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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28384 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Do they simply not care that much?

The Palestinians and Israelis hate eachother, what you're seeing is hatred. You see these incidents where the Israeli soldiers shoot school children in the back and get acquitted:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2

In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.

Or when Hamas suicide bombers blow up Israelis. Doing horrific things to civilians is a goal in and of itself. They've been doing this kind of thing for ages, shooting unarmed protestors, pregnant women. It's hatred.

The Palestinians resent getting kicked off their land, they resent getting bombed, gunned down, getting their water stolen/filled with toxic waste, demolished houses... There are these giant lists of complaints they have: https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

Why would Palestinians trust Israel when they've spent decades suppressing and impoverishing them, so as to maintain and expand Israeli territory and control? There is a massive abyss of negative trust between both sides. Furthermore, Israel knows they aren't going to lose US support, America's leaders tout their unconditional love for Israel to anyone who'll listen. Trump was on Truth Social the other day saying he's far more pro-Israeli than Biden, who has himself been sending billions in extra military aid. So what cost does Israel pay for behaving heavy-handedly? The US will clean up the mess, they'll deal with Yemen and anyone else who tries to target Israel.

Plus there've been swirling allegations that Netanyahu helped Qatar to support Hamas - dividing Palestinians between the Authority and Hamas helps prevent them forming a state. Divide and conquer tactics.

Palestinians aren’t impoverished under Israeli rule. For the most part they have a quality of life similar to other Levantine Arabs with their population performance on standardized tests.

What's the source on that?

Median incomes, GDP/capita, life expectancy and so on relative to other non-oil-rich Arab states.

Which states are we comparing to? I don't know what that list you're talking about looks like.

Palestinians have had very healthy birth rates and population has grown faster than Israel. It’s a very big stretch to say they are impoverished. Impoverished perhaps relative to Western Society. Not impoverished by their ethnic cohort in other nations.

Palestinian GDP PPP is about $5700 https://tradingeconomics.com/palestine/gdp-per-capita-ppp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(PPP)_per_capita

Their Arab neighbours in non-oily Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt are on at least twice their income! Palestinians are basically Arabs, it's hard to see how they could be Sub-Saharan tier in HBD terms.

What sort of argument is this? The correlation between birth rate and affluence is pretty much a straight negative globally. Are you going to argue Nigerians in the US are poorer than Nigerians in Nigeria if the former have lower birth rates?

The correlation between birth rate and affluence is inverted, but in times of genuine famine and starvation birthrates do fall because women’s caloric intake is literally not enough to grow a child. This is widely historically shown, lean years saw fewer births well before contraception, with often greater than 50% falls.

Sure, but how intense does starvation have to get for this effect to overpower the fertility penalty of affluence and stability? Most African countries were outperforming industrial ones even in peak famine conditions.

I think it’s useful to put boundaries on things when people hyperventilate.

“Impoverish” feels to me like it’s doing that.

  1. They were doing nothing close to starvation level fertility decline

  2. They are likely doing as well as any other situated Arab group that isn’t an elite sitting on oil money. Better than many

  3. If Israel never existed I have extreme doubt they would have been wealthier than they were under current arrangements

  4. They are much poorer than they would be if they were Jew loving, eliminated any desire to harm Jews, and worked with the high HBD and foreign money Israel for economic development

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