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.
Hard to tell whether or not he’s concern trolling the Keith Woods1 type dissident rightists who have gone all-in on bleeding heart “isn’t this terrible” kvetching about Palestinians being bombed over the last few days. Sympathy with Palestinians won’t save Gaza from Israel, but it will boost the entire nonprofit NGO world of third-worldist sympathy organizations that ultimate encourage mass migration from the Islamic world to the West. The more sympathyposting they do, the more dead Gazan civilians they share, the more Western publics sympathize with migrants from the Islamic world.
And it’s not like anti-Zionism would end mass immigration to the West either when current flows are increasingly from everywhere where young men don’t have many opportunities in the developing world (particularly sub-Saharan Africa), most of which isn’t Israel’s fault.
That said…
Biden is getting so desperate at the southern border that he’s actually building Trump’s wall and desperately lobbying Central American countries to slow migrant flows behind the scenes, and now he’s going to import 2 million Arabs? Seems unlikely. This guy is getting clowned on in the comments, but more generally it’s hard to see Euro 2015 level migrant flows to the West coming from this. Mostly because the big European migrant flows weren’t on boats, though those were what was photogenic; they were overland crossings via Turkey and then the Balkans or Greece. The Gaza refugees face the rather substantial fact that Israel itself stands between them and the overland route to Europe. That means the migrants would be actively imported as refugees rather than simply show up.
Say what you will about Haitians and Guatemalans, they’re not Muslims, and Muslims in particular occupy since 9/11 a particular place in the American psyche. In 2017, Pew found 70% of Republicans (and almost 40% of Democrats!) said Islam wasn’t part of “mainstream American society”. Islam as a whole had a favorability of 48 points (ie. -2%). 41% of adults and 65% of Republicans agreed with the statement that Islam encourages violence more than other faiths. Trump’s Muslim ban was one of his most popular policies with absolute majority (almost supermajority) support.
So even if, for the discerning HBD aficionado, importing two million Palestinians might actually be preferable to two million Haitians, to the median (especially boomer and older) American they are in different universes. Obama in 2015 didn’t take many Syrian refugees for a reason (even though the president is generally recognized as having significant control over refugee intake), his stated goal was 10,000 total, and he reached this (across the entire conflict) in late 2016 (the US took like 1,500 Syrians total between 2011 and 2015 lol).
And there was a big culture war about that, too. Like 30+ GOP states announced they wouldn’t take any Syrian refugees etc. That was when it was 10,000 total, again. 2 million Muslim Gazans who voted for Hamas in the US is very unlikely, especially a year before an election.
1 I should add that in many ways I do respect Keith for at least being a real-world activist for his own country rather than a faceless internet agitator.
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Notes -
Senior Breitbart editor wants to "temporarily" move palestinians from Gaza to US. https://twitter.com/joelpollak/status/1712981078066213017
Hard to tell whether or not he’s concern trolling the Keith Woods1 type dissident rightists who have gone all-in on bleeding heart “isn’t this terrible” kvetching about Palestinians being bombed over the last few days. Sympathy with Palestinians won’t save Gaza from Israel, but it will boost the entire nonprofit NGO world of third-worldist sympathy organizations that ultimate encourage mass migration from the Islamic world to the West. The more sympathyposting they do, the more dead Gazan civilians they share, the more Western publics sympathize with migrants from the Islamic world.
And it’s not like anti-Zionism would end mass immigration to the West either when current flows are increasingly from everywhere where young men don’t have many opportunities in the developing world (particularly sub-Saharan Africa), most of which isn’t Israel’s fault.
That said…
Biden is getting so desperate at the southern border that he’s actually building Trump’s wall and desperately lobbying Central American countries to slow migrant flows behind the scenes, and now he’s going to import 2 million Arabs? Seems unlikely. This guy is getting clowned on in the comments, but more generally it’s hard to see Euro 2015 level migrant flows to the West coming from this. Mostly because the big European migrant flows weren’t on boats, though those were what was photogenic; they were overland crossings via Turkey and then the Balkans or Greece. The Gaza refugees face the rather substantial fact that Israel itself stands between them and the overland route to Europe. That means the migrants would be actively imported as refugees rather than simply show up.
Say what you will about Haitians and Guatemalans, they’re not Muslims, and Muslims in particular occupy since 9/11 a particular place in the American psyche. In 2017, Pew found 70% of Republicans (and almost 40% of Democrats!) said Islam wasn’t part of “mainstream American society”. Islam as a whole had a favorability of 48 points (ie. -2%). 41% of adults and 65% of Republicans agreed with the statement that Islam encourages violence more than other faiths. Trump’s Muslim ban was one of his most popular policies with absolute majority (almost supermajority) support.
So even if, for the discerning HBD aficionado, importing two million Palestinians might actually be preferable to two million Haitians, to the median (especially boomer and older) American they are in different universes. Obama in 2015 didn’t take many Syrian refugees for a reason (even though the president is generally recognized as having significant control over refugee intake), his stated goal was 10,000 total, and he reached this (across the entire conflict) in late 2016 (the US took like 1,500 Syrians total between 2011 and 2015 lol).
And there was a big culture war about that, too. Like 30+ GOP states announced they wouldn’t take any Syrian refugees etc. That was when it was 10,000 total, again. 2 million Muslim Gazans who voted for Hamas in the US is very unlikely, especially a year before an election.
1 I should add that in many ways I do respect Keith for at least being a real-world activist for his own country rather than a faceless internet agitator.
Quite a nice turn of phrase, heh.
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