naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
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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.
No electricity, water, or fuel for Gaza until hostages freed - Israel
Israel's Energy Minister Israel Katz says the siege of Gaza will not end until Israeli hostages are released.
In a social media post, Israel Katz said no "electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter" until the "abductees" are free.
I think this is a smart move. Even if the hostages being released remains very unlikely, it puts more of the moral burden for the siege on the Gazans, who do (broadly) support Hamas.
A mass scale war crime to block food and water to 2.3 million people. Using war crimes to punish a population is an excellent way to get the world to hate you and the victims to never forget.
Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands.
What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything? Are you counting soviet civilians as subjects of germany, and german soldiers as tragic passive victims 'being killed' through no fault of their own? It sounds like those germans were having a real hard time in this war that came out of nowhere, and then decided a bit of jew-killing would help.
Germans had rationing, but they were not starving during the holocaust, every other population they controlled was. I think there was a Hitler quote about that - apparently traumatized by the WWI blockade, he swore that every european would starve before a single german, or something to that effect. Plus the more intentional starving of 'zig millionen' slavs in the hungerplan.
I wonder if @coffee_enjoyer made the same mistake or if he had the cynicism to imply the intentional starving of slavs by germans was a hardship borne by the german people.
Not defending it in any way, more a data point in the stupid = evil argument, but I think nazi leaders really believed germans would starve if they did not secure arable land. I found TiK’s argument on shrinking markets really illuminating on this. I can’t believe anyone could do such a thing without an ‘either them or us’ frame.
Anyway, one more reason why I dislike pessimistic arguments - zero-sum, de-growth, peak resources, third world exploitation, starving proletariat, inevitable civil war, demographic collapse, climate & AI apocalypse type stuff – it gets easier to support horrible measures if you already think the future will be horrible. The cure is usually far worse than the disease.
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Notes -
No electricity, water, or fuel for Gaza until hostages freed - Israel
[From the BBC news live tracker]
I think this is a smart move. Even if the hostages being released remains very unlikely, it puts more of the moral burden for the siege on the Gazans, who do (broadly) support Hamas.
A mass scale war crime to block food and water to 2.3 million people. Using war crimes to punish a population is an excellent way to get the world to hate you and the victims to never forget.
Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything? Are you counting soviet civilians as subjects of germany, and german soldiers as tragic passive victims 'being killed' through no fault of their own? It sounds like those germans were having a real hard time in this war that came out of nowhere, and then decided a bit of jew-killing would help.
Germans had rationing, but they were not starving during the holocaust, every other population they controlled was. I think there was a Hitler quote about that - apparently traumatized by the WWI blockade, he swore that every european would starve before a single german, or something to that effect. Plus the more intentional starving of 'zig millionen' slavs in the hungerplan.
I was sure the Germans were starving, too, but I guess I was thinking of the Steckrübenwinter late in WWI.
The Hungerplan was unambiguously, cartoonishly evil.
I wonder if @coffee_enjoyer made the same mistake or if he had the cynicism to imply the intentional starving of slavs by germans was a hardship borne by the german people.
Not defending it in any way, more a data point in the stupid = evil argument, but I think nazi leaders really believed germans would starve if they did not secure arable land. I found TiK’s argument on shrinking markets really illuminating on this. I can’t believe anyone could do such a thing without an ‘either them or us’ frame.
Anyway, one more reason why I dislike pessimistic arguments - zero-sum, de-growth, peak resources, third world exploitation, starving proletariat, inevitable civil war, demographic collapse, climate & AI apocalypse type stuff – it gets easier to support horrible measures if you already think the future will be horrible. The cure is usually far worse than the disease.
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