naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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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.
Preventing 'dual-use' equipment like X-ray machines to be brought into the West Bank. Sabotaging the economy of the West bank by bombing power plants, constraining trade into and out of the region, restricting quantities of industrial fuel brought in...
How much of that would have happened if they had accepted their situation and had not pursued armed resistance against Israel since the mid-90s? Probably none of it. They would prefer to fight than to accept a comfortable enough middle-income existence in a crowded city state that would likely be little worse than that had by their cousins in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt or (pre/postwar) Syria. I respect that they want to fight, but then it’s harder to sympathize with what is done to prevent them killing more Israelis.
if they had accepted their situation and had not pursued armed resistance
Well if we go with 'vae victis' then morality is out the window. You can invert this too, maybe Israel shouldn't have tried settling other people's land if they didn't want to be massacred? With vae victis, there is no right and wrong, only weak and strong.
OP is talking morality, sympathy, who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Who should be favoured by third parties on moral grounds (not strategic), who should be strong and who should prevail. A whole other dimension.
Furthermore, it's somewhat ironic that Israel chooses this particular doctrine, given the existence of their state is in large part due to the restraint of the British, who didn't employ vae victis when faced with a terrorist insurgency from the much weaker Israelis. They didn't rev up the Lancasters to teach them a lesson, they held back.
The reason the British didn’t go full vae victis on the Jews is that they didn’t consider themselves to have conquered Zionists. Many British elites (including Churchill) were open Zionists and considered Jewish rule preferable to Arab rule. The UK also had a large Jewish elite, most notably several branches of the Rothschild family, who were (and are) well integrated into the public life of the ruling class, and who spent fifty or more years lobbying for Israel’s existence (and are in fact the primary reason Israel exists). Israel exists because Jews proved themselves useful to the ruling class of the world’s largest and most powerful empire (and indeed funded imperial expansion, cf Cecil Rhodes etc) in the decades in which that empire decided the fate of their ancestral homeland.
If the Gulf Arabs wanted to replicate that success with the Palestinians, they could try bribing America with $500bn of oil money (or just oil) to drop all support from Israel unless they agree to ‘48 borders or whatever. That might or might not work, but in either case, they don’t care enough about people in Gaza and the West Bank to try.
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Notes -
How much of that would have happened if they had accepted their situation and had not pursued armed resistance against Israel since the mid-90s? Probably none of it. They would prefer to fight than to accept a comfortable enough middle-income existence in a crowded city state that would likely be little worse than that had by their cousins in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt or (pre/postwar) Syria. I respect that they want to fight, but then it’s harder to sympathize with what is done to prevent them killing more Israelis.
Well if we go with 'vae victis' then morality is out the window. You can invert this too, maybe Israel shouldn't have tried settling other people's land if they didn't want to be massacred? With vae victis, there is no right and wrong, only weak and strong.
OP is talking morality, sympathy, who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Who should be favoured by third parties on moral grounds (not strategic), who should be strong and who should prevail. A whole other dimension.
Furthermore, it's somewhat ironic that Israel chooses this particular doctrine, given the existence of their state is in large part due to the restraint of the British, who didn't employ vae victis when faced with a terrorist insurgency from the much weaker Israelis. They didn't rev up the Lancasters to teach them a lesson, they held back.
The reason the British didn’t go full vae victis on the Jews is that they didn’t consider themselves to have conquered Zionists. Many British elites (including Churchill) were open Zionists and considered Jewish rule preferable to Arab rule. The UK also had a large Jewish elite, most notably several branches of the Rothschild family, who were (and are) well integrated into the public life of the ruling class, and who spent fifty or more years lobbying for Israel’s existence (and are in fact the primary reason Israel exists). Israel exists because Jews proved themselves useful to the ruling class of the world’s largest and most powerful empire (and indeed funded imperial expansion, cf Cecil Rhodes etc) in the decades in which that empire decided the fate of their ancestral homeland.
If the Gulf Arabs wanted to replicate that success with the Palestinians, they could try bribing America with $500bn of oil money (or just oil) to drop all support from Israel unless they agree to ‘48 borders or whatever. That might or might not work, but in either case, they don’t care enough about people in Gaza and the West Bank to try.
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