site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30318 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What slogan do you want someone who doesn’t want the Israeli state to kill or displace Palestinians to use?

‘Jews have no right to defend themselves’ or maybe ‘brown people can never do anything wrong’. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 200, Gaza then proceeded to elect a terrorist group which then started shooting at Israel. Israel blockaded them to prevent the inflow of weapons and promised it would stop if Gaza stopped shooting, it didn’t stop killing random Israelis for 16 years, then tore down the fence and killed more random Israelis, at which point Israel is now bombing them.

There isn’t a reasonable framework in which Israel isn’t well within its rights to bomb Gaza, and Hamas’s habit of putting military facilities in civilian infrastructure guarantees that Israel will kill and displace Palestinian civilians by doing so. You could be Amish level pacifist I guess, but that’s not a pro-Palestine framework. The only framework that allows you to be pro-Palestine is either ‘Palestinians are brown, and thus automatically right regardless of the facts of the case’ or ‘Israelis don’t have the right to defend themselves for some reason’.

Why is “Israelis don’t have a right to continue to settle on Palestinian land and they should give it back” so hard to say?

Why is “Israelis don’t have a right to continue to settle on Palestinian land and they should give it back” so hard to say?

Because it's equivalent to "Israeli Jews should be pushed into the sea."

How is it equivalent exactly? Besides the millenia old blood feud that's tied to it, I mean.

Because to the Palestinians, Palestinian land is "from the river to the sea".

Surely all the attempts at codifying a two state demarcation that have since been soundly violated should count for something in defining what is and isn't "Palestinian land". Leaving again, the blood feud aside.

Do the Palestinians agree that those attempts count for anything in defining what is not "Palestinian land"?

Well they did sign those agreements. Given that does it matter what they really think?

Of course both sides would like the whole of Palestine for themselves and to get rid of the other ethnic group. They've both made that clear. But that doesn't make them both blameless when they break their word on any attempt to avoid war, surely.

Let us remind ourselves there is such a thing as compromise.

More comments

It’s clearly not, and if the pro-Israeli side is so simplistic about it why even have a discussion? Do you really think “roll back the extralegal settlements in the West Bank” is the same as “exterminate the Jews in Israel?” Be serious.

He is serious. Rolling back the West Bank settlements is not equivalent to exterminating all the Jews, but it is also not equivalent to leaving Palestinian land. Because the Palestinians are very clear, it is all Palestinian land. They consider Tel Aviv an illegal settlement.

Respecting Palestinian claims to the land does indeed mean exterminating Israel.

Except that's not the Palestinian demands(which are "Israelis out, from the river to the sea Palestine will be free, it's all ours").

It strikes me that neither side of this conflict seems in any reasonable state of mind to adjudicate it.

Were we in saner times, a great power would just take the whole territory and administrate it to solve this problem. One should want for the British, but then again they created this mess in the first place.

Still better them than eternal massacre for nonsense such as "self-determination" and rights "to exist".

It strikes me that neither side of this conflict seems in any reasonable state of mind to adjudicate it.

I thought that moral equivalence went out of style with the fall of the USSR,.

Claiming that the two sides are equal is still a position, and this position can be wrong. It especially can be wrong if the actual facts don't match up with your ability to describe both sides with the same words.

Both sides have provably broken their word and murdered innocents. Regardless of who is more at fault, neither are responsible enough to enact good government. Or it would have materialized by now.

In that way at least, they are both sufficiently incompetent or untrustworthy to solve their problem. A competent third party wouldn't have this problem.

More comments

I've honestly wondered if it wouldn't be an improvement if the US just annexed all of the territory just so everyone could put their differences aside for long enough.

How do you predict the US would handle Gaza within its borders?

More comments

Gazans get your shit together? Israel has pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and there has been no attempts to resettle it.

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


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats