naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
29503 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.
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
One of the most edifying experiences of my youth was an academic assignment in the GWOT era, when we were instructed to pick a terrorist group and study its formation and evolution. I knew everyone else would pick something Islamic, so I decided to pick something else to stand out, and I settled on Sri Lanka. For about 33 years (1976 to 2009), Sri Lanka saw a brutal civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, where the two sides could be neatly demarcated into separate ethnicities, separate religions, and separate languages - not dissimilar to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Tamils were represented by the LTTE, which was a terrorist organization and a separatist group seeking to carve out an ethnostate from Tamil-dominated regions of the country. But the LTTE was also a remarkably sophisticated pseudo-state; most terrorist organizations don't have their own navy, air force, or intelligence apparatus, which are all things that the LTTE put together during their war against the Sri Lankan state.
I won't rehash the disputes and grievances of the war, since they are predictable and your imagination can reliably fill in the details from what you know of other ethnic conflicts, including the one in Israel. All race wars are eventually the same. Long story short is that tens of thousands of people died on both sides, and numerous foreign actors including the US, Norway, India, the EU, and the UN tried to intervene and broker a peace, and the conflict settled into a cycle of atrocities->diplomacy->ceasefires->new atrocities->new diplomacy->new ceasefires, on and on. And then in late 2006, the Sri Lankan government essentially said "fuck this", and decided to wage concentrated, merciless, full-throated war against the Tamils. They brought out the kinds of heavy weapons that you usually reserve for wars against foreign states, and they used them without hesitation, and with very little regard for civilian-combatant distinctions. They killed and killed and killed until the LTTE was begging for a ceasefire, which they ignored, and then kept killing until the LTTE was ground into the dirt, their leadership massacred, their leaderships' families massacred, everything destroyed - until the LTTE had no capacity to fight or do anything anymore, at which point the Sri Lankans declared victory, and the war was over.
None of this was "legal" or "ethical" or "moral". Countless crimes against humanity were committed. But the war was over, and has shown no signs of returning in the almost 15 years since its conclusion. No more bombs in public places, no more midnight massacres on farms and villages, no more burning streets. What does it say of our enlightened modern era that two and a half years of bloodthirsty war did more to bring about peace than the preceding 30-something years of talking and diplomacy and give-peace-a-chance rigmarole?
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem. We used to know these things - all the population transfers and ethnic cleaning that took place after World War I and World War II were done with the understanding that you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long, and that an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future. We pretend to know better now, and to what end? To keep money flowing to NGOs, and hand out peace prizes to each other?
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
Israel would not have this specific problem of Hamas launching attacks from Gaza (that up until now, had been quite comfortably handled). But they might have other problems: a revival of pan-Arabism, a withdrawal of US and western support, the fervent determination of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Egypt to pursue development of nuclear weapons, etc.
Brutal, overwhelming force might solve one problem, but if in the process that creates three more, you are no farther ahead than when you started.
Israel has long-term plans. God, after all, has promised them the Holy Land, and they see a long-term way to achieve it. Incrementally expanding settlements in the West Bank every year and fighting off a spirited attempt from Hezbollah/Hamas once a decade might be a slow way, but so far it looks like a sure way. They no longer face an existential threat. They've mollified and bought off their formal rivals, and in the process surpassed them. They have ironclad security guarantees and economic support from the world's most powerful countries. Why risk all of that?
Part of what I think makes Palestine different is that they have hundreds of millions of other Arabs and other muslims supporting them. Once the Tamils were broken, they were broken- they had no path to recovery. But for Palestine, every single member of Hamas could suffer from heart attacks and die tomorrow, and all the weapons could be confiscated, but I don’t think the conflict would be permanently over. Because other groups who want to see Israel ended and Palestine established would work to recreate Hamas or a similar group, providing funding and weapons.
Part of what I think makes Palestine different is that they have hundreds of millions of other Arabs and other muslims supporting them. Once the Tamils were broken, they were broken- they had no path to recovery.
What about 70 million Indian Tamils, why didn't they support the LTTE?
Local Indian Tamil politicians occasionally campaigned on their behalf, and India even armed them in the 80s. It was India intervening as a peacekeeping force later that made the LTTE turn against them, culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, at which point the LTTE found itself pretty much friendless, with even their coethnics largely unwilling to touch them with a ten foot pole.
This feels 10-30 years dated. I don’t get the sense anyone besides a few poors give a shit about Israel in the Middle East now.
Iran and Saudis probably have a few who care but not a majority. Iran cares because a Saudi plus Israel partnership is extremely strong as a regional hegemon. And getting Israel to overreact might cause some issues for the Saudis. Those who care in Saudi society can probably ignored it so long as there are too many dead Palestinians.
I think you underestimate the amount of grass roots support for Palestine. Look at all the protests in Western countries in support of Palestine, before Israel even launched a counter-offensive. A lot of Muslims want to see a free Palestine and want to effectively remove Israel.
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
I've long felt that people who talk this way of such things have never engaged with war closer than playing a Paradox game.
What does it say of our enlightened modern era that two and a half years of bloodthirsty war did more to bring about peace than the preceding 30-something years of talking and diplomacy and give-peace-a-chance rigmarole?
Very true, which is why I support the genocide of all landlords and capitalists because they stand in the way of the socialist utopia and would just keep trying to destroy it if we left them alive. In fact, I might even extend this to genociding all humans because they can't stop polluting the earth.
No one is denying that if you kill anyone who opposes you, you can stop fighting instead of continuing a protracted engagement that drains resources and willpower. What is denied is that this is a moral thing to do. Ending war is not inherently a moral good. To have it as a terminal value is the same mistake the pacifists make when they insist the West should voluntarily disarm or leave the Soviets/Russians alone.
In fact, if I was going to be more cynical, I would guess that for some people, any solution to a problem is better than having to keep hearing about it, as if the real sin is that they were asked to pay attention to something other than their own lives. Funny how this forum would reject that idea if it were leftists calling for a ban on anything that cast black people in a negative light because that is a way of fighting racism.
And what of all the similar conflicts which were resolved without engaging in full-throated war? Northern Ireland is an obvious example. More importantly, this claim:
you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long
an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future.
That is a great argument for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, but not so great for killing all 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip, "everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers," in order to avoid 600 deaths of Israelis, or even 60,000. Because the latter is not a "greater atrocity" than the former.
A false dichotomy, because I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza, but only the option of killing Hamas, politically involved activists, and optionally, some of their families. I'd be immensely surprised if even that latter broader case encompassed anywhere near a million, maybe twenty or thirty thousand at most before people learned they needed to shut up.
The relevant calculus of death is (Israeli and Palestinian military and civilians who would die if the conflict was allowed to keep boiling) versus (The same class if a brutal campaign ended all appetite for further organized activity).
It seems eminently obvious to me that the former is comparable to the latter, if only because a ton of Palestinians already die because of Hamas provoking Israel.
Then, of course, a more rigorous approach considers second order effects. Of which there are multitudes.
I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza,
I'm pretty sure OP is proposing precisely that, since OP said, "But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem."
the Sri Lankan government essentially said "fuck this", and decided to wage concentrated, merciless, full-throated war against the Tamils. They brought out the kinds of heavy weapons that you usually reserve for wars against foreign states, and they used them without hesitation, and with very little regard for civilian-combatant distinctions. They killed and killed and killed until the LTTE was begging for a ceasefire, which they ignored,
That is on top of the quote I already cited, re "killing everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers,"
And they also say this: "I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer."
The bottom line is that if there is evidence that OP in fact would not have endorsed the killing of every Sri Lankan Tamil, had that been necessary, I would like to see it. OP is clearly endorsing that very idea.
I took it to mean that it would be a sufficient solution, at the time, but without any implication that it was necessary today, where far less than the utter annihilation of the Palestinian people will more than suffice.
I'll let him clarify his stance, if he wishes, but just because someone said Genocide X years ago would solve Y problem today, that doesn't mean they're suggesting the very same for Y today.
I don't mind it, honestly. But if some level of ethnic cleansing that falls short of total genocide would be an effective solution, then sure, go for that instead. It's worked out plenty of times in the past. What I object to is this idea that everything on that spectrum of atrocities, from population transfers to mass graves, should be declared off-limits.
Another example would be the Dayton Agreement in the Bosnian War, which specifically established a (creaky, unwieldy) state combining the two recently-slaughtering-each-other national units under one state. Sure, people have predict almost annually that this is the year when it comes to an end and B-H cracks, but it's still standing, remarkably.
To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
Just last week there was the police killing/monastery shootout. And the completely unrelated armor, artillery and mechanized border deployment that undeployed for reasons unrelated to international condemnation. Last year was the fight over license plates. Still standing though.
Heck, even the end of WWII didn't necessitate the Carthage-like destruction of Germany or Japan. The Allies stated their terms seeking (with very limited exceptions) unconditional surrender, and kept fighting until they got it. The Battle of Berlin was tremendously bloody and maybe even cruel, but seems to have marked a decided tipping point in how the German government (both, for several generations) would act toward Jews, Poles, and Russians. Post-war Japan looks very different from it's Imperial days. Neither people was totally wiped from the face of the Earth.
Of course, if Total Military Defeat were to consistently cause such actions, more recent attempts at such "nation building" would have been more successful. I wish I could say that OPs view is completely wrong, but I can't. It's morally reprehensible, and I really don't like it, but does seem to work sometimes.
W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
I think you might want to review what actually happened in Carthage. Though I suspect that if you consider denazification to be akin to mass slaughter, you are likely pushing an agenda rather than engaging seriously with the issue at hand.
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA. Ireland had a fully-developed spectrum of normal political parties and civil organizations, and they signed the Good Friday Agreement as a reflection of the overwhelming popular desire for peace. After that, any Irish group that wanted further conflict would lack a credible basis to do so. Who are you supposed to talk to in Gaza? Hamas is the only authority there, and the population's views are more aligned with Hamas than peace advocates would care to admit. Peace is nice if you can get it, but when the other side doesn't want it (and probably couldn't agree to it even if they wanted to, being an Iranian proxy), there's not really any solution besides a total purge.
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
Ukraine anshlussed on generous terms is better for Ukrainians than battered and destroyed Ukraine folded into the Russian state that has lost couple of million of their best people due to emigration or war casualties.
I have not seen shred of evidence that Russia entered the war with genocidal ambitions which doesn't make it that existential for the populace, unlike the state.
If you make the assumption that Russian victory in the meatgrinder is inevitable (big if, but Zelensky is doing his best to make it smaller lately) it is not unreasonable.
Even Ukrainian victory may not be worth it if it is pyrrhic enough.
"Ukraine anshlussed" is going to lead to millions of Ukrainians emigrating in any case, and would be a bleeding wound with continuous partisan activity that would require Russia continous brutality to quell.
Would you apply the same logic to Palestine? I don’t mean this as a gotcha; I was observing above that “one side’s unilateral surrender” is something that gets floated in every conflict. At least every one where the people dying are at a safe distance.
I'm not pro-Russia (who here is?) but yes Ukraine should seek peace and concede territory if necessary. I have little doubt that this would minimize human suffering.
The counterargument seems to be something along the lines of "We need teach Russia a lesson so they won't do it again. Remember Munich!"
Which is silly. Russia lacks the capacity to do it again.
I find the arguments of the warmongers very unconvincing. The use of the pejorative "pro-Russia" to describe those who would have peace feels like manufacturing consensus.
Which is silly. Russia lacks the capacity to do it again.
Even in my wildest anti-Russian fantasies do I not believe that Russia, if given a peace and concessions instead of some kind of "a lesson", would lack the capacity to do it again.
Exactly, if the war ceases right now at the current lines, Russia's ability to rearm stays constant or improves (as sanctions loosen or their enforcement becomes more lax). Ukraine's drops precipitously off a cliff as Western support evaporates. Ukraine needs Russia to see the invasion as being routed and done, not merely paused, because Russia will find itself in a more advantageous position in the future, and Ukraine needs the mental barrier of "starting a war of aggression on a neighbor" to be back in place, preferably with a little extra bracing from that neighbor having kicked their asses, to hope it doesn't get restarted again.
There are atleastafewaround. More if you count the ones who gesture at how terrible Russia’s actions are only as a justification for telling Ukraine to surrender.
I don’t think “pro-Russia” is a pejorative any more than “pro-Ukraine.”
But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
You would have many other exciting problems. I doubt that mass murder of X million people is actually effective.
Hitler tried, and as far as curbing Jewish political power and influence, or as increasing power of Germany, or as taking Lebensraum, or as promoting eugenics and purity of german race - all that goals failed miserably. Despite actually murdering millions of people.
Germans were thrown out of lots of territories post-WWII
Mostly as a revenge for Germans themselves attempting to conquer and settle into their neighbors' territories. Am I the only one who sees Germans as more analogous to the other side in this conflict?
I don't think Israel needs to literally kill everyone, but they do need to institute some sort of radical de-Palestinization. Go in, establish total martial law, destroy all mosques, convert the entire population to Bnei Noach, ban the Arabic language. These people got self-government and immediately voted a literal terrorist cell into power. Israel has no reason to treat Gaza any more leniently that the Allies treated Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
I wonder if modern communication and widespread prevalence of Islam will lead this to be less effective than your examples.
Like with Nazi Germany, the main source of Nazi ideology was Germany itself: if you wanted to learn about Naziism you had to go up against the occupation authorities that were against that. And even if there were Nazi groups that weren't repressed in Italy or something, you'd have a hard time finding and learning from them.
But that's clearly not going to happen here: Islam exists in many countries across the world and will explicitly talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict, so there's always going to be a supply of Islam for anyone in Palestine who wants to learn it.
Keeping it repressed doesn't just mean tearing down the mosques, it means keeping Palestinians from accessing the mosques in other countries, which would mean an unrealistic crackdown on all communication technology in the country, and probably needing to maintain that crackdown perfectly for decades against people from other countries actively seeking to break it.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
wraelk 1yr ago
There are further differences that seem to support your theory.
Nazism was also denounced by practically the entire world, or at least by those parts of it that had much influence. Since Islam counts as a religion and all parts of the world that have much influence have agreed that religions require protection, Islam receives protection in most of the world whereas Nazism did not.
The other very obvious difference is that Nazism had maybe a decade to take root, whereas Islam has had a good 1300 years. Nobody but a handful of German children, and those only briefly, experienced Nazism as a natural fact of life, whereas Islam is in the soil and water of much of the world.
The two don't really compare at all. So I'd agree with you.
On the other hand... Japan surrendered to the US! How were the Japanese able to swallow their pride in the face of total nuclear annihilation and decide that bending their knee to the West and adopting all of their customs was better than going down in a blaze of glory? But yet the Palestinians find this utterly unthinkable?
After that, though ... was the institution of the Japanese Emperor a blessing in disguise? Anti-terrorist tactics consider "decapitation strikes" killing enemy leaders to be high-value goals, but if there's nobody left at the top who's respected enough to order the foot soldiers to stand down then ipso facto the foot soldiers never stand down. From a moral standpoint it feels like assassinating a "mastermind" is greater justice than killing tons of poor grunts who merely got persuaded or coerced onto the front lines, but maybe the rules of war are more useful in the long run than the rules of anti-terrorism, if wars can come to an end but terrorism just goes on and on?
Yeah, he signed off on it about a week beforehand, and was clearly on board.
See also the “Early Showa period” section of this article. He was actively involved in managing war plans, though surely not to the extent of Hitler or Mussolini.
After the bombs his answer to the question ‘what if they refuse to keep you as emperor, will we fight on? ‘ was ‘of course’. I always have to think of this ridiculous man when people talk of the mythical ‘noblesse oblige’. Here was a man considered a god, whose subjects were killing themselves and others by the millions for him, who could not even take one ounce of responsibility – think of others for one second. Had he never heard of suicide?
It’s human I guess – if you tell a man he is noble, he is godly, he will believe it – and question his actions even less than he would have otherwise. His instinct will never be to turn towards the ragged masses and ‘give back’ (As far as he knows, he did not receive anything from them, so he couldn’t anyway) or sacrifice anything. These strictly hierarchical relationships are purely one-way.
Ever notice that, as, you rise through a company , both your salary and the respect you’re getting increase simultaneously ? It’s not like your superiors help you more when you take out the trash because noblesse oblige. It’s not complicated, the lower on the layer cake you are, the more shit you take. And Mr. Hito was never taking and always giving.
Because to a monarchist, the king or emperor is not the same as a CEO. They are, literally, the soul of the country. Even if many Japanese people die, as long as the emperor is in place Japan remains. So ‘the emperor should step down for the sake of the people’ is nonsensical, it’s saying that you should accept absolute defeat in exchange for not-absolute defeat.
As @dr_analog notes, this is how you manage to make huge changes to the culture of the country without mass uprisings. The emperor is still in place and has publicly given his assent to the new direction. There is continuity in the most visible way. Japan is still Japan.
Obvious solution to maintain the institution while holding the man responsible is suicide. Beyond the man, I woud question why such an institution who failed and was largely responsible for the militaristic and anti-democratic turn of japan should have been maintained in the first place. They made liars of “unconditional surrender’ to maintain this joke of an institution. I’m sure a continuation of the nazi party in germany would have done wonders at stability and limiting riots and such, but hey, they’re the ones who made a mess of it all in the first place, and so did he.
Starting the war with the US in the first place tests that theory to the limit.
No, it really doesn't. First of all, the US being a juggernaut of any sort is 20-20 hindsight. Second, the amount of "sensible" it takes to be convinced by two atomic bombs is quite low.
First of all, the US being a juggernaut of any sort is 20-20 hindsight.
How ? In WWI they were the decisive factor. In the washington naval treaties they commanded first rank (nominally equal to britain, but everyone knew, industrially far superior) . Major european power france accepted a 1,75 to 5 ratio to the US fleet, it's a huge disparity, making any serious contest impossible. And they couldn't even build that much. No one was treating the US as a lightweight.
Certainly the japanese understood they were screwed in case of a long attritional war against the US.
The Japanese were explicitly aware of US industrial capability.
[A]s we have a high prospect of winning in the initial stage of the war, we are convinced that we have an advantage in maintaining and reinforcing that national strength by utilizing that assured result compared to a waiting strategy until the enemy starts to oppress us.
Teiichi Suzuki, 5 November, 1941.
Japan’s strategy relied on exploiting China and the Dutch Indies to get enough industrial resources, especially steel and oil. The initial steps in this process had already antagonized the US, as seen in the Hull note. Since they expected the US to jump in any month, they decided to make it happen on their terms, snatch every resource and base possible, and hope for the best. Ideally, either the American will to fight would crumple, or the Axis would gain enough leverage to make intervention unappealing.
The Japanese were not displaced from their homeland and only temporarily lost control of Japan after their defeat. The Palestinians lost both their homes and control of Palestine permanently.
The emperor surrendered unilaterally against the wishes of his advisors. There is no god emperor in Gaza to make the Palestinians surrender against popular sentiment.
I’d guess it’s because Japan’s entire people were on the line, whereas Hamas identifies with other Arabs/Muslims such that the loss of Palestine doesn’t mean total defeat.
If they managed to find some countries that were willing to take in millions of Palestinians, the Israelis maybe would be able to pull off a soft ethnic cleansing. But they could not pull off a murderous, "kill everybody" genocide without alienating a very large fraction of their current supporters, including Jewish ones. Israel would become similar to what North Korea is today. It would probably not collapse, but it would have big difficulties in retaining nearly as many high-skilled, intelligent people as it has now unless it made it illegal for them to leave the country, and it would have bigger difficulties in convincing Jews from elsewhere to move there than it does now. Only the most hardcore patriots would want to live in an armed camp that is known for having recently committed one of modern history's biggest genocides, and I doubt that the overlap between such hardcore patriots and the kind of high-skilled, intelligent people who are the bedrock of any sophisticated modern economy is very large. Which is not to say that there are no intelligent pro-genocide people, of course. There are plenty. But they are an exception. In the heat of the moment after having had your nation attacked, almost anyone could feel genocidal desire. I think it's likely that a huge number of otherwise compassionate Israelis feel that way right now, for example. But there's a difference between feeling it every now and then and actually being ok with your military doing it and seeing the videos of what it looks like. Even the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust a secret from both Germans and people in other countries, but in today's world there would be no way to keep a violent genocide of Palestinians a secret.
Ethnic cleansing was done before, even with tacit agreement of USA. One such example is Operation Storm that took place on the tail end of Balkan Wars, where Croats basically ethnically cleansed the area that was the stronghold of autonomous republic of Serbs. Croats killed several hundreds of Serbs and basically evicted hundreds of thousands from their land.
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
There's good reason that Britain pacified Afghanistan in the 19th century with far weaker supply chains and less glaring technological disparities, while it and the rest of NATO left in the 21st with their tail tucked between their legs.
Violence is the voice of the unheard, but it's also a universal language. If you can't solve most problems with violence, you're not using enough, and quite often, or at least here, a more dispassionate analysis will show that a quick burst of brutal violence obviates the need for more down the line.
At any rate, I think Western countries are cowardly in large part because most of the wars they've fought of late don't matter, lacking the stakes of their populations being genocided or living conditions cratering.
Yes, there is really no war that cannot be won by killing enough of the enemy. Only the number that counts as ‘enough’ and the precise definition of ‘enemy’ vary. Less than 2000 American soldiers died in Afghanistan, it simply wasn’t a serious war. More Israelis have likely died since Saturday.
I find it ironic that you prefer the Israeli way of doing things that excludes you while you want to migrate to the west which if it followed the logic you praise, would rightfully exclude you from it.
But your logic in favor of nationalist violence implies far more besides that. Lets just say your general stance is completely incoherent. Is nationalist violence good when the Israelis do it only, or do you secretly find the west stupid for not being more hostile to you? Although the implications of your rhetoric of more violence no problems raises far more negative implications about what global powers should do. Or even specific countries fearing a dismal fate for their people in the future. Or should have done in the past.
I don't actually agree but I do think enough force and hostility is needed against those who deserve it and to promote civilization and justice. But adoring violence as the solution is wrongheaded and leads to a world under fire and predation of inoccents. Which you show no concern to avoiding. Obviously not letting someone with your backstabbing mentality come to the west would be the sane course. And stopping mass migration of foreigners in general. Which is good in general. But say some white nationalist when India had no nukes wanting to nuke India because they sew it as a threat would be an extremely immoral conduct.
I fail to see any sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism here. Rather, you are sucking up to Jewish ultra-nationalism.
I find it ironic that you prefer the Israeli way of doing things that excludes you while you want to migrate to the west which if it followed the logic you praise, would rightfully exclude you from it.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial. My idle musings about my potential path to American citizenship, should it ever materialize, was met with almost unanimous approval from pretty much every side of the political compass, be it here or on Reddit.
Can you say the same for the typical Palestinian? Hardly.
Is nationalist violence good when the Israelis do it only, or do you secretly find the west stupid for not being more hostile to you?
Case by case please. Certainly no to the latter, since they would be turning down a win-win deal.
I fail to see any sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism here. Rather you are sucking up to Jewish nationalism.
Ah yes, you (might) have genuine appreciation for the Palestinian cause, I suck up to the Jews. Well, if Mossad wants to pay me, I'll take it, I'm circumcized for medical reasons, but close enough! I am hardly uncritical of the Jews as a whole, given that they formented much of Western Wokism despite it now biting them in the ass.
I made no claim to show "sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism" at all, so you're forgiven for missing it.
What I am saying is that I prefer the outcome of Israeli dominion and pacification of the contested territories, and I don't particularly care about how they go about it. I do not think violence is anti-sacred and verboten, it's just as fungible as most things are as far as I'm concerned. Tribalism? If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
Please try to look for more subtle arguments than those before you claim that support for a particular nation engaging in violence and "tribalism" extends to universal adulation of such. It all depends on the outcome.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial.
Why should I, as an American, give you the benefit of that doubt? Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village? There are over one billion Indians and I'd bet very few of them are pro-Western doctors. Why are you privileged to paint all Palestinians with a broad brush, but I'm not privileged to paint all Indians with a broad brush?
You can give me whatever you like, it matters not in the least unless you're my immigration officer.
Besides, while I'm just as fond of rhetoric as the next person, I'm pretty certain you know that's not true.
And if it's not true, then I suggest you wait till evidence arises that I'm street-shitting in California and not Calcutta, though the former is a cherished pan-American tradition practised by junkies and hobos of any ethnicity. Surprising few Indians among them, to be sure, but if that's not additional reason to support Affirmative Action in immigration to mitigate disparities, what is?
You're missing the point. If you're advocating that Palestinians should be painted with a broad brush based on their worst stereotypes, then why shouldn't Indians be given the same treatment? Your argument presupposes I treat you as an individual, while you want to deny such treatment to any individual from Gaza.
Am I? I have very little outright animosity against a Palestinian who doesn't support Hamas, I think it's a shame they're caught up in the conflict. Yet clearly they're not numerous or vocal enough to be in charge, or they'd have chased them out of town after tarring and feathering them.
For what it's worth, I don't think Israeli reprisals are utterly indiscriminate, while innocents will be caught in the crossfire, I expect those who die to be selected from Hamas than their allies far more than a random sampling would expect. The friends and family being blown up with a Hamas terrorist are significantly more likely to be sympathizers. As for hospitals and schools, with a captive population, perhaps Hamas should reconsider stashing their ammunition there, in a calculated move to curry international favor when Israel blows them up.
Evidently that's enough for me to look the other way, or even cheer for the Israelis. I deny that your analogy works at all really.
Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village?
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
By way of explanation, I was trying to highlight the most uncharitable view of his countrymen that I could think of in order to illustrate a point. I tend to be pro-Israel, but the repeated calls on this board for treating every Gazan as a Hamas terrorist up to the point of advocating for summary execution without evidence or even requirement of specific wrongdoing based on the assumption that all of them are predisposed towards violence rubs me the wrong way. While I understand there's a difference between making broad statements about groups on the other side of the world and actually singling out individual posters, one of my problems with the more racist-leaning elements on this board is that advocating for certain policies is easy when you assume that only other people will be affected by them. I don't put @self_made_human into this category, nor do I assume he is of the character I alluded to. The comment certainly wasn't intended to offend, but I believe I have more contact with actual hoi polloi working-class conservatives than the average poster here, and I can assure you that the kind of people who take the position he's advocating for are the same kind of people who refuse to patronize gas stations owned by Indians and Pakistanis and complain about local Nepali refugees meditating on their lawns. Anyway, I apologize.
the repeated calls on this board for treating every Gazan as a Hamas terrorist up to the point of advocating for summary execution without evidence or even requirement of specific wrongdoing
Well, there are, uh, a lot of posts happening on this topic so I apologize if this sort of thing is genuinely slipping through. I don't see every comment that gets reported, and there are other moderators, but I, at least, have yet to see a single comment in the queue that meets this description, even though I've seen several comments in the queue claiming that this sentiment is being expressed here, somewhere.
(I don't doubt that some comments might be reasonably interpreted this way, but presentation matters. So long as no one explicitly says "all Gazans should be assumed terrorists and shot on sight," less direct claims like "I just don't see how Israel has clear options when it comes to clearly distinguishing between guilty Hamas and innocent Gazans, here" should be interpreted more charitably.)
(I also tend to object to people making sweeping characterizations of "this board" while themselves disclaiming such characterizations; you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. The way you've done it here is relatively mild, but still, I don't think it is beneficial for you, or anyone, to approach conversations here as me-against-the-Motte's-hivemind.)
I don't necessarily mind thought experiments that encourage people to put themselves in someone else's shoes, either, but still it would probably be best to not illustrate those thoughts in terms of the direct personal application of an unflattering stereotype of a user's professed identity.
For what it's worth, I think this comment from over the weekend, and its relative lack of pushback, is what may be leading people to believe that people are saying things like this.
Dude, you support mass murder and are praising a state that excludes you from it for its nationalism.
You are definitely a hypocrite.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial. My idle musings about my potential path to American citizenship, should it ever materialize, was met with almost unanimous approval from pretty much every side of the political compass, be it here or on Reddit.
You are an antiwestern racist who doesn't respect the native peoples human rights to national self determiantion and sovereignity and have said you would vote for the political party the democrats which is the most unhinged in said direction. Also, you are not part of the Western people you are replacing and making a minority in their own country but part of the colonization and discrimination. When you arrive to the USA you will benefit from discrimination in your favor and join the forces of discrimination against the natives. Which you are screwing by displacing and replacing in their own land.
Your migration is not the same as small migration from and towards a country that respects it self, and is sustainble, but part of colonization.
The Israelis care about numbers and not being overwhelmed by foreign ethnic groups and you praise them for it. Why? Because you are hypocritical.
Ah yes, you (might) have genuine appreciation for the Palestinian cause, I suck up to the Jews.
I show no bias in favor of the Palestinians by opposing mass murder and foreign occupation. I attacked the Palestinians for having a muslim fanatical imperialist mentality, actually. I dislike both Hamas, have a negative view about the fanaticism of Muslims in general, and dislike Israel, have a negative view of Jewish fanaticism in general. I am very much willing to condemn different factions. I complained about historical nazis, I complained about the groups I mentioned, I oppose those with a pushover mentality and I oppose those who are fanatical violent racist supremacists for foreign groups too. Or even for their own.
Its like there is a choice outside of this scumbag behavior that one can choose.
Just cause you support genocide and mass violence in favor of the Jews, don't mistake your own indecency for those of others.
You really are a non Jew who favors Jewish supremacy and mass murder in Israel. Own for it. Now as for why you are sucking up to Jewish extremism, is part of your antiwestern agenda, since the western establishment pushes the same racism against natives and unhinged racism in favor of the Jews as you do. You are willing to support mass murder and Jewish ultranationalism for social status within circles that Jewish supremacy has some valiance like the rationalists.
In any case your racist double standards and hypocricy betrays your lack of philosophical sophistication.
What I am saying is that I prefer the outcome of Israeli dominion and pacification of the contested territories, and I don't particularly care about how they go about it. I do not think violence is anti-sacred and verboten, it's just as fungible as most things are as far as I'm concerned. Tribalism? If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
Is that you being the westernized Indian? Supporting mass murder as something to not care about and push aside? Maybe like the Jewish migrants in Palestine, you will support this logic against the natives of the western country you will live in. Seems you are quite willing to support colonialism, if it serves your interest.
Masss murder and ultranationalists who abuse the human rights of others winning is worth it because reasons, is not a valid argument.
If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
The Germans hold records of patents per capita in europe and the Japanese were also much more succdessful than other Asians. And the British contributed much more to humanity than India in modernity. Is mass murder in favor of ethnic domination of these countries good then? Should the British have pacified India harder? What kind of abuse of logic is this?
Israel will still be standing without committing atrocities against the Palestinians. You have never come close to making the work to justify your claims in favor of mass murder.
I am glad you exposed how you and others here are Jewish supremacists. Oh the crocodile tears spent about certain forms of extremism when a different one is the most common one instead.
And your way of thinking would justify a smarter group going around the globe murdering the natives and replacing them everywhere, while promoting hardcore fertility for themselves.
All the liberal ideology you aligned with is hollow. You know what you support aligns more with, right?
It is insane to support mass murder of Palestinians because you consider Jews superior.
While, I think HBD is true, and the anti HBD ers want to silence it so they can get away with being racists under the "overepresentation is due to oppression" narrative, it does seem that when it comes to the Jews in particular we do have HBD leading to the most vile extremism of you and others supporting mass murder which is a very real danger that has materialized.
Although, I think a narrative with HBD is partly to blame and the general ideology of Jewish superiority and they can do no wrong is also directly related. The narrative that connects human biological difference with the right to destroy other groups because yours is superior does deserve to be a taboo. I still am against antiHBDism ideology and the narrative it connects with, but a certain ideology related with HBD should also be kept down.
Dude, you support mass murder and are praising a state that excludes you from it for its nationalism.
Remind me why should I care? I have no plans on going to Israel, except on vacation. After they've dealt with people bombing the concerts, and not just with poor reviews.
The fact that it nominally discriminates against me, yet I still support it, ought to show that I have principles beyond whether or not one side or another is rooting for me.
Now, do tell me how the Palestinians would react to an atheist Indian from a culturally Hindu background shacking up with them? Assuming I was daft enough to. Let's hope the circumcision pulls its weight again.
You are an antiwestern racist
A pro-western racist, or at least a believer in HBD making most claims of rampant racism obsolete in the West, come on dawg. Don't tell me that that is disqualifying for citizenship, or else a large chunk of the West would have to relocate.
In any case your racist double standards and hypocricy betrays your lack of philosophical sophistication.
What does your inability to see that people can and do care about very different things than you do say about you?
Is that you being the westernized Indian? Supporting mass murder as something to not care about and push aside?
I am large. I contain multitudes.
Masss murder and ultranationalists who abuse the human rights of others winning is worth it because reasons, is not a valid arguement.
Agree to disagree?
The Germans hold records of patents per capita in europe and the Japanese were also much more succdessful than other Asians. And the British contributed much more to humanity than India in modernity. Is mass murder in favor of ethnic domination of these countries good then? Should the British have pacified India harder? What kind of abuse of logic is this?
I suppose it's yet another forgivable sin to not read every single comment posted on the Motte, but rest assured that I am on record stating that I believe that a counterfactual world where the British remained in charge of India for decades longer than 1947 would likely have lead to a better outcome, at least for the Indians.
If the Brits and Germans were fighting somebody as profoundly unsympathetic as I find the Palestinians, then sure? Say what you will about India, but we give back more than we take, especially in the talented diaspora I hope to represent.
Israel will still be standing without commiting attrocities against the Palestinians.
Vice-versa.
And your way of thinking would justify a smarter group going around the globe murdering the natives and replacing them everywhere, while promoting hardcore fertility for themselves.
All the liberal ideology you aligned with is hollow. You know what you support aligns more with, right?
If they're accused of murdering the natives, they're not putting their all into it. Then again, the Jews came first, so they're the oppressed native people fighting for the side of freedom and liberty /s
Once again, I never claimed to be a liberal. At most, I'm a classical liberal, with libertarian sympathies, and I could add a dozen more qualifiers to that list. Your attempt to fit me into a convenient bucket leaves my limbs, my dick, and most of my brains sticking out.
While I think you have a point about the forgotten utility of full scale war, I wouldn't characterize the suppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka as a genocide. Nor does the Israeli's potential suppression of the Palestinians require the moniker. That's simply edginess on your part.
I won't split hairs over terminology. Regardless of the moniker, we live in an age where any useful action has been deemed verboten by our modern understanding of martial morality. This grants an advantage to any group that lacks similar moral compunctions.
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem.
What seems to be needed is some kind of uh, ultimate, uh, resolution, of the uh, Jewish problem[ of non-Jews existing in their vicinity]. Perhaps one of the greatest question that has ever posed itself to uh, Jews.
So to speak. Some form of uh, physical removal?
understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem. We used to know these things - all the population transfers and ethnic cleaning that took place after World War I and World War II were done with the understanding that you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long, and that an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future. We pretend to know better now, and to what end? To keep money flowing to NGOs, and hand out peace prizes to each other?
The Jews are one of the groups closest to your mentality actually based on both rhetoric and action. There is a constrain related to muslim world having its own similar solidarity and fanaticism. And where do you expect Palestinians to go as they are further ethnically cleansed and mass murdered as per your final solution? How is this better for the people involved who are mass murdered? And how would after the crimes you advocate be done, avoid things like what happened in Lebanon after mass migration of Palestinians there?
Genocide as the end of ethnic conflict is myopic way of seeing it. In actuality, genocidal empires are prone to find another group and do to them likewise. Moreover, historically one group out to genocide X leads to Z acting similiarly and you get mass murder. Such escalatory spilar reached that point to begin with because that was the favorable course. That is, if groups follow a greedy path to the extreme, you are going to get ethnic conflict. Although yeah ethnic conflict is rather plausible in non homogeneous societies with human tribalism being what it is. That is why progressive supremacists support diversity because they want to create a coalition to lord over and oppress the native people.
Of course, I would not suggest that people should be pushovers. But the Jews are not the group that are pushovers, to the contrary they benefit from others being pushovers towards their own aggression. And of course from unhinged rhetoric of non Jews in favor of Jewish extremism. Tolerance of Jewish fanaticism is the reason that Israel has escalated the situation already this far. As for the Palestinians, the Islamic fanatics of Hamas also provide no happy solutions.
The best historical solution to the conflict was to keep these two people separate in two seperate states controlled by more moderate nationalists over the current leadership.
In the current case, Israel avoiding massive warcrimes like people here advocate is the sane immediate next step. Already their rhetoric about animals, destroying gaza strip, removing water. Rather than seeking reprisals towards military targets, there is the logic of racist annihilation of the ethnic enemy.
It does show that all the rhetoric of so, so, so many here about bad nationalism, tolerance, human rights, genocide denial of 80 year old genocides being of such a moral afront, being nice, whines about racism etc, etc are just the hollow words of hypocrites who align with the most unhinged nationalism and racism of a Jewish hue and even from a political coalition of the far right that is particularly and genuine extreme in said direction.
And of course that you can get away with this rhetoric in favor of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinians without a ban is precisely because of what group you have chosen to target. It's why it would be a good thing if the kind of people who run institutions, including internet forums started to get punished for the kind of unhinged bipartisan (i.e. progressive supremacist or Israeli jewish supremacist) extremism they have been tolerating and encouraging.
People here unironically care and are more passionate in arguing about people denying past genocide involving the jews, than people promoting current genocides in favor of the Jews.
I don't know about others, but I argue against Holocaust deniers not because I have any sort of pro-Jewish agenda but simply because I think that Holocaust denial theories are very implausible and most people who adhere to them do so for emotional reasons rather than intellectual ones. So when I see them, I have the same kind of mental reaction that I would if someone came here and started arguing that the Apollo moon landing never happened, or if someone started arguing that Christianity is literally true.
And of course that you can get away with this rhetoric in favor of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinians without a ban is precisely because of what group you have chosen to target.
You can probably get away with arguing for mass murder and genocide of pretty much any group here as long as you write it in a sufficiently dispassionate-sounding, academic style.
I do find unhinged pro-genocide rants distasteful, but so far at least, somewhat to my surprise, I haven't actually seen anything too barbaric here. Maybe I just need to keep reading this thread further, lol. It would not surprise me to see some.
Or maybe spending a lot of time on 4chan has made Motteizens' occasional murderous rants seem relatively tame to me in comparison.
I’m not convinced that it’s the genocide part that’s important. The solution is to break the will of people to continue to resist. It can be done without killing everyone, but it has to be done with exactly that goal in mind — by the time the smoke clears the very idea of attempting to start a battle with the other side should be unthinkable.
This is exactly correct, and I think it is the true aim of some of the Israeli leadership at this point. That breaking point may be very far along the line however, given the experiences of the 20th century, and I'm not convinced the Israelis have the will to go as far as they will need to.
The analogy above someone used of the war with Japan is a good one: in that case the US acted continually as if their goal was the complete subjugation of the Japanese people at any cost, if not through unconditional surrender then by annihilation. That approach works, but you have to follow it - you can't bluff at it.
So you are interested in enough mass murder so Palestinians will accept anything Jews do and will never even think of attempting to start a battle with the other side.
I am pretty sure you are pointing trivialities and it is the genocide you support as a solution that is important and not the fact that it leads to the defeat of your enemy like you pretend.
A pro-Palestine rally in Sydney has featured the same kind of naked antisemitism that is increasingly common at these sorts of events - in this case including chants of "fuck the Jews".
However, unlike America which has a first amendment to protect offensive speech, Australia is not so squeamish about cracking down on wrongthink. Conservatives tried (and failed) some years back to change the federal law that makes it illegal to "offend or insult" a person on the basis of race, and state-based racial vilification laws carry criminal penalties. States recently have been banning the swastika and other Nazi symbols too.
So, how does this get applied when the racial vilification is coming from Labor-voting Muslims rather than One Nation-voting whites? Well, we got an indication today:
NSW premier Chris Minns said the police’s decision to allow the protest was “operational”.
NSW police have launched an investigation and the premier warned anyone caught taking part in “racial vilification or incitement of hatred or incitement of violence” would be charged. He described the scenes at the Opera House as “abhorrent”.
“To have some people celebrate atrocious indiscriminate killing and kidnapping in Israel is appalling,” he said.
“This is the opposite of the dynamic multicultural community we want in NSW and Australia. Racial epithets were thrown at the Jewish community by the mere fact that they were members of the Jewish community which is shocking and abusive and potentially a crime.”
To be clear, I supported the unsuccessful move to amend the Racial Discrimination Act and generally think that expressing odious views should not be illegal. But I'm also a big believer in the even handed application of law, and given that the country decided to reject the argument that "people have a right to be bigots" (as Brandis put it), I'm going to give myself a pass to enjoy watching some of the less pleasant parts of society get an involuntary legal education.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
AshLael 1yr ago
The question I keep coming back to when I see these pro-Palestinians-murdering-Jews rallies is, "why are these people here?". That's my instinctual response to seeing this in New York, Toronto, Sidney, really any nice, polite, Anglo-founded civilization. Don't get me wrong, I understand why they want to be here, there's all sorts of material goods to be gained by moving to nice, polite, Anglo-founded civilizations. What I mean is how did we wind up with a set of policies that allowed immigration of people that were going to bring their old ethnic hatreds and import them to nice, polite, Anglo civilizations. I can't really begrudge black Americans for holding a grudge over American history and I certainly will grant that Native Americans have a point or two. But why the hell did we add a set of people with Middle Eastern grievances to celebrate the barbaric murder of Jews?
This is, of course, rhetorical and I am familiar with the history of immigration in these countries, but I just can't get past that being my sentiment every time. Whether people have a right to be bigots or not, Sydney didn't need to invite them in to do on the steps of the Opera House. The people that want to engage in desert barbarism should be doing so in said desert, not in Times Square.
Many Irish-Americans supported the IRA, and indeed one can imagine, Native Americans complaining about why these Anglos came here and brought all their nonsense from the Old World, with their Protestants and Catholics and Monarchists and so on.
You're starting from a premise that Anglos didn't bring their grievances with them, and I don't think that is clearly true. In fact the truth is, I think everywhere we go, (people in general) we always bring our grievances with us. From Puritan settlers to Quakers and on, you can see those grievances impact on today. Why do you think PA has such restrictive liquor laws compated to say Texas?
We can just over a long enough period, replace our old grievances with new ones that better fit our new situation. It just takes time.
Give it a minute and just like Irish-Americans complaining more about blacks in Boston, or Polacks somewhere else, everyone will get proper new grievances against the people next door instead. Yes, yes Israel is bad, but have you seen that they want to put a half way house just down from the mosque?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
SSCReader 1yr ago
Many Irish-Americans supported the IRA
Yeah, and it wasn't great!
Native Americans complaining about why these Anglos came here and brought all their nonsense from the Old World, with their Protestants and Catholics and Monarchists and so on.
As above, I think the Natives have something of a point. If nothing else, I surely wouldn't be inclined to tell them that it's actually pretty normal and that they're a bunch of bigots for not welcoming it. The parallels obviously stop making sense in short order, but I think we can confidently say that the squabbles of Europeans being brought to Americans shores sucked for the people that were the previous residents of those shores.
My views largely align with yours. I wish Australia had true freedom of speech backed in our Constitution. Alas, looks like I'll have to settle for your rules applied fairly your rules selectively applied to benefit you.
This is a great example of selective enforcement and Who Whom. White nationalists would never be allowed to undertake the same protest. Particularly without filing a 'Form 1' with NSW Police (or Notice of Intention to Hold a Public Assembly) as was the case with the Pro-Palestinian rally.
Beyond this, this type of ethnic tension is endemic in multi-cultural societies. As I said recently regarding the Sikh assassination in Canada, political agitators who cannot leave their old countries' grudges at the door when emigrating to the West should fail the character test and be denied citizenship.
As I said recently regarding the Sikh assassination in Canada, political agitators who cannot leave their old countries' grudges at the door when emigrating to the West should fail the character test and be denied citizenship.
This is going to fail the disparate impact test - and it'll probably count as antisemitic too given how many jews are Israeli partisans. I happen to agree with you that it is a good idea, but you're not going to be able to get the left to agree to a policy that effectively translates to mostly allowing white and asian immigrants.
Which is interesting considering how people openly talk about genociding Palestinians. They aren't really shown as humans and politicians openly talk about how they various war crimes should be commited against them. Funny how talking about turning Gaza into glass isn't hate speach but we aren't allowed to criticise the people of Israel. I hardly think the police would crack down on fuck the Russians at a pro Ukraine rally.
Right wingers get kicked off twitter for proposing mild measures to reduce immigration. Israelis can cheer on mass bombing of Palestinians, blocking food and electricity to civilians and demolishing their homes and churches without consequence.
Could you show me some examples of politicians saying what you believe to the the equivalent here?
I’ve certainly seen things about bombing Gaza, but this comes immediately after a terrorist attack, and there is an implied “let/force the civilians to leave”.
Here's a politician in the Israeli legislature from Netanyahu's party Likud calling for Israel to use their nuclear weapons rather than ground forces. "Doomsday weapons" is the thinly veiled euphemism Israelis often use to refer to their officially unacknowledged but open secret nuclear arsenal.
Jericho Missile! Jericho Missile! Strategic alert. before considering the introduction of forces.
Doomsday weapon! This is my opinion.
May God preserve all our strength
After seeing those Khaazar Milkers, I'm sympathetic. Unless you also intend to tell me that the "gas the Jews" chanting alongside it wasn't intended to be an invitation to huff nitrous, an authentic Australian pastime if I've heard one.
Honestly, one of the primary benefits of the US seceding from British influence by force was a ground-up reconstruction of its legal system and implicit constitution. While the average Westerner who doesn't think too hard might look at comparable standards of living in the Commonwealth and the US, they have very different presumptions underlying their judicial system and tolerance for political incorrectness.
I live in a very progressive part of the US. I had a moment earlier today when I was surrounded by some Jewish community members/friends, and they were talking about how difficult it's been at work for them this week, because they have to put up with many of their coworkers saying "horrible things" (read: things that they don't agree with regarding the recent events). These community members are the same people who went spouting all manners of progressive talking points in so many inappropriate and unnecessary contexts over the past 5 or so years, from BLM, to covid, to Trump derangement syndrome, and so many more issues.
I'm sure I wouldn't like what these people's coworkers are saying, but I find myself feeling more than ever wanting to say to these people, "So what? You can't have everyone agree with you". I guess I'm now an expert at being around people who say things that make my blood boil. I put up with progressives at work, in my social circles, in my local community events, in stores, who constantly barrage me with their unsolicited progressive message. I not only never say anything anymore, but I act as if I'm completely unbothered. As a result, I find myself having very little sympathy, but a lot of empathy for these pro Israel progressives. I'm sure the irony is completely lost on them, but it makes me wonder how certain people can go through life with so little perspective that they feel so put upon by people with different viewpoints, yet cannot fathom that they may make others feel that way with their own, and that maybe they're wrong to do so.
There’s a lot of wiggle room in “things that they don’t agree with”. The last week has had a lot of public statements that range from disagreements on strategy and ethics for a difficult ground war to questions related to the cycle of violence to ‘that live-streamed mass shooting was faked and if it wasn’t it was a political conspiracy‘ to literally complaining The Final Solution didn’t go far enough. The imprecision of the rest of your post does not really make clear what you’re engaged with.
There’s perhaps a steelman where even the most extreme sides of that spectrum did not have a even or honest application against the Red Tribe (both that Damore was not tolerated, and that the Blue Tribe equivalents to Alex Jones were), and I’d probably agree with you for a significant part of it. But outside of the irony of it all, I don’t really see how much info there is in people only noticing when their ox is on the line.
Because, from their perspective, they’re obviously right, and everyone else is obviously either evil or straight up insane. Yes, enough exposure to contrary evidence might change their minds. But they don’t have it.
You're singing my song. I've had to deal with this over, and over, and over, and over. It's tiresome. The most common incarnation is when they're not sure they can enjoy the work of this celebrity or that celebrity anymore because they did something that was insensitive to this group or that group.
You ask "how certain people can go through life with so little perspective that they feel so put upon by people with different viewpoints, yet cannot fathom that they may make others feel that way with their own, and that maybe they're wrong to do so." (I'm tired and so I'm using direct quotes.) The answer is that.. "it's just different". People who reason emotionally will use their emotions as a justification, and if you can get them to verbalize it, they'll say "it's just different."
All people see themselves as the center of their universe, but only a minority recognize that they do. If you see yourself as the center of the universe and have no cause to correct for that assumption, decisions of "right" and "wrong" will be based entirely on emotion, all the time. No meta level reasoning necessary, because it's not like your feelings can be wrong.
I'm not rational. But I admire rationalists. And that so many people flagrantly disregard the need to be less biased irritates me to no end.
If you see yourself as the center of the universe and have no cause to correct for that assumption, decisions of "right" and "wrong" will be based entirely on emotion, all the time. No meta level reasoning necessary, because it's not like your feelings can be wrong.
Not only that, but that person is also bombarded nearly non-stop with progressive messaging. Media, Universities, Federal Government, and social circles are all telling this person that they are 100% correct.
What are their coworkers saying that your Jewish friends think is ‘horrible’? I can’t imagine people are saying genuine pro-Hamas stuff in a progressive regular workplace in the US, this isn’t a decolonial reading circle at Columbia.
Thankful as ever it would be considered weird to discuss politics seriously in my workplace.
I can’t imagine people are saying genuine pro-Hamas stuff in a progressive regular workplace in the US, this isn’t a decolonial reading circle at Columbia.
You might need to expand your imagination, though it's mostly as @haroldbkny says, stuff about Israel being to blame because of their oppression of the Palestinians. Me, I stay out of that, if there's going to be sectarian violence between the Muslims and the Jews at the workplace, I don't want to be around.
(Ha ha no, it's not really the Muslims who are posting stuff like that; our Muslims are not Palestinian and mostly not even Arab. It's white people)
I think in the context of the conversation I was having, it was mostly regarding people saying that Israel was to blame for any and all violence Hamas may do. It's also worth noting that some of the people involved work at universities, where such sentiment is more common.
How many of those Jews offended by this terrible statement were fully onboard with the George Floyd riots? The party line was that those riots were the language of the unheard, a reaction to oppression, and a civil rights movement. How many George Floyd's have Israeli police or soldiers made in Gaza?
A person who supported BLM riots, who is progressive politically, but has found a sudden sympathy for using military action to reduce wanton violence by a marginalized minority?
With the reports of Egypt notifying Israel in advance of an impending attack, people here and elsewhere have wondered if Bibi maybe let the attack slip through on purpose to consolidate power. Overnight he went from dealing with protests against his judicial reforms and the draft to having those problems disappear and securing the full backing of a broad unity government with his former opposition.
An overwhelming majority of 86% of respondents, including 79% of coalition supporters, said the surprise attack from Gaza is a failure of the country's leadership...
Furthermore, almost all of the respondents (94%) believe the government has responsibility for the lack of security preparedness that led to the assault on the South, with over 75% saying the government holds most of the responsibility...
A slim majority of 56% said Netanyahu must resign at the end of the war, with 28% of coalition voters agreeing with this view.
In addition, 52% of respondents also expect Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to resign.
In addition, most respondents also noted that they do not trust the government to lead the war on Gaza, though the poll was held prior to former defense minister Benny Gantz joining an emergency unity government on Wednesday evening.
Is there any way for Bibi to hold onto power? If not, what might the future look like?
If he knew it was coming the way to consolidate power would have been a thousand Palestinians dead in the attack, a handful of civilians, and a 100 IDF. Looking extremely competent as you crush a massive attack as it happens boost support. Instead he looks incompetent. I guess you would make Hamas think your weak but have everything in place to crush the attack.
The only 4-D chess move for letting the attack happen would be getting the world to accept that Palestine and Israel can not exists together and getting global community to look the other way as you create 2 million refugees and someone like Egypt reluctantly accepting them.
Egypt wont accept them, though. Sane regimes don’t let millions of terrorists in, and Hamas is literally a splinter group from Al-Sisi’s main opposition.
To say nothing of the usual prejudices against Palestinians.
If he knew it was coming the way to consolidate power would have been a thousand Palestinians dead in the attack, a handful of civilians, and a 100 IDF. Looking extremely competent as you crush a massive attack as it happens boost support.
I think Netanyahu's going to retire or be shoved out of the public sphere regardless of what extent he 'knew' an attack was coming. The pre-October doctrine where Gaza was left to Hamas with business relations, a jobs program, and occasional missile exchanges and shooting atrocities was Netanyahu's brainchild, a major bet that no matter Hamas' public doctrine it wouldn't do anything as an organization outside of The Usual. It was a sad and bloody sort of 'deescalation', where a 'win' for Hamas was a gentleman's agreement for the Israeli's to not explode every member of Hamas' senior leadership, but they had eight years of that and it was a lot nicer for Hamas leadership than exploding, and the rule brought everyone to this.
((Separately, the emphasis on the failed judicial reform bill in a lot of these theories is kinda goofy. Netanyahu didn't win, but neither did Biden get a SCOTUS expansion. They gambled some political capital and lost; it's not the end of the world.))
((Separately, the emphasis on the failed judicial reform bill in a lot of these theories is kinda goofy. Netanyahu didn't win, but neither did Biden get a SCOTUS expansion. They gambled some political capital and lost; it's not the end of the world.))
I'm not sure what you mean by either of these, Netanyahu was successful in his judicial reform bill, pending SC review; Biden was against the SCOTUS expansion and never tried.
I think it's more the optics of six months of large scale protests disapearing overnight, but I agree that wouldn't have driven Bibi to do something so crazy. I think it might've been unclear, but part of why I made that post was to illustrate how unlikely it was that he let the attack go through given that polls show what many people would have suspected, that it was bad for his own own political future.
In a monumental, highly controversial decision, the High Court of Justice strikes down legislation passed earlier this year that curtailed judicial oversight of the government, annulling for the first time in Israel’s history an element of one of its quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.
The court split almost down the middle over the highly contentious legislation, which eliminated judicial use of the “reasonableness” standard — the only significant law from the government’s judicial overhaul agenda to have been passed so far. Eight justices vote in favor of striking down the law, while seven vote to uphold it.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I've long felt that something essential was lost from the post-WWII world when we decided to define riots, pogroms, ethnic cleaning and genocide as atrocities that the civilized world could never tolerate, rather than as social technologies that humanity developed to bring permanent resolutions to seemingly intractable problems.
One of the most edifying experiences of my youth was an academic assignment in the GWOT era, when we were instructed to pick a terrorist group and study its formation and evolution. I knew everyone else would pick something Islamic, so I decided to pick something else to stand out, and I settled on Sri Lanka. For about 33 years (1976 to 2009), Sri Lanka saw a brutal civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, where the two sides could be neatly demarcated into separate ethnicities, separate religions, and separate languages - not dissimilar to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Tamils were represented by the LTTE, which was a terrorist organization and a separatist group seeking to carve out an ethnostate from Tamil-dominated regions of the country. But the LTTE was also a remarkably sophisticated pseudo-state; most terrorist organizations don't have their own navy, air force, or intelligence apparatus, which are all things that the LTTE put together during their war against the Sri Lankan state.
I won't rehash the disputes and grievances of the war, since they are predictable and your imagination can reliably fill in the details from what you know of other ethnic conflicts, including the one in Israel. All race wars are eventually the same. Long story short is that tens of thousands of people died on both sides, and numerous foreign actors including the US, Norway, India, the EU, and the UN tried to intervene and broker a peace, and the conflict settled into a cycle of atrocities->diplomacy->ceasefires->new atrocities->new diplomacy->new ceasefires, on and on. And then in late 2006, the Sri Lankan government essentially said "fuck this", and decided to wage concentrated, merciless, full-throated war against the Tamils. They brought out the kinds of heavy weapons that you usually reserve for wars against foreign states, and they used them without hesitation, and with very little regard for civilian-combatant distinctions. They killed and killed and killed until the LTTE was begging for a ceasefire, which they ignored, and then kept killing until the LTTE was ground into the dirt, their leadership massacred, their leaderships' families massacred, everything destroyed - until the LTTE had no capacity to fight or do anything anymore, at which point the Sri Lankans declared victory, and the war was over.
None of this was "legal" or "ethical" or "moral". Countless crimes against humanity were committed. But the war was over, and has shown no signs of returning in the almost 15 years since its conclusion. No more bombs in public places, no more midnight massacres on farms and villages, no more burning streets. What does it say of our enlightened modern era that two and a half years of bloodthirsty war did more to bring about peace than the preceding 30-something years of talking and diplomacy and give-peace-a-chance rigmarole?
I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer. But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem. We used to know these things - all the population transfers and ethnic cleaning that took place after World War I and World War II were done with the understanding that you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long, and that an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future. We pretend to know better now, and to what end? To keep money flowing to NGOs, and hand out peace prizes to each other?
Israel would not have this specific problem of Hamas launching attacks from Gaza (that up until now, had been quite comfortably handled). But they might have other problems: a revival of pan-Arabism, a withdrawal of US and western support, the fervent determination of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Egypt to pursue development of nuclear weapons, etc.
Brutal, overwhelming force might solve one problem, but if in the process that creates three more, you are no farther ahead than when you started.
Israel has long-term plans. God, after all, has promised them the Holy Land, and they see a long-term way to achieve it. Incrementally expanding settlements in the West Bank every year and fighting off a spirited attempt from Hezbollah/Hamas once a decade might be a slow way, but so far it looks like a sure way. They no longer face an existential threat. They've mollified and bought off their formal rivals, and in the process surpassed them. They have ironclad security guarantees and economic support from the world's most powerful countries. Why risk all of that?
More options
Context Copy link
Part of what I think makes Palestine different is that they have hundreds of millions of other Arabs and other muslims supporting them. Once the Tamils were broken, they were broken- they had no path to recovery. But for Palestine, every single member of Hamas could suffer from heart attacks and die tomorrow, and all the weapons could be confiscated, but I don’t think the conflict would be permanently over. Because other groups who want to see Israel ended and Palestine established would work to recreate Hamas or a similar group, providing funding and weapons.
What about 70 million Indian Tamils, why didn't they support the LTTE?
Some support was certainly present.
Local Indian Tamil politicians occasionally campaigned on their behalf, and India even armed them in the 80s. It was India intervening as a peacekeeping force later that made the LTTE turn against them, culminating in the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, at which point the LTTE found itself pretty much friendless, with even their coethnics largely unwilling to touch them with a ten foot pole.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This feels 10-30 years dated. I don’t get the sense anyone besides a few poors give a shit about Israel in the Middle East now.
Iran and Saudis probably have a few who care but not a majority. Iran cares because a Saudi plus Israel partnership is extremely strong as a regional hegemon. And getting Israel to overreact might cause some issues for the Saudis. Those who care in Saudi society can probably ignored it so long as there are too many dead Palestinians.
I think you underestimate the amount of grass roots support for Palestine. Look at all the protests in Western countries in support of Palestine, before Israel even launched a counter-offensive. A lot of Muslims want to see a free Palestine and want to effectively remove Israel.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've long felt that people who talk this way of such things have never engaged with war closer than playing a Paradox game.
Very true, which is why I support the genocide of all landlords and capitalists because they stand in the way of the socialist utopia and would just keep trying to destroy it if we left them alive. In fact, I might even extend this to genociding all humans because they can't stop polluting the earth.
No one is denying that if you kill anyone who opposes you, you can stop fighting instead of continuing a protracted engagement that drains resources and willpower. What is denied is that this is a moral thing to do. Ending war is not inherently a moral good. To have it as a terminal value is the same mistake the pacifists make when they insist the West should voluntarily disarm or leave the Soviets/Russians alone.
In fact, if I was going to be more cynical, I would guess that for some people, any solution to a problem is better than having to keep hearing about it, as if the real sin is that they were asked to pay attention to something other than their own lives. Funny how this forum would reject that idea if it were leftists calling for a ban on anything that cast black people in a negative light because that is a way of fighting racism.
More options
Context Copy link
And what of all the similar conflicts which were resolved without engaging in full-throated war? Northern Ireland is an obvious example. More importantly, this claim:
Is empirically false, because violence between such groups is the exception, not the rule
That is a great argument for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, but not so great for killing all 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip, "everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers," in order to avoid 600 deaths of Israelis, or even 60,000. Because the latter is not a "greater atrocity" than the former.
A false dichotomy, because I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza, but only the option of killing Hamas, politically involved activists, and optionally, some of their families. I'd be immensely surprised if even that latter broader case encompassed anywhere near a million, maybe twenty or thirty thousand at most before people learned they needed to shut up.
The relevant calculus of death is (Israeli and Palestinian military and civilians who would die if the conflict was allowed to keep boiling) versus (The same class if a brutal campaign ended all appetite for further organized activity).
It seems eminently obvious to me that the former is comparable to the latter, if only because a ton of Palestinians already die because of Hamas provoking Israel.
Then, of course, a more rigorous approach considers second order effects. Of which there are multitudes.
I'm pretty sure OP is proposing precisely that, since OP said, "But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem."
They made the comparison to the Tamil situation, in which the vast vast majority of Sri Lankan Tamils were obviously not killed.
What they said was this:
That is on top of the quote I already cited, re "killing everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers,"
And they also say this: "I understand that it's difficult to convince Jews that genocide is the answer."
The bottom line is that if there is evidence that OP in fact would not have endorsed the killing of every Sri Lankan Tamil, had that been necessary, I would like to see it. OP is clearly endorsing that very idea.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I took it to mean that it would be a sufficient solution, at the time, but without any implication that it was necessary today, where far less than the utter annihilation of the Palestinian people will more than suffice.
I'll let him clarify his stance, if he wishes, but just because someone said Genocide X years ago would solve Y problem today, that doesn't mean they're suggesting the very same for Y today.
He is clearly advocating for it in principle. Look at his very first sentence.
@CriticalDuty care to comment to resolve this?
I don't mind it, honestly. But if some level of ethnic cleansing that falls short of total genocide would be an effective solution, then sure, go for that instead. It's worked out plenty of times in the past. What I object to is this idea that everything on that spectrum of atrocities, from population transfers to mass graves, should be declared off-limits.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn’t the solution to the Troubles and the Good Friday accord speak to an ability to accomplish the same through peace?
Another example would be the Dayton Agreement in the Bosnian War, which specifically established a (creaky, unwieldy) state combining the two recently-slaughtering-each-other national units under one state. Sure, people have predict almost annually that this is the year when it comes to an end and B-H cracks, but it's still standing, remarkably.
To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
More options
Context Copy link
Just last week there was the police killing/monastery shootout. And the completely unrelated armor, artillery and mechanized border deployment that undeployed for reasons unrelated to international condemnation. Last year was the fight over license plates. Still standing though.
More options
Context Copy link
Pinochet seems like another example though that was ideologically driven.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Heck, even the end of WWII didn't necessitate the Carthage-like destruction of Germany or Japan. The Allies stated their terms seeking (with very limited exceptions) unconditional surrender, and kept fighting until they got it. The Battle of Berlin was tremendously bloody and maybe even cruel, but seems to have marked a decided tipping point in how the German government (both, for several generations) would act toward Jews, Poles, and Russians. Post-war Japan looks very different from it's Imperial days. Neither people was totally wiped from the face of the Earth.
Of course, if Total Military Defeat were to consistently cause such actions, more recent attempts at such "nation building" would have been more successful. I wish I could say that OPs view is completely wrong, but I can't. It's morally reprehensible, and I really don't like it, but does seem to work sometimes.
W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
More options
Context Copy link
https://www.spiegel.de/international/denmark-s-myths-shattered-a-legacy-of-dead-german-children-a-355772.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification
Carthage-like destruction is a fairly accurate summary of what the Allies did to Germany after WWII.
I think you might want to review what actually happened in Carthage. Though I suspect that if you consider denazification to be akin to mass slaughter, you are likely pushing an agenda rather than engaging seriously with the issue at hand.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA. Ireland had a fully-developed spectrum of normal political parties and civil organizations, and they signed the Good Friday Agreement as a reflection of the overwhelming popular desire for peace. After that, any Irish group that wanted further conflict would lack a credible basis to do so. Who are you supposed to talk to in Gaza? Hamas is the only authority there, and the population's views are more aligned with Hamas than peace advocates would care to admit. Peace is nice if you can get it, but when the other side doesn't want it (and probably couldn't agree to it even if they wanted to, being an Iranian proxy), there's not really any solution besides a total purge.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Presumably the end of the war would have likewise been achieved by the establishment of independent Tamil Eelam.
Yes, any war could be resolved by one side's unilateral surrender. Ukraine could end the war tomorrow too.
As unreasonable as I think it is, I’ve seen pro-Russia posters make that exact argument.
Ukraine anshlussed on generous terms is better for Ukrainians than battered and destroyed Ukraine folded into the Russian state that has lost couple of million of their best people due to emigration or war casualties.
I have not seen shred of evidence that Russia entered the war with genocidal ambitions which doesn't make it that existential for the populace, unlike the state.
If you make the assumption that Russian victory in the meatgrinder is inevitable (big if, but Zelensky is doing his best to make it smaller lately) it is not unreasonable. Even Ukrainian victory may not be worth it if it is pyrrhic enough.
"Ukraine anshlussed" is going to lead to millions of Ukrainians emigrating in any case, and would be a bleeding wound with continuous partisan activity that would require Russia continous brutality to quell.
More options
Context Copy link
It is possible.
Would you apply the same logic to Palestine? I don’t mean this as a gotcha; I was observing above that “one side’s unilateral surrender” is something that gets floated in every conflict. At least every one where the people dying are at a safe distance.
More options
Context Copy link
well, generous terms that would be actually kept are not viable with Russia
More options
Context Copy link
You clearly weren't reading some of the rhetoric coming out of Ria Novosti in January of 2022.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not pro-Russia (who here is?) but yes Ukraine should seek peace and concede territory if necessary. I have little doubt that this would minimize human suffering.
The counterargument seems to be something along the lines of "We need teach Russia a lesson so they won't do it again. Remember Munich!"
Which is silly. Russia lacks the capacity to do it again.
I find the arguments of the warmongers very unconvincing. The use of the pejorative "pro-Russia" to describe those who would have peace feels like manufacturing consensus.
Even in my wildest anti-Russian fantasies do I not believe that Russia, if given a peace and concessions instead of some kind of "a lesson", would lack the capacity to do it again.
Exactly, if the war ceases right now at the current lines, Russia's ability to rearm stays constant or improves (as sanctions loosen or their enforcement becomes more lax). Ukraine's drops precipitously off a cliff as Western support evaporates. Ukraine needs Russia to see the invasion as being routed and done, not merely paused, because Russia will find itself in a more advantageous position in the future, and Ukraine needs the mental barrier of "starting a war of aggression on a neighbor" to be back in place, preferably with a little extra bracing from that neighbor having kicked their asses, to hope it doesn't get restarted again.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Minimizing the present value of human suffering is not, and never has been, the primary aim of a nation at war.
More options
Context Copy link
There are at least a few around. More if you count the ones who gesture at how terrible Russia’s actions are only as a justification for telling Ukraine to surrender.
I don’t think “pro-Russia” is a pejorative any more than “pro-Ukraine.”
none of those are examples of being "pro Russian" and I doubt any of them would self-identify as pro-Russian
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You would have many other exciting problems. I doubt that mass murder of X million people is actually effective.
Hitler tried, and as far as curbing Jewish political power and influence, or as increasing power of Germany, or as taking Lebensraum, or as promoting eugenics and purity of german race - all that goals failed miserably. Despite actually murdering millions of people.
(and for ethics: I reject genocide as a solution)
Germans were thrown out of lots of territories post-WWII where they had historically lived.
This worked.
Yes, exiling people tends to work better and successes are more common there.
More options
Context Copy link
Mostly as a revenge for Germans themselves attempting to conquer and settle into their neighbors' territories. Am I the only one who sees Germans as more analogous to the other side in this conflict?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think Israel needs to literally kill everyone, but they do need to institute some sort of radical de-Palestinization. Go in, establish total martial law, destroy all mosques, convert the entire population to Bnei Noach, ban the Arabic language. These people got self-government and immediately voted a literal terrorist cell into power. Israel has no reason to treat Gaza any more leniently that the Allies treated Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
I wonder if modern communication and widespread prevalence of Islam will lead this to be less effective than your examples.
Like with Nazi Germany, the main source of Nazi ideology was Germany itself: if you wanted to learn about Naziism you had to go up against the occupation authorities that were against that. And even if there were Nazi groups that weren't repressed in Italy or something, you'd have a hard time finding and learning from them.
But that's clearly not going to happen here: Islam exists in many countries across the world and will explicitly talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict, so there's always going to be a supply of Islam for anyone in Palestine who wants to learn it.
Keeping it repressed doesn't just mean tearing down the mosques, it means keeping Palestinians from accessing the mosques in other countries, which would mean an unrealistic crackdown on all communication technology in the country, and probably needing to maintain that crackdown perfectly for decades against people from other countries actively seeking to break it.
There are further differences that seem to support your theory.
Nazism was also denounced by practically the entire world, or at least by those parts of it that had much influence. Since Islam counts as a religion and all parts of the world that have much influence have agreed that religions require protection, Islam receives protection in most of the world whereas Nazism did not.
The other very obvious difference is that Nazism had maybe a decade to take root, whereas Islam has had a good 1300 years. Nobody but a handful of German children, and those only briefly, experienced Nazism as a natural fact of life, whereas Islam is in the soil and water of much of the world.
The two don't really compare at all. So I'd agree with you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On the other hand... Japan surrendered to the US! How were the Japanese able to swallow their pride in the face of total nuclear annihilation and decide that bending their knee to the West and adopting all of their customs was better than going down in a blaze of glory? But yet the Palestinians find this utterly unthinkable?
The Japanese weren't all initially able to do so. Tens of thousands of soldiers tried to kidnap their Emperor and assassinate their Prime Minister to stop the surrender, and that was after two nukes (plus a few tens of millions of incendiary bomblets) had already been dropped.
After that, though ... was the institution of the Japanese Emperor a blessing in disguise? Anti-terrorist tactics consider "decapitation strikes" killing enemy leaders to be high-value goals, but if there's nobody left at the top who's respected enough to order the foot soldiers to stand down then ipso facto the foot soldiers never stand down. From a moral standpoint it feels like assassinating a "mastermind" is greater justice than killing tons of poor grunts who merely got persuaded or coerced onto the front lines, but maybe the rules of war are more useful in the long run than the rules of anti-terrorism, if wars can come to an end but terrorism just goes on and on?
More options
Context Copy link
Because Hirohito was more sensible than any member of Hamas (and perhaps any Palestinian).
Did Hirohito start the war? He certainly made the surrender decision but did he decide to launch Pearl Harbor?
Yeah, he signed off on it about a week beforehand, and was clearly on board.
See also the “Early Showa period” section of this article. He was actively involved in managing war plans, though surely not to the extent of Hitler or Mussolini.
After the bombs his answer to the question ‘what if they refuse to keep you as emperor, will we fight on? ‘ was ‘of course’. I always have to think of this ridiculous man when people talk of the mythical ‘noblesse oblige’. Here was a man considered a god, whose subjects were killing themselves and others by the millions for him, who could not even take one ounce of responsibility – think of others for one second. Had he never heard of suicide?
It’s human I guess – if you tell a man he is noble, he is godly, he will believe it – and question his actions even less than he would have otherwise. His instinct will never be to turn towards the ragged masses and ‘give back’ (As far as he knows, he did not receive anything from them, so he couldn’t anyway) or sacrifice anything. These strictly hierarchical relationships are purely one-way.
Ever notice that, as, you rise through a company , both your salary and the respect you’re getting increase simultaneously ? It’s not like your superiors help you more when you take out the trash because noblesse oblige. It’s not complicated, the lower on the layer cake you are, the more shit you take. And Mr. Hito was never taking and always giving.
Because to a monarchist, the king or emperor is not the same as a CEO. They are, literally, the soul of the country. Even if many Japanese people die, as long as the emperor is in place Japan remains. So ‘the emperor should step down for the sake of the people’ is nonsensical, it’s saying that you should accept absolute defeat in exchange for not-absolute defeat.
As @dr_analog notes, this is how you manage to make huge changes to the culture of the country without mass uprisings. The emperor is still in place and has publicly given his assent to the new direction. There is continuity in the most visible way. Japan is still Japan.
Obvious solution to maintain the institution while holding the man responsible is suicide. Beyond the man, I woud question why such an institution who failed and was largely responsible for the militaristic and anti-democratic turn of japan should have been maintained in the first place. They made liars of “unconditional surrender’ to maintain this joke of an institution. I’m sure a continuation of the nazi party in germany would have done wonders at stability and limiting riots and such, but hey, they’re the ones who made a mess of it all in the first place, and so did he.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, it really doesn't. First of all, the US being a juggernaut of any sort is 20-20 hindsight. Second, the amount of "sensible" it takes to be convinced by two atomic bombs is quite low.
How ? In WWI they were the decisive factor. In the washington naval treaties they commanded first rank (nominally equal to britain, but everyone knew, industrially far superior) . Major european power france accepted a 1,75 to 5 ratio to the US fleet, it's a huge disparity, making any serious contest impossible. And they couldn't even build that much. No one was treating the US as a lightweight.
Certainly the japanese understood they were screwed in case of a long attritional war against the US.
More options
Context Copy link
The Japanese were explicitly aware of US industrial capability.
Teiichi Suzuki, 5 November, 1941.
Japan’s strategy relied on exploiting China and the Dutch Indies to get enough industrial resources, especially steel and oil. The initial steps in this process had already antagonized the US, as seen in the Hull note. Since they expected the US to jump in any month, they decided to make it happen on their terms, snatch every resource and base possible, and hope for the best. Ideally, either the American will to fight would crumple, or the Axis would gain enough leverage to make intervention unappealing.
Always have an exit strategy.
http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/event/forum/pdf/2011/17.pdf
More options
Context Copy link
Why you think so?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Two reasons:
The Japanese were not displaced from their homeland and only temporarily lost control of Japan after their defeat. The Palestinians lost both their homes and control of Palestine permanently.
The emperor surrendered unilaterally against the wishes of his advisors. There is no god emperor in Gaza to make the Palestinians surrender against popular sentiment.
More options
Context Copy link
I’d guess it’s because Japan’s entire people were on the line, whereas Hamas identifies with other Arabs/Muslims such that the loss of Palestine doesn’t mean total defeat.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If they managed to find some countries that were willing to take in millions of Palestinians, the Israelis maybe would be able to pull off a soft ethnic cleansing. But they could not pull off a murderous, "kill everybody" genocide without alienating a very large fraction of their current supporters, including Jewish ones. Israel would become similar to what North Korea is today. It would probably not collapse, but it would have big difficulties in retaining nearly as many high-skilled, intelligent people as it has now unless it made it illegal for them to leave the country, and it would have bigger difficulties in convincing Jews from elsewhere to move there than it does now. Only the most hardcore patriots would want to live in an armed camp that is known for having recently committed one of modern history's biggest genocides, and I doubt that the overlap between such hardcore patriots and the kind of high-skilled, intelligent people who are the bedrock of any sophisticated modern economy is very large. Which is not to say that there are no intelligent pro-genocide people, of course. There are plenty. But they are an exception. In the heat of the moment after having had your nation attacked, almost anyone could feel genocidal desire. I think it's likely that a huge number of otherwise compassionate Israelis feel that way right now, for example. But there's a difference between feeling it every now and then and actually being ok with your military doing it and seeing the videos of what it looks like. Even the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust a secret from both Germans and people in other countries, but in today's world there would be no way to keep a violent genocide of Palestinians a secret.
More options
Context Copy link
Ethnic cleansing was done before, even with tacit agreement of USA. One such example is Operation Storm that took place on the tail end of Balkan Wars, where Croats basically ethnically cleansed the area that was the stronghold of autonomous republic of Serbs. Croats killed several hundreds of Serbs and basically evicted hundreds of thousands from their land.
More options
Context Copy link
There's good reason that Britain pacified Afghanistan in the 19th century with far weaker supply chains and less glaring technological disparities, while it and the rest of NATO left in the 21st with their tail tucked between their legs.
Violence is the voice of the unheard, but it's also a universal language. If you can't solve most problems with violence, you're not using enough, and quite often, or at least here, a more dispassionate analysis will show that a quick burst of brutal violence obviates the need for more down the line.
At any rate, I think Western countries are cowardly in large part because most of the wars they've fought of late don't matter, lacking the stakes of their populations being genocided or living conditions cratering.
Yes, there is really no war that cannot be won by killing enough of the enemy. Only the number that counts as ‘enough’ and the precise definition of ‘enemy’ vary. Less than 2000 American soldiers died in Afghanistan, it simply wasn’t a serious war. More Israelis have likely died since Saturday.
Citation needed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I find it ironic that you prefer the Israeli way of doing things that excludes you while you want to migrate to the west which if it followed the logic you praise, would rightfully exclude you from it.
But your logic in favor of nationalist violence implies far more besides that. Lets just say your general stance is completely incoherent. Is nationalist violence good when the Israelis do it only, or do you secretly find the west stupid for not being more hostile to you? Although the implications of your rhetoric of more violence no problems raises far more negative implications about what global powers should do. Or even specific countries fearing a dismal fate for their people in the future. Or should have done in the past.
I don't actually agree but I do think enough force and hostility is needed against those who deserve it and to promote civilization and justice. But adoring violence as the solution is wrongheaded and leads to a world under fire and predation of inoccents. Which you show no concern to avoiding. Obviously not letting someone with your backstabbing mentality come to the west would be the sane course. And stopping mass migration of foreigners in general. Which is good in general. But say some white nationalist when India had no nukes wanting to nuke India because they sew it as a threat would be an extremely immoral conduct.
I fail to see any sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism here. Rather, you are sucking up to Jewish ultra-nationalism.
Not in the least, since I intend to go through legal channels as about the most Westernized an Indian can get, contributing to a valuable profession, and generally being prosocial. My idle musings about my potential path to American citizenship, should it ever materialize, was met with almost unanimous approval from pretty much every side of the political compass, be it here or on Reddit.
Can you say the same for the typical Palestinian? Hardly.
Case by case please. Certainly no to the latter, since they would be turning down a win-win deal.
Ah yes, you (might) have genuine appreciation for the Palestinian cause, I suck up to the Jews. Well, if Mossad wants to pay me, I'll take it, I'm circumcized for medical reasons, but close enough! I am hardly uncritical of the Jews as a whole, given that they formented much of Western Wokism despite it now biting them in the ass.
I made no claim to show "sincere philosophical appreciation for violence and tribalism" at all, so you're forgiven for missing it.
What I am saying is that I prefer the outcome of Israeli dominion and pacification of the contested territories, and I don't particularly care about how they go about it. I do not think violence is anti-sacred and verboten, it's just as fungible as most things are as far as I'm concerned. Tribalism? If you deny that Jews, even those in Israel, have contributed much more to the globe than all their neighbors put together, then sure, you can abuse the term.
Please try to look for more subtle arguments than those before you claim that support for a particular nation engaging in violence and "tribalism" extends to universal adulation of such. It all depends on the outcome.
Why should I, as an American, give you the benefit of that doubt? Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village? There are over one billion Indians and I'd bet very few of them are pro-Western doctors. Why are you privileged to paint all Palestinians with a broad brush, but I'm not privileged to paint all Indians with a broad brush?
You can give me whatever you like, it matters not in the least unless you're my immigration officer.
Besides, while I'm just as fond of rhetoric as the next person, I'm pretty certain you know that's not true.
And if it's not true, then I suggest you wait till evidence arises that I'm street-shitting in California and not Calcutta, though the former is a cherished pan-American tradition practised by junkies and hobos of any ethnicity. Surprising few Indians among them, to be sure, but if that's not additional reason to support Affirmative Action in immigration to mitigate disparities, what is?
You're missing the point. If you're advocating that Palestinians should be painted with a broad brush based on their worst stereotypes, then why shouldn't Indians be given the same treatment? Your argument presupposes I treat you as an individual, while you want to deny such treatment to any individual from Gaza.
Am I? I have very little outright animosity against a Palestinian who doesn't support Hamas, I think it's a shame they're caught up in the conflict. Yet clearly they're not numerous or vocal enough to be in charge, or they'd have chased them out of town after tarring and feathering them.
For what it's worth, I don't think Israeli reprisals are utterly indiscriminate, while innocents will be caught in the crossfire, I expect those who die to be selected from Hamas than their allies far more than a random sampling would expect. The friends and family being blown up with a Hamas terrorist are significantly more likely to be sympathizers. As for hospitals and schools, with a captive population, perhaps Hamas should reconsider stashing their ammunition there, in a calculated move to curry international favor when Israel blows them up.
Evidently that's enough for me to look the other way, or even cheer for the Israelis. I deny that your analogy works at all really.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
By way of explanation, I was trying to highlight the most uncharitable view of his countrymen that I could think of in order to illustrate a point. I tend to be pro-Israel, but the repeated calls on this board for treating every Gazan as a Hamas terrorist up to the point of advocating for summary execution without evidence or even requirement of specific wrongdoing based on the assumption that all of them are predisposed towards violence rubs me the wrong way. While I understand there's a difference between making broad statements about groups on the other side of the world and actually singling out individual posters, one of my problems with the more racist-leaning elements on this board is that advocating for certain policies is easy when you assume that only other people will be affected by them. I don't put @self_made_human into this category, nor do I assume he is of the character I alluded to. The comment certainly wasn't intended to offend, but I believe I have more contact with actual hoi polloi working-class conservatives than the average poster here, and I can assure you that the kind of people who take the position he's advocating for are the same kind of people who refuse to patronize gas stations owned by Indians and Pakistanis and complain about local Nepali refugees meditating on their lawns. Anyway, I apologize.
Well, there are, uh, a lot of posts happening on this topic so I apologize if this sort of thing is genuinely slipping through. I don't see every comment that gets reported, and there are other moderators, but I, at least, have yet to see a single comment in the queue that meets this description, even though I've seen several comments in the queue claiming that this sentiment is being expressed here, somewhere.
(I don't doubt that some comments might be reasonably interpreted this way, but presentation matters. So long as no one explicitly says "all Gazans should be assumed terrorists and shot on sight," less direct claims like "I just don't see how Israel has clear options when it comes to clearly distinguishing between guilty Hamas and innocent Gazans, here" should be interpreted more charitably.)
(I also tend to object to people making sweeping characterizations of "this board" while themselves disclaiming such characterizations; you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. The way you've done it here is relatively mild, but still, I don't think it is beneficial for you, or anyone, to approach conversations here as me-against-the-Motte's-hivemind.)
I don't necessarily mind thought experiments that encourage people to put themselves in someone else's shoes, either, but still it would probably be best to not illustrate those thoughts in terms of the direct personal application of an unflattering stereotype of a user's professed identity.
For what it's worth, I think this comment from over the weekend, and its relative lack of pushback, is what may be leading people to believe that people are saying things like this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Dude, you support mass murder and are praising a state that excludes you from it for its nationalism.
You are definitely a hypocrite.
You are an antiwestern racist who doesn't respect the native peoples human rights to national self determiantion and sovereignity and have said you would vote for the political party the democrats which is the most unhinged in said direction. Also, you are not part of the Western people you are replacing and making a minority in their own country but part of the colonization and discrimination. When you arrive to the USA you will benefit from discrimination in your favor and join the forces of discrimination against the natives. Which you are screwing by displacing and replacing in their own land.
Your migration is not the same as small migration from and towards a country that respects it self, and is sustainble, but part of colonization.
The Israelis care about numbers and not being overwhelmed by foreign ethnic groups and you praise them for it. Why? Because you are hypocritical.
I show no bias in favor of the Palestinians by opposing mass murder and foreign occupation. I attacked the Palestinians for having a muslim fanatical imperialist mentality, actually. I dislike both Hamas, have a negative view about the fanaticism of Muslims in general, and dislike Israel, have a negative view of Jewish fanaticism in general. I am very much willing to condemn different factions. I complained about historical nazis, I complained about the groups I mentioned, I oppose those with a pushover mentality and I oppose those who are fanatical violent racist supremacists for foreign groups too. Or even for their own.
Its like there is a choice outside of this scumbag behavior that one can choose.
Just cause you support genocide and mass violence in favor of the Jews, don't mistake your own indecency for those of others.
You really are a non Jew who favors Jewish supremacy and mass murder in Israel. Own for it. Now as for why you are sucking up to Jewish extremism, is part of your antiwestern agenda, since the western establishment pushes the same racism against natives and unhinged racism in favor of the Jews as you do. You are willing to support mass murder and Jewish ultranationalism for social status within circles that Jewish supremacy has some valiance like the rationalists.
In any case your racist double standards and hypocricy betrays your lack of philosophical sophistication.
Is that you being the westernized Indian? Supporting mass murder as something to not care about and push aside? Maybe like the Jewish migrants in Palestine, you will support this logic against the natives of the western country you will live in. Seems you are quite willing to support colonialism, if it serves your interest.
Masss murder and ultranationalists who abuse the human rights of others winning is worth it because reasons, is not a valid argument.
The Germans hold records of patents per capita in europe and the Japanese were also much more succdessful than other Asians. And the British contributed much more to humanity than India in modernity. Is mass murder in favor of ethnic domination of these countries good then? Should the British have pacified India harder? What kind of abuse of logic is this?
Israel will still be standing without committing atrocities against the Palestinians. You have never come close to making the work to justify your claims in favor of mass murder.
I am glad you exposed how you and others here are Jewish supremacists. Oh the crocodile tears spent about certain forms of extremism when a different one is the most common one instead.
And your way of thinking would justify a smarter group going around the globe murdering the natives and replacing them everywhere, while promoting hardcore fertility for themselves.
All the liberal ideology you aligned with is hollow. You know what you support aligns more with, right?
It is insane to support mass murder of Palestinians because you consider Jews superior.
While, I think HBD is true, and the anti HBD ers want to silence it so they can get away with being racists under the "overepresentation is due to oppression" narrative, it does seem that when it comes to the Jews in particular we do have HBD leading to the most vile extremism of you and others supporting mass murder which is a very real danger that has materialized.
Although, I think a narrative with HBD is partly to blame and the general ideology of Jewish superiority and they can do no wrong is also directly related. The narrative that connects human biological difference with the right to destroy other groups because yours is superior does deserve to be a taboo. I still am against antiHBDism ideology and the narrative it connects with, but a certain ideology related with HBD should also be kept down.
Remind me why should I care? I have no plans on going to Israel, except on vacation. After they've dealt with people bombing the concerts, and not just with poor reviews.
The fact that it nominally discriminates against me, yet I still support it, ought to show that I have principles beyond whether or not one side or another is rooting for me.
Now, do tell me how the Palestinians would react to an atheist Indian from a culturally Hindu background shacking up with them? Assuming I was daft enough to. Let's hope the circumcision pulls its weight again.
A pro-western racist, or at least a believer in HBD making most claims of rampant racism obsolete in the West, come on dawg. Don't tell me that that is disqualifying for citizenship, or else a large chunk of the West would have to relocate.
What does your inability to see that people can and do care about very different things than you do say about you?
I am large. I contain multitudes.
Agree to disagree?
I suppose it's yet another forgivable sin to not read every single comment posted on the Motte, but rest assured that I am on record stating that I believe that a counterfactual world where the British remained in charge of India for decades longer than 1947 would likely have lead to a better outcome, at least for the Indians.
If the Brits and Germans were fighting somebody as profoundly unsympathetic as I find the Palestinians, then sure? Say what you will about India, but we give back more than we take, especially in the talented diaspora I hope to represent.
Vice-versa.
If they're accused of murdering the natives, they're not putting their all into it. Then again, the Jews came first, so they're the oppressed native people fighting for the side of freedom and liberty /s
Once again, I never claimed to be a liberal. At most, I'm a classical liberal, with libertarian sympathies, and I could add a dozen more qualifiers to that list. Your attempt to fit me into a convenient bucket leaves my limbs, my dick, and most of my brains sticking out.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
While I think you have a point about the forgotten utility of full scale war, I wouldn't characterize the suppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka as a genocide. Nor does the Israeli's potential suppression of the Palestinians require the moniker. That's simply edginess on your part.
I won't split hairs over terminology. Regardless of the moniker, we live in an age where any useful action has been deemed verboten by our modern understanding of martial morality. This grants an advantage to any group that lacks similar moral compunctions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What seems to be needed is some kind of uh, ultimate, uh, resolution, of the uh, Jewish problem[ of non-Jews existing in their vicinity]. Perhaps one of the greatest question that has ever posed itself to uh, Jews. So to speak. Some form of uh, physical removal?
More options
Context Copy link
The Jews are one of the groups closest to your mentality actually based on both rhetoric and action. There is a constrain related to muslim world having its own similar solidarity and fanaticism. And where do you expect Palestinians to go as they are further ethnically cleansed and mass murdered as per your final solution? How is this better for the people involved who are mass murdered? And how would after the crimes you advocate be done, avoid things like what happened in Lebanon after mass migration of Palestinians there?
Genocide as the end of ethnic conflict is myopic way of seeing it. In actuality, genocidal empires are prone to find another group and do to them likewise. Moreover, historically one group out to genocide X leads to Z acting similiarly and you get mass murder. Such escalatory spilar reached that point to begin with because that was the favorable course. That is, if groups follow a greedy path to the extreme, you are going to get ethnic conflict. Although yeah ethnic conflict is rather plausible in non homogeneous societies with human tribalism being what it is. That is why progressive supremacists support diversity because they want to create a coalition to lord over and oppress the native people.
Of course, I would not suggest that people should be pushovers. But the Jews are not the group that are pushovers, to the contrary they benefit from others being pushovers towards their own aggression. And of course from unhinged rhetoric of non Jews in favor of Jewish extremism. Tolerance of Jewish fanaticism is the reason that Israel has escalated the situation already this far. As for the Palestinians, the Islamic fanatics of Hamas also provide no happy solutions.
The best historical solution to the conflict was to keep these two people separate in two seperate states controlled by more moderate nationalists over the current leadership.
In the current case, Israel avoiding massive warcrimes like people here advocate is the sane immediate next step. Already their rhetoric about animals, destroying gaza strip, removing water. Rather than seeking reprisals towards military targets, there is the logic of racist annihilation of the ethnic enemy.
It does show that all the rhetoric of so, so, so many here about bad nationalism, tolerance, human rights, genocide denial of 80 year old genocides being of such a moral afront, being nice, whines about racism etc, etc are just the hollow words of hypocrites who align with the most unhinged nationalism and racism of a Jewish hue and even from a political coalition of the far right that is particularly and genuine extreme in said direction.
And of course that you can get away with this rhetoric in favor of mass murder and genocide against the Palestinians without a ban is precisely because of what group you have chosen to target. It's why it would be a good thing if the kind of people who run institutions, including internet forums started to get punished for the kind of unhinged bipartisan (i.e. progressive supremacist or Israeli jewish supremacist) extremism they have been tolerating and encouraging.
People here unironically care and are more passionate in arguing about people denying past genocide involving the jews, than people promoting current genocides in favor of the Jews.
I don't know about others, but I argue against Holocaust deniers not because I have any sort of pro-Jewish agenda but simply because I think that Holocaust denial theories are very implausible and most people who adhere to them do so for emotional reasons rather than intellectual ones. So when I see them, I have the same kind of mental reaction that I would if someone came here and started arguing that the Apollo moon landing never happened, or if someone started arguing that Christianity is literally true.
You can probably get away with arguing for mass murder and genocide of pretty much any group here as long as you write it in a sufficiently dispassionate-sounding, academic style.
I do find unhinged pro-genocide rants distasteful, but so far at least, somewhat to my surprise, I haven't actually seen anything too barbaric here. Maybe I just need to keep reading this thread further, lol. It would not surprise me to see some.
Or maybe spending a lot of time on 4chan has made Motteizens' occasional murderous rants seem relatively tame to me in comparison.
More options
Context Copy link
I’m not convinced that it’s the genocide part that’s important. The solution is to break the will of people to continue to resist. It can be done without killing everyone, but it has to be done with exactly that goal in mind — by the time the smoke clears the very idea of attempting to start a battle with the other side should be unthinkable.
This is exactly correct, and I think it is the true aim of some of the Israeli leadership at this point. That breaking point may be very far along the line however, given the experiences of the 20th century, and I'm not convinced the Israelis have the will to go as far as they will need to.
The analogy above someone used of the war with Japan is a good one: in that case the US acted continually as if their goal was the complete subjugation of the Japanese people at any cost, if not through unconditional surrender then by annihilation. That approach works, but you have to follow it - you can't bluff at it.
More options
Context Copy link
So you are interested in enough mass murder so Palestinians will accept anything Jews do and will never even think of attempting to start a battle with the other side.
I am pretty sure you are pointing trivialities and it is the genocide you support as a solution that is important and not the fact that it leads to the defeat of your enemy like you pretend.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Arab League needs to follow Sri Lanka's example for the sake of peace. 🕊️
They tried. Of course, an essential component of the strategy is that you are able to win in a straight up war.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A pro-Palestine rally in Sydney has featured the same kind of naked antisemitism that is increasingly common at these sorts of events - in this case including chants of "fuck the Jews".
However, unlike America which has a first amendment to protect offensive speech, Australia is not so squeamish about cracking down on wrongthink. Conservatives tried (and failed) some years back to change the federal law that makes it illegal to "offend or insult" a person on the basis of race, and state-based racial vilification laws carry criminal penalties. States recently have been banning the swastika and other Nazi symbols too.
So, how does this get applied when the racial vilification is coming from Labor-voting Muslims rather than One Nation-voting whites? Well, we got an indication today:
To be clear, I supported the unsuccessful move to amend the Racial Discrimination Act and generally think that expressing odious views should not be illegal. But I'm also a big believer in the even handed application of law, and given that the country decided to reject the argument that "people have a right to be bigots" (as Brandis put it), I'm going to give myself a pass to enjoy watching some of the less pleasant parts of society get an involuntary legal education.
The question I keep coming back to when I see these pro-Palestinians-murdering-Jews rallies is, "why are these people here?". That's my instinctual response to seeing this in New York, Toronto, Sidney, really any nice, polite, Anglo-founded civilization. Don't get me wrong, I understand why they want to be here, there's all sorts of material goods to be gained by moving to nice, polite, Anglo-founded civilizations. What I mean is how did we wind up with a set of policies that allowed immigration of people that were going to bring their old ethnic hatreds and import them to nice, polite, Anglo civilizations. I can't really begrudge black Americans for holding a grudge over American history and I certainly will grant that Native Americans have a point or two. But why the hell did we add a set of people with Middle Eastern grievances to celebrate the barbaric murder of Jews?
This is, of course, rhetorical and I am familiar with the history of immigration in these countries, but I just can't get past that being my sentiment every time. Whether people have a right to be bigots or not, Sydney didn't need to invite them in to do on the steps of the Opera House. The people that want to engage in desert barbarism should be doing so in said desert, not in Times Square.
Many Irish-Americans supported the IRA, and indeed one can imagine, Native Americans complaining about why these Anglos came here and brought all their nonsense from the Old World, with their Protestants and Catholics and Monarchists and so on.
You're starting from a premise that Anglos didn't bring their grievances with them, and I don't think that is clearly true. In fact the truth is, I think everywhere we go, (people in general) we always bring our grievances with us. From Puritan settlers to Quakers and on, you can see those grievances impact on today. Why do you think PA has such restrictive liquor laws compated to say Texas?
We can just over a long enough period, replace our old grievances with new ones that better fit our new situation. It just takes time.
Give it a minute and just like Irish-Americans complaining more about blacks in Boston, or Polacks somewhere else, everyone will get proper new grievances against the people next door instead. Yes, yes Israel is bad, but have you seen that they want to put a half way house just down from the mosque?
Yeah, and it wasn't great!
As above, I think the Natives have something of a point. If nothing else, I surely wouldn't be inclined to tell them that it's actually pretty normal and that they're a bunch of bigots for not welcoming it. The parallels obviously stop making sense in short order, but I think we can confidently say that the squabbles of Europeans being brought to Americans shores sucked for the people that were the previous residents of those shores.
They certainly did, and it does suck, but complaining about 1 group doing it when every other group does the same is an isolated demand for rigor.
To be clear, it is not good. But it is entirely normal. Its not about Anglos and Middle Easterners, its about people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My views largely align with yours. I wish Australia had true freedom of speech backed in our Constitution. Alas, looks like I'll have to settle for
your rules applied fairlyyour rules selectively applied to benefit you.This is a great example of selective enforcement and Who Whom. White nationalists would never be allowed to undertake the same protest. Particularly without filing a 'Form 1' with NSW Police (or Notice of Intention to Hold a Public Assembly) as was the case with the Pro-Palestinian rally.
Beyond this, this type of ethnic tension is endemic in multi-cultural societies. As I said recently regarding the Sikh assassination in Canada, political agitators who cannot leave their old countries' grudges at the door when emigrating to the West should fail the character test and be denied citizenship.
This is going to fail the disparate impact test - and it'll probably count as antisemitic too given how many jews are Israeli partisans. I happen to agree with you that it is a good idea, but you're not going to be able to get the left to agree to a policy that effectively translates to mostly allowing white and asian immigrants.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Which is interesting considering how people openly talk about genociding Palestinians. They aren't really shown as humans and politicians openly talk about how they various war crimes should be commited against them. Funny how talking about turning Gaza into glass isn't hate speach but we aren't allowed to criticise the people of Israel. I hardly think the police would crack down on fuck the Russians at a pro Ukraine rally.
Right wingers get kicked off twitter for proposing mild measures to reduce immigration. Israelis can cheer on mass bombing of Palestinians, blocking food and electricity to civilians and demolishing their homes and churches without consequence.
Could you show me some examples of politicians saying what you believe to the the equivalent here?
I’ve certainly seen things about bombing Gaza, but this comes immediately after a terrorist attack, and there is an implied “let/force the civilians to leave”.
Here's a politician in the Israeli legislature from Netanyahu's party Likud calling for Israel to use their nuclear weapons rather than ground forces. "Doomsday weapons" is the thinly veiled euphemism Israelis often use to refer to their officially unacknowledged but open secret nuclear arsenal.
https://twitter.com/TallyGotliv/status/1711426284322996613
Twitter has decided not to translate that for me.
It’s certainly a strong opinion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
After seeing those Khaazar Milkers, I'm sympathetic. Unless you also intend to tell me that the "gas the Jews" chanting alongside it wasn't intended to be an invitation to huff nitrous, an authentic Australian pastime if I've heard one.
Honestly, one of the primary benefits of the US seceding from British influence by force was a ground-up reconstruction of its legal system and implicit constitution. While the average Westerner who doesn't think too hard might look at comparable standards of living in the Commonwealth and the US, they have very different presumptions underlying their judicial system and tolerance for political incorrectness.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I live in a very progressive part of the US. I had a moment earlier today when I was surrounded by some Jewish community members/friends, and they were talking about how difficult it's been at work for them this week, because they have to put up with many of their coworkers saying "horrible things" (read: things that they don't agree with regarding the recent events). These community members are the same people who went spouting all manners of progressive talking points in so many inappropriate and unnecessary contexts over the past 5 or so years, from BLM, to covid, to Trump derangement syndrome, and so many more issues.
I'm sure I wouldn't like what these people's coworkers are saying, but I find myself feeling more than ever wanting to say to these people, "So what? You can't have everyone agree with you". I guess I'm now an expert at being around people who say things that make my blood boil. I put up with progressives at work, in my social circles, in my local community events, in stores, who constantly barrage me with their unsolicited progressive message. I not only never say anything anymore, but I act as if I'm completely unbothered. As a result, I find myself having very little sympathy, but a lot of empathy for these pro Israel progressives. I'm sure the irony is completely lost on them, but it makes me wonder how certain people can go through life with so little perspective that they feel so put upon by people with different viewpoints, yet cannot fathom that they may make others feel that way with their own, and that maybe they're wrong to do so.
There’s a lot of wiggle room in “things that they don’t agree with”. The last week has had a lot of public statements that range from disagreements on strategy and ethics for a difficult ground war to questions related to the cycle of violence to ‘that live-streamed mass shooting was faked and if it wasn’t it was a political conspiracy‘ to literally complaining The Final Solution didn’t go far enough. The imprecision of the rest of your post does not really make clear what you’re engaged with.
There’s perhaps a steelman where even the most extreme sides of that spectrum did not have a even or honest application against the Red Tribe (both that Damore was not tolerated, and that the Blue Tribe equivalents to Alex Jones were), and I’d probably agree with you for a significant part of it. But outside of the irony of it all, I don’t really see how much info there is in people only noticing when their ox is on the line.
That tweet got memory-holed.
Archive.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Because, from their perspective, they’re obviously right, and everyone else is obviously either evil or straight up insane. Yes, enough exposure to contrary evidence might change their minds. But they don’t have it.
More options
Context Copy link
You're singing my song. I've had to deal with this over, and over, and over, and over. It's tiresome. The most common incarnation is when they're not sure they can enjoy the work of this celebrity or that celebrity anymore because they did something that was insensitive to this group or that group.
You ask "how certain people can go through life with so little perspective that they feel so put upon by people with different viewpoints, yet cannot fathom that they may make others feel that way with their own, and that maybe they're wrong to do so." (I'm tired and so I'm using direct quotes.) The answer is that.. "it's just different". People who reason emotionally will use their emotions as a justification, and if you can get them to verbalize it, they'll say "it's just different."
All people see themselves as the center of their universe, but only a minority recognize that they do. If you see yourself as the center of the universe and have no cause to correct for that assumption, decisions of "right" and "wrong" will be based entirely on emotion, all the time. No meta level reasoning necessary, because it's not like your feelings can be wrong.
I'm not rational. But I admire rationalists. And that so many people flagrantly disregard the need to be less biased irritates me to no end.
Not only that, but that person is also bombarded nearly non-stop with progressive messaging. Media, Universities, Federal Government, and social circles are all telling this person that they are 100% correct.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What are their coworkers saying that your Jewish friends think is ‘horrible’? I can’t imagine people are saying genuine pro-Hamas stuff in a progressive regular workplace in the US, this isn’t a decolonial reading circle at Columbia.
Thankful as ever it would be considered weird to discuss politics seriously in my workplace.
You might need to expand your imagination, though it's mostly as @haroldbkny says, stuff about Israel being to blame because of their oppression of the Palestinians. Me, I stay out of that, if there's going to be sectarian violence between the Muslims and the Jews at the workplace, I don't want to be around.
(Ha ha no, it's not really the Muslims who are posting stuff like that; our Muslims are not Palestinian and mostly not even Arab. It's white people)
More options
Context Copy link
I think in the context of the conversation I was having, it was mostly regarding people saying that Israel was to blame for any and all violence Hamas may do. It's also worth noting that some of the people involved work at universities, where such sentiment is more common.
How many of those Jews offended by this terrible statement were fully onboard with the George Floyd riots? The party line was that those riots were the language of the unheard, a reaction to oppression, and a civil rights movement. How many George Floyd's have Israeli police or soldiers made in Gaza?
A person who supported BLM riots, who is progressive politically, but has found a sudden sympathy for using military action to reduce wanton violence by a marginalized minority?
At my work I work with some religious Jews. To a one, they hated the riots.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
With the reports of Egypt notifying Israel in advance of an impending attack, people here and elsewhere have wondered if Bibi maybe let the attack slip through on purpose to consolidate power. Overnight he went from dealing with protests against his judicial reforms and the draft to having those problems disappear and securing the full backing of a broad unity government with his former opposition.
But Jerusalem Post just released a pretty damning poll:
Is there any way for Bibi to hold onto power? If not, what might the future look like?
If he knew it was coming the way to consolidate power would have been a thousand Palestinians dead in the attack, a handful of civilians, and a 100 IDF. Looking extremely competent as you crush a massive attack as it happens boost support. Instead he looks incompetent. I guess you would make Hamas think your weak but have everything in place to crush the attack.
The only 4-D chess move for letting the attack happen would be getting the world to accept that Palestine and Israel can not exists together and getting global community to look the other way as you create 2 million refugees and someone like Egypt reluctantly accepting them.
Egypt wont accept them, though. Sane regimes don’t let millions of terrorists in, and Hamas is literally a splinter group from Al-Sisi’s main opposition.
To say nothing of the usual prejudices against Palestinians.
More options
Context Copy link
I think most likely you're right.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think Netanyahu's going to retire or be shoved out of the public sphere regardless of what extent he 'knew' an attack was coming. The pre-October doctrine where Gaza was left to Hamas with business relations, a jobs program, and occasional missile exchanges and shooting atrocities was Netanyahu's brainchild, a major bet that no matter Hamas' public doctrine it wouldn't do anything as an organization outside of The Usual. It was a sad and bloody sort of 'deescalation', where a 'win' for Hamas was a gentleman's agreement for the Israeli's to not explode every member of Hamas' senior leadership, but they had eight years of that and it was a lot nicer for Hamas leadership than exploding, and the rule brought everyone to this.
((Separately, the emphasis on the failed judicial reform bill in a lot of these theories is kinda goofy. Netanyahu didn't win, but neither did Biden get a SCOTUS expansion. They gambled some political capital and lost; it's not the end of the world.))
I'm not sure what you mean by either of these, Netanyahu was successful in his judicial reform bill, pending SC review; Biden was against the SCOTUS expansion and never tried.
I think it's more the optics of six months of large scale protests disapearing overnight, but I agree that wouldn't have driven Bibi to do something so crazy. I think it might've been unclear, but part of why I made that post was to illustrate how unlikely it was that he let the attack go through given that polls show what many people would have suspected, that it was bad for his own own political future.
Agreed with all the rest of your post.
Times of Israel reports
Two months after the claim I responded to but thank you for the update on the situation!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
<