site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.

For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

How do y'all suppose Israel was so blindsided? An operation of thousands of people and Mossad etc had no clue it was coming? Smells a bit off

There's basically always been an operation consisting of thousands of people looming just over the horizon, for more than a decade prior. Getting a few thousand guys together to cross the border and wreak havoc isn't much of a challenge, particularly given the very small size of Gaza and the distributed storage and management of weaponry across individual Hamas members - sending a few kids on foot or on bikes to spread the word on impending assault destinations and times is very easy, everyone mostly brings weapons they already had been given weeks/months/years ago for just such an event, and if the groups and destinations are determined even a little in advance then there's practically nothing left to do but go. I wouldn't be surprised if operations of that scale could be called up in a few hours, even factoring in planning time. And as others in the thread have noted, even well-prepared defenders can get caught with their pants down if the enemy makes an unexpected-enough move, so most of the ground-level chaos was caused while the IDF was still figuring out what was even happening.

What raises eyebrows is the size of the stockpiles of weapons, particularly the thousands of rockets launched out of Gaza on the day of the assault. Stuff that blows up doesn't tend to last long in Gaza, and the IDF regularly conducts operations to clear out ammo warehouses. Either they've somehow systematically missed thousands of stockpiled rockets over several years, implying Hamas has been unusually effective at keeping them out of sight over a prolonged period with many changing leaders... or a whole ton of rockets arrived at once from some sponsor, and were smuggled in on very short order by unknown means. I'd bet money on the latter.

My point is, it's entirely possible that a single well-exploited mistake allowing rockets to be smuggled into Gaza by the thousands was the difference between havoc and status quo for Israel this week. Right now, I don't think we can realistically conclude much about the competence of Mossad or western intelligence from single catastrophes, other than "they aren't perfect"; though I expect in the coming weeks we'll see lots more narratives and fingerpointing as Israel tries to understand how this happened and how to prevent it in the future. I definitely don't think there's any need to reach for conspiracy to explain the magnitude of the event, either; it's a sufficient, but hardly necessary, explanation to yield this outcome, and right now there's enough grieving people seeking retribution against someone as an emotional relief valve that basically any publicly visible conspiracy investigation is unquestionably compromised by emotion.

My best guess is, Hamas and Iran pulled a single good trick on Israel, and this sort of disaster was always one bad day away.

I mean weapons of mass destruction weren't found in Iraq. I think intelligence agencies of all stripes have a hubris that enables blind spots. Combine that with human error, and I think negligence (less than diligence) and misestimation is the correct interpretation. If these security agencies only have their failures recorded, not counting the near misses and unreported intelligence successes, the wrong interpretation would be to draw conclusions from their failures as the only evidence. The CIA didn't do 9/11, and similarly this failure of Mossad I think can be judged similarly.

I'm ambivalent towards the Jews and Muslims both, but I don't see how this war will benefit anyone at all. Just another mess.

I'm deeply suspicious of both too. Blasphemy and Israel are incredibly volatile topics for Muslims, I'm certainly not happy that someone's poked the bear yet again. Perhaps maybe possibly as these incidents pile up, we'll build the wall on our borders after all. Or at the very least, admit that multiculturalism is a failure and brown people probably have to become "coconuts" to fully assimilate in western societies.

The most common guess is that Hamas saw Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and felt that they needed to kick the wasp’s nest to prevent that from happening.

Not sure who to tag, but... mods, would it make sense to create a Megathread for all Israel-Gaza war posts? I get the feeling that this conflict will continue for some time -- if not the 'hot' phase of war, then certainly the aftermath -- and I would personally prefer to see this community's response in one spot rather than as responses to the latest intermittent comments that get posted here.

I concur. @Amadan & @naraburns could we do this?

Done.

Blessed are the mods.

Seconded. This seems important enough to get a megathread for - if the Rittenhouse and Floyd 'events' were noteworthy enough to partition, this seems surely equal to that bar.

The thing that's gotten me the most is the cheering crowds in the UK who have zero fear of being arrested on "hate speech" charges (unlike anyone who criticizes them), and the academics justifying it saying "Postcolonial, anticolonial, and decolonial are not just words you heard in your EDI workshop," with reminders that they're going to do it to Americans next
It's endless: Dartmouth, Berkeley, Columbia, CUNY, journal editors, professors, HR bureaucrats, the entire blue ecosystem all cheering rape and torture and kidnapping and screaming that my children are next with no fear of any consequences. Armed american terrorist groups who get hagiographies from NPR accusing anyone opposed to massacring children of being pearl clutching racists.
Random union twitter accounts posting "Palestine is rising, long live the resistance🌹" as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be doing, while the DSA organizes to support the attacks.

Spend an hour reading the "decolonization" tag. They are telling you what they are, and like Noah Smith I am getting "sort of negatively polarized against these people."

It feels less like masks dropping than like it happened so suddenly that everyone forgot to put their masks on in the first place. The Bataclan attack and European truck massacres developed slowly enough that people could adopt effective strategies: /r/news managed to delete all mention of the attacks for an entire day, and by the time it was acknowledged to have happened the party line was "this awful event had nothing to do with any cause we support."
Now we're just getting the raw unfiltered reactions, just like the combat footage, and we see what the real intentions are.

Spend an hour reading the "decolonization" tag. They are telling you what they are, and like Noah Smith I am getting "sort of negatively polarized against these people."

We implemented a rule against culture-warring precisely for that reason. It doesn't matter who you are, your brain is fundamentally susceptible to letting its emotions trump its rationality and logic. This is precisely why engaging the culture war at all is a highly dangerous task, the risk of neutral observation slipping into partisan advocacy is too high.

I would highly encourage 99% of people reading to just not bother reading that tag. It's not going to do you much good.

Spend an hour reading the "decolonization" tag. They are telling you what they are, and like Noah Smith I am getting "sort of negatively polarized against these people."

With all due respect, I'm surprised more people didn't see this coming earlier. "Decolonisation" in its best form has always been one of those failed movements that inadvertently made way to more radical elements that are far less subdued in their hostility towards so called "western values", given the volatile nature of these polities and all around frustration stemming from within due to a lack of economic growth. It's like if the Ashraf Ghani government tried to "decolonise" and is shocked to find himself shaking hands with the Taliban. China did not really "decolonise" either, not any more than Japan or SK did, as much as they claim to be the alternative to western hegemony. The reality is the vast majority of Chinese in all major cities very much live as a westerner does. I'm sure both the government and the general public is well aware of this, though they may not publicly admit it.

That video of Hamas parading that woman's body and accounts of rape, child murders, etc., and several big Muslim names playing apologia, including a liberal Muslim journalist who used to write for Indian Express, might just be the straw that breaks the back for the hard left's camaraderie with 3rd world nationalisms.

The hard left is very much okay with 3rd World Nationalism by any means as long as it is from the "Oppressed". It is only a problem if it is a sentiment expressed by the outgroup.

I looked through the twitter likes of a few prominent Open Source Software developers. I lost any taste for writing Software outside of 9-5.

I don't know how much Social media furor translates over to the real world but I am seeing a lot of white collar (leftist) westerners finding their latent "It is nuanced" superpower in response to the Israeli girl with bloody pant bottoms.

EDIT: Forget "nuanced" most of them say they had it coming, as the posters up the chain mention. I find this horrifying despite regarding the creation of Israel deeply unfair for Palestinians (though they haven't given a good showing since then).

...so you basically went around looking for pro-Hamas-offensive leftist comments to get angry at and then got angry at them?

Like I said earlier, the idea that "most of them say they had it coming" does not match my experience in social media at all, unless it's some sort of a circular definition of "most people who support Hamas say that what Hamas did was good". The feeling I'm getting is that American left is currently mostly in disarray over the events, and the "decolonialists" are at the very least getting a lot of pushback from the other sectors.

I don't know how much Social media furor translates over to the real world but I am seeing a lot of white collar (leftist) westerners finding their latent "It is nuanced" superpower in response to the Israeli girl with bloody pant bottoms.

It is nuanced. You can freely debate whether the Versailles treaty drove Germany towards Nazism or not and neither position means you gleefully approve of either death camps or strategic bombing of population centers.

My "It is nuanced" was more in reference to the rhetorical device used to downplay something you don't want to discuss. I think it is important for a civilization to unconditionally condemn acts that cross a line of barbarity. Being able to understand and empathize with the motivations of a murder should not stop one from condemning the act.

This is different from an emotional "let's turn Gaza into a parking lot" response which I consider as problematic as the "they had it coming" arguments.

Some folks even drew equivalence to condemning Hamas' brutality against Israeli civilians with "All Lives Matter".

I’m not sure I believe in Noah’s takes right now. Though I do think he’s correct in “sort of negatively polarized”. That stuff I think really helps Trump being the main factor. We will end up having a close election and these fringy parts of the Dem coalition will turn off voters.

But his end of Pax Romana take seems off to me.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/youre-not-going-to-like-what-comes

This is definitely possible. And one reason I support the Ukraine War. But I still think this is more in the column of “potential” and probably <50%. These Hamas attacks are not it. It’s so far more like 9/11 and the best reason for it seems to be to break the Saudi-Israel growing alliance. His main point for the end of the Pax Romana is China’s growing might. Concerning but I still tend to think they will try and fit in the system.

I think the bigger issue is internal fracturing of America harming our ability to act.

Concerning but I still tend to think they will try and fit in the system.

Why?

What possible motivation could the Chinese have to support the Pax Americana? They have been talking loudly for decades about the need to shift to a multipolar world and the replacement of the current system. They are explicitly allied with Russia in order to destroy the current system, and they have been working on projects to take the place of the current system for decades.

They are human. It’s in their own best interests. Pax Americana made them rich.

Pax Americana used to be good for them but no longer is, because Chimerica is over. The Chinese are not willing to stop being a superpower that flexes its military muscle at the very least in its claimed turf, and the US is not willing to suffer any unaligned superpowers with turfs to exist; nor allow them to catch up technologically even if they pinky-promise to behave. We'll most likely have a big war within 10 years or so, unless they collapse like the USSR.

China isn’t going to collapse. It’s possible they stagnate like Japan. I could agree with you on mistake theory grounds and China is making a policy mistake but the rules based international system led by America is still very beneficial to them.

I can also agree some of the culture package coming out of America isn’t ideal today. But countries in the system grow more and get richer.

Russia decided to suicide themselves. But rationalist would not do that.

Then you're free to conclude China isn't rational when they invade Taiwan.

...Don't you believe that China is likely to invade Taiwan?

More comments

Have you listened to any political statements made by the Chinese government recently?

Pax Americana didn't make the Chinese rich, the US government corruptly selling the manufacturing base of the entire west to China made them rich. China is currently actively implementing alternatives to the USD for trade and actively forging alliances with countries violently opposed to the Pax Americana. They took what they needed from the Pax Americana and they're now just delaying their final exit in order to minimise the costs associated with that transition.

I don’t see any evidence we are living in a zero sum world. The only thing negative about western is the pride crap we export but you can just ban some movies for that.

The only thing negative about western is the pride crap we export but you can just ban some movies for that.

Have you heard of Taiwan? I don't think the Chinese government would agree with you on this front, and their opinion actually matters quite a bit when it comes to this topic!

Yes obviously I have, explain to me why an independent Taiwan is bad for them? A city-state of ethnic Han Chinese that pumps out of a ton of advanced tech and invest heavily in mainland China.

More comments

Pax Americana has worked out really well for China so far. Maybe they like getting richer and richer in the current system.

A bit unrelated, but this give credence to the Fisted By Foucault theory on how Anglo-Saxon Academia is still an anti-systemic force. The Biden administration was quick to condemn and give support in any case. The Marcusian strategy "no enemy to the left" still holds strong, but at this point not many people are going to support the most extreme left-wing cause.

Btw, probably the most important point for the right that came from all of this is the fact that "decolonization", as all Marxian jargon like Anti-Imperialism, is only an academic term to justify whetever happens to the enemy.

I honestly don't get the point of this tweet. Yes, radical Western left supports third world resistance movements. They did this for a century now. When it was safer to do so, they would even go and get military training in the El Fatah camps. All of this has been common knowledge there is no masks in the first place.

The DSA are supposed to be the good friendly leftists. The demsoc motte to the revolutionary communist bailey. "We're just trying to expand medicare" etc.

When the motte of your opponents goes "actually this is good thing" you are allowed to point out how mask off they've become.

It's endless: Dartmouth, Berkeley, Columbia, CUNY, journal editors, professors, HR bureaucrats, the entire blue ecosystem all cheering rape and torture and kidnapping and screaming that my children are next with no fear of any consequences.

You literally linked to tweets showing that the "entire blue ecosystem" is not cheering for Hamas. If it was, then presumably the quoted persons wouldn't feel the need to make tweets stating their surprise that most people they know are expressing horror and disappointment regarding yesterday's events.

They might be going to far with saying they are happy.

But if I go to the front page of NYT it’s Israel blowing up an apartment building in Gaza. It’s not the brutal things your seeing on what I believe is mainstream twitter but perhaps I filter to people who find women in cages and men executed as brutal.

Israel doesn’t have the Christian/wokism religion of the west. In years past America would send there missiles with Democracy pamphlets; today with BLM stickers. Israel is going to go Old Testament vengeance on them and it’s not going to be couched in terms of improving Palestinian society. It will be eye for an eye (or probably 10 eyes) vengeance.

I’m probably an anti-Semite to the ADL. But I’ve got no problem greenlighting what will come.

Here’s more https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1710720164071973139?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

"A building gets blown up" has been a standard mainstream media imagery conveying the basic message that there's fighting and a war going on for a long time. "Kino", yet sterile - no-one can blame them for directly putting bloody, traumatizing images where kids can see them. Standard operating procedure. And any way one sees it, it is an extremely far cry from "the entire blue ecosystem all cheering rape and torture and kidnapping", an extremely risibly untrue claim that bears absolutely no relation to what I'm seeing on social media (which basically ranges from right-wingers eagerly calling for Israel to flatten entire Gaza to centrists and center-leftists condemning Hamas and eagerly bashing the few far-leftists who are going "Yes, this is bad, but the Israeli occupation..."

It’s not that they put a “building gets blown up” I found significant. It’s that they chose to show a Gaza building first instead of like a gang raped bloody Israeli female or even just the sanitized version of videos of Israeli women civilizan locked up in a basement.

They made a clear choice on whose violence to highlight. Though in the case of the apartment building the Israelis chose to warn the civilians first versus the Bronze Age violent committed by Hamas.

If "ecosystem" refers to people in charge, there is no contradiction between them cheering for Hamas and everyday leftists not doing so.

You don't stay in charge for long if your inferiors think you a monster.

…Well, in some cases you do, but that's not about normie Western PMCs.

Well, are these people in charge? The quoted tweeters seem to be basic worker-bee academics.

Advocating for terrorism has been a criminal offence in Canada since 2015, but I doubt we'll see any prosecutions even though the current government supported that legislation.

My views on the whole affair can roughly be summed up with "Israel based, Palestine cringe", and since someone asked me if I was being ironic last time I said this, far from it.

Israel is an oasis in a hostile desert, about as glaring evidence of HBD as could be desired, not that there's a lack if you have eyes to see and a mind not blind to inconvenient truths. Arabs have and do much worse to each other than the Israelis ever have, and the average Palestinian is better off completely desisting from violent resistance, since I expect they would have a much better life as integrated citizens, even if they're of a tier below the Israelis, without voting rights and such. I can't see how they'd be accepted otherwise, since they outnumber them.

While I have no particular hatred of Palestinians, even if I view the whole Middle-Eastern memeplex with disdain, given how far it lies from my preferences, it's certainly obvious to me that their best bet for a peaceful existence would be to avoid poking at the lion that could swat them out of existence were it not for the optics.

Oh dear. You just gave them a reason to fuck optics, or at least the kind of optics that aren't thermal sights on F-16s and drones.

I guess massacring civilians and gangraping dual citizens who post on social media about supporting Palestine has that effect.

I like Israel, and the Jews as a whole when they aren't self-sabotaging by supporting ideologues who would end them. They're smarter than average, and the Ashkenazi (despite the Nazi in the name, which I always found mildly amusing) have more Nobels to them than most of the world put together.

What most civilizations would find unbearable and deserving of an outright war of eradication, such as regular bombardment of population centers by rockets, the Israelis make tolerable through technology, even if it involves sending missiles a hundred times the expense to blow them up.

They desalinate enough water to thrive in a desert that hasn't had far better days since the Bronze Age, when human-caused desertification ruined most of it.

They have chip fabs, and while I didn't bother to look it up, I doubt that even the Gulf States with their trillions have the technical capacity to build the same, at least not while having locals in charge. I emphasize it because they're close to the pinnacle of human technology, as complex as any supercollider, but profit and power generating in themselves. We build cathedrals these days, but to turn sand into thinking rock.

You don't forge a technocratic marvel like Israel in the midst of hostile territory without much in the way of natural resources without human stock that are several cuts above the average. I respect that enough to ignore the whole religious ethno-state deal, or even the occasional human rights violation.

And if there's a way to end this whole mess without human rights getting wedgied and worked over by Mossad, the Palestinians certainly burnt that bridge yesterday.

Israel can do all of those wonderful without encroaching on Palestinian territory, tearing down their homes to make space for Israeli settlers. You are presenting a false dichotomy in which Israel must relentlessly expand into the West Bank, or give up its modernity and first-world characteristics.

I admire Israel for its development, and the contributions of its people to science and human knowledge. I want Israel to survive and thrive, and so I support their efforts to defend themselves. But I need not give them a blank check to do whatever they like. Israel does not need to build settlements in the West Bank to keep their country safe - just the opposite; these settlements create enmity among the Palestinians, and prevent reconciliation.

We must make a distinction between how a nation fights a war, and why they are fighting in the first place. I don't endorse the Palestinians' conduct in war. They inflict barbaric torture on civilians and capture soldiers. The Israelis do not. Yet we cannot conclude from these facts alone that Israel is in the right. When we zoom out and look at the broader picture, it is the Israeli side that has, in the last few decades, committed more infringements, and Palestine is justified in resisting.

What is Israel infringing on with their settlements? What is there to infringe against? There's no deal. There's no agreed borders.

Obviously they are infringing against Palestinian claims to the land, but notably those claims do not stop at the settlements - they claim all of Israel. Ask a Palestinian if he would rather see the latest Jewish settlements gone or Tel Aviv gone - he'll obviously choose the bigger city.

The settlements get attention because they are the marginal change, not because they are the core of the disagreement.

This makes me wonder where Israel/Palestine sympathies lie among YIMBY activists.

I dont think Hamas from Gaza is attack because of some Israeli encroachment on West Bank.

This would have happened even if Israel has not done this, though Israel did move a lot of IDF to the West Bank side for the settlers…. hmm

Israel can do all of those wonderful without encroaching on Palestinian territory, tearing down their homes to make space for Israeli settlers. You are presenting a false dichotomy in which Israel must relentlessly expand into the West Bank, or give up its modernity and first-world characteristics.

The Palestinians could also refrain from indiscriminate bombardment of civilian population centers. Or the gangrape.

Let's call it even?

But I need not give them a blank check to do whatever they like. Israel does not need to build settlements in the West Bank to keep their country safe - just the opposite; these settlements create enmity among the Palestinians, and prevent reconciliation.

My check isn't blank either, but it has room for quite a few zeroes on it.

When we zoom out and look at the broader picture, it is the Israeli side that has, in the last few decades, committed more infringements.

While I am of the opinion that historical grievances beyond living memory, or at least the memory of octogenarians, should be buried, a few decades seems like a rather early cut-off. The fact that the Palestinians don't do worse is reflective of their incapacity to do so, not a lack of desire for the same, or else they wouldn't be cheering at the sight of a hot blonde Israeli woman dead with blood and shit on her genitals.

Israel, on the other hand, has both means and motive, so I can give them points for being quite polite about things, for the most part.

Israel, on the other hand, has both means and motive, so I can give them points for being quite polite about things, for the most part.

Actually, I don't think they do have the means. If they actually did just go and ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip they would lose substantial amounts of the international support they require to continue to exist. Israel is only sustainable at all due to massive flows of materiel from the West, and while their consent manufacturing/influence operations are incredibly powerful, they are still ultimately subject to a public opinion which would come down extremely hard if they just started a second holocaust and wiped out the muslims.

Israel gets about $3 billion in aid from the USA per year. Their defence budget is $23 billion.

It's an exaggeration to say they can't exist without western support.

This is such a strange take. The US set up client states in Jordan and Egypt to stop them from attacking Israel. It finances half the Lebanese political factions for this purpose (and even Hezbollah!). The entire Iraq war (2-3 TRILLION dollars depending on calculation methods) realistically had no other purpose than to eliminate a regime Israel wanted gone. It still stations around 30.000 soldiers around Middle East, with realistically no other purpose than to deter anyone who might want to mess with Israel. Almost any random deal US sponsors around the world will include some small ridiculous clauses to give Israel a bit more diplomatic legitimacy. US is unable to normalize relations with Iran, even though this would make a great amount of geopolitical sense, because Israel doesn't want it.

The list can go on and on. And I am not getting into items like the French giving Israel nuclear arms technology or massive sums of blood money West Germany paid for Israel's industrialization.

The 3 billion direct military aid is absolutely nothing compared to what America and Europe actually provides to Israel.

The Iraq War was because American intelligence thought there really were WMDs and because Saddam had previously lied about them and aroused America's displeasure.

That 3 billion is far from the only support that Israel gets from the west. They benefit from the military activities of the USA, the countless remittances to Israel and Israeli support initiatives run by Israeli partisans in other societies around the world. Significant investments and factories were built there not because it made good economic sense for the companies involved, but because the people in those companies wanted to support Israel. Even in my country, I can't go shopping at a major shopping mall without having some portion of the money I spend go to Israel, because the owner of the company is (or was, I haven't checked in a while) a zealous supporter of Israel and the IDF.

I don't believe you're thinking seriously about the issue at all if you think that $3 billion figure is the be-all and end-all of Western support for Israel.

countless remittances

0.28% of Israeli GDP.

"Countless" is a fun word, you can use it to make a number sound like it's really big when actually you just haven't bothered counting.

Yes, you've pointed out that one of the sources of western contribution to Israeli welfare isn't that large a portion of their GDP. I didn't really expect remittances to be much more than that - I said countless because those remittances would usually consist of large numbers of smaller payments. Furthermore, look at the definition that your source is using - this only counts money being sent back by Israelis who migrate to other countries. A jewish individual raised in France who sent money to pro-Jewish charity organisations would not show up on this chart according to the methodology listed there - but even if not, that doesn't really hurt my argument. 0.28% of GDP might not sound like much, but that stuff adds up over the years, and consistent financial support like that can make a big difference over time... to say nothing of all the other factors I named and which weren't refuted.

If that's the extent of your argument against my position I must confess that my mind has not been changed.

More comments

The Palestinians could also refrain from indiscriminate bombardment of civilian population centers. Or the gangrape.

Israel doesn't need to build settlements to put a stop to this.

The fact that the Palestinians don't do worse is reflective of their incapacity to do so, not a lack of desire for the same, or else they wouldn't be cheering at the sight of a hot blonde Israeli woman dead with blood and shit on her genitals.

This and the rest of your arguments are all correct, but they don't refute my point. Israel has been and is continuing to provoke the Palestinians, and they do not need to do that.

Do you presume that refraining from building more settlements in contested territory is both necessary and sufficient for the animosity to end? I would have to disagree there.

Other than that, I too think you're correct, we're roughly on the same page, arguing about the punctuation.

As I think more about this, I may be changing my mind.

Do you presume that refraining from building more settlements in contested territory is both necessary and sufficient for the animosity to end?

Earlier this morning, I would have answered your question this way: "I don't know, but building settlements certainly doesn't help, and so Israel can't say they are acting entirely in self-defense."

But I just remembered that Arabs have much higher birth rates than Jews, so if Israel stops all interference in Palestine, the balance of power may shift decisively in the latter's favor. Palestine today is not capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on Israel, but that could change if the difference in birth rates is sustained. So there may be an argument here that Israel has no choice but to do what it is doing today - to wholly conquer and subjugate the Palestinians...

My apologies for being indecisive! This is my first time writing about this issue, and I am realizing that there are gaps in my thinking.

But I just remembered that Arabs have much higher birth rates than Jews, so if Israel stops all interference in Palestine, the balance of power may shift decisively in the latter's favor. Palestine today is not capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on Israel, but that could change if the difference in birth rates is sustained. So there may be an argument here that Israel has no choice but to do what it is doing today - to wholly conquer and subjugate the Palestinians...

You're in some extremely dangerous territory here.

The argument you've deployed is also completely applicable to white nationalism and the extermination of people of colour. Maybe you are actually a white nationalist who thinks that is a good idea, but if you aren't I think you owe it to yourself to explain exactly what differentiates the two situations.

I don't think the birth rate difference is important. But I do think it's important to understand that this conflict does not go away if Israel stops building settlements. That's the marginal issue. But it's not the core issue.

The grim reality is that it's impossible to have peace because a great many Palestinians do not want peace.

But I just remembered that Arabs have much higher birth rates than Jews, so if Israel stops all interference in Palestine, the balance of power may shift decisively in the latter's favor.

This is just wrong though? It's an old trope, popular both with Palestinians ("Our women's wombs are our greatest weapon!") and with Jews ("those fecund savages are swelling up like yeast, we must not fall behind!") but in actuality Arab fertility has been declining, Jewish one has been stable, and so they've converged in Israel:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives.

Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing, ignoring a 100% artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Judea and Samaria Arabs, an inflated birth rate and deflated death rate.

Official Palestinian TFR is like 3.57 but even if we take that at face value and assume it won't decline (it obviously will, they don't have any cultural immunity or institutional capacity to resist the background anti-natalist pressure, unlike Jews), it won't provide for a stark divide in the foreseeable future – and of course the subset of Jews who disproportionately contribute to the trend, Haredim, themselves have a TFR of 6-7, so they're on a much faster exponential and will be a counterweight to Arabs on their own by the end of the century. Specifically, they have like 1.2 million people now and grow at 4% annually; Palestinians are at 5 million and grow 2.5% annually – both will be between 20-30 million strong.

My apologies for being indecisive! This is my first time writing about this issue, and I am realizing that there are gaps in my thinking.

No worries, we're here to debate after all, and if people reconsider their perspectives, that's The Motte working as intended!

I might be able to simplify your argument and agree. Jews are too important to civilization. I wouldn’t be shocked if their 14.7 million people contribute 25% of scientific output. Their high fertility orthodox communities will have a portion secularized and end up contributing hugely to pushing society forward.

It’s similar to why Elon Musks was protected for a long time from his majorly security law violations. He was too important. At the end of the day Jews are important.

I respect that enough to ignore the whole religious ethno-state deal, or even the occasional human rights violation.

Why?

Why?

Dodging the entire moral philosophy question for the moment, civilizational and economic competence are important for every goal. Want water that doesn't give you deadly diseases? Want to not have violent crime? Want to treat diseases so a large percent of your population doesn't die young? Want your smartest to be poets and physicists instead of farmers and street hagglers? Certainly some of these are related to morality.

If the Palestinians simply gave in, stopped all forms of resistance, and accepted annexation and (likely temporary) second class citizenship, they'd be much better off within a decade. And that 'better off'ness includes fewer deaths from disease, greater happiness, etc. The human rights violations don't really change that, and they're ongoing anyway, and you can try to fix them if you want, but either way self's solution is still better.

If the Palestinians simply gave in, stopped all forms of resistance, and accepted annexation and (likely temporary) second class citizenship, they'd be much better off within a decade.

Would they really?

After seeing the Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians I have a hard time believing this - and I have an even harder time believing that someone on the political left would find having a European colony create an explicit underclass of brown people to be acceptable in any way. Given the actual statements and revealed preferences of Israeli figures, I think the Palestinians would actually be substantially worse off in this situation.

If only we had a control group of Israeli arabs to compare the living standards of against Gaza.

No one is disputing the value of civilization and technological improvement. What I'm disputing is the idea that they are so important as to offer a moral offset when we ask if a civilization is immoral on the whole.

Sure, Israel is net immoral. Probably everyone is net immoral, there are always ways to be better, and always horrible mistakes one's making at some scale. You can't find a country that isn't killing its inhabitants with obesity, addictive drugs, or something. Although I don't think 'preventing-harm-to-the-downtrodden' is the pinnacle of one's duty in one's life, it applies either way - the Great Man who only accomplishes part of his potential is, in the same sense, net immoral.

I don't see the practical relevance, though. Yeah, Israel clearly should treat Palestinians better, whether for humanitarian or self-interested reasons. Palestinians should also stop attacking Israel. Every state of relevance, including the US, conducts pointless conflicts. Yet we should still, perhaps, be able to apply terms like 'respect' to these states. And then, yeah, I respect Israel a lot more than Palestine, a lot more than most other states.

Sure, Israel is net immoral. Probably everyone is net immoral, there are always ways to be better, and always horrible mistakes one's making at some scale. You can't find a country that isn't killing its inhabitants with obesity, addictive drugs, or something.

The problem is that of intention. It's one thing to say that there are inevitable costs to, say, policing and some people will end up being hurt when they are. But it's an entirely different thing to say that we shouldn't try to prevent those from happening in the first place.

But Israel hasn't been (seriously) talking about annexation (expect for particular territories designed to render West Bank into unviable enclaves) or any sort of a citizenship, first-class or second-class or whatever, for Palestinians.

I agree, the particulars of the situation don't really point to any good options. I'm trying to provide examples of why being okay with a semi-ethnostate or human rights violations is fine if it comes along with more important things.

Are you okay with this argument being applied to a hypothetical white American or white European ethnostate?

Yes. This would apply to, for instance, African nations being materially better off without decolonization, even if it meant still being ruled by somewhat-racist policies.

An existence as a peaceful lower middle income protectorate of Israel would afford Palestinians a relatively decent standard of living by non-petrostate Arab standards, the chance to continue practicing most of their religion and culture, and the ability to live decent enough lives like the rest of the global middle.

The difference is, I think, that as @Pasha says, this is an extremely honor based culture even by non Hajnali standards. They are, for now, too proud. And let’s be real, their treatment has been undignified. They have just cause for war, and though they do not for the kind of savage war crimes on display yesterday, they’re hardly surprising either.

And so the only options are to crush their will and to humiliate them utterly, or to give in, it’s hard to conceive of a third option.

I think there is a resurgence of anti-Hamas sentiment because at this point in time Israel has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Israel is not going to be the monolithic society they once were in the last century. Palestinians are going to be at the centre of that. It’s a huge transformation for Israel to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Palestinians will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role and without that transformation, Israel will not survive. ~ Barbayla Spectaj

I am tagged so I feel like adding something. I think most Western-oriented people (including me) has had the experience of an incredibly visceral reaction yesterday to the images of gunned men of another culture violating the family homes, taking away women and leaving death and destruction behind them. We all felt this because they could be our houses and they could be our women. Israeli politicians are talking about basically genocide and the Air Force has been dropping a bomb per minute ever since. This is how the Palestinians have felt at least once a month for 4 generations at this point. Their entire culture is a coping mechanism to deal with this extreme constant humiliation. I can't begin to fathom how childish someone has to be to suggest that THIS MAN just surrender to the killers of his child in exchange for becoming their low-wage servant.

The alternative to surrendering to those killers is almost certain death. I mean, what do you say to the surviving (American) Indian in 1880 whose tribe has been mostly killed in conflict with settlers / the government? To run into the bullets?

Surviving in many cases meant the opportunity for more children, descendants, a genetic legacy, life, the things that all people intrinsically seek. But then perhaps this is a difference in kind, after all Jews lived at the mercy of others, often humiliated, for many centuries, so perhaps we cannot understand those for whom death is always better than a life on one’s knees.

The alternative to surrendering to those killers is almost certain death

Palestinians haven’t surrendered for 80+ years at this point and their genetical material is passing along quite successfully.

Israel isn’t omnipotent. It left Gaza before back when it had half the population, Hamas-Iran axis didn’t exist and the US was the absolute world hegemon, unquestionably committed to Israel. There weren’t 100 Jewish hostages in Gaza.

None of these conditions are true anymore. It’s a much richer and casualty sensitive country. Cheap drones are leading to a revolution in asymmetric warfare. US is distancing itself from Middle East.

Israel can inflict incredible casualties in Gaza. But can they really pacify the region? Or even beat hamas without leading to a much more radical faction taking over? I have serious doubts. And as long as Palestinians persist, all it takes for them is one victory at some point in the future.

More comments

I think from a Western orientated POV it feels like a rather absurd situation in which our position of power is being couched in almost absurd levels of coddling for people from certain cultures, compared to historical norms (and what they'd do to us if in a similar position of supremacy) and that the whole thing feels like increasingly there's no coherent reason to be so utterly indulgent aside from pure bleeding-heart sympathy.

I would recommend people with such sentiment to remember this is exactly how Russians felt two years ago. Or the US multiple times in the recent memory. Sometimes your seemingly weak enemies can make some powerful friends or exploit structural imbalances to deny you your goals long enough that it turns into a defeat.

More comments

I fully realize this comment might get me in trouble and it is ad-hominem and "tasteless". I will delete it if mods say so and apologize. It is even embarrassing if I got my basic assumption wrong. Here we go though..

I strongly suspect the real reason is because he is Indian, and the said occasional human rights violations are against Muslims. HBD is a thin veneer used to justify seeing human beings as bugs to be crushed because they aren't technologically advanced enough. Online high-caste Indian men seem to be highly susceptible to such viewpoints, probably because of their experience of living in India of all places, the pinnacle of HDB inequality.

Better than speculating "He only believes that for tribal reasons" would be to... ask him. Yes, we generally dislike people lobbing identity-based arguments at each other. We also prefer you don't delete posts. Whether or not you want to apologize is up to you.

That is a fair point. I will do so the next time. I am quicker to assume such things when people are low key advocating for ethnic cleansing.

I am a South Asian Muslim (technically outside the caste system, which is a Hindu thing, but in reality there is an informal system that everyone knows), and I also

respect that enough to ignore the whole religious ethno-state deal, or even the occasional human rights violation.

I strongly suspect the real reason is because he is Indian, and the said occasional human rights violations are against Muslims

Bruh. I remember you making the same completely unfounded claim about me before, which I immediately pushed back against.

I'm secularly irreligious, largely hating most religion equally, albeit a few annoy me enough to earn more of my scorn. Muslims, Hindu fundamentalists, roughly about as bad as I'm concerned, even if the latter are currently in power.

I'm sure you've seen me ~politely squabble with the local Mormons and miscellaneous denominations of Christianity here too.

On a more forgivable error, I didn't come to believe in HBD while living in India, or at least not while observing Indians growing up.

Living in an upper-middle class bubble tends to blur everything together, especially when I'm unusually bad at figuring out caste from surnames, and I didn't even know what caste I was until I was around 19 (it's not high at all, just a cut above people who get affirmative action in fact, woe is me that I had to get into med school the hard way).

Now, actual med school, where I had to restrain endless fury that I had ended up shunted off to a backwater while my Scheduled Class classmates, if they didn't gotten upgraded a few days later to a far better one, had ranks twice as bad I did in the competitive exam, while being visibly worse at things.. Yeah, that'll radicalize you, or at least make you listen when the oldies mumble when not in public. Huh, seems like they were on to something after all.

I hope you remember this time, not that it really matters.

Err, it's the entire rest of my comment.

What most civilizations would find unbearable and deserving of an outright war of eradication, such as regular bombardment of population centers by rockets, the Israelis make tolerable through technology, even if it involves sending missiles a hundred times the expense to blow them up.

They desalinate enough water to thrive in a desert that hasn't had far better days since the Bronze Age, when human-caused desertification ruined most of it.

They have chip fabs, and while I didn't bother to look it up, I doubt that even the Gulf States with their trillions have the technical capacity to build the same, at least not while having locals in charge. I emphasize it because they're close to the pinnacle of human technology, as complex as any supercollider, but profit and power generating in themselves. We build cathedrals these days, but to turn sand into thinking rock.

You don't forge a technocratic marvel like Israel in the midst of hostile territory without much in the way of natural resources without human stock that are several cuts above the average.

No, I mean why do you endorse a position in which technology and civilization have such value that they can balance out moral obligations? Most people would say that morality comes first, always. In a sense, that's precisely what morality is, the rules that hold utmost importance and must be obeyed should there ever be any conflict. You don't even dispute the idea that what Israel is doing is immoral.

You say that technological innovation and civilization creation are aspects in which Israel does so well that its immoral actions can be ignored. Would you say the same if the costs or consequences of those actions fell on you or those you cared about? If the cost for Israel's success was the death of your parents, your wife, your children, or even you, would you still make the same argument?

Now, you could argue that your human responses are irrational. Feelings are stupid and gay, after all, there's no reason your chemical reaction to seeing your family killed by a drone should dictate the actual morality you hold to. But talk is cheap. I've debated people who struck me as incapable of separating the reality we all inhabit from any hypothetical world I proposed. It's easy to bite bullets about what you would accept when the only one biting actual bullets are your adversaries.

No, I mean why do you endorse a position in which technology and civilization have such value that they can balance out moral obligations? Most people would say that morality comes first, always.

Top level post on this coming soon from yours truly. Stay tuned to the next episode of Dragon Ball Z TheMotte.

Truly he has obtained great powers since rising. I eagerly anticipate the next gospel.

Oh dear, I seem to be gathering apostles... Make it end mom, I'm not the Messiah, I'm a very naughty boy...

Lmao, why not both?! And hey, you can't rise from the dead and not expect to gather disciples. Come on now, you really should know better. ;P

I would say it's largely because my own idiosyncratic morality can differ quite significantly from the norm.

I'd go so far as to say that people who are 100% on board with all the values preached around them are NPCs, which is what I gave as my definition for the term when someone asked in a CW thread a while back. Seemed to match up with most of the answers too.

Most people would say that morality comes first, always. In a sense, that's precisely what morality is, the rules that hold utmost importance and must be obeyed should there ever be any conflict.

This is a deontological take, and I'm a consequentialist.

Such a naive approach runs into the immediate roadblock of someone pointing out how you resolve the Kantian imperatives of not lying and not letting someone come to harm when an murderer knocks on your door and asks where you friend is. (Or the SS comes for the Jews in your annex, if we're to stay close to the topic at hand)

Keep resolving the edge cases, blatant conflicts and order of operations, and you have a dumbed down version of utilitarianism/consequentialism. Reality isn't so kind that it always gives you one option unreproachably better than the other.

(Some suggest that Deontology can also be considered Utilitarianism for Dummies, or people who don't trust themselves to think too hard, which is close enough, we don't have infinite computing power in our skulls and some heuristics are good enough to use most of the time. I'm also not a Benthamian Utilitarian/Effective Altruist, I just model myself as having a utility function)

There are plenty of people who proclaim democracy as valuable in-of-itself, and point to downstream observations about socio-economic output as a justification for the more hard-headed.

Well, I'll happily sacrifice some democracy for a lot of wealth, and I would head to Singapore right away if they didn't only take the top 0.1% of doctors from India.

Further, what comes when we make an AGI (which is obedient instead of killing us immediately)? It takes chutzpah to think that humans should be the ones micromanaging it, instead of asking it to examine our goals and desires and figure out what's best for us, even if we enforce a requirement to let us decide in the end.

I would take being utterly politically powerless in a post-scarcity society over being the ruler of a state like Palestine. And you know what, that's the same dilemma they face. Surrender their useless autonomy, already well compromised, and accept Israeli rule, which very much wants to be kind, or else they'd have leveled the strip.

As for Human Rights?

Spit. They're a contingent outcome of immense global wealth where we can agree to pretend that they descend from the heavens or emerge fully formed from our temples, not pure Logos that we stray from at risk of eternal damnation.

In other words, they're nice to have as Schelling Points, not sacred as far as I'm concerned. And eventually every single one ends up riddled with exceptions for the public good and whatever the bored judge or civil servant feels like that afternoon.

Would you say the same if the costs or consequences of those actions fell on you or those you cared about? If the cost for Israel's success was the death of your parents, your wife, your children, or even you, would you still make the same argument?

Nope. I wouldn't say that if that was the price, but once again, Palestinians don't face that tradeoff either. They could diminish their risk of drone strikes killing them and their loved ones to ~0% by not doing everything in their limited power to piss off their more powerful neighbors.

Or condoning and celebrating those who do, to an extent.

Now, you could argue that your human responses are irrational. Feelings are stupid and gay, after all, there's no reason your chemical reaction to seeing your family killed by a drone should dictate the actual morality you hold to. But talk is cheap. I've debated people who struck me as incapable of separating the reality we all inhabit from any hypothetical world I proposed. It's easy to bite bullets about what you would accept when the only one biting actual bullets are your adversaries.

You can have mine for free, I'm commenting here because I like to, not because I have a Substack or Patreon to shill (maybe later). I'm sure I'm inconsequential in the greater scheme, and I've made my peace with that long ago, as long as things keep improving.

If the modal Palestinian was that pragmatic, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Keep resolving the edge cases, blatant conflicts and order of operations, and you have a dumbed down version of utilitarianism/consequentialism. Reality isn't so kind that it always gives you one option unreproachably better than the other.

I understand that morality is hard. That's not the same as saying that the creation of technology or civilization is itself a moral good.

And eventually every single one ends up riddled with exceptions for the public good and whatever the bored judge or civil servant feels like that afternoon.

You're letting implementation dictate the value of the theoretical.

Nope. I wouldn't say that if that was the price, but once again, Palestinians don't face that tradeoff either. They could diminish their risk of drone strikes killing them and their loved ones to ~0% by not doing everything in their limited power to piss off their more powerful neighbors.

But then you're also okay if Israel happens to, intentionally or with reckless disregard, kill Palestinians who do precisely that because the Israelis think this particular person or family are terrorists or criminals. After all, these are the "occasional human rights violations" you're talking about.

I'm sure I'm inconsequential in the greater scheme, and I've made my peace with that long ago, as long as things keep improving.

Meaning that your statements on any moral issue are contingent upon whether you have political or social power, correct?

I understand that morality is hard. That's not the same as saying that the creation of technology or civilization is itself a moral good.

I deny that objective morality even exists. Or that it's a even a coherent concept!

As far as my personal subjective morality goes, I don't find it particularly difficult, not as much as say, quantum mechanics or memorizing every single fucking interaction in medicine I am expected to learn for the next set of exams I need to give.

Not that I let moral relativism stop me from being a moral chauvinist, why, yes, I prefer my own morals, and I think society would be better off adopting it.

Whether the creation of a technology is a moral good or not obviously depends on the technology, even for an unabashed transhumanist? Gain of function research? Hell no. Eliminating mosquitoes with gene drives? Hell yes. AI? Depends, will it save us or kill us? In expectation I slightly lean towards the former, even if I worry about the latter.

Civilization is a social technology in itself, us bootstrapping from Monke to apotheosis.

Of course the net sum of all technological advances since fire has been overwhelmingly positive, and if Ted K wants to disagree, sucks to be dead I guess. May we develop the technology to solve that particular problem soon.

You're letting implementation dictate the value of the theoretical.

And?

I hereby declare that it's a Human Right to be free from the tyranny of gravity, if not Israeli occupation. Look, I don't float, at least not without a rocket.

What is a Right to Internet Access without the internet? Healthcare, without at least 20th century medicine?

But then you're also okay if Israel happens to, intentionally or with reckless disregard, kill Palestinians who do precisely that because the Israelis think this particular person or family are terrorists or criminals. After all, these are the "occasional human rights violations" you're talking about.

Ain't nobody perfect. It's still the smart decision, even if the dice or Mossad roll against you.

Meaning that your statements on any moral issue are contingent upon whether you have political or social power, correct?

A little? Not that I would even frame it as a bad thing, per se. It should be clear by now that I consider morality to be quite contingent on the circumstances one finds one's self in.

I hereby declare that it's a Human Right to be free from the tyranny of gravity, if not Israeli occupation. Look, I don't float, at least not without a rocket.

You sure? I just tried it and cracked levitating. Maybe you aren't believing strongly enough.

Jokes aside, I think 'objective' morality is an incoherent concept, because objectivity is an incoherent concept! Jordan Peterson has some great discussions on how everything bottoms out to morality - basically related to relevance realization a la John Vervaeke and how there are so many facts out there (like impossible numbers) that you have to have some a priori framework to get them down to a manageable size to make decisions on.

There's also Hume's is-ought gap, if you're looking for the steelmanned version of what I think @drmanhattan16 is trying to argue.

More comments

I deny that objective morality even exists. Or that it's a even a coherent concept!

I said nothing about objective morality.

Civilization is a social technology in itself, us bootstrapping from Monke to apotheosis.

And why is that itself a moral good?

What is a Right to Internet Access without the internet? Healthcare, without it?

You understand that we can abstract these things, right? For example, the right to use contemporary means of private messaging. Letters in the past, DMs today.

Ain't nobody perfect. It's still the smart decision, even if the dice or Mossad roll against you.

But you certainly seem to be indifferent to how imperfect they may be.

If the Israelis were having Predator drones (or whatever their equivalent is) bomb a random house in each block every day, would you say that's just "imperfection"? What if they decide to genocide by bullet the Palestinians entirely, but they also promise a cure for cancer?

More comments

Feel free to enlighten me.

You do realize that much of the repression is almost at the bare minimum necessary for a country of barely 6 million people to monitor several times that number who hate their guts, while living close enough to jog over? Or bike. Or paraglide into a concert and rape the hottest chick who skipped cardio.

The Israelis are not genocidal, despite being victims of one successful genocide in barely living memory, and more that could have plausibly followed if the Arabs had been able to push them into the ocean.

Once again, I beseech you to submit an actual argument regarding why the living conditions of the average Palestinian wouldn't jump, if not to First World standards, something much more respectable, if they didn't use their schools and hospitals to operate an insurgency while using their own populace as shields.

Yeah, they might not be able to vote if they unified, but if you insist using your franchise on bringing Hamas or its sympathizers back into power on the regular, my sympathies are slim.

Edit: For anyone curious, it was a drive by comment accusing me of holding kindergarten grade views about the situation in occupied Palestine, presumably deleted when they worried the mods might notice. They still see deleted comments dawg.

I'll jump in on the side of your interlocutor and just say that while I have massive respect for your hardline consquentialist views (you really play it to the hilt!) I tend to agree that morality has to come first.

Would you not agree that as a technocratic consequentialist, you take on faith things like Scientific Objectivity and Technological Progress as goods? Or of course 'Utility,' although it's such a vaguely defined catchall I'd rather use something like 'virtue.'

More comments

I guess massacring civilians and gangraping dual citizens who post on social media about supporting Palestine has that effect.

The horror cherry on top of this cake of horror is this won't change anyone's minds. Pretty much nobody is going to stop supporting the Palestinians over Israel because of this, not even most of the survivors of the Rave for Peace.

The Palestinians have every right to fight back when their land is being stolen. Do you not think Ukraine has killed people in its counter offensive?

They lost the war, vae victis. If they want to keep fighting, Israel has every reason to keep killing them.

A lot of these people were born after the war. Punishing them for the sins of their ancestors feels wrong. I wish there was an Arab country willing to take them in. Then I would feel comfortable letting the ones who refuse to leave suffer in poverty.

Punishing them for the sins of their ancestors feels wrong.

What punishment? Their ancestors lost the land, now they don't get said land; they had no independent claim to it. If they want to take the land their ancestors lost, Israel has every reason to keep killing them.

You make a good point.

The issue isn't simply that they don't have access to other land. As I understand, the issue is that the only land they have access to isn't actually governed by them, and they're limited in what they're allowed to do. Like, they can't receive packages without going through a long waiting period as it's inspected by the Israeli officials.

I don't know how much of their poor standard of living is due to not having statehood and how much is due to just them being bad at building a society. I'm not even arguing for any specific policy. I just mean that I feel sorry for them, and I have a moral impulse to help them, which I acknowledge.

Ukraine had eminently good game-theoretic reasons to resist, because if countries only claimed to be willing to resist with force invasions by (maybe) superior powers, and then gave up the moment the odds were stacked against them, then they wouldn't last as countries very long, not even the Pax Americana can save them all.

Once you're past that, then it's time to consider alternatives, especially when continued resistance is nigh suicidal.

For what it's worth, I'm 50:50 on whether it's worth it for Ukraine to keep fighting with a maximal war goal, instead of accepting the annexation of its eastern fringes in a white peace.

As for Hamas, buddy just give up already, before you're dead, preferably.

Do Algonquin natives have a right to shoot up Americans and Canadians for colonialism?

That's what the French and Indian war was. If there had been continued resistance, terrorism, and guerrilla fighting by the Native Tribes after the 19th century. Which year would it have gone from righteous to not righteous? 1935? 1970? 2001?

It becomes terrorism after the treaty is signed ending the war. If descendants of the Natives want to call those treaties unfair and demand reparations, I think they have a right to peacefully protest for it, and situationally I might even support their cause. They don’t have a right to commit violence.

Similarly, Arabs don’t have a right to start armed conflicts, and they’re in the wrong when they do so.

"Arabs don't have a right to start armed conflicts" seems like quite the broad claim. Could you explain your reasoning? Did Saudi Arabia not have a right to provide aid and intelligence to fight against ISIS?

As for the treaties, that bypasses a perceived issue of state vs non-state status. Lots of the people in question aren't meaningfully bound by a treaty, because they're from a different tribe, because their tribe wasn't organized enough to sign one, etc. Is a miqmaq obligated by a treaty signed by cherokee and anishinaabe? Presumably not, based on our understanding of how these work.

"Arabs don't have a right to start armed conflicts" seems like quite the broad claim. Could you explain your reasoning? Did Saudi Arabia not have a right to provide aid and intelligence to fight against ISIS?

To be clear, no one has the right to start armed conflicts. ISIS started the fight, Saudi Arabia is justified in fighting an aggressor.

As for the treaties, that bypasses a perceived issue of state vs non-state status. Lots of the people in question aren't meaningfully bound by a treaty, because they're from a different tribe, because their tribe wasn't organized enough to sign one, etc. Is a miqmaq obligated by a treaty signed by cherokee and anishinaabe? Presumably not, based on our understanding of how these work.

That's a fair point, and I would have to do a fair amount more thinking to come to what I would consider a fair belief about when natives are allowed to use violence to fight back vs not. But in any case, I don't think there's any reasonable justification where Palestinians can shoot up music festivals. At the very least, Palestininian leadership should make some clear demands from Israel and only start shooting after Israel says no, instead of just rejecting every Israeli deal as not good enough without making counter offers.

Yes, and in the example of the settlement of the Americas, almost all of “Western civilization”, even as authors sometimes romanticized native life, was on the general side of the colonizers and settlers. The point is that when it’s your family being raped, murdered and/or scalped, the noble savage of the plains rhetoric dies quickly. Israel is in the same place. The Palestinians have a ‘right’ to defend themselves, but exercising that right will only tighten the noose.

What does it mean for land to be stolen in this context? We don't have any agreed upon system for deciding what country owns any given land in Israel or Palestine.

The Israeli settlers that have been demolishing churches and mosques in the past months while beating locals, stealing the cattle and raising their houses are clearly stealing land. The people who are defending the place they grew up clearly have a right to fight back.

This is the first I'm hearing about this. Where is that happening?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot

The fight started a few days ago with a storming of one of Islams main holy sites.

The fact that the Al Aqsa mosque is even still standing is an extraordinary testament to Israeli tolerance. In the inverse situation, the Arabs certainly wouldn’t have left a rebuilt temple standing.

More comments

The Ukranians have the right to fight back, not because their land was once stolen, but because their land was very recently stolen. The further back in time you go, the less your right to push back becomes, if Finland today attacked Russia to try and recover Karelia (this happened around the same time as the creation of Israel) people's sympathies for them would be nowhere near the level they have for Ukraine, and rightfully so.

Indeed, even in western countries like the UK, there are laws on Presciptive Easement where if someone uses a piece of land openly for some use for 20 years they do not own, eventually the government recognizes their claim on the land and hands it to them if the original owner tries to complain, and there are good reasons why such laws exist.

In Israel's case the land theft happened so far back and they have done so much to transform it that what exists now is nothing like what existed in 1950 (on the Israeli side at least), so they have a claim to keep it. And no, I don't expect "if you steal land you will be given 75 years (a lifetime) of hell, after which you'll be allowed to keep the land" to be much less of a deterrent/cause more moral hazard than "if you steal land you'll be given perpetual hell" in stopping people from stealing land.

Putting a statute of limitations on revanchism is a good idea, but not one very compatible with the establishment of the State of Israel in the first place.

if Finland today attacked Russia to try and recover Karelia (this happened around the same time as the creation of Israel) people's sympathies for them would be nowhere near the level they have for Ukraine, and rightfully so.

how does that work with Azerbaijan fighting for the land which independent country of Azerbaijan never controlled prior to 2023/2020?

Armenia put up a pretty big fight back in 2020, but then saw they were going to lose and their cause was a no hoper and bowed out with minimal losses. They absolutely have the right to try and fight and also the right to try and convince the rest of the world to support them, but recognized a lost cause when they saw one (unlike the Palestinians) after they were unable to muster up large amounts of international aid unlike Ukraine. I would be a lot less dismissive of an Armenian counteroffensive say around 2030 if they can put it together than I am of Hamas's usual shenanigans.

Armenia correctly made the decision to reset, recuperate and perhaps try again later, which is something the Palestinians would be wise to do too (and the strength difference between Israel/Palestine is like an order of magnitude bigger than the strength difference between Azerbaijan/Armenia, which should give the Palestinians extra cause to pause and reconsider, but we all know that likely won't happen).

Just because something is morally right doesn't mean it is logically right and vice versa. It's important to consider both of them when deciding your actions, and Hamas attacking Israel is so so logically wrong you need a mountain of "morally right" on your side for it to be a good thing in sum, and they don't have that.

Both sides ethnically cleansed each other on that land decades ago (and before that, too), and Armenia is a major ally of the US’ second largest geopolitical foe. Armenia is in many ways closer to Hamas (and not just for ethnat reasons) in that they fucked around and found out, even though (unlike Zionists) Karabakh Armenians could likely have lived a perfectly fine existence under Azeri rule if they hadn’t agitated from the 80s onward.

Karabakh Armenians could likely have lived a perfectly fine existence under Azeri rule if they hadn’t agitated from the 80s onward.

given long story of mutual pogroms it seems unlikely

The return to violence towards the end of the USSR was because of Armenian agitation. You can try counterfactuals and they’re not invalid, but I’m unsure that ethnic cleansing was in any way inevitable on the Azeri side if the Armenians had played ball.

More comments

So they have a right to fight back against recent settlements.

Also, Gaza is under an illegal blockade, which they have every right to fight back against. Israel is a legitimate military target. They kill Palestinians, they have many Palestinians in torture camps. Israel continuous to destroy their farmland, steal their cattle, harass Palestinians and Palestinians are regularly killed by Israel.

So the jewish claim that Israel is their land is completely bogus after 2000 years?

Gaza is under an illegal blockade

Given what they do with what they manage to get: I am not surprised that it is under blockade, legal or otherwise (note that any effective blockade needs support also from Egypt)

Sure, the attacks yesterday were by and large not done against recently settled land in the West bank, it was on land Israel has settled for many decades now.

Also, Gaza is under an illegal blockade, which they have every right to fight back against. Israel is a legitimate military target.

Sure, but Israeli civilians are not a legitimate military target, and what we saw yesterday was by and large indiscriminatory killing. It wasn't even "we wanted to kill enemy combatants and these civilians were collateral damage" like Israel says to justify its civilian killing, it was straight up "lets kill party goers because they are there", that's at least a few degrees worse.

They kill Palestinians, they have many Palestinians in torture camps. Israel continuous to destroy their farmland, steal their cattle, harass Palestinians and Palestinians are regularly killed by Israel.

Yes, absolutely, that still does not give you the right to wantonly go out with the intent to kill civilians, desecrate their bodies and then parade them around. There are things worse than death, and Hamas put them on display yesterday.

I freely admit Israel doesn't care about Palestinian civilians and accepts their deaths a collateral damage, valuing their lives at near 0, but what Hamas did yesterday goes a few steps beyond that, what they did actively put a negative value on Israeli civilian lives.

Sure, the attacks yesterday were by and large not done against recently settled land in the West bank, it was on land Israel has settled for many decades now.

Interesting parallel to be drawn there with the idea that Ukraine should be more free to attack Russia proper instead of battering themselves against the prepared lines in the Donbass area -- Hamas clearly considers themselves at war with Israel proper, and I guess are acting accordingly. (apparently committing some war crimes in the process, which I expect will come back to haunt them -- but in terms of the armoured vehicles and such they've been attacking I don't think they can be faulted for not being strictly selective about where those are located.

Ukraine ‘could’ attack Russia proper (and obviously has in a very limited way), but it’s a fair restriction with donated munitions and the strategic value of an attack on Russia given asymmetric factors, nukes etc is questionable.

Russia proper

could you please use 'internationally recognized territory of Russia' instead.

More comments

Human minds are a thin veneer of civilization on top of naked tribalism, news at 11.

I suppose the only longterm good that might come of this is the hardliners in Israel make good use of public opinion to stamp Hamas and co out for good.

It might not help the terminally cucked Germans who are torn between voicing support for a liberal woman from their nation (who also happens to be Jewish) versus condemning the precious Palestinians, but it doesn't really matter. If Israel has the stomach for war, ain't nobody stopping them.

The bigger questions I have come down to

  1. What is Hamas plan here? They had to know they can’t militarily match Israel and Israel is going to hit very hard back. The only thing that could do is pull in another backer but I think most of the world is going to let Israel do as they please

  2. This operation seemed too complex for Hamas alone. Which basically points towards Iran and then Russia through Iran. I can’t figure out if more conflicts is good or bad for Russia. I think potentially bad.

In the western world I would think this greatly helps the right. Trumps got easy bulletin board material with Bidens recent Iran deal. I have to think it helps anti-immigration views in Europe, I can’t understand why they would want to import these people into there society.

What is Hamas plan here?

Hope Israel bombs a hospital that is 12 feet from their mortars and collect NGO money from the sky.

What is Hamas plan here? They had to know they can’t militarily match Israel and Israel is going to hit very hard back

So what? Israel is already hitting hard constantly. What is the average life expectancy of Hamas militants or even anyone high up in the hierarchy? These people very much already know that they and their whole family will be obliterated with a precision guided bomb at some point with a very high probability. They do what they do because they believe the moral dignity and the eventual triumph of their people are more important than their personal well-being. How many of the gunmen who participated in the raid yesterday really expected to survive the day?

Palestinians have good reason to believe they will be destroyed as a people if they give up but there is also no immediate action that can bring them victory in the foreseeable future. They have developed institutions and traditions to deal with this grim reality. It is more akin to a death cult than a normal society as we would understand it, but it is what it is.

I saw 5k Palestinian deaths in the last decade. Of a population of 5 million. It’s hyperbole to say that’s significantly reducing their life span. And I would assume a great deal of them are military casualties.

So what? Israel is already hitting hard constantly. What is the average life expectancy of Hamas militants or even anyone high up in the hierarchy?

This argument amounts to "if you're too good at defense, you are not permitted to attack". The fact that Hamas is often bad at killing Israelis, and therefore doesn't decrease their lifespan as much, and the fact that Israel is often good at killing Hamas, and therefore does decrease their lifespan, shouldn't affect whether it's okay to fight them.

There's a common double standard which amounts to "you have to give your enemy a fighting chance". War is not like that; if Hamas dies fast, tough. It's not a reason to stop..

I don't think you understood my point. I am not making the argument you are supposing me to be making. The discussion wasn't about Israeli actions but Hamas motivations.

What is Hamas plan here?

They don't necessarily have a rational plan in place. Sometimes people just go to war for emotional reasons. I mean, despite ~80 years having passed and thousands of historians having looked into the question, there is still no consensus on why Hitler decided to continue the invasion of Poland after the UK and France gave him an "if you don't stop we will declare war" ultimatum on September 3, 1939. In retrospect it is clear that Germany had little or no hope of forcing the UK out of the war and that it would have had to hope for the UK to just get tired of fighting. And generally any strategy that has no way to force your opponents to give up but instead relies on hoping that your opponents decide to sue for peace is a bad strategy! And this should have been rationally clear to the Germans in 1939 given their lack of a navy even close to challenging the UK one or any reason to be convinced that their air force would be able to defeat the UK one. But for whatever reason, Hitler kept going. Politicians are not chess-playing computers, they are human beings who have emotions.

This operation seemed too complex for Hamas alone.

Iran does help them but I'm not convinced that Hamas absolutely needed their help to pull this off. From what I can tell, this Hamas operation was a classic light mounted infantry (in this case mounted on cars and trucks) raid that required secrecy, speed, and willingness to take risks but not necessarily much coordination or sophistication. Basically they just needed to 1) have good reason to believe that the Israeli defenses were vulnerable in certain places, 2) tell all of the commanders to just push as much as possible as fast as possible, and 3) keep the planning secret.

It reminds me of the Prigozhin advance on Moscow. There are many conspiracy theories that swirl to try to explain why he had such an easy time of it, but the simplest explanation is that his opponents were just caught with their pants down and his forces moved really fast.

and then Russia through Iran

I can't think of any good benefit that Russia would get by antagonizing Israel. The last few years Russia has been trying to be pretty neutral to Israel by, for example, supporting Assad yet not trying to stop the Israelis from bombing his forces. Although to be fair, the latter can maybe in part be explained by the simple fact that Russian forces in Syria, being geographically cut off from Russia by unfriendly and neutral countries and by oceans dominated by NATO, could not realistically withstand a serious land attack.

Edit: After watching more videos, for example https://twitter.com/LocalFocus1/status/1710995658092458048, I'm somewhat upping how sophisticated I think this was. For example, in that video I see what to me look like drones dropping expolosives onto some kind of surveillance towers. Not that this in itself necessarily takes much sophistication, but coordinating the timing between doing it and attacking the actual wall, and making sure that the soldiers follow the schedule, requires good organizational skill and discipline.

Yes I came to the conclusion it had sophistication earlier.

On Russia I’m not sure if this benefits them. The theory is more instability elsewhere weakens the west and distracts us. Overwhelms our decision making process. They’ve long tried to do things like this which does include the 2016 election interference which didn’t have a huge effect electorally but did launch distrust between American tribes.

There are at least a moderate number of Jews still affiliated with the wider Russian security apparatus and kleptocracy, it seems unlikely to me that this was Russia.

Iranians are a large and moderately intelligent people (I think IQ estimates are substantially underestimated) with a relatively stable state and a large public university system with a focus on engineering and tech. It’s definitely possible that it was just them. Even in the West quite a few eg. ML professors and so on are Iranians.

It reminds me of the Prigozhin advance on Moscow. There are many conspiracy theories that swirl to try to explain why he had such an easy time of it, but the simplest explanation is that his opponents were just caught with their pants down and his forces moved really fast.

I play a series of Real Time Strategy games called Wargame. It is based on the cold war, NATO vs Warsaw Pact. Lots of fun. Yes, it's just a video game, but after seeing experienced players used combined arms over thousands of hours, you learn something about tactics and the failures of human nature.

After many many hours I've seen this type of strategy play out time and again. Occasionally someone will organise an impromptu Thunder Run or more specifically an attack largely formed of fast moving motorised ground elements. (where motorised is very loosely used. Achmed and his mates in the back of a Toyota Corolla speeding down the highway with AK74's would work. No need to even have a Technical)

It just works. It shouldn't, but it does. Defense networks just can't react that quickly to scenarios that haven't already had countermeasures emplaced. There aren't enough QRF's for this type of thing on a large scale. People skilled at defense don't have the resources for every scenario, so oddball bum's rushes are far more successful than they have any right to be.

Thoughts like 'surely someone would have thought about this and put something in place' are very often wrong. Once the dust has settled in Israel, I'm sure these strategies will be patched, only for new ones to take their place the next time Gaza flares up.

UK news front pages for today.

In general, Arab violence toward Israel since 9/11 inevitably codes to Westerners’ experiences of Islamist terrorism (or, in parts of Europe, migrant crime waves by Muslim young men) in their own countries. Residual sympathy with Palestinians (which people forget was strong enough in the 70s, 80s and 90s for many mainstream European politicians to openly defend or at least carry water for PLO etc terrorism) is evaporating.

Even in the Muslim world, refugee crises and the intensification of the Sunni-Shia conflict have changed political realities. Many Turks, particularly hardcore nationalists, are now more anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian than ever. The old adage that the Arab world could never allow maximum brutality towards the Palestinians because their own people would revolt seems to be weakening, the Saudis are fighting a brutal war in Yemen that requires similarly cruel methods and in which they may (depending on who you believe) be extensively supported by Israel.

It likely won’t be this month or this year, but the conditions are slowly emerging for Israel to be able to take much harsher action with relative impunity.

In general, Arab violence toward Israel since 9/11 inevitably codes to Westerners’ experiences of Islamist terrorism

You are forgetting that the neocon wars are the major source of migrants and muslim immigration to Europe. Israel has been pressing migrants into Europe. Palestinians want arabs to stay in their homeland, Israel wants millions of them to become refugees. The nationalist right in Europe has been pro stable states in the middle east. The less people want islamic terrorism the less they will support neocon policies that swamp Europe with migrants.

Meanwhile there is a growing muslim population that is completely pro Palestine and young people in the west no longer see Israel as victims. Israel is not at all popular in Europe and there is little pointing to increasing support.

You are ignoring the counter-forces in action such as the rapidly diminishing power of Jewish organizations in the West and their willingness to support Israel, and the post-modern Marxist inspired ideological upheaval in Western politics which has the potential to take a very anti-Israel turn. It is perhaps the last remaining Western colonial state. White South Africans were a lot less extreme in their oppression and they were still forced to give up their colony.

Also small bit regarding your observation of pro-Israel young Turks. It is real but it is mainly an extremely-online person phenomenon. Organized secular opposition is and has always been strongly pro-Palestinian[1] and made statements to such effect yesterday as well. Indeed, now there is a strange situation with Erdogan being the only major political actor who stuck to a "both sides do bad" type of statement instead.

[1] The leadership of the opposition in 2018 https://www.aa.com.tr/uploads/userFiles/79121245-49cb-4f77-bd45-d9d308a833b3/09_2018%2F09_mayis%2F04%2F20180515_2_30378555_33752608.jpg

/images/16967568391366947.webp

How are you defining colonial state?

Something like: A state founded by a group of colonizers who moved en masse to an alien area and implemented their political rule with little to no regard for the local population. Of course by this definition there would be a lot of colonial states but I believe Israel is unique today in the sense that the colonizer population created almost zero ties with the locals (unlike the Spanish/Portuguese colonies) but also didn't achieve absolute population majority (like most Anglo colonies)

I’m on record as being a squish on the JQ, and by extension the IQ (Israel Question), relative to other users here who share some of my other political commitments. Yes, I’m aware of many of the most damning conspiracy theories about Israel’s skulduggery when it comes to its relationship with American foreign policy, and I even think many of them are 100% true. I have no illusions about Israel, or at least Israel’s leadership, as a genuine friend of the American or European people. I don’t want American boots on the ground to intervene in this crisis.

That being said, my approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict has always been “which side is more similar to me, and to people like me?” There’s no world in which the answer is the Palestinians. We can argue for eternity about whether or not Jews are white, whether Israel is a Western country, whether it’s in the best interests of people who care about the future of the West to strategically undermine Israel, etc., but compared to a bunch of dirt-poor third-world Arabs, it’s no contest. I want to see Israel embrace cruelty and brutality in a way that we have not seen any industrialized modern democracy do in 60 years, and I want it to be an example to the world of the kind of mindset that European and Anglosphere countries absolutely must emulate in the years to come. The world is about to become a far more savage place, and maybe the fact that Israel has always spiritually had one foot in the West and one foot in the Middle East means that it will have to be the first one to tear off that scab.

For optics reasons, I’m going to be intentionally vague about what precisely I’m imagining.

If optics was your goal, you would have left that sentence out altogether.

Optics are a spectrum, and this was as far along that spectrum as I was willing to publicly go. You’re correct that I could have gone less far, but I also could have gone farther, but didn’t.

A statement like:

the kind of mindset that European and Anglosphere countries absolutely must emulate in the years to come

has the effect of riling people up, and not being specific about why this mindset is necessary allows the speaker to evade questions he does not wish to answer. That does not fit the ethos of this forum. We are not called TheBailey.

I've always appreciated your posts, even though I don't share your motivations, because I like clear thinking and rational debate. I don't object to anyone advancing provocative claims, as long as they give others a fair opportunity to rebut. Your statement was provocative, but it was too vague for someone to argue against.

Right, there have been multiple times in the last month when I have begun to type out a far more clear explication of specific steps which I think need to be taken - the Lampedusa stuff in particular has stirred up some especially visceral reactions in me - but ultimately I’ve deleted all of them. I’ve said before that one of my goals when posting here is to soften people’s perceptions of white identitarians; to show that at least some of us are normal and reasonably well-adjusted people, able to clearly articulate arguments and to joke around and act like human beings. To show that we’re not just hate-filled, bloodthirsty, atavistic monsters.

This goal is sometimes at odds with the fact that there are certain problems which almost certainly will require violent and cruel behavior, and I fear that the time is rapidly approaching when such solutions will become urgently necessary. Explicitly advocating for such an approach, though, is counterproductive to my optical goals. Pretending to disavow such an approach, though, would be dishonest - especially when we’re discussing a very graphic and high-profile textbook example of precisely the sort of problem that would require that type of solution.

This leaves me in the uncomfortable and suboptimal position of having to pull some punches and to occasionally lack clarity. I’m perfectly willing to speak plainly and to pontificate at length about most subjects, but when it comes to discussing violence - particularly against identifiable ethnic groups - I do find that I have to walk a finer line.

That being said, my approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict has always been “which side is more similar to me, and to people like me?” There’s no world in which the answer is the Palestinians.

I want it to be an example to the world of the kind of mindset that European and Anglosphere countries absolutely must emulate in the years to come.

Sure but they already do this. This is the only time Palestinian-Israeli casualties have been even remotely even (at least in confirmed casualties +prisoners rn). A pretty devastating blow to IDF prestige. Most of the time it's the Israelis kicking a lame dog with a steel-toed boot. Since founding, Israel's expanded territorially, ripping bits off other states and Palestine. They've already kicked loads of Palestinians out of Israel.

If you want real lessons in brutality, look to China. They had a little outbreak of terrorism in Xinjiang... and absolutely dropped the hammer. They suppressed so intensely they've basically wiped out an entire culture in 5-6 years. Only old men go to the mosque these days, it's all over. Extremely disciplined use of overwhelming state power, they nipped it in the bud rather than reacting, complete victory. Makes Israel look like a joke.

Most of the time it's the Israelis kicking a lame dog with a steel-toed boot

More like a lame dog with rabies, which can occasionally get a nip in when Mossad is sleeping on the job.

It seems that most of the West, and thus by extension, Israel (public relations work both ways) has a lower tolerance for the kind of performative and effective brutality needed to squash this for good.

If I was a soldier who just had my nose broken with a rock thrown by a bunch of kids who would be better off in school, well, I probably wouldn't shoot them right away, but that little shit would learn his place fast.

The only reason they haven't been beaten to a pulp is because Israel successfully contains them, and through technology mitigates shit like ghetto rockets being launched indiscriminately at their population centers.

There are so many details about the treatment of Xinjiang and the Uighurs that even seasoned China watchers of the high quality kind don’t know, like it’s insane how successful they’ve been in keeping things quiet; my guess is even Western intelligence doesn’t know many details. It’s hard to say how effective it is in that context. Yes, the Chinese have effectively repressed them, but other Central Asian countries have been very effective at limiting terrorism within their borders (mainly by allowing Islamists to leave, but still) and have used far less repressive methods. Comparing the situation to Palestinians 1:1 isn’t simple, it’s possible China would be facing a much worse security crisis if the Uighurs were as radicalized as Gazans.

Uighurs simply don't have a large group of people in other countries who see them as genuine kin the way Palestinians do. Their radicalization was a brief episode that had to do with limited monetary/weapon/ideological support by US/UK/Turkish intelligence services. In contrast there are about 500 million Arabs (situated in a way that absolutely surrounds Israel, and in command of armies and money and influence). Vast majority see Palestine as the pinnacle of their people's humiliation. The darkest spot on their battered honor which they highly value.

The comparison to Uighurs is quite useless because of this. China was subjugating a people who were barely militant, had little real friends, with zero real threats against its own national security as a consequence of these actions.

Also, if the power disparity weren't so enormous.

"Once the bitter enemies of everything me and mine have won their war, consolidated power, and successfully eliminated their main vulnerability and point of criticism, I'll be in a stronger position."

What a braindead take. Reminds me of comments I sometimes see where some 19yo white girl on some university campus somewhere writes that she has more in common with the son of goat herders than her conservative neighbor (b/c they vote for the right political party). If total war broke out and Hamas won tomorrow, in the "years to come" it won't be their grandsons and daughters writing op-eds in the Times about how the ever shrinking white population have become even more Nazi-like.

If Hamas and Hezbollah win tomorrow and Israel is overrun, firstly American Jews will still be in America and secondly nothing about mass immigration into Europe and the West in general will change.

I don’t see Israel, or the Jewish people, as the long-term enemy of my people. I see reconciliation between gentile whites and Jews as an absolutely necessary part of the destiny of the white race. I think we can recognize that in the short term Israel is a malignant actor, and still believe that what they are holding back is even worse. I look at it the same way I look at Japan in the 1940’s: it was a genuinely anti-white force, and it saw its participation in the war as explicitly anti-colonial. If you’d asked an American in 1944 whether Japan was an inevitable racial enemy of white American, he would obviously have said yes. (Polling of Americans at the time revealed that a large majority wanted the Japanese population totally exterminated.) In the fullness of time, though, Japan ended up taking very well to Western culture and becoming a highly beneficial contributor to the Western world order. Jews have in the past made undeniably positive contributions to Western history, and they inevitably will again in the future. Arabs never will.

I don’t see Israel, or the Jewish people, as the long-term enemy of my people.

You should consider that the reverse is true, especially among the more religious hardliners which are growing in influence in Israel. They spit on Christian pilgrims in the streets, they could murder them for that matter, and those Christians will never accept them as a long-term enemy. But that's ultimately because Christian religion has completely blinded them and they are totally incapable of rationally interpreting the relationship between themselves and the Jews.

I don't blame you for wanting this to be true, but my question is what exactly do you perceive as entailing "reconciliation" between Aryan and Jew, a sibling rivalry that is biblical and mythically embodied in the brothers Jacob and Esau. The Jews view themselves as sons of Jacob and you as the son of Esau. Does your idea of reconciliation rely on this changing fundamentally? I don't think you appreciate how deeply this is baked into the cake of the Jewish religion.

Because they will say that they want nothing more than reconciliation between Jew and Aryan. And their conception of "reconciliation" is the suppression and erasure of Aryan racial consciousness and advocacy coincided with bloodthirsty support for the Jewish ethno-state. I assume that you mean something different by "reconciliation", something akin to reciprocity. Imagine if Jews vocally and materially supported the interests of White people to the extent White people support Jewish nationalism. If that's your idea of reconciliation, I would be interested to see how, when, and why you think these attitudes changing are plausible.

I think you also underestimate the capacity for self-deception and cognitive dissonance. Let's say Israel determines the Final Solution to the Palestinian Question is forced deportation. That is not going to open the minds of Europeans in any degree, they are just going to accept simultaneously that this is necessary for Israel but even proposing a similar measure for African migrants is an evil, jail-worthy suggestion.

Advocating forced deportation for migrants isn’t jail worthy in Europe, it’s mainstream on the right. That they fail to implement it is another problem, but they’re not banned from saying it.

This was ages ago (around the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis) but there was a couple that dinged by a court for posting something like "all they bring is sorrow, conflict, and [a bunch of other negative things]" on Facebook. It wasn't as dry as "illegal immigrants should be deported" (a tautology), but it was extremely mild as far anti-migrant rhetoric goes, and the judge explicitly said if they caught posting something like that again, they'll go directly to prison.if they get caught posting something like this again.

I'm talking about the children of those migrants 50 years from now. Israel would be deporting natives from their indigenous region, but that isn't going to open up the minds of Europeans into deporting the next generation of non-Europeans in Europe. They are just going to accept a different set of standards for the Chosen than themselves as they are doing right now.

Israel can’t deport the Arabs from Gaza. They’ve spent 50 years trying to and the Arab population has increased by more than 400%. That is because, exactly as European countries are finding and will find out, nobody wants them.

Israel can’t deport the Arabs from Gaza. They’ve spent 50 years trying to and the Arab population has increased by more than 400%. That is because, exactly as European countries are finding and will find out, nobody wants them.

Europe didn't want its Syrian refugees either, what the European people want doesn't matter. I think it is completely possible that Europe is forced to accept the migration of millions of refugees on behalf of Israel, and people like Hoffmeister will continue to hold out hope on "reconciliation" and belief that Aryans must rely on the Jews to survive. It's already happened so far with millions of Arab refugees, why wouldn't it happen again?

Agreed! If you look at the religious side of things, Jews are the original People of the Book. They should be respected for that fact alone.

The Jewish religious tradition that birthed the Old Testament of the Bible acts as the fundamental moral, spiritual, and societal framework for the entire Western order. And frankly at this point much of the world. Their contributions made whiteness as a thing even possible, in that their religion birthed the religion that made whiteness such a force to be reckoned with.

I'm not a white identitarian, but I'm baffled as to why so many of your fellow travelers can't take the longer view on Jews and Judaism. Thanks for the reasonable take.

in that their religion birthed the religion that made whiteness such a force to be reckoned with.

It isn't like it took Christianity to make the Romans a "force to be reckoned with", so I don't think your claim here is actually correct. Ever seen the Arch of Titus?

Ever seen the Arch of Titus?

Can you really say that the Romans managed to subjugate Judea? In the short term I agree, but in the long run Judea and its ideas became suzerain over the entirety of the Roman empire (or whatever remained of it).

Can you really say that the Romans managed to subjugate Judea?

In the short term yes, and that's what matters for the purpose of this analysis - they were very clearly a formidable power well before Christianity. Even looking at the bible, they don't hide the fact that the Romans were in charge of the area at the time. I am honestly unsure as to the long run consequences, however. I'd honestly want to see the counterfactual world where Rome actually subjugated the jews and Christianity never happened - but that world is so different to ours that I find it hard to talk sensibly about it.

Polling of Americans at the time revealed that a large majority wanted the Japanese population totally exterminated.

This is blatantly wrong. The actual figure is 13%. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3023943.

You are correct, I severely misremembered that result. I appreciate the correction.

I see reconciliation between gentile whites and Jews as an absolutely necessary part of the destiny of the white race.

You're so wrong it literally pains me in my bones.

Low effort. Spell out your objection or don't bother telling people "No, you're just wrong."

Oh yeah, let me describe in detail the absolute necessity of reconciliation with Jews for the destiny of the white race. A group of people with an extreme representation of thinkers and political figures responsible for everything that is wrong with white western societies as they exist with their current modern memeplexes. That sentence coming out some one who's supposed to be pro-white. At a certain point you need to call bullshit to pure trolling.

At a certain point you need to call bullshit to pure trolling.

I’m not trolling. I sincerely believe that the DR is severely - and, in some cases, intentionally - overestimating the centrality of Jews in the constellation of problems facing our people. As I have said before, “The JQ is not a yes-or-no question.” I can recognize the significance of Jewish power without inflating it beyond what is actually supported by the evidence. You can say I’m delusional and profoundly naïve, and maybe I am! But I’m sincerely expressing my own position on the issue.

At a certain point you need to call bullshit to pure trolling.

No, you don't. You need to articulate why you think someone is wrong, decline to engage, or use the report button if you genuinely think someone is trolling.

I'm not taking your side or @Hoffmeister25's side, I'm telling you that no matter how super-obviously-painfully-stupidly wrong someone is, in this place you explain why you think they are wrong if you want to argue with them, you don't just "Nuh uh" them.

They'll probably interbreed till it's a distinction without a difference*

*AI timelines excluded.

Come on. You really ought to at least say why you think so.

The problem is that Israel is a major source of migrants. The Israeli state has expanded forcing millions of Arabs out of their homes. When they bombed Lebanon in 2006 I got some new classmates in Sweden. Israel has been a major force acting to destabilize the middle east and create chaos. This means migrants to Europe. Meanwhile Israel has been busy promoting multiculturalism in Europe. Israel has been fighting Syria for decades and there are now vast numbers of Syrian refugees in the world.

The best option for Europe is stable secure arab states. Israel wants to expand and wants dysfunctional failed arab states. The blowback from that means Europe gets another wave of migrants that Israaid can help bring into Europe through their activities on Greece's beaches.

The last thing I want to see is the world get more destroyed and more migrants flood into Europe because of zionists. If there is a step one to saving Europe, it is ending the pro Israel neocon agenda that has been a root cause of migrants. I don't want to meet more people with heroin addictions and missing family members after neocon Americans decided that they wanted to go on another mass murder spree in the middle east.

What we need now is to speak the language they understand- pushback. Palestinians have shown great courage and resolve today when they fought back. The same neocons who made billions bombing Afghanistan while working class whites died of heroin lost dozens of vehicles. The same neocon/zionist establishment who flooded Syria with weapons and my neighbourhood with people who fled from them got humiliated today. Aggression is in their nature, they will only stop once they get properly bitten back.

The problem is that Israel is a major source of migrants

This was somewhat true in the past, but I think it is already rather outdated. The Arab population pyramid is already leveling off. The vast majority of third world low quality immigration into Europe will come from Africa in this century.

The vast number of migrants that have come have come from "we love Israel" neocons. Strange how Israel gets an ethnostate while they push for diversity in Europe. They level Palestinian villages to build settlements while they finance migrant smuggling to Europe.

Israel has created an enormous problem for Europe while being no benefit.

If massive immigration is inevitable will Israel take massive african immigration?

What do mass migrant flows from countries like Niger, Senegal and Haiti have to do with Israel? Even if you conflate progressive Jews in some Western countries with Israeli policy, the surge in global migration since the 1990s has much more to do with ease of travel, birth rates, stagnation in the global south, rising temperatures and various other intractable factors than it does with Jews or Israel.

Funny how most of the migrants have come from wars against Israels enemies brought about by radical Israel firsters. Israel has promoted massimmigration extensively through NGOs such the jewish internet defence force and israaid while actively working to destabilize countries in the middle east.

You didn't really address the above post, unless you are saying that Isreal is responsible for civil wars and general unrest in countries in Sub-saharan Africa. Why would they do such a thing?

I never said they were soley responsible. I said they have been a main factor. WIth that said israaid is helping them accross the Mediterranean while Israel NGOs are actively pushing for diversity in Europe. Also most of the refugees have come from wars in the middle east pushed by pro zionist neocons. Israel is actively destabalizing Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Syria which is an absolute disaster for Europe.

The last thing I want to see is the world get more destroyed and more migrants flood into Europe because of zionists.

At this point,so many migrants are flooding in from so many other places (arguably Europe's own fault in some cases like when they got rid of Gaddhafi) I doubt it will make more than a marginal difference. Europe is either going to change policy to stem that flow (probably by not accepting irregular migrants at all) or I doubt some more Arabs matter.

When they bombed Lebanon in 2006 I got some new classmates in Sweden The best option for Europe is stable secure arab states.

Snipers on Turkey-greece and turkey - bulgaria borders and drones that ram boats are also effective. Europe should just grow some balls.

I recall reading that Israel also tried to push its African asylum seekers into the West and then there was HIAS' role in the Syrian refugee crisis.

I am generally speaking more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians but I think many Westerners are wildly overstating how much in common we have with the Israelis, at least the part of Israel that is ascendant.

I'm not so optimistic. Israel will likely get a free pass on savagery in popular opinion while all other countries continue to be gentled into submission.

I have myself hitchhiked and volunteered extensively around Israeli territories around Gaza and also inside the West Bank. I know plenty of people who were in serious harms way today and also will likely be even more in the coming months. Both Jews who will be called up to the army and also Arabs who will have to endure Israeli operations which, while not totally indiscriminate, do not care that much about civilian casualties in all honesty. I am mentioning this so I can be forgiven for being a bit ranty and incoherent. I have been feeling very disturbed the whole day and doom scrolling increasingly grim videos.

Israeli military and zionists in general have an obvious incentive to always portrait Mossad and IDF as omnipotent forces who are aware and capable of everything. Israel's enemies also have such an incentive because they keep catastrophically failing to beat Israel and they need to explain this situation somehow without acknowledging their own absolute incompetence.

However in reality we are talking about a country of 6 million people, surrounded by hundreds of millions of hostile Arabs and constantly engaged in the very time/resource constraining task of subjugating a local Arab population about their own Jewish population. Israeli Jews have some very exploitable weaknesses such as an incredibly polarized society comprised of groups who can't even agree why the country exists, high dependance on their diaspora's (diminishing) influence over Western states, absolutely no strategic depth in case of a real invasion and averseness to casualties/POWs from the conscript army (literal 18 year old boys and girls). Most importantly, Israel only has to fail once at defending itself and it will no longer exist. Arabs have the luxury of constant new attempts (as long as they keep up the population pyramid).

I am going to dismiss the more conspiracy-minded explanations of how Israeli security apparatus could allow such a thing to happen. We are talking about a small country, ran by a very small group of people who have missed even worse signs of incoming attack in the past and also had been involved in a bitter internal conflict for most of the year. So if you expect Israel to turn on God mode and destroy its enemies, perhaps take into account that the same people couldn't prevent this from happening in the first place. They are clearly not that omnipotent. Hamas has likely captured a very high number of prisoners. Many of them are female and even children. In the past the pressure on the Israeli government has been immense in such situations. We might see some very nasty breakdowns in Israeli population and politics if Hamas starts exchanging the prisoners' lives and bodies for IDF's behavior.

Also, Israel hasn't really been that successful in the recent memory at actually occupying aggressive militant controlled areas (Lebanon and Gaza, in the West Bank they have mutual interests with the PA elites so pacification is easier). A ground incursion into Gaza will be an extremely bloody affair for both sides. It has a high chance of serious failure.

Another factor Netanyahu will have to consider is his goal of rapprochement between Israel and a bunch of more despotic and American aligned Arab countries. A bloody ground war and occupation would kill such goals for many years to come. Even the most insulated Arab leaders have to somewhat consider the fact that their populations absolutely HATE Israel and Jews in general. Even in the best invasion scenarios, for IDF there will be endless atrocious videos of Arab civilians massacred.

If the escalation continues, I think the Israeli politics will change beyond recognition in the near future. For some decades now the OG-European-Labour-Zionist-Secular elite of the country totally lost its grasp on democratic majorities but have been holding on to power through risky political shenanigans. Their preferred approach to the Arab problem has clearly failed. While they were in no way bastions of humanism towards Arabs, these people still represented much more Western instincts about what is acceptable to do against your enemy. At least they were careful that when they felt atrocities were necessary, they worked well on the Western PR. Things might get much uglier very fast in the near term.

Rant out.

However in reality we are talking about a country of 6 million people

10 million.

9.73 million according to Wikipedia, 73.5% of them are Jewish. So almost exactly 7 million people that are “actually” Israeli (ie can be trusted to not turn into enemies if the opportunity arises). I was off by a million

Thank you for your very interesting and informative post, it's a shame that we're yet again in a position with not a lot of information and little idea about how things are going to play out over the short term. We don't even know if the situation is going to escalate or dampen down, it's simply too early to say at this point. What I am concerned with is the potential to have another 'Austrian Duke' style issue whereby one side feels compelled to act in a harsh way and the other side is compelled to respond. Information is a critical component, that's the difference between a 'Tigray' style Ethiopian ethnic cleansing and the Ukrainian resistance. The difference between the two is that Ukraine got their message out whilst the Tigray were under radio silence and the world simply didn't pay attention to what might have been going on. It's going to be extremely difficult to be a moderate in Isreal if the early reports of massive casualties are true as modern social media has the power to create incredibly evocative content that can be shared wildly quickly amongst people with little in the way of infrastructure to restrict or censor it.

Yonah Jeremy Bob, a military analyst for the Jerusalem Post, says Israel is likely planning a major ground assault into Gaza – the biggest since the 2014 invasion.

“There’s going to be a second act and that is an invasion of Gaza, and I think larger than 2014 when Israel called up 80,000 reserves. Israeli has four divisions of reservists that it is already calling up and has moved 35 brigades to the border. So what Israel had a 6:30am this morning [when the Hamas attack began] was minuscule to what it has now. Within a day or two, Israeli will have a massive force that will be able to overwhelm Hamas forces in Gaza,” Bob told Al Jazeera.

“What the question will really be is how far they want to go? Does it want to topple Hamas and have to figure out being in control, or handing control over to the Palestinian Authority, or a multinational force and all the consequences that could have?”

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/7/israel-palestine-escalation-live-news-barrage-of-rockets-fired-from-gaza

I can't imagine Israel demanding anything less than a complete destruction and removal of Hamas from the Gaza strip. The issue with this isn't with justification for doing so, but how far they will go in the attempt. Whilst Israel may be short on manpower they can certainly make up for it with munitions. I've been following the Ukrainian war and it has really shown off the power of drones as both tools of surveillance and recon as well as acting as weapons themselves. For every suicide bomber they have to deal with, Israel has hundreds to tens of thousands of suicide drones to send back the opposite way. As the casualties mount up on the Palestinian side it will increase pressure on other Arab countries and potentially China a justification to intervene into this matter and up the escalation ladder we go. It's still too early to tell, but I have a strong feeling this is going to turn into a 'shit-show' pretty darn quickly.

I have long feared the use of drones as a tool of genocide. My mental image of it was of a person in Nairobi Kenya sitting behind a large high definition computer screen sipping diet coke whilst blowing up 'insurgents' in Afghanistan. The issue with the corresponding rise of artificial domain (wrong word?) intelligence is that you no longer need that person 'in the loop'. It combines the immediate deadliness of bullets and shrapnel with the emotional/moral distance of proxy methods such as hunger and displacement to achieve their ends. I hope I am right that this current potential conflict is a little too soon for talk of the worst outcomes of the adoption of drones/AI, but this still represents a complete shift in the balance of terror for States fighting insurgency/guerilla adversaries.

For every suicide bomber they have to deal with, Israel has hundreds to tens of thousands of suicide drones to send back the opposite way

Suicide drones are useful when you face anti-air assets and cannot risk planes and pilots for precision strikes. Israeli jets have always had free rein over Gaza and they can annihilate anywhere at will at any time. The limiting factor has always been the extremely high civilian casualties caused by this approach since Hamas is totally embedded into the civilian population. Also Hamas will be using its prisoners as human shields for the foreseeable future. There are already photos of prisoners being put in the tunnels to discourage Israeli bunker busters. Drones will not change this equation.

I have long feared the use of drones as a tool of genocide.

The thing holding a genocide of Palestinians back isn't a lack of tools. It is (geo)politics. Intervention from the Arab states, West, Russia, Iran etc.

Another factor Netanyahu will have to consider is his goal of rapprochement between Israel and a bunch of more despotic and American aligned Arab countries. A bloody ground war and occupation would kill such goals for many years to come

I think you underestimate the sheer venality and corruption of these puppet Arab regimes.

If the escalation continues, I think the Israeli politics will change beyond recognition in the near future. For some decades now the OG-European-Labour-Zionist-Secular elite of the country totally lost its grasp on democratic majorities but have been holding on to power through risky political shenanigans. Their preferred approach to the Arab problem has clearly failed. While they were in no way bastions of humanism towards Arabs, these people still represented much more Western instincts about what is acceptable to do against your enemy. At least they were careful that when they felt atrocities were necessary, they worked well on the Western PR. Things might get much uglier very fast in the near term.

The rise of Israeli religious-right is demographic and structural. I doubt this event will have any real bearing on political trends over the long-term. Besides, many of the seculars are just as hawkish on security matters even if they are better at optics.

I think you underestimate the sheer venality and corruption of these puppet Arab regimes.

Immovable object and unstoppable force clashes. The corruption of Arab regimes vs the Jew hate of their populations.

I doubt this event will have any real bearing on political trends over the long-term.

I actually think it might. The fears of a coup by the IDF/Mossad elite was always a limiting factor in the judicial overhaul ambitions of Netanyahu. Now the protests are going to be stopped for the foreseeable future and the army/intelligence extremely busy fighting a war under the command of Netanyahu. He has to win only once and break the institutional power of the old guard and it will be gone forever. Israel will be a forever changed country. He will have plenty opportunities now. So much so that a significant proportion of the people that I have sent "bro are you okay" messages yesterday eventually confessed to me they suspect some Netanyahu conspiracy about yesterday's events. Of course I don't agree with this take much, and I think this mindset is due to the omnipotency narrative the average Israeli has convinced himself about IDF/Mossad, and they reflexively do not want to even contemplate these institutions genuinely failing.

There are no new strategic options today that didn’t exist yesterday. That has always been the problem. Egypt doesn’t want Gaza for obvious reasons. An occupation would be unimaginably bloody, expensive, permanent and occupy a huge amount of the IDF’s attention when there are other threats to the north.

They can’t trade for the hostages because I can’t imagine the public will support them doing so now. Hamas will demand every single relevant prisoner Israel has, and that’s not politically viable and would be extremely stupid from a security perspective. They’ll have to go in, eat the casualties, and accept the inevitably brutal videos and pictures of the resulting civilian deaths.

KSA will performatively pull out of negotiations (exactly as Iran wants, presumably) but will continue dealing with Israel behind the scenes. Maybe Biden can offer more help in Yemen to save some face but the situation there is complex and it’s unlikely. The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza, as well as the entire political leadership, mercilessly but quickly and professionally. But then again, I’m a Zionist.

Summary executions for prophylactic purposes aren't exactly going to endear one to the international community. I'm generally pro-Israel but if that happened I'd have to concede to my tankie friends that yep, they were right all along, Israel sucks. I suspect most politicians with the exception of some on the American right would agree with me, and Israel would lose whatever special status it has in the international community, if not become an outright pariah state. Next you'll have rocket attacks coming from the West Bank with Jordanian support, and the West won't be there to force them to Lebanon, or Tunis, or wherever.

I think Israel has been remarkably restrained since the mid-90s, and I’d like to see technological superiority used to kill at least a substantial number of violent young men. Retaliation would be limited, and in any case could be met by more destruction. Having been radicalized by the footage from today, I don’t consider these people’s lives to have substantial value.

Israel has been restrained because it is indeed fighting for the subjugation of a population with a size equivalent to its own. The alternative to restraint is not killing "at least a substantial number of violent young men", it is genocide. The definition of "violent young men who might take up arms against Israel if provoked enough" is "99% of Palestinian men". In a society like Palestinians intentionally or unintentionally killing someone is enough to convince a dozen of their male relatives to swear an eternal oath of revenge against you and genuinely pursue this.

I generally sympathize with Israel much more than Arabs instinctively because I perceive them as civilized people dealing with barbarians (a specific type of Islamic barbarity that I personally have reasons to specifically hate). If Israelis become another tribe of barbarians engaged in genocidal clan war then I simply do not care.

Thanks. I think you raise a very important point, which is that there is no such thing as partial humiliation. There is only absolute, total humiliation and total conciliation. Given that the latter is obviously politically impossible with regards to Palestinians, the former - which I agree is a poor option - is the only option.

Drone production, heavily automated surveillance including via facial recognition, all these things can, as Dase said earlier, make effective repression easier. I think it possible.

Drone production, heavily automated surveillance including via facial recognition, all these things can, as Dase said earlier, make effective repression easier. I think it possible.

Yes there is serious potential in this direction. It is not even unique to the Israel/Palestine conflict situation. This might become the testing grounds for a new type of government model for this century where AI developments drones and digitalization makes it viable to implement a degree of totalitarian control over human populations never seen before in human history.

I sense a hidden enthusiasm among some posters here for such a future for Palestinians. I hope they realize that their own governments won't shy away from imposing it on them in a couple decades either.

While people here have some outside-the-overton views, a lot of the eg. problems with things like mass immigration and ‘justice reform’ policies could be solved by this kind of police state. My primary issue with modernity is anarcho-tyranny. A replacement with simple but effective CCP-tier tyranny would be acceptable, if not the best solution.

More comments

Egypt doesn’t want Gaza for obvious reasons.

What happened to French Algerians in Algeria? Germans in Czechoslovakia? Germans in Poland? Germans in former Germany that then became Poland? Poles in former Poland that then became Ukraine? Or the other Palestinians who got kicked out by Israeli expansion? They absolutely can expel another couple million people by seizing their land, credibly threatening them with execution and kicking them out, it's within their power (provided the IDF gets their act together) and they've done it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949%E2%80%931956_Palestinian_expulsions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Palestinian_exodus

As you suggest, this has been tried in the past. It led to incredible amounts of chaos in Jordan and Lebanon. In the Lebanese case Israel then had to try to go and invade the country they chased the Palestinians to and get bogged down in a massive fiasco. Jordan came very close to turning into a radical Arab republic due to the Palestinian groups, similar to Syria/Iraq/Egypt at the time and this would be a catastrophe for Israeli security.

All of these expulsions you mention were carried out by absolute victorious states of massive bloody wars which had almost omnipotent control over the expulsed populations. This is not the case here and likely never will. Arab states played a very bloody and cynical gambit after 1948 by not allowing Palestinian populations to be resettled in a proper manner inside their countries. But in the long term it has paid off and Israel now has to deal with an insurmountable problem that constantly threatens to break the country. Why would Egypt/Jordan/Syria/Lebanon now give up and just accept a population of infinitely more radicalized Palestinians?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_South_Lebanon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

Why would Egypt/Jordan/Syria/Lebanon now give up and just accept a population of infinitely more radicalized Palestinians?

US bribery. Aside from Syria, the US funds them to be friendly with Israel. US foreign aid to Egypt massively increased after they signed a peace agreement with Israel and has stayed high since.

Israel then had to try to go and invade the country they chased the Palestinians to

This is the path Israel chose. Territorial expansion is not without its costs, it makes a lot of people very unhappy if you come in and take their land.

What's the alternative, Israel returns to the former status quo of bombing Gaza every so often? Executing the fighting age men, as suggested above? I'm not confident that's a long-term, sustainable solution. They're hardly likely to engage in serious negotiations or stop building new settlements while they have a fawning superpower sponsor and their enemies don't.

What's the alternative, Israel returns to the former status quo of bombing Gaza every so often?

Returning to permanent occupation of Gaza, probably.

What's the alternative

I don't know, it is certainly difficult to see one. In general I am a firm believer that making your very populous neighbor(s) hate you and basing your security arrangements around a distant superpower always favoring you is not a great idea overall (Israel is not unique in this regard, Russia's little neighbors also make this mistake). America might lose its power or interest at some point, but Arabs will always be right across the border. We have seen how much it freaked out Zionists when the US foreign policy establishment got the idea that perhaps normal relations with Iran is more beneficial to American Empire.

In general I am a firm believer that making your very populous neighbor(s) hate you and basing your security arrangements around a distant superpower always favoring you is not a great idea overall (Israel is not unique in this regard, Russia's little neighbors also make this mistake).

Note that Russia's little neighbors in general were already hated by Russia and trying to get some help from anyone else is preferable to getting better with Russia (which goes nowhere as Russia will invade you anyway once it will be judged as possible by Russia)

The only alternative was to not found Israel in the first place, but the alternatives there were probably worse too. Once it existed, radicalization was inevitable, there’s no world in which coexistence with Arabs was possible, it’s not like the Baltics or Ukraine where they could conceivably decide to join the Russian sphere and accept the consequences. At best it would simply be a return to the pre-1920 status quo of being at the mercy of a hostile, lower IQ foreign authority with zero leverage.

Once it existed, radicalization was inevitable

Probably yes. Perhaps if the first generation of Palestinian refugees in camps did not grow up in such horrible conditions with constant reminders of their humiliation, then things could have been different. My understanding is that they drove almost all of the radicalization in the conflict. But that is not entirely on Israel either. The hosting Arab states almost deliberately didn't allow the refugees to have normal lives and kept trying to use them as geopolitical chips..

This is the path Israel chose. Territorial expansion is not without its costs, it makes a lot of people very unhappy if you come in and take their land.

What are you referring to?

Territorial expansion by Israel and progressive taking of Palestinian land.

What territorial expansion? Are you talking about Israeli settlements in the West Bank?

More comments

French Algerians went back to France.Germans went to Germany. Poles went to Poland. There's nowhere for Palestinians to go, unless Israel really wants them in the West Bank. Moving them to another Arab state isn't an option—first, since Israel isn't wont to take advantage of strategic depth and starts building settlements on any territory they control, all this does is push the problem back geographically; instead of Hamas firing rockets from Gaza into Israel they're firing them from the Sinai into Gaza. More importantly, though, it pretty much closes the book on any rapprochement with additional Arab states. Since the last couple years of the Trump Administration, the US has been brokering deals between Israel and other Arab states in an attempt to undercut Iran's influence in the region. Driving Arabs out of Gaza and into Egypt would put those Arab states, whose populations are generally pro-Palestinian, into a situation where it would be difficult to move forward. There's already speculation that today's attacks were arranged by the Iranians for the express purpose of throwing a wrench into plans for Saudi recognition of Israel. A reaction such as you describe would only play into those schemes. Secretary Blinken is en route to Saudi Arabia as we speak to smooth over any problems these attacks may have caused. If the Israelis go the route you suggest then there's nothing he can say that will do that, not to mention that other states that already recognize Israel and are maybe even allies would find this course of action hard to swallow, the United States included. They'd diplomatically isolate themselves for short-term gain. I'm generally pro-Israel, but I'd seriously reconsider my support if they took this approach.

The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza, as well as the entire political leadership, mercilessly but quickly and professionally. But then again, I’m a Zionist.

Support that plan. Unfortunately the only way to deal with monsters is to show that you are the bigger monster and right now you are wearing a leash of your own making and won't it be wonderful if we are to put on both our leashes. Or else. Every Palestinian grunt and thug that has entered Israel today must die. Every part of the command chain that has approved - also. And the political leadership should be decapitated (figuratively, but literal is also acceptable). Then you go to the top survivor and ask nicely - you are now leader. Are you going to behave. If they refuse - shoot him and move to the one under him.

Given that there's a substantial portion of western societies that view Israel and the Jews as enemies, do you support them taking this approach to the Israelis or Jewish populations in their own country? You're already suggesting that Israel become "more of a monster", and this would dramatically shift the incentives and attitudes towards jewry in western countries.

I could see your approach working out if the Israelis were the biggest, meanest monster in the entire world... but right now I don't think that's the case. A return to bronze age mentality would absolutely not work out in Israel's favour - the USA, Russia and China are all bigger monsters than Israel after all. The biggest competition in that world would be the existing great powers deciding who gets to build a new Arch of Titus.

First - no western society views Israel as enemy. Second - Israel as a state hasn't done any atrocities in Europe, doubful even to have hurt anyone. Crimes and other violence committed by Jews are extremely rare. There is no outlook this to change any time soon.

But to answer your question - if Israel tomorrow launches attack on Poland and starts killing and raping Poles - yes I am totally ok with firmly but politely pointing out to them that Aushwitz is perfectly preserved.

In a way - don't remember that Israel knows in it's literal blood and bones that we are the bigger monsters. And they didn't even provoked us Europeans.

For this situation - Israel has blank check from me to do anything needed to make sure Hamas can never hurt a jew again. If they become too jolly I may be against helping them. But I doubt that there is anything that IDF can do to make me be against Israel in the current situation.

First - no western society views Israel as enemy.

Officially no, but I read constant reports talking about the rise of antisemitism and I'm not even trying to be glib here - I can see antisemitic memes and rhetoric spreading among the general population in real and serious ways, and especially amongst the western political blocs that are in the ascendant and outside the establishment.

Second - Israel as a state hasn't done any atrocities in Europe, doubful even to have hurt anyone. Crimes and other violence committed by Jews are extremely rare. There is no outlook this to change any time soon.

The dissident right absolutely believes that Jews are responsible for a long list of problems in their lives/societies. Crimes and other violence committed by jews are extremely rare, but the crimes that do happen tend to be extremely prominent and serious - Madoff, Epstein, etc. Antisemitism is one of the few areas the dissident right could plausibly work with the anticolonial/pro-islamic immigration left on (in the sense that the various muslim populations living in the west are now big enough to have a political voice). I'm not in any way suggesting that this is the case right now, but I think that assuming this state of affairs will last forever is dangerous. Even if they don't go invade Poland, there are enough people talking about the USS Liberty on the internet these days that it might not matter too much.

The entire reason Israel was created was in anticipation of the world becoming hostile to their Jewish populations. Bronze age mentality is what Israel is for.

If that's the case then you are making an argument for the immediate extermination of all Jewish people outside of Israel. If we're going back to Bronze age norms, AIPAC et al would simply just not exist in very short order. Why should the rest of the world press the co-operate button if Israel proudly announces that they are always going to pick defect every single time they can?

I'm not making an argument for it. I'm making an observation that the foundation of Israel is built on the belief that it will happen inevitably, like it or not.

To be honest, seeing the way crowds have rallied to cheer this sickening violence makes me think they might have been right.

The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza

Wouldn't executing childbearing age women instead of men be a better solution in the long term?

In a friction-less vacuum to be sure, but you also have to factor in the dirty bits of human nature and optics.

Terrible optics. And they are hot. You have to be merciless, the punishment must be inescapable and inevitable, but as least cruel as possible. Also if Israel wanted genocide - they would have done it by now. All of gaza strip depends on Israel for their survival. Their goal is to break the will of hamas to attack israel. Not to wipe the place clean.

The aversion we have to executing women is once again an example of how the environment our intuitions developed in means that some of them are maladaptive in the modern world.

It absolutely makes more sense to execute the childbearing age women instead of fighting age men. The men you just need to hold in jails for 20 years after which they will age out of violence, however the women will continue pumping out more kids who eventually grow into either fighting age men or new childbearing age women who can then pump out more fighting age men and so on.

I think we have an aversion to executing such women (and I too have this aversion, my limbic system makes me feel a visceral repulsion to this that I don't feel towards executing fighting age men) because in the olden days the victors would take the women as spoils of war for themselves after executing the men, and doing so would allow the winning tribe to grow faster than it would do if it had just killed the women, hence favouring the development of a revulsion to killing women that isn't present for killing men. These days we rightfully frown on raping/taking as additional wives captured women and so this benefit to the winning society is no longer present, but the downsides are still there. Hence in the modern system it does make more sense long term strategically to eliminate the women (akin to economic damage through bombing factories in a war) more so than it does to eliminate the men (akin to killing enemy soldiers on the frontline).

However this line of thinking makes even me go "ick" deep down and I wouldn't want to see it happen at all. My estimation of Israel as a polity would go down a lot if they did something like this. Alas, I too am human, all too human...

Male disposability uber alles; our hindbrains tell us that women are wonderful, innocent, and have inherent value.

Women can be easily integrated into a neutral absorbing tribe, such as Ukrainian women merrily living their best Tinder lives in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic.

This would perhaps only go double for a hostile conquering tribe. It’s been well-hypothesized that the female propensity for Stockholm Syndrome is an adaptation for better war-bride acclimation.

No coercion or rape even needed.

I believe there’s a 4Chan screenshot (a most rigorous citation) that pointed out, historically and prehistorically, women would see their boyfriends, husbands, brothers, fathers killed in war, but then shrug it off and have the children of the conquerors.

French women with German soldiers in WW2 could be an example.

such as Ukrainian women merrily living their best Tinder lives in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic.

It might be their pre-war wish, isn't an argument that integrating hostile Palestinian women would be easy.

That's some extraordinary biopolitics.

If Israel ever stoops that low and in a visible way (it won't), I'll at least get the pleasure of watching American Christians indignantly mutter something about justified retribution or whatever when I ask them why forced sterilization in Xinjiang by godless Chicoms is wrong but this isn't.

The women have less of a choice, I’m not without any morality.

The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza

Not sure this would be worth it for Israel in the long run. I think it would cause a diminishment in foreign support for Israel and would also likely cause many of the more liberal kind of Israelis, including many of its brightest minds, to leave the country.

The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza, as well as the entire political leadership, mercilessly but quickly and professionally. But then again, I’m a Zionist.

While I appreciate this candor and show of true colors from a Zionist, it's incredibly unsettling to hear the casual avocation of genocide. I can't see this happening in this day and age though, not with cameras in every persons pocket and social media. I would hope that if Israel would do something like this, it would spark it's neighbors and Muslims around the world into a great Jihad.

Killing 30,000 people out of 2 million is not genocide. As for cameras, I understand Hamas has them, and has been publishing their own atrocities.

Killing 30,000 people out of 2 million is not genocide

What was described above would be.

I agree that it won’t happen for various reasons.

On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

I think people won't care. Or rather, leftists who visibly care will discredit themselves. Like, there's talk of international opinion, but what do you do concretely? Do you sanction Israel for what Azerbaijan just violently did with no provocation and at no cost, after naked Jewish women have been paraded, raped and murdered in the streets by savages? And while a true ethnic cleansing is not out of the question, more realistically they'll simply permanently occupy Gaza and turn it into an actual open air prison, whether after the hostages are recovered or after the stream of atrocities decreases the public tolerance for giving in to hostage tactics.

These events certainly drive home the point that Hamas is the best Palestinian ruling party that Israeli hawks could have had, to the point that intel leaks leading to this disaster should be investigated with an eye for 4D chess (nothing will be found though). This obviates the conflict over judicial reform, demonstrates to Haredim the necessity of cooperation with the secula authority and the military, builds up the momentum for war with Iran, generally accelerates the mode collapse into a far right ethnonationalist society.

From the more mainstream Palestinian side (such as there is), I think escalation now is motivated by the ongoing legitimization of Israel in the rest of the Arab world. They don't have much time left for this silliness.

And while a true ethnic cleansing is not out of the question, more realistically they'll simply permanently occupy Gaza and turn it into an actual open air prison, whether after the hostages are recovered or after the stream of atrocities decreases the public tolerance for giving in to hostage tactics.

7 million Jews trying to occupy 2.3 million Arabs is a tall order. That's a slightly worse ratio than 140 million Russians trying to occupy 40 million Ukrainians, plus Gaza Arabs are younger and raised in an atmosphere of antisemitism that literally spans generations. I don't think setting up a permanent military occupation can work, back when Israel left Gaza in 2005 it was twice as small.

It's obviously a challenging task, but I think Israel will ultimately conclude there is no better alternative. Walling off Gaza and shooting down their rockets hasn't worked. Occupying the West Bank, mostly, has worked.

Suffice to say I believe those concerns are not insurmountable. If the goal of the occupation is not integration of Gaza but simply killing all fighting age men who try to coordinate on anything that resembles Hamas activity or dealing with Iranians – a few tens of thousands plus tons of networked drones, facial recognition checkpoints, shooting everyone masked etc etc. will work adequately. Plus taller walls, better turrets.

This isn't 2005.

Hamas the best Palestinian ruling party that Israeli hawks could have had

Maybe, but I think that it is not the best Palestinian ruling party that Israel could have had. If Israel does become a far right ethnonationalist society, I think that a lot of its most intelligent people will simply move away from there and it will lose many of the advantages that it previously had relative to its enemies. And, since from what I understand Jews outside of Israel tend to increasingly intermarry a lot, this could actually destroy Jews' entire cultural/genetic advantage over gentiles which they have enjoyed for the last ~200 years as Jews get increasingly assimilated by the much huger populations of non-Jews around them.

Indeed, I think that part of this could happen even Israel does not become a far right ethnonationalist society but Israel's enemies simply somehow manage to hit it with rocket attacks a bit more frequently and regularly than they have managed to do up to this point. Highly skilled people like engineers and scientists can move elsewhere and some of the ones who are less patriotic than the rest would do so in such a scenario.

Israel will weather a minor slump in growth rate just fine and can afford to continue truncation selection on loyalty. The gravitation holding it together (fear of annihilation by gentiles plus feeling of racial, spiritual, essential distinctiveness) cannot be negated by anything so petty as a bunch of disloyal white collar workers scurrying away. Given local Jewish TFR, in a generation those turncoats will be more than adequately replaced by children of those who stayed anyway.

I am merely channeling the sentiment I observe among very level-headed, secular Israelis today – ML professors, staunch liberals, witty SSC readers. A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself. Israel no longer gives a fuck about Western libshit routines where patriotism is supposed to be definitionally antithetical to intellectualism; it's traversing the path that the West has renounced in the 20th century.

A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself

Israel would be welcome to try and it would fail. These same "liberals" would also find themselves the targets of Islamic radicals in the West doing revenge attacks for months if not years. Given their embrace of genocidal rhetoric, I certainly wouldn't shed a tear for them.

Islamist attacks in the West (even narrowly targeted at Jews) won’t create more sympathy for the Palestinian cause but the opposite.

Do you sanction Israel for what Azerbaijan just violently did with no provocation and at no cost, after naked Jewish women have been paraded, raped and murdered in the streets by savages?

I strongly doubt people actually follow this moralistic approach to war, or it is always profoundly hypocritical. No sane person ever took sides in the Karabakh conflict aside from the respective diasporas, simply because the people involved are both identical and irrelevant (and equally unpleasant) from our perspective; with Israel-Palestine there is a much stronger ingroup-outgroup dynamic, so it’s more comparable to Russia-Ukraine, in which I don’t believe any atrocity, real or imagined, would force any kind of self-reflection.

No sane person ever took sides in the Karabakh conflict aside from the respective diasporas, simply because the people involved are both identical and irrelevant

Not exactly. Armenians can at least point to their Christian history as a commonality and to the World War One-era genocide as something that many well-read Westerners have heard of. I'd guess that maybe 15% of Americans could immediately point to Armenia on a map of the world without help. When it comes to Azerbaijan, I would guess that it is more like 5%.

Also, probably because most countries never viewed Karabakh to be part of Armenia to begin with, because of Armenia's historical ties to Russia, and because Azerbaijan won both recent wars pretty quickly, Armenia did not benefit from anything even remotely approaching the amount of Western media PR that Ukraine has been getting.

I think the difference is that the Azerbaijanis aren’t really typecasted as Islamists, the first line of the Wikipedia page on Religion in Azerbaijan says “Azerbaijan is considered the most secular country in the Muslim world”, most elites don’t wear hijab etc. It’s clear to any observer that it’s a relatively run of the mill territorial conflict for that part of the world, Azerbaijan is a corrupt petrostate but Islam isn’t relevant and so it avoids the West vs Islam culture war conflict even as desperate Armenian boosters try to claim it as such.

Really? I'd personally think far more people would be able to identify Azerbaijan vs Armenia on a world map. Azerbaijan has the benefit of having a pointy bit sticking out into the Caspian (very memorable and easily identifiable) while Armenia really doesn't have much going for it, I'd imagine lots of people would confuse it for Georgia.

I can’t believe that you of all people are so wildly overestimating the geographical knowledge of the American populace.

Oh, I didn't mean like 30% of the American populace would be able to identify Azerbaijan, it was more like thinking 2% would be able to point to Armenia and get it right on the first try, while something like 5% would be able to do the same with Azerbaijan, my claim was (%age who get AZ correct) > (%age who get AM correct).

Besides, I never said I think the American population is uniquely dumb compared to the rest of the world, they're smarter if anything averaged over the whole rest of the world, it's more that I think modern western culture is what is bad. The hardware of westerners is fine (well, as fine as an average human's hardware can be), it's the software that's borked.

Just as an aside, what value I continue to see in this forum is that it offers at least some sort of a dispassionate ground to discuss the tactical and strategic aspects of a conflict like this, which I find far more interesting than endless decriminations over modern dating or trans stuff or whatever. Twitter, certainly, is currently almost unusable for a discussion like this, even the local Twitter (in a country where the I/P conflict has far less valence than in many other European countries).

I'm reading mostly what the 'rational' pathway towards Israel's victory is. Which, so far, is mostly achieved through some form of PR friendly killing of non-combatants.

I think the line between 'dispassionate' and whatever 'passionate' is in this context is aesthetic at best. I personally prefer the honesty of passion over the pretense that whatever is being discussed here by overt and covert Zionists isn't just as barbaric and tribal as the 'passionate' expressions. That goes for those who forgo commenting on this topic as well.

I certainly wouldn't have entertained the notion of proposing that the end of the conflict can only be achieved through strategic culling of civilians and the routine killing of jewish first born boys. A comment which spurs the question of why we wouldn't kill potential jewish mothers instead... But here we are.

Plenty of this is indeed people simply living out their genocidal fantasies with a veneer of HDB/rationality/geopolitics. But there is good reason to suggest that the half-humanitarian/half-murderous approach of Israel towards this issue in the last generations have collapsed entirely yesterday and things will be different in the future. There is still value in discussing "how", even from nasty viewpoints, because people making these decisions also often have such viewpoints.

I don't care about the discussion happening. Unlike the mods here I don't have a chance to discriminate like that. Overt and covert jew supremacists can talk all they want as far as I am concerned. I appreciate that these events at least manage to draw out some human honesty in people who otherwise sit on the sidelines as two of their outgroups clash whilst giving dispassionate and rational commentary on what's happening. Which sure is easy when your team isn't playing, let me tell you.

I care about the proposition that the thin veneer of calm and collected rationalism that it shrouds itself in is in any way a relevant distinguishing factor from any of the discourse that is and would otherwise be sneered at as being low brow or insane.

There are posters here who get called out as being holocaust deniers and neo-nazis when they post. Just as a reminder or warning to others of what they are. Well, how many of the Zionist jew supremacists here are the exact carbon copy of that sort of poster? 'Israel did nothing wrong!'. Minimize and deny atrocities, flex history to suit their narratives and do it all under the guise of rationality and 'dispassionate discourse'. Can I call out the jewish supremacists here who pontificate on the culling of children to suit their nationalist ideology? At least the neo-nazi here has the tact to deny past atrocities rather than openly plan for new ones.

I mean, lets be honest here, if anyone in the past had suggested that the only peaceful end to the I-P conflict could be found with every jewish first born boy staring down the barrel of a shotgun I think the fine jewish supremacists here would find it very easy to report the comment. Let alone if someone was psychoanalyzing themselves to get past the hump of just killing would be mothers before they had a chance to give birth to a 'problem'. No, I've seen comments here designed by trolls to incite exactly the sort of nasty viewpoints you are talking about and they get banned.

I would say that this place is kind of insane, but it's not. It just has no self awareness. I wish it would gain some so we can stop pretending that there exist rifts between the neo-nazi and the average jew supremacist here. Having sat through years of dispassionate moral grandstanding at the hands of people who now either sit awfully quiet when the ball is in their court or are going full oy-vey-88... yeah.

I don't see why these events should change anything from a rationalist perspective. After all, there are still people here in favor of mass immigration despite the harm its caused in Europe and the US.

My advice to jews everywhere is to turn the other cheek and genuinely open their hearts and society to the Palestinians who are obviously hurting a lot right now. Violence is never the answer. This is the only way for Israel to survive.

Yes, looking for interesting commentary in the sea of nationalist rage, confident posts by people who don't know what they are talking about, and various kinds of copium/hopium gets annoying. I get why people who either live in the war zone or know people who live there get that way, I am pretty sure that I would too. But it's not just coming from those people, it's also coming from people who have no direct connection to the conflict. There is usually a bunch of moralistic grandstanding that is so simplistic it could have been written by a 1970s-era computer plus a bunch of people chiming in who think that they have something interesting to say because unlike the average person, who reads zero things about geopolitics a year, they read five or six.

The above applies to supporters of both sides. And not just to this conflict.

What can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

Nothing, especially as Hamas was smart enough to take dozens of hostages. Bibi was dumb enough to say "we're at war" when in reality it was a limited cross-border raid that affected the immediate vicinity border communities. A war would entail something like the 1967 or 1973 wars which were existential. This clearly is nothing even remotely similar. This miscategorisation has now boxed him in rhetorically and he can't be seen as backing down. It would have been better if he called it what it is: a major terrorist attack/raid.

In terms of propaganda, it seems clear that international opinion is (and should be) with Israel. But what I'm seeing from Israeli military experts is that this is being described as Israel's 9/11. It was a massive intelligence and military failure on their part and once the initial shock dies down, people will be starting to ask hard questions of the govt. So there will be a political angle to ramp up a massive response which may not be effective in the long run but needed to save the govt from its downfall.

Israel is now a very wealthy society and appetite for large-scale casualties which a major ground operation would necessarily require is very low. While you could do a lot of bombings which would level entire neighborhoods, you'd also risk killing your own hostages. It's really a gigantic failure on the part of Israel. I don't really see any good option for them. Gaza is this problem that they can't seem to solve and govt advisors have talked about "mowing the lawn" in the past, as you'd need to continually launch mini operations to degrade the militants' capabilities without actually solving anything at a root level.

I think this ties into Israel's larger failure of solving the issue with the West Bank situation. The left's "land for peace" formula is dead but the right-wing's continued settlement expansion invariably leads to ethnic tension. Bibi used to be good at "managing the crisis" which allowed the mainstream of Israeli society to sort of forget that there ever was an unresolved issue. This year has seen as a huge uptick in terrorist attacks and now this latest Gaza crisis just compounds the issue.

In a very weird way, Israel is safer externally than it has ever been from invasions from other Arab countries with Saudi normalisation on the tangible horizon adding to the Abraham Accords. On the other hand, the internal situation keeps deteriorating and not just between Moslems and Jews but even between religious and secular Jews. Seems like the place is just a perpetual cauldron of unrest.

Bibi is right. Israel has an image of deadly effective military and the initial attack has bloodied that image.

So he needs to respond with overwhelming force to restore the image.

It isn’t about the particulars here but the next invasion.

Nothing, especially as Hamas was smart enough to take dozens of hostages

First - don't underestimate the willingness of Israel to pay the butcher's bill. Second - there is always the Russian approach.

Instead, the KGB kidnapped a man they knew to be a close relative of a prominent Hezbollah leader. They then castrated him and sent the severed organs to the Hezbollah official, before dispatching the unfortunate kinsman with a bullet in the brain.

In addition to presenting him with this grisly proof of their seriousness, the KGB operatives also advised the Hezbollah leader that they knew the indentities of other close relatives of his, and that he could expect more such packages if the three Soviet diplomats were not freed immediately.

I am sure that Israel could outbid the Palestinians from Hamas on pointed extreme cruelty. And don't forget that half the country has Slavic roots. We can be very savage and cruel when push comes to shove.

Yes, there are no good options for Israel with Gaza. The “best” solution would be to occupy and pacify it wholly, but it would be extraordinarily expensive, extremely bloody and would make relations with the Arab world worse. What they have always wanted to do is give it ot Egypt or even anothe Arab country, but of course nobody wants them, partially because it would be ‘surrender’ and partially because they’re 2m people with zero human capital and a high birthrate in a time of high youth unemployment etc etc.

This was sort of my reading of what Hamas's goal is - do a very visible strike that lays bare the hollowness of Israel's invulnerable image (which is also, for instance, a basis for a lot of Israel's weapons trade), try to hunker down and weather the inevitable response, and once it dies down allow Israel to destabilize itself in internal recriminations.

Of course, Israelis also probably know that Hamas might want something like this, which would increase willingness to go the whole hog in attacking Gaza and Hamas so as to not allow them a win...

Ever since I started learning anything about the long-term relationship between Israel and Palestine, I've been unable to understand how there can be a stable equilibrium without something pretty close to ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that Bibi and others that are branded as "hard right" have come to a similar conclusion, even if they don't say as much out loud, and have pursued it by means of slow-moving settlements that inevitably provoke violence, allowing them to bolster security, pushing that cycle indefinitely to solidify Zionist state control of the region. While I won't go as far as saying that this morning's developments make Bibi happy, I think he will immediately see them as strategically useful and proceed accordingly.

I've been unable to understand how there can be a stable equilibrium without something pretty close to ethnic cleansing

You're correct and many Israelis of the hard-right and even some on the center-left have publicly lamented that Ben-Gurion didn't "finish the job of 1948" where Israel ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands in what the Palestinians refer to as "The Nakba". There was another round of ethnic cleansing during the aftermath of 1967.

Since then, the political pressure on Israel has ratched up significantly and even if international opinion is with them now, I highly doubt the West would allow forcible removal of millions of Palestinians today. More importantly, I also suspect the Palestinians would put up a lot more resistance today than their grandparents as they're far better armed and co-ordinated at a local level than they were in the 1940s or 1960s.

In addition, such a large-scale ethnic cleansing would invariably drag in Arab neighbours and kill any attempt at normalisation with Saudi Arabia and dial back the Abraham Accords. Hezbollah is also armed to the teeth and could well join the fray. So I highly doubt something like this would happen. Israel is just boxed in with no good options.

I think this will be bad for Bibi. It's one thing to have occasional rockets slip through the Iron Dome and kill a civilian or two per year. It's another thing to have this happen on his watch. The legitimacy of Likud is that their hardline approach delivers results with respect to the security of Israel. When the dust settles opinion might turn on him; I think this might happen regardless of whether there will be a general political shift.

I think the decision to slowroll settler expansion in the West Bank in exchange for petty violence from Palestinians was a very deliberate one, but this level of violence will probably force some kind of shift in Israeli strategy, one way or the other.

The legitimacy of Likud is that their hardline approach delivers results with respect to the security of Israel.

Shouldn't this have been the case with Republicans circa 9/11? Instead, the guy that was in charge when 9/11 happened saw a massive increase in approval and the intelligence agencies got a massive increase in power.

I don't think the compact was the same. Psychologically-speaking, the United States had lived through decades of peace. An attack by an outside enemy on the homeland was practically unthinkable. It was not the covenant of the government of the day to prevent something that was unimagineable and unpredictable (at least to the average citizen). This was why in part the American bloodlust after 9/11 was so extreme.

By contrast Israel has been under a siege mentality their entire existence, and after 1973 the threat shifted from outside state actors and their conventional armies to terrorism. The threat of the Second Intifada in particular was that violent death could visit any Israeli at any time. The border wall, the Iron Dome, the hostage trades; the government of Israel (under various parties) has undertaken immense cost and effort to save the lives of handfuls of citizens. I'm not sure there's been another government so willing to spend money to save the life of the individual at the margin (at least at the hands of their enemies).

Yeah, I think the response is going to determine how this works out for Bibi. If in short order is displaying the heads of Hamas on pikes outside the walls of Jerusalem (or whatever the modern equivalent is) this will help him.

Bush had only been in power a bit over half an year, so Repscould plausibly (implicitly at first) claim that the fault was with Clinton admin.

Twitter is an insane place right now, but it will only get worse from here. Just now, I scrolled past two gruesome videos, then saw tweets from official Israel military accounts. and then a video supposedly of someone hang gliding from Gaza into Israel?? The Ukraine war was not like this, I feel like I will be scarred by this one.

Speaking of retribution, Netanyahu’s twitter says, emphasis mine:

Since this morning, the State of Israel has been at war. Our first objective is to clear out the hostile forces that infiltrated our territory and restore the security and quiet to the communities that have been attacked.

The second objective, at the same time, is to exact an immense price from the enemy, within the Gaza Strip as well. The third objective is to reinforce other fronts so that nobody should mistakenly join this war.

We are at war. In war, one needs to be level-headed. I call on all citizens of Israel to unite in order to achieve our highest goal – victory in the war.

https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1710631847879717236?s=20

Some of the footage from Ukraine was really grim, especially the videos of drones finishing off wounded soldiers.

yes, not denying that. But those are less shocking than naked dead women being paraded around and spat on

Does that short clip of a female corpse in underwear in a truck with Palestinian soldiers sitting over it make such a huge difference to you? Or are you referring to some other video?

that and crowd yelling as they parade the corpses and people spitting on the corpses; women and children dead after house to house killing; killing a thai worker and trying to chop his dead off using the bluntest farming hoe while shouting “allahu akbar”. I just didnt see this from Ukraine I guess.

Not really? I watched redditors on /r/dronedOrc gloat about a surrendering man being torn apart by shrapnel bombs because he was still alive after the 4th one and they loved watching him writhe in pain.

He was grovelling for his life. Surrendering is a different process and doesn’t look like that
he didn’t start begging for mercy til AFTER he realized his number was up. expect mercy hahaha
Your jazz hands won't save you now.
Leave him to a slow death.
I got hard.
Could literally watch this for hours
I don’t care how brutal it is, I absolutely love watching Russians getting killed.

Spitting on a dead body is nowhere near as grotesque as watching that from what you used to think were civilized humans that speak the same language as you.

The difference is that some angry Estonian who hates Russia trolling in an online comments section is a lot less visceral than literal video footage of the raped corpse of an Israel civilian paraded through Gaza to civilian cheers. Ukraine doesn’t parade desecrated corpses of Russian civilians through Kiev to cheers.

When I was a kid I watched some militants saw the head off a captured NGO worker with a blunt knife. I'm pretty inured to bronze-age savages doing terrible things while spasmodically yelling ALLAH AKBAR.

What still gets me a little is the university HR lady, who'd fire you for making the white supremacist thumbs-up gesture or mentioning the lynching word "picnic", suddenly become a maoist third-worlder screaming about how Stolen Land Will Be Cleansed With The Blood Of The Settlers, From Palestine To California!

Also, there is difference between gloating about dead enemy soldiers and gloating about dead raped civilians.

Yeah there’s a lot of grim video out there, although history suggests nobody should be surprised given the depths of the hatred on the Arab side.

I agree, and Im not naive. But reading about something like this happening in a book, vs see this live, is very very different.

the yom kippur war was 50 years ago to the day, and the IDF gets caught with its pants down again like this? netanyahu and his entire government's days are numbered.

On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

Branded by whom? Amnesty - their job is to brand any fart as human rights violation so they should be ignored. The same way you should ignore Kandi on what is racism. By the arab world - Saudi and UAE are buddies and their elites don't really care about palestinians. Egypt mostly dont care also, Syria is having its own problems. EU - maybe - but look at amnesty. UN - there will be veto from USA and probably from Russia. So they can do anything. They can always use the US doctrine - every man past puberty caught in a rocket strike is declared enemy combatant.

Unfortunately ethnic cleansing is one of the only stable solutions. Make Palestinians citizens and you will be looking in bloodier Lebanon 30 years down the road. And no one wants nuclear warheads in country busy with a civil war anyway. The other is to find a country that will give them passports. But egypt probably won't be too keen, Jordan would probably like a mediterranean port - but I don't see how a land bridge could be made.

It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.

That's probably how this will be remembered / talked about going forward, but discussion/forecasting regarding a third infatada has been increasing over the last year. It's just been overshadowed in the western media due to the war in Ukraine / focus on Israeli politics.

This is more operational surprise than strategic surprise. Iranian arms shipments to groups across the region hasn't exactly been a secret.

The tactical surprise is the relishing in brutality against civilians that's been part of the operation, including the raid shelter killings that have already been publicized. That sort of thing isn't intended to communicate valorous resistance to garner international solidarity, that's the sort of thing intended to provoke reactions expected to overshadow the initial atrocities in public memory.

For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

Given that anything they do would be accused of being a war crime or ethnic cleansing regardless, that's probably not the deterring question it would have been a day ago. Especially given multiple examples of large-scale ethnic cleansing in the last year, and even in the last month, that so far have not exactly manifested any coordinated international response.

That's not to say Israel could get away with it- the gaza strip has an estimated 2 million people, which is almost as many as Armenia the country proper (2.7 million) and the middle east is not the global commons at all- nor is it to say Israel should even try, but it's not exactly the taboo guaranteed a universal response.

As for what Israel will do... I suspect that's going to depend on what Hezbollah does, and more importantly what Iran wants to happen. Hamas isn't quite the proxy that Hezbollah is, but I would be amazed if Hamas conducted this without significant pre-launch coordination with Iran.

including the raid shelter killings that have already been publicized.

God those videos are extremely brutal. Such videos should (but we all know they won't) convince everyone that the side of peace and kindness and treating other human beings well and general "stuff westerners say they like" here is Israel, not Palestine. If you want peace in the Middle East, they are the ones you should be supporting. Sure they are discriminatory etc., but the alternative is not Nordic style welfare democracy, it's literal Hamas, and compared to them, Israel are the good guys.

If you want peace in the Middle East, they are the ones you should be supporting.

What's Israel's record with ME peace again? Annexing land off their neighbours, invading their neighbours, 'pre-emptively' bombing their neighbours? Something like 80-90% of Middle East interstate wars involved Israel, there was only Iran-Iraq and Gulf War 1 without Israeli involvement.

We shouldn't be supporting anyone in the Middle East who isn't going to give us something in return, this is a them problem. Supporting Israel causes us many problems: massive terror attacks, Arab oil embargoes and quagmire wars.

I think it’s possible for individuals to express statements of moral approval toward the methods Israel will need to deploy in this scenario, while also opposing any material support being transferred from Western countries to the IDF. I want Israel to handle this situation entirely on its own, and I want it to win. Do you believe that these desires are incompatible?

If you want peace in the Middle East, they are the ones you should be supporting.

It's kind of ambiguous what he means here but I interpreted it as material support. Moral support alone can't achieve peace in the Middle East.

Your position is very clear.

Such videos should (but we all know they won't) convince everyone that the side of peace and kindness and treating other human beings well and general "stuff westerners say they like" here is Israel, not Palestine. If you want peace in the Middle East, they are the ones you should be supporting. Sure they are discriminatory etc., but the alternative is not Nordic style welfare democracy, it's literal Hamas, and compared to them, Israel are the good guys.

Now apply this reasoning to Rhodesia, South Africa, Algeria, Chechnya… Could it be that your idea of what Westerners (certainly their rulers) like is wrong?

The moral superiority of non-Whites is a foundational principle of Western civilization at this point. The only reason Israel even gets away with thus much is because it’s only partially European.

God those videos are extremely brutal.

I'm probably going to regret this, but do you have a link?

As always, rdrama to the rescue:

Main thread: https://rdrama.net/post/209674/redlight-israel-is-in-a-state

There are links to videos in the post. Further stuff in the comments. To save you a click here's a comment (by user @Awoo) with some links (more can be found on the full post/comments):

https://rdrama.net/post/209674/redlight-israel-is-in-a-state/5121370#context

PEOPLE ARE GETTING BUTCHERED.

GRAPHIC LINKS:

HTTPS://NITTER.NET/JENGELMAYER/STATUS/1710525434285138223

HTTPS://NITTER.NET/BRYANLEIBFL/STATUS/1710532424529007062

HTTPS://NITTER.NET/OZRAELIAVI/STATUS/1710535510798880786

HEADS UP, THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY PRETTY BAD

HTTPS://NITTER.NET/SDFRONTTWIT/STATUS/1710535742739603661

TRANS LIVES MATTER

Last one is footage of the dead in a shelter.

If you want everything as soon as it comes out watchpeopledie.co is where you want to go (full gore warning).

Damn. You weren't joking. That one dude twitching...

The best thing Israel could do for the Palestinian people is to straight up occupy Gaza and the West Bank and declare them to be parts of Israel and their inhabitants citizens. Then punish the attackers as common violent criminals.

Also this really doesn't look good for Mossad. I expected better from them...

Why would they make them citizens where they can have a vote? That would be suicide. It would be strategically preferable to leave them stateless.

Why would they make them citizens where they can have a vote?

This can be seen as much a problem with democracy as it is a problem with the Palestinian people. Besides, Israeli democracy is going to have huge issues with the Haredim throwing around their demographic weight in a few decade's time, creating a few million more Israeli Arabs who are never going to vote for the same parties as the Haredim will delay their takeover for a generation at least by diluting the vote share of these people (Israels Proportional Representation system means extreme Arab votes counteract extreme Haredim votes when it comes to coalition building, ensuring moderates continue to hold the reins of power).

It's like killing two birds with one stone, you get to destroy the attackers self justification of being freedom fighters and brand them as being nothing more than the basest (note: not the same as basedest) violent criminals, denying them of a glorious death in battle with the enemy (which they and their families would happily take) and leaving them to rot in prison, and on the other hand you delay the demographic tsunami of your own ultra-orthodox elements overwhelming your system.

Fighting a government that gives you a vote doesn’t necessarily stop you from calling yourself a freedom fighter. Ireland’s vote for Sinn Féin in the 1918 UK General Election and the subsequent war it legitimized comes to mind.

The best thing Israel could do for the Palestinian people is to straight up occupy Gaza and the West Bank and declare them to be parts of Israel and their inhabitants citizens

RIP Israel. This will be the end of the state. Much better idea is to talk with Egypt to annex it and move them somewhere beyond the Aswan dam

I don’t know, I think that the time has come for them to decide: is Israel a democracy or not? If they want to continue down the pathway to become an apartheid theocratic state, then that’s their business but they should be called out for it or and shouldn’t continue to receive foreign policy deference and foreign aid in abundance. If they are going to remain a democracy that is excellent, and I believe will ultimately be revealed as the correct choice.

Israel is democracy. Which is orthogonal to how religion shapes their society. And how is Israel apartheid state. I often seen it mention, but never explained. South Africa wanted to subjugate the blacks. Israel wants the palestinians gone from their land (choose whichever their suits your political side). They have absolutely no interest in administering or even exploiting them.

They are now, but this nonsense about either deporting all of the Palestinians or maintaining a status quo in which the palestians are not Israeli citizens is basically a form of apartheid

They’d gladly give Gaza to Egypt but the Egyptians obviously don’t want them.

This would result in the Palestinian people losing their homeland forever. A one-state solution would mean the eventual replacement of all Palestinians because of Israel’s soft privileging of Jews and the extreme birth rates of the Hasidim. Given that the Palestinians seem earnestly to value their culture and peoplehood, this simply isn’t viable.

Palestinians also seem to earnestly value the destruction of Israel.

I don't know how this all ends (if it ever does), but I wouldn't bet on everyone getting an outcome they're happy with.

Israel is running into the problem France had in Algeria and the whites had in South Africa. Once the minority becomes too numerous they can't be controlled. Had there been a million Iraqis the US would have won. With a booming population they simply couldn't. France controlled Algeria relatively well when their population was small. With the economic benefits of being a part of France their population boomed and it just became impossible for France to police that many Algerians. Apartheid South Africa would have been hard to maintain with a 4% white population. The Palestinian population is increasing rapidly and is getting to the size where counter insurgency is hard.

The difference is that in South Africa both groups were in the same country and the white minority very deliberately refused to retreat to the Cape (where they could have engineered a permanent white majority) and cede the rest of the country to the majority.

In Israel, the domestic Arabs have been largely pacified. The non-citizens in the West Bank and Gaza are the risk.

Palestinian birth rates are decreasing, whereas Israel’s is stable + 20% have extremely high birth rates which will overshadow Palestine in 60 years

Palestine has a younger population and a high birth rate. That religious fundamentalists with unimpressive average Iqs and dysfunctional ways of living are reproducing at a high rate is a problem for Israel, not a feature.

The Haredi have an average IQ above 110. In fact there’s an above single digit chance that the literal smartest person in the world is sitting in an Israeli housing project arguing about what counts as cheese for the purpose of Jewish dietary laws.

The super genius jews myth doesn't really seem to apply in Israel. Their Pisa scores are below average and their average Iq is less than a hundred. The Haredi have shown little in terms of intellectual achievement.

Because lots of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi and the Haredi don’t want intellectual achievement.

Do the Chareidim have unimpressive IQs? By 2019, Jewish fertility exceeded Arab fertility in Israel.

Seems to me like they already lost. It's now just a debate over the shape of the final peace.

A lost war is never worth it. And Gaza can't win.

What do they get from this? Do they stop Israel from taking land? Of course not. It's just blood and misery for nothing.

A lost war is never worth it.

Truer words... does this apply to other current events though?

Of course. Honestly, Ukraine might end up with even the winner worse off for fighting it.

In Ukraine both sides are losing. It is unclear which is losing faster. They are competing on this metric.

It looks like what Palestinians decided to do in response will have many people say "the Israelis are the good guys here, at least they'll just bomb the women and children instead of selling them to sex slavery".

Or it seems based on the Twitter videos the Palestinians are raping the women, then killing them, and then parading around their naked bodies.

Considering the amount of sex slaves and their history in Israel I'd advise the JIDF to pick a different thing.

What are you talking about?

Exactly what I wrote? Israel used to be a prolific place for sex trafficking and slavery. But they changed their tune in the late 90's after a US DoS Trafficking in Persons report ranked them as Tier 3. Meaning Israel was then in a group of nations that could face sanctions for the abysmal state of their country.

Granted that Israel treats Palestine pretty badly, there’s not a lot Palestine can do about it. This is a real ‘the strong do what they will and the weak put up with what they must’ situation.

Should Palestinians in Gaza just forget the last 18 years and the thousands men, women and children bombed to death?

Yes, yes they should. It sucks but there is no alternative. Israel is too far advanced and strong now compared to the Palestinians, end of story. The time to compete was 50 years ago, and the way to compete was not rockets and bullets but rather a singular focus on economic growth to the point where your soft power grew so much you could influence the players that really matter (lets be honest here, both Palestine and Israel are too small to influence the world by themselves) to put extreme pressure on Israel because they wanted to trade with you (which is what Israel is doing now to the Palestinians, see the proposed normalization of relations with parts of the Arab world).

Violence no longer works on large scales in the 21st century (see Russia v Ukraine) if you want to create a peaceful country and prosperity for your people. The only reason it works for Israel doing the reverse is that the Palestinians are much weaker (to the point that it's no longer two equals fighting - which leads to a lot of damage to the world; but more like police subjugating a riot - minimal damage to the world if the police handle it right), and because Israeli economic heft will mean other countries turn a blind eye to what is going on, were Palestine to try the same, they would rightfully be sanctioned into the ground. Until Hamas understands this the very people they want to help will suffer even more than they would in a counterfactual world where Hamas suddenly disappeared off the face of this planet.

Even if Hamas wants to take the fight to Israel physically, the way to do it is not through the sticks and stones tier rockets but rather through diverting economic resources into high end military research to make yourself a plausible equal of Israel in the domain, and then threaten them (this is never going to happen, but it's still the right way to do things if you choose this path).

The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them. If anything tech is helping Palestine. We have seen cheap drones that are mass produced take out an Israeli tank today. With every Palestinian having a cell phone and most of the middle east on social media it has become harder for Israel to brutally suppress Palestinians. Israel can no longer control the narrative when so much of the public's view comes from the internet and not pro Israel media organizations. The Palestinians are increasing in numbers and fighting an ongoing insurgency at home is cancerous for a society. Furthermore, Israel is already deeply split between conservatives, an extremely woke portion of jews and sectarian fundamentalists that are breeding at a high rate.

The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them.

Eh. The Taliban 'defeated' NATO by being a thorn in their side until NATO decided the juice wasnt worth the squeeze and bailed. That would not work for Palestinians. Suppressing an agressive Palestine isn't a side project for Israel, it's existential. You'd better believe that if Afghanistan were in the middle of the Mohave desert and rocketed Phoenix every decade or so the US would still be there.

Israel can no longer control the narrative when so much of the public's view comes from the internet and not pro Israel media organizations.

That might have been true yesterday but a few viral videos of Israelis getting executed and lynched by Palestinians will turn global perception of the Israeli-Palestine conflict around right quick.

The US could absolutely have won in Afghanistan if it was willing to accept extreme civilian casualties, wipe out villages etc. The reality of an occupation is that if you have fuel, food and resources, mostly you really can just kill people until a population is pacified. It would have worked even in Chechnya, Putin just didn’t have the guts.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that Putin was doing that in Chechnya, it was just cheaper and easier to give Ramzan Kadyrov what he needed to pay off a sufficient portion of the chechens to establish total control in exchange for loyalty.

Pacifying Chechnya was difficult and extremely costly. There are twice as many Palestinians as Chechnyas and they have phones. Russians at least weren't continuously filmed during their operation. Israel has falling support in the polls and going full Chechnya won't improve that.

So far they seem to be using their phones mostly to publicize their own atrocities.

That depends if it is filtered through American media. I am mainly getting Israeli bombings, beatings of Palestinians and attacks.

If Israel kills every palestinian tomorrow, in 5 years all will be forgotten. The half assed genocides get remembered. The full one don't.

That's basically one of only three stable solutions, too. The second one is the Palestinians kill all the Jews, the third is the Jews all go somewhere else far away.

The Palestinian diaspora extends beyond Israel/West Bank/Gaza, though.

More comments

The more India rises as a power and the more Islamic immigration to Europe continues to cause integration issues, the more every non-Muslim country will support Israeli brutality against Arabs.

This makes no sense. Israel wants millions of Arabs to move from where they currently live. Palestinians want Arabs to continue to live in the same place as their family always lived in. Supporting Israel is supporting mass muslim immigration to Europe. Israel has sponsored migration into Europe while destabalizing the middle east. If we don't want massive arab immigration to Europe than not forcefully resettling millions of Palestinians is a good plan. One of the main critiques of neoconservative policies in the middle east has been massive amounts of migrants into Europe. It is also almost impossible to repatriate muslims to Palestine today as Israel blocks it. Palestine meanwhile wants Europe to return migrants.

More comments

The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them

Except that the Taliban didn't defeat them, right? The Taliban managed to kill all of 2000 US troops in 20 years, and they succeeded only after US troops left. I don't think the IDF is going to be leaving Israel any time soon.

That is called losing the battles but winning the war.

I think this kind of desperate attack was inevitable for some time now. Big intelligence failure on Israel’s part but very high birthrates and the fact Gaza is a hellhole (partially by design) mean the requisite large numbers of angry young men are present. With the number that just walked in there will inevitably be cases of families being slaughtered, girls raped and so on to occupy the press for months.

And it explains why the Israeli population lurches to the right. Americans were unfathomably bloodthirsty after 9/11 (see infamous Coulter quote) outside of fringe far-left contrarians; in Israel, this has been going on for 70 years (and 20 in the current phase), the public is radicalizing year by year and has got a long time. Even in Europe the migrant crime wave that led to a surge in support for the AfD etc is less visceral compared to what’s happened in Israel, Swedes don’t fear an actually organized, well equipped army of young men raiding their quaint towns and slaughtering them like pillagers in the thirty years war.

As to what they’ll do, I think bellicose rhetoric is more likely than something more serious. The only real “solution” would be to slaughter the violent young men (same as it always is) to break the spirit of the population, firstborn sons to start, maybe. Or go full Xinjiang, possibly. But they can’t afford that and don’t really want to, you’re right, so instead they’ll build bigger walls, do some more bombing, talk tough and try to forget about it.

Gaza is many terrible things, but a state of slavery isn't one of them.

No, as the isolated nature of Gaza is a consequence of the Gaza-stirp Palestinians, and specifically Hamas, ability to manage their relations with Egypt (who manage a border) and even the West Bank Palestinians (who were a major political force for enabling cross-Palestinian transit concessions from Israel), not solely Israel.

The lack of willingness of Arab states to hold / give refuge / assimilate Palestinians is a broader Palestinian failure, but one that far predates Hamas.

The lack of willingness of Arab states to hold / give refuge / assimilate Palestinians is a broader Palestinian failure, but one that far predates Hamas.

I mean attempted coups by Palestinian refugees in their host countries (and massacring Israeli Olympic athletes by the same group) certainly didn't help.

As the saying goes, they've never missed and opportunity to miss an opportunity. And hijack a few more airliners worth of opportunities along the way.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats