This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
More options
Context Copy link