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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29083 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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The following is a comment about US media, not about the war in Gaza.

Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.

I'm not shocked that Hamas doesn't surrender, but I am shocked that the option is never even mentioned in passing by the talking heads. Do they not think of it? Is it too far outside the bounds of normal discourse? If this were any other military conflict in all of history, it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.

And if they did surrender, then what? Likud is dedicated to preventing a Palestinian state and certainly accept one state solution with full voting rights for all palestinians. Palestinians were fighting with Israel back before Hamas even existed.

Charitably, the media isn't supposed to be giving advice on how best to end international conflicts, and should restrict itself to reporting the facts of the situation. If no discussion of unconditional surrender has occurred between Israel and Hamas, then there's no reason to bring it up.

But you, me, and my neighbor's 4-year-old daughter know the real reason the media is funneling footage of "humanitarian disasters" into American homes. Israel is the neocon darling and American Middle Eastern foothold oppressing the religion of peace, and Israel (and, by proxy, the American military) must be made to suffer for its transgressions. It's the same playbook that Walter Cronkite and his ilk used to make the Vietnam War lose all popular support. The military is one of the few institutions that the left has never completely captured, and so it seeks to undermine and rally public opinion against Israel.

The left loses if Hamas is publicly humiliated by Israel, which is what an "unconditional surrender" amounts to. Israel losing also weakens the United States military significantly, and while I doubt anyone in the media seriously thinks Israel will lose to Hamas, they still stand to gain if Israel loses in the court of public opinion.

So far you’ve been getting a lot of replies saying that the US can only pressure Israel, but not Hamas. This is false. Hamas is not a leaderless organization, it’s actually very well organized and its leadership is known to all.

The heads of Hamas, those that are parallel to its government rather than military leadership, are situated in Qatar. Their locations are known. They frequently fly out of Qatar, to any place they wish, such as Egypt just recently. They are, of course, war criminals. However, there is literally no effort or any calls to bring any of these men to justice, or any sanctions on Qatar. This is despite providing direct monetary aid to Hamas, as well as the aforementioned sheltering of Hamas leadership.

Qatar is a US ally in the region, the US even has bases there (unlike Israel), the US is one of (if not the) largest importer to Qatar. In other words, the US has a lot of leverage on Qatar, if only anyone wished to use it.

Keep all this in mind when reading all these other replies.

This is false. Hamas is not a leaderless organization, it’s actually very well organized and its leadership is known to all.

Oh surely. I think the interesting factor here is that Hamas doesn't have a monopoly on violence in Gaza. Possibly even by design, Islamic Jihad and other groups have the ability to independently throw a wrench in things. As I recall, those groups (broadly non-Hamas militants) had a decent fraction of the hostages taken.

So even if you did turn the screws on Hamas (via Qatar or otherwise) it doesn't solve Israel's problem. Everyone in the West dreams of some Palestinian leader that has a monopoly on force and hence can negotiate for an end to armed resistance in return for whatever is on offer. In reality, if they tried they might quickly lose their position or their limbs.

Yes, Jihad is the biggest and most well-known not-Hamas in Gaza. There’s also several hamullahs (extended family? Not sure how to translate) with their own militias, and some AQ aligned organization. Other than Jihad, they exist only due to Hamas tolerance - and in any case, they’re all quite killable.

If no Palestinian leader is capable of ruling his people for the better, then I’m quite OK with sending them to a far off land that’s willing to take them for enough money - I don’t think we tried Angola or DRC yet.

I think it depends on context. If Hamas tried to kill/suppress them all as part of a deal with Israel or the US in which they were viewed (rightly/wrongly) as giving up the cause, I strongly suspect they might not fare well.

Could be. Hard to tell. They might have a problem of internal rebellion, anyway, making it mostly a moot exercise.

The US allows and even encourages Qatari relationships with the Taliban, Iran, Hamas and other anti-US groups because it makes for a good meeting place, offers near-unlimited access for US intelligence for wiretaps etc, and is trusted enough by most of those groups. Both Hamas and Qatar are well aware that the former is in the latter because the US tolerates it, and this arrangement works for all three parties. Qatar is a core part of the GCC, but being less hostile to the Iranian axis suits almost everyone, and both the Saudis and the US know that Qatar depends upon Iran not extending its natural gas claim in the main Persian Gulf (which Qatar would be unable to defend itself against) into Qatar’s larger field, which many in Iran would like to claim.

Even granting all of that, it still stands in contradiction to the majority of replies here re: America not being able to influence Hamas, or at least the perception thereof in the protestors’ minds.

It seems we only know how to hand our allies the rope with which to hang us, under the pretense of allowing us to see from a higher vantage point. See also: Pakistan with Osama. Perhaps we do gain from these relationships in some way, but it would seem we are getting the worse end of the bargain, and the relationships will end unfavorably to us in all cases.

People just correctly identify total surrender by any side as impossible and correctly don't consider impossible options.

Also, the US has leverage on Israel and no leverage on a Hamas that's already maximally sanctionned. So only the former's conduct is even up for debate from their point of view.

And those Arab countries that are in the converse situation really don't want to draw any attention to the fact that they're looking the other way.

it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.

Nonsense. The Taliban didn't surrender to overwhelming American might. This isn't how asymmetric warfare works, the lack of a definite end to conflict is the main weapon of the weaker force.

Also, the US has leverage on Israel and no leverage on a Hamas that's already maximally sanctionned.

Not at all, Hamas is fully dependent on NGO aid to maintain its rule. There is almost no government in the world that would be easier to smoke out with a US led coalition that does the easy thing of "doing nothing."

This isn't how asymmetric warfare works, the lack of a definite end to conflict is the main weapon of the weaker force.

And hence at second-level, the absence of a power structure that can end the conflict is itself a weapon of asymmetric warfare.

So far Hamasniks have been surrendering just fine. They’re also perfectly capable of dying en-mass. Only their leadership in Qatar remains untouchable to us (Israelis) for now, but hopefully that will change once the hostages are out, or at least accounted for.

Shit like this is why I roll my eyes at the /pol/-trolls who try to paint Israel as being uniquely duplicitous for a US ally.

Like, tell me you don't know shit about middle-eastern history or politics without using those words.

It’s very clear that most people opining on the subject couldn’t even point to it on a map, let alone speak of any history. However, I can’t just roll my eyes and move on, since eventually this will come back to bite us (Israelis) in the ass.

Israel as a major industrialized nation is probably ahead of France in the list of non-Anglo US allies. The amount the French stole with sexy women stationed in airports is much more than Israel ever took.

The amount the French stole with sexy women stationed in airports is much more than Israel ever took.

I think you're right and given that the Vietnam War started as the US bailing the French out of their colonial fuck-ups I'd say they owe us a whole lot more than whatever's on the books.

They’d probably say the US owes them more for independence.

I'd say that debt was paid off after the US bailed them out of back-to-back world wars.

Paid in full saving them from the Germans. Twice.

Oh no ze Germans are coming, we can't just let them make trains come on time and grow our GDP!

Can you imagine if the French soccer team was full of blond-haired, blue-eyed men instead of beautiful diversity?

Indeed.

An insurgent doesn't need to win, they just need to not lose.

As I keep saying, I think a lot of these talking heads are not "anti-war" as much as they are "on the other side" and trying to launder their desire to see Hamas win through a wash of humanitarian concern.

As seen in Vietnam, when prominent "Anti-war" voices could often be seen demonizing US soldiers while happily posing with North Vietnamese artillery and praising the virtue of the Viet Cong. They didn't want the war to end so much as they wanted their side to lose (so they could then proclaim cultural victory).

Would that lead to peace? Or would it just lead to different terrorist attacks on some later timetable? It's not clear at all that it would.

What peace offer is on the table for Hamas from Israel? Really, what is it? Unconditional surrender doesn't even really have a meaning here: when Japan surrendered it was assumed that Japan would still exist as an entity and Japanese people would live there. Is that the deal for Gaza, or will they be expelled? Murdered? Never allowed to leave or to prosper?

r would it just lead to different terrorist attacks on some later timetable?

One does not expect terrorist attacks to end, but at least you could hope for the end of State-Sponsored terror attacks if Hamas surrendered, then the Gazans elected responsible leadership, or a coup by an Attaturk-like dictator remade the State of Gaza into a more normal country than it was on 10/6, because their government wishes to be at war with Israel forever.

Gazans already had Gaza on 10.6, they didn’t need any offers. Now they might have occupation back.

Whenever the mainstream US news covers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza (and the suffering is absolutely horrendous), the underlying subtext I get is "Israel should stop assaulting Gaza". But there's another path that would also end the humanitarian disaster, and that's the unconditional surrender of Hamas.

They probably would argue that Israel has obligations to support humanitarian aid into the area, both legally (international law) and morally, as the formal state with a much stronger military and large amounts of US backing. It's worth noting that this was exactly what deBoer's position was (is?), and he's hardly as bad-faith as some actors.

We have diplomatic relations that we could use to pressure Israel into stopping the assault. Israel has a recognized and legitimate power structure with leaders who we can negotiate with and who could change their policy if we convinced them to.

There things are not true of Hamas. It would be nice if they surrendered, but there's no singular leader or group who could command that to happen and be obeyed, and we wouldn't have meaningful diplomatic relations with them if they would.

Speech is usually a consequentialist act designed to achieve a specific outcome.

Remember the story of the madman, who wants to hide his madness and decides to say only true things; after he has stopped 50 people on the street to emphatically tell them that the sky is blue, everyone knows he is mad for sure.

People don't just go around saying every true thing they know just because they're true; they say the things they think will accomplish what they want in the saying.

Saying that you wish Israel would stop is not very likely to end the violence at this point, but there's at least a clear and straightforward causal mechanism by which it might minorly contribute to something like that happening in the future.

Saying that you wish Hamas would surrender (as an American at least) has no clear path by which it could have any effect on the ongoing conflict. If anything, the most likely outcome of people saying such things en masse is that it splits the conversation into 'teams' (arguments as soldiers) over which side should be responsible for ending the conflict, thus taking responsibility away from Israel and weakening the international pressure on them to stop.

Thus, it is reasonably interpreted as a wish for Israel to continue its attacks, since that would be the most straightforward strategic outcome accomplished by insistently pushing that narrative into the public conversation.

That's why people aren't saying it.

There's presumably very little outside of direct massive intervention (of the sort that Israel hasn't asked for and almost certainly doesn't want) that US could do to make Hamas surrender, whereas there's a large amount of levers US can use to affect Israeli policy, including making it stop assault Gaza.

I've often seen these demands of "why condemn country/instance X (a Western country, or an ally/vassal of the West) but not country/instance Y (hostile to the West)" from various instances (media, "the left", whatever), and I cannot help to think that, insofar as the country Y is indeed the kind of a country/instance whose policy the West can do very little to affect outside of direct violence, this is a demand for a literal virtue signal. There's no perceivable point beyond "you should do this, because I'd consider you doing this a positive demonstration from you".

That just incentivizes countries to be anti-USA and irrationally belligerent in the future. You have to think about this from a time consistent perspective.

Not really, considering that being anti-USA and irrationally belligerent, unless there are special conditions like here, create an increasing risk of the said direct massive intervention.

The following is a comment about US media, not about the war in Gaza.

The comment is about what the comment is about, regardless of prefatory statements.

I'm not shocked that Hamas doesn't surrender, but I am shocked that the option is never even mentioned in passing by the talking heads. Do they not think of it?

They think it's ridiculous to consider that to be a possibility. Either they're pro-Hamas, or they consider Hamas to be like a force of nature that they cannot affect, unlike Israel.

I am not American, so cant comment on the exact tone of US media. But perhaps they bought in to the whole "only democracy in the Middle-East" and "most moral army in the would" slogans. After all, Hamas is roundly condemned as a terrorist organization by both sides of the political establishment in the US (and nearly the whole of Europe), so perhaps it doesnt really make sense to make moral appeals to them?

I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender. While I agree that Israel is likely to win a decisive military victory, I think Hamas so far is winning a slight PR victory and a perhaps even bigger political victory. I dont have any illusions about how Hamas value the sanctity of life, either Palestinian or Israeli, so I think the chance of a political victory is much more important for them in the long term.

It would be an understatement to say that the pre October 7th status quo was dire for the Palestinians. With between 700 000 - 800 000 settlers on the West Bank gradually encroaching on more and more Palestinian land, and talk of annexation of the West Bank becoming mainstream in Israel (Netanyahu had this a campaign promise in 2019 and won the subsequent election). This was all happening with the tacit approval of the US (and probably also most Arab countries), the dream of a two state solution was more or less dead. With this as a back drop Palestinians were witnessing Arab countries pursuing a politic of normalization with Israel, while giving lip service to the Palestinian cause. From the ground in Palestine the status quo probably looked a lot like a slow moving ethnic cleansing. Palestinians gradually getting more sympathy in the US and Europe did not seem to help their case at all, and as we saw earlier this year, having the sympathy of western populations did nothing to help the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh against being ethnically cleansed by a western ally.

Now fast forward a couple of months to today, the plight of Gaza is front and centre again. The US is finding itself increasingly isolated on the global stage as Israels guardian angel. Arab countries had to distance themselves at least optically from anything Israel does. Behind closed doors many of them are probably wondering if a normalization will be possible at all with the current Israeli political scene. We are also in a situation where there is a real chance that Bidens reelection might be in jeopardy due to his support of Israel. Just the perception that this is a possibility is an unprecedented win for the Palestinian cause, and we now have Blinked take some symbolic steps to be seen addressing Palestinian concerns, such as sanctioning violent settlers.

If we assume that there are countries pulling the strings of Hamas, perhaps Qatar, Iran and even Russia, the case for a political win becomes even stronger. Did anyone even notice or care that a female Iranian dissident won the nobel price just now? Does the liberation of Iranian women even register to people when 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza are being bombed daily? However no country has had a bigger PR win over the war in Gaza than Russia. Not only is the attention towards Ukraine diminished, the passion in the "slava Ukraini" camp has been decimated. Many people who thought they where "on the right side of history" and supporting the little guy Ukraine against the bigger aggressor, are having second thoughts about the morals of their side, which is cheering on the Israeli offensive in Gaza. I clearly see this among my normie friends in Norway. People are seeing the Ukraine conflict more in term of realist politics and not absolute morality, and if you are being a realist, perhaps it makes sense to let Russia keep the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine for a ceasefire.

In this scenario the death of many thousands more Palestinian children seems like a small price to pay for what Hamas has achieved.

I think the really interesting question here is if Hamas would have anything to gain by an unconditional surrender.

One would have to look at this both from a foreign-policy and a domestic-policy perspective as well. Domestically, Hamas loses ground to Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa Brigade if they are seen as conciliatory to Israel. This is one reason Hamas remains competitive with the PNA.

Or from a second-order game theoretic perspective, the Palestinian power structure incentives this kind of distributed authority. In a game of chicken, they've dismantled the steering wheel and dispersed it into a dozen little pieces.

There is evidence that Israel is “punishing” the civilian population, which is a war crime. The party that is morally responsible for the misconduct is the only party that should be asked to stop. The US has influence over Israel, but has zero influence over Hamas. It’s brought up that Hamas has tunnels under buildings, and this is to explain Israeli actions, but saying “Hamas should surrender” because of potential Israeli war crimes would be a bad precedent for human rights. Consider a Russian and Ukrainian war where Russia targets civilian homes in Kyiv because they could be housing reserve troops. Would you expect the media to bring up the option that “the Kyiv Regime can surrender to avoid being war crime’d”?

(Just in the past couple weeks we saw Israeli snipers shoot women outside of a Catholic church (leading the Pope to condemn the attack as terrorism) and Israel killing their own hostages, who were walking outside waving a white flag without a shirt. This last one is the strongest evidence we have of Israeli misconduct / war crimes. What is the probability that they accidentally shot these men, versus that they shoot men in most situations where they come across young men?)

who were walking outside waving a white flag without a shirt.

Wasn't this just recently part of an ambush in the area? Mentioning it makes me think you are uniformed or trolling.

That’s interesting, because you mentioning that makes me think you are either uninformed or shilling. It’s a densely populated city, you don’t get to spray and pray because on a different day in a nearby area your soldiers were allegedly fired upon. That justifies killing every male in every location where you have been shot. And there are a lot of locations like this, all over Gaza.

We are talking about a specific false flag tactic though. When you're country's military consistently uses underhanded tactics its going to set the opposing military on edge, which will lead to such things.

People who have cancer often undergo chemotherapy. This procedure involves pumping toxins into the body to kill cancerous cells. Of course some healthy non-cancerous cells do get caught up in this and die. Like many other things in life, chemotherapy comes in different strengths, if a cancer is small you go for low dosage chemotherapy where very few helathy cells get killed in the crossfire. But if the cancer is very big you need to go for agressive chemotherapy because the low dosage stuff won't get rid of the cancer. This agressive chemotherapy will kill lots of healthy cells too, but that doesn't mean the chemotherapy as a whole was a bad idea.

In much the same way Hamas is a cancer on the face of this earth this has grown way too big. Low dosage stuff like precision strikes and being 150% extra sure you're not shooting at people who aren't threats (when by and large 90%+ of the people you encounter will be threats) before pulling the trigger isn't strong enough to excise Hamas from this world. That requires high dosage chemotherapy which will regrettably have side effects including some number of civilian casualites. It's sad, but the alternative (Hamas is left to fester) is even worse.

Bad metaphor. In this case you're not saving the 'patient' getting the chemo, you're saving their neighbor.

If your cancer could be cured by giving your neighbor chemotherapy, maybe you could ask for their consent to undergo it to help you, or maybe you could pay them.

If you broke into their house with a gun and abducted them to get chemo tied down in a basement until you were healthy again, that's not exactly an unalloyed good that everyone should grudgingly endorse as necessary.

Palestinians are also suffering from Hamas, who prefer to divert aid into missiles rather than development.

As is their revealed preference.

You understand this comment reads exactly like something Hitler would say in a speech about Jews, right? I suppose he would use the term parasite, or diseased vermin. Just like not every Jew was a Bolshevik extremist (see: Winston Churchill’s comments), not every Palestinian is a Hamas extremist. Punishing Palestinians as a collective is not morally permissible. And incidentally, were Britain to treat the Jewish colonizers like this in the 30s and 40s (punishing the collective for hiding terrorists), it’s doubtful Zionism would ever have got up and running. Their maximum collective punishment was a curfew — should they have bombed them to the abyss instead?

This reasoning essentially amounts to "Hitler treated Jews like enemies. So we should never treat anyone like enemies."

Whether a comparison to disease is appropriate is true or false on the object level; a blanket condemnation makes no sense. You're also glossing over the difference between comparing an ethnic group to a disease, and comparing a military/terrorist oprganization to a disease.

If Israel wanted to punish Palestinians ‘as a collective’, they’d have killed many more of them. Gaza is very small, a few targeted strikes could kill 50,000 civilians a week, maybe even in a night. We know the kind of casualty counts real indiscriminate bombing attacks on civilian targets produce, and they’re simply not evident in this conflict.

Punishing Palestinians as a collective is not morally permissible

The Palestinian people as a whole are not being punished as a collective, they are just collateral damage which Israel doesn't care about. It's a different thing. If on my way to work I step on some ants and crush them to death I'm not punishing them, they are just collective damage that I don't care about in pursuit of my goal (for me getting to work, for Israel the eradication of Hamas).

it’s doubtful Zionism would ever have got up and running

Zionism has a long and storied history going back to Theodor Herzl since the time of the Dreyfus Affair in 1894. The British promised the Jewish community a home in Palestine in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration (even ignoring the fact that simultaneously they had promised the land to Hussein bin Ali, king of Hejaz, an Arab leader, for his support vs the Ottomans as well as secretly dividing the exact same land between themselves and France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but Perfidious Albion is like that; and of course after WWI when it came time to make good on their contradictory promises the Sykes-Picot Agreement won out and the British kept the land for themselves, giving it to neither Jew nor Arab), not just the 30s and 40s.

Their maximum collective punishment was a curfew — should they have bombed them to the abyss instead?

Not initially no, you start light and ramp up until the terrorism stops. They should have been as severe as needed to stop the violence and no more. Same with Hamas, Israel has already tried all sorts of lighter punishments to improve Hamas's behaviour but so far they haven't worked.

The idea that it's ok to kill thousands of innocent people so long as you were indifferent to killing them instead of wanting to kill them, is exactly why everyone needs to get the fuck away from virtue ethics before it does any more harm.

This is bog-standard international law that's been around for ages. One cannot intentionally kill civilians but attacks that incidentally kill civilians are permissible so long as the attack is intended to achieve a significant military goal.

Perhaps it's wrong, but if it is wrong, the problem is much deeper than virtue ethics.

Sure, but I think we were talking about morality and what we think Israel should do, morally speaking. Not what the law allows or doesn't. There are good reasons for those to be different things.

A subset of X attacks Y. Y responds in part to deter future attacks by X. Y kills some of X accidentally (including those uninvolved in the attack). Z claims “that’s collective punishment.” Y responds I am not trying to collective punish X; the only way to eliminate the capacity of X to attack Y is this attack. Otherwise, you effectively give X a deadly analog to the heckler’s veto.

Not sure why virtue ethics requires this. Seems like you can also get there using utilitarian reasoning.

That's an ok argument for why Israels actions are ok. It's just not the argument I was responding to:

The Palestinian people as a whole are not being punished as a collective, they are just collateral damage which Israel doesn't care about. It's a different thing.

I think that’s the exact argument.

Intellectual honesty is a well-defined and commonly used term. I think "intellectual bravery" should be part of that arsenal as well.

In simple terms, the willingness to think about the unthinkable and speak about the unspeakable. To actually "go there". And by this I don't mean to think about killing all Palestinians, but more so to ask "So what happens if Israel stops now?". You, me and the talking heads and the people in the halls of power all know the answer to that question. The answer being that Palestinians will forever continue to launch terrorist attacks for Israel doing anything short of just packing up and leaving the Middle East altogether.

The intellectual cowardice here, is the Elite (media/journalist/public) class not having the balls to tell this to the masses. The media is a mirror for the masses and the masses just want bad things to stop happening NOW. They don't have the intellectual faculties to simulate the potential outcomes of doing so.

They know it, they think about it, just like you and me. The masses don't.

They know the outcome, and they are acting on it. The international community has been doing everything in its power to prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict as much as possible. There’s the very existence of UNRWA as one clear example, and this current iteration is just one more example - albeit one with an alibi.

I can’t quite find the motive, other than just Jew-hatred, but action speaks clear enough.

Intellectual honesty is a well-defined and commonly used term. I think "intellectual bravery" should be part of that arsenal as well.

There's already a word for that. We call it autism.

I kid, but only kind of. Usually when someone is being 'brave' in this sense, what they're really doing is not understanding that speech is a consequentialist act designed to accomplish specific goals on the world. They don't understand what other people are trying to accomplish with the things they say, or what the consequences or their own 'brave' speech will be.

As I and others already pointed out, the reason people talk about Israel stopping instead of Hamas stopping is that we have diplomatic levers on Israel such that saying they should stop might actually get them to be careful about collateral damage and ratchet down the civilian body count, whereas us saying that about Hamas has no way to affect them and will instead muddy the waters in ways that give Israel more leeway to commit atrocity.

Someone who had no understanding of that might notice everyone saying one true thing while not saying another true thing, make up some half-assed sinister explanation for why, and then be 'brave' enough to say the thing everyone else isn't saying, really loudly and stridently and all the time.

Without realizing that they're the one who doesn't understand what people are actually doing in this conversation at all, and that they're a bull in a china shop causing damage they probably wouldn't endorse if they understood it.

Which is not to say contrarian speech is always bad! It's not at all uncommon for the public perception of an issue to get fixated on an incorrect or misguided model, where people are manipulating their speech in ways that are unnecessary and harmful, and it is useful for someone who recognizes that happening to push back.

But that should be a considered and sober decision by someone who understands the stakes and intentions of everyone involved and what effects they intend to have with their contrarian speech. Not someone blindly trying to be 'brave' by saying the thing no one else is, as if everyone else couldn't possibly have any kind of good reason for all arriving at that decision at the same time.

The phrase 'Would you jump off a bridge just because nobody else is' comes to mind. That's certainly a type of bravery, but one that we want to be careful about encouraging.

(and, although I don't know that this board is very concerned with ableism in general: I've taken the assessment tests on my own, I would probably be diagnosed low-level autistic if I wanted to get a diagnosis. I'm not just sneering at outsiders here, I'm sharing faults I've found in my own thinking and spent decades trying to learn to compensate for, which I recognize in others at times)

Yeah, even after three decades I still sometimes fall into that same old trap of taking what people say at face value, and of expecting the same of them, as if we spoke to each other in order to exchange epistemically sound information. Which is practically never what regular people actually intend to do in conversation.

There's already a word for that. We call it autism.

No we don't, the defining quality of autism is the lack of awareness. The autist doesn't know that what he is saying is dangerous.

Similar to the difference between launching a monkey into space and asking a man to do the same. A man can be described as "brave" in a way that the monkey is not because the man knows he's strapping himself to a bomb.

I understand and might even agree to your insinuation, but that doesn't apply here.

I know why they are doing as much, for optics and consequentialist reasons. However, they are still cowards because they are choosing the consequences of short-term peace instead of putting an end to the problem. And no I don't think there are any mechanistic barriers to Israel doing the unthinkable, the Arab/Muslim world already hates Israel as much as a human can hate anything ever, they launched 3 holy wars against them with a much shorter laundry list of grievances. Just nuke Gaza and get done with it, or at the every least let it be known that it's on the table, carrots don't work on Arabs. What are the Arabs gonna do? Get more mad?

"So what happens if Israel stops now?". You, me and the talking heads and the people in the halls of power all know the answer to that question. The answer being that Palestinians will forever continue to launch terrorist attacks for Israel doing anything short of just packing up and leaving the Middle East altogether.

I dont see how potential future terrorist attacks are worse than the carnage we are seeing in Gaza today, unless you value Israeli lives much higher than Palestinians. Which I totally can understand that Israel does, but why is it a given that the US population values the safety of Israelis to that extent where the current situation in Gaza is an acceptable trade-off? We are after all talking about the safety of a nuclear armed country with the near unconditional backing of the worlds most powerful state, against a terrorist group that according to Israelis themselves consists of 40 000 men controlling a piece of land under naval blockade and without an airport.

but why is it a given that the US population values the safety of Israelis to that extent where the current situation in Gaza is an acceptable trade-off? We

Because it is in our interest for it to come to a different equilibrium than what it was at on 10/6. Having a terrorist state on the Mediterranean is not good, see, e.g. the Houthi pirate problem on the other side of the canal.

I simply believe peoples are allowed to make war. It's the last argument of kings, and when rulers decide to make it, it's their right by God. Palestinians have consented to rule by Hamas, both by in democratic elections and by failing to remove them. Israelis have consented to rule by Likud, both by democratically electing them and failing to remove them. I have no desire to force some sort optimization where people with different religions, values, cultures, languages, and histories from me have to adopt my values and solve problems as I would prefer that they solve them. They have the right to their own way of life and that includes going to war with their neighbors and the resulting devastation that war my cause in the short term and a hopeful peace in the long term when one side extracts the necessary concessions from the other. Forcing people who hate each other to live as peaceful neighbors is cruel, humiliating, and dehumanizing. They will commit escalating aggressions against each that slowly escalate the hate they hold for each other, which is corrosive to their souls. If they have to settle the matter through war, well that may be painful, but at least their grandchildren may grow up in a world where the matter is resolved.

Israel didn’t make the choice to value Gazan lives less than Israelis. Gaza did when it launched a terrorist attack.

Just like if some breaks into my house, then me killing them isn’t saying anything about how I value life but instead is making a statement about how the criminal values life.

Palestinians or whatever terrorist group they have in power at any given time, probably isn't going to be an existential threat for Israel in any meaningful sense the medium term for the reasons you said. And I am also not really looking into the moral calculus of any of this either.

Game theory, real politik, just plain old politics, the code, whatever you want to call it: Most entities have an implicit assumption that other entities won't get in their face, and if they do, they will be hit for it. Palestine in whatever shape it exits, continues to get in Israel's face.

And I also don't really feel too bad for entities that hit other entities and then get hit back, even if they get hit back really disproportionately hard. That includes Palestinian civilians.

It's not like the poor people of Gaza are held hostage by Hamas. Well they are practically if things like a good economy and future is of concern, but I don't think Gazans want all that more than they want the destruction of Israel. They want Hamas, they still think Oct 7 was a good idea given Israels retaliation, they spit on dead bodies of abductees. Palestinians are maxed out in their antisemitism. In a sane world they would have been eveporated yesterday. They are practically a death cult that is a ticking timebomb and a stain on the middle east.

It's not like the poor people of Gaza are held hostage by Hamas. Well they are practically if things like a good economy and future is of concern, but I don't think Gazans want all that more than they want the destruction of Israel. They want Hamas, they still think Oct 7 was a good idea given Israels retaliation, they spit on dead bodies of abductees. Palestinians are maxed out in their antisemitism. In a sane world they would have been eveporated yesterday. They are practically a death cult that is a ticking timebomb and a stain on the middle east.

You are calling for an eradication of a people and yet you are attacking them for their extremism. Clearly you demonstrate an extremism of far worse proportions here and by going that far are demonstrating the wrongness of your position. I highly doubt when you have such a pro mass murder position today, with so little to excuse it you would be more sympathetic to Israelis if you were in the Palestinians position.

This is why most of the world and majority of American youth is against Israel's attrocities and support's ceasefire.

To address what you mention just bellow about the woke.

The problem with the woke is that they are unjust, are racist extremists, have no sense of proportion, have a never ending grievances, explore ethnic issues in the most ridiculously one sided propagandistic manner, don't respect their hated ethnic groups rights and so on and so forth. Actually the zionist ADL types are an important part of it, but granted there can exist those who are more negative of the Jews who also can be part of it. It is your logic here that follows that template whining about Palestinian antisemitism being maxed out while you support their eradication when you say they should had been evaporated yesterday. And of course, like the woke you make no effort to understand any nuance, as if Israel has not been just minding their own business respecting the Palestinians rights, while you are painting it as if Palestinians launch terrorist attacks just cause they are evil.

What is going to happen since you respect power so much, is that this kind of extremism that is indecent will come with a backslash and people losing respect and opposing those having such positions. And this is an understated way to put it.

Personally, I can't but be affected when I see the destroyed homes and the footage of the dead children. To trivialize genuine disgust at civilians being destroyed in one of the worst 21st century atrocities by comparing them to the woke, is promoting a manipulative and false argument. Sympathy over the nonsense promoted by the woke is not warranted. However, precisely because people like you promote their destruction the Palestinians deserve our sympathy in opposition of this agenda and in support of Israel stopping the war.

People are not going to be convinced by this kind of rhetoric which appears unhinged. A picture says a thousand words and the world is going to be increasingly angry at those who commit and support these atrocities.

I don’t think they’re saying that. I think they’re saying that, whatever one’s personal opinions on the conflict, it’s become clear that it’s ‘us’ or ‘them’. Two state solution is dead. Either there will be an Arab Muslim state of Palestine or a Jewish state of Israel. Both sides are clearly aware of this, neither is happy with a compromise position. So the only remaining questions are firstly whether to fight or surrender, and secondly what must be done to win.

I don’t think they’re saying that. I think they’re saying that, whatever one’s personal opinions on the conflict, it’s become clear that it’s ‘us’ or ‘them’. Two state solution is dead. Either there will be an Arab Muslim state of Palestine or a Jewish state of Israel. Both sides are clearly aware of this, neither is happy with a compromise position. So the only remaining questions are firstly whether to fight or surrender, and secondly what must be done to win.

No, the above poster was pretty clear with what they were saying and you shouldn't be sanewashing them. This motte and bailey with the kind of genocidal language and the more vague "its about what must be done to win" is tiresome.

A Jewish Israel already exists. They have won at expense of Palestinians plenty already. Maybe tomorrow you will be calling for them to win some more and promoting the dilemma of Syria, or Lebanon vs Israel. Why expect that the Likudist great Israel project will stop at Gaza?

The question in practice isn't whether it will become an Arab Palestine, but whether it will continue with illegal settlements, mass destruction in gaza that has lead to some of the highest casualties per capita for time of conflict in modern history, blockade, shutting down electricity and food supplies. While many of Israeli elites use the most extreme language about how they support warcrimes, of how they are dealing with animals, how they are to destroy Amalek. Really the question is whether Israel will seize more land and succeed in a second Nakba.

Obviously, almost the entire world agrees that ceasefire is a better move and compromise than Israel continuing this course. You are promoting the fallacy of a false dichotomy here. If people support Israel commiting ethnic cleansing through a very murderous conduct against the Palestinians, they should say this outright. And should stop framing their extreme nationalist and racist preference at expense of Palestinians and in favor of Jews as being about having no alternatives which is false.

Incidentally, lets assume for the sake of discussion that both Palestinian leaders (in Gaza) and Israeli leaders are fanatics and many of their people have been fanaticized in turn in said direction and their dream is the destruction of the other party. In that scenario, we don't really have to adopt fully their perspective and preference. In terms of what pressure has to be enacted, it shouldn't actually respect and allow the desires of Likudists or of Hamas to be realized.

If we are to assume they are both fanatics then let us support the side that doesn't attack neutral ships. Seems like an easy compromise.

Palestine in whatever shape it exits, continues to get in Israel's face.

Hamas does, yes.

But what you're talking about here is collective punishment, and the duty for an ethnic group to police it's own members or face consequences.

This is along the same lines as 'men need to police other men' and 'men need to teach boys not to rape'. It's along the same line as holding all Christians accountable for the Westboro Baptist Church and the evangelicals who got Roe repealed. It's along the same lines as making all white people pay for reparations or take a back seat in hiring until racial inequities have been repaired. And etc.

Which are not things I'm necessarily against! To me, the main difference between these cases is consequentialist, in that on one hand people are maybe being shamed a little and maybe receiving mild financial penalties, and on the other hand thousands of innocents are being killed.

But, people who argue this type of logic in the case of Palestine and Hamas, should realize how the logic applies to other cases where they might be on the other side of the issue.

But what you're talking about here is collective punishment, and the duty for an ethnic group to police it's own members or face consequences.

Correct. If Germans don't think about the consequences of electing a radical party to control the Reichstag, and the Nazis get control of the country and start annexing and invading the neighbors, the result is that other countries declare war on the entire country of Germany and not just on the individuals controlling policy. This is because the basic assumption of the modern nation-state system is that the nation is the sovereign unit, and has the right, ability, and duty to ensure it is governed in the manner it prefers.

If the Palestinians can't even ensure their representatives to the rest of the world match their preferences, then it's hard to call them a "nation" in any meaningful sense.

Hamas is indeed not recognized as the governing body of a nation.

Not for any logical reason. Gaza, from the mid 2000s to 10/7/23 was a sovereign state that was not occupied by any foreign power. The sole reason for them not being recognized internationally was so NGOs and the like could justify sending them lots of money and aid (which they knew would fund terrorism).

De facto, it was.

This is along the same lines as 'men need to police other men' and 'men need to teach boys not to rape'.

What is wrong with those sentiments? Women are physically weaker than men, and most men listen more to male authority figures than female ones. Men are held in check by other men. Even on the most literal level, rape is investigated and rapists arrested by the police and convicted felons incarcerated in prison, both those institutions are largely run by men.

I need to find a poet to immortalise this sequence of events. Brava!

? It’s not an opinion I haven’t expressed before.

Aww, well it's still great even though it wasn't on purpose. Basically guess posted a common (in my experience) progressive misunderstanding of a popular argument here (the actual argument being not that men shouldn't teach boys not to rape but that we already do, and rapists are defectors) and you cut through it by holding them to their word, a rebuttal technique they've used often in the past. Throw in the fact that in isolation someone reading these posts might conclude that guess is right wing and you are left and it's chef's kiss chaotic beauty.

I didn't even advocate for that sentiment!

If Hamas didn't have popular support, I wouldn't make it. If Palestinians have any issue with Hamas at all, its because they aren't gung ho about wiping Jews off the face of the earth enough. Polling data from the West bank shows this.

Doesn't apply because the Palestinians aren't in a position to police hamas, they WANT hamas to do what Hamas does.

It’s hard not to think the Palestinians are making the right choice given their political/tribal framework.

After all, is Razib not always telling us that almost all of us modern humans are the result of a thousand-person population bottleneck 100,000 years ago or whatever? From the perspective of tribal survival, a few highly fecund people surviving while preserving their identity is preferable to the whole population assimilating into global homogenization. Jews ourselves did this, it would have been easier at many points to assimilate, but it took until the 18th century for most of us to start (and even then, the future of the Jewish people is reliant on those who refused to do so), so one can only be so angry at the Arabs for doing the same.

The issue is more that the Palestinians know that Israel cannot fully eradicate them for political reasons, and therefore that from a game theoretical perspective, they only need to refuse to surrender for long enough that the ‘international community’ ie United States tells the Israelis to knock it off. Arguably nobody has done more to make actual genocide less internationally acceptable than Jews, so again this is largely a problem of our own making.

The final issue is that unlike in other tribal post-colonial populations, there is no group of ‘moderates’ who can be trusted to police the Palestinian population. Sure, Israel supported the Islamists against the ‘secular’ Arab-nationalists-with-socialist-characteristics, but the PLO was also a terrorist organization that had no problem killing Israeli civilians and had maximalist aims, so as distasteful as Islamism may be it’s not actually ‘worse’ than the alternative and, crucially, makes Palestinians less sympathetic for Western publics themselves dealing with Islamist terror.

The longstanding goal of Likud has been to find some other Arab nation to govern Palestinian Arabs in areas A and B and in Gaza. But while Israel’s Arab neighbors in Jordan and Egypt have no great fondness for Palestinian militants, they (smartly) choose to blanket refuse to govern the Palestinians, preferring to leave the problem in Israel’s hands.

The Kushner-MBS plan seems to have been (reading between the lines) for the Saudis to take on that duty, granting them the privilege of governing all three primary Islamic holy sites (the Kaaba in Mecca, Mohammed’s tomb in Medina and now Al Aqsa in Jerusalem) in exchange for policing the Palestinians. But that’s delayed now, a big success for Iran, so there are no good options for Israel.

As someone of gentile European descent, I'm descended from assimilated Celts and Germans, who were in turn descended from assimilated Bell Beaker people, who were descended from assimilated early European farmers and so on. Why do you need to keep your identity to survive? The Palestinians themselves were not always Arabs or Muslims.

Of course they could become another people and still reproduce, their lineages would still continue (albeit likely with far lower birthrates). But their identity would arguably be lost, which they seem to care about.

Why should Gaza accept being locked in a small open air prison in which they are under a blockade? Why should they accept continuously expanding Israeli settlements that slowly ethnically cleanse Palestinians? Why should they accept being second class citizens on their ancestor's land compared to recent arrivals from Eastern Europe? The option of cooperating with being ethnically cleansed because it will be nicer doesn't really make sense.

The best comparison to Palestine is the French in Algeria. France entered Algeria in 1830 and stayed for 132 years. That is 57 years longer than Israel has existed. There were 1.6 million ethnic French in Algeria. Many had lived there for generations when they moved home.

There are 2.3 million people in Gaza, making it a large city, 3.2 million on the west bank and 2.1 million arab citizens of Israel. Furthermore, there is also Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have a young population and a growing population. Their best bet is to do what the Algerians did in the 50s and 60s, simply make occupying them unsustainable. The French shot lots of Algerians, jailed lots of Algerians and won almost every battle. The Palestinians are not going to run out of people. Even with 20 000 dead in Gaza over the past 2.5 months, 15 000 have been born during the same time. The Palestinians are fighting an existential threat and have to push back continuously.

The Iraq war was a massive drain on the US. Israel has about 5.7 million jews not counting Haredis who don't pull their weight. They are not going to be able to fight an equivalent to the Iraq war. The Palestinians have a genuine chance of making Israel unsustainable. They can force Israel to have a huge prison population, to have a continuously mobilized army and to be in a constant state of turmoil.

Why should Gaza accept being locked in a small open air prison in which they are under a blockade?

They shouldn't. They should become a normal nation like the rest of us. The only reason they are under a weak blockade (its almost insulting to call it that TBH) is because they keep making war with their neighbor.

The Iraq war was a massive drain on the US.

The Iraq War wasn’t even the tiniest drain on the US’ resources. The US military had 1.4 million personnel in 2003, only 130,000 were required to totally destroy the Iraqi state.

So a tiny fraction of 2% of GDP was being spent on Iraq. Some pro-US analysts estimate Russia might spend 10% of GDP on the Ukraine war in 2023 all-in.

This is before considering that the Israeli advantage actually increases with drone warfare and automated defense tech, which has to be smuggled into Gaza but which can be publicly bought or even produced in huge quantities in Israel, which is also a country where the biggest constraint on offensive warfare is an extremely low casualty tolerance.

It pains me to read these tired talking points on the Motte of all places. This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off their usual combination of strings handed down to them from the hivemind.

Why should Gaza accept being locked in a small open air prison in which they are under a blockade?

They created that situation for themselves by not chilling down with the suicide bombings and indiscriminate rocket fire. It's like yeah their situation sucks, but no one asks why are they in the situation to begin with.

Why should they accept being second class citizens on their ancestor's land compared to recent arrivals from Eastern Europe?

Because they launched 3 wars with help of their coreligionists and lost all of them. Starting a war hands you down the downsides of losing it.

The option of cooperating with being ethnically cleansed because it will be nicer doesn't really make sense.

20% of Israel is Arab. Ethnically no different than Palestinians. They got work visas and got entires into Israel, maybbe after a decade or two with no constant rocket fire and terrorist attacks, that work visa program could have turned into a permanent residency program.

As for the rest of your comment. You are right. Israels location is deeply deeply unfortunate.

It pains me to read these tired talking points on the Motte of all places. This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off their usual combination of strings handed down to them from the hivemind.

This adds heat to your post, but no light. It's totally unnecessary. Please don't.

This reads like the equivalent a woke college student listing off

While opposing the wokest country in the middle east that is flooding Europe with migrants? The hivemind on this subject is the neo-con war machine and the media dominated by AIPAC and the ADL pushing for more war in the middle east and more refugees to Europe.

They created that situation for themselves by not chilling down with the suicide bombings and indiscriminate rocket fire.

Why would they accept being put in Gaza with their country split into two pieces? Why would they accept not being able to live where they or their parents grew up? If the Israelis could stop the occupying, they wouldn't get hit with rockets.

Because they launched 3 wars with help of their coreligionists and lost all of them

Again, why would they accept becoming refugees and not fight back? They have seen how Israeli zoomer soldiers hide in the bathroom and cry while trying to defend a strong point from an attack from a lightly armed militia. There is nothing that says they can't fight back and win. Fighting a large tank battle might not have been the best option. Fighting with FPV-drones, rockets and ambushes might work. Iraq and Afghanistan are great examples of how globalists were removed from a country by continuous small attacks. The Palestinian population has grown extensively since then. The Irish lost a bunch of armed conflicts against the British before most of Ireland became independent.

that work visa program could have turned into a permanent residency program.

Clearly, the Likud was instead creating a refugee crisis on Europe's boarder by expanding settlements and slowly growing Israel. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, his population is increasingly consisting of a woke people, haredi fundamentalists and muslims.

While opposing the wokest country in the middle east that is flooding Europe with migrants?

Are you talking about Syria or the US? I’m honestly having trouble parsing this line.

Israel is flooding Europe with migrants. Israel has been economically blockading Syria, regularly bombing Syria and has armed all sorts of jihadist groups in Syria. Meanwhile, IsraAID is standing on the beaches of Greece and helping the migrants get into Europe.

Syria had a civil war which sent millions of refugees to Europe. It has nothing to do with Israel, and everything to do with its own regime and sectarian strife.

Israel is not capable of blockading Syria. It makes no geographical sense anyway. Here’s a map.

I haven’t heard of IsraAID until now, so I can’t comment on who they are. I do know that most Israelis would rather Europe not accept any Muslims, as it makes Europe less welcoming to Jews. What Europe chooses to do, however, is their own choice even if I think it’s a dumb choice.

Pro-Israel lobby says 250 activists will meet with their senators and representatives in Washington in a bid to win support Congressional support for military action in Syria.

https://www.haaretz.com/2013-09-07/ty-article/aipac-pushing-hard-for-syria-action/0000017f-f82d-d887-a7ff-f8eddf280000

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-gives-secret-aid-to-syrian-rebels-1497813430

Not to mention regular bombing and missile campaigns against syria.

I do know that most Israelis would rather Europe not accept any Muslims, as it makes Europe less welcoming to Jews

Not the view of ADL, AIPAC, jewish internet defence league or any other mainstream jewish organisation.

None of those are Israelis. Are you replacing “Israeli” with “Jewish” in your mind?

Also, again Syrian refugees are the result of sectarian violence, not US action. Israel is not the US, in any case, even if it were Jewish influence somehow forcing the US to act.

Israel will bomb Syria if needed, especially now with the civil war chaos, but those don’t send refugees to Europe.

Do you concede that Israel did not blockade Syria? Can you explain what made you think it did?

Why would they accept being put in Gaza with their country split into two pieces? Why would they accept not being able to live where they or their parents grew up?

Uh, because they lost the war(s)? They lost the political battle and the actual battle. Where are the Germans firing rockets at Czechoslovakia and demanding an absolutely extraordinary right of return? Why would you ever grant a right of return to a people supporting homicidal maniacs? There's three generations of people born in Gaza now.

If the Israelis could stop the occupying, they wouldn't get hit with rockets.

Gaza was not occupied by Israel until the tanks rolled in a month ago. In fact, Israeli settlements were removed from Gaza in the interest of peace. It's clear how that worked out.

Germans can move to modern day countries that came from Czechoslovakia. There is no reason for them to accept ethnic cleansing. There is no reason for the rest of us to accept an Israeli caused refugee crisis.

Gaza was not occupied by Israel until the tanks rolled in a month ago

It was under a blockade which was an act of war. Hundreds of the attackers who enforced this illegal blockade got what was coming to them. If Gaza is under blockade there is no reason for the people of Gaza not to break it.

Palestinians can also move to any country that will let them in. There aren't very many of those because, unlike the Germans, they have burned their bridges in every nearby Arab state.

There is no reason for them to accept ethnic cleansing.

Lol, okay, hope they are enjoying not accepting it and getting their shit kicked in.

It was under a blockade which was an act of war.

It was under blockade because they literally started shooting rockets at Israel. If they hadn't elected a genocidal party and started a war with the preeminent military power in the region, gaza could have been the Singapore of the Levant at this point.

Palestinians can also move to any country that will let them in.

Why would they move to another country? Why would the rest of the world want an arabic refugee crisis. The best option is not to have millions of Arab refugees, the best option is for millions of Arabs to stay put.

Lol, okay, hope they are enjoying not accepting it and getting their shit kicked in.

The Algerians experienced that, now they have a free state.

It was under blockade because they literally started shooting rockets at Israel

Wonder why people who were shoved into a tiny open air prison while their country was cut in two and is continuously shrinking due to settlements don't fight back. If Israel hadn't been an expansionist aggresor they wouldn't have a rocket problem.

Why would they move to another country?

You tell me - you brought up Germans moving to modern day czechoslovakia.

The Algerians experienced that, now they have a free state.

Pacifying the algerians was not an existential issue for France. The existence of Hamas is an existential issue for Israel.

Wonder why people who were shoved into a tiny open air prison while their country was cut in two and is continuously shrinking due to settlements don't fight back. If Israel hadn't been an expansionist aggresor they wouldn't have a rocket problem.

Daily reminder that:

  • gaza and the West Bank were not Israeli territory until the arabs started and lost the six day war

  • Israel occupied the entire Sinai and returned it to Egypt

  • Egypt did not want Gaza back

  • Jordan stripped West Bank residents of citizenship

  • it wasn't an open air prison until Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and Hamas started to fire rockets at Israel

Losers of history get killed, that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it’s always going to be. Do you have a unique issue with this? Nothing that’s happened to the Palestinians hasn’t happened a thousand times to million different tribes through history.

More comments

Iraq and Afghanistan are great examples of how globalists were removed from a country by continuous small attacks. The Palestinian population has grown extensively since then. The Irish lost a bunch of armed conflicts against the British before most of Ireland became independent.

Both the IRA (and general Irish independence) and the Taliban could easily have been crushed if the relevant armies were willing to be brutal enough. The US could leave Afghanistan a couple thousand lives lighter and a trillion dollars poorer, but otherwise unscathed. The Israelis know it’s a fight for their survival, there is no backstop. The same applies to Vietnam, too. It was never a question of capability, only of will and to some extent geopolitical trade offs.

Peace in Ireland also, of course, involved the British government very overtly constraining unionist militants who were very well armed and who would have made any military attempt by Irish nationalists to take Ulster extremely painful, bloody and quite possibly unsuccessful. The best example of successful terrorist tactics is actually Algeria, except that even in that case the French could have won, De Gaulle just decided that enforcing permanent apartheid status on Algerian Muslims for the sake of the pieds noir was inefficient and risked the socialists, if they ever came to power in France, giving all Algerians French citizenship. Israel doesn’t have a France to return to, and the socialists aren’t going to come to power there any time soon, so again the same logic doesn’t apply.

the wokest country in the middle east that is flooding Europe with migrants

This makes me like Israel even more. Europe deserves another 50 million poor migrants from the third world as punishment for their historical actions as well as for the reification of "consequences" for their idiotic policies of subsidising bad behaviour.

What do you propose happens to the 61% Israelis who are Jews ethnically cleansed from other Middle Eastern nations in the past 100 years? Where do they go back to?

French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.

French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.

Eventually the French will not have a France in the current trajectory and unlike the Israelis they are politically not pro French today in the way Israelis are pro Jewish.

We don't live in a world that the argument in favor of respecting a people's right to exist as a majority in their own homeland is taken for granted. Or to continue to exist in general without demographic replacement and threat of persecution in their own homeland. Especially not by the pro Jewish lobby in western countries which has an isolated sensitivity to the possibility of Jews being oppressed that it doesn't apply to various other groups such as Palestinians, or indeed the French. Do you support France remaining French and the homeland of the French people?

In accordance to the person you are responding to, Israel's occupation makes it unsustainable, especially as Palestinian demographics increase. So the Jews living in Israel have the option to remain to Israel but abandon settlements and the occupation and still have a homeland. Stopping the settlements doesn't stop Israel from existing.

There is also the option of a transformation of Israel into a civic state that is multi-ethnic that grants equal rights to Palestinians even if eventually the Jews become a minority. Jews can have equal rights and live there. Another alternative is a state that is even suspicious of Jewish nationalism in the manner western societies are more anti their own ethnic group's nationalism than those of minorities and is pro mass migration. This wouldn't be a genuinely equal and just society but it would fit with the template of what mainstream liberalism and most influential Jewish ngos support in western countries and under their definition would be anti-racist.

Either scenarios can be be opposed to legitimately, if one consistently oppose such experiments by having reasonable worries in other cases, but not if they aren't. But the first scenario especially does exist in the table as an alternative.

The important issue is that Israel as a Jewish majority state can coexist with respecting the rights of non Jewish minorities in Israel and in Palestine. So it is a false argument to claim that Israel's current course is about its existence, when it is about an extreme nationalist agenda to dominate non Jewish Palestinians, ensure demographic dominance in the future as well and get control and land. Religion and the idea that all of that land and more is God promised land is also not irrelevant to this conflict. It would also be nice if Israel tried to police some of the religious intolerance towards the Christian community living in Israel and punish those spitting on them.

It's also worth mentioning that Christians have been ethnically cleansed from most countries in the Middle East post WWI.

Lebanon was a majority Christian country until quite recently.

I wonder why the mainstream press in the West almost never covers those atrocities? Just this year, an enclave of Armenians had their homeland stolen from them and had to flee.

The outrage over Gaza is not a principled objection to violence or to ethnic cleansing.

I wonder why the mainstream press in the West almost never covers those atrocities?

No you don't.

You know full well why. As much as the secular progressive who identify as "woke left" and the secular progressive who identify as "dissident right" may hate each other, they hate Christians and Jews more.

The casual hatred and desire for destruction expressed by @BurdensomeCount and others in this thread is not the exception it is the norm.

Lebanese Christians aren’t primarily a minority because of ethnic cleansing but because they have lower birth rates than Muslims. In addition it’s likely that colonial censuses undercounted the Muslim population, so the Christians never had the demographic advantage they (and the French) thought they did.

Christians in Lebanon are mostly anti-Israel, and a majority of them supported the October 7th attacks. I'm not sure they blame Muslims for their diminishing numbers in Lebanon.

Israel is a strong ally and the main weapon exporter to Azerbaijan.

So the big question is, why are christians in the west so eager to support the country responsible for bombing christian churches in Gaza and help a muslim country ethnically cleanse one of the oldest christian communities in the world? The whole thing has a "chickens for KFC" feeling about it.

Christians in Lebanon aren’t big fans of Israel, but I’m pretty sure most of them do not like their Muslim neighbors much either- as in ‘had a brutal civil war with them in living memory’.

Christians in the West are also major weapons exporters to Azerbaijan and primary clients of its oil industry. Meanwhile, the Armenians were staunchly allied with the Russians until Putin inevitably screwed them over. Meanwhile Iran allies with Armenia against Muslim Azerbaijan for fear that a corridor with also Muslim Turkey would compromise it strategically. It is what it is.

I think you missed my point.

I'm not trying to assign blame. I'm showing that few people actually care about ethnic cleansing. Or, at a minimum, they don't care enough to learn a basic amount of history or geography.

They care about tribalism.

This seems like an isolated demand of rigor. Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?

Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?

Yes. More specifically, I think the scope of caring should be scaled to the level of the atrocity.

If this were any other military conflict in all of history, it would be considered decided by now, and Gazans would be suing for peace.

Not at all. History is full of hopeless last stands in which the outmatched party refused to sue for peace. And unlike some of the warriors of hopeless last stands from times long ago, Hamas at least can count on more friendly media to inflate their last stand into the stuff of legend than a bunch of the last stand warriors of older times could have counted on.

Running like a rat out of a flooded tunnel is rarely a stuff of legends. Hamas are hypocritical, where ISIS were at least sincere - Hamas are willing other Palestinians to die for their cause, but not themselves.

Read Thucydides. He describes some people who were probably some of the bravest of all time, and yet even they surrendered sometimes. The Plataeans in their home city, the Spartans at Sphacteria. And all of them were willing to let some civilians die for their cause. Hamas has not surrendered yet after over a month of fighting at extremely outmatched odds. Whether you support them or not, clearly it is not true that they are willing other Palestinians to die for their cause, but not themselves. Hamas themselves are dying in large numbers.

So far the tales of Hamas valor and bravery are slim even from the official Hamas propaganda wing. No last stands, no deeds beyond the call of duty. Not even organized pockets of resistance.

They are like the SS divisions - good at dishing om civilians, totally shitting themselves and inadequate when faced with proper adversaries.

Indeed.

Hamas leaders don't seem to lead from the frontline.

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