naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
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.
Regarding Western liberal narratives on the Gaza war, I’m noticing something I find somewhat odd. I see mainstream liberals arguing that clueless college students are indoctrinated by loony leftist propagandists to be rabid enemies of Israel, our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East etc. And they seem to be saying this without any reflection on the past, where conservatives they hate, like Ben Shapiro and others, have been warning everyone of the same trend for basically two decades, at least since the early years of Bush Jr’s presidency. Now that the true extent of anti-Zionist agitation on Western college campuses is revealed on prime TV for the first time in almost a decade (the last major Israeli military operation in Gaza was in 2014, I reckon, not counting the mass shootings at the border in 2018 or so), targeted at a nation and a people they actually care about, suddenly it’s a real problem, a real concern to be tackled.
Now I understand that one can come up with all sorts of cynical and mundane interpretations as to why this is, how it’s unsurprising and so on, and I get that. But then I remember that there were violent anti-police protests in the summer of 2020, the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, the various protests against Trump’s rallies, and in these cases the tone of the protests were, as far as I can tell, pretty much set by the same leftist college agitators who initiate the current anti-Zionist protests, the ones who call themselves anticolonialists, social justice advocates, antiracists and so on. And the big difference was that they weren’t criticized by mainstream liberals the way they are now, even though all their agitation and messaging stems from the same ideological tenets.
Colleges have always been super anti-Zionist. You don’t have to be a Ben Shapiro weirdo to know that.
The only thing that seems different now is that the Nikki Haleys of the world are explicitly saying that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, so the activist college students are saying “ok guess I’m anti-Semitic too.”
It’s the same phenomenon that people talk about here re: racism. You call everything racist and eventually people start saying “ok guess I’m racist.”
In modern times, anti-Zionism has always been some flavor of anti-Semitism. At the least it's "let's end the nation of Israel and physically remove the Jews to somewhere else", at the most it's ordinary universal anti-Semitism that someone is playing search-and-replace games with.
As for the colleges, it appears this time people on the left are finding out that "it's just a few kids on college campuses" is not really reassuring in the slightest. As when the conservative-leaning normies found out, it's likely too late for them.
At the least it's "let's end the nation of Israel and physically remove the Jews to somewhere else", at the most it's ordinary universal anti-Semitism that someone is playing search-and-replace games with.
The mainstream western anti-zionist position is that jews would not be removed. The most popular anti-zionist position is a one-state solution where Palestinians get full citizenship in Israel, often alongside Palestinian right-of-return. Now, zionists would argue that such an outcome would cause problems such as a group like Hamas being elected as the government of Israel and ethnically cleansing jewish people, or at least committing terrorist attacks once they are all Israeli citizens with freedom of movement. But the standard anti-zionist position is that this wouldn't happen, that palestinians are resorting to violent resistance against oppression and would no longer need to do so once they are no longer oppressed. The standard comparison is to South Africa, where terrorist leaders such as Nelson Mandela became the new government but didn't outright ethnically cleanse white people. (The South African government discriminates against white people through heavy affirmative action, is now failing to keep reliable electricity and clean water going, has the 3rd highest murder rate in the world, and sometimes has the leaders of political parties talk about mass-murdering white people. But they haven't actually done it and many anti-zionists would be unaware of these things anyway.)
I think this is an important distinction because otherwise you don't appreciate the extent to which anti-zionism is an extension of standard anti-racist positions. They believe Israel would do fine even if it was majority palestinians just like they they believe majority-white countries would be fine if they opened the floodgates for arabic/african/etc. immigration. They believe ethnic conflicts generally have a good weak side (the oppressed) and a bad powerful side (the oppressor). They believe violence by an oppressed group is ultimately the result of their oppression, like how "riots are the language of the unheard" and thus the BLM riots indicated how badly african-americans are being mistreated by the police. Even if they got their one-state solution and there was continued conflict, they would advocate not for ethnically cleansing jews to make a more homogeneous state but for affirmative-action policies and reparations favoring non-jews until they are no longer oppressed (which would at minimum require they have equal outcomes to jewish Israelis).
popular anti-zionist position is a one-state solution where Palestinians get full citizenship in Israel, often alongside Palestinian right-of-return. Now, zionists would argue that such an outcome would cause problems such as a group like Hamas being elected as the government of Israel and ethnically cleansing jewish people, or at least committing terrorist attacks once they are all Israeli citizens with freedom of movement. But the standard anti-zionist position is that this wouldn't happen, that palestinians are resorting to violent resistance against oppression and would no longer need to do so once they are no longer oppressed. The standard comparison is to South Africa, where terrorist leaders such as Nelson Mandela became the new government but didn't outright ethnically cleanse white people. (The South African government discriminates against white people through heavy affirmative action, is now failing to keep reliable electricity and clean water going, has the 3rd highest murder rate in the world, and sometimes has the leaders of political parties talk about mass-murdering white people. But they haven't actually done it and many anti-zionists would be unaware of these things anyway.)
The zionists are right. I don’t see any solution to this that doesn’t eventually look like a Zionism transposed to some other location. The historic record here is pretty clear — a stateless Jewish minority is going to be the target of either states looking for a scapegoat or angry mobs taking matters into their own hands. In most Muslim countries, non Muslims are second class citizens at best. So in order to protect Jews you absolutely need a Jewish state somewhere. If that’s the case, you need to create a continuous land area in which Jews are given complete control. And you’re now displacing whoever lives there now. It ends up looking almost exactly like Israel except now we’re building in South America or Montana or Wales or something. There aren’t really good answers.
There is no actual reason to suppose that if every Israeli Jew were granted the right to live in the US or Australia or the Netherlands or someplace, they would be vulnerable to scapegoating or pogroms. Sure, in Saudi they would, but granting Jews the right of return to Australia would not actually make them vulnerable to discrimination- they just wouldn't have their own country.
Australia is an immigration friendly place, but even so 7 million people all at once would be stretching the friendship a bit.
Edit: Also, we did just have a big crowd in Sydney chanting "gas the jews". Such people are an extreme fringe, but can anyone guarantee they will remain a fringe?
That was just an example, you know. No doubt a 1-state solution where the Palestinians are full citizens, backstopped by the CANZUK nations pledging to accept any Israeli Jewish immigrant who applies, would not result in a Jewish genocide(although it might well result in far fewer Jews in a generation as some of the conditions leading to a high Israeli-Jewish birthrate are probably unique to Israel).
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Notes -
Regarding Western liberal narratives on the Gaza war, I’m noticing something I find somewhat odd. I see mainstream liberals arguing that clueless college students are indoctrinated by loony leftist propagandists to be rabid enemies of Israel, our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East etc. And they seem to be saying this without any reflection on the past, where conservatives they hate, like Ben Shapiro and others, have been warning everyone of the same trend for basically two decades, at least since the early years of Bush Jr’s presidency. Now that the true extent of anti-Zionist agitation on Western college campuses is revealed on prime TV for the first time in almost a decade (the last major Israeli military operation in Gaza was in 2014, I reckon, not counting the mass shootings at the border in 2018 or so), targeted at a nation and a people they actually care about, suddenly it’s a real problem, a real concern to be tackled.
Now I understand that one can come up with all sorts of cynical and mundane interpretations as to why this is, how it’s unsurprising and so on, and I get that. But then I remember that there were violent anti-police protests in the summer of 2020, the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, the various protests against Trump’s rallies, and in these cases the tone of the protests were, as far as I can tell, pretty much set by the same leftist college agitators who initiate the current anti-Zionist protests, the ones who call themselves anticolonialists, social justice advocates, antiracists and so on. And the big difference was that they weren’t criticized by mainstream liberals the way they are now, even though all their agitation and messaging stems from the same ideological tenets.
Colleges have always been super anti-Zionist. You don’t have to be a Ben Shapiro weirdo to know that.
The only thing that seems different now is that the Nikki Haleys of the world are explicitly saying that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, so the activist college students are saying “ok guess I’m anti-Semitic too.”
It’s the same phenomenon that people talk about here re: racism. You call everything racist and eventually people start saying “ok guess I’m racist.”
In modern times, anti-Zionism has always been some flavor of anti-Semitism. At the least it's "let's end the nation of Israel and physically remove the Jews to somewhere else", at the most it's ordinary universal anti-Semitism that someone is playing search-and-replace games with.
As for the colleges, it appears this time people on the left are finding out that "it's just a few kids on college campuses" is not really reassuring in the slightest. As when the conservative-leaning normies found out, it's likely too late for them.
The mainstream western anti-zionist position is that jews would not be removed. The most popular anti-zionist position is a one-state solution where Palestinians get full citizenship in Israel, often alongside Palestinian right-of-return. Now, zionists would argue that such an outcome would cause problems such as a group like Hamas being elected as the government of Israel and ethnically cleansing jewish people, or at least committing terrorist attacks once they are all Israeli citizens with freedom of movement. But the standard anti-zionist position is that this wouldn't happen, that palestinians are resorting to violent resistance against oppression and would no longer need to do so once they are no longer oppressed. The standard comparison is to South Africa, where terrorist leaders such as Nelson Mandela became the new government but didn't outright ethnically cleanse white people. (The South African government discriminates against white people through heavy affirmative action, is now failing to keep reliable electricity and clean water going, has the 3rd highest murder rate in the world, and sometimes has the leaders of political parties talk about mass-murdering white people. But they haven't actually done it and many anti-zionists would be unaware of these things anyway.)
I think this is an important distinction because otherwise you don't appreciate the extent to which anti-zionism is an extension of standard anti-racist positions. They believe Israel would do fine even if it was majority palestinians just like they they believe majority-white countries would be fine if they opened the floodgates for arabic/african/etc. immigration. They believe ethnic conflicts generally have a good weak side (the oppressed) and a bad powerful side (the oppressor). They believe violence by an oppressed group is ultimately the result of their oppression, like how "riots are the language of the unheard" and thus the BLM riots indicated how badly african-americans are being mistreated by the police. Even if they got their one-state solution and there was continued conflict, they would advocate not for ethnically cleansing jews to make a more homogeneous state but for affirmative-action policies and reparations favoring non-jews until they are no longer oppressed (which would at minimum require they have equal outcomes to jewish Israelis).
The zionists are right. I don’t see any solution to this that doesn’t eventually look like a Zionism transposed to some other location. The historic record here is pretty clear — a stateless Jewish minority is going to be the target of either states looking for a scapegoat or angry mobs taking matters into their own hands. In most Muslim countries, non Muslims are second class citizens at best. So in order to protect Jews you absolutely need a Jewish state somewhere. If that’s the case, you need to create a continuous land area in which Jews are given complete control. And you’re now displacing whoever lives there now. It ends up looking almost exactly like Israel except now we’re building in South America or Montana or Wales or something. There aren’t really good answers.
There is no actual reason to suppose that if every Israeli Jew were granted the right to live in the US or Australia or the Netherlands or someplace, they would be vulnerable to scapegoating or pogroms. Sure, in Saudi they would, but granting Jews the right of return to Australia would not actually make them vulnerable to discrimination- they just wouldn't have their own country.
Australia is an immigration friendly place, but even so 7 million people all at once would be stretching the friendship a bit.
Edit: Also, we did just have a big crowd in Sydney chanting "gas the jews". Such people are an extreme fringe, but can anyone guarantee they will remain a fringe?
That was just an example, you know. No doubt a 1-state solution where the Palestinians are full citizens, backstopped by the CANZUK nations pledging to accept any Israeli Jewish immigrant who applies, would not result in a Jewish genocide(although it might well result in far fewer Jews in a generation as some of the conditions leading to a high Israeli-Jewish birthrate are probably unique to Israel).
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