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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Take a look at this: https://www.awrad.org/en/article/10719/Wartime-Poll-Results-of-an-Opinion-Poll-Among-Palestinians-in-the-West-Bank-and-Gaza-Strip

See the tables of results. The press release doesn't mention the objectionable bits.

68% of Palestinians "extremely support" the October 7 terror. Only 7% oppose it.

Edit: 68% of those in WB. 59.3% overall. 46.6% in GS for "extremely support".

But for WB + GS overall you have 75% who support or extremely support the terror.

Yeah, 68% in the West Bank. Those in Gaza sit at 46%.

Secondly, the poll in question doesn't appear to differentiate between the violent attack on the 7th and the civilian casualties. This makes it a weighing game for the pollee - how much do they support the fight for independence vs. condemning attacks against innocent Israelis? W/o knowing this, we cannot know what people are saying they support.

Even in Gaza only 21% oppose it. 64% support or strongly support.

I don't think you can say that the attack on 07.10 was both a military attack and a terror attack as two separate things. The killing and capturing of civilians was the main objective. Most of the killed were civilians. They knocked out some military posts to have free rein. And they paraded corpses and hostages in the streets of Gaza and shared videos of the butchery.

The point I'm getting at is that we don't know what the Palestinians think of killing civilians because that policy is inherently bundled with Hamas' actions as a group enacting violence to remove Israel from the land. If a socialist in WW2 were to support the US/UK against the Nazis, your logic would have this person counted as a capitalist since they aren't rejecting the violence.

Secondly, you can find videos of a great many things. For example, a video with dozens or even hundreds of rioters burning a building down in the name of their cause. That video doesn't necessarily tell you what the supporters of the cause think as a whole.

If a socialist in WW2 were to support the US/UK against the Nazis, your logic would have this person counted as a capitalist since they aren't rejecting the violence.

The logic wouldn't say that they are a capitalist, the logic would say that they are a supporter of the kind of violence that the US/UK uses against the Nazis. Likewise, Palestinians are mostly supporters of the kind of violence Hamas uses, which is killing civilians.

The logic wouldn't say that they are a capitalist, the logic would say that they are a supporter of the kind of violence that the US/UK uses against the Nazis.

This is too literal a reading, the consequence of which is that you completely miss the argument being made. The socialist has two conflicting values in the conflict: fighting capitalism and fighting fascism. It would be illogical to conclude that socialist doesn't care about the former just because he supports the latter in this hypothetical.

When a socialist supports violence by a capitalist state against the Nazis, that's only "support of capitalism" in a very indirect way. They're not fighting the Nazis by trying to impose capitalism on them; they're doing it like any other state would fight a war. The connection between supporting Hamas in this war and Hamas killing civilians on purpose is far more direct; Hamas started it by killing civilians, and killing civilians is one of the tactics they use as part of the war.

Hamas started it by killing civilians, and killing civilians is one of the tactics they use as part of the war.

Yes, in the name of fighting Israel. That is a key component to the issue - the Palestinians would probably support anyone willing to fight for them against the nation they perceive as responsible for the slow dying of their people. We also know that American presidents see a boost to their approval when they declare war - why wouldn't a similar logic apply to any perceived support of Hamas?

In your scenario, the US isn't being capitalist in the name of fighting Nazis.

There's a difference between "doing X in order to do Y" and "doing X while doing Y". Capitalists fighting Nazis is the latter; Hamas is the former.

More comments

They are currently being bombed, though. That tends to cause people to circle the wagons. At present I very much doubt any Palestinians will say no to anything that sounds even remotely anti-Israeli.

June 2023, 1200+ adults in Gaza Strip: https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2088%20English%20full%20text%20June%202023.pdf

Page 25.

70% support or strongly support killing civilians inside Israel.

Sure?

It's not news to me that the Palestinians hate the Israelis. Even well before October 7, I am confident that it would be suicidal to walk down the street in Gaza City wearing a kippah, or bearing any sign of either Jewish or Israeli identity. The Palestinians have never liked or empathised with the Israelis.

I expect anti-Israeli feeling to have only intensified as a result of October 7 and the aftermath - so these sets of figures don't surprise me.

If it's not news to you, why did you try to argue that the results in the first poll was due to the current retaliatory bombing?

I wasn't arguing that they were entirely due to the current war, or that in the absence of the invasion Palestinians would be kind and welcoming towards Israelis or anything like that.

What I believe, in plain terms, is that 1) the Palestinians in general have an extremely negative view of Israel and the Jews, and 2) the current war is likely to only increase both the prevalence and the intensity of those views, and discredit any Palestinian moderates (who were indeed only a minority previously).