This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not asking you to summarize what all Israelis think. That would obviously be ridiculous. I'm asking you to summarize what the hard-liners who believe in a Jewish ethnostate believe, in terms they would agree with.
That isn't what I meant by "stupid grunt shit," and I think you are being disingenuous in claiming that you think that's what I meant. I was thinking more of the videos of them making offensive jokes and raiding Palestinian women's underwear drawers.
I know that the Palestinians (and our resident Jew-haters) claim that Israelis are sniping Palestinian children for fun, but there's been no substantial evidence of this, and to believe that it's happening at scale requires, again, believing that Israelis are so psychologically different from most people, and so bloodthirsty, that "monsters" would be an appropriate description.
I have definitely heard racist and bloodthirsy shit from Russians about Ukrainians, from Arabs about Jews, from Americans about Iraqis, and that's just in recent memory - surely we don't need to take a trip down memory lane to Viet Nam or Korea or WWII. I am not defending what the Maccabi fans said, it's obviously vile, but I am disputing your argument that this shows some uniquely evil and genodical spirit among Israelis. Drunken footballers have always done awful and offensive things, and drunken footballers from a country currently at war? I think the press coverage has been wildly uncritical (presenting it as an "attempted pogrom of Jews of Amsterdam"), but I think you are just using it as another story about how evil Israelis are.
Using the "Aparthead state" rhetoric kind of gives the game away, but as far as the first statement, yes, Zionists believe they are entitled to Israel because it is their ancestral homeland. And you know what? I agree that that's bullshit. You don't have a natural rightful claim to land that your ancestors happened to live on 2000 years ago, or the entire world would be subject to pretty dramatic redrawing of borders. At the same time, it's a lot more complicated than your simple anti-Zionist narrative of "Jews showed up to commit genocide because God told them to take back their land." I mean, have you read any other books? I haven't read Righteous Victims but I've read some of the other stuff by Benny Morris and the New Historians, and even they don't tell it that way.
I mean, no, I don't really blame Palestinian youths for hating Israelis. I'm sure I would too if I grew up as they did. That does not make their position objectively right. If you think that terrorism and unending warfare is a "political consequence of their continued existence," though, then you apparently share the most pessimistic Israeli view of Palestinians. I don't blame people constantly subjected to violence for hating the people responsible and wishing they'd just go away (and this goes for both sides). We can hope some leaders will rise above this, but we can also recognize that the motives are very understandable.
Some of them might say that, and I might even believe a couple of them. On the other hand, we're back to how you characterize "the lengths Israel has gone to." You evidently believe the genocidal apartheid state version where Israelis (a critical mass of them, anyway) are just that evil and hate Palestinians and have not exterminated them only because it would be bad PR. The Israeli version would be quite different from that, and a lot closer to what the white nationalists would call reasonable measures to separate and suppress a violent population that is making war on them. (No, I would not agree with that characterization, any more than I agree with the more ungenerous Israeli characterizations of the Palestinians, but it's at least more coherent than "They're just evil genocidal religious fanatics.")
"Israel is the exclusive nation-state of the Jewish people. It consists of the lands that God agreed to give us in the torah (or talmud, not up to date on the specifics of jewish religious texts), stretching from the river to the sea. As God's chosen people, we are justified in conquering the lands he promised us."
Apologies for misunderstanding - there has been a recent (well not terribly recent but the process has stretched on for a long time) high-profile case in my country where someone was prosecuted for "stupid grunt shit" that turned out to actually be warcrimes. This included kicking a man in handcuffs off a cliff and giving the soldier that did it the nickname Leonidas, as well as multiple murders of civilians (look up Ben Roberts-Smith if you want more information) - that's the sort of behavior I assumed you were describing here.
Actually, I don't think that this behavior marks them as being psychologically different from most people. Go back through history and you'll be hard-pressed to find a people that hasn't engaged in these kinds of brutal acts - you don't even need to go that far back at all when you look at Germany. It is eminently human to get caught up by powerful feelings of nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, esprit de corps etc, and take actions that will haunt you for the rest of your life. That is actually one of the pieces of information that went into forming my view on the topic - the (supposed) increased rates of suicide and psychological issues amongst IDF soldiers as a result of what has happened in Gaza. Take this article for instance - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl/index.html
Here we have a man who gets radicalised by what happened on October 7, goes to fight in Gaza, commits atrocities and brags about it on social media (I'm sure you can see why my mind went to the place it did when you discussed stuff being posted to social media by Israeli soldiers)... then kills himself because he's unable to live with what he's done. I don't think this man was uniquely evil or some incomprehensible monster with alien psychology, and I can understand why he took the actions he did. But that doesn't excuse the fact that what he did was monstrous, and I'm not going to back down from the description of "blood-drenched" when we have an actual soldier who took part in those deeds repeatedly telling his family that "invisible blood" is coming out of his skin. I like to think that if I was in the same position I'd take a different course of action, but that's very easy to say when it isn't my relatives being kidnapped.
I have never claimed that the Israelis are non-human or otherwise incomprehensible. I believe that deeds like the ones Israel is committing are morally wrong, but also that they have an incredibly negative effect on the people who commit them as well. The stoics and the buddhists both view harming others as an act that harms the self as well, and I'm honestly inclined to agree with them. Bulldozing people alive in great numbers as you demolish their homes leaves a stain on the soul that is impossible to remove - but with that said, I'm going to be largely reserving my empathy for the victims.
Is Israel not an apartheid state? If you can provide some evidence that Palestinians and Israelis are treated equally under the law I'd be very happy to be proven wrong. But when I hear about laws that say things like "The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people." I can't help but think of apartheid. I'm not a big fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates, but I think his description was right on the money.
I've read other books, yes. But some of those books are from the Palestinian perspective, and my view is informed by both.
I think that terrorism and unending warfare is a political consequence not of their continued existence but rather a reaction to Israeli policy. Change those policies, give them justice and a lot of that terrorism and unending warfare will vanish. I personally support a single-state solution with full franchise for the Palestinians and prosecutions for the minority of Israelis that were actually engaged in planning and carrying out the blood-drenched, bronze-age deeds that have rightfully garnered so much opprobrium from the rest of the world.
I feel like I addressed several of the other points here earlier, but I'm basing this off widely accepted and reputable sources. I think the UN and ICC are worth listening to when it comes to questions of genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, and even pro Israeli sources largely agree that the north of Gaza has been destroyed and the people who lived there displaced in order to let the settlers start moving in as soon as possible. Even if I go solely by the deeds actually announced by Israeli government officials, I still think that "the lengths Israel has gone to." are that bad.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link