site banner

Israel-Gaza Megathread #3

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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This issue is so toxic it's not even able to be debated.

Yes. The meme is "the most complicated geopolitical issue of all time" is not really all that accurate. There are far more complicated geopolitical issues. The complicacy is just how emotional people are about the issue, not the issue itself, which you can more or less grasp within a day or two of reading.

How do I know this? Most I talk to about this issue who have the passion of a thousand suns about Palestine don't know the history of Israel, and funnier, Palestine itself. Most didn't even know that "Palestine" was under Ottoman rule before the British.

The complicacy is just how emotional people are about the issue, not the issue itself, which you can more or less grasp within a day or two of reading.

Matt Yglesias has a solution:

My plan to resolve the crisis:

  1. Humanitarian pause
  2. Hostages released
  3. Palestinians and Israelis all develop different, more reasonable preferences from the ones they actually have
  4. Two-state solution
  5. Arab states normalize relations with Israel

All we need to work on is [3] and the rest falls into place! Seems like it might be a problem...

Things were just so much more honest when the troublesome step was "???".

  1. Collect underpants
  2. ???
  3. Peace in the Middle East

Indeed. The number of people who didn't get the joke was high. But maybe that will eventually include MattY himself, as his habit of stepping on rakes and then blaming the foliage for swinging too wildly continues.