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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Palestinians don’t magically want to kill Israelis as a deeply-held first principle.

Maybe it didn't start that way. But at what point does it become a first principle? Hatred for Jews seem to predict behavior a lot more than any other principles. Given the choice between greater prosperity and killing Jews, they'll tear up their water pipes to build bombs.

If hatred of Jews were their first principle, we would see overseas Palestinians wage attacks on Jewish communities, where the communities do not have the heightened security of the Israeli state apparatus. That we pretty much never see that (thank God) is strong evidence that their grievances are against Israel and her people. In the average uneducated, undernourished, 85 IQ Palestinian mind, it’s a waste of time to distinguish between Israeli Jews and Israeli Zionists. Their enemies are uniformly Jewish-Zionist citizens of Israel.

I looked into the water pipe claim and I don’t see compelling evidence that this happened. It’s originally traced to a 2021 Telegraph article, which takes footage from a Memri Documentary. But per the documentary,

While the plan to reuse the explosives in the Israeli shells was moving ahead, long water pipelines were found buried in the areas of the settlements from which Israel withdrew in 2005. This discovery turned out to be a qualitative leap. These pipes, which stretched from the liberated settlements in the west across the Israeli border to the east, had been hidden from the eye. For years, they served Israel in its theft of Palestinian water. In the belly of the Earth, we found large quantities of thick metal pipes. It was part of a network that had been used to steal Gaza's groundwater and pump it into the occupied lands. We discovered the plans for that network, and then we dug into the ground and pulled out the pipes, so that they could be used in our military industries."

Given that this documentary is from 2020 and the Telegraph article is from 2021, it’s reasonable to trust the Memri documentary. Especially because it shows other procedures like collecting underseas Israeli munitions.

Undernourished and undereducated? 40% of gazans are overweight or obese and a gazan child completes 12 years of schooling on average. What are you even talking about?

From the UN’s OCHA: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/education-undermined-deteriorating-humanitarian-situation-gaza

Over 450,000 basic, secondary and kindergarten (KG) students and teachers are identified as ‘people in need’ in the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP)

There was a 30% dropout rate in 2017.

On malnutrition, UNICEF says “According to recent national surveys, Palestinians are facing a double burden of malnutrition; malnutrition, a high level of micronutrient deficiencies, and increasing obesity rates.”

So now you send me your sources and we can discuss?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/7c9b64c34a8833378194a026ebe4e247-0140022022/related/HCI-AM22-PSE.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi74f6gw5mCAxXQHjQIHT5FD8AQFnoECA4QBg&usg=AOvVaw24pMjExhMdGAki5ml2zd9F

In the West Bank and Gaza, a child who starts school at age 4 can expect to complete 12.2 years of school by her 18th birthday.

Much of what the UN says about Gazan schools can also be said about American schools. Our children really is not learning.

Re malnutrition - the life expectancy in Gaza is 74 years and the regional expectancy is 76 years (pdf). So there's really a limit as to how malnourished they can be.

Even if overseas Palestinians aren't a major source of antisemitic activity(which I doubt, but a lot of it probably gets attributed to non-existent white supremacists), they are by definition a selected population that values "eating" and "living in a first world country, outside of a jail cell" over "killing Jews".

Hamas has the ability to place covert members in expatriate communities. Half of all Palestinians are diaspora. But they don’t do this, so perhaps it’s reasonable to assume they don’t want to just kill Jews. Perhaps they want to reclaim their lost territory?

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