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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   36915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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Reviewing Predictions on the Israel-Gaza War

The Institute for the Study of War opines that

The Israeli campaign into the Gaza Strip was a military success but has fallen short thus far of setting conditions to replace Hamas as a governing entity. The Israeli government enumerated three objectives at the beginning of the war: destroy Hamas’ military, return the hostages, and destroy Hamas’ government.[1] These objectives—though expansive—were achievable through a combination of military and political action. The Israeli campaign succeeded in destroying Hamas’ military and securing a ceasefire that would release the hostages. The campaign has also isolated Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though Israel and its partners will need to ensure that Hamas remains contained. But neither Israel nor the United States has tried seriously to achieve a political end state that would build upon this military success and permanently replace Hamas as a governing entity in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s failure to achieve this final war aim means that the strip will remain without an alternative governance structure and security broker, and Hamas remnants will inevitably try to fill that role again, especially as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdraw. Hamas will use this space to reassert its political authority and reconstitute its forces—unless the United States and Israel take further steps to prevent those things from occurring.

The Middle East Monitor meanwhile summarizes Israeli opinion:

Unlike previous military campaigns in Gaza – on a much smaller scale compared to the current genocidal war – there is no significant strand of Israeli society claiming victory. The familiar rhetoric of “mowing the lawn”, which Israel often uses to describe its wars, is notably absent. Instead, there is a semi-consensus within Israel that the ceasefire deal was unequivocally bad, even disastrous for the country. The word “bad” carries broad implications. For Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, it represents a “complete surrender”. For the equally extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, it is a “dangerous deal” that compromises Israel’s “national security”. Israeli President Isaac Herzog refrained from offering political specifics but addressed the deal in equally strong terms: “Let there be no illusions. This deal – when signed, approved and implemented – will bring with it deeply painful, challenging and harrowing moments.”

In Haaretz we get headlines like: "Total Victory in Gaza? Dismantling Hamas? The Hostage Deal Is Exposing Netanyahu's Lies” and "The Gaza Cease-fire and Hostage Deal Is the Same One From Eight Months Ago. Why Did Netanyahu Accept It Now? Ailing hostages rotting in tunnels for 15 months and over 120 Israeli soldiers killed since Benjamin Netanyahu declined a previous cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas are the least of the Israeli prime ministers' concerns. He wanted to be pressured just ahead of Trump's inauguration”

I can’t track it down online and I’ve since recycled the paper, but at the signing of the ceasefire, I read a WSJ op-ed in which the writer bemoaned that the hostage exchange, as lopsided as it was, constituted a defeat for Israel, and provided an obvious structure for future defeats. There’s been a consistent drumbeat of sentiment among committed Zionists and self-described foreign policy realists that the ceasefire constitutes an Israeli defeat. And inasmuch as one takes Netanyahu seriously earlier in the war, it does seem a defeat of a kind. Israeli hawks have said from the beginning that they were fighting to destroy Hamas root and branch and obtain lasting peace and security for Israel. That this was not another “mowing the grass” operation, that their intent was to totally and permanently alter the relationship between Israel and Gaza such that there would never be another attack originating from Gaza against Israel.

Now, at the end of the war, the grass is well and truly mowed, but permanent changes seem unlikely to materialize. Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity, while the doomerism seems overwrought it’s tough to see how Israel emerged from this more secure in its long term future. In the short term, perhaps even for a decade or so, Hezbollah is neutered, Hamas is pulling itself off the mat, Iran has been punched in the nose, Baathist Syria is gone; the grass is mowed, there is no immediate threat of attack. But in the longer term, it is hard to see what strategic objective Israel achieved. While a great many Palestinians were killed, amid cries of GENOCIDE from the usual suspects, I’m not even sure there are fewer Palestinians now than there were on 10/6/23. The attitude of those left behind in Palestine towards Israel requires little guesswork. Support for Israel is in decline among younger American voters, they may not be able to count on unconditional US support in the future (I’m not sure Zionism is a position likely to shift with age in the way that positions of issues like Taxes and Racial Equality have historically shifted with age). Israel still has no actual operational plan of what an acceptable government of Gaza would look like, a group that they would endorse as an alternative to Hamas rule in the enclave, or even an outline or an idea of what such a group might be. Many Israeli officials and soldiers face risk of prosecution abroad on war crimes charges, which I imagine will not come to pass in any significant quantity, but it means something that thousands of Israelis will be unable to travel to much of Europe. Israel is unlikely to see a revival of the Abraham Accords peace process with the Gulf States under a second Trump admin, though we can all hope that the Dealmaker in Chief can pull a rabbit out of the turban and get this done.

Looking back, this leaked intelligence paper from Israel detailing plans for removing the population of Gaza to camps in the Sinai before occupying Gaza, was remarkably prescient. The authors predict that the violence required to occupy a populated Gaza would be too great, unsustainable for the Israeli forces politically, and result in the Israeli forces ultimately exiting Gaza without achieving their goals. This has now occurred. While Trump is now making noises about removing Gazan civilians, it is not clear how this would be achieved physically.

@Pasha had an excellent comment near the beginning of the war presaging the situation facing Israel now:

To delve deeper into the uncomfortable topic of the looming genocide, I also increasingly get the feeling that contrary to the expectations of some whose view of geopolitics is eerily similar to RTS mechanics, the genocidal military power IDF is displaying right now is ultimately going to harm Israel a lot more than it helps. I think it mainly has to do with political/military leadership trying to cover their ass and muffle their enormous failures with the sound of bombs. If IDF really goes through with their plan which seems likely to cost civilian lives in the hundreds of thousands, I don't think the nation of Israel will ever recover from this. It is a country that is already losing two of its most powerful weapon: Endlessly idealistic and intelligent Ashkenazi founders who knew to out-think and out-work their opponents at very turn, and most importantly to not lose the sight of their goal even when they had to take very nasty decisions at times: to create a people. Not to destroy one. These people are not only losing out in demography but also they are losing the soul of the nation. Their spirit will not survive a Gazan genocide [AND] Zionist influence in the Western world. Through a combination of dedication, money, human quality, well-crafted propaganda, historical guilt and Cold War positioning, Zionists has always had a very unique power position in Western institutions, especially the US ones. This is quickly disappearing. Western Jews are assimilating into the PMC deracinated blob at a breathtaking pace. They are losing the set of assumptions that motivated them to identify with their kin in Israel, and they are losing the power that comes from ethnic favoritism. A Gazan genocide is very likely going to be the final nail in the coffin here.

I fully agree that the situation with Gaza is entirely unsustainable. But if Israelis go through with what they are plotting right now, they will slowly but surely find out that they are 7 million souls surviving in an ocean of half a billion through miracles, and they are pissing in the miracle potion.

It seems clear that predictions at the outset that “eliminating” Hamas/Islamism as a force in Gaza was not an achievable goal. I’m curious to see if this is an example people reach for in the future. Given the failure to consider predictions based on the 9/11 experience before this war, I doubt it.

What other predictions did you find particularly prescient or wrongheaded?

What other predictions did you find particularly prescient or wrongheaded?

People were convinced that Israel would minimize civilian casualties. The Lancet study from a few weeks ago estimates ~65,000 deaths by traumatic injury in the first 8 months of the war. Haaretz interviewed Israeli soldiers who testify to war crimes. One of Britain’s top surgeons spoke to the House of Parliament about drones targeting children. So there is evidence of Israeli disregard for civilian casualties. Hopefully after the war, interviews can be conducted throughout Gaza to determine the extent of this.

The only hope for Israel was in something eroding the twin forces of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism that have defined Arab Muslim identity since the 1950s. The distinct problem for Israel was and is that the erosion of one is not enough. Both ethnotribal identity, socialist or not, and religious identity in the region are fully hostile to Israel, as increasingly is liberal modernity. There is no off-ramp except the vague hope that maybe eventually people are rich and secular enough that they stop caring. But plenty of rich and secular western Zoomers on college campuses seem to care very much indeed, so even that seems questionable.

Israel was just founded in a bad place. Its destruction is not inevitable, especially because AGI/ASI will upend global politics in such dramatic ways that we can’t really predict anything more than 20 years away. But the most viable location for it was probably in some of the depopulated formerly German parts of Eastern Europe, now no longer claimed by Germany since reunification and never really substantially Polish (pre-1945) either.

One can imagine a kind of smaller, Ashkenazi post-shtetl state in a corner of what is now Western Poland. I think that would probably have been fine. The Germans and Poles would both have claimed it, but the tension between them would have likely kept it independent. Still, the iron curtain, the broader aftermath of the war, and the insistence of the great majority of Zionists that it had to be Israel prevented it from ever being anywhere else.

In the end, I suspect the state of Israel will be another tragic story in the annals of Jewish history. It will be no great new beginning, but it will also be no final end, and its decline (destruction or not) will represent the end of the age of Ashkenazi Jewish overcontribution to modernity that began with the Haskalah.

I keep telling all my Israeli buddies that they should just Migrant Fleet around the world for 2 years. Bury Jerusalem in a giant gelatinous cube to preserve it, then fuck off on a 2 year booze cruise (after buying shares in Carnival Cruise of course). They can return to the holy land thoroughly depopulated after the Arabs have killed each other endlessly to claim the spoils, and its not like the land itself there was worth that much to begin with.

Rising temperatures and water shortages might do that work first. Israel is the only nation in the region with the type of HC to deal with these issues.

Israel was just founded in a bad place.

This has been my stance on Israel for the entire time I’ve been politically aware. I almost wish there had been some sort of Ashkenazi European equivalent of Joseph Smith, who could have come up with some compelling theological innovation to get some number of Jews to reconceptualize Eastern Europe as the actual (or, at least, divinely ordained) site of the Promised Land.

There’s a tinfoil hat theory on the counter-semitic hard right about Khazaria, the supposed medieval Jewish nation which existed somewhere in modern Ukraine; the conspiracy theory is that (((they))) engineered the Russia-Ukraine conflict in order to depopulate that part of Ukraine in order to make it a viable alternative homeland should Israel fall. Maybe the hypothetical Jewish Joseph Smith could have built something around a mythical vision of Khazaria.

It will be no great new beginning, but it will also be no final end, and its decline (destruction or not) will represent the end of the age of Ashkenazi Jewish overcontribution to modernity that began with the Haskalah.

I’m not sure about this. Now, my stance toward Jews is that, in the fullness of time, I would like them to lose their distinctive identity — built on a sense of separateness and specialness — and to become absorbed into a conglomerated elite world culture. For Jews to just become one of the constituent ancestries of the new dominant world ethnicity which is only just beginning to be forged. This will require the end of Israel as a sovereign entity, but I don’t think it will mean a decline in the overperformance of individuals with Ashkenazi ancestry. (If anything, it will help spread Ashkenazi ancestry even wider, albeit in an admittedly diluted form.)

In five hundred years, I can imagine the esoteric right-wing androids will promulgate knowledge of haplogroups, treating Ashkenazi ancestry as a somewhat-tongue-in-cheek badge of honor, the way right-wingers crow about their R1b ancestry nowadays.

Israel was just founded in a bad place. Its destruction is not inevitable, especially because AGI/ASI will upend global politics in such dramatic ways that we can’t really predict anything more than 20 years away. But the most viable location for it was probably in some of the depopulated formerly German parts of Eastern Europe, now no longer claimed by Germany since reunification and never really substantially Polish (pre-1945) either.

Uhh... I think this cold argument completely ignores the religious aspect of where Israel was chosen to be? No, random parts of Germany would not be the "most viable," they literally wouldn't even matter. Jewish people wanted a state in the Holy Land, it's unthinkable that the project could've worked to gather so may Jews into a nation again anywhere else imo.

The Zionists in that timeframe were overwhelmingly secular and laid claim to the territory on secular grounds - like the interwar Polish claim to what later became the ‘recovered territories,’ but somehow even more retarded.

“If you drive [Gaza’s civilians] into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Lloyd Austin, December 2023. Whatever you think of him, that's pretty much what happened.

"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

Golda Meir, 1973. Whatever you think of her, that's pretty much why Israel felt it necessary to 'drive civilians into the arms of the enemy'.

Lloyd Austin, December 2023. Whatever you think of him, that's pretty much what happened.

It really isn't though, and to the extent it is what happened, it is because of folks like Lloyd Austin who were focused on preserving the viability of Hamas tactics. In particular, they were much more concerned about the RESPONSE to putting rocket launchers in schools, than the rocket launchers in schools.

In particular, they were much more concerned about the RESPONSE to putting rocket launchers in schools, than the rocket launchers in schools.

This entire line of argument was just thoroughly discredited and devalued by the Israeli treatment of Gazan hospitals (and the Lebanese hospital with a pile of gold bullion supposedly being kept underneath it). Look, this is the Motte - you don't have to pretend that the IDF is "the most moral army in the world" or anything, you can just speak truthfully about what they intend and what they're doing. People aren't saying "don't blow up the hospitals and schools" because they're trying to preserve Hamas' rocket-launching capabilities, but because doing so has immense humanitarian costs and leads to people around the world viewing you as an evil, genocidal state on the same level as Hitler's Germany.

Why do people view blowing up rockets and weapons caches as evil?

They wouldn't if that's all that was going on, but I think you missed the context. They view blowing up hospitals as evil, even when rockets and weapon caches are the reason they're doing so.

Maybe. It is hard to see into the heart of a person, but I think they more object to Hamas losing.

A few hard-left loudmouths, sure, but not the vast majority of people who think Israel needs to tone it down or just want a ceasefire, any ceasefire.

But a ceasefire on these terms is Hamas winning...

We've known this pattern for over 2 decades now. If you don't understand that is on you.

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focused on preserving the viability of Hamas tactics.

That's a very confusing way to phrase things. Are you're claiming that the US military was intent on helping Hamas? Or that, in practice, that was the effect of misplaced concern? If its the latter, then you would be agreeing with:

Lloyd Austin, December 2023. Whatever you think of him, that's pretty much what happened.

... which you claim you don't agree with. Maybe I'm missing something.

That's a very confusing way to phrase things. Are you're claiming that the US military was intent on helping Hamas? Or that, in practice, that was the effect of misplaced concern? If its the latter, then you would be agreeing with:

Largely, yes the US left is intent on supporting Hamas and they were in charge of the US Military at the time.

No self-respecting religious Muslim (of any nation) or proud Arab (of any level of religiosity) will ever accept Jerusalem in the hands of the Jews. That is the intractable problem for Israel, that is what Meir was referring to, and that is why in the end it is probably if not definitely doomed.

I'm highly skeptical of those absolutes, but that's irrelevant. The problems of a murderous, totalitarian, intransigent ideology are vastly understated, and wildly misunderstood. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!!

Concerningly, it took a lot of digging to unearth some of the following highly influential, well-known, and explanatory quotations. They remove so much of the "mystery" as to what Islam means to hundreds of million of people.

Islamic World Front - 1998:

"On that basis [of jihad], and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it... We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them..." -

Bin Laden, 'Letter To The American People' - 2002:

"...jihad against the tyrants and the aggressors is a form of great worship in our religion. It is more precious to us than our fathers and sons. Thus, our jihad against you is worship and your killing us is a testimony."

Bin Laden 'Letter to America' - 2005:

"The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam... complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions... It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme... You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."

Dabiq Magazine 'Why We Hate You and Why We Fight Your" - 2016:

"One would think that the average Westerner, by now, would have abandoned the tired claim that the actions of the mujahideen—who have repeatedly stated their goals, intentions, and motivations—don’t make sense... There are exceptions among the disbelievers, no doubt, people who will unabashedly declare that jihad and the laws of the shari’a—as well as everything else deemed taboo by the Islam-is-a-peaceful-religion crowd—are in fact completely Islamic, but they tend to be people with far less credibility who are painted as a social fringe, so their voices are dismissed and a large segment of the ignorant masses continues believing the false narrative... We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers... we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the authority of Islam, either by becoming Muslims, or by paying jizya... We hate you because your secular, liberal societies permit the very things that Allah has prohibited... What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary... we will never stop hating you until you embrace Islam."

Che Guevaras purported last words:

"I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man"

The problems of a murderous, totalitarian, intransigent ideology are vastly understated, and wildly misunderstood.

Yes. You are probably understating and misunderstanding them too, given your exclusive focus on one of the two murderous, totalitarian, intransigent ideologies involved.

If it were only the Muslims being like that, the solution to @2rafa's problem would be simple - just let them have it.

I'm a bit confused. Who am I understating and misunderstanding? Just let who have what?

In case I read you right: I could go a on lengthy anti-Israel screed, especially regarding the settlers, their growing government support, and how the settlements function in or around Area C, or whatever. Some crazies - probably numbing in the hundreds of thousands, if not more - faithfully believe a maximalist, forceful, Biblical entitlement to Israel.

My post intended to highlight why basically the entire globe is subject to eternal warfare until every person on the planet submits to a version of Islam that makes sense to hundreds of millions of Muslims (and perhaps less; hard to say)

The former isn't compatible with an easy path to peace in Israel, the latter isn't compatible with civilization. Its relevant to OP because I think the main challenge in Israel is killing - or at best reforming - the latter idea. Far too many people fail to recognize its a challenge to begin with. Currently, the numbers are in favor of simply ignoring the settlers, but the power structure in Israel is not. The ideologies of the settlers pose a problem too.

Israeli hawks have said from the beginning that they were fighting to destroy Hamas root and branch and obtain lasting peace and security for Israel.

Duh, they failed in this goal. There are still Palestinians about, after all.

Israel has a way to gain lasting peace and security- occupy the Sinai, next time Gaza attacks march their entire population out into the desert to die, and tell the west bank that they are now obligated to summarily execute anyone entertaining antizionist ideologies or the entire village will be(they will likely need to make good on this threat a few times). This is not politically possible, but it is what it would take to secure Israel from attack. So Israeli security is not an achievable goal. They're going to do this again in ten years.

How would invading Egypt make Israel's position more secure, rather than less?

If they're struggling to squelch a couple million Palestinians, then how are they supposed to deal with over 100 million Egyptians?

We need to remember that Israel is not a gigantic behemoth like China or Russia, it is a small country heavily reliant on foreign military technology and access to world markets to sustain its strength. They don't have the option of pulling these stunts and getting their high-tech economy rugpulled like a cheap shitcoin.

Israel has defeated Egypt several times before; there's very few people living in the Sinai and a border at the Suez gives them the physical space necessary for death camps.

So the plan is

  1. Invade Egypt and make the big powers very unhappy because of how they need the Suez Canal for their trade
  2. Move a few million Palestinians out of Gaza and into the Sinai where they'll be tortured, starved, brainwashed and/or exterminated in death camps
  3. Somehow hope this doesn't turn into a darkly ironic Warsaw Ghetto uprising but larger and with more tunnels
  4. Somehow avoid having the Israeli economy reduced to zero
  5. Somehow get weapons and munitions to do all this from... the US? Or who?
  6. Secure all their other borders against air and ground attacks at the same time

See Nazi Germany could try this kind of stunt (while fighting first-rate world powers) because they actually were a big, strong country with the armies and industry needed to conquer large territories and exterminate people en masse. Israel is not a big country and enjoys less freedom of action, their army is smaller than Turkey's.

Thailand has a bigger army. Indonesia has a bigger army. Size matters and Israel isn't big, they have no room to make errors and little resources to fall back on.

Moreover, Israel is reliant for its suffrage on a moral system that such actions would undermine. Israel exists and is tolerated in large part because of Western guilt over antisemitism and the Holocaust, a belief in the idea of self determination for ethnic minorities. The moment those beliefs disappear in the USA and the west, so does Israel.

Israel is a nuclear state

South Africa was, too, one upon a time.

South Africa had 6 primitive nuclear weapons made with barely enriched uranium and was less than 10% white(Israel has an outright Jewish majority).

In 1994 whites made up just 10% of the population in South Africa. Even in a fully integrated Israel-Palestine Jews would be 40-50% of the population at the start.

Plus, the whites knew that to some extent South Africa remaining a broadly capitalist country in which they could keep their private property was likely under the international system. Black South Africans mostly don’t hate white people. Even today, the great majority of the richest people and largest landowners in South Africa are white; whites own ~70% of agricultural land and are overrepresented even in the current governing coalition with the ANC.

In the event of an Israel-Palestine I very much doubt the relationship between Jews and Arabs will look like that 30 years after integration.

No source that unironically refers to the situation in Gaza as a genocide deserves to be taken seriously (so that throws Pasha's entire contribution in the bin) ETA: I didn't realise at first @Pasha was talking about a hypothetical future scenario, so despite disagreements we clearly have I should acknowledge I misread his original comments .

It seems clear that predictions at the outset that “eliminating” Hamas/Islamism as a force in Gaza was not an achievable goal.

It was eminently achievable. Stop insisting on sending aid that Hamas will hoard. A starving population will turn on it's leaders pretty quick. Allow Israel to bomb Hamas targets even if that means more of their meat-shields die etc. Too many people who matter in the west however didn't want Hamas to be eliminated.

As for what all this means for the future, from my limited understanding of Israeli domestic politics it sounds like the two-state-solution is well and truly dead. Which may well be a good thing for Israel's security, as an independent Palestine would most likely mean having another another lebanon on their border (only less functional and more Jihadist). Best chance now for peace is for Trump to succeed in getting Egypt to resettle all the Palestinians, which unfortunately probably won't happen.

Sorry for discrediting myself by describing killing a couple hundred thousand people out of a population of 2 million as genocide.

Eager to hear more of your genocide-free strategy of starving them instead and bombing those “meat shields”. Oh and the final option forcefully cleansing the land of them.

Sorry for discrediting myself by describing killing a couple hundred thousand people out of a population of 2 million as genocide.

Making up numbers in order to describe something as a genocide is indeed discrediting.

Eager to hear more of your genocide-free strategy of starving them instead and bombing those “meat shields”

Feel free to look at any war in history fought against a nation like Gaza that has declared total war on you (and insists it will never stop). To consider it unsporting - whoops, I meant genocidal - of a nation to not want to send thousands of trucks of supplies to its enemy demonstrates a lack of understanding of how war works or a very particular grudge against Israel.

If you bother to follow the actual thread, you will see that my comment was written on October 11t 2023 and describes a future hypothetical based on the statements of Israeli politicians at the time. That hypothetical turned out to be more correct than not.

Stop masturbating with words. If you want to mass murder people have the courage to actually say so.

Stop masturbating with words.

Pointing out words have meanings and that the ones you used don't match reality is not "masturbating" with words (curious expression).

If you want to mass murder people have the courage to actually say so.

Mass murder? That type of language is more masturbatory than anything I've said, and seems like an example of the non-central fallacy as it relates to Hamas members. For the avoidance of doubt, I think the murder of Hamas members is a noble goal (unless they surrender), despite the unfortunate reality of collateral civilian deaths. If you have an issue with that, then your issue might be with the nature of war itself.

“You mass murder, I pursue the goal of destroying the enemy despite collateral civilian deaths” must be the most perfect Russell conjugation I’ve ever seen. You’re both describing the same thing, it’s just a question of the spin you’re putting on it.

You’re both describing the same thing

We're not. The difference between an intended and an unintended negative outcome, like harm to a civilian, is something reasonably young children can already intuit. There's a reason most people judge someone who accidentally runs another person over less harshly than someone who actively seeks pedestrians to drive into.

Maybe you think there's some conversion factor i.e. a single deliberately caused death is as bad as 2/5/10 unintended ones, but I'd be very surprised if you think it's 1:1.

Put it this way: if you run over a gaggle of schoolchildren because you’re late for an important meeting and braking would slow you down, you didn’t set out to kill them, you merely accepted it as the price for something more important.

In practice, how much badness people put on such death varies wildly depending on their sympathies with the overall goal. Gaza, nuking Japan, bombing Dresden all have their sympathisers and their critics but they were deliberate killings.

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What about the standard implicit definition of “it’s mass murder if you kill them after they surrender, otherwise it’s combat”?

Bit different, as it implies they're all combatants. We're talking about 'napalm the forest' / 'kill them all, God will know his own' situations where it's unclear who is a combatant and who is a civilian in the wrong place, and the civilians are being kept between you and the combatants, and the line is blurry in the first place.

I have greater than 0 sympathy for those who have to make such choices, such as in my comment on George Macdonald Fraser but the gung-ho attitude of 'can't be helped, just kill them' attitude you see in certain quarters does put me off.

Where is the evidence they’ve killed 200,000 civilians?

If you bother to follow the actual thread, you will see that my comment was written on October 11t 2023. In the last year Israel has murdered about 50k. I am not IDF high command but it’s clear they would gladly work up this number if they weren’t under tremendous international pressure.

No source that unironically refers to the situation in Gaza as a genocide deserves to be taken seriously (so that throws Pasha's entire contribution in the bin).

"Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument." and "Be charitable." are both rules for a reason, taking seriously the things people who disagree with you say is necessary for the kind of discussion we want here.

Where were these Haaretz and WSJ op-eds before the ceasefire? Did they pressure and propagandize in favor of the measures that must be taken to destroy Hamas, to avoid "the evils that come from kindness" in war, to paraphrase Clausewitz? Or have they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, to claim that waging war in an urban environment is inherently inhumane, bht to also bemoan the peace that international pressure brought Israel to?

Pasha sounds like an ideologue with too many opinions and too few facts. First of all there is no genocide in Gaza , the fact that this delusion has continued for this long is astonishing. The numbers hamas pumps out are completely tampered with and problematic in many many ways. Israel is a nuclear power , and even if it wasn't , it still has shown the capability to take arab coalitions 1 versus many. The dramatic tone in his words reminds me of a jihadi hoping for victory over the jewish enemy. It's over buddy , you tried many times , it ain't happening. The two things we have learned from this war is , firstly , the complete inability of the western civilian , and by extension politician, to understand what war actually is and secondly the strength of propaganda which has managed to convince westerners that Israel is commiting something even close to a genocide and killing kids on purpose. Absolute nonsense. None of these things will matter much in the future since it this exact weakness in the western constitution that will make war more and more common until the Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan or the russians attempt to grab a chunk of something they deem russian (or both ) and all hell breaks loose.

It is a genocide. First off 80% of the population of Gaza are there because they or their ancestors were forced into Gaza and have been locked in Gaza ever since.

Israel has denied them food, bombed them at an astounding rate and murdered tens of thousands of people. Judaism is a religion which holidays are celebrations of Bronze age genocides of neighbouring tribes and that rhetoric has been used liberally during the war. While Israeli soldiers have been committing war crimes on an industrial scale they haven't been shy about referencing their historic genoicides.

Israel has shown that it is incapable of of taking an area the size of a city against an enemy with no logistics. The war started with Israeli soldiers crying in a bathroom of a well fortified position while getting smoked by men in sandals, and ended with Israelis being unable to fight. Israel has ended up deeply divided and is in a permanent state of crisis. Israels situation today is similar to the situation of French Algeria in the 50s or Vietnam in the 60s. They have a population that hates them and the cost of containing it is too great. Israel isn't a sustainable state and the Arabs know that they can outlast them as long as they sustain the pressure.

the complete inability of the western civilian , and by extension politician, to understand what war actually is

Europeans have fought battles on battle fields for thousands of years with a strong aversion to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manor. The cowardly and brutal fighting style has once again reminded Europeans why the jewish mindset is fundamentally incompatible with the western mindset and how the Semitic/MENA culture simply is not anything we want to deal with. Israel's popularity has plummeted in the west, especially among younger people who consume their news through social media, which is less controlled by the ADL. The same Jewish institutions who attack westerners for the slightest ethnocentrism have the chutzpah to try to justify bombing the Christians in the middle east so they can build summer homes on the west bank.

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Europeans have fought battles on battle fields for thousands of years with a strong aversion to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manor.

If you ran the IDF, how would you fight Hamas in a chivalrous manner? The Israelis would like nothing more than to fight Hamas ”honorably”, mano a mano, on the open battlefield, with civilians safely miles away in refugee camps run by the Red Cross. Alas, that is not Hamas’ preferred strategy.

You can’t honourably duel a guy who refuses to duel you.

I have read that there are voices within Israel itself which are critical of the current approach because it is, in a sense, cowardly: It seeks not to maximize the effectiveness of the operation, but rather to minimize the Israeli casualties, relying too much on airstrikes and not enough on outright occupation.

Don't have enough knowledge of either Israeli politics or warfare to know if the claim is real or true, though.

If you ran the IDF, how would you fight Hamas in a chivalrous manner?

First off, occupying a large population that fundamentally doesn't have anything to gain from the current setup is futile. Trying to force the Palestinians to accept only having a tiny fraction of the land with an awful arrangement won't work. The only times counter insurgency has worked, it has been with political concessions.

The arrangement is awful for gazans largely because they dump resources into poking the bear next door instead of developing themselves.

The arrangement is awful for gazans largely because they dump resources into poking the bear next door instead of developing themselves.

Israel explicitly forbids them from developing themselves, to the point of making it illegal to harvest rainwater because they consider the rain to be their property.

I don't know how they can be forbidden from developing themselves when they got $4B in aid between 2014 to 2020 for things like schools, infrastructure, hospitals, etc etc.

Why should they lay flat and accept defeat? They were pushed into a tiny area after their villages were destroyed and many of their kin were killed. They are put in a small camp with awful natural resources and have constantly been attacked by the Israelis who have bombed them repeatedly since start. Israel started the war when they attacked the Al Aqsa mosque and had already taken thousands of Palestinian hostages.

If you don't want to get smoked while crying in a bathroom in an IDF outpost don't move to Palestine and don't join the IDF. They have no reason to be there and have only themselves to blame for the constant headache which they will face.

Why should they lay flat and accept defeat?

Jarvis pull up the gazan death toll in the latest war

They are put in a small camp with awful natural resources and have constantly been attacked by the Israelis who have bombed them repeatedly since start. Israel started the war when they attacked the Al Aqsa mosque and had already taken thousands of Palestinian hostages.

I again remind you that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, evicted settlers, exhumed Jewish graves, and in return gazans elected Hamas to eradicate the Jews.

If you don't want to get smoked while crying in a bathroom in an IDF outpost don't move to Palestine and don't join the IDF. They have no reason to be there and have only themselves to blame for the constant headache which they will face.

Could say the same thing about you "crying" about gazans "getting smoked" - don't shoot rockets at the militarily superior neighbor and they won't kill you. As simple as that, yet you only apply the standard one way.

Jarvis pull up the gazan death toll in the latest war

Lower than what the Vietnamese, Algerians or Afghans paid.

I again remind you that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza,

So they took all the land except for a tiny sliver with minimal natural resources and no connection to the west bank and then put it under blockade.

As simple as that, yet you only apply the standard one way.

Because there is absolutely no reason for the IDF to be there. The idea that a God gave them the land in exchange for parts of babies penises is absurd as a legal argument. The Palestinians did not start the fight, people who managed to get all of Eastern Europe to hate them and then decided to move to Palestine started the conflict.

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When the enemy hates you for deep-set religious and ethnic reasons, what concessions are possible? This isn’t Northern Ireland, where the end of the troubles coincided magnificently with both the Protestants and (especially) Catholics embracing secularism, with extreme economic growth in the Republic etc. The only concession the enemy will accept is a shared state, which all but the most optimistic critics accept means becoming both (a) just another third world shithole and (b) jewish subjugation and eventually expulsion in alliance with other Arab states and groups.

The analogy to the troubles is somewhat limited, but there is one part that is very true. The troubles largely stopped following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the flow of communist money to IRA and other terrorist groups.

If the west cut off aid and let Israel cut off the Iranian pipelines to their hearts' content, Gaza would change quite rapidly methinks.

Unfortunately, the troubles stopped after cutting off American funding to the IRA.

Tony Blair’s ambassador to America describes in his biography how much of his job was persuading influential Irish-Americans that passing money to the IRA was funding Irish-on-Irish atrocities rather than being a convenient way of giving Britain the finger and keeping in touch with the old country.

The area is majority Palestinian. You can't have an area where the majority of people are second class citizens in their own home and nobody except Israel wants a massive refugee crisis. This is question for the people who thought building a jewish state in a densely populate area to answer.

The area is majority Palestinian. You can't have an area where the majority of people are second class citizens in their own home

Why not? That is the way it is in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab countries today, and in a wider sense that is the way things have been for various native and non-native populations for states that have lasted centuries countless times across human history.

Right, once the religion died down, so did the ethnic strife, so religion was the dominant factor. I don’t think arab christians care all that much about which worldly ruler owns Jerusalem. It’s 99% religious-islamic reasons. Only islam provides palestinians with generational deep hatred through all the defeats and humiliations, and against every rational consideration. Even SS and functor would at some point, after yet another lost battle, surrender, lay down their arms and let their children live in peace and comfort.

Therefore Israel’s best chance is to destroy or weaken Islam before it destoys Israel. If the saudis can export wahhabism, the jews with their very particular skills can get apostasy going. Of course this eminently justified and thoroughly beneficial endeavour will be viewed in a negative light by morally confused people, but then there is nothing the jews could do that would not be.

Europeans have fought battles on battle fields for thousands of years with a strong aversion to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manor.

The Eastern Front of WWII concluded less than 80 years ago… like c’mon!

And how like are Hitler and Stalin today?

Not too bad.

Whatever the reputation of their leaders today, clearly many rank-and-file Soviets and Nazis of the time also weren't averse to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manner...

Europeans have fought battles on battle fields for thousands of years with a strong aversion to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manor.

Since densely populated urban centres have become commonplace, how many Europeans have comported themselves in such a manner in wartime? There was plenty of deliberate bombing of exclusively civilian targets on the part of the Allies in the second world war, for example (Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki). Likewise the deliberate bombing of villages by Americans in the Vietnam war. Evidently this "cowardly and brutal" fighting style is not unique to Jews.

And that's not even addressing the obvious point, that civilian collateral damage is literally unavoidable when engaged in a conflict with a belligerent which employs guerrilla warfare tactics and uses civilians as human shields, fully anticipating - even hoping - that they will get caught in the crossfire.

Compare the British in Northern Ireland with the videos of IDF soldiers larping biblical genocides. The British stabilized northern ireland and effectively pacified it. They were not mass killing tens of thousands of civilians in a year, and Belfast isn't a smoking heap of rubble. Israeli politicians openly talk about moving large numbers of Palestinians to Europe and other countries in the middle east while blowing up all civilian infrastructure. The level of brutality is unusually high and gets a level of support from the leadership that is unprecedented.

Compare the British in Northern Ireland

You mean the British soldiers who opened fire on a peaceful protest completely without provocation, killing fourteen people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)) ? The British security apparatus which provided almost all of the resources to a paramilitary organisation on one side of the conflict, while British soldiers had an explicit policy of shooting members of opposing paramilitary organisations dead on sight? The British security apparatus which urged the members of a separate paramilitary organisation to assassinate the Irish Taoiseach?

"The British soldiers brought peace to Northern Ireland" is certainly not my understanding of the period 1960-98, some of which I lived through. I accept that the Troubles was a much less brutal conflict than the Israel-Palestine war (although I wouldn't say Israel is solely to blame for said brutality), but the British military and security apparatus deserve a great deal of the blame for needlessly escalating it.

14 deaths in Northern Ireland becomes so famous people know the story 53 years later. Israel kills hundreds of people a year during a peaceful year and tens of thousands during the war. The Gazan war had as many dead in a month as the troubles had in 30 years. It was about 360x more bloody.

The IRA was also significantly less bloodthirsty than Hamas, their goal was to maintain a low level insurgency until Britain ceded the six counties to the Republic of Ireland. Hamas by contrast wants the Jews wiped out.

You're also failing to take population into account. The current combined population of Israel, Palestine and the West Bank is about 15 million people. In 1948 it was about 2.2 million. Let's average that and say the combined population is 8.6 million in the period under discussion.

The Troubles were almost entirely confined to Northern Ireland, only occasionally spilling over into the Republic and the British mainland. To keep things fair, I'll exclude any deaths which took place outside of Northern Ireland, per this table. The population of Northern Ireland was 1.5 million in 1966 (when the Troubles began) and 1.7 million in 1998 (Good Friday Agreement), giving us an average of 1.6 million for the period.

  • 3,272 deaths against a population of 1.6 million = 214 deaths/100k

  • 100,000* deaths against a population of 8.6 million = 1,221 deaths/100k

So the Israel-Palestine conflict is only 6 times as bloody as the Troubles, not 360 times. And that isn't even taking timescale into account, as the Troubles went on for 32 years while the Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing in one form or another since 1948.

  • 3,532 deaths against a population of 1.6 million, over 32 years = 7.2 deaths/100k/year

  • 100,000* deaths against a population of 8.6 million, over 77 years = 16 deaths/100k/year

So only slightly more than twice as bloody as the Troubles.

*Roughly.

But by the same token, I'll note that Hamas claimed nearly half as many lives in one day (7/10) as the Troubles did in 30 years, almost all of whom were civilians. It seems to me that you're being rather selective in your condemnation.

First off the British military wasn't incompetent enough to get pwnd that hard. The Israelis were defending military outposts with hundreds of soldiers and got owned by men in sandals running over an open field. Of the 797 civilian casualties a large portion was killed by Israel blasting the area and preferring to kill civilians rather than letting them be taken prisoners. That is a civilian to military casualty rate well below two civilians killed by Hamas for every IDF soldier.

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Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki

None of these cities were purely civilian targets, particularly if you think military industry is fair game. Hiroshima was a Japanese army headquarters, and at Nagasaki the bomb detonated between an arsenal and an arms factory, while the Doolittle raid hit an aircraft carrier and various industrial targets (and also civilian buildings, but AFAIK the Raiders were not instructed to target e.g. schools). The Dresden bombing was planned to hit German industrial centers and a railroad yard - there were apparently some ancillary military assets there (such as barracks) but the real target was the military industrial center that was believed to be there.

Now, that being said, I tend to agree with your overall point - there's certainly a case to be made that these bombing raids were not proportionate and therefore not justified under the laws of war. But there were certainly military or at a minimum industrial targets relevant to the war effort at all four of those locations.

None of these cities were purely civilian targets, particularly if you think military industry is fair game.

So I guess the tunnel network under Gaza makes every inch of it a legitimate target for earthquake and bunker buster bombs.

Any strike on the tunnel network under Gaza would need to apply the principle of proportionality – same as the Allied bombing strikes on Japan. International law bans

an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

I am not a lawyer but I think that in practice what this means is that if striking the tunnel network was sufficiently necessary to achieve Israel's goals, and it was also entirely colocated with orphanages, hospitals, and food banks, it would be justified to hit a food bank in order to strike the tunnel network. (Note also that as I understand it the Gazan combatants would have some duty to not entirely colocate their military equipment with orphanages, hospitals, and food banks.)

But on the other hand if Israel had the ability to strike the tunnel network and gain the same military advantage without striking an orphanage, hospital or food bank, they should take that option instead of the one that could reasonably be expected to kill civilians.

I have never seen a realistic suggestion for how to militarily destroy the tunnels without hitting said food bank etc. I've seen many suggestions by people who have watched too many Hollywood movies, though.

I don't have a strong opinion on the tunnel network, but it seemed like a helpful example to demonstrate proportionality.

None of these cities were purely civilian targets, particularly if you think military industry is fair game.

This is also true for Gaza.

Yes, I agree – Gaza, as a whole, is not a purely civilian target. This, at least in my estimation, does not mean that carpet bombing it is necessarily a proportionate response – particularly given that modern precision-guided weaponry and the lack of Gazan air defenses means that Israel faces a different calculus than the Allies did during World War Two (and even then, from what I know, I think you could reasonably argue at least some of the Allied bombing strikes weren't justified).

Note that I am not saying the Israelis have been carpet-bombing Gaza – I do not believe that to be a correct description of their actions. Just pointing out there's a material difference at play.

(and even then, from what I know, I think you could reasonably argue at least some of the Allied bombing strikes weren't justified)

This is the piece of the puzzle that I think you are missing. The bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and dozens of other strategic air raid targets are totally unjustifiable by modern standards. They fail the tests of both proportionality and distinction. Were we to be using the standards of the allies in WWII (which were still higher than the standards of the Axis) then Israel turning the Gaza strip to rubble with carpet bombing or nukes would be, if not justifiable, at least comfortably within the window of normality.

Dresden, perhaps. With Hiroshima and Nagasaki it depends on if you take into account that they won the damned war. Critics like to not count that part. If you balance Hiroshima and Nagasaki against continued conventional warfare to a conclusion, they look a lot more proportional.

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Yes, I think you are correct. But on the other hand, modern standards for warfare are much higher due to precision weapons. As you suggest, from what I understand Allied tactics in the Second World War were not unusual when contrasted with the Axis tactics.

Mind you, this isn't necessarily a moral justification for the actions - I just think it's important to understand that our standards are and should be higher because we can be more discriminating.

What is "proportionate" in this context? If I have 1 000 soldiers and the opponent has 10 000, then they kill 100 of mine, is it proportionate to kill 100 or 1 000 in response? Adjust as needed for civilian casualties.

From what I understand, there's no limitations in a time of war on striking enemy combatants. Although there are certainly political questions of proportionality, from what I understand under international law if I sink your rowboat you are entirely justified in sinking my aircraft carrier.

The question of proportionality kicks in when you're considering civilian collateral – so for instance you are probably not justified in nuking downtown Los Angeles to destroy a single military rowboat. But you probably would be justified in launching a conventional strike on San Diego to hit the military base there if it is calibrated to cause as few civilian casualties as possible while achieving its desired military effect.

Note that I am not a lawyer though.

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I think that underestimates Israel on two points. First, unlike other colonial powers the people making the decisions have no where else to go. Israel is the only Jewish majority state on th3 planet. Given the last 2000 years of Jewish history, if Jews lose the country they control, and their military ability to defend themselves they fully expect a return to periodic pogroms and expulsions. That’s what their history has been in Europe. That’s a lot different from most other colonial projects done by Europeans projecting power from relative security in Europe and thus could give up on a territory without putting themselves in danger. Jews in Israel will fight to the last man and woman to protect Israel because they have no other option.

Second, Israel has the full backing of the USA. Even in the face of huge opposition, neither party could bring themselves to offer more than pious mouth noises as they give Israel full access to the American arsenal and logistical and intelligence support on the side. Trump has, if anything provided more of this support, including strong arming Jordan and Egypt into taking Palestinians into their countries. Other countries in the region don’t have that.

First, unlike other colonial powers the people making the decisions have no where else to go.

If Americans are so adamant about a jewish state they should give them a small plot of land. Jews have managed 2000 years without a state so it would hardly be anything new. A large portion of jews lived in the middle east without a jewish state for the past 2000 years. A jewish population in an Ottoman style empire would be return to normalacy.

and their military ability to defend themselves they fully expect a return to periodic pogroms and expulsions

Jews require constant conflict with everyone around them in order to maintain group cohesion. If they didn't want to be disliked a good start would be to stop killing large numbers of civilians. The cause of antisemitism is the type of behaviour Ben Gvir and his likes are engaging in.

Second, Israel has the full backing of the USA

Along with Vietnam and Afghanistan? Evangelical Christians who honestly believe Jesus will return if the foreskins in exchange for Israel deal is upheld is shrinking. The fact that the Jewish community is deeply antagonistic towards the Christian groups that support them doesn't help.

If Americans are so adamant about a jewish state they should give them a small plot of land.

Man, I wish that deal was on the table. I'd take a Jewish state in the Patagonia (not the nicest part, though) every day of the week.

Evangelical Christians who honestly believe Jesus will return if the foreskins in exchange for Israel deal is upheld is shrinking.

I’ve posted this before- in practice, Christian Zionism is not driven by the belief that it will bring around the rapture(or connected to American circumcision, which was a WWII-era health program). Christian Zionism is driven by the(in fairness born out by events) belief that siding against Israel will lead to bad things happening to the country that does it.

A large portion of jews lived in the middle east without a jewish state for the past 2000 years. A jewish population in an Ottoman style empire would be return to normalacy.

How do you imagine this happening? Let's say Israel collectively says "You're right, this was a bad idea, we're packing it up and dissolving the country."

Which Arab states do you imagine would take them in?

Jews require constant conflict with everyone around them in order to maintain group cohesion.

The only place they've been in constant conflict with everyone around them is Israel.

The cause of antisemitism is the type of behaviour Ben Gvir and his likes are engaging in.

An even more ahistorical claim. At various times, the Israeli government has been substantially more conciliatory and peacenik than now, and it didn't stop y'all from hating Jews.

If Americans are so adamant about a jewish state they should give them a small plot of land.

"If the world is so adamant about a Palestinian state, they should give them a small plot of land." After all, there's plenty of land outside of Gaza or the West Bank. I'm sure Israel would be happy for the Palestinians to no longer be their neighbors.

Do you think the Palestinians or surrounding Arab nations would accept this if it was actually offered?

Oh, absolutely not. That's a major part of the conflict in the region, and the point of my mirrored statement.

There is absolutely no reason for the rest of the world to want or support a Palestinian refugee crisis. Neo con wars end up with migration crises and these need to be stopped. No more mass movements of arabs.

A jewish population in an Ottoman style empire would be return to normalacy.

The Ottomans are not around any more. Nor is there any replacement; even Erdogan doesn't seem to be that ambitious.

Plus the last ottoman elites declared that pillarization was out of fashion, and so decided to murder all their minorities instead. You can’t really go lower than dead, but I think they’d have even stronger misgivings towards a newly implanted jewish minority.

I’m not convinced that Jews in Israel would give up their only Jewish state for any reason, as I said, Jewish history isn’t one of success and power and so on. Its pogroms, expulsions, culminating in a holocaust. No Israeli will give up Israel to go back to that. And I think this is behind the response to Palestinians— if they lose Israel, Jews will be back in ghettos hoping that the rest of us don’t try to hurt them again. Better to be a pariah state than risk not being a state at all.

And Kamala Harris is hardly an evangelical speaking to evangelicals. Even so, the best they could come up with contra Israel is “we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself, and at worst we’re slowing down the sale of weapons (NB, not even stopping, just slowing). That in the face of protests and arguably at the cost of her winning the election. The elites are fully on board here.

Europeans have fought battles on battle fields for thousands of years with a strong aversion to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manor.

laughs in thirty years war

Wesphalian Peace mentioned in proxy!

Occasional reminder that the Nazi's rhetorical explanation for giving up at the end of ww2 was "if this continues the devastation will approach that of the 30 years war and we don't want that"

Or the high time of european chivalry, the Hundred Years War.

After a battle they routinely executed all prisoners who were commoners, while the nobles were allowed to ransom their lives. One such man was King John II “the good” who was living large in captivity while France bankrupted itself to pay his ransom. At the same time, his subjects had trouble surviving the standard noble chevauchée tactic, where a small mounted force kills villagers, livestock and destroys crops, to force the rest inside protected walls, destroying the enemy’s agricultural, tax, and ultimately, population base.

But, noblesse oblige. The financial obligations of his starving people to his noble title, that is. And he was considered particularly chivalrous, as his surname alludes to. For the people of the time chivalry did not mean what functor implies, some kind of protective duty towards the weak. It meant the right etiquette for courting highborn ladies, and riding into battle like a total jackass like King John the Blind, another shining beacon of chivalry of the time, who died strapped to his horse like a useless bag of fertilizer of his own chivalrous volition.

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