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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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On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

I think people won't care. Or rather, leftists who visibly care will discredit themselves. Like, there's talk of international opinion, but what do you do concretely? Do you sanction Israel for what Azerbaijan just violently did with no provocation and at no cost, after naked Jewish women have been paraded, raped and murdered in the streets by savages? And while a true ethnic cleansing is not out of the question, more realistically they'll simply permanently occupy Gaza and turn it into an actual open air prison, whether after the hostages are recovered or after the stream of atrocities decreases the public tolerance for giving in to hostage tactics.

These events certainly drive home the point that Hamas is the best Palestinian ruling party that Israeli hawks could have had, to the point that intel leaks leading to this disaster should be investigated with an eye for 4D chess (nothing will be found though). This obviates the conflict over judicial reform, demonstrates to Haredim the necessity of cooperation with the secula authority and the military, builds up the momentum for war with Iran, generally accelerates the mode collapse into a far right ethnonationalist society.

From the more mainstream Palestinian side (such as there is), I think escalation now is motivated by the ongoing legitimization of Israel in the rest of the Arab world. They don't have much time left for this silliness.

And while a true ethnic cleansing is not out of the question, more realistically they'll simply permanently occupy Gaza and turn it into an actual open air prison, whether after the hostages are recovered or after the stream of atrocities decreases the public tolerance for giving in to hostage tactics.

7 million Jews trying to occupy 2.3 million Arabs is a tall order. That's a slightly worse ratio than 140 million Russians trying to occupy 40 million Ukrainians, plus Gaza Arabs are younger and raised in an atmosphere of antisemitism that literally spans generations. I don't think setting up a permanent military occupation can work, back when Israel left Gaza in 2005 it was twice as small.

It's obviously a challenging task, but I think Israel will ultimately conclude there is no better alternative. Walling off Gaza and shooting down their rockets hasn't worked. Occupying the West Bank, mostly, has worked.

Suffice to say I believe those concerns are not insurmountable. If the goal of the occupation is not integration of Gaza but simply killing all fighting age men who try to coordinate on anything that resembles Hamas activity or dealing with Iranians – a few tens of thousands plus tons of networked drones, facial recognition checkpoints, shooting everyone masked etc etc. will work adequately. Plus taller walls, better turrets.

This isn't 2005.

Hamas the best Palestinian ruling party that Israeli hawks could have had

Maybe, but I think that it is not the best Palestinian ruling party that Israel could have had. If Israel does become a far right ethnonationalist society, I think that a lot of its most intelligent people will simply move away from there and it will lose many of the advantages that it previously had relative to its enemies. And, since from what I understand Jews outside of Israel tend to increasingly intermarry a lot, this could actually destroy Jews' entire cultural/genetic advantage over gentiles which they have enjoyed for the last ~200 years as Jews get increasingly assimilated by the much huger populations of non-Jews around them.

Indeed, I think that part of this could happen even Israel does not become a far right ethnonationalist society but Israel's enemies simply somehow manage to hit it with rocket attacks a bit more frequently and regularly than they have managed to do up to this point. Highly skilled people like engineers and scientists can move elsewhere and some of the ones who are less patriotic than the rest would do so in such a scenario.

Israel will weather a minor slump in growth rate just fine and can afford to continue truncation selection on loyalty. The gravitation holding it together (fear of annihilation by gentiles plus feeling of racial, spiritual, essential distinctiveness) cannot be negated by anything so petty as a bunch of disloyal white collar workers scurrying away. Given local Jewish TFR, in a generation those turncoats will be more than adequately replaced by children of those who stayed anyway.

I am merely channeling the sentiment I observe among very level-headed, secular Israelis today – ML professors, staunch liberals, witty SSC readers. A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself. Israel no longer gives a fuck about Western libshit routines where patriotism is supposed to be definitionally antithetical to intellectualism; it's traversing the path that the West has renounced in the 20th century.

A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself

Israel would be welcome to try and it would fail. These same "liberals" would also find themselves the targets of Islamic radicals in the West doing revenge attacks for months if not years. Given their embrace of genocidal rhetoric, I certainly wouldn't shed a tear for them.

Islamist attacks in the West (even narrowly targeted at Jews) won’t create more sympathy for the Palestinian cause but the opposite.

Do you sanction Israel for what Azerbaijan just violently did with no provocation and at no cost, after naked Jewish women have been paraded, raped and murdered in the streets by savages?

I strongly doubt people actually follow this moralistic approach to war, or it is always profoundly hypocritical. No sane person ever took sides in the Karabakh conflict aside from the respective diasporas, simply because the people involved are both identical and irrelevant (and equally unpleasant) from our perspective; with Israel-Palestine there is a much stronger ingroup-outgroup dynamic, so it’s more comparable to Russia-Ukraine, in which I don’t believe any atrocity, real or imagined, would force any kind of self-reflection.

No sane person ever took sides in the Karabakh conflict aside from the respective diasporas, simply because the people involved are both identical and irrelevant

Not exactly. Armenians can at least point to their Christian history as a commonality and to the World War One-era genocide as something that many well-read Westerners have heard of. I'd guess that maybe 15% of Americans could immediately point to Armenia on a map of the world without help. When it comes to Azerbaijan, I would guess that it is more like 5%.

Also, probably because most countries never viewed Karabakh to be part of Armenia to begin with, because of Armenia's historical ties to Russia, and because Azerbaijan won both recent wars pretty quickly, Armenia did not benefit from anything even remotely approaching the amount of Western media PR that Ukraine has been getting.

I think the difference is that the Azerbaijanis aren’t really typecasted as Islamists, the first line of the Wikipedia page on Religion in Azerbaijan says “Azerbaijan is considered the most secular country in the Muslim world”, most elites don’t wear hijab etc. It’s clear to any observer that it’s a relatively run of the mill territorial conflict for that part of the world, Azerbaijan is a corrupt petrostate but Islam isn’t relevant and so it avoids the West vs Islam culture war conflict even as desperate Armenian boosters try to claim it as such.

Really? I'd personally think far more people would be able to identify Azerbaijan vs Armenia on a world map. Azerbaijan has the benefit of having a pointy bit sticking out into the Caspian (very memorable and easily identifiable) while Armenia really doesn't have much going for it, I'd imagine lots of people would confuse it for Georgia.

I can’t believe that you of all people are so wildly overestimating the geographical knowledge of the American populace.

Oh, I didn't mean like 30% of the American populace would be able to identify Azerbaijan, it was more like thinking 2% would be able to point to Armenia and get it right on the first try, while something like 5% would be able to do the same with Azerbaijan, my claim was (%age who get AZ correct) > (%age who get AM correct).

Besides, I never said I think the American population is uniquely dumb compared to the rest of the world, they're smarter if anything averaged over the whole rest of the world, it's more that I think modern western culture is what is bad. The hardware of westerners is fine (well, as fine as an average human's hardware can be), it's the software that's borked.

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