site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   29919 thread views

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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A Gazan hospital has been hit, allegedly by a missile, allegedly by an Israeli missile: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-500-victims-israeli-air-strike-hospital-gaza-health-ministry-2023-10-17/

Here is why this seems incredibly unlikely to me:

  • Israel gains nothing from this.

  • Israel loses a lot from this.

  • Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. whatever amalgamation of actors here are opposing Israel have demonstrated that they are willing to strike their own people.

  • Hamas etc. gain a lot from this (politically).

The narrative around this is already forming and I suspect that we will never be free of knowing that Israel for sure bombed a hospital (maybe they did).

This will be a major inflection point in this war. Causalities are approaching 1000 people (started at 500, now at 800)

Edit: here’s also why I’m so suspicious of this. If it’s true that Israel bombed this hospital, it basically evaporates any amount of good will I had for them. The 10/7 Hamas attacks were terrible. This is just as bad. Pull our aircraft carriers back, no aid, nothing. Still send in some bad hombres to get our citizens out, but other than that Israel is on its own, and I don’t want to hear any ridiculous moralizing from any us politician ever again.

Edit2: There are allegedly demonstrations happening in several countries now. Extremely dynamic news environment. Nobody knows wtf is going on. Israel is starting to get their narrative together about the cause of this, but it's way too late for them to get ahold of it.

Edit3: allegedly a video of both the initial rocket launch, as well as the explosion: https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1714379242983846126

This matches up with the very first video of the rocket hitting the hospital, and answers why the guy filming was filming (because there were a bunch of rockets going overhead)

it basically evaporates any amount of good will I had for them

I don't understand a lot of things in life - and thoughts like these rank among the top.

Israel is surrounded by people's who all basically want them destroyed. One group decided to invade them and kill (1000, 1200?) of them and take hostages. Said people store munitions in hospitals and schools.

By every conceivable human metric that isn't of the last 50 years, Israel has the absolute human right to completely glaze everything around them until they are happy and secure.

But they don't. They hold back. Always. For decades.

And you're upset they blew up a hospital ... Or didn't.

By every conceivable human metric that isn't of the last 50 years, Israel has the absolute human right to completely glaze everything around them until they are happy and secure.

But they don't. They hold back. Always. For decades.

The problem with this statement is that while this would be fine using the human metrics of the past, the last 50 years actually took place in the last 50 years as opposed to during the Bronze age. If you actually want to adopt the standards of the Bronze Age then Israel simply does not exist, because the holocaust would have been just as fine by those standards as the proposed "glazing" of everything around them. It is solely due to the growing understanding of humanity that genocide is a great wrong that Israel and the Jewish people exist in the first place, and Israel demonstrating that they don't actually care about the evils of genocide, they just want to be wearing the boot rather than under it, is enough to make a lot of people reconsider their support. Don't forget the precedent your support of these actions sets either - even just advocating for the nuclear genocide of the Arab world is enough to permanently destroy your credibility when it comes to condemning racists or white nationalists, who are in many cases less extreme in their policy recommendations.

even just advocating for the nuclear genocide of the Arab world is enough to permanently destroy your credibility when it comes to condemning racists or white nationalists, who are in many cases less extreme in their policy recommendations.

I think we should be a bit more clear here: until they are happy and secure.

They are not secure because the people around them want them dead. The people around them constantly kill them, want to kill them, pray to kill them, hope to kill them, etc

Affixing "until they are happy and secure" to the end of the statement does absolutely nothing to change the thrust of my argument or weaken the point at all. If your standard for moral condemnation is that you have to wait for the white nationalists to be "happy and secure" in their position then you're still going to be ok with them wiping out every single jew in their countries (they wouldn't be happy without that of course).

The crud of your point has seemingly little to do with my thoughts.

Israel doesn’t exist as restitution for the Holocaust. It exists because influential British Jews persuaded the UK to grant them the territory and then settled and defended it by force. In other words, it exists because it was able to exist, just like every other polity in history. If Israel was reparations for the Holocaust then it should be German soldiers preparing to invade Gaza now, but of course it is not.

The standards of history show that, whatever our current moral judgment of the Holocaust, these events still happen and bullshit morality arguments by an “international community” that doesn’t really care don’t matter, and that is what - primarily - motivates Israel’s defense. The US can afford to claim that it really is about bringing LGBT rights to Afghanistan or whatever, everyone else accepts the eternal realities of geopolitics.

Israel doesn’t exist as restitution for the Holocaust.

I never claimed this. I was talking about a comparison to a hypothetical world where Bronze-age norms held sway - and in that world there wouldn't be an Israel because nobody would have bothered to stop the holocaust, nor would the few remaining jews have been able to convince the UK to make Israel instead of New Outremer. No Bronze-age nation would ever give a hostile ethnic group a bunch of land, lots of money etc. Hell, they wouldn't even do the same for cousins from a different village!

The standards of history show that, whatever our current moral judgment of the Holocaust, these events still happen and bullshit morality arguments by an “international community” that doesn’t really care don’t matter,

South Africa. If you flout the conventions of the international community, they have more than enough power to make your lives miserable and crater your economy. North Korea is still standing, but I don't think they're a particularly good model for a society. And remember, these same moral judgements that condemn Israel for wanting to exterminate the Palestinians are the same moral judgements that condemn people who want to exterminate the jews. Destroying those norms and indicating that they have no validity or power, at least in my opinion, would not be terribly great for the jewish people.

It's a human right to destroy millions of your neighbors? Well that's new.

Israel has created their enemies, instead of making peace with them, or coming to an agreement, they escalate, bully, and oppress. Hopefully we will see how their hubris and chutzpah will be rewarded. Unfortunately they will also drag the US with them to this lesson.

What do you propose Israelis do, that doesn’t condemn us to total destruction?

Negotiate with Hamas and make peace including concessions. Probably something like recognizing Palestine, ending settlements, respecting borders, ending blockades and embargo, whatever it takes I guess.

The concessions Hamas asks for are “go back to Europe or the sea”. They will only agree to a tactical truce, this is their raison d’être. They don’t want to create an independent state, and they could have done this for about two decades now if they did. There’s nothing to recognize in Gaza. Ending the blockade will mean more weapons in the hands of genocidal maniacs. So now what?

Hamas is the no negotiation political party in Palestine. They are very explicit about that. It's leaders are happy to siphon off billions and live the good life in Qatar and the rank and file soldiers are so ideologically captured they don't know anything except killing Jews and political dissidents.

Okay, let's say Israel does all of that but then Hamas just keeps attacking all the harder. Then what?

Obviously peace would be ideal, but it takes two sides to make peace, and I've seen no sign Hamas are interested.

War - it takes war.

And the longer Israel diddles, the longer the suffering before the cleansing spirit of war.

I wish war was never invented. I wish it were obsolete now. But it was, and it isn't.

Negotiate with Hamas and make peace including concessions.

Hamas wants the complete destruction of Israel. There are no concessions for that. It's like Jews making concessions to the Nazis.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats