black September uprising. But in general, the conditions that the Palestinians have been subject to has made them into a vengeful and violent people, and I don’t know what country would be willing to risk taking them in.
Short of that, every road leads to death. If Israel becomes a true, North Korea style pariah state lead by fundamentalists, then there will be little to stop them from ACTUALLY committing genocide. If the modern equilibrium holds, an increasingly aggressive Israel will continue to whittle away at the Palestinian population and territory until there is nothing left. If somehow the gulf states unite and defeat Israel militarily, given the horrific deaths the Israelis would likely meet at the hands of an invading Arab army, I have little doubt that Israel would elect to glass the entire region.
And in the end, I don’t think any of these outcomes (except maybe the one with the mass nuclear exchange) are going to have much more of an effect on the western world than the Sudanese civil war, or the oppression of the Uighurs, or the various coups in Burma. Except for the fact that, due to some quirks of history, we are doomed to hear about it forever.
Although I agree with your conclusion, I disagree with your reasoning. There is a saying which goes along the lines of "If the Arabs lay down their weapons, there will be peace; if Israel lays down its weapons, there will be no more Israel." Is that saying true? The experience with Jordan and Egypt suggests that the answer is "yes." Israel has not attacked Jordan or Egypt even though it has more than enough military strength to do so. Almost certainly Gaza could have gone in a similar direction after the Israeli pullout 20 years ago, but Gaza's leadership instead chose a different direction.
That being said, I agree that a peaceful solution to the current conflict is very unlikely. The key point is that the main goal of the Palestinian Arabs is to destroy Jewish Israel. As long as they have some hope of achieving that goal, the conflict will continue, unless of course they succeed. Thus, there are basically two ways for the conflict to end: First, Israel gets destroyed (obviously violent). Second, the Palestinian Arabs are completely subdued, their hopes and dreams of destroying Israel getting crushed in the process. It's difficult to see how this could be accomplished without violence.
This distinction matters. Putting pressure on Israel feeds the hopes and dreams of the Palestinian Arabs, leading to more intense conflict.
I disagree with this analysis for a couple reasons. First, the US gave Israel very little support before the 1970s and Israel did okay. In fact it was the USSR that was a big weapon supplier to Israel in the 1940s. Second, there has still been a tremendous amount of support for Israel in the United States notwithstanding the end of the cold war. Third, even without Western support, Israel could defend itself pretty well against Arab attacks just like it did in 1967.
In absolute terms, I would probably disagree with this. Secular Israelis (the type who drive on Saturdays; who eat shrimp; etc. but who go to the local synagogue for funerals, weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc.) are holding their own pretty well compared to other secular groups in the world. But in relative terms? Yes, the religious populations in Israel are outpacing the seculars by a wide margin.
I agree that they are a problem population, but I don't think I would blame it on their conditions. Not those of the last 100 years, anyway.
That was tried back in 1967 and it didn't work out for the Arabs. And it was more because the Israelis were more determined and better organized than anything else. At this point, the Israeli military is far stronger than it was in 1967, so I think it's unlikely that such an invasion would be attempted, let alone having a reasonable chance of success.
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The single most tragic thing about this entire conflict is that anyone in the civilised world has any sort of opinion about it whatsoever.
This should be completely unknown to us, off our radar. This does not concern us. Desert shithole ethnoreligious land conflicts are nothing to do with us. And yet there are people shitting up my town centre every weekend about this. I have to endure conversations with people who inexplicably make this core to their identity.
So I'm in favour of whatever route out of this puts a stop to that as swiftly and decisively as possible while costing my country as little as possible. If that is Palestine becoming a radioactive glass crater, so be it. This is my sole concern about this matter.
As has been pointed out before, people use beliefs not only to model the universe but also to signal group membership. In coalition politics, this can be tricky because some beliefs can alienate members (or potential members) or potential supporters of the coalition. That's what went wrong with using gender ideology and defund the police as identifying beliefs.
That's probably a big part of the reason that progressives have seized on this issue. They are hoping to find something they can all agree on; which can be used to support the need to feel morally superior; but which won't alienate too many people. Thus one can witness situations like that of "Queers for Palestine," in which gay people side against a nation which is relatively tolerant of homosexuality compared to the ferocious hostility found among the group they support.
It's difficult to predict these things, but I think progressives are about to find out that the anti-Israel position is like their support of gun control, in that they are going against a small group of very passionate advocates who are willing to oppose them very aggressively due to that one issue. I remember back in the 90s, the liberals made gun control a big issue and later got killed in the elections.
In terms of public policy in general I tend to agree with you, except that the US really can't ignore Iran. Keep in mind that Iran is hostile to Israel for basically the same reason as progressives - they believe they can use it as a unifying issue in their quest to gain power in the Muslim world.
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I also ultimately have a lot of apathy and also sympathy for both sides. I've known some Israeli Jews, I think it's good for them to build a first-world state, although their friendship has never filled my heart to the brim. I've known some Palestinian Muslims, I've always found them warm people, I feel bad to see them pushed out and squeezed, but I also don't see any real compatibility between our nation and theirs. I've even known some Palestinian Christians, I've seen how they've been abused by the Israelis and abused by the Palestinians, although they're too small and impractical for me to try to have some contrarian third way take.
My sneaking suspicion is that a big part of the problem is the idea of the two-state solution. At this point, Israel is at least three states: Israel, The Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. The West Bank and Gaza are not meaningfully the same entity at all, even if they share the same struggle. It seems like every prospective peace is thwarted by the disunity of the Palestinian two sides, even if it's not always the determining factor. I suspect it would be a lot easier to actually work out a peace deal if Gaza was treated as a separate state, or worse, actually wiped off the map. That's another thing, this whole thing would have wrapped up by now if either Israel or Palestine were allowed to wipe each other off the map. But both sides are backed by larger powers plus "The International Community" trying specifically to avoid a final solution. So there aren't any. I wonder if we've saved suffering this way or if after 80 years of intractable conflict the interest was greater than the principle.
Also, a large part of the conflict is exacerbated by the emotions of people who aren't actually involved but identify strongly with one side or the other, like spectators at a particularly grisly sports game. There is a lot of proxy struggle from people who use Israel-Palestine to subsume their more complicated feelings about Western Civilization as such.
The 1948 war and associated population displacement were nothing particularly notable, historically speaking. The refugee problem was grown and cultivated into today's intractable mess and political project of global prominence via the intervention of external parties, not least the UN which funded the refugees in perpetuity. Without that the displaced Arabs would have had to disperse and assimilate decades ago. Then having manufactured the problem, said international bodies have decreed that there is only one acceptable outcome to it, and refuse to see that it isn't viable.
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I guess I should add that I do have sympathy for both sides as well. In the same sense that I have sympathy for a stranger dying of an inoperable brain tumor. I certainly wouldn't wish this situation on anyone, but that doesn't change the fact that it exists. My apathy is largely born out of the fact that there is almost nothing that can be done given the historical / cultural forces at work. Those measures that might actually work would take immense resources, and I think it's hard to justify giving such resources away with no clear benefit.
I guess this is just one of the flaws in modern Western thought; the idea that all problems A) are solvable, and B) are worth solving no matter the cost if they involve human suffering. This is in many ways analogous to the whole mass migration debate. In its most basic form, this a refusal of the idea that sometimes we have to make difficult decisions. It's saying that we should be allowed to make the comforting, happy decision all the time, and the world must accommodate this. So essentially, it's attempting to deny reality itself, and hoping everything will work out for the best. History has not been kind to this type of thinking.
Sometimes I do but often, in my darker moments, I think "fuck 'em". Because this stranger had access to the best oncologists in the world and decided to pull a Steve Jobs and try some nonsense. Do you know how many peoples with grievances wish they could have had a tenth of the effort and attention poured into this cause for themselves?
How many people have been murdered and ethnically cleansed with not even the prospect of justice? These people are inordinately centered and it seems to have only fed their own narcissism.
I try not to go down the fuck'em route for two reasons. Firstly, most people had no say or were not even born yet when these decisions were made. Holding groups of people responsible as if they were individuals doesn't make a lot of sense. Secondly and more importantly, cruelty out of malice rather than out of necessity is not something I'm okay with morally. Cruelty is a fact of life. But inflicting it on others for no personal gain other than some sense of schadenfreude is about where I draw the line.
This is true of everyone. Plenty of people are dying right now of preventable poverty because of their horrible leadership. It's accepted as a (tragic) fact of life. Why must the Israelis or Palestinians be saved? Why does this tragedy have to be the litmus test for civilization?
I need not inflict anything on them and I don't have the power to in any case. They're inflicting it on one another.
Both true. I certainly have no interest in expending my resources (or to the extent it is my choice, my country's resources) solving this problem. I simply don't on a personal level like taking pleasure in their plight. Based on my (admittedly very subjective) moral framework, apathy is acceptable. Satisfaction isn't.
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Okay, I am way out of my depth here. But I nevertheless have a couple thoughts.
I would not take this for granted. I am sure that there would be atrocities regardless, but I think that some surrounding nations, were they running the show, would elect for an ethnic cleansing over a true genocide.
This is possible, because there are those who treat the survival of Israel and the survival of the Jewish people as fundamentally the same thing, but I think it would be a straightforward mistake even from the perspective of self-interest. If Israeli Jews were fleeing ahead of an Arab army, or being expelled by an Arab Palestinian state, any number of Western countries would be happy to take them in. A retaliatory nuclear strike by Israel would threaten this in a way that few other things could.
Edit: For the avoidance of doubt, I endorse neither ethnic cleansing nor genocide, in either direction.
I saw someone post on Twitter that Jewish hatred is always balanced and at any given time one group hates them and others love them.
The gulf states love Israel now especially at the elite levels. S America actually has booming Israel love. Meanwhile Europeans now hate Israel and support for Israel has collapsed in the US.
The idea of an invading Arab army attacking Israel today is low.
The leadership of the Gulf States are happy with Israel now on the "my enemy's enemy" principle. The people of those states (including people in their military) still hate the Jews as much as ever.
I think your understanding of the situation between Israel and the Gulf is wrong. It’s not about Iran primarily. It’s Israel talent in tech and finance and the Gulf states needing a post oil-society while having a lot of money. That is why Gulf leadership became friendly with Jews.
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Some people believe that the way the relative sizes and distances of the Moon, the Sun, and the Earth are such that both lunar and solar eclipses just about exactly cover the moon/sun is evidence of God's design. Some people believe that the fact that the ratio in size between the observable universe and a typical human being around the same order of magnitude as the ratio in size between 12 grams of carbon and 1 individual carbon atom is evidence of God's design. Surely the greatest evidence of God's design, though, is that history always conspires to make sure that there's always an equal amount of hatred and love directed at the people who claim to have been chosen by Him.
I'm not sure what the best ways to measure hatred and love are, but I do feel like there probably were periods in time where the former overwhelmed the latter in aggregate, though.
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Let's consider America's allies/satellites. Britain - Five Eyes, cooperative, sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, was going to help out in the Asia Pacific before things heated up in Europe. Not very strong but causes no problems.
Australia - Five Eyes, cooperative, Pine Gap signals, rare earths, sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, helping out with developing US submarine-building to buy some nuclear subs. Small and weak but causes no problems.
France - a bit unruly, wants more European strategic autonomy, doesn't like buying US weapons, kicked out US troops of their own country for a while but is still in NATO. Not a major problem though.
Turkey - quite unruly, buys some Russian weapons, complicates things with Syria or anything to do with the Kurds. Constantly double dealing everyone.
And then there's Israel.
Israel is constantly needy for US weapons - about 3-4 billion in military aid per year. Israel has all kinds of special carve outs where the US will contribute to R&D for Israeli weapons that the Israelis later export. Whenever there's a war they get more supplementary military aid. Even their neighbours get military aid to serve as a bribe for being nice to Israel.
The Israelis provide bad intelligence, it was the Israelis producing imaginary armies of Kurds for this most recent Iran shambles. They've been demanding Iran be bombed for 20-30 years now because of nukes that nobody's ever seen. They were demanding war with Saddam's Iraq and didn't lift a finger to help out. They don't contribute to US wars, unlike all other US clients who at least show up sometimes. South Korea sent plenty of troops to Vietnam. Israel never shows up for a US war with the exception of the Iran war, which was started for Israel. Rubio's initial remarks were that Israel was about to attack Iran and so America had to go in too due to the inevitable response. Israel causes massive diplomatic and reputational problems for the US. Why was Osama and all these Muslims so upset with America? To a large extent because of Israel.
Consider non-proliferation, how much harm does it do to the US non-proliferation agenda for Israel to be sitting there while America warns Iran must never be allowed to have nuclear weapons? Rules for me and rules for thee...
Israel is a uniquely toxic US ally but exercises such vast power over American politics it's insane. What has Canada ever done to America that would motivate harsh rhetoric and trade wars? Canada might be incompetent and weak but is that such a great crime? They show up to US wars. Better a weak friend than a moderately powerful leech, deceiver and problem-starter who's shown zero intention to help the US.
Trumpian anger with US allies has been directed everywhere except where it actually belongs. Most farcically, he's now fallen taken that final step that even Bush shied away from.
The idea that America went to war with Iran because of Israeli intelligence about the Kurds strikes me as very bizarre.
Why does Iran keep building secret nuclear sites under mountains where inspectors aren't allowed to go?
How much harm does it do?
Canada imposes tariffs and other barriers on American goods, often in violation of our agreements. Trump retaliated. I really don't think it's deeper than that.
Immediately after I posted this yet another story about fake Israeli intelligence emerged. The CIA had 'low confidence' in the threat to Trump's life that sponsored the plane switcheroo, while it seemed to serve Israeli goals in reinforcing the threat from Iran.
I wouldn’t trust Israel uncritically and I think they understand well when their interests differ from ours. But I saw the same story and I don’t see why I should trust that either. It’s much more likely that someone at CIA has an axe to grind with Israel, or that someone in the media wants to boost something anti-Israel, or someone is exaggerating something because it sounds like a good story. I think it’s extremely implausible we know what he actual story is.
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Let's be fair here, America also had its own share of unfair trade practices that Canada tolerated. I don't begrudge Trump for playing the game, and I find silly how politicians here act like his actions are unprompted aggression (it plays well to the population, who loves a good reason to feel offended or to act morally superior to americans), but putting fingers on the scales with regards to trade is a game everyone, including the US, has been playing.
I think the US took more than it gave before Trump but I think you're also basically right.
This is one of those things where, I think, a lot of the emotion and anger is really just for the cameras. That is to say, I know that a lot of Canadians are angry, and I know that a lot of Canadian politicians also claim to be angry, and I know that Trump certainly sounds angry, but I suspect that behind closed doors Trump and the Canadians probably are just doing business.
As I understand it from my Canadian friends, the defining point of Canadian culture is being "better (morally/culturally, rather than economically/militarily) than the US". The 51st state talk really riled them up far more than any trade war could ever have.
Yes, agreed. I was born in Canada and spent the first half of my life there, and I always explain that the major difference between the two countries' cultures is that, while Americns are very proud of being American, Canadians are very proud of not being American.
I think things have changed in the last 25 years or so–and especially since Trump started provoking us—but certainly in the latter part of the 20th Century Canadians were rarely overly patriotic in the way Americans are. Sure: we'd sew maple leaf patches to our knapsacks when travelling abroad for obvious practical reasons, but otherwise the only places you'd normally see Canadian flags were on government buildings and on Canada day.
But—despite CanCon rules— we consume massive amounts of American media (though obviously we know which shows are actually shot in Vancouver of Toronto, and which of Hollywood stars are originally Canadian), and largely absorb the same values and world view. Those of us from the more populous parts of Ontario even get accused of sounding American by fellow Canadians who grew up closer to Saskatoon!
But as much as we (used to) think of Americans as our pals, and despite how little overt patriotism you'd see on any day but July 1st, Canadians almost necessarily define their cultural identity in opposition to our larger neighbor to the south:
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Yeah, that's pretty much it. I think it's an Anglo/French HBD thing. Fortunately, with all the immigrants they're importing at my direct expense, they'll soon be a minority; unfortunately, it'll be too late for me to gain financially from that because destroying any hope of that is why they are importing the people in the first place.
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Have you not seen the one state solution meme?
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Ultra-Orthodox Jews are not like Christian fundamentalists. Christian fundamentalists generally have the skills necessary to survive in industrial first world societies without outside support, because if they did not, there would not be Christian fundamentalists anymore. That means their leadership has the normal leadership abilities that would enable them to lead their societies overall- perhaps less well or more corruptly, but they could do it, whereas it's not clear that grand rebbes have any such ability, because they're hereditary cult leaders who trade votes for welfare fraud.
Instead, the religious Zionists will probably run Israel. They already kind of do, and sure they're more corrupt than the left would be, but Israel isn't falling apart. And they have a barely lower fertility rate than the haredim.
I'm not convinced that lacking the ability to run a modern state is enough of an impediment to prevent a group from trying to run a modern state. Look no further than the Taliban.
In any case, I suspect the arrangement that exists between the religious Zionists and the Haredi sects can only exist as long as there is a secular state there to exploit. Once that is diminished, things will come to a head rather quickly.
Afghanistan is a medieval kingdom that happens to exist in the 21st century and not really a modern state; in fact ‘state’ is a word that doesn’t necessarily apply. The taliban can govern that state through handwritten notes and beatings. Israël cannot be.
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Naftali Bennett is already trying to take advantage of the collapse of the Israeli left to realign Israeli politics based on an alliance between right-wing patriotic secular Jews and Modern Orthodox patriotic religious Zionists, as opposed to Netanyahu's coalition which is increasingly based on an alliance between MO and the Haredi parasites.
Given the widespread view in Israel that Netanyahu should have been able to prevent October 7th, he is likely to succeed.
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