domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
Totalitarianit
1d ago
Even if it can't sway Israel (let alone Hamas), it can influences the choices of people on the sidelines ie the rest of the world. Whether we're talking about the big picture of "should America support Israel's war effort even though it results in starving children", or the small picture of "should I, personally, donate to that online fundraiser to send help to starving little Abdul".
It can, and has influenced people, but to whose benefit outside of Hamas'? This influence appears to actually be leading to more death and suffering. So, to the extent that your moral correctness on this issue intersects with realpolitik, I see it as a mechanism that prolongs the conflict and props up the worst actors. The dilemma as I see it is if the practical outcome of your moral correctness is just more suffering then do you accept that suffering so that you can stay ideologically consistent, or do you abandon it for what you would consider a more favorable practical outcome?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1d ago
I dont think Ive particularly seen that messaging, and Im genuinely asking. Obviously Ukraine isnt like that, but Israel generally seems more diplomatically than materially limited. Looking things up now, Israels military spending was about 5% of GDP in previous years, up to 9% last year. US aid was approximately(second chart) at 1%, increased to 3% last year (and presumably continuing for the current conflict). Probably those numbers dont include everything, but thats far from "obviously impossible" territory. North Korea is quite a bit higher than that, and you can see in the first link that Israel was there previously. For another comparsion, support for the former east german states seems to have been around 5% of west german GDP in the initial years.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
That seems to depend on who is making the judgment, and whether the 'potshot' is an unguided missile launched at civilian population centers (which happen to include grocery stores, and maybe a few valid military targets) or IDF forces firing at what I assume they deem (validly or not) 'suspicious' actors seeking to steal or disrupt humanitarian aid distribution.
Neither really brings joy, though.
Sunshine
1d ago
The Viet Cong didn't win, the Americans got tired of fighting and gave up. The Viet Cong never landed a single boot on American soil. There was never any question of the Viet Cong conquering America. In the sense that the Palestinians are too weak to conquer Israel, the Viet Cong were too weak to conquer America.
The difference between Hamas and the Viet Cong is that Hamas has invaded Israeli soil and killed Israeli civilians. The Israelis can't get tired of fighting and give up like the Americans did in Vietnam. If they could, they would have done it already. Hamas and its various sister organizations like Hezbollah will continue to attack Israel until one or the other is annihilated. Ergo, the Israelis have no choice but to continue fighting.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
Today I learned this distinction. Thanks!
I am not aware of any requirement that would need an exception to be made. Allowing neutral actors to provide humanitarian aid to civilians is one thing. Allowing hostile actors to aid and abet active combatants is something else entirely. As a credible case has been made that this falls under the latter rather than the former, I don't think there is any international law that actually requires the Israelis to do anything.
As a rule of thumb, international agreements never require states to do anything that would be to their strategic disadvantage. If they did then no state would ever agree to them in the first place. That's why they only ban weapons that are too impractical to actually use, like mustard gas and bioweapons. Nobody would ever seriously suggest banning stealth bombers or cruise missiles, because none of the states that have those things would ever agree to stop using them.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
If Isreal decided "fuck it, Gaza's borders are open. We're just gonna sit behind the border wall and do our thing, the people of Gaza are free to do whatever" then yeah, I would assign them zero responsibility.
They did do this in 2005 when they removed (sometimes at gunpoint) all the Jewish settlers in Gaza. The naval blockade and walls went up years later in response to the rockets and other attacks. I think this is part of why the Israelis question whether peace is possible at this point: Gaza's government, and arguably it's populace that hasn't overthrown it, supports attacks on Israel, even questionably effective ones, at almost any cost to themselves.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Yeah, but if Saudi Arabia decided to reintroduce its original population of lions due to enormous wealth, they’d still have gone extinct in the middle.
Are there first world countries that developed to first world standards without pushing their native large predators out? I mean, Canada and Uruguay are contenders- with the obvious similarity of large tracts of essentially uninhabited land because everyone lives in one or a few major cities. The U.S. is similar- wolves, bears, and cougars were largely extirpated from the areas people actually live, the recent range expansions are driven by population concentration and deliberate reintroductions. Maybe bears in Japan?
Most 'root causes' that get highlighted by activists are just correlates of criminality (e.g. poverty) not causes.
You'll see someone raise a point that's evidence for "just like that" position and draw completely different conclusions. The funny one usually goes something like "Jamie spent 30 years in and out of juvie and prison for various violent offenses. His dad also went to jail for murder and he was raised by his single mother. Just another example of how interactions with the justice system create an intergenerational spiral".
It never seems to occur to the people most likely to use this stuff.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
Doesn't Israel claim sovereignity over the area?
No, they do not.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Bison are grazers, not browsers.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
So are afghans and Iraqis.
2rafa
1d ago
The comment was making an analogy that if what happened to Israel on October 7 had happened to America (eg across the Mexican border), the US would react a certain way. I’m not sure how this relates to American hostages in Gaza.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
That's true
Less of a long painful history though.
Also both Germany and Japan had much better cultural scaffolding for bootstrapping back into friendly productive 20th century neighbors.
Skulldrinker
1d ago
You do realize you're watching curated propaganda designed to outrage and pull heartstrings, right?
Skulldrinker
1d ago
I thought Gaza has been continuously starving for 40+ years. I was told this, anyways. Despite the massive population growth.
FtttG
1d ago
they'll be dead before they can leave infanthood
Are you predicting that literally no Palestinian children in Gaza will survive to adulthood?
FtttG
1d ago
I have no idea whether it's a plausible outcome. But it does have precedent in living memory, namely the post-war American occupations of Germany and (especially) Japan. It's not completely outside the realm of possibility.
FtttG
1d ago
A product designer in a medtech company trying to develop a new way of diagnosing fertility disorders.
2rafa
1d ago
To me there seems to be, or perhaps should be, a kind of reciprocity of honor in wartime. The Germans and British and French in the First World War wanted to take or defend disputed territory, become the first power in Europe, seize some of each others foreign colonies and perhaps effect a change of civilian government. They did not particularly wish to ethnically cleanse their opponents from the vast majority of their metropoles (a few pieces of disputed territory aside). In the Kaiser’s wildest fantasies (and they were his) he did not imagine replacing Welshmen with Bavarians and driving the former out to the sea. The war was brutal, with civilian casualties and endless military ones and war crimes, the Rape of Belgium (truth or fiction) and so on. But it was not a war to the death or to exile for every last German, every last Englishman, woman, child.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews in Israel/Palestine is not such a conflict. It is a tribal war. The Arabs have sought to ethnically cleanse the Jews (or at least all but a token handful, but probably all) from their full territory since 1948 or indeed well before given the history of violence that began during the earlier colonial waves of migration. The Jews were of mixed opinions but have now increasingly, after 70 years of violence, come around to the same opinion about the Palestinians (views on Arab Israelis are more complicated although there are plenty, it must be said, of religious zionists who would kick them out too).
Only America is powerful enough, now, to impose a two-state solution on both sides. To do so would cost trillions, require a permanent US presence of perhaps a hundred thousand or more troops on the border, and would subject the Americans to endless criticism abroad, intermittent violence by militant Muslim and likely also eventually militant Jewish terrorists, and would commit the country forever, for if columbia were to leave, the conflict would simply resume where both sides left off.
Since that will not happen, it is now increasingly clear that one side will ethnically cleanse the other. A Jewish victory would probably, although not necessarily, be permanent; the Muslim world might still accomplish a Reconquista. A Muslim victory would be permanent, at least until the arrival of the messiah, ye of little faith, or failing that another two millennia. The people of Gaza suffer and have suffered. A more intelligent Zionist movement would have settled somewhere else but, then again, without the deep, atavistic lure of Zion, it would probably never have accomplished anything.
If the Gazans surrendered, their suffering would stop. But they cannot surrender, unlike the marranos not even temporarily. They belong to a faith and tribe that conquered a quarter of the world by the sword, without mercy, without self-doubt. They submit only to God. Should I pity them?
Stellula
1d ago
The United States supports Israel militarily. There are no US hostages being held. It is not in the interest of the United States to support the starvation of gazan children regardless of how many Israeli hostages Hamas allegedly has.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1d ago
Tucker Carlson
He interviewed the ex Nikola motors CEO, Trevor Milton.Trevor tried to play all the cards, claiming democrats went after him, big oil was out for him etc. But he pumped a company to $60B by claiming it had a factory with thousands of employees, making working trucks etc. In reality, 20 employees and they made cardboard models of trucks, which they pushed down hills for demonstrations and commercials. And the investigation started in the Trump admin. The fraud was about the same size as Madoff's, but it only cost him $1.7mm to buy a pardon from Trump.
I don't think they recognize any state's claim to the territory, do they? I guess that's not completely unprecedented, but I think in practice it is for populated territory.
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