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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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History isn’t about creating get out of jail free cards. But it is a useful barometer for “what is normal” and what is “abnormal.”

By historical standards what is happening in Gaza is not abnormal nor is it a genocide.

By historical standards all sorts of mass murderous attrocities are not abnormal, including genocides. As is rhetoric of people calling such conduct as not abnormal to justify and excuse it. It is definitely a disgusting atrocity of ethnic cleansing through mass murder, complete obliteration of the homes of the Palestinians, inducing policies to starve them.

Considering the starvation it is mass murder in the process of becoming genocide if one takes a higher standard for genocide. Or already qualifies as a genocide if one considers the mass murder that already has happened as qualifying.

Also, obviously all this attempt to understate terms and it would be too late if the numbers of dead keep on pilling, in line with what Israeli politicians want. Not to mention all the people who have lost limbs.

The reality is that the treatment of Jews in WW2 is brought precisely to justify the murderous ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by people who certainly prove in that regard that we should be careful with our sympathies for bad actors would use them to justify vile warcrimes. It would be more sensible to not be manipulated to obsessing about Jews from 80 years ago and be diverted by that from confronting those committing or supporting the warcrimes of today.

You have a problem with war in that case. That is, you can’t attack Gaza effectively without the collateral consequences.

I go back to “don’t start nothing won’t be nothing.”

Obviously the Palestinians haven't started this conflict in October 7th and there was plenty of something before this. So the way you frame it is completely inaccurate. Of course, I am not someone who is as biased for Palestinians as those I criticize are for Jews, but I do have to defend them when they are under destruction. Frankly Jews and Palestinians living separately (and freely) in their own homeland and keeping out of each others affairs would be the sane ethical way to go.

This would require Jews to stop doing plenty of "somethings" against the Palestinians and respect the group rights of other groups.

While much of war is going to be ugly, there are different levels to this. There is a difference between fanatic supremacist warmongers trying to destroy other ethnic groups and take over their homeland and other ways to conduct yourself. It is excusing warcrimes to say that war is this always. The rhetoric of Israeli politicians and their actions shows that this is about ethnic cleansing through violence and death, starvation, destroying peoples homes.

In the case of Israel, I have no doubt that without the attention of people putting pressure, that Israel's leaders in line with their rhetoric and those who support the already war criminal conduct would have pushed things far further. On the other side, those who have been apologists for this conduct have stained their hands. Israel would have done even less with a less favorable environment in the USA especially.

Here the world is watching and they are reacting entirely differently than your propagandistic Jewish supremacist framing which is why lot of the world wisely has become much more negative against Israel. https://time.com/6559293/morning-consult-israel-global-opinion/

And we see a change to negativity towards Israel even in countries like the UK with a significant Jewish lobby that have also have been harmed by Muslim extremism as well which would give them less reason to sympathize with the Palestinians.