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.
I understand why people are afraid Israel will commit genocide. It'd be great for them if everyone in Gaza suddenly disappeared, and the war is perfect cover for them to make it happen. But there's no evidence that they're currently doing this. So far they've killed less than 1% of Gaza's population and are making efforts to prevent casualties. And yet, leftists are accusing Israel of genocide in present-tense, and Biden of facilitating genocide.
Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
So, here's my question. Let's say this does escalate into genocide. Will it be a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario?
I didn't believe Trump had any authoritarian tendencies until 1/6, and I know most Republicans still don't believe he does. I think that's in large part because of wolf-crying. It could happen again.
Ignorant question, I know. I'm asking it because I'm ignorant and I don't know the answer, but I'm sure there is one, and I want to know it.
Why doesn't Israel just move everyone in Gaza to the West Bank while they do their bombings, then move them back to Gaza when they've destroyed the Hamas bases? Is there not enough room in the West Bank?
Why doesn't Israel just move everyone in Gaza to the West Bank while they do their bombings, then move them back to Gaza when they've destroyed the Hamas bases? Is there not enough room in the West Bank?
Because these people might escape en-route and exercise their right of return by staying in whatever Israeli-occupied village or town they were ethnically cleansed from.
Israel's goal is unknown, but it's unlikely they're losing sleep over the deaths of Gazan civilians. And obviously figuring out which Gazans are civilians and which ones are Hamas fighters is not trivial.
The political goal of the war isn't to destroy hammas, it's to make effective Palestinian internal governance impossible. Moving them to the west bank defeats this purpose; in an ideal scenario for Israel all Palestinians just fuck off to egypt or lebanon or syria and stop being a hassle.
It's not so easy to move 2 million people 50+ km. There's physically enough room in the West Bank (it's much bigger than the Gaza strip), but they would still need tent cities or some other solution for them. Israel would also not like the Gaza population radicalizing the West Bank population (more than it already is) and increasing the population density, making terrorist attacks from there easier.
Law enforcement clashed with protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war outside of the Washington headquarters of the Democratic National Committee Wednesday night after authorities said the demonstration turned violent and lawmakers were evacuated from the building.
“Tonight 6 officers were treated for injuries – ranging from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched. One person has been arrested for assault on an officer. We appreciate our officers who kept these illegal & violent protesters back & protected everyone in the area,” US Capitol Police, who responded with DC Metropolitan Police, said in a statement on X.
...
Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said in a statement Wednesday night that “hundreds of peaceful anti-war activists came to the DNC to call for an end to bombs and violence in order to save Palestinian and Israeli lives.”
“They were met with brutal assaults by the police,” Miller continued. “The Democrats need to decide: will they stand on the side of peace and justice, or will they continue to support war and genocide?”
Riot, attack cops, claim to be the victim. This pattern of conduct isn't remotely surprising to me at this point, but I am surprised that anyone other than fellow travelers is willing to treat these things like a both sides situation, where we can't really know who caused things to turn ugly.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
5mo ago·Edited 5mo ago
Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America" outlining his justifications for the September 11 attack has been deleted from the Guardian's website.
This is in response to a new TikTok trend where people are posting their reactions to reading it for the first time and encouraging others to - usually with either an implication or an outright assertion that Bin Laden was right. A sample compilation of such videos can be seen here.
For those who want to refresh their memory of Bin Laden's manifesto (and IMO it's completely indefensible for the Guardian to have removed it), an archived version is here. He lists a litany of grievances against the crimes and perversions of the west (amusingly including Clinton's blowjob), but the first and most dominant one - and the one that I expect has led to this rekindled interest - is of course America's support for Israel. He describes the creation and continuation of Israel as "one of the greatest crimes". And of course he also claims that the jews control America's policies, media, and economy (while claiming at the same time that the killing of American civilians is justified because America is a democracy and therefore civilians are responsible for America's policies).
So there we have it. Hatred of Israel is leading young online leftists to endorse not only the terrorism by Hamas against Israel, but the terrorism of Bin Laden against America. I'm sure this will end well.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that all English-language media from Al Quada, Bin Laden, etc after around the mid-90s is propaganda aimed not at middle eastern Arabs and Muslims, but at Western leftists who can be persuaded to sympathize with aspects of their cause. There's no reason to believe that it has any relation to what actually drives middle eastern Muslims to join the cause. Any messaging aimed at them would be in Arabic and published in news sources and media channels that they actually read.
I believe their actual motivations, which drives their actual planners and recruits, are along the lines of what is described here. That's from 2002, the Iraq war advocacy has not aged terribly well, but I think the second section on the actual motivations of Islamic fundamentalists is still right on the nose. Short version is that they're mad that western secular values have permeated the world and their own societies and have proven to be far more successful than Islamic fundamentalist societies. As such, they're likely to continue opposing us no matter what we do regarding Israel.
Also, as screye describes below, it seems that letter was in fact written by a radicalized American. As such, the real story is less that maybe Osama had a point than that the class of people who make this type of video are so utterly ignorant that they are trivially manipulated into apologism for an ideology that would have their women locked in the home, only allowed out in Burqas, and their men murdered if they fail to convert to Islam and practice it their way.
Now here is the spicy part - Our dear Azzam is a radicalized son of California Liberals. Oh wait, it gets spicier. Not just any liberal, but a part-jewish descendent of ADL leadership. Say what you want about the jews, but if you want a wordcel, you hire a jew.
American intelligence officials allege that Gadahn inspired bin Laden's September 2007 video, in which bin Laden, among other things, made reference to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Al Qaeda hired a jew and he started writing about money & wall street. You can't make this shit up. Best piece of black comedy I have read all year.
( I have deliberately written it in a snarky tone. LMK if this breaks our rules)
I’ll come out and say it but I think Obl position is far more defensible than Hamas.
America did do a bunch of shit in the Middle East such as propping up Saudi Arabia which was basically a three way alliance between the religious leaders - Saudi Royal Family - US (guns and money). Lacking any direct means of gaining political control from those groups he was really only left with terrorism to shake things up. Hamas on the other hand just feels like a death cult that wants to see Jews killed. A political solution for Palistinians would have been found decades if they were had different beliefs.
I’m not going to say I agree with OBL beliefs but I do get somewhat close to a just war theory with him. Though I’ve come to a belief that on net the US/Saudi alliance was on net quite productive for all involved. The country is noticeably wealthier and more stable than others in the region. It seems to be that OBL chose the only conceivable military target to accomplish his political objectives.
I don't really see much distance between OBL and Hamas. They both seem to me to be primarily motivated by wanting to destroy Israel.
Like OBL throws in a bunch of other grievances too. He complains about the gays, and interest, and climate change, and nuking Japan. But if you read his letter and just objectively look for his one core issue? It's Israel. Same as Hamas, he just wants the Jews gone or (preferably) dead.
Osama's broader grievance-theme was about the loss of respectability/pride of the Arab-Islamic world than Israel per see, though there isn't much distance between them.
This ties to a broader theme in (generally Arab) Islamist thought which contrasts the golden age of the Islamic ascent (when the Arabs dominated the ancient empire of Persia, and then Islamists as a whole overthrew the (Eastern) Robman Empire, truly ancient and established major powers of the era), were broadly acknowledged as world-leaders in thought and technology (in large part from adopting/synthesizing/spreading the knowledge centers they conquered), and were the dominant military force that seemed to ever-advance on all fronts as the Christians feared them, but even the culture-shock of the crusaders were thrown back in a series of triumphs against the outsider... compared to the subjugation of the colonial eras, and then the present malais where the Arab identity isn't a thing of pride and admiration from afar, but with its vices of decadence, impovershment, corruption, and hypcrisy well known. There is a consistent thing of 'things were better when we were better,' with radical islaming groups functionally viewing/presenting themselves as radical reformists trying to correct a shamefully corruption.
I hate to oversimplify it as 'it's a pride thing,' but that's not far away from it. It's about self-respect as much as esteem in comparison to others... which is where Israel comes through, as the Jews were an unquestionable under-class, something that even the lowest Arab good-Islamic person was above, until Israel defeated the prides of the Arab world- some of the key leaders of the pan-Arabism when Arab identity-politics was at its height- repeatedly, decisively, and humiliatingly in multiple wars. If you read some of the diplomatic history from around the time of the foundation of Israel and some of the early wars, there are heavy and repeated themes and points where Arab states were acting out of pride and emotion, rather than reason/rationality/interests/strategy. Politiclaly, Yom Kippur War was more about proving the Israelis weren't invincible and restoring Egyptian self-respect than an actual campaign plan or changing the borders- hence why the Egyptians decisively lost the war, but were willing to accept the land-for-peace arrangement with Israel and the US not too long after.
Returning to OBL, Israel is the 'core issue' because Israel is evidence against pride, and the reminder of humiliation. Erasing Israel is about erasing shame, but the core/underlying issue is one of pride and self-respect which cannot make peace with what one views as properly inferior.
Or at least that's view, though the distinction may be irrelevant.
If there is anything even resembling a good point in Osama's essay, it will have to be re-litigated in the minds of the young. There is no way around this. You've [speaking to what I presume to be the modal reader here, not necessarily you specifically] done this yourself, you've gone through phases of reading, with the excitement of the forbidden and of "waking up", extremely contrarian takes on established history.
Dangerous times, obviously, if the kids decide to throw all their chips in with Team Osama. But my guess is this is a phase, like reading Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto and thinking at first "hmm, ok, I'm following the reasoning." The kids' enthusiasm will probably be tempered by their own meta-contrarians in due time. The circle of life.
I don’t know why people are retconning Western leftists’ view of 9/11 because among actual leftists (ie not center-left mainstream parties) sympathy with the inevitability of the terrorists’ cause (if not the specifics of the act) wasn’t uncommon immediately after 9/11.
It is unlikely this will happen, but if the dark cloud of Muslim terrorism has a silver lining one prays it is an internal review of US foreign policy, especially with regards to Israel. Yesterday's attacks are the chickens of America's callous abuse of others' human rights coming home to roost.
It was the first of at least four strikes involving multiple munitions on different sections of the sprawling complex between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Friday morning. Al-Shifa’s director, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, said in a phone interview that seven people had been killed and several others had been wounded.
Hours after the final blast, the Israeli military blamed unspecified Palestinian militants, saying a “misfired projectile” aimed at Israel Defense Forces troops deployed nearby had instead hit the hospital.
But at least three of the projectiles that struck it appear to have been Israeli munitions, according to pictures of weapons fragments collected and verified by The New York Times and analyzed by experts...
Israel’s assertion that Al-Shifa was actually hit by a Palestinian projectile echoed similar — and unresolved — claims and counterclaims following munitions that hit the courtyard of another Gaza hospital, Al-Ahli, nearly a month ago...
In addition to the weapons remnants, an analysis of video footage shows that three of the projectiles were fired into the hospital from the north and south, contrary to the western trajectory indicated on a map released by the I.D.F., which it said was based on radar detections. A review of satellite images showed there were I.D.F. positions north and south of the hospital early Friday.
The strikes analyzed by The Times did not appear to be targeting underground infrastructure. Two of the most severe strikes hit upper floors of the maternity ward.
It's honestly kind of depressing how much information, proof, etc Israel/IDF provides, and still cannot win trust. Of course it doesn't help when random mid-level Israeli bureaucrats tweet random posts of unverified bs that then gets debonnnked.
Like the Shifa Hospital situation the last few days. Images and videos of IDF bringing in supplies etc for patients in the hospital: "lies, they didn't actually do this!" "just for the video/photo-op!" etc. Of course, they ARE purposeful photo-ops that are trying to counter the anti-Israeli perspective.
And then anti-Israel people will post some link PROVING that Israel "lied" in the past, but then you read the link and it is IDF claiming responsibility for some error. "This is why IDF definitely did fire rockets at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza" etc etc. And of course then pictures come out and ... onto the next story!
It's the same as how US public comms is treated. Oh US DoD denies the casualty numbers claimed by a militia that just attacked a US base? "Lies!" "This means the casualty numbers are true!" When US DoD says, in the same manner, in the same channels, that they did something that can be seen as detrimental, like say they suffered some injuries, like US base got attacked - then what US is saying is of course true.
Everyone here probably knows this and has seen it play out. I'm just a little, idk, depressed and ranty about this.
(and I'm not ruling out that Israel does / can/ has lied about military actions, and god knows IDF has done their share of morally bad things in the past. But there just seems to be nothing israel can do to win over trust. But such is the tiktok PR battle we find ourselves in today.)
((IMO: US, Israel, and any faction that finds itself in a conflict and viewed as the more powerful "oppressor", should just keep silent and never say anything. Did Saudi announce things when fighting Houthis in Yemen? Or Assad when killing hundreds of thousands of people? I am no)
When confronted with clear evidence that Israel lied about something, your response is that it’s depressing that people still distrust Israel. What kind of rhetorical strategy is that?
This is why IDF definitely did fire rockets at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza" etc etc. And of course then pictures come out and ... onto the next story!
As the resident Al-Ahli Speculation Enjoyer this is funny to me, as I was warned by the mods about “single issue posting” when I provided two updates on the topic. The last major update was similar to the article above: the NYTimes and LeMonde came out with their conclusion that a major piece of evidence used by Israel was false, that the rocket came from a different direction than where Israel alleges. And that’s been the last major update because of a lack of evidence to discuss. Which is why Al-Shifa is important: if Israel is lying and is also proven culpable, then IMO it’s likely this is the case also for Al-Ahli. Maybe that is exactly why there are reporters on the grounds now at Al-Shifa.
It was the president of Israel who said they weren’t striking Al-Shifa, by the way. Not a “random mid-level bureaucrat”.
[On a side note, one of the camera video recordings obtained by the Times came from Saleh al-Jafarawi, who is a kind of Palestinian Sam Hyde. Maybe this is grounds for some people to doubt the findings.]
Entities that lie to build support for waging war lose trust and don't get the default assumption of honesty. Remember the US and Israeli governments and their diehards pushing claims that Saddam was feeding people into wood chippers, had WMDs and was trying to make nukes, the guy who claimed to be his bomb maker before congress, and the earlier nonsense from Desert Storm about pulling babies out of incubators? If you questioned any of this at the time, you were a terrorist sympathizer, America hater, Al-Qaeda lover, etc. Cue hundreds of thousands dead until years later people acknowledge these as lies.
Do you think people posting "Lies" are saying that because they remember, or even know, about these things you listed?
Not to say US / Israel / any other military are without blame for the lack of trust. I agree, US military has lied in the past, and the press/government/etc lied with it (possibly in other orders, like papers lied first, apparently, for the Spanish-American war). Not saying they are without sin.
But it does feel to me that the winningest move here is to not play at all (not fight). Failing that, don't say anything while playing and hopefully you win.
Do you think people posting "Lies" are saying that because they remember, or even know, about these things you listed?
Yes. When a person or group proves that they will say anything to manipulate you into doing what they want, the correct move is to always start from the assumption that they're lying.
Do you think people posting "Lies" are saying that because they remember, or even know, about these things you listed?
It was only twenty years ago. Plenty of people in the Pentagon, Israeli and US intelligence, etc who were involved in creating and spreading war propaganda lies in the 2000s would still be active members of those institutions and remember what was done then, and newer members would doubtless be taught about the Iraq War and the like as case studies to inform future propaganda efforts.
Which is fine, as long as it's consistently applied, which hasn't always been seen in this conflict despite plentiful examples on both sides and virtually all media.
I see such things as a result of motivated reasoning coupled with the impossibility of knowing where everything you have is. No military on this planet can know with 100% certainty where every missile being shot is aimed and know where all your enemies weapons and units are. Thus when making statements, the temptation will be to assume the best of your own and the worst of your enemies, and thus it would be to choose the one where they look good.
If there were at least four explosions and three of them were Israeli, it means that one or more could be from Hamas. Everyone could be telling part of the truth here.
Let’s start with the easy legal difference- the Saudi state, and indeed the whole country, is the personal property of the house of Saud, and they deserve to have it as their property because of their family history of guarding the ‘correct’ type of Islam. In a fascist state, the country is personified by the state which answers to no one and it is the state’s power which justifies this personification.
The Saudi model in western societies is similar to the Ancien Regime, Hapsburg empire, old Spain, etc. fascism in western societies is, well, Hitler and Mussolini. Interestingly, there are examples of Arab fascism- Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al Assad. You’ll notice that, while perhaps the level of oppression was similar between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in, say, 2000, the direction and amount were very different, with Saudi oppression aimed at religious conformity and Iraqi oppression aimed at ethnic distinctions which could provide a conflicting loyalty to the state.
Fascism (like communism) was a movement primarily in response to the dissolution of states where power lay in the hands of a hereditary elite, who would maintain that power by doing things for the commoners that they thought the commoners needed, while extracting wealth and making the commoners do things for them. Downtown Abbey is a good example of a show that celebrates the old world order, with the hereditary rich living in mansions and being served on; taking their cut from the farmers, while justifying their position by arguing that they create jobs, help those in need and organize feasts (where they themselves expect to get applauded by the commoners). Saudi Arabia is pretty much like this, with their system of patronage depending on clan relationships.
The actual cause for the social changes that led to the rise of communism and fascism was the Second Agricultural Revolution, which pushed very many people out of the farming life, which in turn enabled the Industrial Revolution. These technical revolutions led to urbanization and capitalism, both of which were much more brutal than today, causing much unhappiness and therefor revolutionary spirit. The elites that ran these countries were seen as doing such a bad job that very many people wanted something different.
Communism in theory sought to abolish the elites, instead of replacing them, by means of radical democracy & shared property. Although in practice this could not work for various reasons and so communist regimes inevitably just descended into authoritarianism, based on power games rather than hereditary power. In that sense, the statement that 'true communism has never been tried' is true, although true communism can't actually be tried and inevitably seems to devolve into what it was intended to fight against.
Fascism sought to replace the hereditary elite with a technocratic elite that would seek to improve society by aligning people towards a societal improvement, rather than their selfish desires. Hence the bundle of sticks, the fasces. All people in the nation united for a common purpose. Unlike communism, it rejects the idea of radical equality, so it accepts wealth differences and differences in hierarchy, but only in so far as to help achieve the common goal. The fascist capital owner may own a big factory, but is not supposed to hoard wealth, have an excessive lifestyle or take advantage of others. Fascism rejects democracy, as it considers the common man to be stupid. It doesn't really answer the question of how the right goal and right leadership is selected. In practice, the autocratic nature of the leadership and lack of goals within the ideology itself, tends to lead to fascism being easily combined with other extremist ideologies, like Hitler's racial beliefs.
This lack of inherent goals within the fascist model tends to lead to a lot of confusion about what fascism actually is, which why it is so easy to claim that something is fascist, as there is no pure fascism. It's always fascism plus some other ideology or some other goal, that is not inherent to fascism itself.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
HalloweenSnarry 5mo ago
"If you don't know the difference between fascism and theocratic absolute monarchy you have nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic and should just be ignored" is the correct reply.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
sun_the_second 5mo ago
Fascism and Absolute totalitarian monarchies have their means and ends flipped, fascism is an extreme form of nationalism and uses authoritarianism to inculcate nationalism amongst its subjects; absolute totalitarian monarchies aim to preserve rule by fiat of the king/emperor and use nationalism to achieve their authoriarianism.
Confusing the two with each other is like believing wet streets cause rain, and someone who thinks that way is not to be trusted on much other stuff either.
What is the practical purpose of distinguishing between "inflicting nationalism to inflict authoritarianism" and "inflicting authoritarianism to inflict nationalism" for the purposes of living there? Either way, the inhabitants get both.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
sun_the_second 5mo ago·Edited 5mo ago
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
Because a bunch of European countries blame themselves when Muslims don't like them or don't integrate or kills hundreds of their fellow citizens in terrorist attacks.
Those European countries don’t have an army to fight or territory to conquer. The one time there really was a state that openly aligned itself with Islamist terrorism in the West a multinational coalition of Western powers invaded and occupied it for 20 years.
Will Al-Shifa be the turning point, one way or another? Or will nothing change? If the IDF takes the hospital, and there are tunnels there, will anyone change their tune, or will it be "Well, the IDF was telling the truth this one time, but they still shouldn't have killed babies"? If there are no tunnels, will Israel back off and end their campaign in shame (their own and the US intelligence community's), or will they try to brazen it out and assume no real net change in total hatred for them? If Hamas blows the tunnels and collapses the area to avoid giving Israel evidence, will anyone accept that it wasn't an Israeli bomb?
Or am I overestimating the importance of this one battle and the massive accompanying news coverage?
If Hamas blows the tunnels and collapses the area to avoid giving Israel evidence, will anyone accept that it wasn't an Israeli bomb?
Yeah tons of people will. Polls show a large majority of Americans support Israel both in this conflict and in general. The Hamas supporters are louder but that's because they're mostly young, very online people who may one day be in charge but not for another 20 years or so. If Israel can't wrap this up by the 2040s then they might run into a PR problem. I wouldn't expect any particular incident to sway people much in either direction.
Al-Shifa being a military installation has been "priced in" for some time. Very little will change if Israeli claims turn out to be correct.
Frankly, finding tunnels isn't enough. If the IDF doesn't have dozens of geolocated photos showing Hamas munitions stockpiles trending on Twitter by 7:30AM EST, Israel is toast. The dying Palestinian babies are trending right now.
The tunnels have been known about for decades. It’s not news. So whether or not there’s something significant under that particular spot, nobody who’s following this region doesn’t know about the tunnels. So those who see this as self defense will continue to do so, and those who see it as provocation will continue.
Whether they find a torture chamber/military base combo pack, or they turn the stone over and all it says is "Peace on Earth;" I predict that IDF will claim the former while Hamas will claim the latter, no one supporting either side will care regardless.
Israel has already been caught faking evidence on official channels, repeatedly and blatantly. No one who supported Israel beforehand cared, nor should they. IDF forces will claim there were military installations under the hospital, they will fake it as aggressively as they need to. The people who want to believe the IDF will believe the IDF; and if they are presented with clear and convincing evidence that the IDF is lying they will say it doesn't matter.
Hamas' track record of honesty is...are we even going to try to address that point? No one who feels that the deaths of [x] number of innocent civilians isn't worth it is going to change their mind, regardless of what they find under there. Nothing they find under there will justify the murder of babies to get it, so therefore they probably won't find it anyway. It's a kind of ethos argumentation: any group bloodthirsty enough to kill children to achieve their military objective is untrustworthy enough to lie about why they killed the children.
It's the law of merited impossibility all the way around. One side says: it's worth killing those kids to get at that military installation, so there must be a military installation there. The other says, it's not worth killing those kids to get at any military installation, so there can't be a military installation there.
The Iranian Tehran Times released an alleged recording of the ADL freaking out about the generational divide in Israel support, as well as Iranian influence in anti-Israel advocacy groups. I do not recommend reading the article because it’s literally Iranian propaganda, but the audio recording is on their page here if you scroll down. Do you think this is legitimate or AI-generated? There’s nothing that struck me as obviously wrong with Greenblatt’s voice. It would be a weird thing to fake, because Iran shouldn’t want to promote the idea that they are behind Western anti-Israel advocacy.
If it’s legitimate, it’s insightful in four ways. The ADL does not believe that support for Israel is Left-Right but instead young-old. The ADL believes that some anti-Zionist organizations are taking their talking points from Iran (eg using the term “Zionist entities”). Iran has access to important meetings of ADL members. And lastly, the ADL has access to the inner circle memorandums of anti-Zionist groups.
Given the source I'm suspicious. Even more so it's weird to me how he goes on and on about "Iranian propaganda" in true "omg Russian bots!" fashion as if the Iranian deep state has arms in every American university and anti-Zionists need Iran of all places to tell them Israel is a violent apartheid state. Given the source, again, it seems very complimentary to Iran. On the other hand, if it's a fake it's good in its organic American dialog - no awkwardness or weird translations here.
But assuming it's true. The the thing that jumps out to me is the line: "The number of young people who think Hamas's massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high".
To me this indicates he drinks his own kool-aid. One of the more annoying things about Israel apologists and Zionists to me is how they constantly attack this weird strawman of anyone that disagrees with them is pro-Hamas. How they repeat Hamas Hamas Hamas like it's a brain virus. It's hilarious to think it's a relatively recent post 2006 phenomenon in Israel-Palestine. The way some people speak it's as if Hamas Hamas Hamas was the singular bad force ruining everything and if it weren't for these ultra-monsters, well shucks, good ol boy Israel wouldn't have to act so bad.
I always assumed it's a talking points memo for public propaganda. It's clearly from the "when did you stop beating your wife" school of distraction & attack. Focus on Hamas and mention it as much as possible. No one wants to defend them, and any talk about them is not talking about all the people Israel is killing while creating a constant negative mental association. Anyway, I have literally never seen this mythical Western pro-Palestinian pro-Hamas "liberal".
Here we see Greenblatt privately believing this psycho BS that the only way anyone could be anti-Zionist is that they are totally fans of Hamas and pro-massacre of civilians. It would never occur to a principled person to notice Zionism's evil actions without being crypto Islamic theocrats. Absurd and wildly detached from the mind of your average Zionist critical secular university aged student. The Zionist equivalent of believing all Trump supporters are literal Nazis.
Even more so it's weird to me how he goes on and on about "Iranian propaganda" in true "omg Russian bots!" fashion as if the Iranian deep state has arms in every American university and anti-Zionists need Iran of all places to tell them Israel is a violent apartheid state
Wasn’t greenblatt a true believer in the Russia narratives? Not surprising he reaches for a similar toolkit.
In general in this conflict do you side more with Israel or Hamas?
48% of those 18-24 said Hamas. Of course siding with Hamas more than Israel doesn't necessarily mean approving of Hamas or of the attack. However there is a question about the attack:
Do you think the Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians on Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians or is it not justified?
51% of 18-24 year olds (and 48% 25-34, and 24% overall) said it can be justified by the grievances of the Palestinians. That said, I am suspicious of these poll results and wonder if they might be because of the specific wording of "can be justified", if some interpreted it as meaning "someone could theoretically make an argument trying to justify it" rather than "I personally think it was just".
It's a bit of a stretch, especially because it corresponds to the general lower level of support for Israel among the young. But some of the other results also call it into question. The prior question had a lower percentage siding with Hamas over Israel. 54% of the same age group (45% overall) answered "Should law firms hire or refuse to hire law students who supported Hamas and the attacks on Israeli civilians?" with refuse to hire, indicating at least 5% who would support blacklisting themselves. (It's pretty striking how support for free-speech in younger generations is so low that support for blacklisting rises even as support for Israel falls.) Or I guess some people might interpret "support" as people donating money to Hamas or something. 62% of those 18-24 say the "attacks on Jews" were genocidal.
I don't know if there's a poll asking about support for the attack with better wording. Best I could find with a quick search was this one which didn't make Hamas/Israel support a binary choice:
22% of college students say they sympathize with Hamas and 26% with the Israeli government
And this one which asks about the attack but again in a potentially ambiguous way, and just college students again:
The poll finds 86% of college students saying they’re aware of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. And of that share, 67% describe the attack as an act of terrorism by Hamas, versus 12% who see it as a justified act of resistance by Hamas. Another 21% describe it as something else other than an act of terrorism or resistance.
I think the role of framing is being underestimated here, and in general. On one hand, sure, Hamas brutally killed over a thousand civilians who presumably were largely innocent beyond whatever guilt they inherit through general support and acceptance of benefits of their country; against the standard of normal morality that most people would claim to subscribe to if asked in a non-charged setting, this was surely unjustified. On the other hand, we are constantly being asked by our authorities to consider it justified that Israel has retaliated by doing the same against Palestinian civilians. You can either try to come up with some additional principle to break the symmetry in favour of Israel's stance (Killing civilians is better when it is done by well-uniformed military members acting professionally than when it is done by shabby guys on pickups? The calculus of retaliation should have a cutoff date somewhere in 2020 so the Israelis can claim to have been attacked first?), or consider both the action and the response justified as many of those 18-24 year olds probably do, or consider neither the action nor the response justified.
At first sight, of course, why not do the last? - but my intuition tells me that this option bumps up against a particular American instinct, captured by the frequently-heard "well, do you have a better idea?" or perhaps even the adjacent "person saying it can't be done should stop bothering person who is actually doing it". Once you have identified something as a problem, whatever countermeasure remains after you have eliminated all the impossible ones must be good, because the alternative would be to shrug and say that nothing can be done which is something for debbie downers, lazy people and those lacking the requisite moral certitude. (I'm reminded of The Quiet American, an early British novel built around calling out the same trait, which at the time hit enough of a nerve that they spitefully made a movie adaptation that inverted its punchline)
On the other hand, we are constantly being asked by our authorities to consider it justified that Israel has retaliated by doing the same against Palestinian civilians.
Are you seriously claiming that the IDF are filming themselves as they go around slaughtering civilians, which is what Hamas did?
Israel was attacked by Hamas, who run the polity of Gaza. Such actions often lead to an unfortunate state called "war". When Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Habor, the casualties were only a factor of two higher than in the Hamas attack. (Of course, these attacks differ in other ways, the victims of Pearl Habor were overwhelmingly military, and Imperial Japan had odds of winning which were orders of magnitude better than Hamas, though still not that high overall.)
While I am sure that today's Guardian would have stories without end on the plight the Japanese civilians would suffer during a war with the US and the power of forgiveness, I do not think that it was morally wrong for the US to enter that war. (This does not extend to morale bombings and the nukes -- especially the second one, though.)
In wars, civilians are often killed as a side effect. This is bad, but totally different from going around and beheading people.
Of course, the question if regime change is the strategically best solution for Israel or the world is debatable.
Why was it morally wrong to drop the second nuke, when Japan still appeared to have no intention of surrendering at the time and even went through a failed coup to prevent a surrender after the second one was dropped?
Are you seriously claiming that the IDF are filming themselves as they go around slaughtering civilians, which is what Hamas did?
No, but I consider the main bad thing to be the part where you slaughter civilians, rather than the one where you try to farm internet points for it.
Israel was attacked by Hamas, who run the polity of Gaza. Such actions often lead to an unfortunate state called "war". When Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Habor, the casualties were only a factor of two higher than in the Hamas attack. (Of course, these attacks differ in other ways, the victims of Pearl Habor were overwhelmingly military, and Imperial Japan had odds of winning which were orders of magnitude better than Hamas, though still not that high overall.)
That's you doing the "calculus of retaliation should have a cutoff date" thing. Rather than ignoring everything that happened before the Hamas attack this time, we could set the arbitrary cutoff date to be December 26th, 2008 instead, and write the same story flipped starting with "Gaza was attacked by the Israeli government, who run the polity of Israel". If we do not set arbitrary cutoffs, surely the story begins in 1948, when IL was formed as a result of an ethnically cleansing invasion of the remains of Mandatory Palestine.
In wars, civilians are often killed as a side effect. This is bad, but totally different from going around and beheading people.
Sorry, but I do not share this perception that killing civilians by bombing them from afar is somehow better or more tasteful, especially considering that I want to correct for a lifetime of consuming propaganda commissioned by the people who have a monopoly on bombing-civilians-from-afar capabilities to make it appear more tasteful.
(I should make clear that I don't think I'm an anti-IL dogmatic; at this point I would consider "recognise that the International Community does not have the collective moral will or executive power to stop them outright and therefore give IL special dispensation to exterminate their uppity charges once and for all" to be a perfectly acceptable course of action to minimise expected total future suffering.)
On the other hand, we are constantly being asked by our authorities to consider it justified that Israel has retaliated by doing the same against Palestinian civilians
Isn't "killing civilians as part of collateral damage from attacking military targets" very much not "doing the same" as "killing civilians by attacking them intentionally"? Using this as an additional principle seems much more obviously legitimate than the ones you mention, and is what I actually see advocated in public discourse. I'm not accusing you of arguing in bad faith, but does "Killing civilians is better when it is done by well-uniformed military members" not seem like an obvious strawman to you?
Once you have identified something as a problem, whatever countermeasure remains after you have eliminated all the impossible ones must be good, because the alternative would be to shrug and say that nothing can be done
Saying that "nothing can be done" is a part of the ideas implied in "well, do you have a better idea?" There have certainly been a sizable fraction of the population calling for a ceasefire. On the other hand, there are of course those in support of continuing the military operation, who would presumably think this to be the least bad of all options, even with civilian casualties and all. And in that case, the Americans stepping aside and "doing nothing" to stop Israel is exactly what is desired -- it's their conflict, let them have at it.
consider both the action and the response justified as many of those 18-24 year olds probably do
I honestly haven't seen anyone support the right of both Hamas and the IDF to hit their respective populations in this way. Rather,
or consider neither the action nor the response justified.
from what I've seen, this seems to be the most common opinion from the people who want a ceasefire. They don't condone Hamas (the "this is what decolonization looks like" people still appear to only be a fringe minority), but they also can't stand the images of civilian casualties from Israeli attacks.
The alt-right and wignat claim that groups like the ADL are huge hypocrites that support diversity in Western countries but ethno nationalism in Israel is obviously true. It an't even be debated in my opinion. Before they could just call the people pointing this out Nazis (because they were), but now people are seeing Israel for what it actually is and the new people calling it out can't just be dismissed as Nazis so they are being exposed for the hypocrites they are. You can't call all the black people, Muslims, SJWs, LGBTQ+ groups, etc. Nazis when they were on your side the past 8 years fighting white nationalism and Trump or whatever they were up to. Then when they have an apartheid state that kills children and has an open air prison for Palestinians (not saying that's what I believe, but left wing activists do) then the Holocaust sympathy dries up real quick. They know they are in a tough place and this is probably what they have stopped messing with Musk publicly.
You're cherry picking that from their site. I could find a bunch of other posts on there from them that paint them as rabid Zionists. The ADL are huge hypocrites after all. Posts like this are just so they can't be pinned down and people can go see they made this post (that nobody read and wasn't intended to be read). But let's be honest, they have spent a million times as much money and effort attacking Musk these past few years publicly than they ever have in their entire history for Israel. This is also a left/wing Jew/Israel culture war battle. They don't like Netenyahu or Likud. But make no mistake, if you go criticizing Israel publicly and aggressively, the ADL will come for you to smear your character no matter how good your points are and how good your intentions are.
No. Rather, I intentionally looked to see what their position was an an extremely well-known recent controversy specifically about ethnic nationalism in Israel.
But let's be honest, they have spent a million times as much money and effort attacking Musk these past few years publicly than they ever have in their entire history for Israel. This is also a left/wing Jew/Israel culture war battle. They don't like Netenyahu or Likud. But make no mistake, if you go criticizing Israel publicly and aggressively, the ADL will come for you to smear your character no matter how good your points are and how good your intentions are.
I have no doubt that they are assholes, but what does any of that have to do with their views on ethnic nationalism?
And lastly, the ADL has access to the inner circle memorandums of anti-Zionist groups.
This doesn’t seem surprising, given that lots of anti-Zionist groups have crossover support from other very work groups which support the ADL in other contexts.
The ADL does not believe that support for Israel is Left-Right but instead young-old.
This is at least partly true, and given the ADL’s day job of ‘call republicans Nazis’, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t believe it.
Iran has access to important meetings of ADL members.
For a modern intelligence service, this would probably be trivially easy- activists are unlikely to guard their computers like government officials. And Iran has very good reasons to keep an eye on major foreign policy advocacy groups(which the ADL is) in their politically unstable-yet-gridlocked archenemy.
because Iran shouldn’t want to promote the idea that they are behind Western anti-Israel advocacy.
Why not? There are millions of Western young people, as you say, who are now openly very anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. Many of these, however, may still either dislike Iran (eg. because of the Hijab protests) or have no opinion of it.
A core goal of Iranian support for Palestinians is for their own propaganda purposes in the regional geopolitical conflict and with the global Ummah, often as a kind of counter to the Saudi message that they’re the guardians of the two holy cities. Extending that audience to Western leftists would be a big win, so attaching themselves publicly to the pro-Palestinian cause in front of them is a good thing in their eyes.
The more people in the West sympathize with Iran, think Iran is ‘actually doing some good things’ or whatever, the more pressure to lift sanctions etc, at least in this logic.
In response, US has done a handful (3-5?) retaliatory strikes on those militias' positions. Apparently one of the strikes hit some IRGC commanders/troops. I also read that apparently Biden opted for lesser attacks, to prevent escalation.
On the Lebanese-Israel border, IDF continues to trade attacks with Hezbollah. Both sides have sustained casualties, though Hezbollah apparently has more (they publish photos of "martyrs" they died, on twitter at least).
However, it seems like the speeches by the Hezbollah leader has not been very inflammatory. Their once-expected entry into the war with Israel still hasn't come, despite these border skirmishes. Maybe the US presence in the area, with two carrier groups and other assets, is actually a real deterrent here? It definitely feels like Hezbollah has to say they are with Hamas against Israel/US, but won't actually put themselves on the line, perhaps rationally in this case. Would Hezbollah leadership be forced to do more or risk losing control of its troops? I read a theory that the Hamas operation on Oct. 7 was mostly lead by younger commanders, without the support of the higher up, older leadership. Could Hezbollah run into this situation as well?
What do you guys think the possibility of this Israel-Gaza situation exploding to include Hezbollah formally? What about US-Iran?
My take:
US-Iran will continue as currently, though honestly US forward positions in Eastern Syria and Iraq are not sustainable in my opinion. They should either be heavily reinforced, or withdrawn, as the bases there are mostly unable to adequately return fire or defend themselves IMO.
Hezbollah will probably keep doing what they are doing, unless something really breaks. Some Hamas leader just recently said that Hezbollah would enter the war with Israel if Hamas is completely destroyed, saying it's a "red line". Though I distinctly remember Hezbollah saying Israel invading Gaza was a red line as well that couldn't be crossed. But then again...
The US killed the single most important official to Iranian geopolitical strategy besides Khamenei (more important than him from a strategic perspective) and Iran attacked a US base after warning the US to move troops out of the way (essentially with American permission).
The irony is that the reason Iran is reluctant to get involved, and the reason they were reluctant to attempt a bigger retaliatory move after the Soleimani assassination, is because they're winning. Sure, they could tell their allies to press harder against US forces in Syria and Iraq, but nothing makes Americans angrier than American soldiers being killed. And the thing is that (and I'm interested in @Dean's view on this) a small number of US forces holed up in bases in Syria and Iraq doesn't threaten most Iranian interests in the region. They still increasingly control most of Iraq, Assad is relatively firmly in power in Syria. It's an insult to them, perhaps, they may consider it offensive, but the Americans aren't going to end shiite control of Iraq or overthrow Assad with their current presence.
The one thing Iran wants to avoid is a major escalation that might draw a large American force in on the side of Saudi Arabia against the Houthis, against Iraqi shiites, against Hezbollah and/or against Assad, which is the only thing that might threaten the shiite crescent plan and the extremely successful arming and training of Iraqi shiite militias and the Houthis.
The irony is that the reason Iran is reluctant to get involved, and the reason they were reluctant to attempt a bigger retaliatory move after the Soleimani assassination, is because they're winning. Sure, they could tell their allies to press harder against US forces in Syria and Iraq, but nothing makes Americans angrier than American soldiers being killed. And the thing is that (and I'm interested in @Dean's view on this) a small number of US forces holed up in bases in Syria and Iraq doesn't threaten most Iranian interests in the region. They still increasingly control most of Iraq, Assad is relatively firmly in power in Syria. It's an insult to them, perhaps, they may consider it offensive, but the Americans aren't going to end shiite control of Iraq or overthrow Assad with their current presence.
Well, since asked... I suppose my view on your assessment is that it depends on if one thinks Iran was actually uninvolved/unaware of the October attack.
If Iran was unaware/uninvolved, then it's not an illogical position. The conflict is an unexpected opportunity for Iran's foes to weaken themselves militarily/politically, disrupt the alignment against Iran by more regional actors, provide new opportunities, etc. etc.
But, as the laconics say, 'If.'
My personal view is that what we're seeing is a failed effort to start a broader conflagration, since being walked back and limited for damage control. An analogy might be the Russian-sponsored NovaRussia uprising in eastern Ukraine that consolidated around the 'separatist republics'- a 'success' on one hand in achieve an operational victory, but a failure for an intention for a much broader result that didn't materialize, leaving the instigating party a 'good hand' for a context they didn't actually want to be in, because they were aiming for something substantially different.
Very non-laconic thoughts below.
From my viewpoint watching various regional actors, the initial post-attack propaganda narratives, and so on, Hamas's goal wasn't isolated to a Gaza-specific event to be resolved with a hostage standoff, but to try to be the instigating event of a wider intifada with broad regional support from Iran's proxy groups. Key goals likely included a broader consolidation of Gaza support into breaking the barrier, instigating a West Bank uprising that would paralyze the 80% of the IDF there, and major external support from Iranian proxies- especially in Lebanon and Syria- to conduct major rocket attacks and limited ground incursions to surround and further paralyze the IDF. This would have only been possible in coordination with Iran, and in turn Iran would have attempted to use the regional chaos to try and expel the remaining U.S. presence from south-eastern Syria and from Iraq, removing US influence from a region where the US presence prevents consolidation of Iranian influence (via US-aligned partners in Syria, and the political impacts of both US presence and critical US funding in the Iraqi government which can and has been used to play off the Iranian-aligned actors). In an 'Iran was involved' perspective, Iran would be relying on its proxies rather than direct involvement, adhering to the principle of plausible deniability.
The 'issue' is that the Hamas attack did not instigate a wider intifada, and the Iranians were confronted that their denials wouldn't be considered plausible by actors who mattered most if the rest of their influence network actually joined in force. Hence the anti-climatic climbdown by Hezbollah from was being built up as a natural call to arms, the token-level support by groups like the Houthis in Yemen that even the Saudis have shot down without meaningful propaganda criticism, and how the Hamas strategy has resorted to increasingly blatant appeals for truce by steadily increasing the number of hostages it would turn over for relief.
The Hamas failure to spark a wider intifada, which has been a real concern in regional security circles over the last few years, can probably be attributed to a few various factors. A lack of coordination outside of the Iranian network meaning other Palestinian groups weren't ready to join in immediately, the shock value of their atrocity-propaganda having a detering rather than galvanizing effect as actual local groups distanced themselves due to the immeninet Israeli retaliation rather than join in, the effectiveness of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank to prevent anyone from mobilizing a force that would make them seem like participants., what have you. In fact, even the Gaza public support has seemed to be... well, acceptance is not the same as endorsement, but the Hamas ability to defend in Gaza has been surprisingly underwhelming, which would be characteristic of a force that thought it would be receiving a lot more support than it actually is. Gaza is not Kyiv in 2022, where the citizenry was mixing molotovs in the streets to fight the invaders. An urban area held by truly hostile local populace is a notoriously rough fight, and one that hasn't manifested in the fighting so far, but was probably expected given the parallels to the Israeli incursion into Lebananon against Hezbollah awhile ago, where Israeli ran into exceptional difficulty on the ground.
Which leads to what I think is the most relevant point- and the one that matters from the Iranian perspective- which was a misjudgement of regional views and perceptions. Plenty of people around and abroad were happy to cheer for Hamas, but no one wanted to join in fighting alongside Hamas- and as it became very quickly clear that the other people weren't joining in, the Iranian-aligned networks could either join in in the Israeli background, or back out.
By and large, they've backed out, even at the cost of regional prestige/leader-of-the-resistance standing. No one has taken more than a token involvement in the Israeli front. The more relevant activity increase has been entirely geographically/politically separate, which is the anti-US attacks in the Syria-Iraq zone. This is relevant for the Iranians- the US presence in Iraq particularly significantly limits Iran's ability to consolidate it's advantages by giving a counter-balance option to local politicians- and it serves a number of purposes in the strategic competition, but the most relevant is trying to re-establish leverage (you need to negotiate, lest we escalate- which is to say, the same position before October) rather than actively trying to overwhelm, which- to me- seemed to be the goal of the opening October efforts.
This is all based on a paradigm and a viewpoint I fully acknowledge others might not share, and that's fine. But from that paradigm comes a significant distinction as to why Iran is doing what it is doing at the level it is- whether this is a situation Iran found itself in that it doesn't need to do anything because escalation could tip the apple cart that it already enjoys, or whether this is a situation Iran found itself in because it tried to turn over the apple cart, but failed, and is now trying to present that it wasn't trying to do that (but could still yet do so if pressed, so better not press it).
To turn back to the start, to the question of if Iran is 'winning' and the analogy of the NovaRussia uprising- this is where I'd make a point that operational successes are not the same as strategic wins, and that sometimes the consequences of a partial success have different, less foreseen, implications. The Ukrainian NovaRussia uprising was a 'win' for Russia in that it successfully inserted itself into Ukrainian politics in a way that froze western integration and allowed Russia to play a key diplomatic role even as it was a de facto belligerant. But the NovaRussia efforts are also what functionally froze the NordStream pipeline project to Germany, cutting off a major economic-influence vector before it could be manifested, and thus greatly reducing influence that would have mattered much more down the line, when the early Russian strategy in Ukraine centered around pressing Germany to accept it and thus undercut a European pillar of support. Had NordStream been activated years earlier, it may well have worked, even as the years of warfare over NovaRussia empowered the Ukrainian army and national identity to resist the Russian invasion.
Iran is probably not going to have as much of a blowback, but then again no one would have predicted the Ukraine War's consequences for the Russians in the first few months of NovaRussia either. What does seem clear to me is that while Iran has likely achieved a short/medium-term disruption of Israeli-Saudi normalization due to the sacrifice of Hamas/Gaza, they do have some key elements of power being undercut as well. For one, the paradigm I reflect- the one where Iran has been deterred from maximal proxy usage- is a fundamental failure of one of the key points of proxy warfare, the 'plausible deniability.' If you wouldn't use a plausible-deniable proxy for fear of retaliation, it's no longer plausibly-deniable, and you're just returning to conventional deterrence. For another, Hamas and the Gaza Strip were most relevant to the Iranian posture as a force-in-being- the idea that Israel was surrounded on three fronts by forces that could at any time launch an uprising, and as a consequence Israel was in a weak position and needed to make concessions that Iran could take credit for leading. Except the West Bank didn't rise up, which changes expectations of what it might do going forward, and whatever happens to Gaza after this war, it's probably not going to be a serious contender for a mass popular uprising either. When the Israeli-Palestinian conflict returned, the anti-Israeli palestinians had to shoot the Palestinians to keep them from running away from the Israelis. Bar Hamas somehow remaining in power- and it seems very unlikely that will be the result of the Gaza war- whoever remains left is much, much less likely to be willing to be a quasi-Iranian proxy after seeing what the Iranian axis did for Hamas.
Is it a 'good' position to be in? Kind of. Is it a 'better' position than they had before the Hamas attack? Questionable.
But all this derives from some first-order assumptions of the nature of the conflict, which I suspect you and I diverge on.
That Iran was aware of the Hamas intent to launch the general premise of the 7 Oct attack and provided technical and additional forms of help to assist with the planning.
What do you guys think the possibility of this Israel-Gaza situation exploding to include Hezbollah formally? What about US-Iran?
If it was going to, it already would have exploded. As it is, if they join now, it will be anti-climatic.
Some of the allegations from the regional shuttle diplomacy that went around the region in October is that they were basically deterred by direct threats to Hezbollah and Iran that if they joined in the war, they would be considered direct belligerants and to have been in on in the initial 7 Oct attacked as a direct act of war by the Iranian government, whose relations with Hezbollah are much stronger than Hamas. Further, other actors indicated that if Hezbollah got involved it would be a non-trivial risk of civil war in Lebanon, such as with the French making a considerable arms 'gift' to the governmental forces that would likely operate against Hezbollah in such a scenario.
As is, while some Iranian proxy groups are trying limited support- the Houthis have tried to lob some things from all the way down in Yemen- it's pretty marginal, and not a particularly regionally-supported affair. (The Saudis reportedly have shot down some Houthi stuff.) Hezbollah could try and get involved for its own reasons, but it'd be largely anti-climatic, and after the very visibile period of letting Hamas fight on its own, and at this point I don't think anyone really believes Hezbollah cares that much about Hamas per see.
As for US-Iran, Iran has long been trying to leverage it's various proxy political and military forces in Iraq and Syria to drive the US out. They appear to have decided now's the time to escalate, hence the counter-strikes.
If it was going to, it already would have exploded. As it is, if they join now, it will be anti-climatic.
I would be inclined to agree. However, the situation along the Israel-Lebanese border is now such that it would have certainly resulted in a full-fledged war by Israel against Hezbollah, at least at the scale of the 2006 war, if Israel weren't preoccupied with Gaza. Hezbollah doesn't want a full war, but they're relying on the fact that Israel wants a full war even less in order to get away with more attacks than they could in other circumstances. Israel won't tolerate this state indefinitely, and it could still escalate to a full-scale war if either side miscalculates.
I agree to a good degree, and even would argue Hezbollah is trying to calibrate the pressure precisely to distract Israel from focusing on Hamas, but states can very much downplay some casus belli factors when they don't want to engage a particular front.
Further, other actors indicated that if Hezbollah got involved it would be a non-trivial risk of civil war in Lebanon, such as with the French making a considerable arms 'gift' to the governmental forces that would likely operate against Hezbollah in such a scenario.
It seems like there’s a non-trivial risk that a second Lebanese civil war with Hezbollah fighting Israel directly ends with the Shiites getting ethnically cleansed from Lebanon.
Twice in the last week, I’ve gotten company emails about security in the face of protests. The advice is not surprising: subscribe to company alerts. Report harassment to security. Do not talk to protestors or try to get past a barricade.
I have naturally seen no signs of any protests at our quiet, suburban office. Presumably the same message was broadcast to employees in, say, Boston. But that’s the only story I could find about an actual protest targeting my industry. I’m left wondering—if this response is due to caution from the higher-ups, do they perceive more of a threat? Or are they playing into a narrative where the rank and file assume there will be a threat?
This is pre-emptive risk management and generally good security governance.
Protests can spring out of the air with little warning, so they are educating staff before they arrive at work one day and come across protestors blocking the entry of their facility. It may never happen, but if it does they are minimising the risk to their staff (and also possible compensation claims for not doing everything they reasonably can to provide a safe workspace)
Large organisations often have security advisors (either internal or consulting on retainer) that serve as early warning for this kind of thing.
Edit:
If you ever find yourself confronting protestors, that advice is pretty good. Don't engage or talk to them; a career protestor has likely been arrested before and has little reputation to lose, unlike yourself. They can do all sorts of dirty tricks like spit on you and then have their friends record your reaction for a nice little propaganda video to go up on Twitter/Youtube. Talking to protestors without media training and authorisation from the organisation can embarrass the company and lead to consequences for you. Basically any interaction in a situation like that would possibly be recorded, (edited in the worst possible way) and signal boosted on social media. The play book for issue motivated groups has been refined and shared since the 60's.
In the worst case, just turn around and go home. Email your boss that you couldn't make it to work due to the protest. They will be happy for you to work from home or even just take the day off. Chances are you'd find an email directing you to do this anyway if you checked your inbox.
Chances are you'd find an email directing you to do this anyway if you checked your inbox.
I have some friends in defense, and often they can't access their email on personal devices. For some, quite literally the pre-pandemic policy was that nothing work-related left the building. That has changed somewhat, but expecting folks to check email before coming to the office isn't universally possible even today.
In those cases there would be some other method of communication available which would be used, such as sms to personal devices.
Defense departments in western countries are usually very good with their security risk management, so I can't see them having no way of warning staff outside of work.
In finance during Occupy (before my time) banks apparently told workers not to wear corporate merch in public for fear people would be harassed or attacked. I don’t know if there were ever gangs of anarchists going around beating up bankers with Citigroup backpacks in 2011, but it seems funny now.
I knew some folks that worked in Big Oil, and around that time similar guidance appeared there to stop advertising corporate logos due to worries about climate activists. I don't know of any particular incidents, but the same sort of cautious guidance.
While Collin and tarrant counties may not be hotspots for left wing mass protests, it’s reasonable for defense contractors to expect some level of protest at their facilities during a war, and it seems reasonable to have a company wide email about it.
If I want to help the ordinary Gazans caught in the middle of the airstrikes, but really didn't want to provide any military aid to Hamas, what would be a good charitable organisation to donate to?
Here are some charities dedicated to providing medical supplies and treatment:
One of the main Gazan hospitals, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, is ran by the Episcopalian church in Jerusalem, and it looks like you can email the Episcopalians to specify that you wish to donate towards providing medical aid for Gazans rather than a general donation that might go to religious services and the like: https://j-diocese.org/wordpress/healthcare-3/
An anti-war and anti-occupation Israeli I am acquainted with recommended Medical Aid for Palestinians and said they're running a lot of relief work: https://www.map.org.uk/
I think this is basically impossible given the priorities and practices of Hamas.
Anything of value will be traded, repurposed, or melted down for weapons. Pipes will become rockets. Food will be stockpiled in bunkers while civilians starve. Medicine will be traded to various unscrupulous parties. Hamas is in control of whatever you send to Gaza and Hamas does not share your concern for ordinary Gazans.
I’d think your best bet might be Christian charitable organizations that were already operating inside of Gaza prior to the conflict. The hospital that famously had something happen to it a few weeks ago (not interested in litigating what happened or by whom) is run by the Anglicans, for example.
IDF. The sooner and thorougher they finish eradicating Hamas, the sooner the Palestinians life will start improving.
Edit: Not a satire or sarcasm. Hamas has entagled all military and civilian spaces so that enormous civilian casualties are unavoidable, hamas has made the life of any palestinian in the gaza strip hell, hamas made the coexisting of Israel and Hamas impossible (how israel helped creating hamas is matter for another time), the best way to save palestinians is to help Hamas lose.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
Lizzardspawn 5mo ago·Edited 5mo ago
I second this. Until Hamas is eradicated there is nothing you can do to not indirectly aid Hamas. Even if you could e.g. give money to a charity to provide food with a 100% guarantee the money would be used on bread and cheese instead of weapons this would still free up money for Hamas to move from providing food for the civilians to weapons instead.
For an example consider a situation where Hamas spends $10 million a year on food and $10 million a year on weapons, where Gaza needs $20 million of food a year (the other $10 million of food comes from current charity). If you donate $1 million to charity so that Gaza is getting $11 million of food from charity Hamas now only needs to spend $9 million to sort of feed its population, which has just freed up an extra $1 million for them to use on weapons instead of food.
The net result of your charitable donation is that the Gazans get the same amount of food they were getting before but Hamas has more money to spend on rockets.
I understand this is a toy example with numbers pulled out of thin air, but as far as I can tell, Hamas spends nothing on feeding civilians and leaves that as a problem for others to solve. And then steals the aid when it comes in.
Not facetious. There are no organizations there which are independent and which can guard their resources and supplies from Hamas. So whatever you send - Hamas will have dibs on it. And there is absolutely nothing in the way Hamas has acted so far that indicates that they will put the wellbeing of the civilians that they use as human shields instead of that of their members.
There may be organizations that are honest and will help but they will be working with the displaced civilians in Egypt, not with the ones in the cross fire.
There are no organizations there which are independent and which can guard their resources and supplies from Hamas. So whatever you send - Hamas will have dibs on it.
Again, as with other discussions, I think it is important to remember that Hamas is the local government. Any goal that starts with "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" is going to be very difficult, on par with a 1943 mission to "help Germans, but not Nazis" or an 1864 plan to "help Southerners, not the Confederacy". While it's possible to thread the needle to some extent, the damage being done to the Nazi and Confederate institutions and civilians with blockades and economic warfare were part of plans being used by the putative good guys, not an accidental bug that we just needed the Red Cross to workaround. Trying to break those blockades and deliver food supplies to enemy civilians has pretty obvious inherent problems associated with it.
If someone just wants to see Hamas win, OK, I guess that's a stance. But really, the "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" position is not just trivially good.
I appreciate that my question was not one with an obvious and straightforward answer, and it's a problem any time you want to assist the populace suffering under a corrupt and despotic regime (even if the populace should have known better than to vote said regime into power).
But all that being said, I feel like there were more constructive responses to the question available than "give your money to the IDF so they can have an easier time bombing Gaza into the stone age lol lol lmao". I think it should have been abundantly obvious that when I say I'm looking for an organisation to which to direct charitable donations, that precludes the armed forces (unless they're involved in peacekeeping, which the IDF obviously are not).
I was mildly tempted to respond with "donate to the IDF" myself, but for better or worse I restrained myself since I could clearly see that that wasn't in the spirit of what you sought, even if I think it's true.
I suppose it depends on how much risk you're willing to take that supplies bought with your money will be misused, barring something particularly specific like a charity that hands out tampons, I suspect that it's going to get yoinked, and in that specific example, intentionally. (Russian conscripts were given tampons and pads by their families when bandages were in short supply, but sadly a material made for soaking up blood isn't very good at staunching a bleed)
Keep in mind that even benign items can be seized and sold on the market for money, and I doubt Hamas has many qualms in that regard. Besides, the IDF isn't particularly funding constrained, at least within the range of any potential donations you might make, unless you're a billionaire I suppose.
Not /u/Lizzardspawn, but that's basically what it boils down to. Until the IDF restores something like a 21st century notion of civilized order, helping Palestinians is nearly impossible.
Sorry for the leading question but am I the only one naive enough to ask "Why don't the israeli troops just walk into the al-Shifa hospital?"? Where I live, if the national army wanted to take over the closest hospital I am confident they could do it in like 5 minutes by walking in through the front door.
If the answer is as I suspect, "the Israeli troops can't walk into the hospital because the hospital is being defended with guns," then why doesn't that fact appear in your average news story like this one? I know this sounds like a post from a person who really cares about Israel and is always going on about media bias against that country, so I just want to add a disclaimer saying that my position on Israel is that I'm just a normal American non-Jew who doesn't really know or care very much about it.
But honestly, to go back to my opening question, what the heck is going on at the hospital? Why can't they just take it over?
Basically Hamas knows Israel won't bomb the hospital, which seems to be the largest hospital in that area. And thus, they base operations there with impunity.
Why wouldn't they just blow it up while they have an excuse to? Netanyahu was talking about how he's dealing with Amalek all over again, do you know what was commanded to do to them?
Is your model that Israel is trying to kill as many people as possible? The world would look different if that were the case. There would be a lot more dead people.
The bar for blowing hospital and it not being a war crime is quite high. Not impossible and Hamas has made sure to make Israel life easier by doing their best to make any civilian infrastructure legitimate military target, but still it is a big deal.
The bar for blowing hospital and it not being a war crime is quite high.
The bar is extremely low, as low as 'is it being used as a military position.'
War crime law is not that legitimate military targets (military positions, command posts, munition stores) are made ineligible by the presence of protected classes (i.e. hospitals), but rather than protected classes are made eligible by the presence of legitimate military targets. There are no protected classes of military sites where someone can fire at you, but you can't fire back.
The proportionality principle, which is what limits collateral damage that could kill civilians, is proportionality relative to what is needed to destroy the legitimate military target compared to other means that would achieve the same military effect, not the proportion of military-to-civilian casualties. There are no convention requirements to take military casualties in the process of storming military objectives in order to minimize civilian casualties.
The proportionality principle, which is what limits collateral damage that could kill civilians, is proportionality relative to what is needed to destroy the legitimate military target compared to other means that would achieve the same military effect, not the proportion of military-to-civilian casualties.
Do you have a source for this? Because if this is true, then I've seen such misinformation repeated all the time:
Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life... which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.
What you cited covers the point in conjunction with the same conventions covering valid military objectives and the revocation of protected sites if they are turned into valid military objectives.
Destroying something so that it no longer contributes to casualties on your forces is a concrete and direct military advantage. This goes back to what a valid military target is, and the conventions are very clear that protected targets are NOT protected if they are converted into valid military targets, even if there are still civilian casualties. As such, there is not requirement for there to be no civilian casualties, or for the belligerant to accept casualties in order to avoid civilian casualities. The onus is on the other belligerent to not place military objectives amongst civilians / to move civilians away from military objectives, not on the 'attacking' beligerant to not engage valid military objectives.
As the collateral damage of any civilians is not a binary disqualifier, proportionality doesn't work as a 'prohibit any attack on a valid military objective that may cause casualties' either-or binary. The porportionality is in the excess to the miltiary advantage... but since the military advantage is judged by the attacker, not the defender, and the anticipated value is often trivial to justify in close-range engagements on force-protection grounds and limiting enemy ability to continue offering mearningful resistance, proportionality would be a functionally dead letter if it was solely a binary (which- by its own working- it isn't).
Rather, proportionality comes into play when something would have no concrete or direct miltiary objective- which is usually when a target is so far away / inconsequential it means nothing for your military force survivial if the target is hit or not- or if you have alternatives that have different effects on the civilians in the course of the legitimate strike. In the face of valid military objective where concrete and direct military is already anticipated, and thus engaging is not prohibited, the proportionality distinction will only apply if you have alternatives with smaller loss of incidental loss- which would then render the overkill-casualties excessive in relations to the military advantage anticipated, because you could get the military advantage anticipated by using a smaller effect and thus the 'extra' deaths are unnecessary.
Thanks! I’ve seen a lot of misinformation around how proportionality actually means that if the ratio of civilians to enemy combatants is high enough, then it’s automatically a war crime. I can see where they come from, as the wording is rather vague, but upon reading the article further:
Australia, Canada and New Zealand have stated that the term “military advantage” includes the security of the attacking forces.
the expression “concrete and direct” military advantage was used in order to indicate that the advantage must be “substantial and relatively close, and that advantages which are hardly perceptible and those which would only appear in the long term should be disregarded”.
Numerous States have pointed out that those responsible for planning, deciding upon or executing attacks necessarily have to reach their decisions on the basis of their assessment of the information from all sources which is available to them at the relevant time.
It’s not clear to me how much of a consensus this is outside of Australia, Canada, and NZ, but the air strikes by Israel most certainly 1) provide immediate and perceptible advantages to 2) the security of its attacking forces, at least 3) as far as the IDF is aware of, unless there’s any evidence that they have engaged in air strikes despite knowing full well that there were no Hamas military assets at the target location.
So there’s indeed a strong case to be made that regardless of civilian casualties, the IDF has not committed war crimes in this particular air strike campaign. Not that anyone already calling it “genocide” would care to change their minds, of course.
It’s not clear to me how much of a consensus this is outside of Australia, Canada, and NZ,
Basically every military that has fought an insurgency or an urban conflict in the last century, or otherwise had to fight a conflict where a house is a battle position, has adopted the force protection argument that some civilian casualties are acceptable. This goes from Russia to the Philippines to Sri Lanka and India to Iran and Saudi Arabia to Colombia and every NATO member.
This is usually the point where I remind an audience that war is hell, and that the laws of wars are about limiting, not preventing, civilian casualties. The conventions on how to wage war 'right' are as much about protecting every single life as a fire break is about stopping forest fires. The effects are good for the greater whole, but the part of the forest within the forest break is fully expected to burn.
So there’s indeed a strong case to be made that regardless of civilian casualties, the IDF has not committed war crimes in this particular air strike campaign. Not that anyone already calling it “genocide” would care to change their minds, of course.
This is generally correct. There will be some specific cases that people will focus on, but these can depend on having insight into the belligerent perspectives, as well as other 'the law isn't what you thought the law was' contexts. For perspectives, nothing in the conventions requires a belligerent to reveal their Intelligence- and thus sources and methods- for why they chose a target, so there are often targets that are legitimate but which may not appear to be when prioritized... and this in turn doesn't even include cases of flawed/wrong intelligence, where the a belligerent can legitimately believe there is a valid target somewhere one isn't. It doesn't become a war crime retroactively if one is duped by a denial/deception campaign. Meanwhile, some things that may seem obviously off-limits are actually covered in other areas of the convention. We had a good example in the first thread, when someone did an actuall review of the convention requirements for delivering aid to civilians- in short, while delivering aid to civilians must be allowed, it doesn't have to be allowed by any given organization to any given organization. Rather, a belligerent must allow a mutually acceptable intermediary to deliver it, so that the there can be some sort of guarantee that the aid goes to civilians and not the beseiged belligerent. As a consequence of that, for example, bombing the border crossings early on is not, from a rules-of-law perspective, 'preventing aid from getting to civilians,' which is forbidden, it is 'preventing resupply to a belligerent,' which is permitted.
Rather than quibbling on legal dynamics few know and fewer actually care about, the better argument against genocide-claimers is the point that, just by the numbers, if the Israelis are trying to genocide the Gaza Strip population... they are doing a really, really poor job at it by even the most pro-Palestinian numbers.
If the goal of the Israeli government and military was to genocide the Palestinian population, we would expect to see massively higher Palestinian casualty rates so far. Like, orders-of-magnitude higher. We'd also have seen considerably different targeting decisions of types of targets- with far more about irrevocably destroying essential infrastructure beyond repair or leveling apartment blocks without organizing evacuations- if they were in a 'just kill them all before anyone can stop us' dynamic.
The proportionality principle, which is what limits collateral damage that could kill civilians, is proportionality relative to what is needed to destroy the legitimate military target compared to other means that would achieve the same military effect, not the proportion of military-to-civilian casualties
And that is actually a high bar in my book. If there are no civilians you are free to overkill.
And no one particularly cares about overkill, because overkill is wasteful and takes away relevant resources for the next engagment. Outside of a few propaganda contexts- which are extremely rare in civilian casualty contexts- civilian-overkill is a military-waste issue as much as anything else.
Is it just that the news sources I'm reading are terrible? I feel like I've never seen it mentioned that there is another side (not just the IDF) fighting in this war. Like they mentioned that the IDF forces have surrounded the hospitals but it's not clear why, since as far as anyone has told me it is just full of doctors and their patients. I feel like I'm five years old asking these questions but it's just so weird to me, it's like the grownups understand something that I don't.
You're quite right. None of the news sources I've read has said anything about what's stopping Israel from just walking up to the reception desk with a bunch of fuel cans and spare generators, and having a look around for tunnels while they're there. The assumption has to be that either it's defended by Hamas, or that Israel is kayfabing that it's defended by Hamas, but no news outlets seem to want to say anything beyond "the doctors say there's no Hamas, but we as reporters didn't bother to ask the IDF commander why they don't just walk inside."
A lot of coverage has made it seem like the IDF is simply choosing to starve everyone in the hospital of supplies under the assumption that Hamas has a position within it, but has been extremely light on details.
This NY Times article from within the hour describes IDF troops 'battling Hamas fighters nearby' the hospital, but otherwise simply paints a picture of the terrible situation the people in the hospital are in, and reproduces a statement from the hospital's director, Dr. Salmiya, where he says that there is no truth to the idea that Hamas is operating beneath the hospital.
"There’s no reason why we just can’t take the patients out of there, instead of letting Hamas use it as a command center for terrorism, for the rockets that they fire against Israel, for the terror tunnels that they use to kill Israeli civilians."
According to this Nov 14 article from the Jerusalem Post, make of that what you will, the IDF is going out of its way to offer assistance in evacuating patients from the hospital, which apparently a publicly released phone conversation shows the hospital leadership is eager to accept. The article also prominently mentions and provides footage of incubators being loaded into vans that the IDF is apparently rushing to get to the hospital as fast as possible. (Isn't the problem that there is no power for their incubators, not that they didn't have enough incubators? How are these new IDF incubators meant to be powered? Or delivered?)
The article reminds readers:
Previously, however, Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have said that Al–Shifa has refused Israeli assistance.
"We just offered Shifa hospital the fuel; they refused it," Netanyahu claimed on Sunday.
Earlier this month, a Gaza health official stated in a phone call intercepted by the IDF that Hamas takes fuel provided to Al-Shifa.
Another intercepted call recorded a health official saying that the director general of Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, Yusef Abu Rish, had prevented a delivery of fuel from getting to the hospital.
The linked reporting there, from Reuters, Nov 12:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday his country offered fuel to Gaza's Al Shifa hospital, which has suspended operations amid fierce fighting with Hamas, but that the militant group refused to receive it.
"We just offered Shifa hospital the fuel, they refused it," Netanyahu said, without providing details.
The fuel was offered to the hospital, but "the militant group [Hamas]" refused to receive it. How was it "offered" and how was it "refused"? Physically, verbally? Why wouldn't Hamas have accepted the fuel in this situation, and just taken some or all of it for themselves, as the IDF has made clear many times is what it would expect them to do?
So ... yeah, it's a little hard to build in my mind's eye what the situation is on the ground. The IDF's messaging here seems to want me to believe that it is fully capable, ready and willing not only to provide supplies directly to the hospital in person, but also to begin evacuating patients, and they could and would immediately do this if only they could get close, which Hamas is preventing. If Hamas is fighting the IDF around the hospital perimeter and not letting them give the hospital anything or take anyone out of it, how are the hospital staff still able to insist that Hamas is not meaningfully present at the hospital? Are they just being held more or less at gunpoint by Hamas and forced to keep saying Hamas isn't at the hospital even when they plainly are?
But also, if Hamas is deeply entrenched in and around the hospital, to the point that it has maintained enough perimeter control around it that the IDF can't or won't enter it and evacuees can't or won't leave it, have the IDF only been surrounding it for days because they simply don't think they could take the hospital by force at this time? Or that they shouldn't for optical reasons, or something?
I'm not a combat strategist and I also can't claim to be able to model the minds of any of the actors here, but yes, I am also confused by the situation.
a statement from the hospital's director, Dr. Salmiya, where he says that there is no truth to the idea that Hamas is operating beneath the hospital.
I honestly think this is what he would say in all possible worlds, and thus not evidence for anything.
Would anyone seriously expect him to say: "The Hamas headquarter is located in building C, floor -1. Please take them out so we can run our hospital in peace."
That would be suicidal even if Hamas was just a local terrorist group. But Hamas is the government in Gaza, and has been for a decade. A director of a hospital is a political position, and I doubt Hamas is very shy about removing their opposition. Especially not if they were actually using that site as a headquarter.
In my mind, falsely claiming a lack of militants in a hospital would be alike to using ambulances as troop transports. Still, if I were a hospital director with a cellar full of militants I would not worry about the Hague to much and instead worry about Hamas.
Meanwhile the IDF is releasing plenty of photos and pretty extensive walkthrough footage showing all of Hamas's stuff that they're pulling out of hallway closets and out from behind MRI machines, as they walk down corridors that have had their security cameras disabled or obscured.
All the reporting I'm reading ... describes the hospital staff being very afraid during the raid, "because of all the fighting", but ... again, written like the hospital staff and patients are having to take cover while the IDF comes in and fights no one.
Al-Jazeera also helpfully relays a witness' statement that the IDF "have tried to kill anyone moving inside - no one has done anything, we don't have any kind of resistance inside the hospital", and also reports, in a bullet point immediately prior, that the IDF evacuated people from inside into the outdoor courtyard to be interrogated - even though it was raining.
(Isn't the problem that there is no power for their incubators, not that they didn't have enough incubators? How are these new IDF incubators meant to be powered? Or delivered?)
I heard these incubators had their own power (or at least didn't require being plugged in) and so could also function to move the infants if necessary, but that was a single article that I can't recall the source of.
Is it just that the news sources I'm reading are terrible?
This is almost always true in all circumstances.
It's unclear to me exactly what the state of play on the ground is, but the Institute for the Study of War claims that zones of control currently look like this, and according to the IDF Israel has broken the effectiveness of 10 of Hamas' 24 battalions. So, to the extent those claims are true (and they easily may not be), the indication is that Israel is making progress but there is a lot more fighting left to be done.
When Israel was in control of Gaza they built the hospital to be a bomb resistant fortress so that patients would be safe during fighting. They handed control of Gaza to the PLA / Fatah. Then Hamas won elections in 2007 and took over.
Hamas set up their headquarters in the hospital. For two reasons, it would look bad if Israel attacked it and it was already fortified.
Western reporters are in an odd spot. They sympathize with the Palestinians as an underdog and see it through an anti-colonial lens. Also they need access to Hamas to do reporting in Gaza. Also there's the safety of their reporters.
As a result it's uncouth to mention the Hamas fighters. They sort of beat around the bush.
The only news sources who will talk about them openly are the kind of sources that say blunt un-PC things.
Just as a bit of meta--I did not create a new thread since the third one did not top 500 comments in a week. There is a "Transnational Thursdays" thread posted each week by @Soriek that is probably the best place for Israel-Gaza discussion outside the CW thread going forward, at least barring any major new developments.
Moldbug weighs in on the latest episode of the Israel and Palestine show and the excessive reactions of westerners to it.
You need to turn off your feelings because you are a mother bird feeding a cuckoo. Once you look at the cuckoo, it is obviously not related to you. Where did your actual eggs go? What happened to your real empathy? It’s gone. Write it off. Your first job is to somehow get that thing out of your nest.
You need to turn off your feelings because you are a mother bird feeding a cuckoo.
and then proceeds with the usual long and convoluted verbal diarrhea. As if Moldbug cared, as is Moldbug had some feelings about current happenings in the land of Canaan. I do not remember him commenting at length about recent events in, for example, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sahel or Myanmar, formerly Burma.
Why is Moldbug allowed to have feelings while we should stay completely calm and disinterested?
Is it because some of Moldbug's ancestors came from this place and some relatives of his do live there now? If this should be the standard, then only people with Eastern Slavic descent should be allowed to care about Ukraine. Somehow, Moldbug despite his lack of Slavic blood, is very interested in this place and writes about it at length.
Is is because Moldbug disregards his own law or is it because there is no law except "Moldbug does what Moldbug wants?"
Actually his father was in the foreign service and was stationed in Ethiopia. He has done podcasts with Ethiopians about Ethiopian politics but his general audience doesn't have much interest.
I'm not sure what you mean? He cares about this insofar as so many people in America care about it - as it illuminates how harmful democracy and progressivism and caring too much about the poor oppressed foreigners is - not for the conflict itself. He wouldn't be posting about it if everyone else wasn't too.
Moldbug's usual principle is: "Might makes right, the strong should do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must."
For some reasons, his application of this principle on the Middle East problem always is: "Palestine is lost cause, Palestinian resistance against Israel is futile, Palestinians should give up and leave the country", never "Israel is lost cause, Israeli resistance against Arab and Muslim world is futile, Israelis should give up and leave the Middle East for good."
To be fair, Israel has a history of trouncing the Arab powers in conventional conflicts - it would be counterintuitive to conclude from that that they are incapable of defending their position against Arab states.
Yeah this is just a factual disagreement. All the demographic extrapolators and "feminized, decadent" west folks should really look into the implied per capita power discrepancy between israel and the arab world. Moderns can always crush angry superstitious masses militarily, if they so choose.
If you hadn't noticed, Israel is the strong one there compared to the Palestinians, so that's not inconsistent in the slightest.
Compared to the Palestinians, yes. Compared to the whole Arab and Muslim world, this is not so clear.
Moldbug believes that Israelis are master race, that America is keeping Israel down and in absence of American influence, Israel would easily roll over all land between Nile and Euphrates.
This is debatable, but if things went the other way and Israelis were to be driven to the sea, would Moldbug say: "Vae victis, winners keepers, losers weepers"? I have my doubts.
This is debatable, but if things went the other way and Israelis were to be driven to the sea, would Moldbug say: "Vae victis, winners keepers, losers weepers"? I have my doubts.
Probably, it would be far from the first and perhaps not even the worst misfortune his people had suffered, “oh well, we got trounced again” is a rather longstanding Jewish narrative.
Moldbug believes that Israelis are master race
Because he believes in HBD? Relatively bold claim re. Moldbug, he’s often spoken pretty disparagingly about Israel and modern Jewry in general.
A completely unified Muslim entity would likely be capable, but the chances of such a thing ever happening are essentially nil since people treat them as overly monolithic instead of rife with their own pile of issues and divisions.
Compared to the Palestinians, yes. Compared to the whole Arab and Muslim world, this is not so clear.
Compared to the whole Arab world, it's pretty clear. Add in Turkey and Iran and maybe not, but Turkey, Iran, and the Arabs getting together to destroy Israel is something that isn't happening.
Moldbug believes that Israelis are master race, that America is keeping Israel down and in absence of American influence, Israel would easily roll over all land between Nile and Euphrates.
And maybe they could, but that would just leave them with an extremely hostile population in the occupied areas. They'd be fools to try it. At least the Sinai was very sparsely populated.
This is debatable, but if things went the other way and Israelis were to be driven to the sea, would Moldbug say: "Vae victis, winners keepers, losers weepers"? I have my doubts.
Your beliefs about Moldbug's claims in the counterfactual don't make him a hypocrite.
The purpose of West Bank settlements is to make a two-state solution impossible.
Palestinians can remain in the West Bank if they agree to be second class citizens without political rights.
Israel’s rightful land extends from the Euphrates to the Nile.
I don’t care about Palestinian children, only my own children.
I like the interview and I respect how honest she is. She doesn’t pretend this is about Hamas or terrorism or anything; it’s her tribe versus someone else’s tribe and her tribe should do whatever it takes to win.
Some thoughts/questions:
How mainstream is her view? My impression is that a lot of Israelis/Israel supporters implicitly think that ultimately there’s no long-term solution other than the killing/displacing all the Palestinians, but aren’t willing to bite the bullet and explicitly advocate for genocide (or know they should be more circumspect about it.)
The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
I am by no means an expert, but I think this relates to the idea of Greater Israel. There even was an attempt to do that by Ariel Sharon in 1980ies at least according to Darryl Cooper of Martyrmade fame. The plan was to ethnically clense Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank as well as from Lebanon. Make Lebanon a Christian ally state and drive all the refugee Palestinian population to Jordan, where they can have their revolution creating a new Palestinian state by overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy, which was imported by Brits in 1920ies anyway.
It is not without precedent - something similar happened to Germans after WW2. Not many people know about it, but Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers "to the left" and anexed/incorporated some lands into Russia//Ukraine at the expense of ethnically cleansed Germans from historically German cities like Breslau/Wrocław or Königsberg/Kaliningrad etc. The same happened in Czechoslovakia where millions of Germans were ethnically cleansed and relocated to Germany, Germans who lived there for literally centuries. Poland and Czech Republic became ethnically homogenous countries.
The analogy would be treating Gaza/West Bank as something akin to East Prussia or Sudetenland while Jordan - or any other Arab state for that matter - plays the role of post-war East or West Germany or Austria. So you will have two state solution in the end. And ideally nobody will bat an eye, the ethnic cleansing of Germans is nothingburger today. Nobody gives a shit, there is no whining on some supposed wound on the soul of Czech or Polish or Russian nation or anything like that. Most people don't even know this and life goes on, there is enough to do in the respective countries and the mutual relationships are cordial enough, event outright friendly.
The Germans whined about it for years but couldn’t do anything while they were literally under military occupation and their former lands were themselves part of the Soviet empire. But official policy in the CDU, which dominated postwar German politics, was that those lands should be returned as late as the 1980s. What settled it was that the occupying powers agreed to reunification only if the claims were dropped.
As an aside, the Lebanon stuff is always interesting. As early as the 1950s the Israelis offered to carve out a Christian state, but the Lebanese refused, believing they could maintain control of the whole thing, which obviously didn’t work out (and obviously there were internecine disputes between various Christian groups). It’s pretty sad actually.
How mainstream is her view? My impression is that a lot of Israelis/Israel supporters implicitly think that ultimately there’s no long-term solution other than the killing/displacing all the Palestinians, but aren’t willing to bite the bullet and explicitly advocate for genocide (or know they should be more circumspect about it.)
A two-state solution was moderately popular just a few decades ago, but it's largely considered a lost cause at this point among Israelis at this point, and polls among Palestinians show it unacceptable or undesirable for them as well (for whatever extent you trust polls on this). But that does not mandate genocide or a lack of political rights (or ethnic cleansing), nevermind presuming such a position would be popular: indeed, even early in 2023 a two-state solution polls higher than a single-state one with privileged status for Jews.
The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?
A lot of it's less political power, and more the Israeli equivalent of the deep state. A lot of the positions and perspectives favoring Israeli expansionism into the West Bank has been a philosophical goal of the Israeli government for long enough that changing who's in office doesn't necessarily change what happens, it just changes who reports on it. And there were military and tactical reasons in the 70s, even if using those reasons as justification for military confiscation to later hand over to individual civilians is utterly abominable. Beyond that...
The settlers in the areas illegal under Isreali law, and their more activist branches in specific, are often assholes (price taggers regularly deface Israeli or even IDF property!). But there's another large class who played by at least Israeli rules, and are not so readily opposed. And the former groups exist in no small part by exploiting the ambiguities, there, and they're regularly assisted by international groups that take anything less than the Green Line borders as Israeli perfidy.
While I think the religious role is overplayed in American or international contexts, among Israelis and Palestinians there's a very serious concern that each side will dynamite the other's religious sites the second anyone's back is turned, and they matter a good deal more for internal reasons.
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
Combatant doesn't mean 'bad person' (an Israeli defending their Kibbutz on 10/7 is a combatant!), and non-combatant does not mean 'good person'. We have the "you're not allowed to shoot someone unless they're trying to kill you, or at least part of a military trying to kill you" for the very good reason that if you start allowing military strikes on anyone who has actively wrong political positions, there's nothing without a target.
A more difficult question is whether she'd count as a valid military target, and that's complicated. Ideally, trespassing and unlawful occupation are not themselves the sort of thing that would justify military or personal self-defense, but COGAT's enforcement and implementation of the law is a joke, so I have more sympathy for some of that. That said, mere advocacy or past actions are not themselves military justification -- there's a difference between fighting someone who's actively invading your house from breaking in to beat up someone who did a year ago.
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
I'm not the person you'd need to persuade, but it's been considered at times.
A lot depends on what, exactly, you mean by "West Bank" or "settlers": there's a risk of certain if-by-whiskeyism, here. Area A is already effectively off-limits for Jewish (and Israeli-friendly non-Jewish) people, rather famously. But that's a bunch of small cities and towns without a land bridge, which doesn't even include all West Bank Palestinians. On the other hand, turning over Area C and going back to the 1967 Green Line would involving moving almost a 400k Israelis and give the West Bank a fully-uncontrolled border with Jordan; that was a difficult ask in 2000 and there's no way it'd be acceptable now. Whatever extent 'land for peace' might have seemed a reasonable trade in the 1990s, it's clearly danegeld now, if the rumors that Arafat was planning the Second Intifada during the 2000 talks weren't enough, the recent problems made it obvious. And a lot of Palestinians, the Arab states, and the academic left consider all Israelis to be settlers, which beyond all the other problems, given the number of Israeli Jews that were ejected from Muslim countries nearby, is the sort of thing you bring to end negotiations, rather than to start them.
On the gripping hand, I think Israel should dismantle the settlements that are a violation of Israeli law anyway, so 'conceding' to remove them is conceding nothing at all.
I dunno. Before October, some large scale-down of Area C, in exchange for significant concessions elsewhere, might have been the best option. And maybe the PA pulls some sort of hat trick here that makes puts that back on the table again, if only to cut out Hamas and its affiliates as competition. But the last 'significant' (and it wasn't much, or even that honest!) pull-back resulted in a swath of suicide bombings, and I'm not sure that Abbas could commit to non-hostilities if the IDF gift-wrapped the entire Green Line borders for him, and any attempt to remove Israeli settlements requires them to believe they're getting peace out of it.
I think her particular view is pretty extreme, even among religiously motivated settlers I doubt very many would see the east bank of the Nile as part of the promised land. That would imply that Moses was already in the promised land when he parted the Red Sea.
Broadening "her cause" somewhat, there's a number of religious and very right-wing parties that Netanyahu relies on as coalition partners, and incorporating "Judea and Samaria" into Israel has support in those sectors because of the area's historical and religious significance. E.g. King David ruled from Hebron, Abraham was buried there, Jericho was the site of Joshua's first conquest in Canaan, etc.
She's not a combatant, but I also take issue with the implication that it's obviously fine to attack soldiers. Attacking civilians is an act of terrorism but attacking soldiers is still an act of war, and war is often even worse than terrorism.
Sure. "Land for peace" is a good trade if it works.
In the end it doesn’t really matter what the extremists think. If the Arabs had accepted the 1947 or 1967 borders and an independent Palestine was a separate, legitimate state (likely with the permanent or temporary presence of various Arab armies), clearly delineated borders, it’s own military and so on, there would be no ‘Jewish settlers’ on its territory.
Would religious Zionists still dream of an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates? Sure. But Jews dreamed of a return to Israel for millennia without doing anything about it. And of course since the return of the Sinai to the Egyptians, there aren’t any Jewish settlers there either, because they don’t want to die. There aren’t any in Gaza since 2006 either, because they don’t want to die. So again, the dreams of Jewish irredentists in a timeline where the Palestinians didn’t deliberately sabotage their own future are about as irrelevant as the dreams of Germans who wish they could reconquer all of Prussia, or Austrians who would like Hungary back, or even the Spaniards who would seek the return of Gibraltar which, for all the endless whining, isn’t going to happen any time soon either.
They are restricted by reality. The reason the settlers are in the West Bank is because the Palestinians fucked up so badly that, after being curbstomped thrice, they’re now under a combination of partial occupation and collaborationist government. Any number of things could have avoided this for them, settlers want to breed, they wouldn’t cut down the fence to an independent Palestinian state only to get shot by border guards because that defeats the purpose of their ideology. They settle because they can, and they can because the Palestinians, when it came down to it, were unwilling to deal.
But one of the reasons the Arabs fought Israel is because they predicted they would turn into an expansionist state and claim its ancestral borders. This is a damned if you, damned if you don’t. Israel is literally creating new colonies each year within the West Bank and (more egregiously) the Golan Heights, and its history is illustrative —
In 1976, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan said Israel provoked more than 80% of the clashes with Syria in the run up to the 1967 war, although historians debate whether he was "giving an accurate account of the situation in 1967 or whether his version of what happened was colored by his disgrace after the 1973 Middle East war, when he was forced to resign as Defense Minister over the failure to anticipate the Arab attack."[89] The provocation was sending a tractor to plow in the demilitarized areas. The Syrians responded by firing at the tractors and shelling Israeli settlements.[90][91] Jan Mühren, a former UN observer in the area at the time, told a Dutch current affairs programme that Israel "provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land".[92] UN officials blamed both Israel and Syria for destabilizing the borders
The argument sounds almost like, “why didn’t you let me take your land peacefully? Now that you defended it, you’ve forced me to take your lane!”
I also doubt anyone would make this argument if it were the Arabs destroying Israel militarily. Israelis would be in uproar about Arabs violating international law and taking rightful Jewish clay.
If the Arabs destroyed Israel militarily there would be a lot of kvetching for a few years, then nothing. The refugees/survivors would presumably be accepted by various Western countries, and in a decade Palestine would be just another MENA shithole riven by internal conflict between Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which would adopt a lot of secular Palestinian nationalist elements, and Saudi-backed Sunni militias, who would adopt the rest. It would be a poor dump and nobody would care about it ever again.
Of course, one other thing is that the Jews would never again retake the land (at least in the foreseeable future). America would decide that ‘what’s done is done’, neither Turkey nor Cyprus nor Egypt nor anyone else would give Jews staging ground for an operation to retake their country, the ‘West’ would decide that annoying the Arabs further was unwise and besides, the Jews would be back in the diaspora and settled.
But that underlines the point, really. 98% of the region is Arab, always has been and always will be. Sympathy is therefore difficult. Say the price to secure a white supermajority in Western Europe and North America forever was to hand a tiny sliver of land - say the state of New Jersey, or half of Flanders - to everyone else as an ethnostate. Practically every single wignat I’ve ever encountered would take that deal instantly, no matter the fact that a few locals would be mad. US secessionists talk openly of handing half their country to the ‘enemy’ in a ‘national divorce’.
But the Arabs, even after being trounced several times, throw a fit at the idea of losing - and this is true even in the case of an unrealistically expansionist Zionism - a tiny percentage of their land. And that’s a ‘worst case’ scenario; the Jews have no interest in Arabia itself, nor in Persia or almost all of North Africa or Anatolia (despite having an extensive history in those places).
In truth, there is more than enough land in the region to settle all Palestinians without great hardship, without approaching an unliveable population density and without removing almost all of the region from Muslim control. The Palestinians have been offered a vastly better future than practically any other defeated people in history (in many ways including the Germans and Japanese, who suffered more, lost more, and sacrificed cultural autonomy to American global homogenization, whereas Palestinians have preserved their Islam, their radicalism, their irredentism and most cultural traditions), including the Jews (whom they expelled from their own lands after the founding of Israel, of course).
To me this is as if someone complains that communists have taken over their country and expropriated them. Tragic, I obviously sympathize. Then they say ‘well actually they haven’t, they’re actually just social democrats and they taxed me a little on my billion dollar fortune’. My sympathy is lowered. The expropriation of Arabs in former mandatory Palestine is sad, but it does not seem to me sadder than the expropriation of the region’s Jews (something that of course happened not once but repeatedly for centuries before the founding of Israel), which few seem concerned with.
My continued position is that the Israelis have treated the Palestinians substantially better than Arabs have treated Jews, than Shiites have treated Sunnis (and vice versa) and than warring Sunni tribes have treated each other in most of the conflicts in the region’s history. When they force their way out of their containment zone (implemented due to their attacks on civilians), they have a chimp out and rape, torture and kill women and children like a bronze age warband with RPGs. What mercy do they deserve?
Doesn’t it bother you that you immediately changed your argument from “the Palestinians deserve to lose their territory because they failed to make an agreement”, to “the Palestinians deserve to lose their territory because Jews are special and there’s not many of them and Arabs suck?” It betrays the fact that your original argument wasn’t exactly sincere. Or was not at least your main argument.
98% of the region is Arab, always has been and always will be. Sympathy is therefore difficult
That’s a lot like saying “99% of the region is Slavic, therefore sympathy is difficult if Turks decided to conquer Odessa“. It doesn’t make sense as an argument because it ignores the diversity within the term “Arab” and the fact that you don’t suddenly get the right to land because the inhabitants are under the same broad ethnic umbrella. And it ignores that the holy land is particularly important for the whole Arab world.
the Jews have no interest in Arabia itself, nor in Persia or almost all of North Africa or Anatolia
The Jews have no interest in Iran? Have you turned on the news in the past decade? One of their overriding geopolitical interests of Israel is to destabilize Iran, just like they aimed and succeeded to influence American foreign policy toward destabilizing Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It turns out that placing Jews in the heartland of the Muslim world means that they are perpetually neurotic about powerful neighboring states. Which is a recipe for massive regional unrest. Jews have been kvetching about Iran for some time now, with the same WMD lie that they used to sell Iraq to America. Israel has no interest in Iran like America has no interest in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Doesn’t it bother you that you immediately changed your argument from “the Palestinians deserve to lose their territory because they failed to make an agreement”, to “the Palestinians deserve to lose their territory because Jews are special and there’s not many of them and Arabs suck?” It betrays the fact that your original argument wasn’t exactly sincere. Or was not at least your main argument.
There are two arguments for two different questions, neither of which is 'does Israel deserve to exist?'.
The first is something like 'are problems with Israeli religious zionist settlers [which is what the original comment was about] in the West Bank an inevitable outcome of the existence of Israel and its settlement by zionists?'. My answer to this is 'no', because (as I said) had the Palestinians accepted the '47 or '67 borders, there would be no settlers on that land because it would have a clear border, be guarded by one or multiple Arab armies and would be recognized by the international community (including the US and Israel, which were prepared and ready to recognize such a Palestinian state at the times in question). There would be no settlers in such a Palestinian state for the same reason there are none in present-day Syria, in present-day Jordan and in present-day Egypt. The sole reason settlers exist in the West Bank is because they can be guarded by the IDF, because the IDF controls the land, because of successive defeats for Arab armies on that land by the IDF, because of wars that the Arabs started.
The second question, which you seemed to be discussing in your next comment, is some variant of 'how much should we sympathize with the Palestinians' plight?'. This is a separate moral consideration since one can certainly sympathize with a defeated party even if they brought ruin upon themselves. In this case, I argue that the grander civilization of which most Palestinians were part continues to control almost all of the region and that resettlement away from historic Palestine - while a partially avoidable (as I said above) tragedy - to nearby Arab lands that are not overpopulated, that have natural resources and that share a cultural, ethnic and religious identity with (predominantly Sunni) Palestinians is a less sympathetic plight than that of Jews who have no 'homeland' peopled by those of their ethnoreligious identity if Israel is destroyed.
This is actually why I'm more sympathetic to, say, the plight of European nationalists than I am to the plight of, say, the Rohingya. The Rohingya are ethnically Bengali Muslims who live next door to the homeland of Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh, where their demographic majority is not threatened. If, say, native French become a minority in France, they have no homeland left to return to.
The Jews have no interest in Iran? Have you turned on the news in the past decade?
How much interest did the Jews have in Iran when the central mission of the Iranian state was not the eradication of Israel? I think the answer is comparatively little, and as I recall they were allies. It was only when an explicitly Islamist movement took over the country, almost all the local Jews fled after many were arrested and/or expropriated and/or even executed, and the Iranian government declared that it sought (and would fund, and arm, and incite) the eradication of Israel that Israel pursued its anti-Iran policy.
The counterfactual is valid - Iran could, without altering its demography, territory, flag, national religion or even political system end any Israeli opposition by renouncing (and ceasing to pursue) its hostility toward Israel. There is nothing, by contrast, that the 'Zionist entity' could do to end the opposition of the Iranian revolutionary government other than dissolve itself entirely.
I liked the interview for giving a hint of just how strongly Israelis believe in the demographic dimension of history. Mainstream or not, her side will become more mainstream through their efforts at expanding their Lebensraum and effortfully breeding; and their vigor will win over tired moderates even over this purely biological growth. I'm fairly sure we will see her maximalist ambitions of a massive Israeli empire normalized in some decades. What is impossible often becomes possible when enough people believe in it.
I also think this whole war episode has strengthened my thesis that Israel doesn't depend on the US much, doesn't care for what the US thinks, and frankly isn't any sort of an «outpist of Western liberalism in the sea of barbarism» but just a powerful, autonomous civilization state on its own already.
My least favorite part is her shrill denialism here:
In a lot of these places where settlements have been developed, from 1967 to the present day, there have been Palestinian communities and Palestinian families. What is your feeling about where these people should go?
It’s the opposite. None of the communities in Judea and Samaria are founded on an Arab place or property, and whoever says this is a liar. I wonder why you said it. Why did you say that, since you have no idea about the real facts of history? That’s not true. The opposite is true. Who got this idea into your mind?
Palestinian communities have been removed from their land, kicked off their land by—
No, you never read things like that. No. There are no pictures. [According to a report by Btselem, an Israeli human-rights group, parts of Kedumim, where Weiss lives, were built on private Palestinian land; in 2006, Peace Now found that privately owned Palestinian land comprised nearly forty per cent of the territory of West Bank settlements and outposts.]
O.K. I’m a little surprised you are denying this. I thought you were going to say, “It’s O.K. to kick Palestinians off land because it belongs to the Jewish people.”
You did no homework before you interviewed me. Everything that you say is the opposite of my personality and my philosophy. You are interviewing a person, and you don’t know anything about them. It’s very strange. I’ve never encountered a situation like this.
I was trying to understand where Palestinians who live in the West Bank should go.
Why should they go? Why should they go?
etc.
This kind of DARVO-like shrieking has always rustled my jimmies, but it seems to be normal in the Eastern discourse, and will be normalized further in the future. People on the right will be begging to get the genteel progressive assimilated Jews back.
This kind of DARVO-like shrieking has always rustled my jimmies, but it seems to be normal in the Eastern discourse, and will be normalized further in the future. People on the right will be begging to get the genteel progressive assimilated Jews back.
You would then like Baruch Kogan,most popular representative of Israeli settlers on dead bird site. Typical settler (born in Taganrog, served in US army, moved to reclaim holy land due to mid life crisis) who tells openly what he thinks about his Arab neighbors and Gentiles in general and is not shy about his plans for them. He would be happy to debate you (in English, Russian, Hebrew or Arabic) on every level, from insults and prison slang to most intellectual HBDIQ and NRX arguments.
Mainstream as in widely shared, or mainstream as in accurate? The premise that the purpose of the West Bank settlements is to make a two-state solution impossible is more than a bit of a stretch, somewhere between over-reach, over-simplification, and ignoring other competing dynamics.
The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?
Because it overlaps and taps into multiple cultural/religious/ideological/strategic considerations, which creates the conditions suitable for political coalitions to work with as a tool for compromise for internal political cohesion.
East Bank settlements have always had a strategic-security implications for the ultimate resolution of Israel's eastern border. Ever since the initial 'land will be traded for peace,' the second implication of that has been 'but facts on the ground will shape what is traded for what.' Some settlements can be tolerated/advanced for the purpose of being traded- a concession in and of themselves. But others are expected to shape the new borders, as has already been reflected in previous iterations of negotiations, where territorial tradeoffs were set to accept israeli settlements in some areas. These enduring settlements, in turn, have post-deal implications for things like who controls how much of East Jerusalem, the practical viability of a East Bank state to marshal and consolidate military power across the North-South Mountains, the strategic depth / chokepoints of any future hostile army approaching from the East, and so on.
Whether you view the Settlements as an ideological mission to secure command of the holy land, a bargaining chip that can be traded away, a tool that can be leveraged against coalition partners for domestic policy concessions, or a factor in long-term strategic planning, there are a variety of reasons why settlement activists will have access to political power. The settlements are politically potent.
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant?
Not unless she takes part in combat.
On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian.
As long as those colors are accurate, she garners the protections to civilians under international law, including not being deliberately targetted (as opposed to being accepted as collateral when targetting military targets).
On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
Since the Israelis didn't declare rules like that, the premise of fairness is rather misaimed. It's certainly inconvenient international law, but it's not international law crafted by the Israelis for the purpose claimed, and it's not international law with a caveat for settlers.
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
Given that the broader peace deals that were closest to being credible and coming to fruition didn't kick all settlers out of the West Bank, but rather did mutual trades with a goal of respecting many exsting population distributions, it would seem like a poison pill demand to sink a peace deal, and thus not a moderate position to take.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
Dean 5mo ago
The premise that the purpose of the West Bank settlements is to make a two-state solution impossible is more than a bit of a stretch, somewhere between over-reach, over-simplification, and ignoring other competing dynamics.
More than a bit of a stretch? What else are they? Unless the idea is to have them as Jewish citizens of the new Palestinian state, the counterpart of Israeli Arabs in Israel, they new Palestinian state will either have to remove them or have an impossibly fractal border.
Unless the idea is to have them as Jewish citizens of the new Palestinian state,
And why should this be so farfetched? Perhaps because implicit in the idea of both Israel and the Palestinian national project has been ethnic homogeneity, or at least hegemony, for the dominant ethny. Two states has always meant division of the Cis-Jordanian territory into two ethno-states, which simply isn't practical for any number of reasons (water distribution, population distribution, transport networks and ocean access, etc.) even before we get to the basic fundamental fact that significant factions in both sides see themselves as entitled to all of the land, and anything less as a bitter half-loaf to be mourned until revenge can be taken.
Precisely what I said? A number of settlements are fully expected to be traded away- those that would make things 'impossible'- while others are meant to shape the borders- the land swaps that have been a core component of 2-state talks to date.
To say the that the purpose of West Bank settlements is to make the two-state solution impossible is to ignore the history that 2-state negotiations were already built and being conducted on the acknowledgement that the 2-state borders weren't going to align with the occupied territory dividers, and that various settlements had different prospects and roles in said negotiations to different relevant actors.
How mainstream is her view? My impression is that a lot of Israelis/Israel supporters implicitly think that ultimately there’s no long-term solution other than the killing/displacing all the Palestinians, but aren’t willing to bite the bullet and explicitly advocate for genocide (or know they should be more circumspect about it.)
I'm pro-Israeli and think Israel over all is one of the more moral countries in the world and has just been put in a very difficult situation. But I think the settlements do not have good justification at all, and because of that complete lack of justification are a blight on Israel's record.
The Netanyahu government seems like it’s on her side at least through benign neglect. Why does her cause have so much political power?
I'm given to understand in modern politics, a very dedicated interest group can wield a ton of power even if they aren't very large.
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
I don't know what the international law is, but personally I think if someone illegal crosses into another states territory during a period of heightened tensions like the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, that state is allowed to kill them.
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
I'd prefer it over a deal where they were allowed to stay even if Israel got nothing else for it. The settlements aren't a deal breaker for my support for Israel, but that's just because I think Palestine is even worse. The settlements are still a bad thing.
I don’t think there can be a two state solution. There can only be a one state solution at this point in time with some devolved control. But that doesn’t mean the settlements are just or right to maintain.
I think Israel would be better off maintaining the current state of affairs than going for a one state solution. I don't think the Palestinians would let go of their hate for Israel even if they were granted voting rights and freedom of movement, and giving voting rights and freedom of movement to a population that violently hates you would not go well.
I think one state solution with a population in Gaza that isn’t permitted to vote for the Knesset. But they could have a local parliament for civil governance.
Saudi Arabia laughs at you in fuck-you money. Most of the Gulf States rely on second class citizens/migrant workers while their primary citizens lounge about on welfare if they wish to.
There's a big difference between treating your imported brown labour class poorly (western nations that cry about racism do this all the time, I've run into indian physicists working in supermarket delis) and having an explicit category of second class citizens who cannot vote.
Does a settler/activist like her count as an enemy combatant? On one hand she operates under the colors of being a civilian. On the other hand it seems a little unfair for someone who is actively working to conquer your land to declare rules like “no sorry you’re only allowed to shoot at the guys who have rifles and body armor otherwise you’re a terrorist.”
I think that would make her a more legitimate target than the average civilian minding their own business in Israel, but a legitimate target? No strong opinion on that. It's not like the legitimacy of targets is a major sticking point for people who shoot up peace raves.
For moderate pro-Israel people, is “kick all the settlers out of the West Bank” something you’d be willing to accept as part of a broader peace deal?
I'd call myself strongly pro-Israel, to the extent that there's little or nothing they could do to the Palestinians that would make me withdraw my support (within the Overton Window of Israeli politics).
And the answer is yes, but only if the peace deal has any hope of being adhered to. I have a high opinion of Israel as a whole, not the fundamentalsist wackos who are the primarily inhabitants of the settlements. They could die in a house fire and I wouldn't be particularly fazed.
I'd call myself strongly pro-Israel, to the extent that there's little or nothing they could do to the Palestinians that would make me withdraw my support (within the Overton Window of Israeli politics).
I have noticed that a lot of Indians support Israel online, would you be able to shed some light on that phenomenon?
I have noticed that a lot of Indians support Israel online, would you be able to shed some light on that phenomenon?
Pure "enemy of my enemy" principle. Otherwise, devout Jews have no sympathy for Hinduism and devout Hindus think even less about any Abrahamic religion.
I would ascribe the majority of the sentiment to them pattern matching to Muslims Bad, as is common because of the animosity with Pakistan. There really isn't much more to it to be honest, especially since Indians are usually strictly neutral to Jews, both because we lack any meaningful number of them, and because our education in history and civics doesn't really dwell on the Holocaust in more than passing (my textbook didn't even mention it, but it ended at the 40s and even then only dealt with the Indian independence struggle).
That's not the reason I support Israel, which is more of a general appreciation for intelligence and competence, especially as an oasis in a region seemingly deficient in both.
I don't like the average Muslim much, but I also happen to dislike Hindu fundamentalists and Christians and.. I'm secularly irreligious though I can maybe hold back my disdain for the inoffensive types, or the ones who are a thin veneer over secular humanism like Unitarian Universalists or some Western strains of Buddhism.
I will note, given that I've already devoted more space to an answer beyond "The average (Hindu) Indian isn't particularly fond of Muslims", is that there is a mild under-current of support for Palestine from upper middle class Westernized Indians like myself. American politics and ideology dominates their worldview, including adoption of leftwing talking points and propaganda. I have yet to see anyone in my social circle post pro Israeli statements on social media, but I have seen a handful supporting the Palestinians, including falling for absolutely ridiculous propaganda, and I mean beyond the ability of anyone with a passing knowledge of Israel and Palestine to believe, not just a slant on facts.
So you're seeing the millions of nationalist Hindus on Twitter engaging in foreign politics for once, and of course you're going to be exposed to the most polarized takes within that. It's still true that the average Indian supports Israel, be it because they hate Muslims, or for the more moderate because they see them as a potential ally against Middle Eastern nations that have historically aided Pakistan (and even then I'm pretty sure the US has done much more to prop up that sorry excuse for a country than their Islamic brethren have).
It would just be reloading, not peace. And therefore I don’t think it’s a good idea. Until Hamas is replaced with a government that wants to live in peace, the conflict can’t really end. Ceasefire without that victory means Palestinians rearm, start shooting rockets, and plan their next attack. It’s been tried for 75 years now, and it’s not working nor will it. And I see pretending that it will as the kind of childish no answer given by people who don’t live with the consequences
Two thoughts: First, Palestinian casualties since Oct. 7 are close to an order of magnitude higher than Israeli casualties on Oct. 7. Israel has already responded; who’s to say they need to keep it up?
Second, whatever they do, they should do it on their own, without a penny of U.S. aid. Since that doesn’t seem to be on the table, I support a ceasefire, and I hope international pressure succeeds in getting one put in place.
The purpose of the Israeli war is to get Hamas out of power, not to kill an equal number of Gazans as the number of Israelis who died in the initial attack. The goal isn't revenge, it's regime change.
A ceasefire just means that Hamas gets another few years to oppress the Gazans before trying for another massacre.
Alternatively if the goal was simply to kill enough Palestinians that they would be deterred from any future attack, I think it's clear that number has not been reached yet - if it exists at all.
Does Israel have any reasonable shot at both getting Hamas out of power and preventing the rise of Hamas 2.0? I don’t believe it does. If I’m right about that, the only question that remains is how much vengeance the Israelis should exact on the Gazans for the events of October 7. An order of magnitude more fatalities plus an unknown number of additional casualties doesn’t seem like a ridiculous stopping point. After all, if regime change isn’t possible, is it really moral to continue killing? It certainly violates most people’s idea of a just war.
Does Israel have any reasonable shot at both getting Hamas out of power and preventing the rise of Hamas 2.0? I don’t believe it does.
Why not? Why can't it be an ongoing West Bank-style occupation? You don't see Hamas seizing power in Ramallah or rockets being launched from Hebron - and the people there hate Israel every bit as much as the ones in Gaza do.
I understand that would be unpopular internationally, but what else is new?
I believe the casualty level necessary to subdue Hamas and occupy Gaza would be unacceptable even to Israel’s closest ally. If Israel had gone in blasting in the first two days after the attack, they might have gotten away with it. By now, though, the moment has passed, and I don’t see any possible path toward occupation.
Israel has already responded; who’s to say they need to keep it up?
I don't think a world were every couple decades Palestine kills one thousand Israelis and Israel then kills ten thousand Palestinians is the ideal equilibrium. Although given how messy this conflict is, maybe it is
Israel needs to find a way to make Palestinians wealthier so they lose interest in fighting. The only bomb that can pacify a restive population is a money bomb.
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Notes -
I understand why people are afraid Israel will commit genocide. It'd be great for them if everyone in Gaza suddenly disappeared, and the war is perfect cover for them to make it happen. But there's no evidence that they're currently doing this. So far they've killed less than 1% of Gaza's population and are making efforts to prevent casualties. And yet, leftists are accusing Israel of genocide in present-tense, and Biden of facilitating genocide.
Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
So, here's my question. Let's say this does escalate into genocide. Will it be a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario?
I didn't believe Trump had any authoritarian tendencies until 1/6, and I know most Republicans still don't believe he does. I think that's in large part because of wolf-crying. It could happen again.
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Ignorant question, I know. I'm asking it because I'm ignorant and I don't know the answer, but I'm sure there is one, and I want to know it.
Why doesn't Israel just move everyone in Gaza to the West Bank while they do their bombings, then move them back to Gaza when they've destroyed the Hamas bases? Is there not enough room in the West Bank?
Because these people might escape en-route and exercise their right of return by staying in whatever Israeli-occupied village or town they were ethnically cleansed from.
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Israel's goal is unknown, but it's unlikely they're losing sleep over the deaths of Gazan civilians. And obviously figuring out which Gazans are civilians and which ones are Hamas fighters is not trivial.
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The political goal of the war isn't to destroy hammas, it's to make effective Palestinian internal governance impossible. Moving them to the west bank defeats this purpose; in an ideal scenario for Israel all Palestinians just fuck off to egypt or lebanon or syria and stop being a hassle.
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It's not so easy to move 2 million people 50+ km. There's physically enough room in the West Bank (it's much bigger than the Gaza strip), but they would still need tent cities or some other solution for them. Israel would also not like the Gaza population radicalizing the West Bank population (more than it already is) and increasing the population density, making terrorist attacks from there easier.
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There's no way from Gaza to Judea and Samaria without passing through Israel.
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Top House Democrats evacuated from DNC headquarters as police clash with protesters calling for Gaza ceasefire
...
Riot, attack cops, claim to be the victim. This pattern of conduct isn't remotely surprising to me at this point, but I am surprised that anyone other than fellow travelers is willing to treat these things like a both sides situation, where we can't really know who caused things to turn ugly.
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Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America" outlining his justifications for the September 11 attack has been deleted from the Guardian's website.
This is in response to a new TikTok trend where people are posting their reactions to reading it for the first time and encouraging others to - usually with either an implication or an outright assertion that Bin Laden was right. A sample compilation of such videos can be seen here.
For those who want to refresh their memory of Bin Laden's manifesto (and IMO it's completely indefensible for the Guardian to have removed it), an archived version is here. He lists a litany of grievances against the crimes and perversions of the west (amusingly including Clinton's blowjob), but the first and most dominant one - and the one that I expect has led to this rekindled interest - is of course America's support for Israel. He describes the creation and continuation of Israel as "one of the greatest crimes". And of course he also claims that the jews control America's policies, media, and economy (while claiming at the same time that the killing of American civilians is justified because America is a democracy and therefore civilians are responsible for America's policies).
So there we have it. Hatred of Israel is leading young online leftists to endorse not only the terrorism by Hamas against Israel, but the terrorism of Bin Laden against America. I'm sure this will end well.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that all English-language media from Al Quada, Bin Laden, etc after around the mid-90s is propaganda aimed not at middle eastern Arabs and Muslims, but at Western leftists who can be persuaded to sympathize with aspects of their cause. There's no reason to believe that it has any relation to what actually drives middle eastern Muslims to join the cause. Any messaging aimed at them would be in Arabic and published in news sources and media channels that they actually read.
I believe their actual motivations, which drives their actual planners and recruits, are along the lines of what is described here. That's from 2002, the Iraq war advocacy has not aged terribly well, but I think the second section on the actual motivations of Islamic fundamentalists is still right on the nose. Short version is that they're mad that western secular values have permeated the world and their own societies and have proven to be far more successful than Islamic fundamentalist societies. As such, they're likely to continue opposing us no matter what we do regarding Israel.
Also, as screye describes below, it seems that letter was in fact written by a radicalized American. As such, the real story is less that maybe Osama had a point than that the class of people who make this type of video are so utterly ignorant that they are trivially manipulated into apologism for an ideology that would have their women locked in the home, only allowed out in Burqas, and their men murdered if they fail to convert to Islam and practice it their way.
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Not sure how true it is, but the "letter to america" was likely written by Al Qaeda's head propagandist and Osama's advisor - "Azzam the American" https://twitter.com/IsmailRoyer/status/1725353618675474837
Now here is the spicy part - Our dear Azzam is a radicalized son of California Liberals. Oh wait, it gets spicier. Not just any liberal, but a part-jewish descendent of ADL leadership. Say what you want about the jews, but if you want a wordcel, you hire a jew.
Al Qaeda hired a jew and he started writing about money & wall street. You can't make this shit up. Best piece of black comedy I have read all year.
( I have deliberately written it in a snarky tone. LMK if this breaks our rules)
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I’ll come out and say it but I think Obl position is far more defensible than Hamas.
America did do a bunch of shit in the Middle East such as propping up Saudi Arabia which was basically a three way alliance between the religious leaders - Saudi Royal Family - US (guns and money). Lacking any direct means of gaining political control from those groups he was really only left with terrorism to shake things up. Hamas on the other hand just feels like a death cult that wants to see Jews killed. A political solution for Palistinians would have been found decades if they were had different beliefs.
I’m not going to say I agree with OBL beliefs but I do get somewhat close to a just war theory with him. Though I’ve come to a belief that on net the US/Saudi alliance was on net quite productive for all involved. The country is noticeably wealthier and more stable than others in the region. It seems to be that OBL chose the only conceivable military target to accomplish his political objectives.
I don't really see much distance between OBL and Hamas. They both seem to me to be primarily motivated by wanting to destroy Israel.
Like OBL throws in a bunch of other grievances too. He complains about the gays, and interest, and climate change, and nuking Japan. But if you read his letter and just objectively look for his one core issue? It's Israel. Same as Hamas, he just wants the Jews gone or (preferably) dead.
Osama's broader grievance-theme was about the loss of respectability/pride of the Arab-Islamic world than Israel per see, though there isn't much distance between them.
This ties to a broader theme in (generally Arab) Islamist thought which contrasts the golden age of the Islamic ascent (when the Arabs dominated the ancient empire of Persia, and then Islamists as a whole overthrew the (Eastern) Robman Empire, truly ancient and established major powers of the era), were broadly acknowledged as world-leaders in thought and technology (in large part from adopting/synthesizing/spreading the knowledge centers they conquered), and were the dominant military force that seemed to ever-advance on all fronts as the Christians feared them, but even the culture-shock of the crusaders were thrown back in a series of triumphs against the outsider... compared to the subjugation of the colonial eras, and then the present malais where the Arab identity isn't a thing of pride and admiration from afar, but with its vices of decadence, impovershment, corruption, and hypcrisy well known. There is a consistent thing of 'things were better when we were better,' with radical islaming groups functionally viewing/presenting themselves as radical reformists trying to correct a shamefully corruption.
I hate to oversimplify it as 'it's a pride thing,' but that's not far away from it. It's about self-respect as much as esteem in comparison to others... which is where Israel comes through, as the Jews were an unquestionable under-class, something that even the lowest Arab good-Islamic person was above, until Israel defeated the prides of the Arab world- some of the key leaders of the pan-Arabism when Arab identity-politics was at its height- repeatedly, decisively, and humiliatingly in multiple wars. If you read some of the diplomatic history from around the time of the foundation of Israel and some of the early wars, there are heavy and repeated themes and points where Arab states were acting out of pride and emotion, rather than reason/rationality/interests/strategy. Politiclaly, Yom Kippur War was more about proving the Israelis weren't invincible and restoring Egyptian self-respect than an actual campaign plan or changing the borders- hence why the Egyptians decisively lost the war, but were willing to accept the land-for-peace arrangement with Israel and the US not too long after.
Returning to OBL, Israel is the 'core issue' because Israel is evidence against pride, and the reminder of humiliation. Erasing Israel is about erasing shame, but the core/underlying issue is one of pride and self-respect which cannot make peace with what one views as properly inferior.
Or at least that's view, though the distinction may be irrelevant.
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The second link goes mistakenly also to the Guardian.
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If there is anything even resembling a good point in Osama's essay, it will have to be re-litigated in the minds of the young. There is no way around this. You've [speaking to what I presume to be the modal reader here, not necessarily you specifically] done this yourself, you've gone through phases of reading, with the excitement of the forbidden and of "waking up", extremely contrarian takes on established history.
Dangerous times, obviously, if the kids decide to throw all their chips in with Team Osama. But my guess is this is a phase, like reading Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto and thinking at first "hmm, ok, I'm following the reasoning." The kids' enthusiasm will probably be tempered by their own meta-contrarians in due time. The circle of life.
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I don’t know why people are retconning Western leftists’ view of 9/11 because among actual leftists (ie not center-left mainstream parties) sympathy with the inevitability of the terrorists’ cause (if not the specifics of the act) wasn’t uncommon immediately after 9/11.
The Guardian, September 12th, 2001
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Heads up, your second link also leads to the guardians removed content.
Whoops. Fixed!
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Israel struck the Al-Shifa hospital and then lied about the source being misfired Palestinian munitions. The IDF even provided a trajectory map of the projectiles which they claimed to be based on radar detections:
It's honestly kind of depressing how much information, proof, etc Israel/IDF provides, and still cannot win trust. Of course it doesn't help when random mid-level Israeli bureaucrats tweet random posts of unverified bs that then gets debonnnked.
Like the Shifa Hospital situation the last few days. Images and videos of IDF bringing in supplies etc for patients in the hospital: "lies, they didn't actually do this!" "just for the video/photo-op!" etc. Of course, they ARE purposeful photo-ops that are trying to counter the anti-Israeli perspective.
And then anti-Israel people will post some link PROVING that Israel "lied" in the past, but then you read the link and it is IDF claiming responsibility for some error. "This is why IDF definitely did fire rockets at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza" etc etc. And of course then pictures come out and ... onto the next story!
It's the same as how US public comms is treated. Oh US DoD denies the casualty numbers claimed by a militia that just attacked a US base? "Lies!" "This means the casualty numbers are true!" When US DoD says, in the same manner, in the same channels, that they did something that can be seen as detrimental, like say they suffered some injuries, like US base got attacked - then what US is saying is of course true.
Everyone here probably knows this and has seen it play out. I'm just a little, idk, depressed and ranty about this.
(and I'm not ruling out that Israel does / can/ has lied about military actions, and god knows IDF has done their share of morally bad things in the past. But there just seems to be nothing israel can do to win over trust. But such is the tiktok PR battle we find ourselves in today.)
((IMO: US, Israel, and any faction that finds itself in a conflict and viewed as the more powerful "oppressor", should just keep silent and never say anything. Did Saudi announce things when fighting Houthis in Yemen? Or Assad when killing hundreds of thousands of people? I am no)
When confronted with clear evidence that Israel lied about something, your response is that it’s depressing that people still distrust Israel. What kind of rhetorical strategy is that?
As the resident Al-Ahli Speculation Enjoyer this is funny to me, as I was warned by the mods about “single issue posting” when I provided two updates on the topic. The last major update was similar to the article above: the NYTimes and LeMonde came out with their conclusion that a major piece of evidence used by Israel was false, that the rocket came from a different direction than where Israel alleges. And that’s been the last major update because of a lack of evidence to discuss. Which is why Al-Shifa is important: if Israel is lying and is also proven culpable, then IMO it’s likely this is the case also for Al-Ahli. Maybe that is exactly why there are reporters on the grounds now at Al-Shifa.
It was the president of Israel who said they weren’t striking Al-Shifa, by the way. Not a “random mid-level bureaucrat”.
[On a side note, one of the camera video recordings obtained by the Times came from Saleh al-Jafarawi, who is a kind of Palestinian Sam Hyde. Maybe this is grounds for some people to doubt the findings.]
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Entities that lie to build support for waging war lose trust and don't get the default assumption of honesty. Remember the US and Israeli governments and their diehards pushing claims that Saddam was feeding people into wood chippers, had WMDs and was trying to make nukes, the guy who claimed to be his bomb maker before congress, and the earlier nonsense from Desert Storm about pulling babies out of incubators? If you questioned any of this at the time, you were a terrorist sympathizer, America hater, Al-Qaeda lover, etc. Cue hundreds of thousands dead until years later people acknowledge these as lies.
Do you think people posting "Lies" are saying that because they remember, or even know, about these things you listed?
Not to say US / Israel / any other military are without blame for the lack of trust. I agree, US military has lied in the past, and the press/government/etc lied with it (possibly in other orders, like papers lied first, apparently, for the Spanish-American war). Not saying they are without sin.
But it does feel to me that the winningest move here is to not play at all (not fight). Failing that, don't say anything while playing and hopefully you win.
Yes. When a person or group proves that they will say anything to manipulate you into doing what they want, the correct move is to always start from the assumption that they're lying.
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It was only twenty years ago. Plenty of people in the Pentagon, Israeli and US intelligence, etc who were involved in creating and spreading war propaganda lies in the 2000s would still be active members of those institutions and remember what was done then, and newer members would doubtless be taught about the Iraq War and the like as case studies to inform future propaganda efforts.
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Which is fine, as long as it's consistently applied, which hasn't always been seen in this conflict despite plentiful examples on both sides and virtually all media.
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I see such things as a result of motivated reasoning coupled with the impossibility of knowing where everything you have is. No military on this planet can know with 100% certainty where every missile being shot is aimed and know where all your enemies weapons and units are. Thus when making statements, the temptation will be to assume the best of your own and the worst of your enemies, and thus it would be to choose the one where they look good.
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If there were at least four explosions and three of them were Israeli, it means that one or more could be from Hamas. Everyone could be telling part of the truth here.
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Saudi Arabia is not fascist, it’s a theocratic absolute monarchy.
For some, the easy retort here is "what's the difference?"
Let’s start with the easy legal difference- the Saudi state, and indeed the whole country, is the personal property of the house of Saud, and they deserve to have it as their property because of their family history of guarding the ‘correct’ type of Islam. In a fascist state, the country is personified by the state which answers to no one and it is the state’s power which justifies this personification.
The Saudi model in western societies is similar to the Ancien Regime, Hapsburg empire, old Spain, etc. fascism in western societies is, well, Hitler and Mussolini. Interestingly, there are examples of Arab fascism- Saddam Hussein and Bashar Al Assad. You’ll notice that, while perhaps the level of oppression was similar between Iraq and Saudi Arabia in, say, 2000, the direction and amount were very different, with Saudi oppression aimed at religious conformity and Iraqi oppression aimed at ethnic distinctions which could provide a conflicting loyalty to the state.
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Yes, ignorance makes for easy retorts.
Fascism (like communism) was a movement primarily in response to the dissolution of states where power lay in the hands of a hereditary elite, who would maintain that power by doing things for the commoners that they thought the commoners needed, while extracting wealth and making the commoners do things for them. Downtown Abbey is a good example of a show that celebrates the old world order, with the hereditary rich living in mansions and being served on; taking their cut from the farmers, while justifying their position by arguing that they create jobs, help those in need and organize feasts (where they themselves expect to get applauded by the commoners). Saudi Arabia is pretty much like this, with their system of patronage depending on clan relationships.
The actual cause for the social changes that led to the rise of communism and fascism was the Second Agricultural Revolution, which pushed very many people out of the farming life, which in turn enabled the Industrial Revolution. These technical revolutions led to urbanization and capitalism, both of which were much more brutal than today, causing much unhappiness and therefor revolutionary spirit. The elites that ran these countries were seen as doing such a bad job that very many people wanted something different.
Communism in theory sought to abolish the elites, instead of replacing them, by means of radical democracy & shared property. Although in practice this could not work for various reasons and so communist regimes inevitably just descended into authoritarianism, based on power games rather than hereditary power. In that sense, the statement that 'true communism has never been tried' is true, although true communism can't actually be tried and inevitably seems to devolve into what it was intended to fight against.
Fascism sought to replace the hereditary elite with a technocratic elite that would seek to improve society by aligning people towards a societal improvement, rather than their selfish desires. Hence the bundle of sticks, the fasces. All people in the nation united for a common purpose. Unlike communism, it rejects the idea of radical equality, so it accepts wealth differences and differences in hierarchy, but only in so far as to help achieve the common goal. The fascist capital owner may own a big factory, but is not supposed to hoard wealth, have an excessive lifestyle or take advantage of others. Fascism rejects democracy, as it considers the common man to be stupid. It doesn't really answer the question of how the right goal and right leadership is selected. In practice, the autocratic nature of the leadership and lack of goals within the ideology itself, tends to lead to fascism being easily combined with other extremist ideologies, like Hitler's racial beliefs.
This lack of inherent goals within the fascist model tends to lead to a lot of confusion about what fascism actually is, which why it is so easy to claim that something is fascist, as there is no pure fascism. It's always fascism plus some other ideology or some other goal, that is not inherent to fascism itself.
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"If you don't know the difference between fascism and theocratic absolute monarchy you have nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic and should just be ignored" is the correct reply.
What is the difference that's meaningful to the poster who conflates them?
Don’t waste your time defending the idiotic utterances of this troll. He is not on your side.
Which one?
"jewdefender"
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Fascism and Absolute totalitarian monarchies have their means and ends flipped, fascism is an extreme form of nationalism and uses authoritarianism to inculcate nationalism amongst its subjects; absolute totalitarian monarchies aim to preserve rule by fiat of the king/emperor and use nationalism to achieve their authoriarianism.
Confusing the two with each other is like believing wet streets cause rain, and someone who thinks that way is not to be trusted on much other stuff either.
What is the practical purpose of distinguishing between "inflicting nationalism to inflict authoritarianism" and "inflicting authoritarianism to inflict nationalism" for the purposes of living there? Either way, the inhabitants get both.
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
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I don't think this is true - many European countries would simply not retaliate at all if left to their own devices.
The last time they retaliated we got two world wars.
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Notably, Hamas wasn’t leaving Israel to its own devices, and nobody had any reasonable expectation that they would.
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Because a bunch of European countries blame themselves when Muslims don't like them or don't integrate or kills hundreds of their fellow citizens in terrorist attacks.
Those European countries don’t have an army to fight or territory to conquer. The one time there really was a state that openly aligned itself with Islamist terrorism in the West a multinational coalition of Western powers invaded and occupied it for 20 years.
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I disagree. Getting invaded and genocided has a way of focusing the mind.
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Will Al-Shifa be the turning point, one way or another? Or will nothing change? If the IDF takes the hospital, and there are tunnels there, will anyone change their tune, or will it be "Well, the IDF was telling the truth this one time, but they still shouldn't have killed babies"? If there are no tunnels, will Israel back off and end their campaign in shame (their own and the US intelligence community's), or will they try to brazen it out and assume no real net change in total hatred for them? If Hamas blows the tunnels and collapses the area to avoid giving Israel evidence, will anyone accept that it wasn't an Israeli bomb?
Or am I overestimating the importance of this one battle and the massive accompanying news coverage?
Yeah tons of people will. Polls show a large majority of Americans support Israel both in this conflict and in general. The Hamas supporters are louder but that's because they're mostly young, very online people who may one day be in charge but not for another 20 years or so. If Israel can't wrap this up by the 2040s then they might run into a PR problem. I wouldn't expect any particular incident to sway people much in either direction.
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Al-Shifa being a military installation has been "priced in" for some time. Very little will change if Israeli claims turn out to be correct.
Frankly, finding tunnels isn't enough. If the IDF doesn't have dozens of geolocated photos showing Hamas munitions stockpiles trending on Twitter by 7:30AM EST, Israel is toast. The dying Palestinian babies are trending right now.
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The tunnels have been known about for decades. It’s not news. So whether or not there’s something significant under that particular spot, nobody who’s following this region doesn’t know about the tunnels. So those who see this as self defense will continue to do so, and those who see it as provocation will continue.
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Whether they find a torture chamber/military base combo pack, or they turn the stone over and all it says is "Peace on Earth;" I predict that IDF will claim the former while Hamas will claim the latter, no one supporting either side will care regardless.
Israel has already been caught faking evidence on official channels, repeatedly and blatantly. No one who supported Israel beforehand cared, nor should they. IDF forces will claim there were military installations under the hospital, they will fake it as aggressively as they need to. The people who want to believe the IDF will believe the IDF; and if they are presented with clear and convincing evidence that the IDF is lying they will say it doesn't matter.
Hamas' track record of honesty is...are we even going to try to address that point? No one who feels that the deaths of [x] number of innocent civilians isn't worth it is going to change their mind, regardless of what they find under there. Nothing they find under there will justify the murder of babies to get it, so therefore they probably won't find it anyway. It's a kind of ethos argumentation: any group bloodthirsty enough to kill children to achieve their military objective is untrustworthy enough to lie about why they killed the children.
It's the law of merited impossibility all the way around. One side says: it's worth killing those kids to get at that military installation, so there must be a military installation there. The other says, it's not worth killing those kids to get at any military installation, so there can't be a military installation there.
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That is evidence in itself.
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The Iranian Tehran Times released an alleged recording of the ADL freaking out about the generational divide in Israel support, as well as Iranian influence in anti-Israel advocacy groups. I do not recommend reading the article because it’s literally Iranian propaganda, but the audio recording is on their page here if you scroll down. Do you think this is legitimate or AI-generated? There’s nothing that struck me as obviously wrong with Greenblatt’s voice. It would be a weird thing to fake, because Iran shouldn’t want to promote the idea that they are behind Western anti-Israel advocacy.
If it’s legitimate, it’s insightful in four ways. The ADL does not believe that support for Israel is Left-Right but instead young-old. The ADL believes that some anti-Zionist organizations are taking their talking points from Iran (eg using the term “Zionist entities”). Iran has access to important meetings of ADL members. And lastly, the ADL has access to the inner circle memorandums of anti-Zionist groups.
Given the source I'm suspicious. Even more so it's weird to me how he goes on and on about "Iranian propaganda" in true "omg Russian bots!" fashion as if the Iranian deep state has arms in every American university and anti-Zionists need Iran of all places to tell them Israel is a violent apartheid state. Given the source, again, it seems very complimentary to Iran. On the other hand, if it's a fake it's good in its organic American dialog - no awkwardness or weird translations here.
But assuming it's true. The the thing that jumps out to me is the line: "The number of young people who think Hamas's massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high".
To me this indicates he drinks his own kool-aid. One of the more annoying things about Israel apologists and Zionists to me is how they constantly attack this weird strawman of anyone that disagrees with them is pro-Hamas. How they repeat Hamas Hamas Hamas like it's a brain virus. It's hilarious to think it's a relatively recent post 2006 phenomenon in Israel-Palestine. The way some people speak it's as if Hamas Hamas Hamas was the singular bad force ruining everything and if it weren't for these ultra-monsters, well shucks, good ol boy Israel wouldn't have to act so bad.
I always assumed it's a talking points memo for public propaganda. It's clearly from the "when did you stop beating your wife" school of distraction & attack. Focus on Hamas and mention it as much as possible. No one wants to defend them, and any talk about them is not talking about all the people Israel is killing while creating a constant negative mental association. Anyway, I have literally never seen this mythical Western pro-Palestinian pro-Hamas "liberal".
Here we see Greenblatt privately believing this psycho BS that the only way anyone could be anti-Zionist is that they are totally fans of Hamas and pro-massacre of civilians. It would never occur to a principled person to notice Zionism's evil actions without being crypto Islamic theocrats. Absurd and wildly detached from the mind of your average Zionist critical secular university aged student. The Zionist equivalent of believing all Trump supporters are literal Nazis.
Wasn’t greenblatt a true believer in the Russia narratives? Not surprising he reaches for a similar toolkit.
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He might be thinking of polls like this Harvard-Harris poll:
48% of those 18-24 said Hamas. Of course siding with Hamas more than Israel doesn't necessarily mean approving of Hamas or of the attack. However there is a question about the attack:
51% of 18-24 year olds (and 48% 25-34, and 24% overall) said it can be justified by the grievances of the Palestinians. That said, I am suspicious of these poll results and wonder if they might be because of the specific wording of "can be justified", if some interpreted it as meaning "someone could theoretically make an argument trying to justify it" rather than "I personally think it was just".
It's a bit of a stretch, especially because it corresponds to the general lower level of support for Israel among the young. But some of the other results also call it into question. The prior question had a lower percentage siding with Hamas over Israel. 54% of the same age group (45% overall) answered "Should law firms hire or refuse to hire law students who supported Hamas and the attacks on Israeli civilians?" with refuse to hire, indicating at least 5% who would support blacklisting themselves. (It's pretty striking how support for free-speech in younger generations is so low that support for blacklisting rises even as support for Israel falls.) Or I guess some people might interpret "support" as people donating money to Hamas or something. 62% of those 18-24 say the "attacks on Jews" were genocidal.
I don't know if there's a poll asking about support for the attack with better wording. Best I could find with a quick search was this one which didn't make Hamas/Israel support a binary choice:
And this one which asks about the attack but again in a potentially ambiguous way, and just college students again:
I think the role of framing is being underestimated here, and in general. On one hand, sure, Hamas brutally killed over a thousand civilians who presumably were largely innocent beyond whatever guilt they inherit through general support and acceptance of benefits of their country; against the standard of normal morality that most people would claim to subscribe to if asked in a non-charged setting, this was surely unjustified. On the other hand, we are constantly being asked by our authorities to consider it justified that Israel has retaliated by doing the same against Palestinian civilians. You can either try to come up with some additional principle to break the symmetry in favour of Israel's stance (Killing civilians is better when it is done by well-uniformed military members acting professionally than when it is done by shabby guys on pickups? The calculus of retaliation should have a cutoff date somewhere in 2020 so the Israelis can claim to have been attacked first?), or consider both the action and the response justified as many of those 18-24 year olds probably do, or consider neither the action nor the response justified.
At first sight, of course, why not do the last? - but my intuition tells me that this option bumps up against a particular American instinct, captured by the frequently-heard "well, do you have a better idea?" or perhaps even the adjacent "person saying it can't be done should stop bothering person who is actually doing it". Once you have identified something as a problem, whatever countermeasure remains after you have eliminated all the impossible ones must be good, because the alternative would be to shrug and say that nothing can be done which is something for debbie downers, lazy people and those lacking the requisite moral certitude. (I'm reminded of The Quiet American, an early British novel built around calling out the same trait, which at the time hit enough of a nerve that they spitefully made a movie adaptation that inverted its punchline)
Are you seriously claiming that the IDF are filming themselves as they go around slaughtering civilians, which is what Hamas did?
Israel was attacked by Hamas, who run the polity of Gaza. Such actions often lead to an unfortunate state called "war". When Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Habor, the casualties were only a factor of two higher than in the Hamas attack. (Of course, these attacks differ in other ways, the victims of Pearl Habor were overwhelmingly military, and Imperial Japan had odds of winning which were orders of magnitude better than Hamas, though still not that high overall.)
While I am sure that today's Guardian would have stories without end on the plight the Japanese civilians would suffer during a war with the US and the power of forgiveness, I do not think that it was morally wrong for the US to enter that war. (This does not extend to morale bombings and the nukes -- especially the second one, though.)
In wars, civilians are often killed as a side effect. This is bad, but totally different from going around and beheading people.
Of course, the question if regime change is the strategically best solution for Israel or the world is debatable.
Why was it morally wrong to drop the second nuke, when Japan still appeared to have no intention of surrendering at the time and even went through a failed coup to prevent a surrender after the second one was dropped?
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No, but I consider the main bad thing to be the part where you slaughter civilians, rather than the one where you try to farm internet points for it.
That's you doing the "calculus of retaliation should have a cutoff date" thing. Rather than ignoring everything that happened before the Hamas attack this time, we could set the arbitrary cutoff date to be December 26th, 2008 instead, and write the same story flipped starting with "Gaza was attacked by the Israeli government, who run the polity of Israel". If we do not set arbitrary cutoffs, surely the story begins in 1948, when IL was formed as a result of an ethnically cleansing invasion of the remains of Mandatory Palestine.
Sorry, but I do not share this perception that killing civilians by bombing them from afar is somehow better or more tasteful, especially considering that I want to correct for a lifetime of consuming propaganda commissioned by the people who have a monopoly on bombing-civilians-from-afar capabilities to make it appear more tasteful.
(I should make clear that I don't think I'm an anti-IL dogmatic; at this point I would consider "recognise that the International Community does not have the collective moral will or executive power to stop them outright and therefore give IL special dispensation to exterminate their uppity charges once and for all" to be a perfectly acceptable course of action to minimise expected total future suffering.)
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Isn't "killing civilians as part of collateral damage from attacking military targets" very much not "doing the same" as "killing civilians by attacking them intentionally"? Using this as an additional principle seems much more obviously legitimate than the ones you mention, and is what I actually see advocated in public discourse. I'm not accusing you of arguing in bad faith, but does "Killing civilians is better when it is done by well-uniformed military members" not seem like an obvious strawman to you?
Saying that "nothing can be done" is a part of the ideas implied in "well, do you have a better idea?" There have certainly been a sizable fraction of the population calling for a ceasefire. On the other hand, there are of course those in support of continuing the military operation, who would presumably think this to be the least bad of all options, even with civilian casualties and all. And in that case, the Americans stepping aside and "doing nothing" to stop Israel is exactly what is desired -- it's their conflict, let them have at it.
I honestly haven't seen anyone support the right of both Hamas and the IDF to hit their respective populations in this way. Rather,
from what I've seen, this seems to be the most common opinion from the people who want a ceasefire. They don't condone Hamas (the "this is what decolonization looks like" people still appear to only be a fringe minority), but they also can't stand the images of civilian casualties from Israeli attacks.
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The alt-right and wignat claim that groups like the ADL are huge hypocrites that support diversity in Western countries but ethno nationalism in Israel is obviously true. It an't even be debated in my opinion. Before they could just call the people pointing this out Nazis (because they were), but now people are seeing Israel for what it actually is and the new people calling it out can't just be dismissed as Nazis so they are being exposed for the hypocrites they are. You can't call all the black people, Muslims, SJWs, LGBTQ+ groups, etc. Nazis when they were on your side the past 8 years fighting white nationalism and Trump or whatever they were up to. Then when they have an apartheid state that kills children and has an open air prison for Palestinians (not saying that's what I believe, but left wing activists do) then the Holocaust sympathy dries up real quick. They know they are in a tough place and this is probably what they have stopped messing with Musk publicly.
The ADL opposed the 2018 nation-state law, which means that they oppose ethnic nationalism in Israel.
You're cherry picking that from their site. I could find a bunch of other posts on there from them that paint them as rabid Zionists. The ADL are huge hypocrites after all. Posts like this are just so they can't be pinned down and people can go see they made this post (that nobody read and wasn't intended to be read). But let's be honest, they have spent a million times as much money and effort attacking Musk these past few years publicly than they ever have in their entire history for Israel. This is also a left/wing Jew/Israel culture war battle. They don't like Netenyahu or Likud. But make no mistake, if you go criticizing Israel publicly and aggressively, the ADL will come for you to smear your character no matter how good your points are and how good your intentions are.
No. Rather, I intentionally looked to see what their position was an an extremely well-known recent controversy specifically about ethnic nationalism in Israel.
I have no doubt that they are assholes, but what does any of that have to do with their views on ethnic nationalism?
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This doesn’t seem surprising, given that lots of anti-Zionist groups have crossover support from other very work groups which support the ADL in other contexts.
This is at least partly true, and given the ADL’s day job of ‘call republicans Nazis’, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t believe it.
For a modern intelligence service, this would probably be trivially easy- activists are unlikely to guard their computers like government officials. And Iran has very good reasons to keep an eye on major foreign policy advocacy groups(which the ADL is) in their politically unstable-yet-gridlocked archenemy.
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Why not? There are millions of Western young people, as you say, who are now openly very anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. Many of these, however, may still either dislike Iran (eg. because of the Hijab protests) or have no opinion of it.
A core goal of Iranian support for Palestinians is for their own propaganda purposes in the regional geopolitical conflict and with the global Ummah, often as a kind of counter to the Saudi message that they’re the guardians of the two holy cities. Extending that audience to Western leftists would be a big win, so attaching themselves publicly to the pro-Palestinian cause in front of them is a good thing in their eyes.
The more people in the West sympathize with Iran, think Iran is ‘actually doing some good things’ or whatever, the more pressure to lift sanctions etc, at least in this logic.
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Speaking of, whatever came of the various audio logs the IDF claim to have intercepted? Was there ever any good analysis done on those?
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Iran-backed militias keep striking US positions in Syria, Iraq, etc. By various counts up to 40-70+ times in the last 2-3 weeks. Another recently one I just saw - US denied the high casualties claimed by the possible assailants
In response, US has done a handful (3-5?) retaliatory strikes on those militias' positions. Apparently one of the strikes hit some IRGC commanders/troops. I also read that apparently Biden opted for lesser attacks, to prevent escalation.
Oh and US might unfreeze $10billion worth of funds to Iran? For some reason? Were the six billion dollars going to Iran through Qatar actually delivered, or held up?
On the Lebanese-Israel border, IDF continues to trade attacks with Hezbollah. Both sides have sustained casualties, though Hezbollah apparently has more (they publish photos of "martyrs" they died, on twitter at least).
However, it seems like the speeches by the Hezbollah leader has not been very inflammatory. Their once-expected entry into the war with Israel still hasn't come, despite these border skirmishes. Maybe the US presence in the area, with two carrier groups and other assets, is actually a real deterrent here? It definitely feels like Hezbollah has to say they are with Hamas against Israel/US, but won't actually put themselves on the line, perhaps rationally in this case. Would Hezbollah leadership be forced to do more or risk losing control of its troops? I read a theory that the Hamas operation on Oct. 7 was mostly lead by younger commanders, without the support of the higher up, older leadership. Could Hezbollah run into this situation as well?
What do you guys think the possibility of this Israel-Gaza situation exploding to include Hezbollah formally? What about US-Iran?
My take:
US-Iran will continue as currently, though honestly US forward positions in Eastern Syria and Iraq are not sustainable in my opinion. They should either be heavily reinforced, or withdrawn, as the bases there are mostly unable to adequately return fire or defend themselves IMO.
Hezbollah will probably keep doing what they are doing, unless something really breaks. Some Hamas leader just recently said that Hezbollah would enter the war with Israel if Hamas is completely destroyed, saying it's a "red line". Though I distinctly remember Hezbollah saying Israel invading Gaza was a red line as well that couldn't be crossed. But then again...
The US killed the single most important official to Iranian geopolitical strategy besides Khamenei (more important than him from a strategic perspective) and Iran attacked a US base after warning the US to move troops out of the way (essentially with American permission).
The irony is that the reason Iran is reluctant to get involved, and the reason they were reluctant to attempt a bigger retaliatory move after the Soleimani assassination, is because they're winning. Sure, they could tell their allies to press harder against US forces in Syria and Iraq, but nothing makes Americans angrier than American soldiers being killed. And the thing is that (and I'm interested in @Dean's view on this) a small number of US forces holed up in bases in Syria and Iraq doesn't threaten most Iranian interests in the region. They still increasingly control most of Iraq, Assad is relatively firmly in power in Syria. It's an insult to them, perhaps, they may consider it offensive, but the Americans aren't going to end shiite control of Iraq or overthrow Assad with their current presence.
The one thing Iran wants to avoid is a major escalation that might draw a large American force in on the side of Saudi Arabia against the Houthis, against Iraqi shiites, against Hezbollah and/or against Assad, which is the only thing that might threaten the shiite crescent plan and the extremely successful arming and training of Iraqi shiite militias and the Houthis.
Well, since asked... I suppose my view on your assessment is that it depends on if one thinks Iran was actually uninvolved/unaware of the October attack.
If Iran was unaware/uninvolved, then it's not an illogical position. The conflict is an unexpected opportunity for Iran's foes to weaken themselves militarily/politically, disrupt the alignment against Iran by more regional actors, provide new opportunities, etc. etc.
But, as the laconics say, 'If.'
My personal view is that what we're seeing is a failed effort to start a broader conflagration, since being walked back and limited for damage control. An analogy might be the Russian-sponsored NovaRussia uprising in eastern Ukraine that consolidated around the 'separatist republics'- a 'success' on one hand in achieve an operational victory, but a failure for an intention for a much broader result that didn't materialize, leaving the instigating party a 'good hand' for a context they didn't actually want to be in, because they were aiming for something substantially different.
Very non-laconic thoughts below.
From my viewpoint watching various regional actors, the initial post-attack propaganda narratives, and so on, Hamas's goal wasn't isolated to a Gaza-specific event to be resolved with a hostage standoff, but to try to be the instigating event of a wider intifada with broad regional support from Iran's proxy groups. Key goals likely included a broader consolidation of Gaza support into breaking the barrier, instigating a West Bank uprising that would paralyze the 80% of the IDF there, and major external support from Iranian proxies- especially in Lebanon and Syria- to conduct major rocket attacks and limited ground incursions to surround and further paralyze the IDF. This would have only been possible in coordination with Iran, and in turn Iran would have attempted to use the regional chaos to try and expel the remaining U.S. presence from south-eastern Syria and from Iraq, removing US influence from a region where the US presence prevents consolidation of Iranian influence (via US-aligned partners in Syria, and the political impacts of both US presence and critical US funding in the Iraqi government which can and has been used to play off the Iranian-aligned actors). In an 'Iran was involved' perspective, Iran would be relying on its proxies rather than direct involvement, adhering to the principle of plausible deniability.
The 'issue' is that the Hamas attack did not instigate a wider intifada, and the Iranians were confronted that their denials wouldn't be considered plausible by actors who mattered most if the rest of their influence network actually joined in force. Hence the anti-climatic climbdown by Hezbollah from was being built up as a natural call to arms, the token-level support by groups like the Houthis in Yemen that even the Saudis have shot down without meaningful propaganda criticism, and how the Hamas strategy has resorted to increasingly blatant appeals for truce by steadily increasing the number of hostages it would turn over for relief.
The Hamas failure to spark a wider intifada, which has been a real concern in regional security circles over the last few years, can probably be attributed to a few various factors. A lack of coordination outside of the Iranian network meaning other Palestinian groups weren't ready to join in immediately, the shock value of their atrocity-propaganda having a detering rather than galvanizing effect as actual local groups distanced themselves due to the immeninet Israeli retaliation rather than join in, the effectiveness of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank to prevent anyone from mobilizing a force that would make them seem like participants., what have you. In fact, even the Gaza public support has seemed to be... well, acceptance is not the same as endorsement, but the Hamas ability to defend in Gaza has been surprisingly underwhelming, which would be characteristic of a force that thought it would be receiving a lot more support than it actually is. Gaza is not Kyiv in 2022, where the citizenry was mixing molotovs in the streets to fight the invaders. An urban area held by truly hostile local populace is a notoriously rough fight, and one that hasn't manifested in the fighting so far, but was probably expected given the parallels to the Israeli incursion into Lebananon against Hezbollah awhile ago, where Israeli ran into exceptional difficulty on the ground.
Which leads to what I think is the most relevant point- and the one that matters from the Iranian perspective- which was a misjudgement of regional views and perceptions. Plenty of people around and abroad were happy to cheer for Hamas, but no one wanted to join in fighting alongside Hamas- and as it became very quickly clear that the other people weren't joining in, the Iranian-aligned networks could either join in in the Israeli background, or back out.
By and large, they've backed out, even at the cost of regional prestige/leader-of-the-resistance standing. No one has taken more than a token involvement in the Israeli front. The more relevant activity increase has been entirely geographically/politically separate, which is the anti-US attacks in the Syria-Iraq zone. This is relevant for the Iranians- the US presence in Iraq particularly significantly limits Iran's ability to consolidate it's advantages by giving a counter-balance option to local politicians- and it serves a number of purposes in the strategic competition, but the most relevant is trying to re-establish leverage (you need to negotiate, lest we escalate- which is to say, the same position before October) rather than actively trying to overwhelm, which- to me- seemed to be the goal of the opening October efforts.
This is all based on a paradigm and a viewpoint I fully acknowledge others might not share, and that's fine. But from that paradigm comes a significant distinction as to why Iran is doing what it is doing at the level it is- whether this is a situation Iran found itself in that it doesn't need to do anything because escalation could tip the apple cart that it already enjoys, or whether this is a situation Iran found itself in because it tried to turn over the apple cart, but failed, and is now trying to present that it wasn't trying to do that (but could still yet do so if pressed, so better not press it).
To turn back to the start, to the question of if Iran is 'winning' and the analogy of the NovaRussia uprising- this is where I'd make a point that operational successes are not the same as strategic wins, and that sometimes the consequences of a partial success have different, less foreseen, implications. The Ukrainian NovaRussia uprising was a 'win' for Russia in that it successfully inserted itself into Ukrainian politics in a way that froze western integration and allowed Russia to play a key diplomatic role even as it was a de facto belligerant. But the NovaRussia efforts are also what functionally froze the NordStream pipeline project to Germany, cutting off a major economic-influence vector before it could be manifested, and thus greatly reducing influence that would have mattered much more down the line, when the early Russian strategy in Ukraine centered around pressing Germany to accept it and thus undercut a European pillar of support. Had NordStream been activated years earlier, it may well have worked, even as the years of warfare over NovaRussia empowered the Ukrainian army and national identity to resist the Russian invasion.
Iran is probably not going to have as much of a blowback, but then again no one would have predicted the Ukraine War's consequences for the Russians in the first few months of NovaRussia either. What does seem clear to me is that while Iran has likely achieved a short/medium-term disruption of Israeli-Saudi normalization due to the sacrifice of Hamas/Gaza, they do have some key elements of power being undercut as well. For one, the paradigm I reflect- the one where Iran has been deterred from maximal proxy usage- is a fundamental failure of one of the key points of proxy warfare, the 'plausible deniability.' If you wouldn't use a plausible-deniable proxy for fear of retaliation, it's no longer plausibly-deniable, and you're just returning to conventional deterrence. For another, Hamas and the Gaza Strip were most relevant to the Iranian posture as a force-in-being- the idea that Israel was surrounded on three fronts by forces that could at any time launch an uprising, and as a consequence Israel was in a weak position and needed to make concessions that Iran could take credit for leading. Except the West Bank didn't rise up, which changes expectations of what it might do going forward, and whatever happens to Gaza after this war, it's probably not going to be a serious contender for a mass popular uprising either. When the Israeli-Palestinian conflict returned, the anti-Israeli palestinians had to shoot the Palestinians to keep them from running away from the Israelis. Bar Hamas somehow remaining in power- and it seems very unlikely that will be the result of the Gaza war- whoever remains left is much, much less likely to be willing to be a quasi-Iranian proxy after seeing what the Iranian axis did for Hamas.
Is it a 'good' position to be in? Kind of. Is it a 'better' position than they had before the Hamas attack? Questionable.
But all this derives from some first-order assumptions of the nature of the conflict, which I suspect you and I diverge on.
Hope that answers the question.
Wat are your assumptions?
That Iran was aware of the Hamas intent to launch the general premise of the 7 Oct attack and provided technical and additional forms of help to assist with the planning.
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If it was going to, it already would have exploded. As it is, if they join now, it will be anti-climatic.
Some of the allegations from the regional shuttle diplomacy that went around the region in October is that they were basically deterred by direct threats to Hezbollah and Iran that if they joined in the war, they would be considered direct belligerants and to have been in on in the initial 7 Oct attacked as a direct act of war by the Iranian government, whose relations with Hezbollah are much stronger than Hamas. Further, other actors indicated that if Hezbollah got involved it would be a non-trivial risk of civil war in Lebanon, such as with the French making a considerable arms 'gift' to the governmental forces that would likely operate against Hezbollah in such a scenario.
As is, while some Iranian proxy groups are trying limited support- the Houthis have tried to lob some things from all the way down in Yemen- it's pretty marginal, and not a particularly regionally-supported affair. (The Saudis reportedly have shot down some Houthi stuff.) Hezbollah could try and get involved for its own reasons, but it'd be largely anti-climatic, and after the very visibile period of letting Hamas fight on its own, and at this point I don't think anyone really believes Hezbollah cares that much about Hamas per see.
As for US-Iran, Iran has long been trying to leverage it's various proxy political and military forces in Iraq and Syria to drive the US out. They appear to have decided now's the time to escalate, hence the counter-strikes.
I would be inclined to agree. However, the situation along the Israel-Lebanese border is now such that it would have certainly resulted in a full-fledged war by Israel against Hezbollah, at least at the scale of the 2006 war, if Israel weren't preoccupied with Gaza. Hezbollah doesn't want a full war, but they're relying on the fact that Israel wants a full war even less in order to get away with more attacks than they could in other circumstances. Israel won't tolerate this state indefinitely, and it could still escalate to a full-scale war if either side miscalculates.
I agree to a good degree, and even would argue Hezbollah is trying to calibrate the pressure precisely to distract Israel from focusing on Hamas, but states can very much downplay some casus belli factors when they don't want to engage a particular front.
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It seems like there’s a non-trivial risk that a second Lebanese civil war with Hezbollah fighting Israel directly ends with the Shiites getting ethnically cleansed from Lebanon.
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Twice in the last week, I’ve gotten company emails about security in the face of protests. The advice is not surprising: subscribe to company alerts. Report harassment to security. Do not talk to protestors or try to get past a barricade.
I have naturally seen no signs of any protests at our quiet, suburban office. Presumably the same message was broadcast to employees in, say, Boston. But that’s the only story I could find about an actual protest targeting my industry. I’m left wondering—if this response is due to caution from the higher-ups, do they perceive more of a threat? Or are they playing into a narrative where the rank and file assume there will be a threat?
This is pre-emptive risk management and generally good security governance.
Protests can spring out of the air with little warning, so they are educating staff before they arrive at work one day and come across protestors blocking the entry of their facility. It may never happen, but if it does they are minimising the risk to their staff (and also possible compensation claims for not doing everything they reasonably can to provide a safe workspace)
Large organisations often have security advisors (either internal or consulting on retainer) that serve as early warning for this kind of thing.
Edit: If you ever find yourself confronting protestors, that advice is pretty good. Don't engage or talk to them; a career protestor has likely been arrested before and has little reputation to lose, unlike yourself. They can do all sorts of dirty tricks like spit on you and then have their friends record your reaction for a nice little propaganda video to go up on Twitter/Youtube. Talking to protestors without media training and authorisation from the organisation can embarrass the company and lead to consequences for you. Basically any interaction in a situation like that would possibly be recorded, (edited in the worst possible way) and signal boosted on social media. The play book for issue motivated groups has been refined and shared since the 60's.
In the worst case, just turn around and go home. Email your boss that you couldn't make it to work due to the protest. They will be happy for you to work from home or even just take the day off. Chances are you'd find an email directing you to do this anyway if you checked your inbox.
I have some friends in defense, and often they can't access their email on personal devices. For some, quite literally the pre-pandemic policy was that nothing work-related left the building. That has changed somewhat, but expecting folks to check email before coming to the office isn't universally possible even today.
In those cases there would be some other method of communication available which would be used, such as sms to personal devices.
Defense departments in western countries are usually very good with their security risk management, so I can't see them having no way of warning staff outside of work.
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In finance during Occupy (before my time) banks apparently told workers not to wear corporate merch in public for fear people would be harassed or attacked. I don’t know if there were ever gangs of anarchists going around beating up bankers with Citigroup backpacks in 2011, but it seems funny now.
I knew some folks that worked in Big Oil, and around that time similar guidance appeared there to stop advertising corporate logos due to worries about climate activists. I don't know of any particular incidents, but the same sort of cautious guidance.
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There were not. My coworkers and I would pass by Zucotti park a lot to get lunch looking very bankery and it was all quite peaceful.
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Don’t you work in the defense industry?
While Collin and tarrant counties may not be hotspots for left wing mass protests, it’s reasonable for defense contractors to expect some level of protest at their facilities during a war, and it seems reasonable to have a company wide email about it.
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It’s likely a request from their insurance company, a request sent out in response to rising claim payouts.
Bigwigs ignore politics, but listen to insurance underwriters.
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If I want to help the ordinary Gazans caught in the middle of the airstrikes, but really didn't want to provide any military aid to Hamas, what would be a good charitable organisation to donate to?
Non-facetious answers only, please.
Here are some charities dedicated to providing medical supplies and treatment:
One of the main Gazan hospitals, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, is ran by the Episcopalian church in Jerusalem, and it looks like you can email the Episcopalians to specify that you wish to donate towards providing medical aid for Gazans rather than a general donation that might go to religious services and the like: https://j-diocese.org/wordpress/healthcare-3/
An anti-war and anti-occupation Israeli I am acquainted with recommended Medical Aid for Palestinians and said they're running a lot of relief work: https://www.map.org.uk/
Doctors Without Borders is also providing aid, is helping out the hospital mentioned above, and while they were forced to pull most of their staff out of Gaza, they are preparing to go back in: https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/our-response-israel-gaza-war
Thank you very much.
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I think this is basically impossible given the priorities and practices of Hamas.
Anything of value will be traded, repurposed, or melted down for weapons. Pipes will become rockets. Food will be stockpiled in bunkers while civilians starve. Medicine will be traded to various unscrupulous parties. Hamas is in control of whatever you send to Gaza and Hamas does not share your concern for ordinary Gazans.
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I don't think there is one. As far as I can tell the situation is logistics-constrained rather than funding-constrained.
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I’d think your best bet might be Christian charitable organizations that were already operating inside of Gaza prior to the conflict. The hospital that famously had something happen to it a few weeks ago (not interested in litigating what happened or by whom) is run by the Anglicans, for example.
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IDF. The sooner and thorougher they finish eradicating Hamas, the sooner the Palestinians life will start improving.
Edit: Not a satire or sarcasm. Hamas has entagled all military and civilian spaces so that enormous civilian casualties are unavoidable, hamas has made the life of any palestinian in the gaza strip hell, hamas made the coexisting of Israel and Hamas impossible (how israel helped creating hamas is matter for another time), the best way to save palestinians is to help Hamas lose.
I second this. Until Hamas is eradicated there is nothing you can do to not indirectly aid Hamas. Even if you could e.g. give money to a charity to provide food with a 100% guarantee the money would be used on bread and cheese instead of weapons this would still free up money for Hamas to move from providing food for the civilians to weapons instead.
For an example consider a situation where Hamas spends $10 million a year on food and $10 million a year on weapons, where Gaza needs $20 million of food a year (the other $10 million of food comes from current charity). If you donate $1 million to charity so that Gaza is getting $11 million of food from charity Hamas now only needs to spend $9 million to sort of feed its population, which has just freed up an extra $1 million for them to use on weapons instead of food.
The net result of your charitable donation is that the Gazans get the same amount of food they were getting before but Hamas has more money to spend on rockets.
I understand this is a toy example with numbers pulled out of thin air, but as far as I can tell, Hamas spends nothing on feeding civilians and leaves that as a problem for others to solve. And then steals the aid when it comes in.
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Is that "because of the bombs" or "because Hamas uses hospitals as human shields for military bases"?
The lack of anesthesia would presumably be because of neither but rather the total blockade that Israel has imposed.
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Not looking for a facetious answer, thank you.
Not facetious. There are no organizations there which are independent and which can guard their resources and supplies from Hamas. So whatever you send - Hamas will have dibs on it. And there is absolutely nothing in the way Hamas has acted so far that indicates that they will put the wellbeing of the civilians that they use as human shields instead of that of their members.
There may be organizations that are honest and will help but they will be working with the displaced civilians in Egypt, not with the ones in the cross fire.
Again, as with other discussions, I think it is important to remember that Hamas is the local government. Any goal that starts with "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" is going to be very difficult, on par with a 1943 mission to "help Germans, but not Nazis" or an 1864 plan to "help Southerners, not the Confederacy". While it's possible to thread the needle to some extent, the damage being done to the Nazi and Confederate institutions and civilians with blockades and economic warfare were part of plans being used by the putative good guys, not an accidental bug that we just needed the Red Cross to workaround. Trying to break those blockades and deliver food supplies to enemy civilians has pretty obvious inherent problems associated with it.
If someone just wants to see Hamas win, OK, I guess that's a stance. But really, the "help Palestinians, but not Hamas" position is not just trivially good.
I appreciate that my question was not one with an obvious and straightforward answer, and it's a problem any time you want to assist the populace suffering under a corrupt and despotic regime (even if the populace should have known better than to vote said regime into power).
But all that being said, I feel like there were more constructive responses to the question available than "give your money to the IDF so they can have an easier time bombing Gaza into the stone age lol lol lmao". I think it should have been abundantly obvious that when I say I'm looking for an organisation to which to direct charitable donations, that precludes the armed forces (unless they're involved in peacekeeping, which the IDF obviously are not).
I was mildly tempted to respond with "donate to the IDF" myself, but for better or worse I restrained myself since I could clearly see that that wasn't in the spirit of what you sought, even if I think it's true.
I suppose it depends on how much risk you're willing to take that supplies bought with your money will be misused, barring something particularly specific like a charity that hands out tampons, I suspect that it's going to get yoinked, and in that specific example, intentionally. (Russian conscripts were given tampons and pads by their families when bandages were in short supply, but sadly a material made for soaking up blood isn't very good at staunching a bleed)
Keep in mind that even benign items can be seized and sold on the market for money, and I doubt Hamas has many qualms in that regard. Besides, the IDF isn't particularly funding constrained, at least within the range of any potential donations you might make, unless you're a billionaire I suppose.
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If you had said that to start with, I'd have had no objection.
Not /u/Lizzardspawn, but that's basically what it boils down to. Until the IDF restores something like a 21st century notion of civilized order, helping Palestinians is nearly impossible.
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Sorry for the leading question but am I the only one naive enough to ask "Why don't the israeli troops just walk into the al-Shifa hospital?"? Where I live, if the national army wanted to take over the closest hospital I am confident they could do it in like 5 minutes by walking in through the front door.
If the answer is as I suspect, "the Israeli troops can't walk into the hospital because the hospital is being defended with guns," then why doesn't that fact appear in your average news story like this one? I know this sounds like a post from a person who really cares about Israel and is always going on about media bias against that country, so I just want to add a disclaimer saying that my position on Israel is that I'm just a normal American non-Jew who doesn't really know or care very much about it.
But honestly, to go back to my opening question, what the heck is going on at the hospital? Why can't they just take it over?
It's highly likely Hamas has some significant operations based out of Al-Shifa Hospital.
If you read the history from 2008-9 and 2014 wars, every outlet from NYT to WaPo, organizations from Human Rights Watch to Amnesty International, have reported on Hamas militants being in the hospital, hamas leaders seen there, Hamas spokespeople talking to media there (using a fake backdrop of destroyed buildings), and Hamas using the hospital for torture and imprisonment (Amnesty).
Basically Hamas knows Israel won't bomb the hospital, which seems to be the largest hospital in that area. And thus, they base operations there with impunity.
In 2007, Hamas and Fatah fought in/near that hospital, though at much smaller scale (apparently only one wounded from each faction).
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Why wouldn't they just blow it up while they have an excuse to? Netanyahu was talking about how he's dealing with Amalek all over again, do you know what was commanded to do to them?
Could it be that they don’t want to slaughter that many innocents?
Seems unlikely.
You’ll have elaborate. While I’m sure the IDF has limited regard for Palestinians, “limited” is not zero.
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Is your model that Israel is trying to kill as many people as possible? The world would look different if that were the case. There would be a lot more dead people.
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Indeed, who doesn't?
https://rdrama.net/post/204796/in-which-the-god-of-israel
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The bar for blowing hospital and it not being a war crime is quite high. Not impossible and Hamas has made sure to make Israel life easier by doing their best to make any civilian infrastructure legitimate military target, but still it is a big deal.
The bar is extremely low, as low as 'is it being used as a military position.'
War crime law is not that legitimate military targets (military positions, command posts, munition stores) are made ineligible by the presence of protected classes (i.e. hospitals), but rather than protected classes are made eligible by the presence of legitimate military targets. There are no protected classes of military sites where someone can fire at you, but you can't fire back.
The proportionality principle, which is what limits collateral damage that could kill civilians, is proportionality relative to what is needed to destroy the legitimate military target compared to other means that would achieve the same military effect, not the proportion of military-to-civilian casualties. There are no convention requirements to take military casualties in the process of storming military objectives in order to minimize civilian casualties.
Do you have a source for this? Because if this is true, then I've seen such misinformation repeated all the time:
What you cited covers the point in conjunction with the same conventions covering valid military objectives and the revocation of protected sites if they are turned into valid military objectives.
Destroying something so that it no longer contributes to casualties on your forces is a concrete and direct military advantage. This goes back to what a valid military target is, and the conventions are very clear that protected targets are NOT protected if they are converted into valid military targets, even if there are still civilian casualties. As such, there is not requirement for there to be no civilian casualties, or for the belligerant to accept casualties in order to avoid civilian casualities. The onus is on the other belligerent to not place military objectives amongst civilians / to move civilians away from military objectives, not on the 'attacking' beligerant to not engage valid military objectives.
As the collateral damage of any civilians is not a binary disqualifier, proportionality doesn't work as a 'prohibit any attack on a valid military objective that may cause casualties' either-or binary. The porportionality is in the excess to the miltiary advantage... but since the military advantage is judged by the attacker, not the defender, and the anticipated value is often trivial to justify in close-range engagements on force-protection grounds and limiting enemy ability to continue offering mearningful resistance, proportionality would be a functionally dead letter if it was solely a binary (which- by its own working- it isn't).
Rather, proportionality comes into play when something would have no concrete or direct miltiary objective- which is usually when a target is so far away / inconsequential it means nothing for your military force survivial if the target is hit or not- or if you have alternatives that have different effects on the civilians in the course of the legitimate strike. In the face of valid military objective where concrete and direct military is already anticipated, and thus engaging is not prohibited, the proportionality distinction will only apply if you have alternatives with smaller loss of incidental loss- which would then render the overkill-casualties excessive in relations to the military advantage anticipated, because you could get the military advantage anticipated by using a smaller effect and thus the 'extra' deaths are unnecessary.
Thanks! I’ve seen a lot of misinformation around how proportionality actually means that if the ratio of civilians to enemy combatants is high enough, then it’s automatically a war crime. I can see where they come from, as the wording is rather vague, but upon reading the article further:
It’s not clear to me how much of a consensus this is outside of Australia, Canada, and NZ, but the air strikes by Israel most certainly 1) provide immediate and perceptible advantages to 2) the security of its attacking forces, at least 3) as far as the IDF is aware of, unless there’s any evidence that they have engaged in air strikes despite knowing full well that there were no Hamas military assets at the target location.
So there’s indeed a strong case to be made that regardless of civilian casualties, the IDF has not committed war crimes in this particular air strike campaign. Not that anyone already calling it “genocide” would care to change their minds, of course.
Basically every military that has fought an insurgency or an urban conflict in the last century, or otherwise had to fight a conflict where a house is a battle position, has adopted the force protection argument that some civilian casualties are acceptable. This goes from Russia to the Philippines to Sri Lanka and India to Iran and Saudi Arabia to Colombia and every NATO member.
This is usually the point where I remind an audience that war is hell, and that the laws of wars are about limiting, not preventing, civilian casualties. The conventions on how to wage war 'right' are as much about protecting every single life as a fire break is about stopping forest fires. The effects are good for the greater whole, but the part of the forest within the forest break is fully expected to burn.
This is generally correct. There will be some specific cases that people will focus on, but these can depend on having insight into the belligerent perspectives, as well as other 'the law isn't what you thought the law was' contexts. For perspectives, nothing in the conventions requires a belligerent to reveal their Intelligence- and thus sources and methods- for why they chose a target, so there are often targets that are legitimate but which may not appear to be when prioritized... and this in turn doesn't even include cases of flawed/wrong intelligence, where the a belligerent can legitimately believe there is a valid target somewhere one isn't. It doesn't become a war crime retroactively if one is duped by a denial/deception campaign. Meanwhile, some things that may seem obviously off-limits are actually covered in other areas of the convention. We had a good example in the first thread, when someone did an actuall review of the convention requirements for delivering aid to civilians- in short, while delivering aid to civilians must be allowed, it doesn't have to be allowed by any given organization to any given organization. Rather, a belligerent must allow a mutually acceptable intermediary to deliver it, so that the there can be some sort of guarantee that the aid goes to civilians and not the beseiged belligerent. As a consequence of that, for example, bombing the border crossings early on is not, from a rules-of-law perspective, 'preventing aid from getting to civilians,' which is forbidden, it is 'preventing resupply to a belligerent,' which is permitted.
Rather than quibbling on legal dynamics few know and fewer actually care about, the better argument against genocide-claimers is the point that, just by the numbers, if the Israelis are trying to genocide the Gaza Strip population... they are doing a really, really poor job at it by even the most pro-Palestinian numbers.
To take just two stores from Al Jazeera, which has a definite anti-Israeli slant in the conflict to date- on 13 November, Al Jazeera reported on the (Hamas-controlled) Gaza Public Health Ministry's claim that 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict so far. This is, of course, what the Americans know as a McBigNumber. 11,000 in a month an a half- that's a lot, right?
But nearly a week early, Al Jazeera reported on an Israeli government claim to have conducted more than 12,000 strikes... as of 1 November, nearly 2 weeks before the Hamas death claim. If we accept both claims as true- and both Hamas and Al Jazeera have an even greater incentives to greatly inflate the death claims than the Israeli government does- this is less than a 1-death-per-bomb ratio... in one of the most densly populated urbanized war zones in modern history, when Israeli ability to level entire apartment blocks is incredibly well established.
If the goal of the Israeli government and military was to genocide the Palestinian population, we would expect to see massively higher Palestinian casualty rates so far. Like, orders-of-magnitude higher. We'd also have seen considerably different targeting decisions of types of targets- with far more about irrevocably destroying essential infrastructure beyond repair or leveling apartment blocks without organizing evacuations- if they were in a 'just kill them all before anyone can stop us' dynamic.
Instead, this is where we also remind you that Hamas's militant wing has had an estimated strength in the 30,000 to 40,000 range even before the conflict. Total Palestinian death could triple or even quadruple from the first month, and it would be mathematically possible- though incredibly implausible- for nearly every single one of those casualties to not only be a Hamas member, but a part of Hamas's military component. (And it's not like the military component members are the only legitimate target under the conventions either.)
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And that is actually a high bar in my book. If there are no civilians you are free to overkill.
And no one particularly cares about overkill, because overkill is wasteful and takes away relevant resources for the next engagment. Outside of a few propaganda contexts- which are extremely rare in civilian casualty contexts- civilian-overkill is a military-waste issue as much as anything else.
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...it's being defended with guns. And to get to it they have to go through Gaza city which is also being defended with guns.
It's a war. You have to take territory with force.
Is it just that the news sources I'm reading are terrible? I feel like I've never seen it mentioned that there is another side (not just the IDF) fighting in this war. Like they mentioned that the IDF forces have surrounded the hospitals but it's not clear why, since as far as anyone has told me it is just full of doctors and their patients. I feel like I'm five years old asking these questions but it's just so weird to me, it's like the grownups understand something that I don't.
You're quite right. None of the news sources I've read has said anything about what's stopping Israel from just walking up to the reception desk with a bunch of fuel cans and spare generators, and having a look around for tunnels while they're there. The assumption has to be that either it's defended by Hamas, or that Israel is kayfabing that it's defended by Hamas, but no news outlets seem to want to say anything beyond "the doctors say there's no Hamas, but we as reporters didn't bother to ask the IDF commander why they don't just walk inside."
It's really, really weird to read.
A lot of coverage has made it seem like the IDF is simply choosing to starve everyone in the hospital of supplies under the assumption that Hamas has a position within it, but has been extremely light on details.
This NY Times article from within the hour describes IDF troops 'battling Hamas fighters nearby' the hospital, but otherwise simply paints a picture of the terrible situation the people in the hospital are in, and reproduces a statement from the hospital's director, Dr. Salmiya, where he says that there is no truth to the idea that Hamas is operating beneath the hospital.
Apparently Netanyahu personally told CNN directly yesterday that:
According to this Nov 14 article from the Jerusalem Post, make of that what you will, the IDF is going out of its way to offer assistance in evacuating patients from the hospital, which apparently a publicly released phone conversation shows the hospital leadership is eager to accept. The article also prominently mentions and provides footage of incubators being loaded into vans that the IDF is apparently rushing to get to the hospital as fast as possible. (Isn't the problem that there is no power for their incubators, not that they didn't have enough incubators? How are these new IDF incubators meant to be powered? Or delivered?)
The article reminds readers:
The linked reporting there, from Reuters, Nov 12:
The fuel was offered to the hospital, but "the militant group [Hamas]" refused to receive it. How was it "offered" and how was it "refused"? Physically, verbally? Why wouldn't Hamas have accepted the fuel in this situation, and just taken some or all of it for themselves, as the IDF has made clear many times is what it would expect them to do?
liveuamap.com reporting from 4 hours ago has the IDF still surrounding the hospital complex, with heavy gunfire and artillery shelling taking place there.
So ... yeah, it's a little hard to build in my mind's eye what the situation is on the ground. The IDF's messaging here seems to want me to believe that it is fully capable, ready and willing not only to provide supplies directly to the hospital in person, but also to begin evacuating patients, and they could and would immediately do this if only they could get close, which Hamas is preventing. If Hamas is fighting the IDF around the hospital perimeter and not letting them give the hospital anything or take anyone out of it, how are the hospital staff still able to insist that Hamas is not meaningfully present at the hospital? Are they just being held more or less at gunpoint by Hamas and forced to keep saying Hamas isn't at the hospital even when they plainly are?
But also, if Hamas is deeply entrenched in and around the hospital, to the point that it has maintained enough perimeter control around it that the IDF can't or won't enter it and evacuees can't or won't leave it, have the IDF only been surrounding it for days because they simply don't think they could take the hospital by force at this time? Or that they shouldn't for optical reasons, or something?
I'm not a combat strategist and I also can't claim to be able to model the minds of any of the actors here, but yes, I am also confused by the situation.
I honestly think this is what he would say in all possible worlds, and thus not evidence for anything.
Would anyone seriously expect him to say: "The Hamas headquarter is located in building C, floor -1. Please take them out so we can run our hospital in peace."
That would be suicidal even if Hamas was just a local terrorist group. But Hamas is the government in Gaza, and has been for a decade. A director of a hospital is a political position, and I doubt Hamas is very shy about removing their opposition. Especially not if they were actually using that site as a headquarter.
In my mind, falsely claiming a lack of militants in a hospital would be alike to using ambulances as troop transports. Still, if I were a hospital director with a cellar full of militants I would not worry about the Hague to much and instead worry about Hamas.
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Update: they raided the hospital earlier today.
UN agencies, the WHO, and the Red Cross have all strongly condemned the raid.
Meanwhile the IDF is releasing plenty of photos and pretty extensive walkthrough footage showing all of Hamas's stuff that they're pulling out of hallway closets and out from behind MRI machines, as they walk down corridors that have had their security cameras disabled or obscured.
All the reporting I'm reading ... describes the hospital staff being very afraid during the raid, "because of all the fighting", but ... again, written like the hospital staff and patients are having to take cover while the IDF comes in and fights no one.
Al-Jazeera also helpfully relays a witness' statement that the IDF "have tried to kill anyone moving inside - no one has done anything, we don't have any kind of resistance inside the hospital", and also reports, in a bullet point immediately prior, that the IDF evacuated people from inside into the outdoor courtyard to be interrogated - even though it was raining.
So... why does this weird media phenomenon exist? If it's because of anti-Israel bias, then why is the media biased against Israel?
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I heard these incubators had their own power (or at least didn't require being plugged in) and so could also function to move the infants if necessary, but that was a single article that I can't recall the source of.
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This is almost always true in all circumstances.
It's unclear to me exactly what the state of play on the ground is, but the Institute for the Study of War claims that zones of control currently look like this, and according to the IDF Israel has broken the effectiveness of 10 of Hamas' 24 battalions. So, to the extent those claims are true (and they easily may not be), the indication is that Israel is making progress but there is a lot more fighting left to be done.
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When Israel was in control of Gaza they built the hospital to be a bomb resistant fortress so that patients would be safe during fighting. They handed control of Gaza to the PLA / Fatah. Then Hamas won elections in 2007 and took over.
Hamas set up their headquarters in the hospital. For two reasons, it would look bad if Israel attacked it and it was already fortified.
Western reporters are in an odd spot. They sympathize with the Palestinians as an underdog and see it through an anti-colonial lens. Also they need access to Hamas to do reporting in Gaza. Also there's the safety of their reporters.
As a result it's uncouth to mention the Hamas fighters. They sort of beat around the bush.
The only news sources who will talk about them openly are the kind of sources that say blunt un-PC things.
also it seems like before, say in 2014, western journalists would post on twitter about Hamas operating in/around the hospital, but then immediately delete those posts. Unclear if deleting because of the abuse they received on twitter, or because of Hamas intimidation. Probably more likely from the latter.
It seems like western journalists are both less present in Gaza, and less likely to post about Hamas misdeeds online at all.
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Just as a bit of meta--I did not create a new thread since the third one did not top 500 comments in a week. There is a "Transnational Thursdays" thread posted each week by @Soriek that is probably the best place for Israel-Gaza discussion outside the CW thread going forward, at least barring any major new developments.
I think part of the reason the comment count was low was because the thread wasn’t pinned, so people didn’t see it and posted in the main thread.
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Someone asked about it and I gave permission. They said there were a bunch of updates, and I know nothing about the issue so I believed them.
That was me. There are a bunch of updates but coincidentally a lot of updates in my personal life as well, so a bit unfortunate timing.
Also the motte is just not that active on this issue, I perhaps misread how much activity there would be from the first thread.
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https://graymirror.substack.com/p/clearpill-yourself-on-gaza
Moldbug weighs in on the latest episode of the Israel and Palestine show and the excessive reactions of westerners to it.
Moldgub:
and then proceeds with the usual long and convoluted verbal diarrhea. As if Moldbug cared, as is Moldbug had some feelings about current happenings in the land of Canaan. I do not remember him commenting at length about recent events in, for example, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sahel or Myanmar, formerly Burma.
Why is Moldbug allowed to have feelings while we should stay completely calm and disinterested?
Is it because some of Moldbug's ancestors came from this place and some relatives of his do live there now? If this should be the standard, then only people with Eastern Slavic descent should be allowed to care about Ukraine. Somehow, Moldbug despite his lack of Slavic blood, is very interested in this place and writes about it at length.
Is is because Moldbug disregards his own law or is it because there is no law except "Moldbug does what Moldbug wants?"
Actually his father was in the foreign service and was stationed in Ethiopia. He has done podcasts with Ethiopians about Ethiopian politics but his general audience doesn't have much interest.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BKdOoR4zhOc
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I'm not sure what you mean? He cares about this insofar as so many people in America care about it - as it illuminates how harmful democracy and progressivism and caring too much about the poor oppressed foreigners is - not for the conflict itself. He wouldn't be posting about it if everyone else wasn't too.
Moldbug's usual principle is: "Might makes right, the strong should do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must."
For some reasons, his application of this principle on the Middle East problem always is: "Palestine is lost cause, Palestinian resistance against Israel is futile, Palestinians should give up and leave the country", never "Israel is lost cause, Israeli resistance against Arab and Muslim world is futile, Israelis should give up and leave the Middle East for good."
To be fair, Israel has a history of trouncing the Arab powers in conventional conflicts - it would be counterintuitive to conclude from that that they are incapable of defending their position against Arab states.
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If you hadn't noticed, Israel is the strong one there compared to the Palestinians, so that's not inconsistent in the slightest.
Yeah this is just a factual disagreement. All the demographic extrapolators and "feminized, decadent" west folks should really look into the implied per capita power discrepancy between israel and the arab world. Moderns can always crush angry superstitious masses militarily, if they so choose.
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Compared to the Palestinians, yes. Compared to the whole Arab and Muslim world, this is not so clear.
Moldbug believes that Israelis are master race, that America is keeping Israel down and in absence of American influence, Israel would easily roll over all land between Nile and Euphrates.
This is debatable, but if things went the other way and Israelis were to be driven to the sea, would Moldbug say: "Vae victis, winners keepers, losers weepers"? I have my doubts.
Probably, it would be far from the first and perhaps not even the worst misfortune his people had suffered, “oh well, we got trounced again” is a rather longstanding Jewish narrative.
Because he believes in HBD? Relatively bold claim re. Moldbug, he’s often spoken pretty disparagingly about Israel and modern Jewry in general.
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I think if the whole Arab and Muslim world could wipe Israel out, they would have already done so. Certainly they tried a few times.
A completely unified Muslim entity would likely be capable, but the chances of such a thing ever happening are essentially nil since people treat them as overly monolithic instead of rife with their own pile of issues and divisions.
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Compared to the whole Arab world, it's pretty clear. Add in Turkey and Iran and maybe not, but Turkey, Iran, and the Arabs getting together to destroy Israel is something that isn't happening.
And maybe they could, but that would just leave them with an extremely hostile population in the occupied areas. They'd be fools to try it. At least the Sinai was very sparsely populated.
Your beliefs about Moldbug's claims in the counterfactual don't make him a hypocrite.
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An interview in the New Yorker with settler/activist Daniella Weiss, The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers, is making the rounds on Twitter.
Tl;dr:
I like the interview and I respect how honest she is. She doesn’t pretend this is about Hamas or terrorism or anything; it’s her tribe versus someone else’s tribe and her tribe should do whatever it takes to win.
Some thoughts/questions:
I am by no means an expert, but I think this relates to the idea of Greater Israel. There even was an attempt to do that by Ariel Sharon in 1980ies at least according to Darryl Cooper of Martyrmade fame. The plan was to ethnically clense Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank as well as from Lebanon. Make Lebanon a Christian ally state and drive all the refugee Palestinian population to Jordan, where they can have their revolution creating a new Palestinian state by overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy, which was imported by Brits in 1920ies anyway.
It is not without precedent - something similar happened to Germans after WW2. Not many people know about it, but Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers "to the left" and anexed/incorporated some lands into Russia//Ukraine at the expense of ethnically cleansed Germans from historically German cities like Breslau/Wrocław or Königsberg/Kaliningrad etc. The same happened in Czechoslovakia where millions of Germans were ethnically cleansed and relocated to Germany, Germans who lived there for literally centuries. Poland and Czech Republic became ethnically homogenous countries.
The analogy would be treating Gaza/West Bank as something akin to East Prussia or Sudetenland while Jordan - or any other Arab state for that matter - plays the role of post-war East or West Germany or Austria. So you will have two state solution in the end. And ideally nobody will bat an eye, the ethnic cleansing of Germans is nothingburger today. Nobody gives a shit, there is no whining on some supposed wound on the soul of Czech or Polish or Russian nation or anything like that. Most people don't even know this and life goes on, there is enough to do in the respective countries and the mutual relationships are cordial enough, event outright friendly.
The Germans whined about it for years but couldn’t do anything while they were literally under military occupation and their former lands were themselves part of the Soviet empire. But official policy in the CDU, which dominated postwar German politics, was that those lands should be returned as late as the 1980s. What settled it was that the occupying powers agreed to reunification only if the claims were dropped.
As an aside, the Lebanon stuff is always interesting. As early as the 1950s the Israelis offered to carve out a Christian state, but the Lebanese refused, believing they could maintain control of the whole thing, which obviously didn’t work out (and obviously there were internecine disputes between various Christian groups). It’s pretty sad actually.
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A two-state solution was moderately popular just a few decades ago, but it's largely considered a lost cause at this point among Israelis at this point, and polls among Palestinians show it unacceptable or undesirable for them as well (for whatever extent you trust polls on this). But that does not mandate genocide or a lack of political rights (or ethnic cleansing), nevermind presuming such a position would be popular: indeed, even early in 2023 a two-state solution polls higher than a single-state one with privileged status for Jews.
A lot of it's less political power, and more the Israeli equivalent of the deep state. A lot of the positions and perspectives favoring Israeli expansionism into the West Bank has been a philosophical goal of the Israeli government for long enough that changing who's in office doesn't necessarily change what happens, it just changes who reports on it. And there were military and tactical reasons in the 70s, even if using those reasons as justification for military confiscation to later hand over to individual civilians is utterly abominable. Beyond that...
The settlers in the areas illegal under Isreali law, and their more activist branches in specific, are often assholes (price taggers regularly deface Israeli or even IDF property!). But there's another large class who played by at least Israeli rules, and are not so readily opposed. And the former groups exist in no small part by exploiting the ambiguities, there, and they're regularly assisted by international groups that take anything less than the Green Line borders as Israeli perfidy.
While I think the religious role is overplayed in American or international contexts, among Israelis and Palestinians there's a very serious concern that each side will dynamite the other's religious sites the second anyone's back is turned, and they matter a good deal more for internal reasons.
Combatant doesn't mean 'bad person' (an Israeli defending their Kibbutz on 10/7 is a combatant!), and non-combatant does not mean 'good person'. We have the "you're not allowed to shoot someone unless they're trying to kill you, or at least part of a military trying to kill you" for the very good reason that if you start allowing military strikes on anyone who has actively wrong political positions, there's nothing without a target.
A more difficult question is whether she'd count as a valid military target, and that's complicated. Ideally, trespassing and unlawful occupation are not themselves the sort of thing that would justify military or personal self-defense, but COGAT's enforcement and implementation of the law is a joke, so I have more sympathy for some of that. That said, mere advocacy or past actions are not themselves military justification -- there's a difference between fighting someone who's actively invading your house from breaking in to beat up someone who did a year ago.
I'm not the person you'd need to persuade, but it's been considered at times.
A lot depends on what, exactly, you mean by "West Bank" or "settlers": there's a risk of certain if-by-whiskeyism, here. Area A is already effectively off-limits for Jewish (and Israeli-friendly non-Jewish) people, rather famously. But that's a bunch of small cities and towns without a land bridge, which doesn't even include all West Bank Palestinians. On the other hand, turning over Area C and going back to the 1967 Green Line would involving moving almost a 400k Israelis and give the West Bank a fully-uncontrolled border with Jordan; that was a difficult ask in 2000 and there's no way it'd be acceptable now. Whatever extent 'land for peace' might have seemed a reasonable trade in the 1990s, it's clearly danegeld now, if the rumors that Arafat was planning the Second Intifada during the 2000 talks weren't enough, the recent problems made it obvious. And a lot of Palestinians, the Arab states, and the academic left consider all Israelis to be settlers, which beyond all the other problems, given the number of Israeli Jews that were ejected from Muslim countries nearby, is the sort of thing you bring to end negotiations, rather than to start them.
On the gripping hand, I think Israel should dismantle the settlements that are a violation of Israeli law anyway, so 'conceding' to remove them is conceding nothing at all.
I dunno. Before October, some large scale-down of Area C, in exchange for significant concessions elsewhere, might have been the best option. And maybe the PA pulls some sort of hat trick here that makes puts that back on the table again, if only to cut out Hamas and its affiliates as competition. But the last 'significant' (and it wasn't much, or even that honest!) pull-back resulted in a swath of suicide bombings, and I'm not sure that Abbas could commit to non-hostilities if the IDF gift-wrapped the entire Green Line borders for him, and any attempt to remove Israeli settlements requires them to believe they're getting peace out of it.
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I think her particular view is pretty extreme, even among religiously motivated settlers I doubt very many would see the east bank of the Nile as part of the promised land. That would imply that Moses was already in the promised land when he parted the Red Sea.
Broadening "her cause" somewhat, there's a number of religious and very right-wing parties that Netanyahu relies on as coalition partners, and incorporating "Judea and Samaria" into Israel has support in those sectors because of the area's historical and religious significance. E.g. King David ruled from Hebron, Abraham was buried there, Jericho was the site of Joshua's first conquest in Canaan, etc.
She's not a combatant, but I also take issue with the implication that it's obviously fine to attack soldiers. Attacking civilians is an act of terrorism but attacking soldiers is still an act of war, and war is often even worse than terrorism.
Sure. "Land for peace" is a good trade if it works.
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I am not fond of these settlers.
I’m also not fond of the millions pouring over my border. Why am I supposed to care about the West Bank border and not care about my country’s border?
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In the end it doesn’t really matter what the extremists think. If the Arabs had accepted the 1947 or 1967 borders and an independent Palestine was a separate, legitimate state (likely with the permanent or temporary presence of various Arab armies), clearly delineated borders, it’s own military and so on, there would be no ‘Jewish settlers’ on its territory.
Would religious Zionists still dream of an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates? Sure. But Jews dreamed of a return to Israel for millennia without doing anything about it. And of course since the return of the Sinai to the Egyptians, there aren’t any Jewish settlers there either, because they don’t want to die. There aren’t any in Gaza since 2006 either, because they don’t want to die. So again, the dreams of Jewish irredentists in a timeline where the Palestinians didn’t deliberately sabotage their own future are about as irrelevant as the dreams of Germans who wish they could reconquer all of Prussia, or Austrians who would like Hungary back, or even the Spaniards who would seek the return of Gibraltar which, for all the endless whining, isn’t going to happen any time soon either.
They are restricted by reality. The reason the settlers are in the West Bank is because the Palestinians fucked up so badly that, after being curbstomped thrice, they’re now under a combination of partial occupation and collaborationist government. Any number of things could have avoided this for them, settlers want to breed, they wouldn’t cut down the fence to an independent Palestinian state only to get shot by border guards because that defeats the purpose of their ideology. They settle because they can, and they can because the Palestinians, when it came down to it, were unwilling to deal.
But one of the reasons the Arabs fought Israel is because they predicted they would turn into an expansionist state and claim its ancestral borders. This is a damned if you, damned if you don’t. Israel is literally creating new colonies each year within the West Bank and (more egregiously) the Golan Heights, and its history is illustrative —
The argument sounds almost like, “why didn’t you let me take your land peacefully? Now that you defended it, you’ve forced me to take your lane!”
I also doubt anyone would make this argument if it were the Arabs destroying Israel militarily. Israelis would be in uproar about Arabs violating international law and taking rightful Jewish clay.
If the Arabs destroyed Israel militarily there would be a lot of kvetching for a few years, then nothing. The refugees/survivors would presumably be accepted by various Western countries, and in a decade Palestine would be just another MENA shithole riven by internal conflict between Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which would adopt a lot of secular Palestinian nationalist elements, and Saudi-backed Sunni militias, who would adopt the rest. It would be a poor dump and nobody would care about it ever again.
Of course, one other thing is that the Jews would never again retake the land (at least in the foreseeable future). America would decide that ‘what’s done is done’, neither Turkey nor Cyprus nor Egypt nor anyone else would give Jews staging ground for an operation to retake their country, the ‘West’ would decide that annoying the Arabs further was unwise and besides, the Jews would be back in the diaspora and settled.
But that underlines the point, really. 98% of the region is Arab, always has been and always will be. Sympathy is therefore difficult. Say the price to secure a white supermajority in Western Europe and North America forever was to hand a tiny sliver of land - say the state of New Jersey, or half of Flanders - to everyone else as an ethnostate. Practically every single wignat I’ve ever encountered would take that deal instantly, no matter the fact that a few locals would be mad. US secessionists talk openly of handing half their country to the ‘enemy’ in a ‘national divorce’.
But the Arabs, even after being trounced several times, throw a fit at the idea of losing - and this is true even in the case of an unrealistically expansionist Zionism - a tiny percentage of their land. And that’s a ‘worst case’ scenario; the Jews have no interest in Arabia itself, nor in Persia or almost all of North Africa or Anatolia (despite having an extensive history in those places).
In truth, there is more than enough land in the region to settle all Palestinians without great hardship, without approaching an unliveable population density and without removing almost all of the region from Muslim control. The Palestinians have been offered a vastly better future than practically any other defeated people in history (in many ways including the Germans and Japanese, who suffered more, lost more, and sacrificed cultural autonomy to American global homogenization, whereas Palestinians have preserved their Islam, their radicalism, their irredentism and most cultural traditions), including the Jews (whom they expelled from their own lands after the founding of Israel, of course).
To me this is as if someone complains that communists have taken over their country and expropriated them. Tragic, I obviously sympathize. Then they say ‘well actually they haven’t, they’re actually just social democrats and they taxed me a little on my billion dollar fortune’. My sympathy is lowered. The expropriation of Arabs in former mandatory Palestine is sad, but it does not seem to me sadder than the expropriation of the region’s Jews (something that of course happened not once but repeatedly for centuries before the founding of Israel), which few seem concerned with.
My continued position is that the Israelis have treated the Palestinians substantially better than Arabs have treated Jews, than Shiites have treated Sunnis (and vice versa) and than warring Sunni tribes have treated each other in most of the conflicts in the region’s history. When they force their way out of their containment zone (implemented due to their attacks on civilians), they have a chimp out and rape, torture and kill women and children like a bronze age warband with RPGs. What mercy do they deserve?
Doesn’t it bother you that you immediately changed your argument from “the Palestinians deserve to lose their territory because they failed to make an agreement”, to “the Palestinians deserve to lose their territory because Jews are special and there’s not many of them and Arabs suck?” It betrays the fact that your original argument wasn’t exactly sincere. Or was not at least your main argument.
That’s a lot like saying “99% of the region is Slavic, therefore sympathy is difficult if Turks decided to conquer Odessa“. It doesn’t make sense as an argument because it ignores the diversity within the term “Arab” and the fact that you don’t suddenly get the right to land because the inhabitants are under the same broad ethnic umbrella. And it ignores that the holy land is particularly important for the whole Arab world.
The Jews have no interest in Iran? Have you turned on the news in the past decade? One of their overriding geopolitical interests of Israel is to destabilize Iran, just like they aimed and succeeded to influence American foreign policy toward destabilizing Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It turns out that placing Jews in the heartland of the Muslim world means that they are perpetually neurotic about powerful neighboring states. Which is a recipe for massive regional unrest. Jews have been kvetching about Iran for some time now, with the same WMD lie that they used to sell Iraq to America. Israel has no interest in Iran like America has no interest in Venezuela and Nicaragua.
There are two arguments for two different questions, neither of which is 'does Israel deserve to exist?'.
The first is something like 'are problems with Israeli religious zionist settlers [which is what the original comment was about] in the West Bank an inevitable outcome of the existence of Israel and its settlement by zionists?'. My answer to this is 'no', because (as I said) had the Palestinians accepted the '47 or '67 borders, there would be no settlers on that land because it would have a clear border, be guarded by one or multiple Arab armies and would be recognized by the international community (including the US and Israel, which were prepared and ready to recognize such a Palestinian state at the times in question). There would be no settlers in such a Palestinian state for the same reason there are none in present-day Syria, in present-day Jordan and in present-day Egypt. The sole reason settlers exist in the West Bank is because they can be guarded by the IDF, because the IDF controls the land, because of successive defeats for Arab armies on that land by the IDF, because of wars that the Arabs started.
The second question, which you seemed to be discussing in your next comment, is some variant of 'how much should we sympathize with the Palestinians' plight?'. This is a separate moral consideration since one can certainly sympathize with a defeated party even if they brought ruin upon themselves. In this case, I argue that the grander civilization of which most Palestinians were part continues to control almost all of the region and that resettlement away from historic Palestine - while a partially avoidable (as I said above) tragedy - to nearby Arab lands that are not overpopulated, that have natural resources and that share a cultural, ethnic and religious identity with (predominantly Sunni) Palestinians is a less sympathetic plight than that of Jews who have no 'homeland' peopled by those of their ethnoreligious identity if Israel is destroyed.
This is actually why I'm more sympathetic to, say, the plight of European nationalists than I am to the plight of, say, the Rohingya. The Rohingya are ethnically Bengali Muslims who live next door to the homeland of Bengali Muslims in Bangladesh, where their demographic majority is not threatened. If, say, native French become a minority in France, they have no homeland left to return to.
How much interest did the Jews have in Iran when the central mission of the Iranian state was not the eradication of Israel? I think the answer is comparatively little, and as I recall they were allies. It was only when an explicitly Islamist movement took over the country, almost all the local Jews fled after many were arrested and/or expropriated and/or even executed, and the Iranian government declared that it sought (and would fund, and arm, and incite) the eradication of Israel that Israel pursued its anti-Iran policy.
The counterfactual is valid - Iran could, without altering its demography, territory, flag, national religion or even political system end any Israeli opposition by renouncing (and ceasing to pursue) its hostility toward Israel. There is nothing, by contrast, that the 'Zionist entity' could do to end the opposition of the Iranian revolutionary government other than dissolve itself entirely.
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I liked the interview for giving a hint of just how strongly Israelis believe in the demographic dimension of history. Mainstream or not, her side will become more mainstream through their efforts at expanding their Lebensraum and effortfully breeding; and their vigor will win over tired moderates even over this purely biological growth. I'm fairly sure we will see her maximalist ambitions of a massive Israeli empire normalized in some decades. What is impossible often becomes possible when enough people believe in it.
I also think this whole war episode has strengthened my thesis that Israel doesn't depend on the US much, doesn't care for what the US thinks, and frankly isn't any sort of an «outpist of Western liberalism in the sea of barbarism» but just a powerful, autonomous civilization state on its own already.
My least favorite part is her shrill denialism here:
No, you never read things like that. No. There are no pictures. [According to a report by Btselem, an Israeli human-rights group, parts of Kedumim, where Weiss lives, were built on private Palestinian land; in 2006, Peace Now found that privately owned Palestinian land comprised nearly forty per cent of the territory of West Bank settlements and outposts.]
etc.
This kind of DARVO-like shrieking has always rustled my jimmies, but it seems to be normal in the Eastern discourse, and will be normalized further in the future. People on the right will be begging to get the genteel progressive assimilated Jews back.
You would then like Baruch Kogan,most popular representative of Israeli settlers on dead bird site. Typical settler (born in Taganrog, served in US army, moved to reclaim holy land due to mid life crisis) who tells openly what he thinks about his Arab neighbors and Gentiles in general and is not shy about his plans for them. He would be happy to debate you (in English, Russian, Hebrew or Arabic) on every level, from insults and prison slang to most intellectual HBDIQ and NRX arguments.
I think there's nothing to be learned and, accordingly, nothing to be debated in matters of faith (if not in matters preceding those axiomatic ones).
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Or, alternatively, extremely boring and usual very-online frogtwitter/DR shitposter with a zionist instead of wignat flavor?
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Mainstream as in widely shared, or mainstream as in accurate? The premise that the purpose of the West Bank settlements is to make a two-state solution impossible is more than a bit of a stretch, somewhere between over-reach, over-simplification, and ignoring other competing dynamics.
Because it overlaps and taps into multiple cultural/religious/ideological/strategic considerations, which creates the conditions suitable for political coalitions to work with as a tool for compromise for internal political cohesion.
East Bank settlements have always had a strategic-security implications for the ultimate resolution of Israel's eastern border. Ever since the initial 'land will be traded for peace,' the second implication of that has been 'but facts on the ground will shape what is traded for what.' Some settlements can be tolerated/advanced for the purpose of being traded- a concession in and of themselves. But others are expected to shape the new borders, as has already been reflected in previous iterations of negotiations, where territorial tradeoffs were set to accept israeli settlements in some areas. These enduring settlements, in turn, have post-deal implications for things like who controls how much of East Jerusalem, the practical viability of a East Bank state to marshal and consolidate military power across the North-South Mountains, the strategic depth / chokepoints of any future hostile army approaching from the East, and so on.
Whether you view the Settlements as an ideological mission to secure command of the holy land, a bargaining chip that can be traded away, a tool that can be leveraged against coalition partners for domestic policy concessions, or a factor in long-term strategic planning, there are a variety of reasons why settlement activists will have access to political power. The settlements are politically potent.
Not unless she takes part in combat.
As long as those colors are accurate, she garners the protections to civilians under international law, including not being deliberately targetted (as opposed to being accepted as collateral when targetting military targets).
Since the Israelis didn't declare rules like that, the premise of fairness is rather misaimed. It's certainly inconvenient international law, but it's not international law crafted by the Israelis for the purpose claimed, and it's not international law with a caveat for settlers.
Given that the broader peace deals that were closest to being credible and coming to fruition didn't kick all settlers out of the West Bank, but rather did mutual trades with a goal of respecting many exsting population distributions, it would seem like a poison pill demand to sink a peace deal, and thus not a moderate position to take.
More than a bit of a stretch? What else are they? Unless the idea is to have them as Jewish citizens of the new Palestinian state, the counterpart of Israeli Arabs in Israel, they new Palestinian state will either have to remove them or have an impossibly fractal border.
And why should this be so farfetched? Perhaps because implicit in the idea of both Israel and the Palestinian national project has been ethnic homogeneity, or at least hegemony, for the dominant ethny. Two states has always meant division of the Cis-Jordanian territory into two ethno-states, which simply isn't practical for any number of reasons (water distribution, population distribution, transport networks and ocean access, etc.) even before we get to the basic fundamental fact that significant factions in both sides see themselves as entitled to all of the land, and anything less as a bitter half-loaf to be mourned until revenge can be taken.
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Precisely what I said? A number of settlements are fully expected to be traded away- those that would make things 'impossible'- while others are meant to shape the borders- the land swaps that have been a core component of 2-state talks to date.
To say the that the purpose of West Bank settlements is to make the two-state solution impossible is to ignore the history that 2-state negotiations were already built and being conducted on the acknowledgement that the 2-state borders weren't going to align with the occupied territory dividers, and that various settlements had different prospects and roles in said negotiations to different relevant actors.
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I'm pro-Israeli and think Israel over all is one of the more moral countries in the world and has just been put in a very difficult situation. But I think the settlements do not have good justification at all, and because of that complete lack of justification are a blight on Israel's record.
I'm given to understand in modern politics, a very dedicated interest group can wield a ton of power even if they aren't very large.
I don't know what the international law is, but personally I think if someone illegal crosses into another states territory during a period of heightened tensions like the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, that state is allowed to kill them.
I'd prefer it over a deal where they were allowed to stay even if Israel got nothing else for it. The settlements aren't a deal breaker for my support for Israel, but that's just because I think Palestine is even worse. The settlements are still a bad thing.
I don’t think there can be a two state solution. There can only be a one state solution at this point in time with some devolved control. But that doesn’t mean the settlements are just or right to maintain.
I think Israel would be better off maintaining the current state of affairs than going for a one state solution. I don't think the Palestinians would let go of their hate for Israel even if they were granted voting rights and freedom of movement, and giving voting rights and freedom of movement to a population that violently hates you would not go well.
I think one state solution with a population in Gaza that isn’t permitted to vote for the Knesset. But they could have a local parliament for civil governance.
An explicit apartheid state? Good luck selling that in the modern world.
Saudi Arabia laughs at you in fuck-you money. Most of the Gulf States rely on second class citizens/migrant workers while their primary citizens lounge about on welfare if they wish to.
There's a big difference between treating your imported brown labour class poorly (western nations that cry about racism do this all the time, I've run into indian physicists working in supermarket delis) and having an explicit category of second class citizens who cannot vote.
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I think that would make her a more legitimate target than the average civilian minding their own business in Israel, but a legitimate target? No strong opinion on that. It's not like the legitimacy of targets is a major sticking point for people who shoot up peace raves.
I'd call myself strongly pro-Israel, to the extent that there's little or nothing they could do to the Palestinians that would make me withdraw my support (within the Overton Window of Israeli politics).
And the answer is yes, but only if the peace deal has any hope of being adhered to. I have a high opinion of Israel as a whole, not the fundamentalsist wackos who are the primarily inhabitants of the settlements. They could die in a house fire and I wouldn't be particularly fazed.
I have noticed that a lot of Indians support Israel online, would you be able to shed some light on that phenomenon?
Pure "enemy of my enemy" principle. Otherwise, devout Jews have no sympathy for Hinduism and devout Hindus think even less about any Abrahamic religion.
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I would ascribe the majority of the sentiment to them pattern matching to Muslims Bad, as is common because of the animosity with Pakistan. There really isn't much more to it to be honest, especially since Indians are usually strictly neutral to Jews, both because we lack any meaningful number of them, and because our education in history and civics doesn't really dwell on the Holocaust in more than passing (my textbook didn't even mention it, but it ended at the 40s and even then only dealt with the Indian independence struggle).
That's not the reason I support Israel, which is more of a general appreciation for intelligence and competence, especially as an oasis in a region seemingly deficient in both.
I don't like the average Muslim much, but I also happen to dislike Hindu fundamentalists and Christians and.. I'm secularly irreligious though I can maybe hold back my disdain for the inoffensive types, or the ones who are a thin veneer over secular humanism like Unitarian Universalists or some Western strains of Buddhism.
I will note, given that I've already devoted more space to an answer beyond "The average (Hindu) Indian isn't particularly fond of Muslims", is that there is a mild under-current of support for Palestine from upper middle class Westernized Indians like myself. American politics and ideology dominates their worldview, including adoption of leftwing talking points and propaganda. I have yet to see anyone in my social circle post pro Israeli statements on social media, but I have seen a handful supporting the Palestinians, including falling for absolutely ridiculous propaganda, and I mean beyond the ability of anyone with a passing knowledge of Israel and Palestine to believe, not just a slant on facts.
So you're seeing the millions of nationalist Hindus on Twitter engaging in foreign politics for once, and of course you're going to be exposed to the most polarized takes within that. It's still true that the average Indian supports Israel, be it because they hate Muslims, or for the more moderate because they see them as a potential ally against Middle Eastern nations that have historically aided Pakistan (and even then I'm pretty sure the US has done much more to prop up that sorry excuse for a country than their Islamic brethren have).
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I have a question for those of you who support a ceasefire.
How do you think Israel should respond to the events of October 7?
It would just be reloading, not peace. And therefore I don’t think it’s a good idea. Until Hamas is replaced with a government that wants to live in peace, the conflict can’t really end. Ceasefire without that victory means Palestinians rearm, start shooting rockets, and plan their next attack. It’s been tried for 75 years now, and it’s not working nor will it. And I see pretending that it will as the kind of childish no answer given by people who don’t live with the consequences
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Two thoughts: First, Palestinian casualties since Oct. 7 are close to an order of magnitude higher than Israeli casualties on Oct. 7. Israel has already responded; who’s to say they need to keep it up?
Second, whatever they do, they should do it on their own, without a penny of U.S. aid. Since that doesn’t seem to be on the table, I support a ceasefire, and I hope international pressure succeeds in getting one put in place.
The purpose of the Israeli war is to get Hamas out of power, not to kill an equal number of Gazans as the number of Israelis who died in the initial attack. The goal isn't revenge, it's regime change.
A ceasefire just means that Hamas gets another few years to oppress the Gazans before trying for another massacre.
Alternatively if the goal was simply to kill enough Palestinians that they would be deterred from any future attack, I think it's clear that number has not been reached yet - if it exists at all.
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Does Israel have any reasonable shot at both getting Hamas out of power and preventing the rise of Hamas 2.0? I don’t believe it does. If I’m right about that, the only question that remains is how much vengeance the Israelis should exact on the Gazans for the events of October 7. An order of magnitude more fatalities plus an unknown number of additional casualties doesn’t seem like a ridiculous stopping point. After all, if regime change isn’t possible, is it really moral to continue killing? It certainly violates most people’s idea of a just war.
Why not? Why can't it be an ongoing West Bank-style occupation? You don't see Hamas seizing power in Ramallah or rockets being launched from Hebron - and the people there hate Israel every bit as much as the ones in Gaza do.
I understand that would be unpopular internationally, but what else is new?
I believe the casualty level necessary to subdue Hamas and occupy Gaza would be unacceptable even to Israel’s closest ally. If Israel had gone in blasting in the first two days after the attack, they might have gotten away with it. By now, though, the moment has passed, and I don’t see any possible path toward occupation.
Who is going to stop them and how? It may be "unacceptable" but in practice "unacceptable" things get accepted all the time.
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I don't think a world were every couple decades Palestine kills one thousand Israelis and Israel then kills ten thousand Palestinians is the ideal equilibrium. Although given how messy this conflict is, maybe it is
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Israel needs to find a way to make Palestinians wealthier so they lose interest in fighting. The only bomb that can pacify a restive population is a money bomb.
How are they supposed to do that while Hamas runs the place?
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Palestinians get wealthier -> Palestinians use wealth to buy weapons -> Palestinians attack Israel more effectively.
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You mean like the work permit program that was going on and growing prior to the attack?
Totally insufficient. Unemployment was massive.
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arent they doing that? remove hamas, demilitarize gaza like they did west bank. West Bank is much wealthier than Gaza.
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