naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
One of the most edifying experiences of my youth was an academic assignment in the GWOT era, when we were instructed to pick a terrorist group and study its formation and evolution. I knew everyone else would pick something Islamic, so I decided to pick something else to stand out, and I settled on Sri Lanka. For about 33 years (1976 to 2009), Sri Lanka saw a brutal civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, where the two sides could be neatly demarcated into separate ethnicities, separate religions, and separate languages - not dissimilar to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Tamils were represented by the LTTE, which was a terrorist organization and a separatist group seeking to carve out an ethnostate from Tamil-dominated regions of the country. But the LTTE was also a remarkably sophisticated pseudo-state; most terrorist organizations don't have their own navy, air force, or intelligence apparatus, which are all things that the LTTE put together during their war against the Sri Lankan state.
I won't rehash the disputes and grievances of the war, since they are predictable and your imagination can reliably fill in the details from what you know of other ethnic conflicts, including the one in Israel. All race wars are eventually the same. Long story short is that tens of thousands of people died on both sides, and numerous foreign actors including the US, Norway, India, the EU, and the UN tried to intervene and broker a peace, and the conflict settled into a cycle of atrocities->diplomacy->ceasefires->new atrocities->new diplomacy->new ceasefires, on and on. And then in late 2006, the Sri Lankan government essentially said "fuck this", and decided to wage concentrated, merciless, full-throated war against the Tamils. They brought out the kinds of heavy weapons that you usually reserve for wars against foreign states, and they used them without hesitation, and with very little regard for civilian-combatant distinctions. They killed and killed and killed until the LTTE was begging for a ceasefire, which they ignored, and then kept killing until the LTTE was ground into the dirt, their leadership massacred, their leaderships' families massacred, everything destroyed - until the LTTE had no capacity to fight or do anything anymore, at which point the Sri Lankans declared victory, and the war was over.
None of this was "legal" or "ethical" or "moral". Countless crimes against humanity were committed. But the war was over, and has shown no signs of returning in the almost 15 years since its conclusion. No more bombs in public places, no more midnight massacres on farms and villages, no more burning streets. What does it say of our enlightened modern era that two and a half years of bloodthirsty war did more to bring about peace than the preceding 30-something years of talking and diplomacy and give-peace-a-chance rigmarole?
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem. We used to know these things - all the population transfers and ethnic cleaning that took place after World War I and World War II were done with the understanding that you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long, and that an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future. We pretend to know better now, and to what end? To keep money flowing to NGOs, and hand out peace prizes to each other?
Ethnic cleansing was done before, even with tacit agreement of USA. One such example is Operation Storm that took place on the tail end of Balkan Wars, where Croats basically ethnically cleansed the area that was the stronghold of autonomous republic of Serbs. Croats killed several hundreds of Serbs and basically evicted hundreds of thousands from their land.
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
What seems to be needed is some kind of uh, ultimate, uh, resolution, of the uh, Jewish problem[ of non-Jews existing in their vicinity]. Perhaps one of the greatest question that has ever posed itself to uh, Jews.
So to speak. Some form of uh, physical removal?
I don't think Israel needs to literally kill everyone, but they do need to institute some sort of radical de-Palestinization. Go in, establish total martial law, destroy all mosques, convert the entire population to Bnei Noach, ban the Arabic language. These people got self-government and immediately voted a literal terrorist cell into power. Israel has no reason to treat Gaza any more leniently that the Allies treated Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
I wonder if modern communication and widespread prevalence of Islam will lead this to be less effective than your examples.
Like with Nazi Germany, the main source of Nazi ideology was Germany itself: if you wanted to learn about Naziism you had to go up against the occupation authorities that were against that. And even if there were Nazi groups that weren't repressed in Italy or something, you'd have a hard time finding and learning from them.
But that's clearly not going to happen here: Islam exists in many countries across the world and will explicitly talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict, so there's always going to be a supply of Islam for anyone in Palestine who wants to learn it.
Keeping it repressed doesn't just mean tearing down the mosques, it means keeping Palestinians from accessing the mosques in other countries, which would mean an unrealistic crackdown on all communication technology in the country, and probably needing to maintain that crackdown perfectly for decades against people from other countries actively seeking to break it.
There are further differences that seem to support your theory.
Nazism was also denounced by practically the entire world, or at least by those parts of it that had much influence. Since Islam counts as a religion and all parts of the world that have much influence have agreed that religions require protection, Islam receives protection in most of the world whereas Nazism did not.
The other very obvious difference is that Nazism had maybe a decade to take root, whereas Islam has had a good 1300 years. Nobody but a handful of German children, and those only briefly, experienced Nazism as a natural fact of life, whereas Islam is in the soil and water of much of the world.
The two don't really compare at all. So I'd agree with you.
If they managed to find some countries that were willing to take in millions of Palestinians, the Israelis maybe would be able to pull off a soft ethnic cleansing. But they could not pull off a murderous, "kill everybody" genocide without alienating a very large fraction of their current supporters, including Jewish ones. Israel would become similar to what North Korea is today. It would probably not collapse, but it would have big difficulties in retaining nearly as many high-skilled, intelligent people as it has now unless it made it illegal for them to leave the country, and it would have bigger difficulties in convincing Jews from elsewhere to move there than it does now. Only the most hardcore patriots would want to live in an armed camp that is known for having recently committed one of modern history's biggest genocides, and I doubt that the overlap between such hardcore patriots and the kind of high-skilled, intelligent people who are the bedrock of any sophisticated modern economy is very large. Which is not to say that there are no intelligent pro-genocide people, of course. There are plenty. But they are an exception. In the heat of the moment after having had your nation attacked, almost anyone could feel genocidal desire. I think it's likely that a huge number of otherwise compassionate Israelis feel that way right now, for example. But there's a difference between feeling it every now and then and actually being ok with your military doing it and seeing the videos of what it looks like. Even the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust a secret from both Germans and people in other countries, but in today's world there would be no way to keep a violent genocide of Palestinians a secret.
On the other hand... Japan surrendered to the US! How were the Japanese able to swallow their pride in the face of total nuclear annihilation and decide that bending their knee to the West and adopting all of their customs was better than going down in a blaze of glory? But yet the Palestinians find this utterly unthinkable?
After that, though ... was the institution of the Japanese Emperor a blessing in disguise? Anti-terrorist tactics consider "decapitation strikes" killing enemy leaders to be high-value goals, but if there's nobody left at the top who's respected enough to order the foot soldiers to stand down then ipso facto the foot soldiers never stand down. From a moral standpoint it feels like assassinating a "mastermind" is greater justice than killing tons of poor grunts who merely got persuaded or coerced onto the front lines, but maybe the rules of war are more useful in the long run than the rules of anti-terrorism, if wars can come to an end but terrorism just goes on and on?
The Japanese were not displaced from their homeland and only temporarily lost control of Japan after their defeat. The Palestinians lost both their homes and control of Palestine permanently.
The emperor surrendered unilaterally against the wishes of his advisors. There is no god emperor in Gaza to make the Palestinians surrender against popular sentiment.
I’d guess it’s because Japan’s entire people were on the line, whereas Hamas identifies with other Arabs/Muslims such that the loss of Palestine doesn’t mean total defeat.
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
Israel would not have this specific problem of Hamas launching attacks from Gaza (that up until now, had been quite comfortably handled). But they might have other problems: a revival of pan-Arabism, a withdrawal of US and western support, the fervent determination of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Egypt to pursue development of nuclear weapons, etc.
Brutal, overwhelming force might solve one problem, but if in the process that creates three more, you are no farther ahead than when you started.
Israel has long-term plans. God, after all, has promised them the Holy Land, and they see a long-term way to achieve it. Incrementally expanding settlements in the West Bank every year and fighting off a spirited attempt from Hezbollah/Hamas once a decade might be a slow way, but so far it looks like a sure way. They no longer face an existential threat. They've mollified and bought off their formal rivals, and in the process surpassed them. They have ironclad security guarantees and economic support from the world's most powerful countries. Why risk all of that?
But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
You would have many other exciting problems. I doubt that mass murder of X million people is actually effective.
Hitler tried, and as far as curbing Jewish political power and influence, or as increasing power of Germany, or as taking Lebensraum, or as promoting eugenics and purity of german race - all that goals failed miserably. Despite actually murdering millions of people.
Germans were thrown out of lots of territories post-WWII
Mostly as a revenge for Germans themselves attempting to conquer and settle into their neighbors' territories. Am I the only one who sees Germans as more analogous to the other side in this conflict?
understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem. We used to know these things - all the population transfers and ethnic cleaning that took place after World War I and World War II were done with the understanding that you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long, and that an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future. We pretend to know better now, and to what end? To keep money flowing to NGOs, and hand out peace prizes to each other?
The Jews are one of the groups closest to your mentality actually based on both rhetoric and action. There is a constrain related to muslim world having its own similar solidarity and fanaticism. And where do you expect Palestinians to go as they are further ethnically cleansed and mass murdered as per your final solution? How is this better for the people involved who are mass murdered? And how would after the crimes you advocate be done, avoid things like what happened in Lebanon after mass migration of Palestinians there?
Genocide as the end of ethnic conflict is myopic way of seeing it. In actuality, genocidal empires are prone to find another group and do to them likewise. Moreover, historically one group out to genocide X leads to Z acting similiarly and you get mass murder. Such escalatory spilar reached that point to begin with because that was the favorable course. That is, if groups follow a greedy path to the extreme, you are going to get ethnic conflict. Although yeah ethnic conflict is rather plausible in non homogeneous societies with human tribalism being what it is. That is why progressive supremacists support diversity because they want to create a coalition to lord over and oppress the native people.
Of course, I would not suggest that people should be pushovers. But the Jews are not the group that are pushovers, to the contrary they benefit from others being pushovers towards their own aggression. And of course from unhinged rhetoric of non Jews in favor of Jewish extremism. Tolerance of Jewish fanaticism is the reason that Israel has escalated the situation already this far. As for the Palestinians, the Islamic fanatics of Hamas also provide no happy solutions.
The best historical solution to the conflict was to keep these two people separate in two seperate states controlled by more moderate nationalists over the current leadership.
In the current case, Israel avoiding massive warcrimes like people here advocate is the sane immediate next step. Already their rhetoric about animals, destroying gaza strip, removing water. Rather than seeking reprisals towards military targets, there is the logic of racist annihilation of the ethnic enemy.
It does show that all the rhetoric of so, so, so many here about bad nationalism, tolerance, human rights, genocide denial of 80 year old genocides being of such a moral afront, being nice, whines about racism etc, etc are just the hollow words of hypocrites who align with the most unhinged nationalism and racism of a Jewish hue and even from a political coalition of the far right that is particularly and genuine extreme in said direction.
And of course that you can get away with this rhetoric in favor of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinians without a ban is precisely because of what group you have chosen to target. It's why it would be a good thing if the kind of people who run institutions, including internet forums started to get punished for the kind of unhinged bipartisan (i.e. progressive supremacist or Israeli jewish supremacist) extremism they have been tolerating and encouraging.
People here unironically care and are more passionate in arguing about people denying past genocide involving the jews, than people promoting current genocides in favor of the Jews.
I don't know about others, but I argue against Holocaust deniers not because I have any sort of pro-Jewish agenda but simply because I think that Holocaust denial theories are very implausible and most people who adhere to them do so for emotional reasons rather than intellectual ones. So when I see them, I have the same kind of mental reaction that I would if someone came here and started arguing that the Apollo moon landing never happened, or if someone started arguing that Christianity is literally true.
And of course that you can get away with this rhetoric in favor of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinians without a ban is precisely because of what group you have chosen to target.
You can probably get away with arguing for mass murder and genocide of pretty much any group here as long as you write it in a sufficiently dispassionate-sounding, academic style.
I do find unhinged pro-genocide rants distasteful, but so far at least, somewhat to my surprise, I haven't actually seen anything too barbaric here. Maybe I just need to keep reading this thread further, lol. It would not surprise me to see some.
Or maybe spending a lot of time on 4chan has made Motteizens' occasional murderous rants seem relatively tame to me in comparison.
I’m not convinced that it’s the genocide part that’s important. The solution is to break the will of people to continue to resist. It can be done without killing everyone, but it has to be done with exactly that goal in mind — by the time the smoke clears the very idea of attempting to start a battle with the other side should be unthinkable.
This is exactly correct, and I think it is the true aim of some of the Israeli leadership at this point. That breaking point may be very far along the line however, given the experiences of the 20th century, and I'm not convinced the Israelis have the will to go as far as they will need to.
The analogy above someone used of the war with Japan is a good one: in that case the US acted continually as if their goal was the complete subjugation of the Japanese people at any cost, if not through unconditional surrender then by annihilation. That approach works, but you have to follow it - you can't bluff at it.
So you are interested in enough mass murder so Palestinians will accept anything Jews do and will never even think of attempting to start a battle with the other side.
I am pretty sure you are pointing trivialities and it is the genocide you support as a solution that is important and not the fact that it leads to the defeat of your enemy like you pretend.
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
I've long felt that people who talk this way of such things have never engaged with war closer than playing a Paradox game.
What does it say of our enlightened modern era that two and a half years of bloodthirsty war did more to bring about peace than the preceding 30-something years of talking and diplomacy and give-peace-a-chance rigmarole?
Very true, which is why I support the genocide of all landlords and capitalists because they stand in the way of the socialist utopia and would just keep trying to destroy it if we left them alive. In fact, I might even extend this to genociding all humans because they can't stop polluting the earth.
No one is denying that if you kill anyone who opposes you, you can stop fighting instead of continuing a protracted engagement that drains resources and willpower. What is denied is that this is a moral thing to do. Ending war is not inherently a moral good. To have it as a terminal value is the same mistake the pacifists make when they insist the West should voluntarily disarm or leave the Soviets/Russians alone.
In fact, if I was going to be more cynical, I would guess that for some people, any solution to a problem is better than having to keep hearing about it, as if the real sin is that they were asked to pay attention to something other than their own lives. Funny how this forum would reject that idea if it were leftists calling for a ban on anything that cast black people in a negative light because that is a way of fighting racism.
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
There's good reason that Britain pacified Afghanistan in the 19th century with far weaker supply chains and less glaring technological disparities, while it and the rest of NATO left in the 21st with their tail tucked between their legs.
Violence is the voice of the unheard, but it's also a universal language. If you can't solve most problems with violence, you're not using enough, and quite often, or at least here, a more dispassionate analysis will show that a quick burst of brutal violence obviates the need for more down the line.
At any rate, I think Western countries are cowardly in large part because most of the wars they've fought of late don't matter, lacking the stakes of their populations being genocided or living conditions cratering.
I find it ironic that you prefer the Israeli way of doing things that excludes you while you want to migrate to the west which if it followed the logic you praise, would rightfully exclude you from it.
But your logic in favor of nationalist violence implies far more besides that. Lets just say your general stance is completely incoherent. Is nationalist violence good when the Israelis do it only, or do you secretly find the west stupid for not being more hostile to you? Although the implications of your rhetoric of more violence no problems raises far more negative implications about what global powers should do. Or even specific countries fearing a dismal fate for their people in the future. Or should have done in the past.
I don't actually agree but I do think enough force and hostility is needed against those who deserve it and to promote civilization and justice. But adoring violence as the solution is wrongheaded and leads to a world under fire and predation of inoccents. Which you show no concern to avoiding. Obviously not letting someone with your backstabbing mentality come to the west would be the sane course. And stopping mass migration of foreigners in general. Which is good in general. But say some white nationalist when India had no nukes wanting to nuke India because they sew it as a threat would be an extremely immoral conduct.
I fail to see any sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism here. Rather, you are sucking up to Jewish ultra-nationalism.
I find it ironic that you prefer the Israeli way of doing things that excludes you while you want to migrate to the west which if it followed the logic you praise, would rightfully exclude you from it.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial. My idle musings about my potential path to American citizenship, should it ever materialize, was met with almost unanimous approval from pretty much every side of the political compass, be it here or on Reddit.
Can you say the same for the typical Palestinian? Hardly.
Is nationalist violence good when the Israelis do it only, or do you secretly find the west stupid for not being more hostile to you?
Case by case please. Certainly no to the latter, since they would be turning down a win-win deal.
I fail to see any sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism here. Rather you are sucking up to Jewish nationalism.
Ah yes, you (might) have genuine appreciation for the Palestinian cause, I suck up to the Jews. Well, if Mossad wants to pay me, I'll take it, I'm circumcized for medical reasons, but close enough! I am hardly uncritical of the Jews as a whole, given that they formented much of Western Wokism despite it now biting them in the ass.
I made no claim to show "sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism" at all, so you're forgiven for missing it.
What I am saying is that I prefer the outcome of Israeli dominion and pacification of the contested territories, and I don't particularly care about how they go about it. I do not think violence is anti-sacred and verboten, it's just as fungible as most things are as far as I'm concerned. Tribalism? If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
Please try to look for more subtle arguments than those before you claim that support for a particular nation engaging in violence and "tribalism" extends to universal adulation of such. It all depends on the outcome.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial.
Why should I, as an American, give you the benefit of that doubt? Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village? There are over one billion Indians and I'd bet very few of them are pro-Western doctors. Why are you privileged to paint all Palestinians with a broad brush, but I'm not privileged to paint all Indians with a broad brush?
Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village?
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
By way of explanation, I was trying to highlight the most uncharitable view of his countrymen that I could think of in order to illustrate a point. I tend to be pro-Israel, but the repeated calls on this board for treating every Gazan as a Hamas terrorist up to the point of advocating for summary execution without evidence or even requirement of specific wrongdoing based on the assumption that all of them are predisposed towards violence rubs me the wrong way. While I understand there's a difference between making broad statements about groups on the other side of the world and actually singling out individual posters, one of my problems with the more racist-leaning elements on this board is that advocating for certain policies is easy when you assume that only other people will be affected by them. I don't put @self_made_human into this category, nor do I assume he is of the character I alluded to. The comment certainly wasn't intended to offend, but I believe I have more contact with actual hoi polloi working-class conservatives than the average poster here, and I can assure you that the kind of people who take the position he's advocating for are the same kind of people who refuse to patronize gas stations owned by Indians and Pakistanis and complain about local Nepali refugees meditating on their lawns. Anyway, I apologize.
the repeated calls on this board for treating every Gazan as a Hamas terrorist up to the point of advocating for summary execution without evidence or even requirement of specific wrongdoing
Well, there are, uh, a lot of posts happening on this topic so I apologize if this sort of thing is genuinely slipping through. I don't see every comment that gets reported, and there are other moderators, but I, at least, have yet to see a single comment in the queue that meets this description, even though I've seen several comments in the queue claiming that this sentiment is being expressed here, somewhere.
(I don't doubt that some comments might be reasonably interpreted this way, but presentation matters. So long as no one explicitly says "all Gazans should be assumed terrorists and shot on sight," less direct claims like "I just don't see how Israel has clear options when it comes to clearly distinguishing between guilty Hamas and innocent Gazans, here" should be interpreted more charitably.)
(I also tend to object to people making sweeping characterizations of "this board" while themselves disclaiming such characterizations; you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. The way you've done it here is relatively mild, but still, I don't think it is beneficial for you, or anyone, to approach conversations here as me-against-the-Motte's-hivemind.)
I don't necessarily mind thought experiments that encourage people to put themselves in someone else's shoes, either, but still it would probably be best to not illustrate those thoughts in terms of the direct personal application of an unflattering stereotype of a user's professed identity.
For what it's worth, I think this comment from over the weekend, and its relative lack of pushback, is what may be leading people to believe that people are saying things like this.
You can give me whatever you like, it matters not in the least unless you're my immigration officer.
Besides, while I'm just as fond of rhetoric as the next person, I'm pretty certain you know that's not true.
And if it's not true, then I suggest you wait till evidence arises that I'm street-shitting in California and not Calcutta, though the former is a cherished pan-American tradition practised by junkies and hobos of any ethnicity. Surprising few Indians among them, to be sure, but if that's not additional reason to support Affirmative Action in immigration to mitigate disparities, what is?
You're missing the point. If you're advocating that Palestinians should be painted with a broad brush based on their worst stereotypes, then why shouldn't Indians be given the same treatment? Your argument presupposes I treat you as an individual, while you want to deny such treatment to any individual from Gaza.
Am I? I have very little outright animosity against a Palestinian who doesn't support Hamas, I think it's a shame they're caught up in the conflict. Yet clearly they're not numerous or vocal enough to be in charge, or they'd have chased them out of town after tarring and feathering them.
For what it's worth, I don't think Israeli reprisals are utterly indiscriminate, while innocents will be caught in the crossfire, I expect those who die to be selected from Hamas than their allies far more than a random sampling would expect. The friends and family being blown up with a Hamas terrorist are significantly more likely to be sympathizers. As for hospitals and schools, with a captive population, perhaps Hamas should reconsider stashing their ammunition there, in a calculated move to curry international favor when Israel blows them up.
Evidently that's enough for me to look the other way, or even cheer for the Israelis. I deny that your analogy works at all really.
Dude, you support mass murder and are praising a state that excludes you from it for its nationalism.
You are definitely a hypocrite.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial. My idle musings about my potential path to American citizenship, should it ever materialize, was met with almost unanimous approval from pretty much every side of the political compass, be it here or on Reddit.
You are an antiwestern racist who doesn't respect the native peoples human rights to national self determiantion and sovereignity and have said you would vote for the political party the democrats which is the most unhinged in said direction. Also, you are not part of the Western people you are replacing and making a minority in their own country but part of the colonization and discrimination. When you arrive to the USA you will benefit from discrimination in your favor and join the forces of discrimination against the natives. Which you are screwing by displacing and replacing in their own land.
Your migration is not the same as small migration from and towards a country that respects it self, and is sustainble, but part of colonization.
The Israelis care about numbers and not being overwhelmed by foreign ethnic groups and you praise them for it. Why? Because you are hypocritical.
Ah yes, you (might) have genuine appreciation for the Palestinian cause, I suck up to the Jews.
I show no bias in favor of the Palestinians by opposing mass murder and foreign occupation. I attacked the Palestinians for having a muslim fanatical imperialist mentality, actually. I dislike both Hamas, have a negative view about the fanaticism of Muslims in general, and dislike Israel, have a negative view of Jewish fanaticism in general. I am very much willing to condemn different factions. I complained about historical nazis, I complained about the groups I mentioned, I oppose those with a pushover mentality and I oppose those who are fanatical violent racist supremacists for foreign groups too. Or even for their own.
Its like there is a choice outside of this scumbag behavior that one can choose.
Just cause you support genocide and mass violence in favor of the Jews, don't mistake your own indecency for those of others.
You really are a non Jew who favors Jewish supremacy and mass murder in Israel. Own for it. Now as for why you are sucking up to Jewish extremism, is part of your antiwestern agenda, since the western establishment pushes the same racism against natives and unhinged racism in favor of the Jews as you do. You are willing to support mass murder and Jewish ultranationalism for social status within circles that Jewish supremacy has some valiance like the rationalists.
In any case your racist double standards and hypocricy betrays your lack of philosophical sophistication.
What I am saying is that I prefer the outcome of Israeli dominion and pacification of the contested territories, and I don't particularly care about how they go about it. I do not think violence is anti-sacred and verboten, it's just as fungible as most things are as far as I'm concerned. Tribalism? If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
Is that you being the westernized Indian? Supporting mass murder as something to not care about and push aside? Maybe like the Jewish migrants in Palestine, you will support this logic against the natives of the western country you will live in. Seems you are quite willing to support colonialism, if it serves your interest.
Masss murder and ultranationalists who abuse the human rights of others winning is worth it because reasons, is not a valid argument.
If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
The Germans hold records of patents per capita in europe and the Japanese were also much more succdessful than other Asians. And the British contributed much more to humanity than India in modernity. Is mass murder in favor of ethnic domination of these countries good then? Should the British have pacified India harder? What kind of abuse of logic is this?
Israel will still be standing without committing atrocities against the Palestinians. You have never come close to making the work to justify your claims in favor of mass murder.
I am glad you exposed how you and others here are Jewish supremacists. Oh the crocodile tears spent about certain forms of extremism when a different one is the most common one instead.
And your way of thinking would justify a smarter group going around the globe murdering the natives and replacing them everywhere, while promoting hardcore fertility for themselves.
All the liberal ideology you aligned with is hollow. You know what you support aligns more with, right?
It is insane to support mass murder of Palestinians because you consider Jews superior.
While, I think HBD is true, and the anti HBD ers want to silence it so they can get away with being racists under the "overepresentation is due to oppression" narrative, it does seem that when it comes to the Jews in particular we do have HBD leading to the most vile extremism of you and others supporting mass murder which is a very real danger that has materialized.
Although, I think a narrative with HBD is partly to blame and the general ideology of Jewish superiority and they can do no wrong is also directly related. The narrative that connects human biological difference with the right to destroy other groups because yours is superior does deserve to be a taboo. I still am against antiHBDism ideology and the narrative it connects with, but a certain ideology related with HBD should also be kept down.
Dude, you support mass murder and are praising a state that excludes you from it for its nationalism.
Remind me why should I care? I have no plans on going to Israel, except on vacation. After they've dealt with people bombing the concerts, and not just with poor reviews.
The fact that it nominally discriminates against me, yet I still support it, ought to show that I have principles beyond whether or not one side or another is rooting for me.
Now, do tell me how the Palestinians would react to an atheist Indian from a culturally Hindu background shacking up with them? Assuming I was daft enough to. Let's hope the circumcision pulls its weight again.
You are an antiwestern racist
A pro-western racist, or at least a believer in HBD making most claims of rampant racism obsolete in the West, come on dawg. Don't tell me that that is disqualifying for citizenship, or else a large chunk of the West would have to relocate.
In any case your racist double standards and hypocricy betrays your lack of philosophical sophistication.
What does your inability to see that people can and do care about very different things than you do say about you?
Is that you being the westernized Indian? Supporting mass murder as something to not care about and push aside?
I am large. I contain multitudes.
Masss murder and ultranationalists who abuse the human rights of others winning is worth it because reasons, is not a valid arguement.
Agree to disagree?
The Germans hold records of patents per capita in europe and the Japanese were also much more succdessful than other Asians. And the British contributed much more to humanity than India in modernity. Is mass murder in favor of ethnic domination of these countries good then? Should the British have pacified India harder? What kind of abuse of logic is this?
I suppose it's yet another forgivable sin to not read every single comment posted on the Motte, but rest assured that I am on record stating that I believe that a counterfactual world where the British remained in charge of India for decades longer than 1947 would likely have lead to a better outcome, at least for the Indians.
If the Brits and Germans were fighting somebody as profoundly unsympathetic as I find the Palestinians, then sure? Say what you will about India, but we give back more than we take, especially in the talented diaspora I hope to represent.
Israel will still be standing without commiting attrocities against the Palestinians.
Vice-versa.
And your way of thinking would justify a smarter group going around the globe murdering the natives and replacing them everywhere, while promoting hardcore fertility for themselves.
All the liberal ideology you aligned with is hollow. You know what you support aligns more with, right?
If they're accused of murdering the natives, they're not putting their all into it. Then again, the Jews came first, so they're the oppressed native people fighting for the side of freedom and liberty /s
Once again, I never claimed to be a liberal. At most, I'm a classical liberal, with libertarian sympathies, and I could add a dozen more qualifiers to that list. Your attempt to fit me into a convenient bucket leaves my limbs, my dick, and most of my brains sticking out.
Yes, there is really no war that cannot be won by killing enough of the enemy. Only the number that counts as ‘enough’ and the precise definition of ‘enemy’ vary. Less than 2000 American soldiers died in Afghanistan, it simply wasn’t a serious war. More Israelis have likely died since Saturday.
Part of what I think makes Palestine different is that they have hundreds of millions of other Arabs and other muslims supporting them. Once the Tamils were broken, they were broken- they had no path to recovery. But for Palestine, every single member of Hamas could suffer from heart attacks and die tomorrow, and all the weapons could be confiscated, but I don’t think the conflict would be permanently over. Because other groups who want to see Israel ended and Palestine established would work to recreate Hamas or a similar group, providing funding and weapons.
This feels 10-30 years dated. I don’t get the sense anyone besides a few poors give a shit about Israel in the Middle East now.
Iran and Saudis probably have a few who care but not a majority. Iran cares because a Saudi plus Israel partnership is extremely strong as a regional hegemon. And getting Israel to overreact might cause some issues for the Saudis. Those who care in Saudi society can probably ignored it so long as there are too many dead Palestinians.
I think you underestimate the amount of grass roots support for Palestine. Look at all the protests in Western countries in support of Palestine, before Israel even launched a counter-offensive. A lot of Muslims want to see a free Palestine and want to effectively remove Israel.
Part of what I think makes Palestine different is that they have hundreds of millions of other Arabs and other muslims supporting them. Once the Tamils were broken, they were broken- they had no path to recovery.
What about 70 million Indian Tamils, why didn't they support the LTTE?
Local Indian Tamil politicians occasionally campaigned on their behalf, and India even armed them in the 80s. It was India intervening as a peacekeeping force later that made the LTTE turn against them, culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, at which point the LTTE found itself pretty much friendless, with even their coethnics largely unwilling to touch them with a ten foot pole.
I'm not pro-Russia (who here is?) but yes Ukraine should seek peace and concede territory if necessary. I have little doubt that this would minimize human suffering.
The counterargument seems to be something along the lines of "We need teach Russia a lesson so they won't do it again. Remember Munich!"
Which is silly. Russia lacks the capacity to do it again.
I find the arguments of the warmongers very unconvincing. The use of the pejorative "pro-Russia" to describe those who would have peace feels like manufacturing consensus.
There are atleastafewaround. More if you count the ones who gesture at how terrible Russia’s actions are only as a justification for telling Ukraine to surrender.
I don’t think “pro-Russia” is a pejorative any more than “pro-Ukraine.”
Which is silly. Russia lacks the capacity to do it again.
Even in my wildest anti-Russian fantasies do I not believe that Russia, if given a peace and concessions instead of some kind of "a lesson", would lack the capacity to do it again.
Exactly, if the war ceases right now at the current lines, Russia's ability to rearm stays constant or improves (as sanctions loosen or their enforcement becomes more lax). Ukraine's drops precipitously off a cliff as Western support evaporates. Ukraine needs Russia to see the invasion as being routed and done, not merely paused, because Russia will find itself in a more advantageous position in the future, and Ukraine needs the mental barrier of "starting a war of aggression on a neighbor" to be back in place, preferably with a little extra bracing from that neighbor having kicked their asses, to hope it doesn't get restarted again.
Ukraine anshlussed on generous terms is better for Ukrainians than battered and destroyed Ukraine folded into the Russian state that has lost couple of million of their best people due to emigration or war casualties.
I have not seen shred of evidence that Russia entered the war with genocidal ambitions which doesn't make it that existential for the populace, unlike the state.
If you make the assumption that Russian victory in the meatgrinder is inevitable (big if, but Zelensky is doing his best to make it smaller lately) it is not unreasonable.
Even Ukrainian victory may not be worth it if it is pyrrhic enough.
"Ukraine anshlussed" is going to lead to millions of Ukrainians emigrating in any case, and would be a bleeding wound with continuous partisan activity that would require Russia continous brutality to quell.
Would you apply the same logic to Palestine? I don’t mean this as a gotcha; I was observing above that “one side’s unilateral surrender” is something that gets floated in every conflict. At least every one where the people dying are at a safe distance.
And what of all the similar conflicts which were resolved without engaging in full-throated war? Northern Ireland is an obvious example. More importantly, this claim:
you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long
an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future.
That is a great argument for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, but not so great for killing all 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip, "everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers," in order to avoid 600 deaths of Israelis, or even 60,000. Because the latter is not a "greater atrocity" than the former.
A false dichotomy, because I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza, but only the option of killing Hamas, politically involved activists, and optionally, some of their families. I'd be immensely surprised if even that latter broader case encompassed anywhere near a million, maybe twenty or thirty thousand at most before people learned they needed to shut up.
The relevant calculus of death is (Israeli and Palestinian military and civilians who would die if the conflict was allowed to keep boiling) versus (The same class if a brutal campaign ended all appetite for further organized activity).
It seems eminently obvious to me that the former is comparable to the latter, if only because a ton of Palestinians already die because of Hamas provoking Israel.
Then, of course, a more rigorous approach considers second order effects. Of which there are multitudes.
I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza,
I'm pretty sure OP is proposing precisely that, since OP said, "But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem."
the Sri Lankan government essentially said "fuck this", and decided to wage concentrated, merciless, full-throated war against the Tamils. They brought out the kinds of heavy weapons that you usually reserve for wars against foreign states, and they used them without hesitation, and with very little regard for civilian-combatant distinctions. They killed and killed and killed until the LTTE was begging for a ceasefire, which they ignored,
That is on top of the quote I already cited, re "killing everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers,"
And they also say this: "I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer."
The bottom line is that if there is evidence that OP in fact would not have endorsed the killing of every Sri Lankan Tamil, had that been necessary, I would like to see it. OP is clearly endorsing that very idea.
I took it to mean that it would be a sufficient solution, at the time, but without any implication that it was necessary today, where far less than the utter annihilation of the Palestinian people will more than suffice.
I'll let him clarify his stance, if he wishes, but just because someone said Genocide X years ago would solve Y problem today, that doesn't mean they're suggesting the very same for Y today.
I don't mind it, honestly. But if some level of ethnic cleansing that falls short of total genocide would be an effective solution, then sure, go for that instead. It's worked out plenty of times in the past. What I object to is this idea that everything on that spectrum of atrocities, from population transfers to mass graves, should be declared off-limits.
Another example would be the Dayton Agreement in the Bosnian War, which specifically established a (creaky, unwieldy) state combining the two recently-slaughtering-each-other national units under one state. Sure, people have predict almost annually that this is the year when it comes to an end and B-H cracks, but it's still standing, remarkably.
Just last week there was the police killing/monastery shootout. And the completely unrelated armor, artillery and mechanized border deployment that undeployed for reasons unrelated to international condemnation. Last year was the fight over license plates. Still standing though.
To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA. Ireland had a fully-developed spectrum of normal political parties and civil organizations, and they signed the Good Friday Agreement as a reflection of the overwhelming popular desire for peace. After that, any Irish group that wanted further conflict would lack a credible basis to do so. Who are you supposed to talk to in Gaza? Hamas is the only authority there, and the population's views are more aligned with Hamas than peace advocates would care to admit. Peace is nice if you can get it, but when the other side doesn't want it (and probably couldn't agree to it even if they wanted to, being an Iranian proxy), there's not really any solution besides a total purge.
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
Heck, even the end of WWII didn't necessitate the Carthage-like destruction of Germany or Japan. The Allies stated their terms seeking (with very limited exceptions) unconditional surrender, and kept fighting until they got it. The Battle of Berlin was tremendously bloody and maybe even cruel, but seems to have marked a decided tipping point in how the German government (both, for several generations) would act toward Jews, Poles, and Russians. Post-war Japan looks very different from it's Imperial days. Neither people was totally wiped from the face of the Earth.
Of course, if Total Military Defeat were to consistently cause such actions, more recent attempts at such "nation building" would have been more successful. I wish I could say that OPs view is completely wrong, but I can't. It's morally reprehensible, and I really don't like it, but does seem to work sometimes.
I think you might want to review what actually happened in Carthage. Though I suspect that if you consider denazification to be akin to mass slaughter, you are likely pushing an agenda rather than engaging seriously with the issue at hand.
W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
While I think you have a point about the forgotten utility of full scale war, I wouldn't characterize the suppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka as a genocide. Nor does the Israeli's potential suppression of the Palestinians require the moniker. That's simply edginess on your part.
I won't split hairs over terminology. Regardless of the moniker, we live in an age where any useful action has been deemed verboten by our modern understanding of martial morality. This grants an advantage to any group that lacks similar moral compunctions.
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Notes -
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
One of the most edifying experiences of my youth was an academic assignment in the GWOT era, when we were instructed to pick a terrorist group and study its formation and evolution. I knew everyone else would pick something Islamic, so I decided to pick something else to stand out, and I settled on Sri Lanka. For about 33 years (1976 to 2009), Sri Lanka saw a brutal civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, where the two sides could be neatly demarcated into separate ethnicities, separate religions, and separate languages - not dissimilar to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Tamils were represented by the LTTE, which was a terrorist organization and a separatist group seeking to carve out an ethnostate from Tamil-dominated regions of the country. But the LTTE was also a remarkably sophisticated pseudo-state; most terrorist organizations don't have their own navy, air force, or intelligence apparatus, which are all things that the LTTE put together during their war against the Sri Lankan state.
I won't rehash the disputes and grievances of the war, since they are predictable and your imagination can reliably fill in the details from what you know of other ethnic conflicts, including the one in Israel. All race wars are eventually the same. Long story short is that tens of thousands of people died on both sides, and numerous foreign actors including the US, Norway, India, the EU, and the UN tried to intervene and broker a peace, and the conflict settled into a cycle of atrocities->diplomacy->ceasefires->new atrocities->new diplomacy->new ceasefires, on and on. And then in late 2006, the Sri Lankan government essentially said "fuck this", and decided to wage concentrated, merciless, full-throated war against the Tamils. They brought out the kinds of heavy weapons that you usually reserve for wars against foreign states, and they used them without hesitation, and with very little regard for civilian-combatant distinctions. They killed and killed and killed until the LTTE was begging for a ceasefire, which they ignored, and then kept killing until the LTTE was ground into the dirt, their leadership massacred, their leaderships' families massacred, everything destroyed - until the LTTE had no capacity to fight or do anything anymore, at which point the Sri Lankans declared victory, and the war was over.
None of this was "legal" or "ethical" or "moral". Countless crimes against humanity were committed. But the war was over, and has shown no signs of returning in the almost 15 years since its conclusion. No more bombs in public places, no more midnight massacres on farms and villages, no more burning streets. What does it say of our enlightened modern era that two and a half years of bloodthirsty war did more to bring about peace than the preceding 30-something years of talking and diplomacy and give-peace-a-chance rigmarole?
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem. We used to know these things - all the population transfers and ethnic cleaning that took place after World War I and World War II were done with the understanding that you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long, and that an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future. We pretend to know better now, and to what end? To keep money flowing to NGOs, and hand out peace prizes to each other?
Ethnic cleansing was done before, even with tacit agreement of USA. One such example is Operation Storm that took place on the tail end of Balkan Wars, where Croats basically ethnically cleansed the area that was the stronghold of autonomous republic of Serbs. Croats killed several hundreds of Serbs and basically evicted hundreds of thousands from their land.
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What seems to be needed is some kind of uh, ultimate, uh, resolution, of the uh, Jewish problem[ of non-Jews existing in their vicinity]. Perhaps one of the greatest question that has ever posed itself to uh, Jews. So to speak. Some form of uh, physical removal?
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I don't think Israel needs to literally kill everyone, but they do need to institute some sort of radical de-Palestinization. Go in, establish total martial law, destroy all mosques, convert the entire population to Bnei Noach, ban the Arabic language. These people got self-government and immediately voted a literal terrorist cell into power. Israel has no reason to treat Gaza any more leniently that the Allies treated Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
I wonder if modern communication and widespread prevalence of Islam will lead this to be less effective than your examples.
Like with Nazi Germany, the main source of Nazi ideology was Germany itself: if you wanted to learn about Naziism you had to go up against the occupation authorities that were against that. And even if there were Nazi groups that weren't repressed in Italy or something, you'd have a hard time finding and learning from them.
But that's clearly not going to happen here: Islam exists in many countries across the world and will explicitly talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict, so there's always going to be a supply of Islam for anyone in Palestine who wants to learn it.
Keeping it repressed doesn't just mean tearing down the mosques, it means keeping Palestinians from accessing the mosques in other countries, which would mean an unrealistic crackdown on all communication technology in the country, and probably needing to maintain that crackdown perfectly for decades against people from other countries actively seeking to break it.
There are further differences that seem to support your theory.
Nazism was also denounced by practically the entire world, or at least by those parts of it that had much influence. Since Islam counts as a religion and all parts of the world that have much influence have agreed that religions require protection, Islam receives protection in most of the world whereas Nazism did not.
The other very obvious difference is that Nazism had maybe a decade to take root, whereas Islam has had a good 1300 years. Nobody but a handful of German children, and those only briefly, experienced Nazism as a natural fact of life, whereas Islam is in the soil and water of much of the world.
The two don't really compare at all. So I'd agree with you.
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If they managed to find some countries that were willing to take in millions of Palestinians, the Israelis maybe would be able to pull off a soft ethnic cleansing. But they could not pull off a murderous, "kill everybody" genocide without alienating a very large fraction of their current supporters, including Jewish ones. Israel would become similar to what North Korea is today. It would probably not collapse, but it would have big difficulties in retaining nearly as many high-skilled, intelligent people as it has now unless it made it illegal for them to leave the country, and it would have bigger difficulties in convincing Jews from elsewhere to move there than it does now. Only the most hardcore patriots would want to live in an armed camp that is known for having recently committed one of modern history's biggest genocides, and I doubt that the overlap between such hardcore patriots and the kind of high-skilled, intelligent people who are the bedrock of any sophisticated modern economy is very large. Which is not to say that there are no intelligent pro-genocide people, of course. There are plenty. But they are an exception. In the heat of the moment after having had your nation attacked, almost anyone could feel genocidal desire. I think it's likely that a huge number of otherwise compassionate Israelis feel that way right now, for example. But there's a difference between feeling it every now and then and actually being ok with your military doing it and seeing the videos of what it looks like. Even the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust a secret from both Germans and people in other countries, but in today's world there would be no way to keep a violent genocide of Palestinians a secret.
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On the other hand... Japan surrendered to the US! How were the Japanese able to swallow their pride in the face of total nuclear annihilation and decide that bending their knee to the West and adopting all of their customs was better than going down in a blaze of glory? But yet the Palestinians find this utterly unthinkable?
The Japanese weren't all initially able to do so. Tens of thousands of soldiers tried to kidnap their Emperor and assassinate their Prime Minister to stop the surrender, and that was after two nukes (plus a few tens of millions of incendiary bomblets) had already been dropped.
After that, though ... was the institution of the Japanese Emperor a blessing in disguise? Anti-terrorist tactics consider "decapitation strikes" killing enemy leaders to be high-value goals, but if there's nobody left at the top who's respected enough to order the foot soldiers to stand down then ipso facto the foot soldiers never stand down. From a moral standpoint it feels like assassinating a "mastermind" is greater justice than killing tons of poor grunts who merely got persuaded or coerced onto the front lines, but maybe the rules of war are more useful in the long run than the rules of anti-terrorism, if wars can come to an end but terrorism just goes on and on?
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Two reasons:
The Japanese were not displaced from their homeland and only temporarily lost control of Japan after their defeat. The Palestinians lost both their homes and control of Palestine permanently.
The emperor surrendered unilaterally against the wishes of his advisors. There is no god emperor in Gaza to make the Palestinians surrender against popular sentiment.
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I’d guess it’s because Japan’s entire people were on the line, whereas Hamas identifies with other Arabs/Muslims such that the loss of Palestine doesn’t mean total defeat.
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Because Hirohito was more sensible than any member of Hamas (and perhaps any Palestinian).
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Israel would not have this specific problem of Hamas launching attacks from Gaza (that up until now, had been quite comfortably handled). But they might have other problems: a revival of pan-Arabism, a withdrawal of US and western support, the fervent determination of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Egypt to pursue development of nuclear weapons, etc.
Brutal, overwhelming force might solve one problem, but if in the process that creates three more, you are no farther ahead than when you started.
Israel has long-term plans. God, after all, has promised them the Holy Land, and they see a long-term way to achieve it. Incrementally expanding settlements in the West Bank every year and fighting off a spirited attempt from Hezbollah/Hamas once a decade might be a slow way, but so far it looks like a sure way. They no longer face an existential threat. They've mollified and bought off their formal rivals, and in the process surpassed them. They have ironclad security guarantees and economic support from the world's most powerful countries. Why risk all of that?
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You would have many other exciting problems. I doubt that mass murder of X million people is actually effective.
Hitler tried, and as far as curbing Jewish political power and influence, or as increasing power of Germany, or as taking Lebensraum, or as promoting eugenics and purity of german race - all that goals failed miserably. Despite actually murdering millions of people.
(and for ethics: I reject genocide as a solution)
Germans were thrown out of lots of territories post-WWII where they had historically lived.
This worked.
Mostly as a revenge for Germans themselves attempting to conquer and settle into their neighbors' territories. Am I the only one who sees Germans as more analogous to the other side in this conflict?
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Yes, exiling people tends to work better and successes are more common there.
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The Jews are one of the groups closest to your mentality actually based on both rhetoric and action. There is a constrain related to muslim world having its own similar solidarity and fanaticism. And where do you expect Palestinians to go as they are further ethnically cleansed and mass murdered as per your final solution? How is this better for the people involved who are mass murdered? And how would after the crimes you advocate be done, avoid things like what happened in Lebanon after mass migration of Palestinians there?
Genocide as the end of ethnic conflict is myopic way of seeing it. In actuality, genocidal empires are prone to find another group and do to them likewise. Moreover, historically one group out to genocide X leads to Z acting similiarly and you get mass murder. Such escalatory spilar reached that point to begin with because that was the favorable course. That is, if groups follow a greedy path to the extreme, you are going to get ethnic conflict. Although yeah ethnic conflict is rather plausible in non homogeneous societies with human tribalism being what it is. That is why progressive supremacists support diversity because they want to create a coalition to lord over and oppress the native people.
Of course, I would not suggest that people should be pushovers. But the Jews are not the group that are pushovers, to the contrary they benefit from others being pushovers towards their own aggression. And of course from unhinged rhetoric of non Jews in favor of Jewish extremism. Tolerance of Jewish fanaticism is the reason that Israel has escalated the situation already this far. As for the Palestinians, the Islamic fanatics of Hamas also provide no happy solutions.
The best historical solution to the conflict was to keep these two people separate in two seperate states controlled by more moderate nationalists over the current leadership.
In the current case, Israel avoiding massive warcrimes like people here advocate is the sane immediate next step. Already their rhetoric about animals, destroying gaza strip, removing water. Rather than seeking reprisals towards military targets, there is the logic of racist annihilation of the ethnic enemy.
It does show that all the rhetoric of so, so, so many here about bad nationalism, tolerance, human rights, genocide denial of 80 year old genocides being of such a moral afront, being nice, whines about racism etc, etc are just the hollow words of hypocrites who align with the most unhinged nationalism and racism of a Jewish hue and even from a political coalition of the far right that is particularly and genuine extreme in said direction.
And of course that you can get away with this rhetoric in favor of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinians without a ban is precisely because of what group you have chosen to target. It's why it would be a good thing if the kind of people who run institutions, including internet forums started to get punished for the kind of unhinged bipartisan (i.e. progressive supremacist or Israeli jewish supremacist) extremism they have been tolerating and encouraging.
People here unironically care and are more passionate in arguing about people denying past genocide involving the jews, than people promoting current genocides in favor of the Jews.
I don't know about others, but I argue against Holocaust deniers not because I have any sort of pro-Jewish agenda but simply because I think that Holocaust denial theories are very implausible and most people who adhere to them do so for emotional reasons rather than intellectual ones. So when I see them, I have the same kind of mental reaction that I would if someone came here and started arguing that the Apollo moon landing never happened, or if someone started arguing that Christianity is literally true.
You can probably get away with arguing for mass murder and genocide of pretty much any group here as long as you write it in a sufficiently dispassionate-sounding, academic style.
I do find unhinged pro-genocide rants distasteful, but so far at least, somewhat to my surprise, I haven't actually seen anything too barbaric here. Maybe I just need to keep reading this thread further, lol. It would not surprise me to see some.
Or maybe spending a lot of time on 4chan has made Motteizens' occasional murderous rants seem relatively tame to me in comparison.
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I’m not convinced that it’s the genocide part that’s important. The solution is to break the will of people to continue to resist. It can be done without killing everyone, but it has to be done with exactly that goal in mind — by the time the smoke clears the very idea of attempting to start a battle with the other side should be unthinkable.
This is exactly correct, and I think it is the true aim of some of the Israeli leadership at this point. That breaking point may be very far along the line however, given the experiences of the 20th century, and I'm not convinced the Israelis have the will to go as far as they will need to.
The analogy above someone used of the war with Japan is a good one: in that case the US acted continually as if their goal was the complete subjugation of the Japanese people at any cost, if not through unconditional surrender then by annihilation. That approach works, but you have to follow it - you can't bluff at it.
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So you are interested in enough mass murder so Palestinians will accept anything Jews do and will never even think of attempting to start a battle with the other side.
I am pretty sure you are pointing trivialities and it is the genocide you support as a solution that is important and not the fact that it leads to the defeat of your enemy like you pretend.
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I've long felt that people who talk this way of such things have never engaged with war closer than playing a Paradox game.
Very true, which is why I support the genocide of all landlords and capitalists because they stand in the way of the socialist utopia and would just keep trying to destroy it if we left them alive. In fact, I might even extend this to genociding all humans because they can't stop polluting the earth.
No one is denying that if you kill anyone who opposes you, you can stop fighting instead of continuing a protracted engagement that drains resources and willpower. What is denied is that this is a moral thing to do. Ending war is not inherently a moral good. To have it as a terminal value is the same mistake the pacifists make when they insist the West should voluntarily disarm or leave the Soviets/Russians alone.
In fact, if I was going to be more cynical, I would guess that for some people, any solution to a problem is better than having to keep hearing about it, as if the real sin is that they were asked to pay attention to something other than their own lives. Funny how this forum would reject that idea if it were leftists calling for a ban on anything that cast black people in a negative light because that is a way of fighting racism.
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There's good reason that Britain pacified Afghanistan in the 19th century with far weaker supply chains and less glaring technological disparities, while it and the rest of NATO left in the 21st with their tail tucked between their legs.
Violence is the voice of the unheard, but it's also a universal language. If you can't solve most problems with violence, you're not using enough, and quite often, or at least here, a more dispassionate analysis will show that a quick burst of brutal violence obviates the need for more down the line.
At any rate, I think Western countries are cowardly in large part because most of the wars they've fought of late don't matter, lacking the stakes of their populations being genocided or living conditions cratering.
I find it ironic that you prefer the Israeli way of doing things that excludes you while you want to migrate to the west which if it followed the logic you praise, would rightfully exclude you from it.
But your logic in favor of nationalist violence implies far more besides that. Lets just say your general stance is completely incoherent. Is nationalist violence good when the Israelis do it only, or do you secretly find the west stupid for not being more hostile to you? Although the implications of your rhetoric of more violence no problems raises far more negative implications about what global powers should do. Or even specific countries fearing a dismal fate for their people in the future. Or should have done in the past.
I don't actually agree but I do think enough force and hostility is needed against those who deserve it and to promote civilization and justice. But adoring violence as the solution is wrongheaded and leads to a world under fire and predation of inoccents. Which you show no concern to avoiding. Obviously not letting someone with your backstabbing mentality come to the west would be the sane course. And stopping mass migration of foreigners in general. Which is good in general. But say some white nationalist when India had no nukes wanting to nuke India because they sew it as a threat would be an extremely immoral conduct.
I fail to see any sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism here. Rather, you are sucking up to Jewish ultra-nationalism.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial. My idle musings about my potential path to American citizenship, should it ever materialize, was met with almost unanimous approval from pretty much every side of the political compass, be it here or on Reddit.
Can you say the same for the typical Palestinian? Hardly.
Case by case please. Certainly no to the latter, since they would be turning down a win-win deal.
Ah yes, you (might) have genuine appreciation for the Palestinian cause, I suck up to the Jews. Well, if Mossad wants to pay me, I'll take it, I'm circumcized for medical reasons, but close enough! I am hardly uncritical of the Jews as a whole, given that they formented much of Western Wokism despite it now biting them in the ass.
I made no claim to show "sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism" at all, so you're forgiven for missing it.
What I am saying is that I prefer the outcome of Israeli dominion and pacification of the contested territories, and I don't particularly care about how they go about it. I do not think violence is anti-sacred and verboten, it's just as fungible as most things are as far as I'm concerned. Tribalism? If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
Please try to look for more subtle arguments than those before you claim that support for a particular nation engaging in violence and "tribalism" extends to universal adulation of such. It all depends on the outcome.
Why should I, as an American, give you the benefit of that doubt? Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village? There are over one billion Indians and I'd bet very few of them are pro-Western doctors. Why are you privileged to paint all Palestinians with a broad brush, but I'm not privileged to paint all Indians with a broad brush?
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
By way of explanation, I was trying to highlight the most uncharitable view of his countrymen that I could think of in order to illustrate a point. I tend to be pro-Israel, but the repeated calls on this board for treating every Gazan as a Hamas terrorist up to the point of advocating for summary execution without evidence or even requirement of specific wrongdoing based on the assumption that all of them are predisposed towards violence rubs me the wrong way. While I understand there's a difference between making broad statements about groups on the other side of the world and actually singling out individual posters, one of my problems with the more racist-leaning elements on this board is that advocating for certain policies is easy when you assume that only other people will be affected by them. I don't put @self_made_human into this category, nor do I assume he is of the character I alluded to. The comment certainly wasn't intended to offend, but I believe I have more contact with actual hoi polloi working-class conservatives than the average poster here, and I can assure you that the kind of people who take the position he's advocating for are the same kind of people who refuse to patronize gas stations owned by Indians and Pakistanis and complain about local Nepali refugees meditating on their lawns. Anyway, I apologize.
Well, there are, uh, a lot of posts happening on this topic so I apologize if this sort of thing is genuinely slipping through. I don't see every comment that gets reported, and there are other moderators, but I, at least, have yet to see a single comment in the queue that meets this description, even though I've seen several comments in the queue claiming that this sentiment is being expressed here, somewhere.
(I don't doubt that some comments might be reasonably interpreted this way, but presentation matters. So long as no one explicitly says "all Gazans should be assumed terrorists and shot on sight," less direct claims like "I just don't see how Israel has clear options when it comes to clearly distinguishing between guilty Hamas and innocent Gazans, here" should be interpreted more charitably.)
(I also tend to object to people making sweeping characterizations of "this board" while themselves disclaiming such characterizations; you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. The way you've done it here is relatively mild, but still, I don't think it is beneficial for you, or anyone, to approach conversations here as me-against-the-Motte's-hivemind.)
I don't necessarily mind thought experiments that encourage people to put themselves in someone else's shoes, either, but still it would probably be best to not illustrate those thoughts in terms of the direct personal application of an unflattering stereotype of a user's professed identity.
For what it's worth, I think this comment from over the weekend, and its relative lack of pushback, is what may be leading people to believe that people are saying things like this.
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You can give me whatever you like, it matters not in the least unless you're my immigration officer.
Besides, while I'm just as fond of rhetoric as the next person, I'm pretty certain you know that's not true.
And if it's not true, then I suggest you wait till evidence arises that I'm street-shitting in California and not Calcutta, though the former is a cherished pan-American tradition practised by junkies and hobos of any ethnicity. Surprising few Indians among them, to be sure, but if that's not additional reason to support Affirmative Action in immigration to mitigate disparities, what is?
You're missing the point. If you're advocating that Palestinians should be painted with a broad brush based on their worst stereotypes, then why shouldn't Indians be given the same treatment? Your argument presupposes I treat you as an individual, while you want to deny such treatment to any individual from Gaza.
Am I? I have very little outright animosity against a Palestinian who doesn't support Hamas, I think it's a shame they're caught up in the conflict. Yet clearly they're not numerous or vocal enough to be in charge, or they'd have chased them out of town after tarring and feathering them.
For what it's worth, I don't think Israeli reprisals are utterly indiscriminate, while innocents will be caught in the crossfire, I expect those who die to be selected from Hamas than their allies far more than a random sampling would expect. The friends and family being blown up with a Hamas terrorist are significantly more likely to be sympathizers. As for hospitals and schools, with a captive population, perhaps Hamas should reconsider stashing their ammunition there, in a calculated move to curry international favor when Israel blows them up.
Evidently that's enough for me to look the other way, or even cheer for the Israelis. I deny that your analogy works at all really.
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Dude, you support mass murder and are praising a state that excludes you from it for its nationalism.
You are definitely a hypocrite.
You are an antiwestern racist who doesn't respect the native peoples human rights to national self determiantion and sovereignity and have said you would vote for the political party the democrats which is the most unhinged in said direction. Also, you are not part of the Western people you are replacing and making a minority in their own country but part of the colonization and discrimination. When you arrive to the USA you will benefit from discrimination in your favor and join the forces of discrimination against the natives. Which you are screwing by displacing and replacing in their own land.
Your migration is not the same as small migration from and towards a country that respects it self, and is sustainble, but part of colonization.
The Israelis care about numbers and not being overwhelmed by foreign ethnic groups and you praise them for it. Why? Because you are hypocritical.
I show no bias in favor of the Palestinians by opposing mass murder and foreign occupation. I attacked the Palestinians for having a muslim fanatical imperialist mentality, actually. I dislike both Hamas, have a negative view about the fanaticism of Muslims in general, and dislike Israel, have a negative view of Jewish fanaticism in general. I am very much willing to condemn different factions. I complained about historical nazis, I complained about the groups I mentioned, I oppose those with a pushover mentality and I oppose those who are fanatical violent racist supremacists for foreign groups too. Or even for their own.
Its like there is a choice outside of this scumbag behavior that one can choose.
Just cause you support genocide and mass violence in favor of the Jews, don't mistake your own indecency for those of others.
You really are a non Jew who favors Jewish supremacy and mass murder in Israel. Own for it. Now as for why you are sucking up to Jewish extremism, is part of your antiwestern agenda, since the western establishment pushes the same racism against natives and unhinged racism in favor of the Jews as you do. You are willing to support mass murder and Jewish ultranationalism for social status within circles that Jewish supremacy has some valiance like the rationalists.
In any case your racist double standards and hypocricy betrays your lack of philosophical sophistication.
Is that you being the westernized Indian? Supporting mass murder as something to not care about and push aside? Maybe like the Jewish migrants in Palestine, you will support this logic against the natives of the western country you will live in. Seems you are quite willing to support colonialism, if it serves your interest.
Masss murder and ultranationalists who abuse the human rights of others winning is worth it because reasons, is not a valid argument.
The Germans hold records of patents per capita in europe and the Japanese were also much more succdessful than other Asians. And the British contributed much more to humanity than India in modernity. Is mass murder in favor of ethnic domination of these countries good then? Should the British have pacified India harder? What kind of abuse of logic is this?
Israel will still be standing without committing atrocities against the Palestinians. You have never come close to making the work to justify your claims in favor of mass murder.
I am glad you exposed how you and others here are Jewish supremacists. Oh the crocodile tears spent about certain forms of extremism when a different one is the most common one instead.
And your way of thinking would justify a smarter group going around the globe murdering the natives and replacing them everywhere, while promoting hardcore fertility for themselves.
All the liberal ideology you aligned with is hollow. You know what you support aligns more with, right?
It is insane to support mass murder of Palestinians because you consider Jews superior.
While, I think HBD is true, and the anti HBD ers want to silence it so they can get away with being racists under the "overepresentation is due to oppression" narrative, it does seem that when it comes to the Jews in particular we do have HBD leading to the most vile extremism of you and others supporting mass murder which is a very real danger that has materialized.
Although, I think a narrative with HBD is partly to blame and the general ideology of Jewish superiority and they can do no wrong is also directly related. The narrative that connects human biological difference with the right to destroy other groups because yours is superior does deserve to be a taboo. I still am against antiHBDism ideology and the narrative it connects with, but a certain ideology related with HBD should also be kept down.
Remind me why should I care? I have no plans on going to Israel, except on vacation. After they've dealt with people bombing the concerts, and not just with poor reviews.
The fact that it nominally discriminates against me, yet I still support it, ought to show that I have principles beyond whether or not one side or another is rooting for me.
Now, do tell me how the Palestinians would react to an atheist Indian from a culturally Hindu background shacking up with them? Assuming I was daft enough to. Let's hope the circumcision pulls its weight again.
A pro-western racist, or at least a believer in HBD making most claims of rampant racism obsolete in the West, come on dawg. Don't tell me that that is disqualifying for citizenship, or else a large chunk of the West would have to relocate.
What does your inability to see that people can and do care about very different things than you do say about you?
I am large. I contain multitudes.
Agree to disagree?
I suppose it's yet another forgivable sin to not read every single comment posted on the Motte, but rest assured that I am on record stating that I believe that a counterfactual world where the British remained in charge of India for decades longer than 1947 would likely have lead to a better outcome, at least for the Indians.
If the Brits and Germans were fighting somebody as profoundly unsympathetic as I find the Palestinians, then sure? Say what you will about India, but we give back more than we take, especially in the talented diaspora I hope to represent.
Vice-versa.
If they're accused of murdering the natives, they're not putting their all into it. Then again, the Jews came first, so they're the oppressed native people fighting for the side of freedom and liberty /s
Once again, I never claimed to be a liberal. At most, I'm a classical liberal, with libertarian sympathies, and I could add a dozen more qualifiers to that list. Your attempt to fit me into a convenient bucket leaves my limbs, my dick, and most of my brains sticking out.
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Yes, there is really no war that cannot be won by killing enough of the enemy. Only the number that counts as ‘enough’ and the precise definition of ‘enemy’ vary. Less than 2000 American soldiers died in Afghanistan, it simply wasn’t a serious war. More Israelis have likely died since Saturday.
Citation needed.
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Part of what I think makes Palestine different is that they have hundreds of millions of other Arabs and other muslims supporting them. Once the Tamils were broken, they were broken- they had no path to recovery. But for Palestine, every single member of Hamas could suffer from heart attacks and die tomorrow, and all the weapons could be confiscated, but I don’t think the conflict would be permanently over. Because other groups who want to see Israel ended and Palestine established would work to recreate Hamas or a similar group, providing funding and weapons.
This feels 10-30 years dated. I don’t get the sense anyone besides a few poors give a shit about Israel in the Middle East now.
Iran and Saudis probably have a few who care but not a majority. Iran cares because a Saudi plus Israel partnership is extremely strong as a regional hegemon. And getting Israel to overreact might cause some issues for the Saudis. Those who care in Saudi society can probably ignored it so long as there are too many dead Palestinians.
I think you underestimate the amount of grass roots support for Palestine. Look at all the protests in Western countries in support of Palestine, before Israel even launched a counter-offensive. A lot of Muslims want to see a free Palestine and want to effectively remove Israel.
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What about 70 million Indian Tamils, why didn't they support the LTTE?
Some support was certainly present.
Local Indian Tamil politicians occasionally campaigned on their behalf, and India even armed them in the 80s. It was India intervening as a peacekeeping force later that made the LTTE turn against them, culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, at which point the LTTE found itself pretty much friendless, with even their coethnics largely unwilling to touch them with a ten foot pole.
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The Arab League needs to follow Sri Lanka's example for the sake of peace. 🕊️
They tried. Of course, an essential component of the strategy is that you are able to win in a straight up war.
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Presumably the end of the war would have likewise been achieved by the establishment of independent Tamil Eelam.
Yes, any war could be resolved by one side's unilateral surrender. Ukraine could end the war tomorrow too.
As unreasonable as I think it is, I’ve seen pro-Russia posters make that exact argument.
I'm not pro-Russia (who here is?) but yes Ukraine should seek peace and concede territory if necessary. I have little doubt that this would minimize human suffering.
The counterargument seems to be something along the lines of "We need teach Russia a lesson so they won't do it again. Remember Munich!"
Which is silly. Russia lacks the capacity to do it again.
I find the arguments of the warmongers very unconvincing. The use of the pejorative "pro-Russia" to describe those who would have peace feels like manufacturing consensus.
Minimizing the present value of human suffering is not, and never has been, the primary aim of a nation at war.
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There are at least a few around. More if you count the ones who gesture at how terrible Russia’s actions are only as a justification for telling Ukraine to surrender.
I don’t think “pro-Russia” is a pejorative any more than “pro-Ukraine.”
none of those are examples of being "pro Russian" and I doubt any of them would self-identify as pro-Russian
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Even in my wildest anti-Russian fantasies do I not believe that Russia, if given a peace and concessions instead of some kind of "a lesson", would lack the capacity to do it again.
Exactly, if the war ceases right now at the current lines, Russia's ability to rearm stays constant or improves (as sanctions loosen or their enforcement becomes more lax). Ukraine's drops precipitously off a cliff as Western support evaporates. Ukraine needs Russia to see the invasion as being routed and done, not merely paused, because Russia will find itself in a more advantageous position in the future, and Ukraine needs the mental barrier of "starting a war of aggression on a neighbor" to be back in place, preferably with a little extra bracing from that neighbor having kicked their asses, to hope it doesn't get restarted again.
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Ukraine anshlussed on generous terms is better for Ukrainians than battered and destroyed Ukraine folded into the Russian state that has lost couple of million of their best people due to emigration or war casualties.
I have not seen shred of evidence that Russia entered the war with genocidal ambitions which doesn't make it that existential for the populace, unlike the state.
If you make the assumption that Russian victory in the meatgrinder is inevitable (big if, but Zelensky is doing his best to make it smaller lately) it is not unreasonable. Even Ukrainian victory may not be worth it if it is pyrrhic enough.
well, generous terms that would be actually kept are not viable with Russia
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"Ukraine anshlussed" is going to lead to millions of Ukrainians emigrating in any case, and would be a bleeding wound with continuous partisan activity that would require Russia continous brutality to quell.
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It is possible.
Would you apply the same logic to Palestine? I don’t mean this as a gotcha; I was observing above that “one side’s unilateral surrender” is something that gets floated in every conflict. At least every one where the people dying are at a safe distance.
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And what of all the similar conflicts which were resolved without engaging in full-throated war? Northern Ireland is an obvious example. More importantly, this claim:
Is empirically false, because violence between such groups is the exception, not the rule
That is a great argument for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, but not so great for killing all 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip, "everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers," in order to avoid 600 deaths of Israelis, or even 60,000. Because the latter is not a "greater atrocity" than the former.
A false dichotomy, because I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza, but only the option of killing Hamas, politically involved activists, and optionally, some of their families. I'd be immensely surprised if even that latter broader case encompassed anywhere near a million, maybe twenty or thirty thousand at most before people learned they needed to shut up.
The relevant calculus of death is (Israeli and Palestinian military and civilians who would die if the conflict was allowed to keep boiling) versus (The same class if a brutal campaign ended all appetite for further organized activity).
It seems eminently obvious to me that the former is comparable to the latter, if only because a ton of Palestinians already die because of Hamas provoking Israel.
Then, of course, a more rigorous approach considers second order effects. Of which there are multitudes.
I'm pretty sure OP is proposing precisely that, since OP said, "But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem."
They made the comparison to the Tamil situation, in which the vast vast majority of Sri Lankan Tamils were obviously not killed.
What they said was this:
That is on top of the quote I already cited, re "killing everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers,"
And they also say this: "I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer."
The bottom line is that if there is evidence that OP in fact would not have endorsed the killing of every Sri Lankan Tamil, had that been necessary, I would like to see it. OP is clearly endorsing that very idea.
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I took it to mean that it would be a sufficient solution, at the time, but without any implication that it was necessary today, where far less than the utter annihilation of the Palestinian people will more than suffice.
I'll let him clarify his stance, if he wishes, but just because someone said Genocide X years ago would solve Y problem today, that doesn't mean they're suggesting the very same for Y today.
He is clearly advocating for it in principle. Look at his very first sentence.
@CriticalDuty care to comment to resolve this?
I don't mind it, honestly. But if some level of ethnic cleansing that falls short of total genocide would be an effective solution, then sure, go for that instead. It's worked out plenty of times in the past. What I object to is this idea that everything on that spectrum of atrocities, from population transfers to mass graves, should be declared off-limits.
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Doesn’t the solution to the Troubles and the Good Friday accord speak to an ability to accomplish the same through peace?
Another example would be the Dayton Agreement in the Bosnian War, which specifically established a (creaky, unwieldy) state combining the two recently-slaughtering-each-other national units under one state. Sure, people have predict almost annually that this is the year when it comes to an end and B-H cracks, but it's still standing, remarkably.
Just last week there was the police killing/monastery shootout. And the completely unrelated armor, artillery and mechanized border deployment that undeployed for reasons unrelated to international condemnation. Last year was the fight over license plates. Still standing though.
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Pinochet seems like another example though that was ideologically driven.
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To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
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I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA. Ireland had a fully-developed spectrum of normal political parties and civil organizations, and they signed the Good Friday Agreement as a reflection of the overwhelming popular desire for peace. After that, any Irish group that wanted further conflict would lack a credible basis to do so. Who are you supposed to talk to in Gaza? Hamas is the only authority there, and the population's views are more aligned with Hamas than peace advocates would care to admit. Peace is nice if you can get it, but when the other side doesn't want it (and probably couldn't agree to it even if they wanted to, being an Iranian proxy), there's not really any solution besides a total purge.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
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Heck, even the end of WWII didn't necessitate the Carthage-like destruction of Germany or Japan. The Allies stated their terms seeking (with very limited exceptions) unconditional surrender, and kept fighting until they got it. The Battle of Berlin was tremendously bloody and maybe even cruel, but seems to have marked a decided tipping point in how the German government (both, for several generations) would act toward Jews, Poles, and Russians. Post-war Japan looks very different from it's Imperial days. Neither people was totally wiped from the face of the Earth.
Of course, if Total Military Defeat were to consistently cause such actions, more recent attempts at such "nation building" would have been more successful. I wish I could say that OPs view is completely wrong, but I can't. It's morally reprehensible, and I really don't like it, but does seem to work sometimes.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/denmark-s-myths-shattered-a-legacy-of-dead-german-children-a-355772.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification
Carthage-like destruction is a fairly accurate summary of what the Allies did to Germany after WWII.
I think you might want to review what actually happened in Carthage. Though I suspect that if you consider denazification to be akin to mass slaughter, you are likely pushing an agenda rather than engaging seriously with the issue at hand.
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W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
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While I think you have a point about the forgotten utility of full scale war, I wouldn't characterize the suppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka as a genocide. Nor does the Israeli's potential suppression of the Palestinians require the moniker. That's simply edginess on your part.
I won't split hairs over terminology. Regardless of the moniker, we live in an age where any useful action has been deemed verboten by our modern understanding of martial morality. This grants an advantage to any group that lacks similar moral compunctions.
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