naraburns nihil supernum
2yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed 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.
In a weird way this really is about communism vs capitalism, radical vs liberal, left vs center.
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in. From a liberal standpoint, we see one new consensual transaction being conducted and one formerly consensual transaction being canceled when no longer consensual. Completely legit and just.
That this happened to result in a large enough number of people in a short enough time getting evicted and not knowing what to do with themselves and becoming ghettoized in shantytowns (prior to the initial civil wars in that region), is exactly the sort of thing that leftists say is wrong with liberalism.
The fundamental leftist argument is that purely voluntary transactions can force some people into conditions sufficiently intolerable that it constitutes a real injustice, even if all contracts are upheld and everything is consensual.
So you have on one hand: "we purchased the land in Mandatory Palestine fair and square, we toiled and saved and spent hard earned money on it, and moved in, and now people want to kill us"
And on the other hand: "100 years ago we were spread out over this whole land, we had a system going, we had our own society. Now we are impoverished, crammed into this little ghetto while you rub your possession of our land in our face."
In the first case: voluntary, uncoerced transactions between consenting parties, aka liberalism
In the second case: those purely voluntary transactions result in injustice, aka leftism
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian. Pointing out how Muslims are anti-LGBTQ or whatever falls on deaf ears because it's not really about that with them.
I don't even think it's that dynamic that leads the American left to be so sympathetic towards Palestinians. Instead, I think it's the old Arnold Kling Three Languages of Politics thesis that includes progressives thinking primarily in terms of the oppressed-oppressor axis and conservatives thinking in terms of the civilization-barbarism axis. You can see echos of this all over the language that people use to talk about it, with the emphasis on how utterly savage the Hamas attacks are and how Israel has backed Palestinians into a corner. Who conservatives and progressives sympathize with can almost always be neatly predicted by applying that framework; even when it looks to me like the progressives are siding with power, they still usually believe themselves to be siding with the oppressed.
This actually feels pretty close to my thinking on it. Every time I start to think along the lines of, those Palestinians did get a pretty raw deal, getting booted off of their land effectively permanently mostly due to things that had nothing to do with them, they go and do something so freaking savage that it's hard to think anything but that the only thing they deserve is the same savagery pointed right back at them.
The left / blue team tries to excuse it with "that's how the oppressed naturally behave", to which I would reply that plenty of groups have managed to rebel against oppression without resorting to the laundry list of awful things the Palestinians have been known for.
those Palestinians did get a pretty raw deal, getting booted off of their land effectively permanently mostly due to things that had nothing to do with them
I agree with that. Then, of course - like an awful lot of oppressed people whose way of relating to each other is the paradigm of oppressor and oppressed - they turned around and engaged in savagery. Like, I feel for the Palestinians, but the guys who decided to open a war by attacking a music festival and then parading the corpses around seem to have erred badly. Even leaving morality aside, this looks like it might just be a ploy to goad Israel and perhaps the West into an equally savage response. What is the ultimate purpose of this kind of thing for Hamas? Who benefits? What does "victory" look like? Even if we're being uncharitable and it's "Drive the Israelis out of Israel, kill those that won't leave, and control the territory there", deliberately attacking civilians hardens resolve and makes you look like a bunch of savages to Westerners...the ones with the boatloads of guns and ammo and bombs.
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Notes -
In a weird way this really is about communism vs capitalism, radical vs liberal, left vs center.
My understanding is the recent ancestors of the present Israelis bought the land from willing sellers fair and square, whose tenants were evicted when the new buyers wanted to move in. From a liberal standpoint, we see one new consensual transaction being conducted and one formerly consensual transaction being canceled when no longer consensual. Completely legit and just.
That this happened to result in a large enough number of people in a short enough time getting evicted and not knowing what to do with themselves and becoming ghettoized in shantytowns (prior to the initial civil wars in that region), is exactly the sort of thing that leftists say is wrong with liberalism.
The fundamental leftist argument is that purely voluntary transactions can force some people into conditions sufficiently intolerable that it constitutes a real injustice, even if all contracts are upheld and everything is consensual.
So you have on one hand: "we purchased the land in Mandatory Palestine fair and square, we toiled and saved and spent hard earned money on it, and moved in, and now people want to kill us"
And on the other hand: "100 years ago we were spread out over this whole land, we had a system going, we had our own society. Now we are impoverished, crammed into this little ghetto while you rub your possession of our land in our face."
In the first case: voluntary, uncoerced transactions between consenting parties, aka liberalism
In the second case: those purely voluntary transactions result in injustice, aka leftism
That's why the left is pro-Palestinian. Pointing out how Muslims are anti-LGBTQ or whatever falls on deaf ears because it's not really about that with them.
I don't even think it's that dynamic that leads the American left to be so sympathetic towards Palestinians. Instead, I think it's the old Arnold Kling Three Languages of Politics thesis that includes progressives thinking primarily in terms of the oppressed-oppressor axis and conservatives thinking in terms of the civilization-barbarism axis. You can see echos of this all over the language that people use to talk about it, with the emphasis on how utterly savage the Hamas attacks are and how Israel has backed Palestinians into a corner. Who conservatives and progressives sympathize with can almost always be neatly predicted by applying that framework; even when it looks to me like the progressives are siding with power, they still usually believe themselves to be siding with the oppressed.
This actually feels pretty close to my thinking on it. Every time I start to think along the lines of, those Palestinians did get a pretty raw deal, getting booted off of their land effectively permanently mostly due to things that had nothing to do with them, they go and do something so freaking savage that it's hard to think anything but that the only thing they deserve is the same savagery pointed right back at them.
The left / blue team tries to excuse it with "that's how the oppressed naturally behave", to which I would reply that plenty of groups have managed to rebel against oppression without resorting to the laundry list of awful things the Palestinians have been known for.
I agree with that. Then, of course - like an awful lot of oppressed people whose way of relating to each other is the paradigm of oppressor and oppressed - they turned around and engaged in savagery. Like, I feel for the Palestinians, but the guys who decided to open a war by attacking a music festival and then parading the corpses around seem to have erred badly. Even leaving morality aside, this looks like it might just be a ploy to goad Israel and perhaps the West into an equally savage response. What is the ultimate purpose of this kind of thing for Hamas? Who benefits? What does "victory" look like? Even if we're being uncharitable and it's "Drive the Israelis out of Israel, kill those that won't leave, and control the territory there", deliberately attacking civilians hardens resolve and makes you look like a bunch of savages to Westerners...the ones with the boatloads of guns and ammo and bombs.
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