naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
29416 thread views
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.
Israel wants to expand, into Palestine and in other directions. They do not want Gaza to exist. Hence settlements contra the internationally agreed borders (making new 'facts on the ground'), hence land confiscation... Palestine also wants to expand and wants to get rid of Israel, yet they lack the power to do so. Look at who has been expanding and who has been contracting - why should anyone feel sympathy for the growing nuclear power of $54,000 GDP per capita, vs the declining semi-recognized state <$2000 GDP per capita?
You see a bear mauling a badger and your sympathy is with the bear, who's existence is being threatened by a badger? The badger got in two or three hits while the bear was sleeping and this is international news (admittedly it is at least novel and exciting). But the bear's surely going to maul the badger even harder in response. The overall trend will remain, just as it has for the last fifty+ years.
Well, sympathy shouldn't be the basis for foreign policy. Israel has the power to inflict their will, in large part thanks to tireless US assistance. We should at least be somewhat objective with what's going on and not pretend that Israel faces any present existential threat from Palestine. The statelet facing existential threat is on the other side of the conflict.
If Hamas had agreed to those borders you might have a point. But they haven't. "From the river to the sea" is their refrain. Tel Aviv is an infringement of their claims just as much as the newest settlement is.
If there is to be peace, both sides need to come to the table and compromise. Hamas does not want to compromise. Thus, no peace.
Your argument boils down to we should take Palestine's side because they have been losing the conflict. That's silly. Sometimes the good guys win.
Your argument boils down to we should take Palestine's side because they have been losing the conflict. That's silly. Sometimes the good guys win.
Note where I say 'Sympathy shouldn't be the basis of foreign policy' and 'I favour doing nothing, leaving things be, benign neglect.'
You are the one who wants to support a strong power bullying a weak one. My position is that the strong are doing fine on their own, they don't need any help doing what they're doing. You can't repress people and then act shocked when they repress you back.
Hamas does not want to compromise.
Israel derails the farcical 'US-mediated' peace process at every opportunity. Who would compromise with people who have no intention of following through on their commitments, in a process overseen by a judge who's sleeping with one of the parties?
Ron Pundak, Israeli negotiator: "The traditional approach of the [U.S.] State Department . . . was to adopt the position of the Israeli Prime Minister. This was demonstrated most extremely during the Netanyahu government, when the American government seemed sometimes to be working for the Israeli Prime Minister, as it tried to convince (and pressure) the Palestinian side to accept Israeli offers. This American tendency was also evident during Barak's tenure.
The Israelis make insulting offers where they retain control over Palestinian water, airspace, borders and prevent the Palestinians having an army and then say 'oh well we tried, the Palestinians just aren't interested in negotiations'.
Given all this, it is not surprising that Barak's former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was a key participant at Camp David, later told an interviewer, "If I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.
Between the start of the Oslo peace process in September 1993 and the outbreak of the Second Intifada seven years later, Israel confiscated more than forty thousand acres of Palestinian land, built 250 miles of bypass and security roads, established thirty new settlements, and increased the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza by almost one hundred thousand, which effectively doubled that population
I'm not a Palestinian leader, how should I know? I suggest that if even Israeli leaders like Ben-Ami wouldn't have accepted the terms they were offering, then they weren't negotiating in good faith.
One must also point out that the borders are what they de facto are as a result of an offensive war launched against Israel that Israel defended and took territory. I know the right of conquest is out of favor, but the right of conquest is surely just in Israel’s case.
Can you unpack your definition of an offensive war here? I suspect it would be hard to make it in such a way that it would not also apply to situations (chiefly involving the US and Russia) in which you would bristle at the action being described as an offensive war. The overall pattern since 1945 looks to me a lot like "if the X does nothing, Y will take their land slowly and the modal American will just pretend it isn't happening; if X does something, Y will take their land quickly and the modal American will perceive them as having a just right of conquest in response to an unprovoked attack".
I think you are wrong on your assertion. The US and Russia have engaged in countless aggressive wars. They are (perhaps were) the two hegemonic powers since 1945. I don’t think the US has clean hands although as far as hegemonic powers you could do a lot worse.
Which assertion specifically? I wasn't even going for the low-hanging fruit like either of the two invading Afghanistan; the interesting cases are more of the form of Ukraine's attacks on the *NR (how long do they have to squat that area before any Ukrainian attempt to reclaim it becomes completely analogous to Palestine vs. Israel now?)
Look at who has been expanding and who has been contracting - why should anyone feel sympathy for the growing nuclear power of $54,000 GDP per capita, vs the declining semi-recognized state <$2000 GDP per capita?
What is this slave morality? Of course one should, in most cases, feel more sympathy for the successful entity compared to the failed one. If a successful heart surgeon gets killed in a home invasion by some random thug, I feel more sad than I do when some dropout welfare leech has the same happen to them. Both are horrific, both are wrong, both represent a failure of the state’s obligation to protect all its citizens from crime, but the former is a greater loss than the latter. It is a tragedy when any good art is lost, but I would rather lose a mediocre Picasso sketch than the Mona Lisa.
Why rue that a killer has been stripped of his guns? The Gazans have been locked up in their territory (they were not initially, it is very important to remember) because they already fucked around and killed a lot of innocent civilians on countless previous occasions, and therefore their land was sealed off from Israel. For all the (valid, I should say) concerns about ethnic supremacist sentiment from some Religious Zionists, the Gazans are not in their current condition because of escalating oppression by Otzma Yehudit types, but because they repeatedly killed Israeli civilians when they were allowed into Israel for work and leisure.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2rafa 1yr ago
If a successful heart surgeon gets killed in a home invasion by some random thug, I feel more sad than I do when some dropout welfare leech has the same happen to them.
Except in this case the "surgeon" has been accepting massive amounts of welfare, and is simultaneously considered to be one of the biggest and most serious intelligence threats facing the US government for quite some time. It becomes a lot easier to support the badger when the bear has been given vast sums of your money while both spying on you and manipulating your political system (referring to the existence of AIPAC rather than the Elders of Zion here, mind).
I don't feel more sympathy for the surgeon because he is more successful, but because he provides more value. Some people, on the other hand, enjoy a lot of success in ventures that provide negative value to many, and I prefer the welfare leech to them.
Worse than slave morality is lionizing the strong as the weak and rushing to help an overlord as if they were an underdog.
Anyway, I say that we shouldn't make decisions based on sympathy but on interests. If the West were coolly and dispassionately making decisions, that would be great! We wouldn't be doing anything but selling weapons to whoever had the cash to pay for them. The US would not be rushing to shower Israel with billions in (additional) defence aid, not rushing aircraft carriers into the region to prevent anyone interfering with Israel.
International relations is anarchic, there is no police. Two men are feuding over some land. One is stronger than the other and is winning. Is your immediate reaction to run over and help the strong repress the weak, having a mental breakdown at the thought of a weak loser not knowing his place and striking his betters? That's the action of a madman. Leave them to it.
If we were favouring Israel because it advanced our interests, that's fine. But that's not the case. It doesn't do us any good to anger the Arabs, who can cause many problems for us and have much more to offer. Reason dictates that we throw Israel under the bus, so we can strengthen relations with more important countries. I see your surgeon and I raise you the petrol station, the latter is more important.
I note that you're not getting stuck into Ashlael's slave morality, or OP, not when their slave morality is pro-Israel. Would you honestly prefer the US adopt master morality, slapping Israel back hard when they blow up a US spy ship and sell US secrets to China?
If we were favouring Israel because it advanced our interests, that's fine. But that's not the case. It doesn't do us any good to anger the Arabs, who can cause many problems for us and have much more to offer. Reason dictates that we throw Israel under the bus, so we can strengthen relations with more important countries. I see your surgeon and I raise you the petrol station, the latter is more important.
But it does. Who else in the area is sympathetic to western ideology and willing to house western military bases?
Israel is also one of the intellectual powerhouses in the region. Intel has a 17 billion dollar foundry there. It's become an important industrial and manufacturing area of high level technology in the world. There is huge incentive for the US/west to support Israel beyond slave morality.
Who else in the area is sympathetic to western ideology and willing to house western military bases?
Turkey? All of these countries would be way happier with the West if we weren't supporting Israel, their mortal enemy. That Israel is liberal-democratic is a problem, it makes MENA look upon liberal democracy with suspicion and seek out alternative powers to balance against the US-Israel duo.
Israel's semiconductor production is pretty puny, all things considered. Malaysia also produces a fair few microchips, so what. They're no Taiwan or South Korea.
Turkey? All of these countries would be way happier with the West if we weren't supporting Israel, their mortal enemy.
Turkey also has significant political unrest with Erdogan and is essentially an authoritarian regime. I would guess the US military would be worried about parking bases there with the human rights violations and the potential for Erdogan to attempt to seize military assets one way or another. What you/Arab nations see as a problem is what US sees as something they can easily work with. Support for Erdogan by the west would also be political suicide for any politician who would endorses such a move as to their human rights violations.
Israel's semiconductor production is pretty puny, all things considered. Malaysia also produces a fair few microchips, so what.
Maybe in terms of total chip volume, but if the Intel press release is anything to go by the loss of the Fab would put the company in an awful spot. Also, decentralization of foundries seems to be a pretty good idea in general.
is what US sees as something they can easily work with
Which is why Israel has sent soldiers to help out in... zero US wars? They provide minimal military assistance, soak up considerable amounts of munitions, foreign aid and enormous diplomatic energy and provide lots of dubious intelligence - see them claiming Iran is six months away from a nuclear bomb for the last 30 years, or Iraq's WMDs. Israel's nuclear weapons blow an enormous hole in the non-proliferation treaty and complicate US enforcement efforts. And then there's the technology transfers to China.
Israel provides the sort of friendship the US needs much less of.
Even if Israel is as unreliable and selfish as your purport, do you think any other middle eastern country would not be the same if not worse?
Do you think any other country in the area would be amenable to having US military presence and US businesses operating in their country with relative freedom and autonomy?
Even if Israel is as unreliable and selfish as your purport, do you think any other middle eastern country would not be the same if not worse?
If it weren't for US support for Israel, the Arabs would be much more pro-US, since they'd think the US has more to it than just propping up their hated enemy.
Do you think any other country in the area would be amenable to having US military presence and US businesses operating in their country with relative freedom and autonomy?
The US would not be rushing to shower Israel with billions in (additional) defence aid, not rushing aircraft carriers into the region to prevent anyone interfering with Israel.
I don’t believe the US should provide any further military (or other) aid to Israel.
I see your surgeon and I raise you the petrol station, the latter is more important.
The US is now energy self-sufficient, there is no further need for Arab oil and the Europeans, Indians and Chinese can conduct their own negotiations if they want it.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Israel wants to expand, into Palestine and in other directions. They do not want Gaza to exist. Hence settlements contra the internationally agreed borders (making new 'facts on the ground'), hence land confiscation... Palestine also wants to expand and wants to get rid of Israel, yet they lack the power to do so. Look at who has been expanding and who has been contracting - why should anyone feel sympathy for the growing nuclear power of $54,000 GDP per capita, vs the declining semi-recognized state <$2000 GDP per capita?
You see a bear mauling a badger and your sympathy is with the bear, who's existence is being threatened by a badger? The badger got in two or three hits while the bear was sleeping and this is international news (admittedly it is at least novel and exciting). But the bear's surely going to maul the badger even harder in response. The overall trend will remain, just as it has for the last fifty+ years.
Well, sympathy shouldn't be the basis for foreign policy. Israel has the power to inflict their will, in large part thanks to tireless US assistance. We should at least be somewhat objective with what's going on and not pretend that Israel faces any present existential threat from Palestine. The statelet facing existential threat is on the other side of the conflict.
If Hamas had agreed to those borders you might have a point. But they haven't. "From the river to the sea" is their refrain. Tel Aviv is an infringement of their claims just as much as the newest settlement is.
If there is to be peace, both sides need to come to the table and compromise. Hamas does not want to compromise. Thus, no peace.
Your argument boils down to we should take Palestine's side because they have been losing the conflict. That's silly. Sometimes the good guys win.
Note where I say 'Sympathy shouldn't be the basis of foreign policy' and 'I favour doing nothing, leaving things be, benign neglect.'
You are the one who wants to support a strong power bullying a weak one. My position is that the strong are doing fine on their own, they don't need any help doing what they're doing. You can't repress people and then act shocked when they repress you back.
Israel derails the farcical 'US-mediated' peace process at every opportunity. Who would compromise with people who have no intention of following through on their commitments, in a process overseen by a judge who's sleeping with one of the parties?
The Israelis make insulting offers where they retain control over Palestinian water, airspace, borders and prevent the Palestinians having an army and then say 'oh well we tried, the Palestinians just aren't interested in negotiations'.
What are the concessions that Israel could make that would end the conflict?
I'm not a Palestinian leader, how should I know? I suggest that if even Israeli leaders like Ben-Ami wouldn't have accepted the terms they were offering, then they weren't negotiating in good faith.
You could listen to what the Palestinians clearly and repeatedly say on the subject.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
One must also point out that the borders are what they de facto are as a result of an offensive war launched against Israel that Israel defended and took territory. I know the right of conquest is out of favor, but the right of conquest is surely just in Israel’s case.
Can you unpack your definition of an offensive war here? I suspect it would be hard to make it in such a way that it would not also apply to situations (chiefly involving the US and Russia) in which you would bristle at the action being described as an offensive war. The overall pattern since 1945 looks to me a lot like "if the X does nothing, Y will take their land slowly and the modal American will just pretend it isn't happening; if X does something, Y will take their land quickly and the modal American will perceive them as having a just right of conquest in response to an unprovoked attack".
I think you are wrong on your assertion. The US and Russia have engaged in countless aggressive wars. They are (perhaps were) the two hegemonic powers since 1945. I don’t think the US has clean hands although as far as hegemonic powers you could do a lot worse.
Which assertion specifically? I wasn't even going for the low-hanging fruit like either of the two invading Afghanistan; the interesting cases are more of the form of Ukraine's attacks on the *NR (how long do they have to squat that area before any Ukrainian attempt to reclaim it becomes completely analogous to Palestine vs. Israel now?)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What is this slave morality? Of course one should, in most cases, feel more sympathy for the successful entity compared to the failed one. If a successful heart surgeon gets killed in a home invasion by some random thug, I feel more sad than I do when some dropout welfare leech has the same happen to them. Both are horrific, both are wrong, both represent a failure of the state’s obligation to protect all its citizens from crime, but the former is a greater loss than the latter. It is a tragedy when any good art is lost, but I would rather lose a mediocre Picasso sketch than the Mona Lisa.
Why rue that a killer has been stripped of his guns? The Gazans have been locked up in their territory (they were not initially, it is very important to remember) because they already fucked around and killed a lot of innocent civilians on countless previous occasions, and therefore their land was sealed off from Israel. For all the (valid, I should say) concerns about ethnic supremacist sentiment from some Religious Zionists, the Gazans are not in their current condition because of escalating oppression by Otzma Yehudit types, but because they repeatedly killed Israeli civilians when they were allowed into Israel for work and leisure.
Except in this case the "surgeon" has been accepting massive amounts of welfare, and is simultaneously considered to be one of the biggest and most serious intelligence threats facing the US government for quite some time. It becomes a lot easier to support the badger when the bear has been given vast sums of your money while both spying on you and manipulating your political system (referring to the existence of AIPAC rather than the Elders of Zion here, mind).
More options
Context Copy link
I don't feel more sympathy for the surgeon because he is more successful, but because he provides more value. Some people, on the other hand, enjoy a lot of success in ventures that provide negative value to many, and I prefer the welfare leech to them.
More options
Context Copy link
Worse than slave morality is lionizing the strong as the weak and rushing to help an overlord as if they were an underdog.
Anyway, I say that we shouldn't make decisions based on sympathy but on interests. If the West were coolly and dispassionately making decisions, that would be great! We wouldn't be doing anything but selling weapons to whoever had the cash to pay for them. The US would not be rushing to shower Israel with billions in (additional) defence aid, not rushing aircraft carriers into the region to prevent anyone interfering with Israel.
International relations is anarchic, there is no police. Two men are feuding over some land. One is stronger than the other and is winning. Is your immediate reaction to run over and help the strong repress the weak, having a mental breakdown at the thought of a weak loser not knowing his place and striking his betters? That's the action of a madman. Leave them to it.
If we were favouring Israel because it advanced our interests, that's fine. But that's not the case. It doesn't do us any good to anger the Arabs, who can cause many problems for us and have much more to offer. Reason dictates that we throw Israel under the bus, so we can strengthen relations with more important countries. I see your surgeon and I raise you the petrol station, the latter is more important.
I note that you're not getting stuck into Ashlael's slave morality, or OP, not when their slave morality is pro-Israel. Would you honestly prefer the US adopt master morality, slapping Israel back hard when they blow up a US spy ship and sell US secrets to China?
But it does. Who else in the area is sympathetic to western ideology and willing to house western military bases?
Israel is also one of the intellectual powerhouses in the region. Intel has a 17 billion dollar foundry there. It's become an important industrial and manufacturing area of high level technology in the world. There is huge incentive for the US/west to support Israel beyond slave morality.
Turkey? All of these countries would be way happier with the West if we weren't supporting Israel, their mortal enemy. That Israel is liberal-democratic is a problem, it makes MENA look upon liberal democracy with suspicion and seek out alternative powers to balance against the US-Israel duo.
Israel's semiconductor production is pretty puny, all things considered. Malaysia also produces a fair few microchips, so what. They're no Taiwan or South Korea.
Turkey also has significant political unrest with Erdogan and is essentially an authoritarian regime. I would guess the US military would be worried about parking bases there with the human rights violations and the potential for Erdogan to attempt to seize military assets one way or another. What you/Arab nations see as a problem is what US sees as something they can easily work with. Support for Erdogan by the west would also be political suicide for any politician who would endorses such a move as to their human rights violations.
Maybe in terms of total chip volume, but if the Intel press release is anything to go by the loss of the Fab would put the company in an awful spot. Also, decentralization of foundries seems to be a pretty good idea in general.
Which is why Israel has sent soldiers to help out in... zero US wars? They provide minimal military assistance, soak up considerable amounts of munitions, foreign aid and enormous diplomatic energy and provide lots of dubious intelligence - see them claiming Iran is six months away from a nuclear bomb for the last 30 years, or Iraq's WMDs. Israel's nuclear weapons blow an enormous hole in the non-proliferation treaty and complicate US enforcement efforts. And then there's the technology transfers to China.
Israel provides the sort of friendship the US needs much less of.
Even if Israel is as unreliable and selfish as your purport, do you think any other middle eastern country would not be the same if not worse? Do you think any other country in the area would be amenable to having US military presence and US businesses operating in their country with relative freedom and autonomy?
If it weren't for US support for Israel, the Arabs would be much more pro-US, since they'd think the US has more to it than just propping up their hated enemy.
Kuwait? Saudi Arabia? UAE?
https://www.americansecurityproject.org/national-security-strategy/u-s-bases-in-the-middle-east/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree. What’s your point?
I don’t believe the US should provide any further military (or other) aid to Israel.
The US is now energy self-sufficient, there is no further need for Arab oil and the Europeans, Indians and Chinese can conduct their own negotiations if they want it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link