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This whole Israel-Palestine issue has made it even more clear than ever that politicians and many of the "elites" have literally no critical thinking skills or the ability to reason out one or two steps into the future. First there is the "Cease Fire People". It's understandable that people are upset seeing what is going on in Gaza with women and children, but what do they think a cease fire will accomplish? It is literally just kicking the can down the road again. Do they think Hamas will be more reasonable and someone people can negotiate with? If not, you are literally just allowing them to regroup and commit another terrorist attack that could destabilize the Middle East again in a few years. It's really that simple. If you want peace in the region, Hamas cannot be allowed to be in charge in Gaza. And if you asked the Egyptian government, they'd probably tell you the same thing since they just had their own issues wit the Muslim Brotherhood.
Then you have the people who think there will be peace if the Palestinians get their own state. Throwing out for a minute whether or not the Palestinians will attack Israel, the real question is how quickly they will start attacking each other an a civil war. We already know there was a Fatah–Hamas conflict recently, and why would they not fight each other again in a civil war that could very possibly be even worse than what's going on in Gaza? Looking at the neighboring countries, it's not exactly a place known for political stability.
I understand people seeing things on television that makes them sad and they just want it to stop. That's understandable. But has anyone in the State Department revolting against the Biden Administration for their stance on Israel given any reasonable plan for what comes next after a cease fire with Hamas? And I say this as someone who is not a Zionist or a huge fan of Israel.
Westerners just don't seem to be able to understand Muslim extremists. Hamas fighters are literally Islamists that can't be reasoned with. This should be obvious by now to everyone on planet earth after Al Qaeda and ISIS, but apparently some people still haven't learned this obvious fact. I don't know if it's because Westerners don't think that people could actually sincerely believe in their religion like that so they must be ACTUALLY motivated by something else (wrong, as their writings tell us), or their belief that inside everyone is a Westerner waiting to come out who supports gay marriage and diversity, a combination of this, or something else entirely. But if these people think that a cease fire with Hamas will lead to a long standing peace then they are delusional.
It is clear as long as Israel is an expansionist country pushing Palestinians out of their homes, blockading them and making it impossible to have a continous Palestine there won't be peace. Israel undermines nearby countries such as Syria creating fallout that spreads across the region and into Europe in the form of waves of refugees. Israel and their expansionist policies are a major source of the regions problems and they are not interested in letting millions of Arabs live in peace in the town their family has lived in for generations.
When Americans were too into a warmongering fury 20 years ago the Iraqis and taliban helped them come to their senses with a firm and proper lessons in not sticking one's nose where it doesn't belong. The Palestinians are currently doing the same. Israel needs a good hard punch in order to learn to keep out of Palestinian territory. Unless Israel gets a proper shakedown the Israel problem and the massive waves of migrants they produce won't be stopped.
what kind of hard punch you thinking? 1948? 1967? 1973? I mean were these just not hard enough punches?
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You... really didn't learn from the Palestinian history for this one, lol.
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As college students at the best institutions across America have recently informed us with various chants: Palestine is from the river to the sea.
All Israelis are colonizers, occupiers, etc from that point of view.
Even the Israeli Arabs?
Eh, I suppose most Palestinians would call them house niggers, so I don't see that making much of a difference.
I've seen this kind of discussed. Dozens of Thai citizens and some other East Asians were captured or killed in the attack. Were these foreign visiting students and temporary guest workers "colonizers"? I've seen people say yes. If they are working with and for colonizers, they count also. There's no free pass from accusation for merely not being Jewish or Israeli.
And to be excessively fair, if they really are concerned about colonizing illegal occupiers, then they shouldn't give a pass for "just visiting" or being an Arab Israeli or something.
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Yeah, the Iraqis did such a great job teaching that lesson that they are still using the constitution that Americans wrote for them. Let's be clear: the Iraqi "insurgency" was not some sort of anti-Imperialist endeavor; it was a civil war. That is why the "insurgents" killed vastly more civilians than they did coalition troops.
And the Taliban was so good at teaching that lesson that they killed all of an average of 100 US servicemen per year
While the Taliban's K/D ratio was atrocious, they were effective at:
Did we learn any lessons? Survey says no. But I feel like America lost the war in Afghanistan for all intents and purposes.
Not really. $100 billion per year = about $300 bucks per American, or
Yes, but the key there is "after the occupation ended."
Well, in order to learn lessons, we have to understand what actually happened, it seems to me
Ehh capitalizing it over the course of a 20 year conflict is a bit of a slight of hand. I didn't want to pay $300/year || $6,000 in taxes to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. You've also got 6,000 Americans killed (ARV of $7.5m apiece) which isn't factored into those costs, much less the QALY's of the wounded.
Even if you exclude casualty values, ~$45k per enemy combatant is expensive, and this is assuming no value for the civilians we killed.
This was one of the most expensive mistakes in US history by almost any metric. It's annoying that it was so obvious for so long, and the only person with the balls to actually stop the madness was Joe fucking Biden.
No, the only one with the balls to try and start the process of stopping was Trump. The only one who didn't have a choice in the matter was Biden. And also Biden doesn't choose what he's having for breakfast, so you can't really imply he's even a conscious agent anymore.
Biden was the only person in Obama's administration who was pushing to ramp down the war.
I'm not a fan of the guy, I don't think anyone with more than a couple brain cells to rub together could be. This presidency has been a disaster, including the pull out. But I won't avoid giving credit where it's due.
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I didn't want to pay either; nevertheless, there is no way that the costs can be described as "massive."
But relatively cheap for educating millions of Afghan girls. If you are going to weigh costs and benefits, you have to include all of them.
Why do I care about the education of afghan girls? It’s not going to do them, or anyone else, any good.
There is tons of economic research that says otherwise.
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Was the increase in the education of Afghan girls worth the increase in sexual abuse of Afghan boys?
Probably? I'd assume so given most common values, unless the figures are grossly lopsided.
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I don't know. That's the point: All costs and benefits have to be included.
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Actually trump was withdrawing, he just didn’t finish the job before he lost an election.
I know that, and he does get partial credit.
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Ehh it had largely stopped by the time Trump came into place. Trump even had a planned exit. Biden to his credit continued with the exit but kind of fucked it up.
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Lot of projection going on here.
Perhaps you'd like to hear it from the Hamas spokesman in an official interview with the NYT?
From a member of their Politburo (an apt name, I might add)
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This is disconnected from reality. Americans can fuck off and run half a world away. But Palestinian territory equals all of Israel, according to the Palestinians. And the various ne'erdowells in Gaza were regularly lobbing missiles, no matter the situation with the Israel settlers in the margins of the West Bank. Their issue is the existence of the state of Israel, not some rounding-error settlements. And Israel isn't going anywhere.
I wouldn't be so sure. History actually has some good examples of nations in very similar circumstances - ever read up on the history of the Kingdoms of Outremer? So far I haven't seen a single bit of data that convinces me Israel isn't on the same historical trajectory.
Huh. I've never met someone for whom the Israeli policy of nuclear non-acknowledgement actually worked so well.
The Crusader Kingdoms, after all, fell to conventional invasion by neighboring Kingdoms/Empires more interested in fighting them than eachother. Israel, by contrast, is generally believed to have nuclear weapons, and as such its neighboring Kingdoms who could conduct conventional invasions are not particularly interested in fighting them directly anymore.
I'm entirely aware that their nuclear weapons exist, I just fail to see how they'd be useful in saving the country. Yes, they're capable of preventing a massive ground invasion from the arab states around them right now, but there's no guarantee that will last forever, nor is there any guarantee that military annihilation is the only way Israel could come to an end. While it was the foreign invasions that dealt the deathblow in the case of Outremer, they could only have happened as a result of longer term problems that simply weren't solved, and several other calamities could have taken their place - such as a plague or famine. Heavy reliance on foreign western powers, complicated and expensive social arrangements (the orthodox population of 'useless eaters'/christian scholars), a strategy revolving around keeping the various islamic nations at odds with one another and unable to unite in any real way... these are all serious issues, and having nuclear weapons only helps with that last one, and even there that effectiveness just might dwindle over time. If the Muslim brotherhood knew that attacking Israel from Egypt would get the current government nuked, they'd take that deal in a heartbeat. A hypothetical united Arab world would be an exceedingly difficult problem for Israel to deal with, and far too complicated a problem to simply nuke into submission.
Well, that's certainly a novel theory, and given the longevity of the Crusader Kingdoms and rarity of total state collapse without external intervention, a generally non-falsifiable one that would outlast either of our time on the mortal coil.
I generally am not moved by conditionals that already failed to occur (Egypt was already ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood- it did not take the deal in a heartbeat), presumption of uninterupted trend lines that justify inevitable disaster without shaping (the othrodox population claim), or hypotheticals that run contrary to historical experience or macro trends (lol, said pan-Arabism, RIP), so as such I'll just leave that I find your failure to see how nukes would be useful in saving a country unconvincing as evidence that they don't have more relevance that historical metaphors with fundamentally different assumptions.
No, the theory I'm proposing is actually extremely testable. Maybe you're in your late 60s, but I don't see American support for Israel lasting for the rest of our lifetimes, and that's the most significant of the factors that I listed. We can't really test that right now, but when you look at the demographics of the US and the views of the populations that are going to be a majority in the future I don't think there's any guarantee that financial support to Israel continues.
Yes, because Egypt was being ruled by the Muslim brotherhood - why would they want THEIR government to get attacked by Israel given that they know they'd lose? I'm talking about a situation where the Muslim brotherhood aren't in power, yet have the ability to elicit a military response from Israel targeted at the government that's throwing them in jail and declared them a terrorist organisation.
There's no presumption of trend lines here - the orthodox population is simply a weight hanging around Israel's neck. They have complicated social reasons for maintaining a large population who cannot help militarily or economically in any real way, which is a problem given that Israel itself doesn't have enough of an economy to support itself and the outsized defence expenditures it needs to stay safe. Even assuming that the orthodox all stopped having children, that's still a dependent population of some size that Israel will have to support for no gain. They can do that now, but that's going to become a bigger issue as support gets cut off.
I don't think it is terribly contrary to historical experience for extremely warlike and quarrelsome populations to be united by charismatic leaders. This has happened multiple times throughout history, and while it doesn't have to be pan-Arabism I don't think the idea of some movement or charismatic leader uniting a few countries into a larger coalition is terribly ahistorical.
Nuclear weapons are a solution for a fairly narrow set of problems. Domestic political unrest spurred by economic issues after the collapse of material western support despite a continued need for outsized defence expenditure doesn't fall into that category. And if you really don't see any evidence or historical analogues for nuclear weapons being unable to save a country from internal problems, please point out where the USSR is today and explain how their nuclear arsenal saved them from collapse.
That is an impressive number of mis-chosen historical allusions that don't quite demonstrate what you think they do and even less about nuclear deterrence, but as already noted we'll be dead before it would be disproven by not manifesting as relied upon so again, general shrug at unconvincing perception in lieu of evidence.
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The USSR collapsed out of apathy. The Russian Soviet Republic was replaced by the Russian Federation, they were and are a majority. The Palestinians winning would wipe the Israelis off the map in a way the crumbling of the USSR didn’t kill all Russians. the rationale for use of nuclear weapons is completely different.
As for American support, most current US migrants are Central American Christians (largely Catholic, but many Latin Catholics convert to Evangelical Christianity after moving to the US) fleeing leftist regimes (chiefly Venezuela), not generally a particularly anti-Israel demographic.
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I have always cynically assumed that the real purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons is to blackmail western governments into continuing enthusiastic support, via the 'Samson option'.
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The reality is that Israel has created millions of refugees, is creating havoc in the region and waves of migrants toward Europe. They are expanding and clearly have ambitions to grow their country. The Palestinians are well within their rights to fight back. Israel is a permanent threat to its neighbours, who aren't going anywhere. There is no guarantee of peace for Israel's neighbors as long as Israel is a militarized and aggressive nation. As long as Israel is blocking Gaza, killing hundreds of civilians a year and conducting air strikes on Gaza they have every reason to continue fighting. For us in Europe it would be a major win to not have Israel stir up chaos on our border.
The Palestinian population is approaching the population of Algeria in 1960 with Israel having a population that has a large component of religious fanatics who can't fight and combined with one of the scrawniest populations around. There is absolutely strong reasons to believe an insurgency could win.
I can see how Palestinians have a right to fight for what they want: some issues aren't able to be resolved by dialog because of irreconcilable values, and violence is the only solution. But once you believe there's a legitimate war going on, both sides have the right to commit violence. I don't see the current bombing and invasion of Gaza as furthering Israel's interests, but I also don't see destroying enemies who want to destroy you as something that makes Israel worthy of condemnation: they're responding like any state would, just as Palestinians are responding like any colonized indigenous population in the same circumstances would.
Algeria is an interesting comparison, but I think it breaks down. Algeria could be ethnically cleansed of Frenchmen because they were a numerical minority, they had a place to go and, critically, the existence of the French state wasn't threatened. The same isn't true of Israel, which suggests that a Palestinian insurgency to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews is more likely to fail.
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there is a big difference between messing about on a different continent and messing about next door.
Like all those African migrants coming into Europe? Or Central and South American migrants moving in the millions into the U.S.?
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Not if the population of Israel largely consists of people who migrated from Eastern Europe.
and suddenly all the open border people are policing the heritage of a people. to be fair i have no idea what your position on this issue is.
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That’s not exactly as true anymore. First 20% of Israel are non Jewish Arabs. A lot of immigration last few decades have been Arab Jews and they have higher fertility.
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The Eastern European countries callously refuse the right of return for second and third generation emigrants living in Israel.
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The majority of the population of Israel was born in Israel.
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