site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1036 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 28, 2023

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Israel and Palestine

The conflicts continues to rage on, with Israel conducting raids both into the West Bank and into refugee camps in Gaza. The flareups on the northern border with Lebanon have worsened as well, with Hezbollah stepping up attacks and Israel having by now evacuated at least 42 settlements worth thousands of people. Israel is now conducting air raids into southerly Lebanese towns and insisting that Hezbollah withdraw thirty miles away from the border.

Major media, or at least the stuff in my diet, feels like it has been increasingly critical of Israel’s role in the conflict. The NYTimes released an investigation claiming that Israel not only routinely attacked the “safe” areas they instructed civilians to cluster inside, but that they used 2000 pound bombs, among the most destructive in their traditional (non-nuclear obviously) arsenal. These bombs were provided by the US, which is continuing to ship them up even now, though apparently they are shifting to sending more small munitions.

Wapo also recently realized a visual review measuring buildings destroyed, demonstrating that the destruction of Gaza has outpaced the bombing campaigns of Aleppo, Mosul, and Raqqa. The death toll from the current conflict is still lower than the other three (20k in Gaza vs 50k in Aleppo out of roughly 2 million people in both areas), but the previous campaigns lasted much longer - at the current rate the death toll from this war could easily exceed the others.

I wonder why places where people live are called "towns" in Lebanon but "settlements" in Israel.

insisting that Hezbollah withdraw thirty miles away from the border.

Actually I think this is a mistake here - 30 km or 18 miles. This is not a random number - that's where the Litani river is - and by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah is not supposed to have any military presence south of Litani. Of course, Hezbollah has been blatantly ignoring it all the way since 2006, but now Israel is insisting on finally implementing this decision.

20k in Gaza

It is important to note here that the only source for this data is Hamas, these numbers are not verifiable outside Hamas, and people giving those numbers are the same people that told us there were over 500 casualties from an Islamic Jihad rocket falling on Al Ahli hospital (they said it was Israeli attack) which was a complete fabrication. Moreover, they declared the number within less than a day (which would be utterly impossible if they actually counted anything). Given that absolutely no identity information is disclosed about any of the supposedly deceased (except Hamas terrorists high profile enough to deserve official acknowledgment when they are eliminated) - not that, again, it'd be possible to verify that information outside Hamas - a smart person would consider these numbers with enormous amount of skepticism. The real number is probably around 10x less.

I'm sure Hamas lies and they obviously lied about the hospital explosion, and its a shame that media uncritically re-reports Hamas numbers but even the Jerusalem post puts palestinan deaths in Gaza at >13k.

If you have a credible argument for the real number being less than 6th of that then I would like to hear it.

I'm not sure what "even Jerusalem Post" adds here. JP does not have any sources besides Hamas' reports. Nobody does. They discount it in certain way, but it's just baseless and unverifiable assumptions, I don't see why it should be given more weight that anybody else's. Are you able to find any substantiation to these figures that ultimately doesn't converge on believing Hamas' word?

I don't have any independent sources either, I just do a rough estimate based on what I learned about how much they are willing to lie. Like, if Israel attacks a building and they say 10000 people died, nobody is going to believe that - too much. But if 5 people died and they say 50 - there's a chance that goes through. Saying something like 7 would be pointless - too little added, saying something like 500 would strain the credibility too much, probably - the real multiplier is somewhere within those bounds. Of course, I have no means to accurately estimate it either beyond that.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats