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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Should Palestinians in Gaza just forget the last 18 years and the thousands men, women and children bombed to death?

Yes, yes they should. It sucks but there is no alternative. Israel is too far advanced and strong now compared to the Palestinians, end of story. The time to compete was 50 years ago, and the way to compete was not rockets and bullets but rather a singular focus on economic growth to the point where your soft power grew so much you could influence the players that really matter (lets be honest here, both Palestine and Israel are too small to influence the world by themselves) to put extreme pressure on Israel because they wanted to trade with you (which is what Israel is doing now to the Palestinians, see the proposed normalization of relations with parts of the Arab world).

Violence no longer works on large scales in the 21st century (see Russia v Ukraine) if you want to create a peaceful country and prosperity for your people. The only reason it works for Israel doing the reverse is that the Palestinians are much weaker (to the point that it's no longer two equals fighting - which leads to a lot of damage to the world; but more like police subjugating a riot - minimal damage to the world if the police handle it right), and because Israeli economic heft will mean other countries turn a blind eye to what is going on, were Palestine to try the same, they would rightfully be sanctioned into the ground. Until Hamas understands this the very people they want to help will suffer even more than they would in a counterfactual world where Hamas suddenly disappeared off the face of this planet.

Even if Hamas wants to take the fight to Israel physically, the way to do it is not through the sticks and stones tier rockets but rather through diverting economic resources into high end military research to make yourself a plausible equal of Israel in the domain, and then threaten them (this is never going to happen, but it's still the right way to do things if you choose this path).

The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them. If anything tech is helping Palestine. We have seen cheap drones that are mass produced take out an Israeli tank today. With every Palestinian having a cell phone and most of the middle east on social media it has become harder for Israel to brutally suppress Palestinians. Israel can no longer control the narrative when so much of the public's view comes from the internet and not pro Israel media organizations. The Palestinians are increasing in numbers and fighting an ongoing insurgency at home is cancerous for a society. Furthermore, Israel is already deeply split between conservatives, an extremely woke portion of jews and sectarian fundamentalists that are breeding at a high rate.

The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them.

Eh. The Taliban 'defeated' NATO by being a thorn in their side until NATO decided the juice wasnt worth the squeeze and bailed. That would not work for Palestinians. Suppressing an agressive Palestine isn't a side project for Israel, it's existential. You'd better believe that if Afghanistan were in the middle of the Mohave desert and rocketed Phoenix every decade or so the US would still be there.

Israel can no longer control the narrative when so much of the public's view comes from the internet and not pro Israel media organizations.

That might have been true yesterday but a few viral videos of Israelis getting executed and lynched by Palestinians will turn global perception of the Israeli-Palestine conflict around right quick.

The US could absolutely have won in Afghanistan if it was willing to accept extreme civilian casualties, wipe out villages etc. The reality of an occupation is that if you have fuel, food and resources, mostly you really can just kill people until a population is pacified. It would have worked even in Chechnya, Putin just didn’t have the guts.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that Putin was doing that in Chechnya, it was just cheaper and easier to give Ramzan Kadyrov what he needed to pay off a sufficient portion of the chechens to establish total control in exchange for loyalty.

Pacifying Chechnya was difficult and extremely costly. There are twice as many Palestinians as Chechnyas and they have phones. Russians at least weren't continuously filmed during their operation. Israel has falling support in the polls and going full Chechnya won't improve that.

So far they seem to be using their phones mostly to publicize their own atrocities.

That depends if it is filtered through American media. I am mainly getting Israeli bombings, beatings of Palestinians and attacks.

If Israel kills every palestinian tomorrow, in 5 years all will be forgotten. The half assed genocides get remembered. The full one don't.

That's basically one of only three stable solutions, too. The second one is the Palestinians kill all the Jews, the third is the Jews all go somewhere else far away.

The Palestinian diaspora extends beyond Israel/West Bank/Gaza, though.

A lot of the Palestinian diaspora is Christians who don’t care much, eg. Bukele is on the Zionist side etc.

The more India rises as a power and the more Islamic immigration to Europe continues to cause integration issues, the more every non-Muslim country will support Israeli brutality against Arabs.

This makes no sense. Israel wants millions of Arabs to move from where they currently live. Palestinians want Arabs to continue to live in the same place as their family always lived in. Supporting Israel is supporting mass muslim immigration to Europe. Israel has sponsored migration into Europe while destabalizing the middle east. If we don't want massive arab immigration to Europe than not forcefully resettling millions of Palestinians is a good plan. One of the main critiques of neoconservative policies in the middle east has been massive amounts of migrants into Europe. It is also almost impossible to repatriate muslims to Palestine today as Israel blocks it. Palestine meanwhile wants Europe to return migrants.

Almost no Muslim immigration to Europe is from Palestine. And again, it isn’t really about that, it’s that sympathy with the Jewish side rises as Islamist terrorism increases in the West.

Israel is a major proponent of chaos in the region and Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian migrants aren't that uncommon. The national rally in France isn't even pro Israel. The neocon love of war in the middle east and religious worship of jews isn't really a thing in Europe. Most of the right doesn't care about the conflict at all. The only groups that are really animated by it is a small group of leftists and the immigrant population.

The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them

Except that the Taliban didn't defeat them, right? The Taliban managed to kill all of 2000 US troops in 20 years, and they succeeded only after US troops left. I don't think the IDF is going to be leaving Israel any time soon.

That is called losing the battles but winning the war.

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