naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
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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.
This is catching my eye. Maybe more culture war than war. There’s a lot of canceling going on of people expressing antisemitism but I do think there’s a red line and the phrase they are using I would define as the genocidal anti-semitism. I do think social media allows for kids to do dumb shit and gets magnified too much.
The particular phrase is “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea”. I wouldn’t have a problem with “Palestine shall be free” then maybe some kind of Gandhi type saying. That seems like normal do-gooder leftist that was quite normal in the ‘90’s to about 2010.
“From the river to the sea” sounds like straight up Hitler type solutions. I’m gonna call that bad. Whose indoctrinating these 15-22 year olds with this ideology. Do these kids understand the difference between Gandhi type stuff and Hitler? Is this me not being intune to tick-tock channels and the kids are just picking up a catchy chant but don’t really understand they are calling for genocide.
Given the German history in the last century, I do not think that most of our European neighbors would view this as a call to charm them into ceding substantial parts of their territory out of their goodness of heart. They would clearly and correctly interpret it as a call to drown Europe in recidivist warfare again.
The history between the Palestinians longing for their own state and Israel is no less bloody than the one which lead to the current borders of Germany. Hamas, one of the most influential Palestinian organization which also happens to subscribes to the "river to the sea" territorial claim gave the world a clear taste of the means they prefer to accomplish their goal. While they thankfully don't have a realistic path to victory, I am not aware of any Palestinian group whose strategy is to charm Israel into ceding all of their territory to a Palestinian nation state out of their goodness of heart. I fully expect the Israelis would defend the existence of their state until their last soldier and nuke.
Under these circumstances, I see little semantic difference between “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea” and "Go Hamas, drive the Jews into the sea!"
(Another debatable point would be the concept of a "free" nation state. As a person without strong nationalist sentiments (a trait I likely share with the wokes parroting the slogan), I think this is a curious choice of adjective. I suppose states like Afghanistan or North Korea would qualify as "free", because their despotic rulers are not beholden to any foreign power, while Scotland, Texas or Bavaria are not because they are part of larger states. If one focuses on personal freedom, the most free Palestinians in the Middle East are Israelis (because they are (2nd class) citizens of a western democracy) and the least free are Gazans (because they are ruled by Islamists (who in my experience are not great at respecting gender identities) who clearly place their suicidal terrorism over the welfare of their subjects.)
I think most understand that the phrase “from the river to the sea” means the end of Israel, they just aren’t willing to concede to the second order effects of that being implemented (ie slaughter of the region’s Jewish population). They would say it means a single, Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would live together. They would deny that it would lead to ethnic cleansing.
they just aren’t willing to concede to the second order effects of that being implemented (ie slaughter of the region’s Jewish population)
The same was said by the Afrikaners who had a far more precarious position before Apartheid fell. It is easy to say in hindsight that such concerns were overblown but they certainly did not feel it at the time (hence the massive emigration once the system fell). I don't think genocide would happen (the world would step in) but I agree that ethnic cleansing á la Karabach could happen or though we may see Israel do it in Gaza over the coming months instead.
If we're honest, both sides view the conflict as zero-sum so I don't think there's a moral lesson here. Only who is more powerful.
I don't think genocide would happen (the world would step in)
The track record of the world stepping in to prevent genocide is not actually that great. If the world is stepping in, it would be before Israel is defeated.
I have no doubt that Hamas would do their best to genocide Israeli citizens if they had the power to do so.
Genocide isn't necessary, israelis could leave (unlike the palestinians). The western position is that Ukraine shouldn't give up an inch of territory they do not currently control, so why should palestinians?
there are some differences, for example Ukraine has not stated that genocide of all Russians is among their top priorities (they also are not behaving in this way, again unlike Hamas).
Americans not knowing about geography is unfortunately fairly common, and it's at least plausible for them to not know what river (or even sea) is in mention, or think it's a shortcut given Gaza being at one and the West Bank at the other. While a modern-day college student should know better or at least check, most don't; cfe Vox's famous 'land bridge'.
Further toward the outside bounds of plausible charitable, a lot of people do clearly want Israel gone but might be advocating a Palestinian single-state solution, either having ludicrously optimistic hopes of a peaceful Palestinian single state or expecting the Israelis to flee. The latter is still ethnic cleansing under international law, but it's not mass murder.
...
But there's a lot of stuff that's not really got that excuse, with either a transparent fig leaf or none at all. Sometimes the authors can't plausibly be mistaken: when Coates calls one of the largest Israeli cities and the one furthest from any Palestinian claims, Haifa, part of Palestine, he doesn't have the excuse that a dumbass college student might. There's a lot of celebration of October 7th, especially paraglider symbolism, with people trying to pretend that it's plausible to celebrate the military or territory victories (which ones, you might ask?) from the mass murder of civilians. There's a lot of people who just hate those 'Zionist' Journalists, with about the same level of fortitude and intellectual coherency as you'd expect from conventional actualfa.
And then you have people who just think the final solution wasn't final enough (caveat: the author has given not-very-compelling claims he was 'hacked'; no one seems interested in verifying that, nor has his publisher spoken out one way or the other).
On its own, that's not a huge surprise! There have been a lot of anti-'Zionism' that happened to care about anything involving non-Israeli Jews or domestic Israeli politics, and there's nutty antisemitism around most political aisles.
What's really concerning is the institutional support. The rehabilitation of Al Sharpton and the curious willingness to treat with Farrakhen-adjacents has long been a problem for principled anti-racists, but for the most part this had at least tried to keep invisible -- less visibly with internal conflicts for the Women's March, famously up to and including the Obama dinner meeting that wasn't. That doesn't really seem on the table, or even considered, by a lot of people now. It's not weird that a handful of nutty Harvard students exist; it's a problem when they're going to get paid for it. The students in question here might get marked absent, if the teachers don't play along, but I doubt we'll be seeing them face the sort of opprobrium that calling the walkout stupid might.
(though note that this points to the org behind the walkout and that particular video being bugnuts, who probably do mean at least the Israeli-exclusionist version of 'from the river to the sea'; note the approving retweet of this October 8th CNN piece that's still up).
I'm not sure if it reflects changes in the leadership of the Democratic coalition -- beyond the number of recent immigrants from countries with a lot of anti-Israeli politics, who tbf often themselves aren't often the nuttiest, there's just a lot of people who were raised around anti-Israeli -- or the passing wake of the Bush era, or if it's more a philosophical thing, or if it's another "march through institutions" bit where this was always present but it's reached a tipping point where (people believed) it stopped being expensive to say publicly.
I clicked thru the organizations power point for talking points. In their chants they don’t have “from the river to the sea” they have “from Palestine to Mexico” and from “Palestine to the Philippines”.
The kids could be dumb. And even if they know what it means it’s the adults training them who are far more culpable. I think I fairly claim the two phrases I listed are dog whistles for river to sea. The organization I’m going to assume did give them river to sea in non published material and are fully aware of what it means.
There’s certainly an organization behind the message that is giving it to the kids or spreading it on tick-tock who 100% know what they are selling.
The Sharpton rehabilitation etc I have strong suspicion that the ADL has been playing with these groups and it well it sort of backfired on their primary mission. Training people who actually hate you.
As far as culpability I wouldn’t punish high school students. They just haven’t put enough thoughts in their head yet to make distinctions. College kids are getting their but exploring some heretical ideas is ok. Both of these groups get some training as punishment. The adults and law school students especially from elite backgrounds should be able to make these distinctions.
Well yes- how many of these people support some kind of land back scheme and how many just don’t get that coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians isn’t really an option?
how many just don’t get that coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians isn’t really an option?
100% of them, and they not only "just don't get it" they explicitly uphold and champion political ideologies which make "getting it" utterly impossible. What's the argument against a one-state solution with equality between Palestinians and Israelis that can't also be used against the multicultural societies of the west? To accept that coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians isn't possible is for them to admit that the political beliefs they built their entire identity around are irrevocably flawed and that they have wasted their life in pursuit of an impossible dream. Do you think a La Raza activist is going to accept that actually racism is good and the Trump supporters are right because a bunch of white people with funny little hats want to keep their apartheid state alive and healthily discriminating against brown people?
a bunch of white people with funny little hats want to keep their apartheid state alive and healthily discriminating against brown people?
Objectively this isn't true- while Ashkenazim are the wealthiest ethnic group in Israel, that's just at the level to be expected based on their IQ advantage, and most Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi. Israel is also not an apartheid state- Arab Israelis are full citizens and the Palestinians' own poor behavior is probably the largest contributing factor to their lack of international recognition.
Objectively this isn't true- while Ashkenazim are the wealthiest ethnic group in Israel, that's just at the level to be expected based on their IQ advantage,
We're talking about the left wing here - do you think "Oh actually people of colour are just hereditarily stupid, violent criminals so that's why they aren't doing as well as whites" is the sort of argument that they're willing to accept? Sure, this is the motte and we can talk about HBD openly and use it in arguments, but if you think that's going to be convincing to left wing political activists you're dreaming.
Israel is also not an apartheid state-
Let's just ask some people on the left their opinion on this issue! https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/ Oh, would you look at that - it seems like they actually disagree with you here. In fact, they disagree with you so strongly that they have actually provided a short educational course you can take which will help you get educated on this issue and realise your (from their point of view) mistake. I mean, I have to admit that quotes like "Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them" sound pretty ethnonationalist to me, but maybe there's some factor I'm missing? There was also that time they got caught surreptitiously administering contraceptives to brown people, which is another policy the antiracist left is somewhat opposed to.
Palestinians' own poor behavior is probably the largest contributing factor to their lack of international recognition.
I actually disagree here for two main reasons. The first is that I believe that the jewish community exists - I can look at organisations like Chabad house who currently have a big page on their website talking about how members of the community can support Israel. At the same time, organisations like AIPAC exist and frequently make very public statements about their goals and what they're doing. So we have some evidence that there is actually an organised effort to change opinions on the conflict coming from the Israeli side. And as for their poor behavior being the largest contributing factor to their lack of international recognition... I really have to disagree. I've encountered multiple arguments from Israeli partisans that run along the lines of 'Palestine was never a real country' and hence wasn't recognised before the conflict even started. Furthermore, it isn't like Lehi(self admitted terrorists!) or Irgun managed to prevent Israel from being internationally recognised either. How exactly could the bad behaviour of the Palestinians in response to Israeli occupation reach back in time and destroy international recognition while similar behaviour on the part of the Israelis garnered the opposite reaction? I don't think it actually could have, which is why I don't think it's the largest contributing factor.
My guess is they don’t understand the implications of the second part and say it because it’s catchy and rhymes with the first part. I don’t think it’s worth taking too seriously.
To be honest, I’d be more wary of pro-Israel folks taking the surely unobjectionable first part and trying to elide any calls for a free Palestine with genocide.
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Notes -
This is catching my eye. Maybe more culture war than war. There’s a lot of canceling going on of people expressing antisemitism but I do think there’s a red line and the phrase they are using I would define as the genocidal anti-semitism. I do think social media allows for kids to do dumb shit and gets magnified too much.
The particular phrase is “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea”. I wouldn’t have a problem with “Palestine shall be free” then maybe some kind of Gandhi type saying. That seems like normal do-gooder leftist that was quite normal in the ‘90’s to about 2010.
“From the river to the sea” sounds like straight up Hitler type solutions. I’m gonna call that bad. Whose indoctrinating these 15-22 year olds with this ideology. Do these kids understand the difference between Gandhi type stuff and Hitler? Is this me not being intune to tick-tock channels and the kids are just picking up a catchy chant but don’t really understand they are calling for genocide.
https://twitter.com/theeliklein/status/1715002198550257918?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
I agree.
As an intuition pump, suppose the Germans started using the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied again, which contains the lines
(See here for where these rivers run.)
Given the German history in the last century, I do not think that most of our European neighbors would view this as a call to charm them into ceding substantial parts of their territory out of their goodness of heart. They would clearly and correctly interpret it as a call to drown Europe in recidivist warfare again.
The history between the Palestinians longing for their own state and Israel is no less bloody than the one which lead to the current borders of Germany. Hamas, one of the most influential Palestinian organization which also happens to subscribes to the "river to the sea" territorial claim gave the world a clear taste of the means they prefer to accomplish their goal. While they thankfully don't have a realistic path to victory, I am not aware of any Palestinian group whose strategy is to charm Israel into ceding all of their territory to a Palestinian nation state out of their goodness of heart. I fully expect the Israelis would defend the existence of their state until their last soldier and nuke.
Under these circumstances, I see little semantic difference between “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea” and "Go Hamas, drive the Jews into the sea!"
(Another debatable point would be the concept of a "free" nation state. As a person without strong nationalist sentiments (a trait I likely share with the wokes parroting the slogan), I think this is a curious choice of adjective. I suppose states like Afghanistan or North Korea would qualify as "free", because their despotic rulers are not beholden to any foreign power, while Scotland, Texas or Bavaria are not because they are part of larger states. If one focuses on personal freedom, the most free Palestinians in the Middle East are Israelis (because they are (2nd class) citizens of a western democracy) and the least free are Gazans (because they are ruled by Islamists (who in my experience are not great at respecting gender identities) who clearly place their suicidal terrorism over the welfare of their subjects.)
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I think most understand that the phrase “from the river to the sea” means the end of Israel, they just aren’t willing to concede to the second order effects of that being implemented (ie slaughter of the region’s Jewish population). They would say it means a single, Palestinian state in which Jews and Arabs would live together. They would deny that it would lead to ethnic cleansing.
The same was said by the Afrikaners who had a far more precarious position before Apartheid fell. It is easy to say in hindsight that such concerns were overblown but they certainly did not feel it at the time (hence the massive emigration once the system fell). I don't think genocide would happen (the world would step in) but I agree that ethnic cleansing á la Karabach could happen or though we may see Israel do it in Gaza over the coming months instead.
If we're honest, both sides view the conflict as zero-sum so I don't think there's a moral lesson here. Only who is more powerful.
The track record of the world stepping in to prevent genocide is not actually that great. If the world is stepping in, it would be before Israel is defeated.
I have no doubt that Hamas would do their best to genocide Israeli citizens if they had the power to do so.
Depends who the victims would be.
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Genocide isn't necessary, israelis could leave (unlike the palestinians). The western position is that Ukraine shouldn't give up an inch of territory they do not currently control, so why should palestinians?
there are some differences, for example Ukraine has not stated that genocide of all Russians is among their top priorities (they also are not behaving in this way, again unlike Hamas).
Hamas didn't even exist when Palestinian lands were taken by force in 1948 for example.
Well, it exists now. And UPA does not exist now.
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Americans not knowing about geography is unfortunately fairly common, and it's at least plausible for them to not know what river (or even sea) is in mention, or think it's a shortcut given Gaza being at one and the West Bank at the other. While a modern-day college student should know better or at least check, most don't; cfe Vox's famous 'land bridge'.
Further toward the outside bounds of plausible charitable, a lot of people do clearly want Israel gone but might be advocating a Palestinian single-state solution, either having ludicrously optimistic hopes of a peaceful Palestinian single state or expecting the Israelis to flee. The latter is still ethnic cleansing under international law, but it's not mass murder.
...
But there's a lot of stuff that's not really got that excuse, with either a transparent fig leaf or none at all. Sometimes the authors can't plausibly be mistaken: when Coates calls one of the largest Israeli cities and the one furthest from any Palestinian claims, Haifa, part of Palestine, he doesn't have the excuse that a dumbass college student might. There's a lot of celebration of October 7th, especially paraglider symbolism, with people trying to pretend that it's plausible to celebrate the military or territory victories (which ones, you might ask?) from the mass murder of civilians. There's a lot of people who just hate those 'Zionist' Journalists, with about the same level of fortitude and intellectual coherency as you'd expect from conventional actualfa.
And then you have people who just think the final solution wasn't final enough (caveat: the author has given not-very-compelling claims he was 'hacked'; no one seems interested in verifying that, nor has his publisher spoken out one way or the other).
On its own, that's not a huge surprise! There have been a lot of anti-'Zionism' that happened to care about anything involving non-Israeli Jews or domestic Israeli politics, and there's nutty antisemitism around most political aisles.
What's really concerning is the institutional support. The rehabilitation of Al Sharpton and the curious willingness to treat with Farrakhen-adjacents has long been a problem for principled anti-racists, but for the most part this had at least tried to keep invisible -- less visibly with internal conflicts for the Women's March, famously up to and including the Obama dinner meeting that wasn't. That doesn't really seem on the table, or even considered, by a lot of people now. It's not weird that a handful of nutty Harvard students exist; it's a problem when they're going to get paid for it. The students in question here might get marked absent, if the teachers don't play along, but I doubt we'll be seeing them face the sort of opprobrium that calling the walkout stupid might.
(though note that this points to the org behind the walkout and that particular video being bugnuts, who probably do mean at least the Israeli-exclusionist version of 'from the river to the sea'; note the approving retweet of this October 8th CNN piece that's still up).
I'm not sure if it reflects changes in the leadership of the Democratic coalition -- beyond the number of recent immigrants from countries with a lot of anti-Israeli politics, who tbf often themselves aren't often the nuttiest, there's just a lot of people who were raised around anti-Israeli -- or the passing wake of the Bush era, or if it's more a philosophical thing, or if it's another "march through institutions" bit where this was always present but it's reached a tipping point where (people believed) it stopped being expensive to say publicly.
I clicked thru the organizations power point for talking points. In their chants they don’t have “from the river to the sea” they have “from Palestine to Mexico” and from “Palestine to the Philippines”.
The kids could be dumb. And even if they know what it means it’s the adults training them who are far more culpable. I think I fairly claim the two phrases I listed are dog whistles for river to sea. The organization I’m going to assume did give them river to sea in non published material and are fully aware of what it means.
There’s certainly an organization behind the message that is giving it to the kids or spreading it on tick-tock who 100% know what they are selling.
The Sharpton rehabilitation etc I have strong suspicion that the ADL has been playing with these groups and it well it sort of backfired on their primary mission. Training people who actually hate you.
As far as culpability I wouldn’t punish high school students. They just haven’t put enough thoughts in their head yet to make distinctions. College kids are getting their but exploring some heretical ideas is ok. Both of these groups get some training as punishment. The adults and law school students especially from elite backgrounds should be able to make these distinctions.
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My first assumption is that it's associated with the "anti-colonialism" of the so-called woke.
Well yes- how many of these people support some kind of land back scheme and how many just don’t get that coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians isn’t really an option?
100% of them, and they not only "just don't get it" they explicitly uphold and champion political ideologies which make "getting it" utterly impossible. What's the argument against a one-state solution with equality between Palestinians and Israelis that can't also be used against the multicultural societies of the west? To accept that coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians isn't possible is for them to admit that the political beliefs they built their entire identity around are irrevocably flawed and that they have wasted their life in pursuit of an impossible dream. Do you think a La Raza activist is going to accept that actually racism is good and the Trump supporters are right because a bunch of white people with funny little hats want to keep their apartheid state alive and healthily discriminating against brown people?
Objectively this isn't true- while Ashkenazim are the wealthiest ethnic group in Israel, that's just at the level to be expected based on their IQ advantage, and most Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi. Israel is also not an apartheid state- Arab Israelis are full citizens and the Palestinians' own poor behavior is probably the largest contributing factor to their lack of international recognition.
We're talking about the left wing here - do you think "Oh actually people of colour are just hereditarily stupid, violent criminals so that's why they aren't doing as well as whites" is the sort of argument that they're willing to accept? Sure, this is the motte and we can talk about HBD openly and use it in arguments, but if you think that's going to be convincing to left wing political activists you're dreaming.
Let's just ask some people on the left their opinion on this issue! https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/ Oh, would you look at that - it seems like they actually disagree with you here. In fact, they disagree with you so strongly that they have actually provided a short educational course you can take which will help you get educated on this issue and realise your (from their point of view) mistake. I mean, I have to admit that quotes like "Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them" sound pretty ethnonationalist to me, but maybe there's some factor I'm missing? There was also that time they got caught surreptitiously administering contraceptives to brown people, which is another policy the antiracist left is somewhat opposed to.
I actually disagree here for two main reasons. The first is that I believe that the jewish community exists - I can look at organisations like Chabad house who currently have a big page on their website talking about how members of the community can support Israel. At the same time, organisations like AIPAC exist and frequently make very public statements about their goals and what they're doing. So we have some evidence that there is actually an organised effort to change opinions on the conflict coming from the Israeli side. And as for their poor behavior being the largest contributing factor to their lack of international recognition... I really have to disagree. I've encountered multiple arguments from Israeli partisans that run along the lines of 'Palestine was never a real country' and hence wasn't recognised before the conflict even started. Furthermore, it isn't like Lehi(self admitted terrorists!) or Irgun managed to prevent Israel from being internationally recognised either. How exactly could the bad behaviour of the Palestinians in response to Israeli occupation reach back in time and destroy international recognition while similar behaviour on the part of the Israelis garnered the opposite reaction? I don't think it actually could have, which is why I don't think it's the largest contributing factor.
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I would guess most of them (assuming US college kids) don’t know either the river or the sea they are talking about.
The river I could understand, but not knowing what sea it is would be next level disappointing.
A state stretching all the way from the Jordan River to the Dead Sea is a funny image at least.
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Woke American college kids are truly disappointingly geographically illiterate.
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My guess is they don’t understand the implications of the second part and say it because it’s catchy and rhymes with the first part. I don’t think it’s worth taking too seriously.
To be honest, I’d be more wary of pro-Israel folks taking the surely unobjectionable first part and trying to elide any calls for a free Palestine with genocide.
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