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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Did Hamas debunk the "Bronze Age Mindset"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The choice is clear.

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

This is Bulverism.

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

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

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

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

Same problem as anarcho-primitivism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Oh. Wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAP's reply:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only if you've never read Nietzsche.

The Gay Science #306:

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

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

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

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

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

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

What you guys think of this plan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now what?

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

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

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

Now what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not if Palantir has anything to say about it.

Wait, wrong franchise.

Wait are we talking about Palestinians or Fremen?

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

So massive genocide

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

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

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

but with Jewish masters and overlords.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benefits of my plan:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think the Brave browser is on iOS and it has built in ad blocking.

Mel Brooks before him:

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

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

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

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

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

That was beautiful, wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food and water could probably be handled.

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

It's whimsical but seems quite unrealistic to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I see it, Israel + USA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I see it, Israel + USA.

Good luck with gaining access to Iranian ports.

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

Refusing port does not imply shooting guns.

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

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

Your reply here is mostly fantasy.

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

Please, explain.

Good luck with gaining access to Iranian ports.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s time to be cruel,” and Knesset member Ariel Kallner calling for a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” a reference to the massacre and expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians upon Israel’s founding.

So I looked up more on this Nakba:

Before, during and after the 1947–1949 war, hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed. Geographic names throughout the country were erased and replaced with Hebrew names, sometimes derivatives of the historical Palestinian nomenclature, and sometimes new inventions. Numerous non-Jewish historical sites were destroyed, not just during the wars, but in a subsequent process over a number of decades. For example, over 80% of Palestinian village mosques have been destroyed, and artefacts have been removed from museums and archives.

You shouldn't be able to get away with this sort of thing right in the middle of the 20th century. After that, it's no wonder if there are Palestinians who will never accept Israel, and I also think Israel doesn't really have a leg to stand on to negotiate, as it's not really a legitimate state, just a top-down imposition.

Debating this elsewhere, some reactions were "Oh, but the Arabs wouldn't accept the partition plan", but why should they, why does the UN have the right to just impose that on them? Actually, the UN involvement just makes Israel seem like another High Modernist fuck up, another of the numerous errors of the first half of the 20th century.

Addressing something Ike Saul said below:

I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

No, I am not moved by appeals to ancient history. That cycle has to end at some point, and the end of WW II seems like a good stopping point for that sort of shenanigan.

Also, you can't have your high officials expressing themselves like the guy above and like this:

Gallant said that he had ordered “a complete siege of the Gaza Strip,” which is home to 2.2 million Palestinians, nearly half of them children. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” he said. “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”

Netanyahu:

The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.

You can't talk like this and then pretend you're the civilized party here! Though of course, looking at the so-called developed nations, especially America, maybe they don't talk like this, but they sure behave like it, so maybe there actually are no or few civilizations around.

But that doesn't make me think Israel is legitimate, it just makes me think the developed world is fake too.

Sam Kriss had a great article on Israel from some time ago:

It was almost inconceivable that this wasteland had been made by Jews, that my people and my religion could have created something so ungodly. I did not recognise myself in this mirror. Jews—like Mel Brooks, like Franz Kafka, like Albert Einstein, like Bruno Schulz, like Woody Allen, like the Coen brothers, like Walter Benjamin, like me. People with sexual hangups and a good sense of humour. Bookish men with overbearing mothers. Latkes and lokshen pudding. Candles on a Friday night. Jews, the guilty conscience of Europe, the bearers of messianic hope through every generation—reduced to this.

American support for an ethno-nationalist state can't last. All it takes is a sufficiently left-wing administration coming around to undo this by simply withdrawing support, which could easily happen in the next few decades.

Apologies if this is too much heat, but looking at the circumstances of Israel's founding, Israel genuinely just seems to me to be an injustice. Maybe Israel could have happened legitimately if they hadn't been in such a hurry, and maybe the hurry could have been excused because of the Holocaust, but not to the point that you pull a Nakba.

EDIT: And of course, Hamas' attacks were barbarous, but that doesn't really conjure up legitimacy for the state of Israel. Why should they?

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

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

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

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

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

The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.

You can't talk like this and then pretend you're the civilized party here! Though of course, looking at the so-called developed nations, especially America, maybe they don't talk like this, but they sure behave like it, so maybe there actually are no or few civilizations around.

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

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

why does the UN have the right to just impose that on them?

Because the alternative was what happened: The right of conquest.

If the Arab states somehow really managed to unite, crush Israel, send the Jews packing and establish a river-to-sea Palestine, I have a distinct feeling that many people who believe that the "right of conquest" can actually be used as a justification for anything would suddenly no longer see it that way.

I don’t think you understand the sheer elegance of the position. From the pov of some uninvolved party, it doesn’t matter who wins, it’s just about solving the problem. Coase theorem really. Just assign it to whoever holds it and defends it, no one has to do anything, and all aboard for the pareto optimum.

The question by CrashedPsychonaut was why the UN were in any way justified to authorize a partition and the simple answer is that they were and are not. But if you deny this „top-down imposition“, and you can’t rely on a hegemon to keep the status quo as the British are leaving, you will instead have a bottom-up solution: civil war.

And I have a feeling that many people who have been crying about human rights violations Israel is perpetrating on Palestinians would range from absolutely blind to triumphant over human rights violations occurring in that scenario. Arguments are soldiers, what else is new?

Personally, I really do feel that the Arab nations are not civilized, so they play by different rules. It ticks me off more when a nation pretends to be of a superior sort, but then not actually live up to the supposed superiority.

At which point you're insisting Israel behave according to Marquis de Queensbury rules in a street fight. It makes no sense.

Not really. He's just asking them to be honest. If Israel wants to become a blood-drenched Bronze Age state in response to their environment, they can. But if they do decide to take that path then they should be honest and open about it.

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

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

Want to bet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egypt won’t let them in.

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

Debating this elsewhere, some reactions were "Oh, but the Arabs wouldn't accept the partition plan", but why should they, why does the UN have the right to just impose that on them?

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

Debating this elsewhere, some reactions were "Oh, but the Arabs wouldn't accept the partition plan", but why should they, why does the UN have the right to just impose that on them? Actually, the UN involvement just makes Israel seem like another High Modernist fuck up, another of the numerous errors of the first half of the 20th century.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Give the Jewish people Alaska, or something

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zionist Terrorism and the Establishment of Israel (pdf warning)

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

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

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

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

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

Very impressive, honestly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway they didn't get it peacefully from the crusaders

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

No, I am not moved by appeals to ancient history. That cycle has to end at some point, and the end of WW II seems like a good stopping point for that sort of shenanigan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That cycle has to end at some point, and the end of WW II seems like a good stopping point for that sort of shenanigan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So you guys do know all these Palestinians will end up in Europe, right?

Yes, of course they eventually will. It's probably the best thing that could happen too. Europe deserves another few million low value humans based on their actions of continually subsidizing low value humans. Perhaps this time will be the one that finally teaches them that some people are better than others, end of story. I doubt it, and so the punishments will need to continue, but maybe at some point it will finally click.

So you guys do know all these Palestinians will end up in Europe, right?

So, nation states that want the EU to disintegrate will eagerly try to pick them up and put them on boats and send them to Europe, eh?

Richard Hanania has already suggested it would be less trouble for the Palestinians to be expelled to Europe, I certainly wouldn't rule it out. If a regional war breaks out then there is a 100% chance of Europe being forced to take mass refugees.

Isn’t Richard literally a Palestinian? Why is Keith accusing him of being a traitor by trying to secure his people passage to Europe?

I’ve posted before about Indians being basically the biggest HBD type in the UK. White people aren’t able to express those opinions in the west. It’s the fringe white adjacent who get to (like Ramaswany too).

If the issue for Palestinians is that they want to be free of rule by jews, moving to Europe is not a solution. Most if not all European countries have anti-antisemitism laws and anti-islam laws. While Palestinians would necessarily be more materially comfortable in Europe or almost anywhere else, they could never obtain the weapons and training readily available at home if they aspire to fight jewish rule.

For Keith, supporting the ethnic cleansing of your people from your ancestral homeland is a betrayal on principle. i.e. if Ireland became overrun with Arabs and things came to a head, I don't think Keith would advocate for ethnically cleansing the Irish to the United States even if that had a higher standard of living and more political rights.

I don't care about Richard's betrayal of the Palestinians, I care about his betrayal of Europe, not that he necessarily owes any loyalty to Europeans. But it shows where his priorities lie when he talks about "less trouble."

For Keith, supporting the ethnic cleansing of your people from your ancestral homeland is a betrayal on principle. i.e. if Ireland was overrun

What if the Irish were by far the weaker party and were liable to being completely destroyed imminently? Does Keith think it better to die at home than live in diaspora? If he does, I don’t know that he can fault others too much for disagreeing with him - at least it’s a matter of debate.

If the Arabs completely blockaded and turned off the food and water to the Irish, I think Keith would consider it a betrayal to say "good idea on that blockade, that's going to force the Irish away from Ireland finally and that will cause less trouble." Even if they were the weaker party.

I was surprised to find out he’s not Jewish, with that last name. Turns out he’s from a christian Arab family. In that case, his people were already cleansed from Gaza. The people still in Gaza are his people’s killers.

Richard Hanania is incompetent Twitterati with idiotic takes on all topics familiar to me.

(not specialist on everything, maybe coincidentally he is wrong only on topics familiar to me and correct on everything else)

there is a 100% chance of Europe being forced to take mass refugees.

How they would get there? Teleport? Who would accept them?

To be honest 100-200 billion would be cheap for the west to just settle this issue forever. 40-80k a head which is enough to build a cheap house plus some startup cash. The question is who would take them.

It’s sort of funny but Russia is depopulated and has handled these populations like Chechens well would be the most logical place to send them.

Hell, a trillion bucks wouldn't be a bad price to pay. For what it's worth it wouldn't be bad if the US took a bunch of 'em too.

This has the usual issues with some policies like this that might work (or at least help): getting enough political inertia to get it through, if it doesn't happen in the background, seems like it would probably just result in them sending more money over the next time there's issues (and then for more projects as well). That's not necessarily bad for some viewpoints, but I think is hard to avoid..

It took two Chechen Wars before "handling Chechens" became an attractive option, I recall. If you want to inflict that on Russia again, I'm taking your based trad right card away.

Israel can handle Palestinians the way Russia handled Chechens just fine on its own:

  • bomb Gaza Strip into oblivion
  • give the most amenable local warlord financial support
  • have the warlord recognize Israel within current borders and deal with the opposition together with the IDF
  • keep giving the warlord money, because he sucks at anything except repressions
  • keep a military base close to the warlord's palace, just in case

The current situation with the PA has already arguably been finding the most amenable local warlord and working with them. Nevertheless, whilst Russians cater to Kadyrov in a great variety of ways, the Israelis can't help but repeatedly teabag and humiliate their warlord, Abbas, and make him look like a scrub, which is a major reason as to why Hamas keeps being popular.

If it was that cheap even Israel could pay it over time. They don’t want to go though and Egypt and Jordan don’t want them, even for that money.

Money won't solve this. The EU tried building water pipes in Gaza and the pipes just ended up being repurposed as homemade missiles. You can't solve this by sending money to someone who cares more about killing you than they care about making a good life for themselves.

2.1 million is a lot of refugees. How does that measure up to previous crises, like Syria, etc? Is it effectively the same but all at once or a much bigger number?

Poland alone had more Ukrainian refugees, with about one million still staying right now (depending on how you count you will get different numbers).

Total count of Ukrainian refugees was about 5-6 million, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_refugee_crisis_(2022%E2%80%93present)

Obviously, refugee count is far from only impact. Palestinians are not going to Europe. Unless someone plays 7D chess and really wants right across Europe to win elections.

Unless someone plays 7D chess and really wants right across Europe to win elections.

Voting "right-wing" literally does not do anything in Western Europe. In Eastern-Europe "right-wing" voters still overwhelmingly support fighting Russia on behalf of the EU/NATO while simultaneously asking EU politely to stop sending migrants. The only way out of this endless All-Star loop Europe is stuck in is through violent revolution and rejection of democratic institutions.

In Eastern-Europe "right-wing" voters still overwhelmingly support fighting Russia on behalf of the EU/NATO

Why the heck they would prefer to live under Russia? Even if you would go with "USA and Russia are equally bad"[1] then still playing empire far away against close empire makes perfect sense.

Also, if you think that "fighting Russia on behalf of the EU/NATO" is happening you should discuss it with other contrarians who thing that USA supporting Ukraine is mistaken and should be isolating rather than helping Eastern Europe.

[1] they are not, unless you put high value on stuff like rampant homosexual rape in military

Voting "right-wing" literally does not do anything in Western Europe.

Even if true, then importing Palestinians is still going to boost them.

Why the heck they would prefer to live under Russia? Even if you would go with "USA and Russia are equally bad"[1] then still playing empire far away against close empire makes perfect sense.

Russia is not actively attempting to genocide the natives.

Also, if you think that "fighting Russia on behalf of the EU/NATO" is happening you should discuss it with other contrarians who thing that USA supporting Ukraine is mistaken and should be isolating rather than helping Eastern Europe.

USA should not be supporting the Ukraine government sending the average Ukrainian man who has not fled the country yet to his death.

Not sure what you mean by isolating. Foreign policy does not have to be a 2-position switch between Cuba-style blockade and CIA-led 'color revolution'. Perhaps the US could consider trading without meddling politically?

Even if true, then importing Palestinians is still going to boost them.

Boost what? It's certainly going to make european governments more authoritarian, but just because they police the migrants harder does not mean that they will stop oppressing the natives. If anything, the post-9/11 policies enacted by the West have mostly been used to send right-wingers to jail over facebook posts or mostly peaceful election results protests.

Russia is not actively attempting to genocide the natives.

No matter how you call it: what they did in Mariupol, Nova Kakhovka, Bucha, Odessa and so on is not conductive to human flourishing. (and yes, this time they are less murderous than previously, though it is fairly low bar given Holodomor death toll)

Also, "is not actively attempting to genocide the natives." is passed also by EU. And basically everyone else. Clearing "they do not want murder your nation" bar is not sufficient to answer "Why the heck they would prefer to live under Russia?".

And after https://www.themotte.org/post/705/israelgaza-megathread-1/148670?context=8#context I will limit myself to commenting that I am hopeful that your beloved Russia will fall on its face with their latest imperialism attempt and will stop such activity for few decades.

No matter how you call it: what they did in Mariupol, Nova Kakhovka, Bucha, Odessa and so on is not conductive to human flourishing. (and yes, this time they are less murderous than previously, though it is fairly low bar given Holodomor death toll)

What did they do?

What I remember from Mariupol was the Azov battalion taking civilian hostages underground into the metallurgy factory complex, much like what is claimed Hamas did, and the Russians waiting for them to come out or release the hostages.

Imo Russia has been far less destructive with Ukraine than the US with Iraq, or even previous wars in the area.

Also, "is not actively attempting to genocide the natives." is passed also by EU.

Encouraging invasion by millions of foreigners + discouraging native reproduction and sovereignty, branding right-wing nativist movements as 'nazi 2.0' etc counts as attempt at destroying European nations to me.

Perhaps the European population is broadly consenting to this destruction, and the intent is so diffuse and generalized that the finger cannot be pointed at any given group of people for this attempt, but the results are the same. What happened to the former countries that joined the EU should be a cautionary tale, not something a supposedly nationalist country should emulate.

What did they do?

Have you seen photos of Mariupol before Russian army arrived and after Ruski Mir?

(also, last time I checked it was less "hostages" and more "people hiding from rampaging russian army" - for typical and quite good reasons)

or even previous wars in the area.

They attack civilians less than USSR and Nazi Germany. Congrats, if they would get worse than this it would be pretty amazing.

Still, to get "less destructive than EU" level they are quite far away. And fortunately for Poland it is not Russia vs Nazi Germany, so Russia would improve a lot to be attractive.

attempt at destroying European nations to me.

Your goalposts are moving quite fast. And yes, it is still less destructive (in both deliberate destruction and stupid self-destruction) than Russian epic efforts. Though that bar is so low that I am not happy about EU either. Being better than Russia is not enough.

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Violent Revolution, so that Eastern Europe can do what? Bend over for Moscow? Balkanize into Rand-approved fiefdoms from sea to sea? You may not like the “right-wing” option, but I find it a more credible path to supporting your values than throwing your nation out the window.

Balkanize into Rand-approved fiefdoms from sea to sea?

Where do you think the verb 'balkanize' even come from?

but I find it a more credible path to supporting your values than throwing your nation out the window.

Good luck teaching half a billion Africans your 'values'. There is no European civilization without Europeans.

This is how 'right-wing' voting works.

current immigration level 100K/year

right-wing talking head: "The left wants to take in 500K immigrants per year, but we listen to the voters and will reduce immigration!"

immigration level becomes 200K/year

Rinse and repeat The people who control the media are the ones deciding what voters care about, and they will never give a platform to somebody further right than left-wingers 5 years ago.

I know exactly where “Balkanize” came from. I picked that to point out that a violent revolution in EE won’t create an ethnostate paradise. It’ll create a shithole, full of land mines and, if you’re lucky, NATO peacekeepers.

Balkan shitholes still look much better than what is probably in store for the future of Western Europe.

Fistulas are a kind of damage that is seldom seen in the developed world

In eastern Congo, however, the problem is practically an epidemic. When a truce was declared in the war there in 2003, so many cases began showing up that Western medical experts at first called it impossible—especially when local doctors declared that most of the fistulas they were seeing were the consequence of rapes. "No one wanted to believe it at first," says Lyn Lusi, manager of the HEAL Africa hospital (formerly called the Docs Hospital) in the eastern Congo city of Goma. "When our doctors first published their results, in 2003, this was unheard of."

More references to look up: necklacing;

documentary Africa Addio

Balkan shitholes

Are you even aware with current state of Balkan countries?

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Is there something inconsistent about being right-wing and supporting fighting Russia? You would simply be one link in potentially numerous generations of right-wing local nationalists who have supported the same.

From an ethno-nationalist point of view, rule by USSR had much better consequences than rule by EU/NATO-aligned globalists. See this convenient experiment in Germany.

On the other hand, if you're talking about some kind of authoritarianism/freedom axis, surely Europe is becoming more right-wing one migrant at a time. Sharia law soon brothers. Now that's trad.

See this convenient experiment in Germany.

That is 2011. Any more recent data? Also "no muslims" is only one axis, on many others like "people wishing to change something are not murdered on orders of Moscow/Washington" or ">100 000 dead due to catastrophic economy mismanagement, maybe deliberate murder via economy sabotage" Russia is less rosy.

And "due to USSR we are noticeably poorer so migrants want to migrate elsewhere" is hardly a great incentive to be occupied by Russia again.

That is 2011. Any more recent data?

USSR's control of Germany ended 20 years prior, I don't see why newer data would change anything. I don't expect East Germany to have diversified faster than West Germany in the last decade, and if it did, I'd expect a good explanation to blame it on the USSR, considering that the very agents responsible for mass immigration to Europe to this day are still waging war against the ghost of the USSR.

">100 000 dead due to catastrophic economy mismanagement, maybe deliberate murder via economy sabotage" Russia is less rosy.

People die all the time. Nations die when globalists simultaneously import millions of foreigners and discourage breeding among the natives.

And "due to USSR we are noticeably poorer so migrants want to migrate elsewhere" is hardly a great incentive to be occupied by Russia again.

European civilization was explicitly defined by its Christianity according to which poverty is a virtue and excessive wealth a sin, so it's a question of point-of-view. If you want to be more 'trad' and revert to older versions of culture and civilization then this might conflict with it, and higher levels of islamic immigration might actually further your values.

Nations die when globalists simultaneously import millions of foreigners and discourage breeding among the natives.

Take a look at Russian demographics, it does not look stellar either.

defined by its Christianity according to which poverty is a virtue and excessive wealth a sin

Starvation and drowning everything in rampant alcoholism is not highly prized by Christianity.

Why do you think the entire European right (apart from some very fringe groups) resisted USSR that strongly for its entire existence, then?

From an actual ethnonationalist point of view, people in Estonia, Latvia and to a lesser extent Lithuania certainly remember that rule by USSR meant a real, existing risk of their nationalities really, genuinely becoming minorities in their titular homelands, as temporarily already happened to the Kazakhs.

It's hard to explain. The traditionalist right pretty much died out when the USSR and Americans allied to crush them. Then whatever fringe was left was crushed by a combination of consumerism (industrial society), chemical warfare (contraception), and massive amount of propaganda. Anyone with eyes can see that Western (American) media is a much bigger threat to native cultures than anything coming out of Russia or China. Perhaps because the West is the most effective vehicle of the Industrial Revolution. A less effective ruler can be a good thing, if the ruler's objectives are opposite to the survival of your people.

From an actual ethnonationalist point of view, people in Estonia, Latvia and to a lesser extent Lithuania certainly remember that rule by USSR meant a real, existing risk of their nationalities really, genuinely becoming minorities in their titular homelands

Yes or they could have been Belgians. I doubt Belgians will exist as an ethnic group in the next 50 years, after so charitably hosting the EU parasite. Meanwhile Poland is just as white as the Nazi ethnic cleansing left it.

Anyone with eyes can see that Western (American) media is a much bigger threat to native cultures than anything coming out of Russia or China.

That is quite wild claim, given outright attempts to destroy cultures run by both (see also "Ukrainians and Ukraine are fake and never really existed"). Chinese managed to run quite hard destruction attempt on themself and are busy speed running deliberately exploding population pyramid (recently they tried to reverse it, with poor results).

Still less terrible population pyramid than Poland, but we at least have not tried to achieve it deliberately.

And yes, Russia is corrupt and ineffective - but not so much to make them harmless. And Russification was repeatedly attempted by them with various degrees of success.

I doubt Belgians will exist as an ethnic group in the next 50 years

I am not sure whether they ever existed as ethnic group :)

Meanwhile Poland is just as white as the Nazi ethnic cleansing left it.

And that is both false and misleading (Nazis in Poland had very limited opportunity to murder non-white people on account of Poland having even less of them than nowadays - they murdered millions of white people). Hmm, now I wonder how many were murdered due to this.

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Why do you think the entire European right (apart from some very fringe groups) resisted USSR that strongly

Note that in areas closer to Russia also very large part of left opposed USSR.

Yes, certainly, but the point I was answering to specifically referred to the right, and made the strange and ahistorical claim that being opposed to Russia would somehow by itself rended these parties as "not right-wing".

Is there something inconsistent about being right-wing and supporting fighting Russia?

not at all (you can also be right-wing and support Russia)

In the (by far) highest year of the migrant crisis so far, 2015, 1.1 million Syrian refugees supposedly arrived in Europe.

The total amount of displaced Syrians was much higher though. Over 5 million are still refugees abroad.

Most in Turkey though.

How? They can’t walk given the only land exit is to the south via Egypt. Egypt is unlikely to simply let them free into the interior. Gaza is blockaded by sea, and even if Israel allowed NGO migrant vessels to dock, they’d (a) have to abandon the existing locations, which they’d be reluctant to do, and (b) would have nowhere near the capacity. Unlike the regular migrants who are pretty much all young men, most of the Gazan survivors will be women and children, with a moderate number of elderly people too.

That means that irregular immigration is improbable and they’d have to come to Europe as pre-admitted refugees, like those the west admits from refugee camps and so on. European governments would have to charter ships to consciously bring 2 million people to their countries. I cant see governments that agree to that surviving - the AfD is on the verge of power in parts of Germany, the right is at least partially in power in Italy, even Macron is trying to seem tougher on immigration and integration, the Danes are now trying to be heavily restrictionist from the Islamic world, the Swedish conversation of migrants seem to be turning. Oh, and all of Europe saw the footage from Hamas’ atrocities.

How? They can’t walk

Like I said in the other comment, you rendezvous with an NGO rescue ship, drop them in the sea, the rescue ship picks them up, and now you can't turn them away, because what are you going to do, let them drown, you monster?

I cant see governments that agree to that surviving - the AfD is on the verge of power in parts of Germany, the right is at least partially in power in Italy

Yeah, and we had a lot of handwringing about what Italy's fascist PM is going to do with immigrants, and she ended up admitting just as many as past governments. Why would AfD be different?

With which boats will they rendezvous with the NGO ships? How will the NGOs 20x their capacity overnight? How will the NGOs feel about abandoning the present African migrants for Gazans? How do you think voters are going to react?

Of the issues you mentioned the only real one is capacity, yeah it won't happen overnight. Everything else doesn't seem relevant. Human traffickers will be the ones randezvouing with the NGOs, just like they do now. The NGOs will stop caring about the African refugees.

How would Zionists behave if they were in the Palestinian position?

This is a key question for determining the moral severity of the terrorist attacks we saw this weekend. A common criticism of Hamas is that they engage in terrorism against civilians whereas their morally enlightened (ostensibly) Israeli cousins only attack military targets. But I think this ignores the fact that Israel has the luxury of successfully hitting military targets. Israel can kill just as many civilians as Hamas by targeting military sites, while also killing relevant military leaders and defending against unwanted criticism. Yet at the end of the day, the same if not more civilians are killed, and the same terror is instilled in the enemy’s civilian population. Regarding an Israeli missile attack in May which killed ten civilians, Amnesty writes:

They were launched into densely populated urban areas at 2am when families were sleeping at home, which suggests that those who planned and authorized the attacks anticipated – and likely disregarded – the disproportionate harm to civilians. Intentionally launching disproportionate attacks, a pattern Amnesty International has documented in previous Israeli operations, is a war crime.

The idea that it is morally acceptable to kill civilians when you also kill military targets at the same time is often brought up when American bombings in Japan during WWII are discussed. However, I’m not convinced that there is a clear moral difference between Hamas actions and, say, the firebombing of Tokyo, where as many as 100k were killed, the vast majority being civilians.

Back to the question at hand, we know that Zionists had no issue bombing embassies and killing non-combatants in order to colonize the land of what is now called Israel. In the 40s, they notably bombed a British embassy, and in the 50s the Israeli government pressured Britain and Italy not to investigate the bombing. Recently, an Israeli historian has claimed that Zionists were responsible for the bombings targeting the Jews of Baghdad in order to pressure Jews to migrate and settle Israel. So, back when Israel’s position was more similar to Palestine, they did in fact engage in terrorist activity. If Israeli militants would behave as Hamas militants were they in that position, then the immorality of Hamas conduct is greatly diminished in severity.

If either side was in each others position they would be extreme ultranationalists/hardcore identitarian tribalists as they are now. I think the Zionists would be more competent at dealing with another invading group had they been equally smart in that scenario. If the zionists were in palestinian position and were invaded by a group called the Yews that behaved just like the Jews did historically, they would hate their guts with an intense fanaticism that is rarely seen. And yes they would of course utilize terorrism like they did historically, and they wouldn't stop had it been the advantageous method for them to utilize in the circumstances. Generally Jews would really, really, really hate a group that behaved against the Jews like Jews behave towards non Jews.

If Israeli militants would behave as Hamas militants were they in that position, then the immorality of Hamas conduct is greatly diminished in severity.

Yes, relatively to Israel that is. Neither Hamas nor the Israelis and their fans are reasonable groups of people, from the perspective of seeking compromise, avoiding bloodshed, acting morally and ethically, with a mind to proportionality, caring consistently about the golden rule, respecting others rights, etc, etc. Including the same people in the west and in the middle east, they are all a bunch of crybullies, quite possible for them to be victimized based on circumstances, but whenever they get the opportunity they will mistreat others for their benefit and cry about being the victims besides.

So I am not a fan of either sides, or even the behavior of their diaspora but I would prefer if they behaved better but alas you can't change them just cause you wish it to be so. Although due to greater power, I find Israel has the greater responsibility to stop illegal settlements.

Anyhow, contemporary Israel bad behavior and war crimes and unhinged genocidal rhetoric we see among Zionists is already bad enough and worse than what the Palestinians do, although one could argue that had they had the power they would be just as bad or worse.

If either side was in each others position they would be extreme ultranationalists/hardcore identitarian tribalists as they are now.

You are making this up.

One of the most annoying things about Jewish extremism is not only they are extreme nationalists but they are utterly unwilling to admit it and will gaslight you. Crybullying 101. Yes, Israel is an extreme nationalist country, that is occupying even more land on top of their previous murderous ethnic cleansing, and take various racist policies in the open prison they have palestinians in. Plus their army engages in warcrimes.

Of course Israel is just one example of the issue which is that Jews even outside Israel and not just in Israel are really hardcore racists and support discriminating against the non Jewish ethnic groups of the area and don't respect their national rights. Rights which they assert for themselves.

So the problem that Jews are massive racists is very much real, and those who deny it are making things up and promoting a very false vision of reality.

I don't know about you, but I prefer if ethnic groups weren't massive racists and respected each others rights instead of operating with a mentality that what is yours is mine and what is mine is mine and then lying to your victims.

The pervasive choice that Jews engaging in waging the culture war like you do is to be as racist as possible and deny wrongdoing instead of accept rightfully and justly the error that their peoples have done over the years against other ethnic groups.

Hasn’t the entire Middle East been governed in this way with perhaps the lone exception being current Iraq. Every country has had to brutally repress at times to keep the peace.

Lebanon at one point was different but hasn’t been for decades.

Is this whole line of moral questioning useful? I consider it a given that the civilness is based on security, safety, abundance, lawfulness, peace and so on. Teasing out religious and cultural differences is a little interesting, though I think misses the point. It's fairly universal that stripping away these civilization cornernstones make people more savage.

The more interesting question is, is it ever possible for a 21st century civilization to collide with a 14th century one and for the 14th century one to be warmly embraced and adapted? And I say 14th century because I consider the currently problematic Islamic cultures of the world to be basically the Spanish inquisition with the sign flipped from Christian to Islam.

For a more extreme example, my mind immediately goes to European settlers meeting the already-here indigenous peoples of America. Despite the billions of words written about how harmoniously they must have existed in connection with the Earth and one another, I'm sure they were probably even more insane to deal with than the currently situated Hamas.

(Of course the native Americans didn't have adversaries of the European settlers hooking them up with modern assault weapons)

If 21st century is supposed to mean moving beyond fanaticism, neither civilization is part of 21st century and neither are even American non Jews who throw themselves extreme rhetoric about destroying Gaza.

It is immoral to side with the more prosperous fanatical racists when they could and should be behaving much better and respecting others human rights.

Someone could ironically use your way of thinking to justyfing Nazi conquest of more backward eastern europeans. That you use this kind of rhetoric in defense of Israel acting without any judgement is telling where you are coming from.

Of course many Jewish communists also thoght themselves superior intellectuals with the right to lead and abuse inferior reactionary gentile ethnic groups with tragic consequences.

Is this whole line of moral questioning useful? I consider it a given that the civilness is based on security, safety, abundance, lawfulness, peace and so on. Teasing out religious and cultural differences is a little interesting, though I think misses the point. It's fairly universal that stripping away these civilization cornernstones make people more savage.

Israel does not respect the security, safety, lawfulness and peace of the Palestinians.

It also doesn't respect it for various other countries they bomb.

And they don't respect it for western countries that their lobby promotes policies against them. And against freedom of speech and also the native people having any rights. It is important to note that Israelis have had key influence in Facebook enforcing racist jewish supremacist propaganda as the allowed speech.

The person who banned Trump from twitter was part of Israel's goverment. And Likudists in west including aligned neocons not only promoted mass migration in western countries but also have at times advocated Palestinians moving to europe as the means of solving Israel's problem.

Being too racist against others in the way that actually doesn't allow said nations to exist and prosper goes against others civilization. This mentality does not promote civilization for it is predatory and parasitical. While it is immoral for anyone to support it, especially any non Jew has no reason to support Jewish racism which will turn against them and has them on their crosshair too.

What I find ironic about the whole Jewish issue is the whole whining about racism against Jews by who, Jews of all people who are so pervasively racist as a group.

Now, lest we forget, the Jews aren't the only fanatics in the region. Same in the past, it is an inaccurate vision that sees Jews as center of all evil and any non Jewish group or ideology as center of good. Although the opposite vision which has been more common in 20th and 21st century is even more stupid and dangerous. But they definitely are bullies whenever they can get away with it. If you are a Jew and you try to be a good person you should have a problem with how your ethnic community tends to behave like and how other Jews tend to behave like.

And part of their ultranationalist mentality and racist mentality of both them and non Jewish, Jewish supremacists, is this asinine vision of Jews who never didn't do nothing and how you are insane to think otherwise. Which as we see when you employ your kind of more nazi like arguement, is disingenuous. And I absolutely do see the Jewish supremacist faction which includes non Jews too promote might is right supremacist rhetoric and also rhetoric about how the Jews are just so fucking superior to other groups and they just have the right to behave as they please.

The projection of this faction using rhetoric about racism tends to obscure that the correct response to the bad behavior of Jewish supremacists is to outright condemn them for their racism.

BTW if you are curious where I am coming from I actually think you can support your own group's prosperity while also respecting the rights of others.The homeland system where we have countries that ought to respect each others rights beeing a key part of international justice. Ideally we have something like international justice when this happens. And we don't when ethnic groups are getting, genocided, colonized by others, they lose their land and their rights of self determination and even self respect and right to a historical education of their own ethnic group (that is they are victims of cultural genocide which the nazis like many modern Jews in western countries and far leftists in general, are proponents of) are destroyed under the boot of foreign conquerors or those locals who align with said agenda.

Warmongering imperialists who destroy millions, especially relevant today the modern neocons are the kind of people who we need to keep down. Those who give platforms to those promoting the dangerous rhetoric we have seen these days advocating for warcrimes are culpable for what happens and have the blood of inoccents also on their hands. And those who cultivated an atmosphere where any ethnic group can do no wrong, in this case the Jews, are obviously racist supremacists in favor of said group or groups, but also culpable for whatever happens next in Gaza.

Regarding the Jews acting as racist bullies, it has to do with the dominance of ultranationalist ideology among Jews relating both to religion and even secular Jewish ultranationalism and even combo of Jewish ultranationalism with progressive extremism. This ideology is just classic ridiculous one sided racist propaganda that in clown world stage we are, is increasingly imposed. That Jews never did nothing wrong, that anything otherwise is racist conspiracy theory and insane (and the ridiculous term used by racists, the term antisemite), and that Jews both historically and presently have been oppressed and have the right to destroy and thriump over their oppressors (liek Egypt which enslaved Jews according to religious myth but not necessarilly according to fact). In combo with the same faction promoting the idea of Jews as just superior.

Classic ultranationalist propaganda 101 and non Jews who also perpetuate it are racist supremacists in favor of a foreign ethnic group. So the solution isn't the same predatory mentality against inoccents and against Jews, but not to tolerate the Jewish or other groups ultranationalist bullshit, and to impose a mentality to them that they ought to be less cruel, disrespectful of other groups rights and compromise and avoid having demands were they encroach on the rights of others.

Which Jewish community does in Palestine, stealing land, and doing plenty of warcrimes, plus what they have gotten away with getting already the moral path is a two state solution with 1967 borders. And they do, with control over powerful institutions in the west, and enforcing authoritarian racist supremacist propaganda, promoting mass migration, criminalizing and not tolerating healthy moderate nationalism to their outgroup while encouraging a progressive supremacist alliance of Jewish supremacist, black supremacists and others against western civilization.

This stopping is necessary part of an ideology in favor of the only international justice that ever made sense and ever worked. It is important not to confuse disregarding the fake moralism of principleless trying to manipulate you into allowing you to victimize you with abandoning morality altogether.

Anyway, Jews in current circumstances are not the victimized party but the victimizing party that should make amends towards others. I am not suggesting they become complete pushovers though towards say Hamas. There is a sweet spot and Jews are consistently on the wrong side of it.

*Obviously, when saying Jews here =/ all Jews, I don't think it needs saying but part of the nasty rhetorical tricks of misinterpretation. It does mean Jews as a pattern, average Jew, etc, etc.

(Of course the native Americans didn't have adversaries of the European settlers hooking them up with modern assault weapons)

Just nitpicking, but didn’t the British arm the natives during the American War of Independence?

Not with AK-47s and RPGs

Anyhow, contemporary Israel bad behavior and war crimes and unhinged genocidal rhetoric we see among Zionists is already bad enough and worse than what the Palestinians do,

No, it isn’t. Israel should stop settlerism in the West Bank, yes, but it’s not the equivalent of what Hamas is doing in southern Israel right now. Israel should probably show a bit more concern for civilian casualties, but it’s not taking preemptive strikes against a music festival.

Israel has killed far more Palestinians than otherwise. Even just recently. Also Hamas =/ the totality of Palestinian faction even if key to it.

Israel should probably show a bit more concern for civilian casualties, but it’s not taking preemptive strikes against a music festival.

The way you are framing it is downplayment to the extreme.

Enough with the apologia for Israeli warcrimes. I don't think it is an accident that the spaces that promote this including IDW has rhetoric that is upvoted about how Jews are superior. Which we see here as well people write this nonsense and promote the argument of Jews being superior to non Jews.

Israel unmoored from the threat of backlash, would probably have done ever worse, just like so many zionists advocate. And like they have done in the past. There is a real threat of mass murderous ethnic cleansing lying over the Palestinians right now. There is also a lot of rhetoric and an atmosphere created that makes attrocities all that more likely because of the complicity of gatekeepers of discourse.

Lest we forget that Hamas has not existed always in this conflict and the start of it is Jewish murderous conquest and ethnic cleansing of which terrorism played a key role.

This conflict isn't really all that debatable in all its facets. It is a fact that both Hamas and Israel (and those willing to support it unconditional) are fanatical extreme regimes. Also, part of their badness has to do with their global badness. Their fanaticism isn't only a problem for the location of palestine, but their ideology is vile, predatory, and disrespectful of others rights with a more global reach.

One under the banner of Islam, and with elements of anti western (and anti other non muslim, including Christians but other groups too), and the other with the symbol of star of david, with also anti western, obviously anti-christian but also anti Muslim element. And both quite capable of being anti-X other groups in favor of the domination of their own tribe.

Yes, this will probably end with mass civilian casualties among the Palestinians of Gaza. Hamas maybe shouldn’t have started a genocidal war they were guaranteed to lose.

Israel is not a saint, but there’s not exactly a moral equivalence here. Israel isn’t dragging off Palestinian civilian hostages to rape and parade through the streets. Israel didn’t open hostilities by killed 250 people at a concert. Israel isn’t breaking into apartments to kill civilians and drag their carcasses through Tel Aviv to be spat on.

Really?

https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1711026961257267208?cursor=QAAAAPAxHBlmnoDS3ayE574v8oewjZyY1L8vjIG5pd-16r4v9MTencL6-74v_IWzqYiV5b4vwMS5gam_1r8vJQISFQQAAA#r

Even in recent events propaganda rages. While the fog of war exists for me too, there are plenty of Israel warcrimes that have been reported over the years.

https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1711364819863888227#m

There is also deliberate bombing of civilians. Israel has murdered far more than just 250 civilians.

There is no moral equivalence if you are a racist who excuses Jewish warcrimes because you believe Jews are superior and non Jews are inferior.

In reality, Americans are incredibly propagandized by Jewish supremacists to become themselves Jewish supremacists. Although some Americans quite more than others. And some deliberately pretend that Israel hasn't done its very fair share of warcrimes.

Yes, this will probably end with mass civilian casualties among the Palestinians of Gaza. Hamas maybe shouldn’t have started a genocidal war they were guaranteed to lose.

Love the passive voice. So you don't even oppose the genocidal war but support it because Hamas started it. Like Hamas started the occupation, after all.

So you support genocidal war by only blaming Hamas for it and not Israel and people like yourself with your bloodthirst, racist bias you support the murder of countless of inoccents in war.

Incidentally, aren't the people of Hamas using your logic to murder Jews? How are you any better than them, when you justify genocidal war and excuse the perpetrators?

Unlike the Palestinians, or even Hamas, your call for revenge doesn't even have the excuse of your country being occupied.

It isn't a mystery that aggressively calling for restraint and trying to keep the zionist genocidal fanatics and warmongers who even want to escalate things to war with Iran down, is the prudent course. Having lived through the mass propaganda of the Iraq war, the current situation smells exactly like that. A bunch of dangerous propagandists out for blood putting civilization in course for destruction.

So no, you are fully 100% at fault for your own rhetoric, and Israel for their own actions. They always had the opportunity to act in a far more restrained manner than they have done. From the very beginning of this conflict that has been a Jewish supremacist imperialist grab.

Simultaneously, it would be a good idea to keep down annoying muslim fanatics too with their own global imperialist nuttery and disrespect towards others. And of course the antiwestern fanatics with their colonizing visions under the pretense of decolonization.

Of which, Jewish supremacists dreaming of ethnically cleansing Palestinians to send them to europe are part of. It is in fact imperative that Israeli reprisals show restraint and avoid the mass murder of civilians. And simultaneously Israel should finally abadon its vile illegal settlements. Maybe the creation of a palestinian state in those areas with nobody of Hamas allowed inside and the preresequite for peace being Hamas to be gone in general. Of course the Jewish supremacist fanatics which includes non Jews have no interest in that and of course Hamas has no interest in itself to be gone.

The main group of non Jewish, Jewish supremacists are mainly from western countries. And these people not only become racist supremacists of extreme proportions but also betray their own countries and nation by aligning with an ultranationalist agenda that is incredibly intolerant and hostile to western civilization in the broadest sense and its component nations and sees it as an antisemitic oppressor to be exploited or destroyed. Or pretends cynically it is an antisemitic oppressor to justify their racist agenda for its destruction. In either case, Jewish tribalism is incredibly racist against the main countries outside of Israel that tend to support it and despises the native people of said countries. Unlike in Israel, the Jews support mass migration and oppose any rights of national identity for their non Jewish victims. For the same reason they support colonization of Palestinian land by Jews, and oppose Palestinian human rights and nationhood. Because they are racist imperialists of extreme proportions who do not respect the rights of others. And fundamentally same as the non Jewish, Jewish supremacists. Including the aware proponent who have ideologically adopted an insane treasonous ideology, and the useful idiot component who ends up helping those who despise them.

Yes, this will probably end with mass civilian casualties among the Palestinians of Gaza. Hamas maybe shouldn’t have started a genocidal war they were guaranteed to lose.

Love the passive voice.

Personal pet peeve: there is no passive voice in that sentence (guaranteed is clearly an adjective).

Really?

Can you provide better source than this troll account?

I recognize this one from unironically claiming that Russia has not invaded Ukraine and about biolabs and how Poland is preparing to invade Ukraine. They repeatedly posted lies, misleading claims, bizarre misinterpretations and various propaganda.

Not all people, not all civilizations, not all tribes, are equal. This is a core conservative conceit, it’s also inherent to ideas like HBD that you yourself agree with. Human progress has always involved the conquest of some peoples by others.

“I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here.' They had not the right, nor had they the power.”

  • Winston Churchill on Palestine (1937)

‘Punching down’, in other words, may be more moral than ‘punching up’. The many settlers of the Americas did what they did and so, perhaps, will the Israelis.

Oh, punching down is absolutely more moral than punching up in the modern western world. The "Up" basically pays for the continued existence of the "Down" these days, and thus punching up is nothing more than biting the hand that feeds you, the crime that Dante punished down at the very center of the lowest circle of hell, right next to where Satan was imprisoned.

Funny coming from someone like you rather willing to whine about racism, antisemitism while simultaneously pushing your own genocidal and racist supremacist agendas.

Fundamentally your words are hollow and it is BS BS, We Jews are superior (including those of lower IQ and can do as we want.

Like this monstrous inferior savage:

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."

It is true that humans are not equal. And trying to enforce that all groups do equally well is folly. However, there is another way that not all groups are equal. And that is morality.

There is a reason why adults who are smarter are not allowed by any sane society to pray on children who are weaker and lower intelligence.

Some people are cruel, predatory, hypocritical, ingrates, and have all the traits of murderous narcisistic sociopaths. I am not talking hre about da Jews although I think you personally have argued one too many times about carpet bombing middle east and similiar rhetoric although never once been banned for it. Recently you have been promoting the final solution to palestinian problem and genocidal mass murder.

The short of it is that you are willing to destroy civilizations and support attrocities because you are a hateful racist fanatic who lacks decency.

AND when others have even a sane menality critical of your people engaging in this dark racist supremacist path that is pervasive, you whine about racism.

Obviously you wouldn't acceept others treating you by the same coin. Indeed, your whine about nazism is utterly hypocritical considering your only difference is your group you are a racist supremacist for.

I am glad in this instance you show your power level as you have done in others. But trully you are allowed to be this way because of others who are like you.

Anyhow, as you very well know (you are someone who whines about others being racist over petty nonsense when you are this kind of person) the concept but pretend not to, because you are bloodthirsty racist supremacist fanatic, obviously there is a value in certain forms of equality even if the concept of equality going far is utterly idiotic.

And that has to do with rights and equality under the law. Just like we shouldn't let ten dumber people gang up on one smarter person, we should also not allow the later defraud the first. but actually you are no IQ supremacist, having opposed HBDers and having supported AA, but suddenly you become the most hardcore of HBD racist supremacist when it comes to da Jews.

A sane society would not tolerate hateful fanatics like you to promote your propaganda and advocate for warcrimes. Least of all your rhetoric in favor of war crimes and mass murder in the middle east is not unrelated to the millions who died there. And of course your rhetoric in favor of cultural genocide in west, and the vile agendas related to that.

Of course you are contemptible from both a universalistic perspective as a malevolent dishonest predatory and parasitical racist supremacist and a local one. Whether the local funnilly enough applies to pretty much most non jewish groups. And likely those you want to use as goldems against your outgroup.

but actually you are no IQ supremacist, having opposed HBDers and having supported AA

Wait, what? 2rafa opposing HBDers? I'd have to see the posts to believe it.

I never opposed it (and have pretty much the standard take here, i.e. that the evidence is compelling). As for AA, I think what I said is that HBD and affirmative action aren’t actually mutually exclusive under a tribal spoils system, but again, I don’t think that has much to do with the point he’s trying to make.

Not all people, not all civilizations, not all tribes, are equal. This is a core conservative conceit...

No, it certainly is not, in the sense of moral worth that you are explicitly appealing to.

it’s also inherent to ideas like HBD that you yourself agree with.

I thought HBD was just about population averages in performance, not moral worth? Have I not been told that over and over again for years now? ...In any case, I do thank you for the citation.

I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

We learn nothing. The foolishness of Enlightenment Progressivism is without bound. You and everyone else making similar arguments here know for a fact that you have no rigorous, objective, scientific materialist standard for "better" or "higher-grade" or "worldly-wise" other than raw strength. Your appeal is pure Might Makes Right, and you make it because you have lost the ability to even imagine that the roles could be reversed.

It is possible that some violence is more moral than others, because it is directed by ‘higher grade’ civilizations against lower grade ones.

No, that is not possible, nor has it ever been possible. When you design a better microprocessor, that does not give you or your culture additional moral value. Technological advancement does not, cannot, and never will imply moral value. It doesn't matter if I'm knapping flints and you're building star destroyers: our moral responsibilities to each other remain entirely unaltered. To think otherwise is to fatally misunderstand both morality and technology on an extremely basic level.

Describe for me the moral gradations between murder with a stone versus a flint knife, a bronze sword, an arrow, a bullet, or a laser-guided fragmentation submunition. Show me the moral difference between strangling a person with my bare hands and disassembling them with sci-fi nanotechnology. Show me the objective moral difference between oral storytelling around a campfire and Avengers: Endgame, or between a horse and an airplane. What is the moral value of refined aluminum, and what is the exchange rate in charred corpses of your friends and family? What is the atomic mass of love or mercy, or the molecular weight of justice?

Of course, you and most other rational materialists don't actually believe in moral value or morality in any meaningful sense, as these threads have amply demonstrated. They are just words to you, made-up labels to be applied where convinient, because ultimately there is no meaning or value to anything at all, no final accounting, no judge and therefore no justice, beyond that enforced by your own strong arm. And of course, when the nuke goes off in Tel Aviv some day, or the tech shifts the wrong way and its Israelis getting slaughtered down to the old men and the infants, that will not be "a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place", will it? Because chip fabs and language models, right?

And of course, when the nuke goes off in Tel Aviv some day, or the tech shifts the wrong way and its Israelis getting slaughtered down to the old men and the infants, that will not be "a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place", will it? Because chip fabs and language models, right?

There's a reason I'm not an Israeli, namely that I think the chances of Israel losing (everything) are much higher than most people, and especially most Jews, recognize. My existence in the diaspora is comfortable enough, and as such (a sign of loyalty, perhaps) I also don't favor additional (or any) American/Western aid for Israel. Nevertheless, both as a Jew and a supporter of civilization in the endless struggle against savagery, barbarism, and low IQ nonsense, I won't shed any tears if the Israelis decide (and successfully ensure) that enough is enough. The Holocaust was a tragedy of history and, though I don't particularly consider German civilization superior to Jewish civilization, we got fucked and many of us paid the price. That is life, and though I have thoughts on the general principles of the matter, I personally harbor no illusions that I am morally superior to a German or Palestinian, nor do I care to be.

Fair enough, then, and I apologize for interpreting your comments otherwise.

I think Jews are mostly quite aware of, and discuss incessantly, Israel lacking strategic depth and being in a precarious situation and having no choice but to preemptively strike etc etc; if anything, they overestimate the threat from its utterly inept or degraded, and frankly well-taught in previous wars, neighbors.

What they do get wrong is the relative danger of being in the Diaspora, because they take deluded Whites lending vocal support to Hamas and other savages too seriously, and extrapolate this incoherent virtue-signaling gibberish to willingness for participating in or enabling Antisemitic violence locally. I appreciate that progressive Jews at, say, Harvard may experience very… interesting emotions right now; but realistically, they're unlikely to ever get hit with more than a variant of anti-white anti-colonial invective from their peers. Hence «there is only one country where it's safe to live while being a Jew» refrain. (Though judging by Twitter and in light of recent events, India might quality).

Then again, I may be overestimating human rationality and pacification again.

I thought HBD was just about population averages in performance, not moral worth? Have I not been told that over and over again for years now? ...In any case, I do thank you for the citation.

HBD is a fact, what policy implications you draw from it are a function of the rest of your values.

Me? I think we should gene therapy the living shit out of the human population until everyone is at least a 180 IQ Ubermensch, potentially to the limits of human biology and other relevant tradeoffs. Skin color should no more determine your more relevant qualities than the shade of lipstick you choose to wear.

Should. Not does, at present. We look for trillion dollar bills on the pavement, not realizing that it is the pavement. Or at least I hope a bill for a sum so large should reflect it.

I also happen to be less than sympathetic to the accusations of racism of the gaps that provoked the Great Awokening, since any discrepancies are best explained by HBD instead.

HBD is a fact, what policy implications you draw from it are a function of the rest of your values.

And heretofore, HBD proponents have vociferously denied that they consider those of lower genetic IQ to be morally inferior. And yet, here we are.

Me? I think we should gene therapy the living shit out of the human population until everyone is at least a 180 IQ Ubermensch, potentially to the limits of human biology and other relevant tradeoffs.

You also think that less-sophisticated people should be massacred by "more sophisticated" people, if they turn out to be troublesome. The fact that genetic engineering is considerably more hypothetical than massacre engineering raises immediate concerns.

And heretofore, HBD proponents have vociferously denied that they consider those of lower genetic IQ to be morally inferior. And yet, here we are.

Well, I can't speak for all of them. I just happen to prefer assigning some moral worth on the basis of IQ, and today, race serves as a strong proxy. They could be pink and blue with elephant ears for all I really care. Or a mind upload.

You also think that less-sophisticated people should be massacred by "more sophisticated" people

"Should" seems a bit strong if I stop to assess everything I've uttered on the matter today. If there was a peaceful solution, I'd take it, but if there isn't, then I won't complain at all if the Israelis stamp out their opposition instead of letting it fester. Largely because I think the total amount of violence necessary over a longer period will be lower if it's frontloaded.

The fact that genetic engineering is considerably more hypothetical than massacre engineering raises immediate concerns.

I certainly wish it were otherwise.

HBD proponents are a heterogeneous group. And if we're talking about 2rafa who seems to have brought it up in this subthread, I'm fairly sure she considers a whole lot of people (including most of us) to be her inferiors in all ways.

Whether there's an "evil gene" (or genes) is in an interesting question, but my guess is that if there is, it's at fixation in the human population. And is a separate thing from IQ. Being stupid doesn't make you evil, though it may make you become more easily convinced that evil things which are not in your self interest actually are.

I certainly don’t consider you my inferior, Nybbler!

At least until the Gobbler model comes out

Skin color should no more determine your more relevant qualities than the shade of lipstick you choose to wear.

Yeah, that's never going to happen. We don't have full control of our genes and I'm going to bet even slight tweaks to skin color will have a measurable effect on intelligence. (In either way. Who knows, maybe 300% melanin will actually make us hyper intelligent or whatever).

Whatever genes you alter to change faces, hair, body size. Literally any structural or outward appearance of a human will also alter their brains. It's all interconnected.

I find this a very dubious assertion, within my limit of understanding of genetics. Which I would hope is better than average, even if I don't claim domain expertise like say, our Chris Pratt Dino Wrangler friend can say.

Yes, DNA is unadulterated spaghetti code, but it's not so intractable that something like melanin production can't be targeted without, a priori, not expecting it to blow up the kidneys of something. If I was designing something, I would look for a way to down regulate melanocyte stimulating hormone, to the degree feasible without say, causing visual problems as seen in albinos.

While skin tone isn't a Mendelian trait, I see no reason to think it can't be managed.

As for other phenotypical traits, it depends, but once again I have reason for optimism, or at least faith in plastic surgery. It doesn't have to be a germline modification, you can probably pull it off in-utero or later, the bones have to grow, unless you have a really bad case of baby face.

And since my end goal is liberation from biology in the form of an existence as a mind upload, then I'd say I don't particularly care either way.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give.

I thought HBD was just about population averages in performance, not moral worth?

That's obviously true. But I don't think 2rafa believes a pious 90 IQ Mizrahim settler is morally less worthy than a 150 IQ Persian academic (despite likely preferring the company of the latter); and the 160 IQ Netanyahu certainly would rather have the latter assassinated to ensure the safety of the former.

It's all friend vs enemy; or worse yet, hot take vs hot take. Descriptive frameworks are used to justify normative beliefs that themselves are little more than habitual verbal behavior. It gets pretty tiresome.

«Он знает, что ничто не застанет его врасплох и ничто не заставит сделать какое-нибудь отступление от той сети пустых и насквозь прогнивших афоризмов, в которую он закутался с головы до ног. Для него не существует ни горя, ни радости, ни ненависти, ни любви. Весь мир, в его глазах, есть гроб, могущий служить лишь поводом для бесконечного пустословия.»

But I don't think 2rafa believes a pious 90 IQ Mizrahim settler is morally less worthy than a 150 IQ Persian academic (despite likely preferring the company of the latter);

Are many settlers Mizrachim? In any case I find the settlements project inanely justified by a religious ideology I don’t believe in and unnecessarily provocative at best. The ‘67 borders are amenable to me, although I’d have the Saudis run the Palestinian state. As for who should be in power, well you know my opinion of democracy.

Many of my friends were (gentile) Persians growing up, and many of them still are. It is entirely feasible that a smart Persian academic, even one committed to Israel’s destruction, might have higher moral worth than a 90 IQ Religious Zionist. Iranian hostility to Israel is the result of a PR exercise by the mullahs, it can evaporate within months of regime change. Palestinian hostility, due to the fundamental nature of dispossession, is much more intractable.

‘My people’ are smart, secular, Ashkenazim, although we have thrown our lot in with some I find much more unsavory. Nevertheless, when it comes to broad principles, Iran isn’t discriminating between the settlement fanatic (few or none of whom seem to have been killed on Saturday) and a version of me in Israel, so there is little choice in whom to support for now.

And you cannot disconnect IQ from moral worth entirely. It is immoral when something beautiful is destroyed by something uglier and more vulgar. This is in part why we find rape so abhorrent, it is why the Mongol horde razing civilization to the ground is such a deeply ingrained (often subconscious) cultural motif. So yes, Bronze Age savagery by a people who have not contributed to the wider human race in a millennium and who would rather live in poverty and squalor than kneel is morally less noble than, say, the settlement of the Americas by Europeans, regardless of the individual moral worth of members of that culture.

In my more optimistic moments I believe that all the "extermination by Artificial SuperIntelligence" fears will prove to be unfounded, because the sorts of strategies we use to train LLMs will also be used to train future superintelligence to share human values.

In my more pessimistic moments I believe that all the "extermination by Artificial SuperIntelligence" fears will prove to be inevitable, because the sorts of strategies we use to train LLMs will also be used to train future superintelligence to share human values.

The problem is that in this case, slave morality has been adopted and is being promoted by the dominant and technologically superior civilization. Wouldn’t that make it the pinnacle of human progress? Does your parochial tribe have any right not to embrace diversity and tolerance; does it even have the power for much longer? Especially since it was so intimately involved in the birth of these values (at the very least you acted as midwives).

It’s no coincidence that taking Churchill’s stance here on anything other than Palestine is unthinkable nowadays, nor is it really a good sign of things to come. Given enough time, generational loss of hypocrisy may well prevail over Holocaust guilt-mongering.

I think slave morality is a feature of modern Western hegemony. All it took was 9/11 (casualty rate of 1/10th of the Israeli death rate so far per capita) for American bloodlust to explode to current-Israeli proportions. Ann Coulter infamously spoke for many Americans when she said after 9/11 that

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war".

Diversity and tolerance are luxury patrician ideologies, Americans will be no different if or when the time comes.

Ann Coulter infamously spoke for many Americans when she said after 9/11

Yet the meme from that era that survives to this day is the ‘religion of peace’ one. It seems it would be better to describe this as an emergency belief, a temporary unprincipled exception to the general notion of virtuous victimhood that reasserts itself as soon as passions die down.

Note also the WWII analogy: the myth she invokes is absolutely central to the current incarnation of slave morality. Hitler was an avatar of absolute evil precisely because of his blatant disregard of human rights and universalism. He oppressed the weak and powerless more than anyone ever had. This was so unspeakably, cosmologically evil that it easily excuses the unprecedented suffering inflicted upon the German population, the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young Americans, becoming an accomplice in Stalin’s crimes etc. When Americans start comparing themselves to Hadrian instead, I’ll believe they’re getting uncucked.

I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it.

This is, of course, a justification that one day may be used against peoples less backward than Palestinians. «You are animals in comparison, so we do not admit any wrong in dispossessing you».

It must be nice to belong to the highest average IQ population on the planet. Whatever ideology wins, your side comes out on top.

That is the only real justification that matters. I have (as I have said many times) great sympathy for the Palestinians; their armed struggle is justified on grounds of self defense and historical humiliation. Their war crimes are brutal, but expected. If they fight to the end, they’ll die with honor, at least by their own standards (the only ones that matter, in that case).

I think if you take a civilizational view, there ought to be some kind of respect for national achievement. But the thing about war is that if you lose, you probably weren’t really as good as you thought. If Israel is defeated, the Jewish political project will be over, and they can be considered a defeated people who wasted their opportunity for statehood, at least for now. A tragedy, perhaps, but one of many in history. So it does go both ways.

Yes "a tragedy perhaps" but one that can be forgoten and bypassed. Promoted by someone like you who are milking grudges constantly. The point here you are promoting is that the defeat of Palestinians which is more likely now can be forgoten. Not about Israel.

If you really cared about forgetting tragedies, you wouldn't be milking the holocaust.

The issue here is that incredibly immoral sociopathic Jewish supremacists and other bad actors are free to destroy as they please instead of being restrained through accountability. Like, if anyone deserves to be prosecuted for hate speech, it aint most people you whine about whose rhetoric counters your extremism and therefore promote a valuable service to society even if some can go too far, but the cimarafas of the world are the primary faction of the most malevolent abuse of rights today.

It is no accident that all your genocidal racist supremacist rhetoric and even advocating actual warcrimes has not gotten you in trouble by the moderators. Birds of a feather and reveals the fake nature of rationalism which underneath lies hypocritical extreme tribalism. Like the other israel firster and backers of the racist supremacist democrats the fraudster Sam Bankman Fried.

You have a bunch of comments in the mod queue. Most of them, like this one, this one, and this one, are just raging ad hominems.

It is no accident that all your genocidal racist supremacist rhetoric and even advocating actual warcrimes has not gotten you in trouble by the moderators.

If @2rafa was advocating literal genocide (which I'm pretty sure she's not), people are allowed to argue for abominable things here. That's why going on about how much you hate Jews hasn't gotten you into trouble until now, when you lost your self control and made it personal.

You're being really obnoxious and antagonistic and clearly cruising for a banning. Since you posted so many comments like this in such a short time, I'm guessing you knew you'd get modded and figured you'd get your attacks in while you can.

Banned for a week because this is your first formal mod action, but if you come back for another round of "Flame people before I get banned" I'll just delete your posts and permaban you. If you actually want to continue to participate here, get yourself under control.

Since you are making a moral arguement condemning me as hateful and defending cimarafa it is fair to ask what cimerafa advocates if it isn't genocide.

It isn't hard to connect the quote from Churchil. Or this quote by cimarafa

The most important thing for Israel is that it moves toward firing squads and summary execution of perhaps 10,000-30,000 fighting age men in Gaza, as well as the entire political leadership, mercilessly but quickly and professionally. But then again, I’m a Zionist.

https://www.themotte.org/post/695/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/145883?context=8#context

along with other rhetoric from them and various people here. Bloodthirsty rhetoric is abominable but opposing it and calling for restraint is correct.

And in fact, it is the pervasive view worldwide, was more popular in the USA in the past to an extend. In addition with a decent size of negativity towards Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians but without such negativity leading to the same dehumanization against Israelis than we see against Palestinians. Well except some quarters of the world. And of course, you will find in much of the world plenty of negativity towards Hamas. Anyway, negativity up to a point is a moderating pressure on those who would behave badly without it. But it does require a certain objectivity by those who throw it around.

You attack me of being hateful and I will be defending myself but it is those who have allowed the dehumanization of convenient targets and the advocation of atrocities under racist supremacist ideology while being ban happy to dissenters have genuinely been reprehensible.

And in relevance to the Israel and Gaza conflict, in fact it is precisely because of such decisions by people in control of media and social media that so much blood has been spilled in the middle east for the last 20 years.

Also directly related to the culture war reaching the extreme directions it reached. If there were more responsible and ethical and even handed people in charge, and gatekept out unethical virtue signaling extremists, a lot less blood would have been spilled.

Alas the gatekeeping has been done by the extremists with a manichaistic vision of the world who combine being extreme racists who with the pretensions of being antiracists out to destroy hatred. In fact they hate those who are much more moderate than them and perceive that moderation as hatred.

One that is less hostile on groups than the rhetoric against "inferior peoples". Or is it ok for people to advocate against palestnians and not ok to advocate against people who have influence in media, and social media and forums? Well the later is more in line to being against hatred than for it.

This is not a forum nor has ever been a forum where any political rhetoric goes but one where the moderators have always put a thump on the scales. And while I will be responding in a calmer manner, I will never censor the view that is completely against this ideology I speak about. Plus, it matters what opinion people of influence express. Even in lower importance settings with low inluence. And what views do you express? Well, you have ignored all this bloodthirsty rhetoric even some you linked and more besides and other and you only saw fit to imagine hatred against Jews fitting to comment about. When in a conflict when radicalism in favor of Jews that uses the ideology of Jewish superiority and Jews doing no wrong as an asset, negativity is the necessary antidote.

Even though the actual extreme racist rhetoric and advocation for murder here was obviously not against Jews but Palestinians and other groups deemed inferior by the people promoting said rhetoric.

Personally attacking me as hating the Jews when in response to all of this my view was that Jews have a serious problem of racism is you abusing your position as a moderator to personally attack your outgroup based on your sympathies.

It is actually impressive how with so much provocation my rhetoric towards groups like the Jews was restrained to only condemn pervasive racism as a problem and also outside of Jews in general being critical of those advocating of atrocities without myself siding with those who have abused Jews, like Hamas.

I am actually proud of how even handed my views are in comparison with who I am dealing with and the fact I did push back on their hateful rhetoric that promotes atrocities.

But sure, I will stand for the truth with less personal criticisms against the people who advocate for atrocities here.

Now in regards to the issue of who is the hateful in the current political environment.

The reality is that if virtue signalling racist extremists of the politically correct manner where to deradicalize, stopped their propaganda and moderate and listen to the many reasonable criticisms instead of slandering it all as hatred, the world would be a less racist, and hateful place. The people who are reasonable are never going to be perfect to the standards of extremists who see criticism and negativity towards their ingroup as a sin.

This of course applies also to Israel and Gaza conflict and zionism in general. And yes it does applies to groups like Hamas as well.

Plus, human beings are always going to be emotional beings even those who are reasonable enough to qualify as reasonable people. And for the unreasonable filled with fanaticism to lose, the reasonable need to match them in determination and will.

Less provocative racism which we shouldn't appease to, will lead to less proportionate hostility. And will reduce conflict being inflamed. But this would require to have people in positions of power who put their influence to good use for once and gatekeep those who don't. This is me making an observation about the culture war, certainly less flaming the outgroup than the people calling for commiting attrocities, or inferior peoples deserving it. And pertinent to your condemnation of me as hateful. Which is dangerous rhetoric from you considering the willingness of people to harm those perceived as hateful on the Jews.

Pressure in these directions is necessary for less hatred.

I am very much willing to accept the groups I complain about moderating, and have no problem with consistent standards but it would make me happy and consider it a victory for my position. I reject your framing. If those I call progressive supremacists or Jewish supremacists (which excludes Jews who aren't Jewish supremacists and includes non Jews who are Jewish supremacists who I have been quite negative about) abadoning their ideology and accepting that their rights ends where others begins, and vice versa, that their rights also exist, is a great general compromising point. In Israel it would along with far more restraint in dealing with Palestinians (although opposing Hamas is in line with protecting their own rights) and acceptance of how warcrimes of past, present and future are a sin also include of course ending settlements. And I would rather that the racist ideology of Jews did no wrong, Christians and Europeans or non Jews are to blame for interethnic conflict to be abadoned and not tolerated, but without pushing the opposite extreme.

Obviously this position is more moderate and pro Israeli and Jews , than the people I have been arguing with are pro Palestinian. And more pro Jewish than those promoting the Jews didn't do or are doing wrong position. But what makes you angry?

Less "It isn't happening its all in your hateful conspiring head and it is good that it is happening". More "I aknowledge that we or the progressive stack group might have erred in this manner and this isn't how things ought to go and here is how things should change, but lets be fair about it and not go to the other extreme".

Of course, not only many of their critics are reasonable people who are opposing the most pervasive extremism in our time but also even those who are similarly extreme which I am also not a fan of, can in fact make legitimate points too. Indeed, even with the people I complain about, I wouldn't say they are wrong to note that Hamas and the Palestinians supporting it are radicalized too. Which I funnily enough, got zero pushback in observing that fact. It's because people willing to advocate aggressively in favor of Palestinians mistreating Jews are rare here over the opposite.

As far as the more pervasive extremism of the day in western countries, this applies to both racist tribalists for their own groups in line with progressive stack groups and we observe the groups where it is taboo to object to their racism, but not taboo for them to be racist to naturally behave the worse. This is not going to lead to reasonable people objecting being zen monks, and rightfully so.

If it is taboo and racist to oppose the racism of Jews but not taboo for Jews or even non Jews to be racists in favor of Jews, then you got a problem of racism in favor of Jews. Naturally you will get much more of what you incentivize.

Not that complicated and not that hard for people to have a more even handed norm than that, in line with the golden rule. Not hard if people want to do that and much easier if they are incentivized to do that and we put might in service of right instead of defining what is right by might.

And it applies also to the phenomenon I have spent some time talking about which is racist supremacists for a different ethnic group. Note, that I got only a problem with any sort of tribalists for any group if it is above a certain point. It is reasonable for people to like their group. Even handedness is about avoiding certain massive bad behavior, about putting red lines respected reciprocally. It isn't about eliminating racism in an utopian manner that predictably leads to people forgiving the massive and obsessing over the irrelevant.

Not tolerating big problems does include not tolerating the view that inferior peoples should be destroyed.

And it isn't a personal attack but simply a fact that various posters here promote said racist supremacist rhetoric. Completely fair in discussing the culture war to note this fact and acknowledge it as a negative development. How is that radicalized rhetoric not provocative and attention worthy but only the response to it?

Personally I find that it isn't virtuous, or praiseworthy to be silent in line with the more pervasive racist extremism. Nor is it courageous to condemn and punch down on the politically correct targets.

And it is also fair to see the rhetoric in line of mass murder, or carpet bombing the area and ethnically cleansing Palestinians as genocide.

Is there a room in opposition to this ideology and rhetoric? Or are you going to cover with it as a moderator because you sympathize with that faction and paint opposition as hateful? Will you use the position as moderator to impose your perspective?

If you can paint me as hateful, and call this fair, I can only fairly completely reject this framing and say just as fairly as your statement that I stand against hatred you sympathize with, so that is what I advocated here for. So I explain my position over the easy slander.

And I have important reason to do so, because you can get away with your sympathies in the current political environment, for now. While those who are rather more reasonable than you can find themselves mistreated. And you know it. Of course things can change and change in a reasonable direction than the opposite extreme.

Obviously, when we got rather extreme rhetoric against general outgroups here and people promoting extreme rhetoric of their ingroups doing no wrong, others should respond.

Still, in a calmer manner, so there is less of an excuse. So I will change the way I express my values, I won't compromise on being critical of what I ought to be criticizing.

By the way, I don't see the point of you deleting my few posts when you attack me. Isn't this a way for you to paint me in any manner as you please?

Criticism that opposes bloodthirsty fanaticism in fact it is incredibly important to do so and censoring it is feeding a dangerous crocodile. And lack of it has lead to repeated tragedies, while those doing so might be arrogant and contemptuous of those wiser, not knowing what they are doing, when they create interesting times they too will be affected.

As for the general problem of hatred of our times. Those who need to change their ways and behave in a an ethical manner, to avoid their gigantic bias and to stop advocating for attrocities, won't do it when those who are in charge also share their ideology and participate, or enable it. When pushback doesn't exist and in fact it is opposed. So, the key issue here and is to gatekeep better and have ethical people be those in charge who are intolerant of this kind of behavior.

I will consider it a success against hatred if the rhetoric of those who can't coexist with other ethnic groups and don't tolerate their continued existence and are greedy to dominate others are drowned out by those opposing it. Therefore those who would support destroying and oppressing the other ethnic groups stay silent, or actually through incentives never arrive in positions that they are more psychologically susceptible to fall into.

You weren't modded for hating Jews, you were modded for ad hominem attacks on other posters. End of.

Since you posted so many comments like this in such a short time, I'm guessing you knew you'd get modded and figured you'd get your attacks in while you can.

There's also the possibility of just reading through a thread and responding to everything that drew his ire as he read it.

Where did you get the info that 2rafa and the moderators are """birds of a feather"""?

I don't remember having ever seen 2rafa try to milk the Holocaust. Maybe she has, somewhere, but I'm at least pretty sure I would have noticed by now if she did it on a regular basis.

I have the sense that you might be projecting your mental concept of what Jewish supremacists are like onto everyone who agrees even partially with things that you consider to be Jewish supremacy adjacent, even if those people do not actually express the ideas that you think they are expressing.

It is no accident that all your genocidal racist supremacist rhetoric and even advocating actual warcrimes has not gotten you in trouble by the moderators. Birds of a feather and reveals the fake nature of rationalism which underneath lies hypocritical extreme tribalism. Like the other israel firster and backers of the racist supremacist democrats the fraudster Sam Bankman Fried.

Well no, it's no accident because the mods here ding people for personal attacks, and rafa didn't attack anyone. Besides which, a motte where she can't say what she thinks is a worse motte. It is because I am rational that I allow her shitty argument - so I can argue against it - just as much as it is because of her rationality that she allows my shitty arguments - so she can argue against them.

I agree with rafa. I keep telling you Might Morality and Truth are correlated. As are Weakness, Ignorance and Evil. Parent to child, elder to younger sibling, civilised to barbarian, the stronger is often the wiser.

It’s a strange equivalence op is trying to draw. The more obvious one is that with israeli capabilities , hamas would have killed far more jews in a day than jews ever killed palestinians. palestinians owe their lives to jewish clemency, yet are incapable of it. They are ignorant of their own weakness, and morally childish, which is to say, incompetent and cruel .

Not necessarily. If Hamas had Israeli capabilities, they would have different incentives than they currently do. It's possible that they would decide "yeah let's kill as many Jews as we can", but it's also possible that they would decide "you know what, given that the Jews aren't actually an existential threat to us, maybe we should chill out instead of turning most of the world against us by massacring people".

but it's also possible that they would decide "you know what, given that the Jews aren't actually an existential threat to us, maybe we should chill out instead of turning most of the world against us by massacring people".

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

Perhaps all these shall happen...but not before the end of the world

Given the comments here and elsewhere, I very much doubt any sincerity when it comes to the alleged 'clemency' on Israels part. Apparently, the only reason jews in Israel have not ethnically cleansed, genocided, holocausted or otherwise brutalized their enemy is because it's a bad tactic at the moment. Because, I would suppose from your comment, there are stronger, morally wiser, more competent and actually merciful people out there that prevent the childish and inane racist power fantasies of hateful zionist jews to come to light.

This is a real mask off moment. Zionists wish suffering and death on women and children. They would take the lives of 1000 innocents in the most torturous way possible to save a single one of theirs. Everything they allege a nazi was they wish they could be.

They would take the lives of 1000 innocents in the most torturous way possible to save a single one of theirs.

Most of your comment falls on the wrong side of the rules, I think, but this line in particular seems like standard-issue hyperbolic propaganda. Like, show me one instance where this looks literally true, a single instance of Israel selecting "the most torturous way possible" to kill "1000 innocents" for any reason at all, much less to "save a single one of theirs."

This is (apparently!) a hotly contested issue, so I was feeling mildly reluctant to moderate you in spite of the overall badness of the comment, but that sentence in particular just struck me as entirely too much heat, directed toward your outgroup, for what looks like no light at all.

Evil is usually a bad tactic. The holocaust really slowed down the german war effort. I wish they'd understood how bad genocide is tactically. They could have achieved more objectives for less blood.

Anyway, who's mask off? rafa is always for culling the young male population anywhere, anytime.

I don't recognize the claims of the indians or palestinians , and I don't even need to call them savages, - all they have are earlier claims of conquest that have been nullified by more recent ones.

The holocaust really slowed down the german war effort.

This is a common idea, but actually the Holocaust barely affected the German war effort. The whole thing used only a very small fraction of the German manpower and logistics capacity, required no rare materials, and may have even paid for itself by providing slave labor.

What do you call a very small fraction? Seems to me large parts of the military were involved in it, or otherwise 'pacifying' to allow the einsatzgruppen to do their work. All of this wouldn't even be necessary if they just played the kind liberators against soviet oppression.

But that's not even the worst waste: Without the antisemitic obsession , jews would be the usual highly productive workforce, like in WWI, and perhaps they could build an atomic bomb for germany, or find another Haber-Bosch, or Fischer-Tropf process. Slave labor benefits, or the value of their gold teeth, are a joke by comparison.

Sorry for the really late reply but yes, I think that you are right that the overall Nazi anti-Jew campaign probably slowed their war effort by, for example, driving a bunch of scientists out of the country. When I wrote my reply, I thought that you were referring specifically to the wartime Holocaust that started around 1941.

I'd gladly witness your culling by a militarily superior race in its quest for Lebensraum, so long as it's explicitly justified with this inane correlational logic.

Despite the triteness of this platitude, correlation really does not imply causation. There are some tenuous reasons for morality to be weakly correlated with formidability, but overwhelmingly it's just due to the fact that peoples of Western Christian extraction are the strongest, have been for centuries, and have recently developed some queer compunctions. Well, this particular mix of character traits isn't globally optimal, and their exalted status isn't going to last much longer. Technologically advanced Chinese, Turks, Jews, Arabs, Mongols, Africans, whatever, wherever (including in your nations, including in their halls of power) will be as ruthless as they need to, and increasingly prove this as your race decays; first they'll bother with some glib chattering, then they'll stop. You are used to mercy and magnanimity tempering realpolitik. You'll cope about power being self-justifying, inherently beautiful and ultimately more True than any morality when those shackles are cast away.

I'd gladly witness your culling by a militarily superior race in its quest for Lebensraum, so long as it's explicitly justified with this inane correlational logic.

Already happened. And my nazi grandfathers had to witness the full extent of their moral, racial, military and epistemologic inferiority. They fought till destruction because they really believed in the correlation, far more than I do. In a way it vindicated the theory while it destroyed them and their particular beliefs.

When you’re living in your bombed-out capital, your conscience sullied, your army destroyed, your reputation infamous, the universe is trying to tell you something. You can immediately exclude the hypothesis of having done anything right, and of your own superiority.

I don't think realpolitik will triumph if the west falls - people have always resisted the athenians, even when it was hopeless - witness the realists anger at Ukraine. If china dominates, they'll just make their own rules russia and the others will have to obey, and the russians will still be grumbling about 'universalism' .

Eh, I think the use of the word "race" in that quote misleads a bit. All Churchill is really getting across is the old reply to Melos: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Not a very Christian perspective of Churchill, and not one I agree with, but he's not just saying that there's a hierarchy of races, and if you're lower you have no moral claim against your betters.

Eh, I think the use of the word "race" in that quote misleads a bit. All Churchill is really getting across is the old reply to Melos: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Yes. That reply is fundamentally repugnant. Bullets, bombs and other horrors exist to punish such foolishness.

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe —
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after — ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station —
A canter down some dark defile —
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail —
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat, Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares — shoot straight who can —
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap — alas! as we are dear.

Yes, he's not a scrub loser to appeal to some predefined theoretically just table of ranks. He is saying instead that this hierarchy is established in a contest of strength; that might makes right through its very utilization. It's an explicitly Hitlerist argument, ironically enough – except it doesn't presuppose proven superiority of Aryans. But this does explain, to some extent, why Hitler believed in such tender kinship with Anglo-Saxons.

(fuckduck9000 would say that this he is exactly correct, as demonstrated by German loss and British victory).

Back to the question at hand, we know that Zionists had no issue bombing embassies and killing non-combatants in order to colonize the land of what is now called Israel. In the 40s, they notably bombed a British embassy, and in the 50s the Israeli government pressured Britain and Italy not to investigate the bombing. Recently, an Israeli historian has claimed that Zionists were responsible for the bombings targeting the Jews of Baghdad in order to pressure Jews to migrate and settle Israel. So, back when Israel’s position was more similar to Palestine, they did in fact engage in terrorist activity. If Israeli militants would behave as Hamas militants were they in that position, then the immorality of Hamas conduct is greatly diminished in severity.

On the other hand, the Jews have spent hundreds of years as second-rate citizens being legally discriminated against and subject to expulsions and pogroms, yet instead of revolting they adapted and flourished despite the persecution. Could it be that they don't see the Palestinian future as envisioned by Israel as something really that terrible, after all, living in ghettoes and shtetls wasn't that bad until the whole industrialized Jewish extermination plan.

I think they only flourished after much of the persecution had been removed. Before about 1800 they had not been much of a factor in European life, it was after Jewish emancipation that they began their rise, as an ethnic group, to riches and influence.

On the other hand, they may have played a larger role than I know in bringing about their own emancipation.

Is there any evidence Palestinians lack other options if they got rid of Hamas? And Israel would be forced to allow a S Africa type situation in a short time?

This is a key question for determining the moral severity of the terrorist attacks

No, it isn't. Intentionally targeting civilians is morally wrong. You don’t get a free pass to murder Pol Pot's children just because he has done similar things in the past.

You don’t get a free pass to murder Pol Pot's children just because he has done similar things in the past.

"Free" pass? Not really, it's already been paid for in blood. With additional promissory value if it convinces him to stop after he's had his own medicine.

I think this "free pass" rhetoric conceals the role of the speaker, and the authorities that the speaker seeks to persuade to act, in war crime discourse. It should be one matter whether in our beliefs, the murderer of Pol Pot's children ought to be assigned the same metaphysical quality of evil or expectation of supernatural punishment as Pol Pot; it's quite another matter whether you (@Gdanning) and the government that represents you get to "withhold the free pass" (by slapping around the murderer, probably also reaping some totally coincidental benefits in the process) if previously you chose to grant the free pass to Pol Pot.

quite another matter whether you (@Gdanning) and the government that represents you get to "withhold the free pass" (by slapping around the murderer,

You seem to be referring here to whether consequences are imposed for immoral actions. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether the action is immoral or not. By "free pass", I meant a moral free pass -- because, again that was the subject of OP's claim -- not a practical free pass. People get away with immoral acts all the time. That does not render them any more or less immoral. It used to be perfectly legal to forcibly rape one's wife. Hence, husbands were given a free pass -- they were not "slapped around" by the state, to use your terminology. But that says nothing about the morality of those actions.

Israel can kill just as many civilians as Hamas by targeting military sites, while also killing relevant military leaders and defending against unwanted criticism.

There is little evidence Israel wants this. Hamas chooses to put its rocket launchers on top of hospitals because making Israel look like a big meanie is their only tactic with any hope of success.

How would Zionists behave if they were in the Palestinian position?

I mean, there are communities of Jews, even fundamentalist Jews, in pockets all over the world, under various governments that treat them across a broad spectrum of disdain and liberalism. Never in my life heard of Jewish terrorist attacks on the civilians of their host countries.

I'll never know exactly, but I think it's reasonable to extrapolate they wouldn't airdrop into a music festival and go on a rape and murder spree. Or bring some left overs home with them to enjoy later.

Extremist Jews consider their homeland to be Israel which nullifies your example

That's not actually true. A lot of the "ultra-Orthodox" in the U.S. have historically had the position that the modern state of Israel is a biblical abomination, as Jews should only return to the Promised Land when the coming of the Messiah shows that God has redeemed the Jews from the sins that resulted in their expulsion. They'll come and protest speeches by prominent Israelis just like pro-Palestinian groups will.

You’re conflating fundamentalism with extremism here; the topic of the discussion is Zionists. A religious group can be fundamentalist but not extremist, for instance the Amish.

I don't think you know enough extremist Jews to be saying that. There are Jews as extreme as any in Israel here in the USA. Brooklyn, Lakewood, smaller places like Kiryas Joel in upstate NY. These Jews are no less extreme.

AFAIK Hasidim are not Zionist. With that said they have engaged in violence to defend their community in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Square_arson_attack

Right but you said Jews. You didn't say Zionists.

I find no cognitive dissonance in my enjoying the fruits of the American Revolution while also condemning modern-day leftist revolutionaries that have so far only managed to hold a few blocks in Seattle for part of a summer.

How would Zionists behave if they were in the Palestinian position?

This is a key question for determining the moral severity of the terrorist attacks we saw this weekend

I deny this claim outright. The only real relevance to our reality is if it manifests in the fevered imagination of some alt-history author.

If, Zionism hadn't succeeded in clawing back their Holy Land, maybe a sizeable portion of the far larger Jewish diaspora would advocate for terrorism. Doesn't matter in the least, didn't happen, and the primary parties involved, namely the militia who might have taken up arms, are now octogenarians or dead. There are plenty of movements that, while nominally advocating for violent resistance in their homeland, have few people willing to do more than shout slogans. The Khalistani chap potentially offed by Modi recently is a good example, the Sikhs back in India are respected and integrated, which they wouldn't be if they had kept up their war.

A common criticism of Hamas is that they engage in terrorism against civilians whereas their morally enlightened (ostensibly) Israeli cousins only attack military targets. But I think this ignores the fact that Israel has the luxury of successfully hitting military targets. Israel can kill just as many civilians as Hamas by targeting military sites, while also killing relevant military leaders and defending against unwanted criticism.

There are few liberation movements, successful or not, that haven't shed civilian blood somewhere down the line.

If Hamas wishes to hit purely military targets, they're eminently capable, since I've seen footage of Israeli FOBs with dead soldiers nude but for hastily thrown on body armor.

Or shoot the people in the checkpoints or other side of the fence.

No, they have made a considered decision that their aims are to be manifested by killing easier targets when they can. They certainly think that it's better to save the life of their own from a decidedly uphill battle against the Israeli military, by shooting at things that won't shoot back. Regretfully, that just pushes the slope a little back, makes it steeper, and it now has an angry Apache waiting on top.

Most Western nations have far more appetite for trading their soldiers for the lives of innocent civilians, or less Afghanistan would have seen more MOABs. A mistake, in my eyes, but they would have seen tangible results from doing so, whereas the Palestinians have no hope from even maximal aggression, as I hope the Israelis are showing them.

But I think this ignores the fact that Israel has the luxury of successfully hitting military targets. Israel can kill just as many civilians as Hamas by targeting military sites, while also killing relevant military leaders and defending against unwanted criticism.

It's not luxury, it's capability. Luxury implies that it shouldn't be held against Hamas.

However, I’m not convinced that there is a clear moral difference between Hamas actions and, say, the firebombing of Tokyo, where as many as 100k were killed, the vast majority being civilians.

The firebombings could be justified if they took out some doomsday weapon that was guaranteed to win Japan the war and there was no other way to stop them. I don't believe the firebombings would qualify, there wasn't much to threaten the US by that point.

How would Zionists behave if they were in the Palestinian position?

This is a key question for determining the moral severity of the terrorist attacks we saw this weekend.

No, it really isn't. It's a way to excuse the attacks by inventing a straw Zionist who would have acted the same or even worse.

Is Joe more immoral than Fred if the action Joe takes is of the same quality Fred would take, were Fred in Joe’s position? The weight of moral philosophy says no. At worst they are equally immoral. But Joe can’t be worse than Fred, if Fred would do the same thing. Joe is only morally worse than Fred if he would behave worse than Fred.

The weight of moral philosophy says no.

Then the weight of moral philosophy is approximately the same as the weight of the angels dancing on pinheads.

"You would have done the same if you were in my position, therefore what I did is OK" is probably false and certainly unprovable in this case.

Do you think that one group is more immoral than another simply because of chance? So if two people try to kill each other equally, the one whose gun didn’t jam is more immoral? If two people attempt adultery, the immoral one is the one who is more attractive? I don’t think I’m representing your view correctly here. In the case of Hamas vs Israel, I’m saying Hamas can’t be “more immoral than Israel” if Israel would do the same to them all things being equal. This doesn’t imply that international law is suddenly abolished or that the actions can’t be censured by some third party nation. I’m only making an assertion about morality relative to the two. So an application would be that neither Hamas nor Israel get to claim righteousness or moral high ground.

It’s unknowable but we can still consider things that are likely.

I am saying your imaginings about what Zionists would do if in the same situation as Hamas have no weight. You're taking it as a given that the two groups are morally equivalent, using that belief to assert that the Zionists would do the same in reversed circumstances, and then using that assertion to claim the two groups are morally equivalent. It's entirely circular. In reality, we've got no evidence that, in a reversed situation, that the Zionists would target civilians and rape and murder them and drag their bodies through the streets. Their big well-known terrorist action was the bombing of British administrative headquarters in the King David Hotel, which isn't similar.

I am not taking it as a given.

Per Richard Catling regarding the Deir Yassin massacre in the 40s by Zionists, just weeks before the creation of Israel:

On 14th April at 10 a.m. I visited Silwan village accompanied by a doctor and a nurse from the Government Hospital in Jerusalem and a member of the Arab Women's Union […] I interviewed many of the women folk in order to glean some information on any atrocities committed in Deir Yassin but the majority of those women are very shy and reluctant to relate their experiences especially in matters concerning sexual assault and they need great coaxing before they will divulge any information. The recording of statements is hampered also by the hysterical state of the women who often break down many times whilst the statement is being recorded. There is, however, no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. One story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn in two. Many infants were also butchered and killed. I also saw one old woman who gave her age as one hundred and four who had been severely beaten about the head with rifle butts. Women had bracelets torn from their arms and rings from their fingers and parts of some of the women's ears were severed in order to remove earrings

The men were paraded in the streets of Jerusalem and spat on before being executed.

How would one restrain the temptation to justify any actions by saying that your enemy would have acted like you did? It seems like a fully general way to excuse bad behavior on the part of an underdog in any conflict.

By reasoning? The same way we use our reasoning to predict other future contingencies. There’s a reason so many people were on board with invading Iraq over WMDs and after hearing about Iraq killing innocents. There was then intense backlash once it was realized that this intelligence gathering was horribly faulty and in some cases fraudulent. So it’s actually already normal to consider what our geopolitical enemies would do if they could, and to make judgments as a consequence.

It’s the bloody inverse of the golden rule: do unto others what you imagine they might do unto you. It’s the tribal justification for the cleansing fire of war since human history began.

How would Zionists behave if they were in the Palestinian position?

I think that a good example could be found around the founding of Israel. Were there atrocities when Israel was the weaker side on the brink of extinction - rapes used as a weapon of war. People gathered in building set on fire. Summary executions of Palestinian non combatants. These are not rhetorical questions - the Wikipedia articles are grossly inadequate.

the Wikipedia articles are grossly inadequate.

Are they? The lists of killings and massacres in Mandatory Palestine and during the 1948 war and in Israel seem pretty thorough. Everybody was massacring the hell out of everybody else, including Irgun bombings of civilians, summary execution of Arab civilians for violating curfews they hadn't been notified of, and one massacre by IDF forces with 3 or 4 reported rapes. Fog of war, biased reporting, etc., but AFAIK nobody objective thinks there's a side without blood on their hands there. At most they try to excuse or disavow some or all of it. (Or both? I don't recall any Law of Merited Impossibility apologetics here but maybe that's just my inattention or bad memory.)

I'm not actually aware of a "People gathered in building set on fire" massacre, though. You're not thinking about the Cinema Rex fire at the start of the Iranian Revolution?

People gathered in building set on fire

It's common enough trough history. I was not mentioning the war, just a list of most despicable things that are less than Nanking

I think this is an example of typical-minding a far-group that you don't really interact with in any meaningful capacity. Palestinians aren't regretfully killing or raping civilians because they are limited to those particular targets - they are happy to do so, proud to do so, and will shout their joy from the rooftops. Most of the videos of Palestinians dragging girls back to Gaza or desecrating corpses aren't from Israeli propaganda, they're from pro-Palestine Telegram groups where everyone is in lockstep approval of their actions.

lockstep approval

Although both the lock-stepping Nazis and the celebrating Palestinians are/were anti-Semites, I’d instead characterize the latter as “like-minded.”