naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
If they managed to find some countries that were willing to take in millions of Palestinians, the Israelis maybe would be able to pull off a soft ethnic cleansing. But they could not pull off a murderous, "kill everybody" genocide without alienating a very large fraction of their current supporters, including Jewish ones. Israel would become similar to what North Korea is today. It would probably not collapse, but it would have big difficulties in retaining nearly as many high-skilled, intelligent people as it has now unless it made it illegal for them to leave the country, and it would have bigger difficulties in convincing Jews from elsewhere to move there than it does now. Only the most hardcore patriots would want to live in an armed camp that is known for having recently committed one of modern history's biggest genocides, and I doubt that the overlap between such hardcore patriots and the kind of high-skilled, intelligent people who are the bedrock of any sophisticated modern economy is very large. Which is not to say that there are no intelligent pro-genocide people, of course. There are plenty. But they are an exception. In the heat of the moment after having had your nation attacked, almost anyone could feel genocidal desire. I think it's likely that a huge number of otherwise compassionate Israelis feel that way right now, for example. But there's a difference between feeling it every now and then and actually being ok with your military doing it and seeing the videos of what it looks like. Even the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust a secret from both Germans and people in other countries, but in today's world there would be no way to keep a violent genocide of Palestinians a secret.
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Notes -
If they managed to find some countries that were willing to take in millions of Palestinians, the Israelis maybe would be able to pull off a soft ethnic cleansing. But they could not pull off a murderous, "kill everybody" genocide without alienating a very large fraction of their current supporters, including Jewish ones. Israel would become similar to what North Korea is today. It would probably not collapse, but it would have big difficulties in retaining nearly as many high-skilled, intelligent people as it has now unless it made it illegal for them to leave the country, and it would have bigger difficulties in convincing Jews from elsewhere to move there than it does now. Only the most hardcore patriots would want to live in an armed camp that is known for having recently committed one of modern history's biggest genocides, and I doubt that the overlap between such hardcore patriots and the kind of high-skilled, intelligent people who are the bedrock of any sophisticated modern economy is very large. Which is not to say that there are no intelligent pro-genocide people, of course. There are plenty. But they are an exception. In the heat of the moment after having had your nation attacked, almost anyone could feel genocidal desire. I think it's likely that a huge number of otherwise compassionate Israelis feel that way right now, for example. But there's a difference between feeling it every now and then and actually being ok with your military doing it and seeing the videos of what it looks like. Even the Nazis tried to keep the Holocaust a secret from both Germans and people in other countries, but in today's world there would be no way to keep a violent genocide of Palestinians a secret.
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