naraburns nihil supernum
7mo 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.
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.
So in order to protect Jews you absolutely need a Jewish state somewhere.
I feel like it is important to point out that however valid this argument may be, making it forever forecloses your ability to criticise Trump, the alt-right and white nationalists. Once you cross this line you lose the ethical and moral ground which allows you to say that white nationalism/ethnonationalism is bad at all. There simply aren't any real arguments for why the Jews need to be protected and get their own ethnostate that don't also apply to white or yellow people beyond blatant ethnic supremacy (that would sound something like "The Jews get to have their own nation because they're God's chosen people and above all others").
And while this is the motte and hence nobody cares that a pseudonymous Zensunni wanderer can't exactly condemn Trump anymore, these concerns become much bigger in the real world where people make political statements tied to their identity. All these public arguments, discussions and comments about what's happening are going to be remembered, and the left is famous for digging into people's past comments in order to discredit them in arguments so this isn't exactly a purely academic concern.
There simply aren't any real arguments for why the Jews need to be protected and get their own ethnostate that don't also apply to white or yellow people beyond blatant ethnic supremacy
That's not true. E.g. whites are much more numerous. It's not realistic to imagine that whites in the USA could suffer the same fate as Jews in Germany - there's too many of them.
White people are vanishingly small as a percentage of the total population on Earth, so all you're saying is that we just have to wait a bit longer before they can have their own ethnostate? Would you also support Israel ceasing to be an ethnostate once the jewish diaspora population gets a bit bigger? How you slice the salami matters a lot too - do the Boers get to have their own ethnostate, given that they are a tiny minority on the verge of being wiped out and far smaller in population than the jews? I'm struggling to see the actual principle here - "you only get an ethnostate if you could plausibly be wiped out" is a contradictory and self-defeating argument anyway because it means that the moment you have the ethnostate you're protected and hence no longer deserve it... and if the ethnostate DOESN'T protect you, then there's no point tying it to numbers like that.
I think each people group is well served to have at least one country where they are a majority. Whether or not a country exists for the explicit purpose of giving them a majority is pretty much immaterial. E.g. Egypt is not a country formed for the purpose of giving Arabs a state of their own, but it nonetheless functions perfectly well as an Arab-majority country, such that the establishment of an Arab ethnostate is unnecessary. Whites don't need an ethnostate because we already have the thing that an ethnostate would exist to give us. E.g. when white Zimbabweans were a persecuted minority, they had somewhere to flee to that opened the doors for them.
And yes, this does mean I would like the Boers to have their own land - ideally they would have beaten the British and the Orange Free State would have survived. Alas.
Whites don't need an ethnostate because we already have the thing that an ethnostate would exist to give us. E.g. when white Zimbabweans were a persecuted minority, they had somewhere to flee to that opened the doors for them.
Heterosexual white men are not protected from affirmative action (discrimination) in most of the West, so what is that elusive 'the thing that an ethnostate would give exist to give us'?
This makes me think that one way for Israel to resolve that Hamas conundrum would be to offer Palestinians female-only visas, scholarships and massive cash bonuses to study and work in Israel and elsewhere.
Something like what the Americans tried in Afghanistan but actually effective.
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Notes -
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.
I feel like it is important to point out that however valid this argument may be, making it forever forecloses your ability to criticise Trump, the alt-right and white nationalists. Once you cross this line you lose the ethical and moral ground which allows you to say that white nationalism/ethnonationalism is bad at all. There simply aren't any real arguments for why the Jews need to be protected and get their own ethnostate that don't also apply to white or yellow people beyond blatant ethnic supremacy (that would sound something like "The Jews get to have their own nation because they're God's chosen people and above all others").
And while this is the motte and hence nobody cares that a pseudonymous Zensunni wanderer can't exactly condemn Trump anymore, these concerns become much bigger in the real world where people make political statements tied to their identity. All these public arguments, discussions and comments about what's happening are going to be remembered, and the left is famous for digging into people's past comments in order to discredit them in arguments so this isn't exactly a purely academic concern.
That's not true. E.g. whites are much more numerous. It's not realistic to imagine that whites in the USA could suffer the same fate as Jews in Germany - there's too many of them.
White people are vanishingly small as a percentage of the total population on Earth, so all you're saying is that we just have to wait a bit longer before they can have their own ethnostate? Would you also support Israel ceasing to be an ethnostate once the jewish diaspora population gets a bit bigger? How you slice the salami matters a lot too - do the Boers get to have their own ethnostate, given that they are a tiny minority on the verge of being wiped out and far smaller in population than the jews? I'm struggling to see the actual principle here - "you only get an ethnostate if you could plausibly be wiped out" is a contradictory and self-defeating argument anyway because it means that the moment you have the ethnostate you're protected and hence no longer deserve it... and if the ethnostate DOESN'T protect you, then there's no point tying it to numbers like that.
I think each people group is well served to have at least one country where they are a majority. Whether or not a country exists for the explicit purpose of giving them a majority is pretty much immaterial. E.g. Egypt is not a country formed for the purpose of giving Arabs a state of their own, but it nonetheless functions perfectly well as an Arab-majority country, such that the establishment of an Arab ethnostate is unnecessary. Whites don't need an ethnostate because we already have the thing that an ethnostate would exist to give us. E.g. when white Zimbabweans were a persecuted minority, they had somewhere to flee to that opened the doors for them.
And yes, this does mean I would like the Boers to have their own land - ideally they would have beaten the British and the Orange Free State would have survived. Alas.
Heterosexual white men are not protected from affirmative action (discrimination) in most of the West, so what is that elusive 'the thing that an ethnostate would give exist to give us'?
I mean if you want to form a "heterosexual white male" ethno/gender/sexualstate, go right ahead. But personally I'd like to have women in my country.
That is not what I am suggesting.
This makes me think that one way for Israel to resolve that Hamas conundrum would be to offer Palestinians female-only visas, scholarships and massive cash bonuses to study and work in Israel and elsewhere. Something like what the Americans tried in Afghanistan but actually effective.
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