naraburns nihil supernum
1yr 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.
You can’t really get away with what Israel wants in the 21st century in this context. Too many Muslims care too much about this particular conflict, and there are two billion of them now. Occupying without either indoctrinating, killing or driving out the 2 million locals will accomplish nothing.
The only high casualty thing that could have ‘worked’ (not really) is if Israel had carpet bombed Gaza and killed maybe 100,000 of them in the first day after the Hamas attacks, then it could have been rolled into some general numbness and slipped under the radar. The longer you wait, the more time the NGO and media apparatus has to prepare the narrative. Presidencies are kind of similar, hence the importance of getting whatever you want done ASAP before institutions respond to your methods.
The only outcome for Israel and Gaza is the continued locking up of the Palestinians indefinitely. The Arabs don’t want them, and neither does anyone else. As @orthoxerox says, they’ll fortify the Gaza border to make a ground invasion much more difficult, then call it a day.
Invading Gaza without ethnically cleansing the local population is strategically idiotic. Israel doesn’t have the resources to go full Xinjiang yet, it might be feasible with AI and modern tech in general but would be an extraordinary expense and lead to a permanent stream of bad PR with the Muslim world because unlike Xinjiang they’d have to let international observers and media in.
Too many Muslims care too much about this particular conflict, and there are two billion of them now
and what can they possibly do? Americans are vastly outnumbered by Chinese, Hindus, etc. Americans have always been outnumbered, yet this does not stop it from throwing its weight around. This is similar Taleb's argument on Twitter, which is that upsetting these Muslims is a potential 'Black Swan' event; I disagree. It's only a tiny percentage of Muslims , mostly in the Middle East, that are going to take up arms.
I mean, Israel has had to fight wars against multiple neighbours simultaneously on repeated occasions. It's not that outlandish to imagine it happening again.
And yeah, they won all those wars. But they only need to lose once.
I've heard before that Egypt and Jordan don't want Palestinians, but do we know why? Is it the raw number of immigrants or the fact that their Palestinian? I don't get it.
Letting radicalized refugee populations into your country is destabilizing and dangerous generally. In particular, the Arab states near Israel are not particularly stable, vulnerable to Islamist appeals, and have a history of sneakily collaborating with Israel under the table while denouncing them in public that would not endear them to their new Palestinian residents. Most of all, they remember the fairly disastrous war that previous generations of Palestinian refugees waged on the Jordanian state.
Letting Palestinian refugees in would in effect abet whatever Israeli aims there are to drive Arabs out of the West Bank and Gaza. I'm not sure the Egyptian or Jordanian regime would want to be seen as doing something like that.
While the main reasons for the direct neighbors were already mentioned (Muslim Brotherhood, civil war, attacks on Israel which invite reprisals), for the bigger well established, oil-rich Muslim countries further away from Israel, one reason might be that they see the Gazans as a welcome thorn in Israels side. You would think that the Iranian or Qatari leadership, if they really cared about that Palestinians being subjected to "war crimes", the first thing they would do would be to open their borders to refugees. Instead, they sponsor Hamas.
Hamas is an offshoot of the people the current Egyptian government overthrew a couple years back. Last time Jordan let in a significant number of Palestinians, it led to a civil war.
Too many Muslims care too much about this particular conflict, and there are two billion of them now.
Muslims wouldn't hate Israel any more if Israel genocided the Palestinians, and the memory of a massacre in the past likely wouldn't keep the hatred in the forefront of their minds the way the occasional flare-ups do. The problem is Israel would lose the support of the west (and quite possibly many of their own people) if they did that.
Most people are scope insensitive. If Hitler killed only half as many Jews, do you think he would be any more popular with the survivors?
If Israel killed 5000 Gazans instead of the 500 Hamas claimed they killed in that one instance, do you suppose that ten times as many Muslims would protest?
Like The_Nybbler said, Western response is one constraint on genocide. Another is that violence begets violence. If Israel turned Gaza into a parking lot, that would technically solve their Hamas problem. It would also change how the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians would feel about them and the prospect of peaceful coexistence. They might even face violent opposition from the liberal Jewish population. Unless they are willing to go full Macbeth and just murder their way into some totalitarian theocracy, they would be in a worse spot than where they started out.
I actually think the numbers do matter. If Israel kills, directly or indirectly, 50,000 Gazans it is way different than 5,000. People start to know people individually affected. International reaction is different. Refugee pressures increase proportionally. Unrest spreads and worsens in the West Bank. Iran starts to feel more tempted to get involved directly. Hezbollah, who for now seems to be totally disinterested in getting pulled into another massive war and getting Beirut leveled again, starts to feel pressure to actually do something.
Scope isn’t the only thing that matters and is often fallible (i.e. doesn’t solely determine responses or determine them absolutely). But it sure as hell does matter all the same.
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Notes -
You can’t really get away with what Israel wants in the 21st century in this context. Too many Muslims care too much about this particular conflict, and there are two billion of them now. Occupying without either indoctrinating, killing or driving out the 2 million locals will accomplish nothing.
The only high casualty thing that could have ‘worked’ (not really) is if Israel had carpet bombed Gaza and killed maybe 100,000 of them in the first day after the Hamas attacks, then it could have been rolled into some general numbness and slipped under the radar. The longer you wait, the more time the NGO and media apparatus has to prepare the narrative. Presidencies are kind of similar, hence the importance of getting whatever you want done ASAP before institutions respond to your methods.
The only outcome for Israel and Gaza is the continued locking up of the Palestinians indefinitely. The Arabs don’t want them, and neither does anyone else. As @orthoxerox says, they’ll fortify the Gaza border to make a ground invasion much more difficult, then call it a day.
Invading Gaza without ethnically cleansing the local population is strategically idiotic. Israel doesn’t have the resources to go full Xinjiang yet, it might be feasible with AI and modern tech in general but would be an extraordinary expense and lead to a permanent stream of bad PR with the Muslim world because unlike Xinjiang they’d have to let international observers and media in.
and what can they possibly do? Americans are vastly outnumbered by Chinese, Hindus, etc. Americans have always been outnumbered, yet this does not stop it from throwing its weight around. This is similar Taleb's argument on Twitter, which is that upsetting these Muslims is a potential 'Black Swan' event; I disagree. It's only a tiny percentage of Muslims , mostly in the Middle East, that are going to take up arms.
I mean, Israel has had to fight wars against multiple neighbours simultaneously on repeated occasions. It's not that outlandish to imagine it happening again.
And yeah, they won all those wars. But they only need to lose once.
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I'd argue it's a favorable ethnic ratio, not resources, that Israel lacks to go full Xinjiang.
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I've heard before that Egypt and Jordan don't want Palestinians, but do we know why? Is it the raw number of immigrants or the fact that their Palestinian? I don't get it.
Letting radicalized refugee populations into your country is destabilizing and dangerous generally. In particular, the Arab states near Israel are not particularly stable, vulnerable to Islamist appeals, and have a history of sneakily collaborating with Israel under the table while denouncing them in public that would not endear them to their new Palestinian residents. Most of all, they remember the fairly disastrous war that previous generations of Palestinian refugees waged on the Jordanian state.
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Letting Palestinian refugees in would in effect abet whatever Israeli aims there are to drive Arabs out of the West Bank and Gaza. I'm not sure the Egyptian or Jordanian regime would want to be seen as doing something like that.
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While the main reasons for the direct neighbors were already mentioned (Muslim Brotherhood, civil war, attacks on Israel which invite reprisals), for the bigger well established, oil-rich Muslim countries further away from Israel, one reason might be that they see the Gazans as a welcome thorn in Israels side. You would think that the Iranian or Qatari leadership, if they really cared about that Palestinians being subjected to "war crimes", the first thing they would do would be to open their borders to refugees. Instead, they sponsor Hamas.
Just so, they don't hate Israel because they support Palestine. They support Palestine because they hate Israel.
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Palestinian migrants were also major contributor to Lebanon civil war and its current state.
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Both. It'd be a massive humanitarian crisis just by raw numbers, but every country anywhere near that area knows of Jordan's past principled commitment to generosity and absolutely doesn't want to be them.
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Hamas is an offshoot of the people the current Egyptian government overthrew a couple years back. Last time Jordan let in a significant number of Palestinians, it led to a civil war.
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Muslims wouldn't hate Israel any more if Israel genocided the Palestinians, and the memory of a massacre in the past likely wouldn't keep the hatred in the forefront of their minds the way the occasional flare-ups do. The problem is Israel would lose the support of the west (and quite possibly many of their own people) if they did that.
If the history of Israel teaches us anything, it's that these Abrahamic religions don't hold a grudge about genocide and ethnic cleansing!
Most people are scope insensitive. If Hitler killed only half as many Jews, do you think he would be any more popular with the survivors?
If Israel killed 5000 Gazans instead of the 500 Hamas claimed they killed in that one instance, do you suppose that ten times as many Muslims would protest?
Like The_Nybbler said, Western response is one constraint on genocide. Another is that violence begets violence. If Israel turned Gaza into a parking lot, that would technically solve their Hamas problem. It would also change how the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians would feel about them and the prospect of peaceful coexistence. They might even face violent opposition from the liberal Jewish population. Unless they are willing to go full Macbeth and just murder their way into some totalitarian theocracy, they would be in a worse spot than where they started out.
I actually think the numbers do matter. If Israel kills, directly or indirectly, 50,000 Gazans it is way different than 5,000. People start to know people individually affected. International reaction is different. Refugee pressures increase proportionally. Unrest spreads and worsens in the West Bank. Iran starts to feel more tempted to get involved directly. Hezbollah, who for now seems to be totally disinterested in getting pulled into another massive war and getting Beirut leveled again, starts to feel pressure to actually do something.
Scope isn’t the only thing that matters and is often fallible (i.e. doesn’t solely determine responses or determine them absolutely). But it sure as hell does matter all the same.
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