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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22779 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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I for my part find it extremely frustrating to deal with the recurrent tendency of Israel apologists, and you in particular in this case, to treat Oct 7th as having happened in a vacuum, as opposed to being another iteration in a long chain of action and reaction.

We can argue about who escalated more and which reaction by what side was uniquely disproportionate to the preceding ones, or who started the chain and whether they were justified in doing that, but having the same old argument where you start out by pretending that Israelis and Palestinians were living in peace and harmony until Oct 7th and then Hamas attacked out of absolutely nowhere, and you even go as far as painting a picture where your opponents agree with this framing and just have some obviously silly weaksauce arguments that try to justify Oct 7th against that putative backdrop of peace and harmony over and over again is not productive. It is particularly frustrating here because I'm sure you have been involved in past discussions where the same topic came up, and it is kind of looking like you just abandoned those discussions, waited for things to cool down and then reposted the same premise under the guise of a long-form "effortpost" hoping to roll the dice again for a pliant choir of allies and newcomers that you can preach to.

I don't treat the October 7th attacks as having happened – look at that, you're doing the exact thing I criticised in the OP – having been committed in a vacuum. I'm aware that they were a reopening of hostilities in a conflict which has been ongoing for the guts of a century.

But the fact remains: in the most recent conflict, Hamas struck first. That part is not open for debate. Other things that are not open for debate: Hamas deliberately targeted civilians; most civilians killed were intentionally killed by Hamas and not by the IDF; Hamas intentionally chose to attack Israel. The October 7th attacks were not "inevitable", and to claim that they were is to, ironically, deny the agency of the Palestinian people.

where you start out by pretending that Israelis and Palestinians were living in peace and harmony until Oct 7th

Please show me where I said any such thing.

But the fact remains: in the most recent conflict, Hamas struck first. That part is not open for debate.

Please show me where I said any such thing.

To define the "most recent conflict" as starting on Oct 7th, you either have to assert that there was no conflict before that date, or you can set the beginning of the "most recent conflict" at any point at all for your argumentative convenience. If it's the latter, then, well, I'll say that in the most recent conflict (the one that started on Oct 27th 2023 or so), Israel struck first. That part is not open for debate, etc.

To define the "most recent conflict" as starting on Oct 7th, you either have to assert that there was no conflict before that date

I have to do no such thing. I simply have to stipulate that there was a low-level conflict prior to October 2023, and a sudden and dramatic escalation of hostilities in October 2023. I genuinely don't see how anyone could contradict such a claim in all seriousness.

"Low-level" is relative. Yes, Oct 7th was an escalation. So was the Israeli response! Israel kills n people in 2023, then Hamas kills about 1.2k, then Israel kills 71k. It doesn't look like n is much smaller than 1200/(71/1.2)! Conveniently place your arbitrary cutoff between "high-level" and "low-level" somewhere else, and you can say there was a low-level conflict prior to Oct 27th followed by a sudden and dramatic escalation of hostilities. (Certainly Hamas reduced no Israeli cities to rubble.)

I feel like I'm losing my mind here. You have Hamas commanders (Yahya Sinwar among them) openly stating that the purpose of the October 7th attacks was to escalate the conflict by provoking Israel into a more aggressive response than they had thitherto been using. You had some of these fine gentlemen explicitly contemplating the possibility that the October 7th attacks might be so gruesome and horrific that Israel would use nuclear weapons in response. And yet you still refuse to assign any moral responsibility for the escalation in hostilities to Hamas. Everything is ultimately Israel's fault, because of something something 1948 right of return.

This seems like a tremendous example of the hypoagentic framing I was complaining about in the OP.

But how about I propose some admittedly arbitrary cutoffs to demonstrate that the October 7th attacks represented a major discontinuity in the conflict up to that point in 2023:

  • It was the first time 1,000+ civilians were killed as part of the conflict in a single day in 2023.
  • It was the first time 500+ civilians were killed as part of the conflict in a single day in 2023.
  • It was the first time 100+ civilians were killed as part of the conflict in a single day in 2023.
  • It was the first time 50+ civilians were killed as part of the conflict in a single day in 2023.

Do you dispute any of these figures?

This also illustrates why your invocation of the 71k figure is a cheat. Israel did not kill 71k Palestinians all at once, but over the course of three years, during which they sustained considerable casualties of their own.

And yet you still refuse to assign any moral responsibility for the escalation in hostilities to Hamas.

Can you show me where you think I said they have no moral responsibility? Of course they do; both parties do in an escalation spiral. I just think the Israelis have more, while it seems to me that you, in your attempts to frame the story as a simple "the Palestinians started it", think they have none.

I do think that, in a very basic sense, the Israelis do have more agency, because to begin with, unlike the Palestinians they have a very plausible option to simply abandon their project of conquest and gtfo. If they used a fraction of the lobbying power that they have accumulated, they could secure citizenship in a rich Western country of their choosing for every one of their people, generous starting package of funds included.

"in a day"

I dispute that how many days the killing was spread out over is particularly relevant.

Can you show me where you think I said they have no moral responsibility?

The fact that, in your first reply to me, you described the October 7th attacks as having "happened", the exact kind of evasive euphemistic language I decried in the OP.

You used "happened" yourself in your post, when you said "get them to concede ... the October 7th attacks happened". This is because this turn of phrase is natural in English, and you are trying to make a lot of tea from very little leaf there. I have no problem with the wording "Hamas performed, fully agentically, the Oct 7th attacks", nor would I take any issue with the converse "the levelling of Gaza happened"! Not every random stylistic choice has to be a dog whistle for whatever proves your grand theory.

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