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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29502 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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Did Hamas debunk the "Bronze Age Mindset"?

There has been a lot of discourse among the American Right about the recent Hamas attack on Israel. This specific attack has caught this attention of the "vitalist Nietzschean" sphere of the Right, often followers of Bronze Age Pervert.

This sphere is known to be against moralizing and all "slave morality" coming from either the liberal establishement, the left or religion. An example of this would be the meme culture of the BAP sphere, which openly celebrates murder, rape and death. However, with an ironic twist of reality, Hamas is precisely getting accused of what these BAP rightists vitalists uphold. But when they are faced with Hamas's "barbarian vitalist attack" on Israel, utilizing non-modern warfare techniques, they suddenly all cowered out.

All of the BAP sphere has stopped celebrating "vitalism" when it came to Israel. This is because it is now "low IQ Muslims" that do it. It is very clear that Islam challenges the ontological foundations of the Nietzschean worldview. They can not explain Hamas on their terms.

Since you are forced by the rise of the world market to take a position (the American people's money is going into this), the Nietzschean BAP sphere can not say anything. They are practically rendered politically irrelevant. Thus, their position is reduced to fence-setting or straight zionism, a position completely and utterly in line with the political establishement in America. All of this to claim to be "right-wing dissidents". All of the rejection of moralizing now became an endorsement of moralizing. BAP openly retweeted a post denouncing "the rape & genocide" of Hamas (unproven by the way) while he himself, a couple days earlier, celebrated the killing of a leftist journalist saying it turned him on.

This reveals a huge hole in BAP's worldview. A gap between his "complete surrendering to natural instinct" and "transcendetal Platonist moralizing". He has now suddenly decided to start moralizing! He has found the exception to his Nietzscheanism! This single event has proven the complete bankruptcy of the Nietzschean outlook. It can never explain REVOLUTIONS, it can only react to it in its own moralizing sense through its metaphysical lense of "will to Power". It is fundamentally a whining ideology.

The Nietzschean outlook does not understand that high culture is only secondary to material harmony of society. Only when inherent tensions are solved in modernity can "high culture" be produced once again. Harmony is directly derivative of political & economic realities. Thus, taking the metaphysical lense of "will to Power" becomes non-sensical when faced with a pre-modern (non-aristocratic) revolutionary force. It is what creates (or destroys) aristocracy itself. Faced with the deep ancient Islamic spirit, the Nietzscheans have no answer. In the same way that the revolutionnaries of the 20th century rendered Nietzschean fascism politically useless (this was done by Mao and the creation of Neo-China), the same is happening with the new Hamas partisan. This is material Being asserting itself against ideology.

This has forced the online political sphere, specifically the Right, for a re-alignement. You either oppose the current political establishement (left-wing) or you support it (right-wing). BAP has chosen to support it.

The choice is clear.

The whole "vitalism" "Bronze Age Mindset" just basically comes off as fantasizing and wish-fulfillment for the masculinity-based sector of the right, no wonder it would get instantly thrown aside (with some scant justifications about not supporting brown barbarians or whatever) whenever it might conflict with actual politics.

This is Bulverism.

BAP has already been discredited by a large portion of the Dissident Right for being a Jewish Zionist, he is a known quantity as a Zionist posing as a Nietzschean. The real Nietzscheans in the DR don't have much of a dog in the inter-Abrahamic wars beyond the impact on their own civilization. That doesn't mean necessarily killing civilians, although context certainly matters. One pattern we saw in WWII was that shooting civilians is seen as much more barbaric than bombing civilians, and that pattern seems to hold today as well.

I also don't think "you are barbarians for your practices in war, so we must subjugate you and civilize you" is really contrary to Nietzsche. That was the M.O of the Roman Empire, who would basically denounce everyone outside their sphere of influence as a "barbarian." So the "barbarian spirit" is a little more complicated than glamorizing the most grotesque things any people does. Being Nietzschean doesn't mean you have to glorify all acts by the barbarians, it also means you subjugate them and impose your morality onto them.

Going around raping random women and killing defenseless civilians as an prelude for your home to get leveled by heavy artillery by a powerful military doesn’t seem very Nietzschean to me…

BAM's exhortations run counter modern technology. You can't be a pirate or a steppe raider when the people whose settlements you want to conquer or raid can get you bombed.

Same problem as anarcho-primitivism.

Who could have guessed that a bronze age mindset had been rendered obsolete by technological advance!

Is it incumbent upon dissidents to oppose every single policy of the current establishment? If it is, there have been very few (perhaps no) dissidents in human history. In general this is a relatively weak defense of a form of historical materialism, misunderstands Nietzsche and so on, as many others have noted. The author writes with the eloquence of a 13 year old, which is somehow even more grating than Costin's shtick.

More generally, BAP is Jewish and has longstanding sympathies for some of the early zionists, if not the degraded and spiritually void religious zionism that exists in Israel today (and which Costin has not infrequently criticized).

Faced with the deep ancient Islamic spirit, the Nietzscheans have no answer.

Perhaps in an Israel that had embraced BAP's nietzscheanism more wholly, there wouldn't be much of the population in question left at all, certainly not in its current form. So this is a somewhat weird point, in that it hardly disproves the relevant political program (not that anyone, of course, knows what that is).

So maybe I just don't understand what people have been meaning by having a Bronze Age Mindset, because to be BAP's position seems perfectly ideologically consistent. Them raping and pillaging is bad, us raping and pillaging is good. What's more Bronze Age than that? For anyone reading this forum, the Palestinians are not your allies and never will be, so it seems only natural the Bronze Age response is "slaughter them and salt the earth"

Uh…did you write this? Write commentary for it? Or are you just sharing?

Also, what’s up with his love for letter “e”? There’s quite a fewe extras sprinkeled in.

I’m familiar with the concepts of BAM but not the culture. So it’s hard for me to tell if the author is representing it fairly. The piece feels like a strawman, even though I know edgy memes and bad optics are in line with the Mindset. Is he trying to bait Bronze Agers into his position?

The more I think about it, the more this scans like a Tumblr hit piece. The Mindset must be bankrupt, perhaps even problematic. It’s insufficiently REVOLUTIONARY. And all of this based off of a retweet! Truly, the most decisive endorsement of slave morality. Bronze Agers simply must smash their idols, and cast aside the false dichotomy of “fence-setting” or “Zionism.” They must travel a third road. They must become… anti-Semites.

Oh. Wait.

Uh…did you write this? Write commentary for it? Or are you just sharing?

Just sharing. Ran into it on a certain anti-Western Muslim account I follow and this is the only other place I know that gets into BAP.

I’m familiar with the concepts of BAM but not the culture. So it’s hard for me to tell if the author is representing it fairly

Same here, got his first book but never really finished. Was interested to see how more familiar people take it .

I don't really know what he thinks, he seems to be obsessed with the Ukraine war and the Gaza conflict (RT galore) but thinks it is stupid to fight (and die) as a low level grunt?

https://twitter.com/bronzeagemantis/status/1711513938511196289

The “Bronze Age” ruler would have smashed your idol group identities in a thousand pieces. Literally every state and group today is fake. And my book isn’t about celebrating your preferred ethnic pathic affectations when they engage in chimpouts or fake modern wars.

BAP's reply:

The main objection against the aesthetic admiration of POC violence whether Pali or BLM joggers or Somalis is that they are only allowed to exist in a limited playpen situation, dependent as wards of the state or other powers and a humanitarian ethics. It is therefore sterile.
Gangsta violence can be made to look transgressive only so long as the power of the USA state in this case stops nature from taking its course—50-100 military cadets could probably pacify all of LA or Chicago in a couple of weeks. Now extend this to the world—virtual playpen.

Edit: I should put a disclaimer that I have never read BAP and only vaguely understand what any of this debate is about, but those posts randomly drifted into my twitter feed and were clearly a response to the critique above. If anyone thinks it's worth the time to read BAPista philosophy so this all makes sense, could you give me an elevator pitch? I got filtered pretty hard on him right off the bat.

the BAP sphere, which openly celebrates murder, rape and death.

Citations needed. I highly doubt they are celebrating Hamas style barbarism, or else we are nutpicking.

It's not always exactly easy to see what BAP and his followers are actually supporting, seeing how it's couched in layers of comic exaggeration (or... IS IT??) and memespeak.

I don't disagree. But some prominent examples would really buttress this crux, and I do think it's the crux of this position. Do they really advocate and celebrate Hamas-style barbarism?

The overwhelming majority of conservatives and right wingers are firmly on the side of civilization, on the civilization-barbarism axis.

Can you link any tweets from the BAPsphere that are endorsing Hamas, even ironically?

I'm not really that familiar with BAP, since I don't like his writing style (see above), and strictly defining who is his follower and who is not is similarly beyond my ken.

This seems to be saying in many words that $cool_thing suddenly seems not so cool when it becomes associated with the despised outgroup. It's not even the first time this has happened recently: the whole Russia/Western Europe/Eastern Europe/US empire/traditionalism/progressivism graph has been a wellspring of cognitive dissonance and stomach aches to anyone trying to bipartition it into good ingroup and evil outgroup, as seen with the Trump-Russia association, Ukrainian neo- and paleonazi gaffes or Germany's very mixed feelings about the rise of PiS Poland. For a cast more reminiscent of the Israel scenario, recall also the "Islam is right about women" trolling campaign.

It is very clear that Islam challenges the ontological foundations of the Nietzschean worldview.

Only if you've never read Nietzsche.

The Gay Science #306:

Stoic and Epicurean. The Epicurean selects the situations, the persons, and even the events which suit his extremely sensitive, intellectual constitution; he renounces the rest that is to say, by far the greater part of experience - because it would be too strong and too heavy fare for him. The Stoic, on the contrary, accustoms himself to swallow stones and vermin, glass-splinters and scorpions, without feeling any disgust: his stomach is meant to become indifferent in the end to all that the accidents of existence cast into it: - he reminds one of the Arabic sect of the Assaua, with which the French became acquainted in Algiers; and like those insensible persons, he also likes well to have an invited public at the exhibition of his insensibility, the very thing the Epicurean willingly dispenses with: - he has of course his "garden"! Stoicism may be quite advisable for men with whom fate improvises, for those who live in violent times and are dependent on abrupt and changeable individuals. He, however, who anticipates that fate will permit him to spin "a long thread," does well to make his arrangements in Epicurean fashion; all men devoted to intellectual labour have done it hitherto! For it would be a supreme loss to them to forfeit their fine sensibility, and to acquire the hard, stoical hide with hedgehog prickles in exchange.

Here's my proposal for how to solve this, with a plan I am shamelessly stealing from Greg Abbot and Camp of the Saints.

Step 1, just start rounding up Palestinians and putting them on boats. Let them grab their possessions if they want to cooperate. These are nice, safe, clean boats with cameras everywhere to film all the food/medicine/clean water being provided. Maybe also Gaza is 100% blockaded and no food goes in, giving people an incentive to leave.

Step 2: the boats set sail to Iran. Egypt allows them to traverse Suez because...well keep reading.

Step 3: the unarmed boats full of refugees and cameras go directly to shore in Iran. They ignore warnings to stop. They let the Iranians inspect them for weapons. They land, tell everyone to get off, and repeat.

This puts Iran in the unenviable position of either a) having to martyr thousands of unarmed Palestinian refugees on camera or b) live with Palestinians. If Egypt doesn't let them through Suez, then Egypt can have the Palestinians.

What you guys think of this plan?

Better border security seems a lot more feasible and practical . Relocating millions of Arabs won't change anything if the funding for terrorism is intact, as is the antipathy against the West. The money for arms is coming from somewhere...focusing on that should be the main priority, combined with better border security and intelligence. Now we see why surveillance exists. 99.9% of the time it seems useless and intrusive , but then incidents like this happen.

Moving the Palestinians would change a lot. First of all, they'd mostly be Iran's problem. If they remain prisoners in Iran-operated refugee camps, any human rights issues are the result of Persian rather than Israeli oppression. If they integrate into Iranian society, hopefully they find better things to do than become terrorists. Meanwhile the world loses a current talking point against Israel - maybe 10-20 years ago they did a forced migration, but that's ancient history. Netenyahu, the person with his name/face on the policy, is 74 today and will be dead soon.

Second, they'd be far away. No matter how terrible the Palestinians are, they aren't America's problem due to distance. To attack America they need to either get past airport security, take a boat, or something similar.

What if Iran sends the Palestinians back on boats, with food? The Palestinians want to live in Jerusalem. The Iranians want the Palestinians to live in Israel. Neither wants the Palestinians to be in Iran.

Realistically, the US/Israel are far better able to mount a logistical operation such as this than Iran is. Taking the $50B-ish of US aid to Ukraine and dividing by 2M Palestinians, that's $25k/person to spend. Can Iran throw $25B at the return trip?

Maybe not, but it's quite a gamble on the past of the US/Israel, especially because e.g. Iraq and Syria might let the Iranians bus the Palestinians to Israel.

Suppose that Syria and Iraq allow buses to drive to Israel. The buses get to the fence, which you can see pictures of here:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-gunfire-from-syria-aimed-at-military-drone-operating-along-border/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/syrian-man-shot-by-idf-after-allegedly-hurling-objects-at-golan-border/

Now what?

For comparison, Iran has 800 miles of coastline on the Persian Gulf which looks like this:

https://theculturetrip.com/middle-east/iran/articles/the-most-beautiful-beaches-in-iran

https://traveltriangle.com/blog/beaches-in-iran/

Now what?

The media game begins. Israel is portrayed as an ethnic cleanser, the Palestinians as wanting to return to their homelands.

The Israelis might win the media game, but it's a gamble.

Sure, but that's the same as it always was.

This does of course assume that Assad has no problem taking the risk of Palestinians getting off the bus in Syria - everyone is happy with a bunch of Palestinians showing up, right?

Relocating millions of Arabs won't change anything if the funding for terrorism is intact, as is the antipathy against the West

This doesn't seem like a serious assertion. Of course relocating millions of people would change something. Probably entirely. X can't do Y if there are no more X taps temple

99.9% of the time it seems useless and intrusive , but then incidents like this happen.

But if incidents like this still happen then why are you rhetorically attempting to justify intrusive surveillance?

Every Israeli needs a wearable Iron Dome to protect them from blade and projectile attacks. Border security won't be enough because the Palestinians can fly over the border in ornithopters or tunnel through the sand. Mass surveillance is a technological solution that ultimately relies on human beings to interpret the data. Having the prescience to predict attacks before they happen is a rare gift, and the Israelis don't seem to have anyone with that gift.

Mass surveillance is a technological solution that ultimately relies on human beings to interpret the data.

Not if Palantir has anything to say about it.

Wait, wrong franchise.

Wait are we talking about Palestinians or Fremen?

So massive genocide and another mass wave of refugees from the middle east. Neo con pro Israel policies always end up being a disaster for Europe and the middle east. Why not an alternative plan, arabs get to live in the same town as their grandparents lived in.

So massive genocide

It is possible that Iran commits genocide against the Palestinians. Quite a move, first steering them towards committing atrocities against Israel, then murder them all when they show up in need of help.

Why not an alternative plan, arabs get to live in the same town as their grandparents lived in.

Honestly this is the best idea. Arabs get to live in the same town, but with Jewish masters and overlords. And if they start shitting stuff up, beat them with a large stick (literally) until they learn their lessons, the stick is very effective on those humans on which words don't have any effect. Also as subjects of the state of Israel, their incoming packages can all be legally inspected at will etc. (just like how the incoming packages of any Israeli Jew can be legally inspected by Israel) and any weapons easily confiscated without the ability of the former Gazans to be able to cry "oppression" and "blockade". Israel needs to make it clear that we are your rulers, just like it has done to the Israeli Arabs who are far more civilized than the Palestinians.

but with Jewish masters and overlords.

Why bring back slavery? If anything, the eastern European jews who have moved there recently should be ruled by the locals. The arabs have done a fairly good job at handling jewish minorities for the last millenia. It has been the natural order in much of the middle east with an arab ruling glass and ghetto jews being an underclass.

Yes, the Arabs have done a great job. That's why virtually all the Jews in their countries fled or were expelled, and mostly wound up in Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956%E2%80%931957_exodus_and_expulsions_from_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Syria#Post-1948

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Iranian_Jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Afghanistan#Anti-Jewish_campaign

It's not slavery any more than being the citizen of any democratic western country is slavery (Nozick may well have argued that that is still slavery, but most people would disagree).

It has been the natural order in much of the middle east with an arab ruling glass and ghetto jews being an underclass.

Sure, but the ruling Jews of modern day Israel are not Middle Eastern Mizrahim any more, they are high end Ashkenazim from Europe who are a superior breed, destined to rule over others in any fair system. Different people, different relative social structure.

As cheeky as this is, doesn't reasonably constitute an act of war?

The "proposal" is so autistic that I hope it is trolling, but to be fair each side does like 10 things per day that constitutes an act of war.

Against whom? The Palestiniains? Sure. They wanted a war, they got one.

Against Iran? It doesn't seem any more an act of war than Mexico or other nations cooperating with illegal immigration to the US.

This is all so tiresome. Since we are going wild with ambitious proposals, how about we deport the Jews instead?

This would have to take place some decades in the future, when the space tech matures a little. That, or we just give the Jews longer deadlines. Everybody (by that I mean mostly the US) does their best to convince the Jews that the promised holy land is, in fact, on Mars. They are then strongly incentivized, both through threats, as well as generous funding, to use their superior IQ to settle the red planet. The place is admittedly somewhat drier, but on the other hand, a lot more spacious and with no neighbors to complain. I'm sure they'll do fine.

Benefits of my plan:

-Space development dramatically accelerated.
-Final solution to Jewish settlement problem. Jews don't bother anyone and no one is bothering the Jews.
-The Palestinians can have their cursed patch of desert all to themselves.

This is excellent. Maybe Elon can send them some rockets.

We’ve had enough rockets, but thanks for the offer.

Chapelle already covered Space Jews.

On an unrelated note, how the hell can I get through these YouTube "you must watch ads" pop-ups?? I am on safari with adguard

Why don't you just hit the mute button and watch the ads? I don't understand why people complain so much about watching a few short seconds of advertisements in exchange for dozens of minutes of FREE video.

It's my understanding that, if you don't skip until the 30-second mark, then the ad counts as having been "watched", so the uploader still gets paid. There's at least one Chrome extension that you can set up to automatically skip ads after the 30-second mark. I don't know whether Safari has anything similar.

Mel Brooks before him:

“We’re Jews up in space.
We’re zooming along
protecting the Hebrew race

We're Jews out in space
If trouble appears
we put it right back in its place

When goyim attack us
We give 'em a smack
we'll slap them right back in the face

We’re Jews up in space.
We’re zooming along
protecting the Hebrew race"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sz7JGCj4Q5k

That was beautiful, wow.

Hilariously terrible idea. When you're relying on Iran to allow you to do things it doesn't want you to do on the basis of them being too squeamish to stop you, you know you've got a bad plan.

If you let them on to inspect for weapons, they can just shoot the crew and let the Palestinians take the boat back. If that doesn't work, they can just sink the boats. "It's terrible that the enemy forced us to kill these innocent civilians" is a time honoured rhetorical device, and it wouldn't even be wrong here.

Not to mention the passengers would be trying to kill you the whole time.

When you're relying on Iran to allow you to do things it doesn't want you to do on the basis of them being too squeamish to stop you, you know you've got a bad plan.

I'm not relying on this. Iran can murder all the Palestinians on camera as far as I'm concerned. It's a win for Israel and there's tons of footage of Persians murdering Arabs to broadcast to the Arab world. Arab/Persian conflict is a distraction from Arab/Jew conflict.

You'd need 1000 boats with 1000 person capacity to move a million refugees. Among the refugees would almost certainly be terrorists and crypto-militants. Obviously no weapons would be allowed on board, despite a small chance of smuggling efforts succeeding. So you will need a sizeable police force. And can you trust all of the police to maintain control of their weapons and populace, and not support some kind of mutiny?

Food and water could probably be handled.

Who is paying for this, and in charge? Israel? The UN? Someone will have to take responsibility for the Iran destination, and that will prove quite contentious. Iran can reasonably blockade and/or refuse port. Eventually conditions onboard deteriorate. Maybe the crew abandons ship? Iran could commandeer the ships and park them at the Port Authority of NY/NJ.

It's whimsical but seems quite unrealistic to me.

We just gifted like $100 Billion dollars to Ukraine. I think we can probably buy a few cruise ships to facilitate this.

As of December 2021, there were 323 cruise ships operating worldwide, with a combined capacity of 581,200 passengers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship

To put it into context: if we are talking about moving 1 million Gazans, then in Ukraine equivalent spending this is about $100k per person to cover the logistics of it.

Laughing at the idea of sending Hamas to Iran on The Disney Wish..

It typically carries 4000 passengers and 1500 crew members. Even assuming doubling up (even expensive cruises don't have a lot of cabin space), that leaves maybe 10,000 refugees per trip. Also would need to consider how much security is needed to prevent a mutiny and capture of the vessel by its passengers.

Or you need 100 boats with 1000 person capacity if each one takes 10 trips. I'm shocked at your suggestion that the Palestinians are a bunch of terrorists, rather than innocent victims of Israeli oppression!

Who is paying for this, and in charge? Israel?

As I see it, Israel + USA.

Someone will have to take responsibility for the Iran destination, and that will prove quite contentious.

USA and Israel can certainly provide tons of Israeli/American flag branded food/water/etc, which Iran can distribute as they see fit.

Someone will have to take responsibility for the Iran destination, and that will prove quite contentious. Iran can reasonably blockade and/or refuse port.

Yes, Iran certainly does have the ability to shoot guns at boats full of Palestinian refugees while the cameras broadcast videos of innocent women and children dying to the world. How is showing Iran to be bloodthirsty killers of Arabs and getting rid of Palestinians not a huge win for Israel?

Iran could commandeer the ships and park them at the Port Authority of NY/NJ.

Getting from the Meditterranean to the Persian Gulf is a far simpler logistical problem than Persian Gulf to America, and Iran is far less capable of logistics than Israel or the US.

Yes, Iran certainly does have the ability to shoot guns at boats full of Palestinian refugees while the cameras broadcast videos of innocent women and children dying to the world.

And then what does the world do? Send a strongly-worded letter? Sanction them? Maybe try to stop their nuclear program?

And then what does the world do? Send a strongly-worded letter? Sanction them? Maybe try to stop their nuclear program?

Just like the Palestinians, this isn't really Israel's problem anymore.

Keep sending Palestinians until there are no more Palestinians, of course.

At some point after Iran has established they're going to shoot, I think Israel loses their plausible deniability. "oh no Iran shot them AGAIN? What are the odds?" probably wouldn't come off very well.

Assuming they don't run out of boats and/or Palestinians who would prefer to be shot by Iran than by Israel first, of course.

Or you need 100 boats with 1000 person capacity if each one takes 10 trips.

Multiple trips are not realistic. I'm happy to explain why, but that shouldn't be necessary.

As I see it, Israel + USA.

Good luck with gaining access to Iranian ports.

Yes, Iran certainly does have the ability to shoot guns at boats full of Palestinian refugees while the cameras broadcast videos of innocent women and children dying to the world.

Refusing port does not imply shooting guns.

Getting from the Meditterranean to the Persian Gulf is a far simpler logistical problem than Persian Gulf to America

The destination is rhetorical. Iran can perform the same maneuver at any port of their choosing.

Your reply here is mostly fantasy.

Multiple trips are not realistic. I'm happy to explain why, but that shouldn't be necessary.

Please, explain.

Good luck with gaining access to Iranian ports.

Wow, so Europe can stop illegal immigrants from taking boats across the Mediterranean simply by refusing a port pass? Why haven't they thought of this?

The destination is rhetorical. Iran can perform the same maneuver at any port of their choosing.

This sounds like a problem for Iran and Saudi Arabia/the UAE/Oman/Pakistan (ports that are reasonably accessible to Iran) to work out amongst themselves. Pretty sure Israel can work out ways to stop a Suez crossing in the reverse direction if they need to.

Wow, so Europe can stop illegal immigrants from taking boats across the Mediterranean simply by refusing a port pass? Why haven't they thought of this?

I dunno about a port pass, but yes, they can. They have thought of this.

It's sometimes referred to as "turnback policy" under international maritime law, as I understand.

Foreign vessels have a right of innocent passage in a state’s territorial sea (up to 12 miles from shore) under article 17 LOSC. If passage is not innocent, such as when domestic immigration laws are breached, states can take necessary steps to prevent passage. For seaworthy vessels, this is generally unproblematic. It may be that the UK government expects to rely on some iteration of this principle.

But if a vessel determines and justifies that it is in distress, it can enter the state’s territorial sea, according to an exception in article 18 LOSC. The duty to render assistance is also still applicable, even where the state believes that migration offences have been committed by those in peril.

For this same reasoning, multiple trips to Iranian port will be denied. And when the first trip is denied, the boat remains full and unable to take on additional migrants.

Israel can of course do the same thing that African migrants to Europe are doing: ensure that by the time the Palestinians are 11.9 miles from Iran, they are in boats capable of traveling only 30 miles (i.e. not enough to cross the gulf to reach Saudi Arabia).

The Iranians can shoot them out of the sea, let them land on the beach, or even render assistance.

Kind of strange how Europe is incapable of turning back migrants, but sending migrants to Iran is of course impossible.

Europe is certainly capable of turning back migrants. They choose not to.

Yes, Europe “can’t” stop the boats in part because it’s not the migrants’ boats landing in Europe, it’s the NGO boats that pick them up just offshore near North Africa that are landing, and those boats are in large part literally funded by European governments like those of Germany, and those boats say they have passengers in distress when they return with the migrants.

with a plan I am shamelessly stealing from Greg Abbot and Camp of the Saints.

Greg Abbott is seeing success with his immigration policy because the people he’s bussing more or less by definition want to go somewhere deep in the country that may or may not be in Texas but definitely isn’t the Rio grande valley. ‘You can go to New York, LA, Denver, Chicago, or DC’ is an appealing pitch to such people.

Of course those cities don’t want them and he’s only willing to stop sending them if they stop coming, which those cities then advocate for the federal government to enforce(and he got his way, at least as far as barriers are concerned).

In contrast, the Palestinians want to live in Tel Aviv, not Iran, and there is no policy concession Iran can give to Israel that makes the Palestinians go away.

Greg Abbott is seeing success with his immigration policy because the people he’s bussing more or less by definition want to go somewhere

I already addressed this point. The Palestinians want to get on the boat and go to Iran because there's food in Iran, and none in Gaza.

The Palestinians didn’t want to go to Iran in the first place, and unlike the masses of economic migrants showing up at the Texas border, are controlled by a militant group of psychopathic terrorists. This makes relocating them much more difficult.

Step 1, just start rounding up Palestinians and putting them on boats

Usually the "and then a miracle happens" step is in the middle of a proposal, not at the very beginning.

I already mentioned the most extreme method needed to do this:

Maybe also Gaza is 100% blockaded and no food goes in, giving people an incentive to leave.

“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?

You’ve just now looked up the ‘48 war, then came up with a bunch of quotes to support your new-found opinion that just happens to mirror the same talking points as every other pro-Hamas person in the world? Is that supposed to be believable?

That actually is the truth yeah, I didn't have a particularly strong opinion on this, though I suppose I was never pro-Israel. I'm not pro-Hamas either, although, to be fair, I don't know who has the moral authority to actually punish them. Possibly only the Palestinians themselves. Reading up more on the history of Zionism prior to the partition, I'm increasingly of the view this was a bad idea. Two of the quotes came from The Intercept article I linked to, Netanyahu's from this thread, and the Sam Kriss article I read months ago when it came out.

Frankly, I don’t believe you. You’ve already stated that you think Israel “should never have existed”, and that we should “forgive Hitler” - whatever forgiveness to a dead man even means. Maybe he should apologize first. Of course, I have no way to prove that one way or another.

But if you really are new to the subject, I ask you to consider: before 1947, Jews were spread out all over mandatory Palestine. In Hebron, in east Jerusalem, in Kfar Etzion in Samaria. After 1949, every place conquered by the Jordanians and Egyptians - formerly mandatory Palestine - suddenly became judenfrei. The Jews were all mysteriously gone. On the other side of the armistice line, there still existed a mixed population. In fact, this happened all over the Middle East, where Jewish communities would suddenly vanish from Muslim countries. So tell me, please, why do you think these countries have any right to exist? They also have their own sectarian violence going on until today, of course, where minorities have not been totally wiped out yet.

(That article is awful, by the way. The kind of foreign misunderstanding that’s close to getting it, but then misses the mark so widely it almost makes me want to defend the government I was just protesting against. He actually thinks anyone wants to shut down electricity on Shabbat? Jesus, how about shutting up?)

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.

I agree it sounds menacing but I parse that as: the strong don't get surprised by a devastating terrorist attack Hamas has been planning for 2 and a half years almost in the open and then get sucked basically irrecoverably into an invasion of Gaza that causes enormous collateral damage on both sides that will skyrocket animosity and anger for decades to come.

They obviously failed at this "strong" ideal here but IMO, part of security and stability means convincing criminals and terrorists that it's futile to even try to do bad things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It does seem to me that Israel is going to try to use this incident to fully remove Palestinian from Israel forever. That’s actually the 4-D chess thing where Israel new of the attack and let it happen.

Honestly most of the regimes in the area probably want the issue settled and won’t care that much. The Saudis want to be friends for geopolitical aims. The Iranians if I had to guess don’t give a shit about Hamas other than they want to use them to prevent Arab-Israel friendship.

Want to bet?

I’ve got a pretty healthy skepticism for any theory which relies on that level of “4-D chess.” Israel doesn’t appear to have needed a manufactured consensus to get Gaza to this point; the cost-benefit is all wrong even before asking if there’s a simpler explanation.

I am willing to bet that Israel does not go further than this in an ethnic cleansing of the strip. Military action yes, continued blockade yes, targeted killings of civilians, no.

More concretely, my wager is they are asking civilians to clear out of North Gaza because they plan to occupy it and root out and destroy all of the tunnels and hopefully destroy supply caches and find hostages and treat everyone who gets in the way as Hamas. I expect they would leave when this mission is accomplished.

Sorry misworded. I don’t think they played 4-D chess and were just confused. I do think they met try to push for expulsion now.

So where do the 2 million Gazans go? Mass emigration is essentially impossible. No one wants these people. Genocide is even more unlikely as it would result in the withdrawal of U.S. support and, probably, the end of the Israeli state in the following decades.

Honestly not a clue. I mean they are like a hot potato no one wants them. Probably most likely is refugee camp in Egypt. Then they are stuck with them.

Egypt won’t let them in.

However many Palestinians survive the months long siege and bombardment and ground invasion will have to be dealt with somehow, and it sure won’t be by letting them roam through Israel. Lebanon and Egypt and Jordan don’t want them either.

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.

The British had control of the territory, but had decided to step out and leave it to be governed by the people who lived there - fair enough, right?

But of course some of the people who lived there were Jews and some of them were Arabs. So the partition plan was an attempt to ensure that British withdrawal would not result in war and ethnic cleansing.

The Arabs refused to accept it, so we got war and ethnic cleansing. Their only problem with that was that they were on the losing side.

What do you suggest should have been done instead of the partition plan? Just step out and let the chips fall where they may? The result would have been the same.

What do you suggest should have been done instead of the partition plan?

Give the Jewish people Alaska, or something, and let them do their "right of return" thing there?

I can see their side of things on a lot of issues there, but I dare you to look me in the eye and say that they picked a reasonable location for "the only place in the world where it's safe to be a Jew".

That's an argument against the Jews moving to Israel. By the time of the partition plan, they had already moved there. The partition was an attempt to deal with that reality.

Now, the Jews could indeed have not moved to Palestine, that's absolutely true. But I do not believe for a second if they had not done so that they would have been granted a homeland in Alaska.

But I do not believe for a second if they had not done so that they would have been granted a homeland in Alaska.

Why? It's a marginal state controlled by the same coalition that gave them Palestine.

For pretty much the same reason that the US has not given Alaska to the Kurds or to the Roma or to any other people group. Countries typically make decisions in their own interests. It's in America's interests to maintain ownership of Alaska.

This is true in Palestine as well. The British Empire shrank significantly in the postwar period as Britain decided that maintaining the Empire had become too costly. British rule didn't end as a favour to the Jews, they would have pulled out regardless.

The formation of Israel was borne out of Jewish agency, not the gift of western powers. For that reason it's not really accurate to say that any coalition "gave" them Palestine. Yes there was a partition plan, but that plan was rejected by the Arab side who immediately started a war to take over the whole territory, so it's not like everyone said "Oh well, the UN decided, we better let it happen then".

If the Jews were to have a nation in Alaska, they would have needed to create it themselves - just as they created Israel in our reality. Realistically, this is always going to mean fighting whoever else thinks they have a claim. In the case of Israel it was Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In the alternate reality it would have been the USA. I think they made the right choice.

Give the Jewish people Alaska, or something

Should've been part of Germany, if anything; they were the ones that started the shit that go-round.

Re your comment “it has to stop somewhere” why not today as opposed to 70 years ago?

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?

The UN didn't. The British did, both as the internationally recognised rulers of Mandate Palestine, and by virtue of having (if we could be bothered, which in the post-WW2 environment we couldn't) sufficient men, ships and guns to determine the outcome. The legal status of the 1947 partition plan was that it was non-binding advice (it was a General Assembly resolution, and only the Security Council can issue binding resolutions and only under specific circumstances) to the British. When Israel's Arab neighbours (most of which were nominally British allies) rejected the plan, the British government declined to enforce it and we basically bugged out and let the Jews and Arabs fight.

I was just reading an interesting paper last night about Zionist terrorism in the lead-up to the founding of Israel:

Zionist Terrorism and the Establishment of Israel (pdf warning)

Zionists were only given the territory of Palestine as a nation (rather than a home for a small segment of Jewry) because of the abundance of terrorist attacks that Zionists committed against the British, in some cases slaughtering civil servants and kidnapping politicians, in one case blowing up a boat of 250 Jewish refugees as a false flag (the refugee ship Patria). Once they secured the nation of Israel for themselves, they used brutal terrorism and psychological warfare on the Palestinians to get them to flee. They killed innocents in a village called Deir Yassin, audio recorded their cries for help, and then drove loud “sound trucks” around Palestinian villages which played the cries of women and children while threatening nuclear warfare and poison gas attacks —

The Jews, too, used Deir Yassin's memory effectively, both against the Irgun and Stern Gang and against the Arabs. Jacques de Reznier of the International Red Cross said, "News of Deir Yassin promoted a widespread terror which the Jews always skillfully maintained. "The Jews used Deir Yassin extensively in their psychological warfare campaigns designed to make the Arabs quit their lands. Horror recordings and sound trucks accompanied Jewish attacks. “Shrieks, wails and anguished moans of Arab women, the wails of sirens and the clangs of fire-alarm bells, interrupted by a sepulchral voice calling out in Arabic, 'Remember Deir Yassin' and 'Save your souls, all ye faithful! Flee for your lives! The Jews are using poison gas and atomic weapons! Run for your lives in the name of Allah!"

In that unsearchable 270 page master’s thesis from the ‘70s, what page is your quote from? Did you just happen to stumble upon this, and read it at your leisure?

It is searchable for me on iOS. Actually it was a top search when I plugged in “Zionist terrorism Israel”, because I wanted to understand how the early Zionists used terrorism and whether it was comparable to Hamas actions. I realized that some American gentile’s military thesis from the 70s is almost certainly less biased than the leading Israeli or Palestinian histories, so why not read it? It’s all cited anyway. My passage is from page 81.

And yes I read most of it, it’s legitimately interesting, would recommend

Very impressive, honestly.

So what is your position re: group responsibility? Are the Israelis of the time, or even today, accountable for the alleged actions of a few?

That’s something of a non-sequieter, I’d say. You’re a different profile, care to answer my question re: group responsibility?

Alright, does that hold to every people? Should Americans go back to Europe? Should all the Al-Masris in Gaza go back to Egypt?

Actually, is the population in Gaza responsible for what happened on October 7th?

More comments

There's a debate on whether Deir Yassin was really a 'massacre'. both the Jews and Arabs trumpeted up the atrocities, the Jews to encourage other Arabs to flee, the Arabs to encourage other Arabs to stand and fight. the Jews turned out to be correct.

Every group in Palestine had cause for spreading the atrocity narrative. The Irgun and Lehi wished to frighten the Arabs into leaving Palestine; the Arabs wished to provoke an international response; the Haganah wished to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; and the Arabs wished to malign both the Jews and their cause.

Hazem Nuseibeh, the news editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service at the time of the attack, gave an interview to the BBC in 1998. He spoke about a discussion he had with Hussayn Khalidi, the deputy chairman of the Higher Arab Executive in Jerusalem, shortly after the killings: "I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story. He said, 'We must make the most of this.' So he wrote a press release, stating that at Deir Yassin, children were murdered, pregnant women were raped, all sorts of atrocities."

Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun at the time of the attack, though not present at the village, wrote in 1977: The enemy propaganda was designed to besmirch our name. In the result it helped us. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah, was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. These two places overlooked the main road; and their fall, together with the capture of al-Qastal by the Haganah, made it possible to keep open the road to Jerusalem. In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces. Not what happened at Deir Yassin, but what was invented about Deir Yassin, helped to carve the way to our decisive victories on the battlefield ... The legend was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel.

The question is not about the legitimacy of Israel. Israel was founded on blood like any other state in the world. Before that the territory was british, and before that it was ottoman (turkish) for centuries. So do you think Turkey was the legitimate owner of this territory? Anyway they didn't get it peacefully from the crusaders, who took it by force from the arabs. Those arabs took it by force from the byzantine empire. I don't think I need to continue.

Nowadays, Israel is a strong state and a nuclear power. Perhaps it has no right to exist but it will exist anyway. The earlier you accept it, the earlier a more acceptable solution than this awful status quo can be found.

Nothing wrong with having your own country with ethnic preference for your kin and discrimination against non-kin, strong border walls, and brutality against foreign intruders. The issue is when Israeli/Israel supporters tell us we can't have it in our own country. For example the ADL as highlighted by Carlson. It's not the police brutality, the bombing of innocent civilians, the colonization... it's the hypocrisy.

Well, it wasn't clear from my comment but the brutality and the settlements are not necessary for Israel to exist, so they aren't justified at all. I mean, if you are searching for a peaceful solution and not to justify your own crimes.

Are you sure about that? They may be the most pragmatic solution after all. Why do you think they're doing it if they're not necessary?

Out of hate, perhaps? Or as a revenge? I'm pretty sure raping women is useless for the freedom of palestinians, it does not prevent hamas to do it. People do not always act in their best interests... if they did, there would be no suicide terror attack

My hypothesis for suicide attacks is that they would be a way to manage mental illness in the Middle-East.

While in the US disturbed, isolated teenagers may become fodder for gun control fed conspiracies, in the Middle-East they could serve as a tribute to the local islamists. While the family may not necessarily approve of the insurgents' actions, giving away their failson would be better than any other family member or other forms of extortions. If they do approve of the insurgency, then it may be the most effective way a particularly defective family member may contribute to it.

Anyway they didn't get it peacefully from the crusaders

That's because they got it from the Mamluks, who got it from the Ayyubids, who got it from the crusaders. The sands of the Levant have been watered by a lot of blood.

I think it’s still very unclear what Israel is going to do, honestly.

There is a possibility for something truly great that would shock the world here: do nothing. Just beef up defenses around Gaza so they don't catch them with their pants down again, but actually demonstrate what the high road looks like. Perhaps some will claim they have taken the high road many times, but I'm not so convinced.

Locking Gaza down is probably the right tactical decision (urban warfare sucks, urban warfare against military willing to used ununiformed and armed troops alongside an armed civilian populace that hates you sucks even more), but it's not politically viable (there's no appetite among the Israeli population nor the IDF would accept orders that don't cost enemies blood; until the hostages are returned or known dead kinetic actions are going to take too high a priority) and more importantly it doesn't really work over the long term.

Beefing up defenses around and boxing in Gaza still gets you kilodeaths among Gazans, they're just going to die to less kinetic means, and be more photogenic (and often even more innocent!) victims. Gaza just doesn't have the infrastructure to maintain consistent food, water, medicine, and power, Hamas isn't interested in developing that infrastructure, no other nearby country is interested in doing so (or can be trusted to do so without providing combat or dual-use materials), Israel can not maintain connection into the country without presenting new vulnerabilities. You're either kicking the can down the road until another high-profile civilian hostage crisis shows up, or somewhere in May of next year international pressure (correctly!) notices that you're basically starving hundreds of young children a day.

It's wild that water pipes are now dual-use technology. There's promotional video the Gazans put out themselves of them digging up functional water/sewer pipe infrastructure and fashioning them into rockets that are then fired into Israel. What on Earth can you do with such a deranged culture? The Gazans hate Israelis more than they love water, and they're getting exactly what they want.

Is it? They’re going to invade and set up a puppet government.

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.

What does this mean? The Jews in 2023 should just pack up and leave Israel for other countries because WW2 was supposed to be the end of these shenanigans? Why can't you say this to Palestinians?

(I agree stuff like "it's time to be cruel" isn't a good look)

They should have handled the situation differently back then, do anything other than the Nakba, but the way they acted shows they don't respect anything but their own power. Reading up more about the history, I'm just against Zionism as it was practiced, the people actually living there weren't liking it, and I really dislike that a displaced people could just decide to pass the buck on and displace other people, particularly when the ones doing the displacing are supposed to be civilized.

Either pack up and leave, or adopt a semi-pacifist policy towards Gaza: beef up the defenses around it, but there is to be no retaliation.

Even in the 70s the US was doing things in Vietnam that would be much more scandalous if it did today. There's been a lot of moral progress since the end of WW2 and I have trouble judging Israel's current population for things most of them had no hand in.

It sounds like your point boils down to: truly enlightened people would accept the sins of the past and surrender the place to the Palestinians and make a new life elsewhere. That sounds like a great standard but I don't think any people on Earth would rise to it.

(For a phantasmagoric twist, it would be nice if Palestinians were so touched by the offer that they offered to pack up instead and both sides had a eureka moment and moved towards a single state peace)

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.

I think the history of peaceful resolutions to conflicts (of which there are not many) is that the stopping point has to be now. You can't go back and re-litigate what happened 50 years ago or 20 or even 5. And this has problems of course. People who had their loved ones killed recently will not be ready to let it go. But if you want peace then you have to work on an agreement from where things are now.

Whether Israel should have been created after WW2 is irrelevant. Whether Israel should have been building new settlements or blockading Gaza is irrelevant. Whether surrounding nations should have attacked Israel in 1967 is irrelevant. Those things happened and are part of history. For a peaceful settlement enough people have to be willing to ignore that and negotiate based on what today looks like and on what they want tomorrow to look like.

Clearly that won't happen any time soon. Tensions are running too high. But at some point if there is to be a real long lasting peace deal (and that is by no means certain), then at some point in the future Israelis are going to have to get past the deaths that occurred at the weekend and Palestinians will have to get past the deaths happening now.

For Northern Ireland, they didn't try to roll back the clock to a prior point, the agreement is based upon agreeing that Northern Ireland is currently British, that this can change in the future with the democratic assent of the people and that individuals can be British citizens, Irish citizens or both. There is a lot more to it, but those are the main points that addressed what Nationalists wanted (to be Irish, for Northern Ireland to be able to be part of Ireland) and Unionists wanted (that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that they are and will remain British citizens).

As much as you have to learn history to not repeat it, sometimes that history will cause you to repeat it, if you cannot learn to let go of its emotional hold on your decision making. When it comes to deaths and hurt and war, if you want to create a peaceful outcome for the future, remember what happened, learn from it, let it inform you, but don't let it rule you.

And that is tough. It's especially tough if you have lost someone personally. It is hard to decouple when your father was killed by the IRA or your brother was shot by the UVF. Many Israelis and Palestinians will be out for blood to pay for the lives of their kin, that's an entirely normal human reaction, no matter who is to blame for the initial set of events which led us here.