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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Why Not Simply: Gaza, some more.

As I understand it,

  • Hamas is the mostly illegitimate government of the Gaza Strip.
  • Hamas is Iran-backed and hostile to Israel and Jews in general, with the dissolution of Israel and the expulsion of Jews from the region as explicit long-term goals, and general mayhem and violence as immediate goals.
  • Israel is treating the further existence of Hamas as an existential threat, and, catalyzed by the 10/7 attack, has launched an embargo and military campaign in Gaza in order to eliminate Hamas as a continuing threat, analogous to the US's military efforts in reducing ISIS in MENA.
  • Israel is more powerful in total than Hamas, and only sometimes more powerful locally; Hamas is more powerful in total and also at all times and places in Gaza than the Gazan civilian populace
  • Consequently, a common Hamas strategy has been to strike at Israeli targets and ensure that attempts at reprisal maximally injure Gazan civilians. It is in Hamas' interest to maximize the suffering of Gazan civilians in order to maximize Israel's loss of face internationally.
  • In order to reduce Hamas' effectiveness as a military force, Israel has enacted a siege, which is disproportionately impacting Gazan civilians since Hamas is using large stockpiles located in underground tunnel networks. Food and medicine intended for civilians is easily taken by Hamas agents, by force if needed.
  • The conditions for lifting this siege are Hamas' elimination as a viable opposing force, meaning starving them into submission, meaning probably starving civilians to death first.

It seems that one way to defuse Hamas' tactic of using a civilian populace as an all-purpose shield and moral justification is to separate Hamas-ans from Gazans, prevent the Gazan class from providing aid to Hamas, prevent the Gazan class from attacking Israel, and then avoid mistreating the Gazan class. In other words, stop-the-world filtration:

  1. accept all who surrender, Hamas and civilian, starve/shoot/bomb/propagandize those who don't.
  2. house those who surrender in a temporary facility, observed and audited as needed. Control movement inside, monitor information in/out/within.
  3. provide food, infrastructure, and medical aid to whatever standard is demanded for the duration of the surrender. 3a) lots of time here to process and investigate covert Hamas members
  4. After combat operations end, repatriate.

(Yes I know it's evil, but it's less evil and seems back-of-envelope more practical than what they're doing now)

I don't understand why Israel isn't doing this, and prefers to do horrific things to civilians and take the international consequences on the chin. Is it just because it's reinventing concentration/filtration camps, and not even Israel can handle the international blowback of that tactic at that scale? Is the scale impractical? Is the expense impractical? Is the needed bandwidth of processing humans not doable within Israeli manpower constraints? Do they simply not care that much? Do Gazans prefer to live freely in the current war zone that much more than food, board, and light prison regimentation? Is "after combat operations end" too fuzzy of a line to trust? Is there no trust in being released after internment, or good conditions during?

If you take possession of Gazans then you are now seen as responsible for anything that goes wrong. If Hamas is in possession then they are responsible.

I also found this tweet interesting

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has a message for the 'Ceasefire Now' people and its 🔥🔥🔥

“One of the things that I have found somewhat absent from the [media] coverage is that what we are talking about in the first phase is women, elderly, and wounded civilians.

Those who would like to see a ceasefire in Gaza. A ceasefire is on the table today for six weeks to be built on into something more enduring if Hamas would simply release women, wounded, and elderly.“

https://twitter.com/avivaklompas/status/1767692156179726699?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

So when things are real this administration seems to know what a women is?

I believe it’s Hanania who has made comments that if you take a liberal woman and asks her beliefs on a host of woke topics she will answer correctly. But then make a comment about her weight and she will become upset and apparently all women aren’t beautiful, etc.

And for the record I 100% think women should get special treatment in times of war.

He is talking about the women, elderly and wounded among Israeli citizens being held hostage by Hamas, right? Or so I hope?

Because if he is talking about Palestinian civilians, that's absolutely insane. The women and children living in the Gaza strip live there. Why should Hamas kick them out of their own country, just to make it easier for Israel to massacre the remaining adult male Palestinians (regardless of Hamas affiliation) without looking like the bad guy?

Even talking about hostages it seems like a frankly insane demand to make: “Hey, we want to murder all of you, but if we kill a few hostages in the process, that would make us look like the bad guys. Crazy, right? So can you do us a big favor and release your hostages so we can go ahead and kill you all without any repercussions? Thanks, Hamas! ... Oh, you refuse? How unreasonable of you!”

Israel doesn’t have a mandate to kill Jew loving Palestinians. They would be forced to make peace immediately if Hamas rebranded to Jew loving Palestinians and the first step in that direction would be to release the hostages.

Palestinians don't just want peace, they also want independence. We both know that if Palestinians turned Jew-loving overnight, released their hostages and laid down their arms, what happens next is not that Israel withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories, but rather that Israel will conquer the entire country (as Netanyahu has already said he intends to), and Palestinians will live under Jewish rule forever.

All armed conflicts can be resolved peacefully if one side is willing to give up all of their claims. But would you suggest this in any other conflict? Should the Ukrainians hand their country to Putin for the sake of peace, at the cost of their freedom? Should Taiwan give their country to the CCP? Should America have accepted British rule instead of establishing their independence?

And let's be clear: the source of the conflict has nothing to do with whether Palestinians love or hate Jews. The inhabitants of all surrounding countries hate the Jews just as much as the Palestinians do, but Israel is not occupying them, because Israel does not want their land.

The reason Israel is occupying territories like Jerusalem and the West Bank is that the Jews consider those part of their God-given holy land. It doesn't matter whether the citizens living in that land love or hate the Jews; the Jews want to conquer that land either way.

Should the Ukrainians hand their country to Putin for the sake of peace, at the cost of their freedom?

Ukrainians lost a lot of freedoms while Ukraine fights Putin's Russia. I heard Ukrainian blogger speculating that Ukrainian males would be never let to travel outside, even if Russia is defeated this year, because once they be allowed out, several or more millions will leave immediately. Ukrainians also don't have freedom to say "Let Putin annex all Ukraine, and then we can oust Putin with less human causalties".