naraburns nihil supernum
6mo 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 am pro-Israeli here, but I can easily steelman this. Yes, what Hamas did was your cookie-cutter attempt at ethnic cleansing. You see, the way ethnic cleansing works is to do horrible shit to women, children and elderly and then proudly shout that from the rooftops. If you instill enough fear in the opposing ethnicity, they will vacate the premises on their own.
This is how it was done by Israelis themselves in 1948, they massacred the village of Deir Yassin and then run around literally broadcasting to rest of Arabs that they are next. By the way the extremist Israeli militia that participated in Deir Yassin massacre called Irgun was led by Menachim Begin, later a prime minister of Israel who called the massacre as "splendid act of conquest".
There are numerous other examples of successful ethnic cleansing. I can mentioned the Operation Storm during Balkan Wars in 1990s, where Croats ethnically cleansed Serbs from their territory with tacit approval of western coalition, the international tribunal even rubberstamped that it was actually not ethnic cleansing despite hundreds of thousands Serbs being effectively expelled. The formula was the same: run in, massacre anybody who refused to leave: mostly infirm, children, elderly etc. Then just enjoy wailing of their wives running before you, as they are just cheap but very authentic signal booster for those Serbs who did not get the message so far to run on the double. And now you have nice ethnically cleansed Croatia, part of EU and Eurozone, full of nice beaches and good food prepared by former soldiers that participated in the operation, with main perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing - general Ante Gotovina - considered as national hero.
Another successful ethnic cleansing is that of Germans after WW2, nobody now gives a shit about atrocities they experienced in East Prussia, currently Russian enclave or that they were expelled from Poland because Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers to the west, which included German cities, or Czechoslovakia when Germans lived there for literally centuries. Nobody gives a shit about those Germans now, there is no wound on the soul of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles or Russians, this is the reality now and they will live happily ever after - until they themselves are ethnically cleansed sometimes in the future possibly.
As the last example I present the genocide of a tribe living on Catham Islands called Moriori. They had unique pacifist culture of nonviolence that was able to survive in isolation. That is until they got in contact with Māori people in 1835 - in paradox of history Māori themselves were the Moriori ancestors. Long story short, imagine slavery and genocide with the last descendand of the culture died in 1933, around 100 years after contact with Māori. Again, nobody gives a shit about Moriori, because there is now literally nobody to give a shit about, they are history complete with their unworkable pacifist culture. And Māori are now respected minority of New Zaeland complete with land rights recognition and all that.
And I think I will also close with another last example I ninjaedited here, that of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh as it is very pertinent to the topic at hand. This instance of ethnic cleansing was made possible because the main ally of Armenians - Russia - is unable to provide any assistance, but also because Azerbaijan now has a very good geopolitical situation as being key for non-Russian supply of energy to Europe, having good diplomatic ties to Turkey as their protector as well as being on the upswing economically. There are some performative declarations from the west, but nothing will be done on practical level.
So I guess my "steelman" is that this is the reality of human nature, this is how the world worked and will work in the future. If there is anything that needs any "steelamaning", it is this first principles morality and dream of multicultural peace loving society where the whole world is full of Moriori peoples singing kumbaya together. The reality is much more ugly and the fact is that ethnic cleansing was used and will be used in the future as solution of various conflicts. In a sense I think that the Hamas attack was a success to large extent, it shows that the support is shifting away from Israel. Europe is still dependent on energy from Arab countries, Germans recently signed 15 years long contract for LNG from Qatar, and guess who is one of the largest supporter of Hamas globally. Who knows, maybe in due time we will have the same situation as with Nagorno-Karabakh, which was also a long war until it wasn't.
I've seen the Moriori mentioned dozens of times by right-wing New Zealanders going "Guess those Māori aren't so great after all, huh?", so I'd guess one would encounter such comments inside New Zealand way more.
Sure and I am using them as one of the examples now in this discussion, so we do give a shit in this sense. But it will not help Moriori people, so it is just discussion over spilled milk. Bygones are bygones, current ancestors of Māori people can just express some sympathy and move on fighting for the living nation instead of ruminating over the dead one.
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Notes -
Is there a Hamas steelmanning available?
I am pro-Israeli here, but I can easily steelman this. Yes, what Hamas did was your cookie-cutter attempt at ethnic cleansing. You see, the way ethnic cleansing works is to do horrible shit to women, children and elderly and then proudly shout that from the rooftops. If you instill enough fear in the opposing ethnicity, they will vacate the premises on their own.
This is how it was done by Israelis themselves in 1948, they massacred the village of Deir Yassin and then run around literally broadcasting to rest of Arabs that they are next. By the way the extremist Israeli militia that participated in Deir Yassin massacre called Irgun was led by Menachim Begin, later a prime minister of Israel who called the massacre as "splendid act of conquest".
There are numerous other examples of successful ethnic cleansing. I can mentioned the Operation Storm during Balkan Wars in 1990s, where Croats ethnically cleansed Serbs from their territory with tacit approval of western coalition, the international tribunal even rubberstamped that it was actually not ethnic cleansing despite hundreds of thousands Serbs being effectively expelled. The formula was the same: run in, massacre anybody who refused to leave: mostly infirm, children, elderly etc. Then just enjoy wailing of their wives running before you, as they are just cheap but very authentic signal booster for those Serbs who did not get the message so far to run on the double. And now you have nice ethnically cleansed Croatia, part of EU and Eurozone, full of nice beaches and good food prepared by former soldiers that participated in the operation, with main perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing - general Ante Gotovina - considered as national hero.
Another successful ethnic cleansing is that of Germans after WW2, nobody now gives a shit about atrocities they experienced in East Prussia, currently Russian enclave or that they were expelled from Poland because Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers to the west, which included German cities, or Czechoslovakia when Germans lived there for literally centuries. Nobody gives a shit about those Germans now, there is no wound on the soul of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles or Russians, this is the reality now and they will live happily ever after - until they themselves are ethnically cleansed sometimes in the future possibly.
As the last example I present the genocide of a tribe living on Catham Islands called Moriori. They had unique pacifist culture of nonviolence that was able to survive in isolation. That is until they got in contact with Māori people in 1835 - in paradox of history Māori themselves were the Moriori ancestors. Long story short, imagine slavery and genocide with the last descendand of the culture died in 1933, around 100 years after contact with Māori. Again, nobody gives a shit about Moriori, because there is now literally nobody to give a shit about, they are history complete with their unworkable pacifist culture. And Māori are now respected minority of New Zaeland complete with land rights recognition and all that.
And I think I will also close with another last example I ninjaedited here, that of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh as it is very pertinent to the topic at hand. This instance of ethnic cleansing was made possible because the main ally of Armenians - Russia - is unable to provide any assistance, but also because Azerbaijan now has a very good geopolitical situation as being key for non-Russian supply of energy to Europe, having good diplomatic ties to Turkey as their protector as well as being on the upswing economically. There are some performative declarations from the west, but nothing will be done on practical level.
So I guess my "steelman" is that this is the reality of human nature, this is how the world worked and will work in the future. If there is anything that needs any "steelamaning", it is this first principles morality and dream of multicultural peace loving society where the whole world is full of Moriori peoples singing kumbaya together. The reality is much more ugly and the fact is that ethnic cleansing was used and will be used in the future as solution of various conflicts. In a sense I think that the Hamas attack was a success to large extent, it shows that the support is shifting away from Israel. Europe is still dependent on energy from Arab countries, Germans recently signed 15 years long contract for LNG from Qatar, and guess who is one of the largest supporter of Hamas globally. Who knows, maybe in due time we will have the same situation as with Nagorno-Karabakh, which was also a long war until it wasn't.
I've seen the Moriori mentioned dozens of times by right-wing New Zealanders going "Guess those Māori aren't so great after all, huh?", so I'd guess one would encounter such comments inside New Zealand way more.
Sure and I am using them as one of the examples now in this discussion, so we do give a shit in this sense. But it will not help Moriori people, so it is just discussion over spilled milk. Bygones are bygones, current ancestors of Māori people can just express some sympathy and move on fighting for the living nation instead of ruminating over the dead one.
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