naraburns nihil supernum
6mo 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.
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.
Lol, I’m certainly not defending Keith’s stupid views on Jews, they’re unsurprising - hardcore antisemitism is (not exclusively, of course) a particularly Irish thing even in the US, witness how many of the most hardcore American antisemitic DR types are of Irish descent. Sinn Fein were hardcore pro-Palestinian for decades, and while Woods disavows them now for supporting immigration, Irish nationalism has always been somewhat thirdworldist in character.
But yeah, there was a good meme I saw today (maybe retweeted by BAP, idk) about just how stupid this is for the dissident right. Antisemitism aside, the worst thing for anyone who wants to reduce immigration from the Islamic world to Europe is to signal boost sympathy for dispossessed or oppressed Muslims and their (many, many) causes. Whether or not the people of Gaza end up fleeing to the West, there are a billion others who might.
By contrast Jews are rare in Europe, and in 50 years almost all will either have left, have assimilated, or be in insular Chareidi communities largely uninvolved in secular affairs.
hardcore antisemitism is (not exclusively, of course) a particularly Irish thing even in the US
Maybe I just can’t see the water I’m swimming in but I don’t think modern Irish people are antisemitic (Keith Woods and 4chan posters excepted). The first half of the 20th century was pretty bad (like the Limerick Boycott), but since then Jews are barely talked about in Ireland because there are only like 1,000 of them. The anti-Semitic stuff I heard from Muslims and Poles in Ireland struck me as a fairly foreign thing when I first heard it.
Irish people oppose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for the same reason they opposed South African Apartheid: not because Jews or Boers are inherently worthy of hate but because if you squint you can sort of draw parallels with Ireland’s experience under British rule. Irish people support a Jewish leader in Ukraine because Russian actions remind them of British colonialism, they supported the Sinn Féin Rabbi when being pro-Israel meant fighting the British, they oppose the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians because it reminds them of what the British did. Everything is interpreted through the lens of our history, we’re too self-centered to be anti-Semites.
I completely agree that very very few modern Irish people are antisemitic. It is notable how many American antisemites (and dissident rightists in general, actually) are of Irish descent, and how there was in part a kind of longstanding low level enmity between Jews and Irish in some cities for many years though. My grandfather grew up in Brooklyn when it really was Irish, Italians and Jews (primarily) and always said that while the Italians and Jews typically got along mostly amenably, the Irish and the Jews didn’t, it was just how it was. Clearly that enmity predates even the foundation of Israel, so can’t be derived from sympathy with the Palestinians in that case, and while American antisemitism was generally more pronounced among Catholics than Protestants, that described both the Irish and Italians, so can’t be it. Possibly they were competing for the same kinds of things.
I don't think we disagree in that case. I don't know much about Irish-Americans outside of their influence back in Ireland (they were always more bitter towards the British), so I'll take your word for it.
By stereotype when I was growing up in London in the 1990's, the Irish were more likely to be anti-Semitic than the British. Overt anti-Semitism was sufficiently rare that I couldn't gauge the truth of the stereotype. On the far left there was an element of IRA-PLO solidarity, but most Irish people in both the mainland UK and Republic of Ireland despised the IRA by this point, so that can't have been the main thing. Some of it went back to the 19th century, when Disraeli opposed devolution to Ireland and Irish Catholic politicians responded by wheeling out all the usual anti-Semitic tropes. (Even in the 1860's, Disraeli's Jewish ancestry was not an issue in mainstream British politics). The piece de resistance was a speech by Daniel O'Connell comparing Disraeli to the unrepentant robber crucified alongside Jesus and speculating about their family resemblance.
The piece de resistance was a speech by Daniel O'Connell comparing Disraeli to the unrepentant robber crucified alongside Jesus and speculating about their family resemblance.
Yeah I remember reading that, Disraeli's comeback was a good one: 'Yes, I am a Jew, and while the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.'
Again I won't dispute personal experience with immigrant communities and maybe I'm just not seeing it myself, but Ireland is almost a different country to what it was 30 years ago so the historical picture of Irish attitudes could be completely accurate and yet not hold true today. There is definitely a very anti-semitic strain growing in the far-right in Ireland, but the people I know like that are young and picked it up from the internet.
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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.
Lol, I’m certainly not defending Keith’s stupid views on Jews, they’re unsurprising - hardcore antisemitism is (not exclusively, of course) a particularly Irish thing even in the US, witness how many of the most hardcore American antisemitic DR types are of Irish descent. Sinn Fein were hardcore pro-Palestinian for decades, and while Woods disavows them now for supporting immigration, Irish nationalism has always been somewhat thirdworldist in character.
But yeah, there was a good meme I saw today (maybe retweeted by BAP, idk) about just how stupid this is for the dissident right. Antisemitism aside, the worst thing for anyone who wants to reduce immigration from the Islamic world to Europe is to signal boost sympathy for dispossessed or oppressed Muslims and their (many, many) causes. Whether or not the people of Gaza end up fleeing to the West, there are a billion others who might.
By contrast Jews are rare in Europe, and in 50 years almost all will either have left, have assimilated, or be in insular Chareidi communities largely uninvolved in secular affairs.
Maybe I just can’t see the water I’m swimming in but I don’t think modern Irish people are antisemitic (Keith Woods and 4chan posters excepted). The first half of the 20th century was pretty bad (like the Limerick Boycott), but since then Jews are barely talked about in Ireland because there are only like 1,000 of them. The anti-Semitic stuff I heard from Muslims and Poles in Ireland struck me as a fairly foreign thing when I first heard it.
Irish people oppose Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for the same reason they opposed South African Apartheid: not because Jews or Boers are inherently worthy of hate but because if you squint you can sort of draw parallels with Ireland’s experience under British rule. Irish people support a Jewish leader in Ukraine because Russian actions remind them of British colonialism, they supported the Sinn Féin Rabbi when being pro-Israel meant fighting the British, they oppose the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians because it reminds them of what the British did. Everything is interpreted through the lens of our history, we’re too self-centered to be anti-Semites.
I completely agree that very very few modern Irish people are antisemitic. It is notable how many American antisemites (and dissident rightists in general, actually) are of Irish descent, and how there was in part a kind of longstanding low level enmity between Jews and Irish in some cities for many years though. My grandfather grew up in Brooklyn when it really was Irish, Italians and Jews (primarily) and always said that while the Italians and Jews typically got along mostly amenably, the Irish and the Jews didn’t, it was just how it was. Clearly that enmity predates even the foundation of Israel, so can’t be derived from sympathy with the Palestinians in that case, and while American antisemitism was generally more pronounced among Catholics than Protestants, that described both the Irish and Italians, so can’t be it. Possibly they were competing for the same kinds of things.
I don't think we disagree in that case. I don't know much about Irish-Americans outside of their influence back in Ireland (they were always more bitter towards the British), so I'll take your word for it.
By stereotype when I was growing up in London in the 1990's, the Irish were more likely to be anti-Semitic than the British. Overt anti-Semitism was sufficiently rare that I couldn't gauge the truth of the stereotype. On the far left there was an element of IRA-PLO solidarity, but most Irish people in both the mainland UK and Republic of Ireland despised the IRA by this point, so that can't have been the main thing. Some of it went back to the 19th century, when Disraeli opposed devolution to Ireland and Irish Catholic politicians responded by wheeling out all the usual anti-Semitic tropes. (Even in the 1860's, Disraeli's Jewish ancestry was not an issue in mainstream British politics). The piece de resistance was a speech by Daniel O'Connell comparing Disraeli to the unrepentant robber crucified alongside Jesus and speculating about their family resemblance.
Yeah I remember reading that, Disraeli's comeback was a good one: 'Yes, I am a Jew, and while the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.'
Again I won't dispute personal experience with immigrant communities and maybe I'm just not seeing it myself, but Ireland is almost a different country to what it was 30 years ago so the historical picture of Irish attitudes could be completely accurate and yet not hold true today. There is definitely a very anti-semitic strain growing in the far-right in Ireland, but the people I know like that are young and picked it up from the internet.
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