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.
- 1849
- 20
What is this place?
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.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Not really though. The Jewish population of Palestine/Israel prior to Zionist immigration starting in the 1880s is irrelevantly small. Jews basically don't exist as a people in the area before then - at least in contrast. If you want a solid number, 15,000 is a census of Jews from the Ottoman period before Zionism. Compare with the 7 million Jews there today.
Wiki (which I wouldn't completely trust) has a line apparently that nicely sums it up:
Israeli Jews are fundamentally an immigrant people. Good luck finding a single one that has ancestry in Israel before 1880. The conflict is a colonial conflict of an outside people ethnically displacing the local natives. If you don't understand that you are not really understanding major keys to the whole thing.
Just because no Jews can trace their personal history to caanan doesn't mean that they don't consider it the cradle of their culture and their birthright. This is why understanding religious idealism is so important that everyone here is conveniently ignoring which is why I wrote this post, it's not about "I was here first" or "I can trace my family here for 1000 generations". It's about those many generations of Jews having a shared religion and belief structures that through the literal millenia as a nation without a home, that they are united through the Talmud and religious texts that they have a birthright destined by God. 60% of Israels population is Jewish in some degree, do you think that they don't know the history of their people and that it doesn't necessarily require a direct physical lineage?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link