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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   28847 thread views

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.

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“It’s time to be cruel,” and Knesset member Ariel Kallner calling for a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” a reference to the massacre and expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians upon Israel’s founding.

So I looked up more on this Nakba:

Before, during and after the 1947–1949 war, hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed. Geographic names throughout the country were erased and replaced with Hebrew names, sometimes derivatives of the historical Palestinian nomenclature, and sometimes new inventions. Numerous non-Jewish historical sites were destroyed, not just during the wars, but in a subsequent process over a number of decades. For example, over 80% of Palestinian village mosques have been destroyed, and artefacts have been removed from museums and archives.

You shouldn't be able to get away with this sort of thing right in the middle of the 20th century. After that, it's no wonder if there are Palestinians who will never accept Israel, and I also think Israel doesn't really have a leg to stand on to negotiate, as it's not really a legitimate state, just a top-down imposition.

Debating this elsewhere, some reactions were "Oh, but the Arabs wouldn't accept the partition plan", but why should they, why does the UN have the right to just impose that on them? Actually, the UN involvement just makes Israel seem like another High Modernist fuck up, another of the numerous errors of the first half of the 20th century.

Addressing something Ike Saul said below:

I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

No, I am not moved by appeals to ancient history. That cycle has to end at some point, and the end of WW II seems like a good stopping point for that sort of shenanigan.

Also, you can't have your high officials expressing themselves like the guy above and like this:

Gallant said that he had ordered “a complete siege of the Gaza Strip,” which is home to 2.2 million Palestinians, nearly half of them children. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” he said. “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”

Netanyahu:

The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.

You can't talk like this and then pretend you're the civilized party here! Though of course, looking at the so-called developed nations, especially America, maybe they don't talk like this, but they sure behave like it, so maybe there actually are no or few civilizations around.

But that doesn't make me think Israel is legitimate, it just makes me think the developed world is fake too.

Sam Kriss had a great article on Israel from some time ago:

It was almost inconceivable that this wasteland had been made by Jews, that my people and my religion could have created something so ungodly. I did not recognise myself in this mirror. Jews—like Mel Brooks, like Franz Kafka, like Albert Einstein, like Bruno Schulz, like Woody Allen, like the Coen brothers, like Walter Benjamin, like me. People with sexual hangups and a good sense of humour. Bookish men with overbearing mothers. Latkes and lokshen pudding. Candles on a Friday night. Jews, the guilty conscience of Europe, the bearers of messianic hope through every generation—reduced to this.

American support for an ethno-nationalist state can't last. All it takes is a sufficiently left-wing administration coming around to undo this by simply withdrawing support, which could easily happen in the next few decades.

Apologies if this is too much heat, but looking at the circumstances of Israel's founding, Israel genuinely just seems to me to be an injustice. Maybe Israel could have happened legitimately if they hadn't been in such a hurry, and maybe the hurry could have been excused because of the Holocaust, but not to the point that you pull a Nakba.

EDIT: And of course, Hamas' attacks were barbarous, but that doesn't really conjure up legitimacy for the state of Israel. Why should they?

why does the UN have the right to just impose that on them?

Because the alternative was what happened: The right of conquest.

If the Arab states somehow really managed to unite, crush Israel, send the Jews packing and establish a river-to-sea Palestine, I have a distinct feeling that many people who believe that the "right of conquest" can actually be used as a justification for anything would suddenly no longer see it that way.

The question by CrashedPsychonaut was why the UN were in any way justified to authorize a partition and the simple answer is that they were and are not. But if you deny this „top-down imposition“, and you can’t rely on a hegemon to keep the status quo as the British are leaving, you will instead have a bottom-up solution: civil war.

I don’t think you understand the sheer elegance of the position. From the pov of some uninvolved party, it doesn’t matter who wins, it’s just about solving the problem. Coase theorem really. Just assign it to whoever holds it and defends it, no one has to do anything, and all aboard for the pareto optimum.

And I have a feeling that many people who have been crying about human rights violations Israel is perpetrating on Palestinians would range from absolutely blind to triumphant over human rights violations occurring in that scenario. Arguments are soldiers, what else is new?

Personally, I really do feel that the Arab nations are not civilized, so they play by different rules. It ticks me off more when a nation pretends to be of a superior sort, but then not actually live up to the supposed superiority.

At which point you're insisting Israel behave according to Marquis de Queensbury rules in a street fight. It makes no sense.

Not really. He's just asking them to be honest. If Israel wants to become a blood-drenched Bronze Age state in response to their environment, they can. But if they do decide to take that path then they should be honest and open about it.

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