site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   13349 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

popular anti-zionist position is a one-state solution where Palestinians get full citizenship in Israel, often alongside Palestinian right-of-return. Now, zionists would argue that such an outcome would cause problems such as a group like Hamas being elected as the government of Israel and ethnically cleansing jewish people, or at least committing terrorist attacks once they are all Israeli citizens with freedom of movement. But the standard anti-zionist position is that this wouldn't happen, that palestinians are resorting to violent resistance against oppression and would no longer need to do so once they are no longer oppressed. The standard comparison is to South Africa, where terrorist leaders such as Nelson Mandela became the new government but didn't outright ethnically cleanse white people. (The South African government discriminates against white people through heavy affirmative action, is now failing to keep reliable electricity and clean water going, has the 3rd highest murder rate in the world, and sometimes has the leaders of political parties talk about mass-murdering white people. But they haven't actually done it and many anti-zionists would be unaware of these things anyway.)

The zionists are right. I don’t see any solution to this that doesn’t eventually look like a Zionism transposed to some other location. The historic record here is pretty clear — a stateless Jewish minority is going to be the target of either states looking for a scapegoat or angry mobs taking matters into their own hands. In most Muslim countries, non Muslims are second class citizens at best. So in order to protect Jews you absolutely need a Jewish state somewhere. If that’s the case, you need to create a continuous land area in which Jews are given complete control. And you’re now displacing whoever lives there now. It ends up looking almost exactly like Israel except now we’re building in South America or Montana or Wales or something. There aren’t really good answers.

So in order to protect Jews you absolutely need a Jewish state somewhere.

I feel like it is important to point out that however valid this argument may be, making it forever forecloses your ability to criticise Trump, the alt-right and white nationalists. Once you cross this line you lose the ethical and moral ground which allows you to say that white nationalism/ethnonationalism is bad at all. There simply aren't any real arguments for why the Jews need to be protected and get their own ethnostate that don't also apply to white or yellow people beyond blatant ethnic supremacy (that would sound something like "The Jews get to have their own nation because they're God's chosen people and above all others").

And while this is the motte and hence nobody cares that a pseudonymous Zensunni wanderer can't exactly condemn Trump anymore, these concerns become much bigger in the real world where people make political statements tied to their identity. All these public arguments, discussions and comments about what's happening are going to be remembered, and the left is famous for digging into people's past comments in order to discredit them in arguments so this isn't exactly a purely academic concern.

There simply aren't any real arguments for why the Jews need to be protected and get their own ethnostate that don't also apply to white or yellow people beyond blatant ethnic supremacy

That's not true. E.g. whites are much more numerous. It's not realistic to imagine that whites in the USA could suffer the same fate as Jews in Germany - there's too many of them.

E.g. whites are much more numerous.

White people are vanishingly small as a percentage of the total population on Earth, so all you're saying is that we just have to wait a bit longer before they can have their own ethnostate? Would you also support Israel ceasing to be an ethnostate once the jewish diaspora population gets a bit bigger? How you slice the salami matters a lot too - do the Boers get to have their own ethnostate, given that they are a tiny minority on the verge of being wiped out and far smaller in population than the jews? I'm struggling to see the actual principle here - "you only get an ethnostate if you could plausibly be wiped out" is a contradictory and self-defeating argument anyway because it means that the moment you have the ethnostate you're protected and hence no longer deserve it... and if the ethnostate DOESN'T protect you, then there's no point tying it to numbers like that.

I think each people group is well served to have at least one country where they are a majority. Whether or not a country exists for the explicit purpose of giving them a majority is pretty much immaterial. E.g. Egypt is not a country formed for the purpose of giving Arabs a state of their own, but it nonetheless functions perfectly well as an Arab-majority country, such that the establishment of an Arab ethnostate is unnecessary. Whites don't need an ethnostate because we already have the thing that an ethnostate would exist to give us. E.g. when white Zimbabweans were a persecuted minority, they had somewhere to flee to that opened the doors for them.

And yes, this does mean I would like the Boers to have their own land - ideally they would have beaten the British and the Orange Free State would have survived. Alas.

Whites don't need an ethnostate because we already have the thing that an ethnostate would exist to give us. E.g. when white Zimbabweans were a persecuted minority, they had somewhere to flee to that opened the doors for them.

Heterosexual white men are not protected from affirmative action (discrimination) in most of the West, so what is that elusive 'the thing that an ethnostate would give exist to give us'?

I mean if you want to form a "heterosexual white male" ethno/gender/sexualstate, go right ahead. But personally I'd like to have women in my country.

That is not what I am suggesting.

This makes me think that one way for Israel to resolve that Hamas conundrum would be to offer Palestinians female-only visas, scholarships and massive cash bonuses to study and work in Israel and elsewhere. Something like what the Americans tried in Afghanistan but actually effective.

I think the poorly defined and murky phrase "people group" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. This position makes you a firm supporter of Kurdish nationalism and Catalan separatism, but it unfortunately doesn't actually do anything to give you the solid ground you need to actually condemn white nationalists. What exactly is it that makes Jews a "people group" worthy of their own apartheid regime and ethnostate? I don't think you've defined that clearly enough to avoid also endorsing white nationalism, and you have also opened yourself up to a bunch of really dumb borderline questions like whether the Scots-Irish population in the USA deserves their own homeland.

My rule is any group of people that constitutes a majority in a defined geographical area of a city or larger should be able to form their own state if they want to. The lines that separate us are arbitrary and malleable, if people choose to care about being Hispanic or Saxon or Catalan or Appalachians then so be it.

I'm not particularly invested in condemning white nationalism. I don't support it on an object level, but I don't see it as being somehow illegitimate for a country to decide its own immigration policy or whatever.

Jews get to have an ethnostate because they’ve been genocided several times. I don’t think that’s identical to other arguments. I’m not worried about other states wanting to have an ethnostate if they want one.

White people have also been genocided several times through history as well (European history is surprisingly brutal). They're still around, but if that's an argument against them getting an ethnostate then it also applies to the jews.

Honestly when you saw the riots in Paris and the marches and London maybe it isn’t unreasonable to keep France for the French or England for the English.

Personally I thought the Rotherham case was a far greater argument for keeping England for the English. I'm not even going to feign a lack of disgust at people who think protests in favour of Hamas are where the line was crossed as opposed to Rotherham (though to clarify I'm not accusing you of this right now).

Agreed. Rotherham is disgusting. Basically “sure we let them rape white girls because we don’t want to be called racist”

There is no actual reason to suppose that if every Israeli Jew were granted the right to live in the US or Australia or the Netherlands or someplace, they would be vulnerable to scapegoating or pogroms. Sure, in Saudi they would, but granting Jews the right of return to Australia would not actually make them vulnerable to discrimination- they just wouldn't have their own country.

Australia is an immigration friendly place, but even so 7 million people all at once would be stretching the friendship a bit.

Edit: Also, we did just have a big crowd in Sydney chanting "gas the jews". Such people are an extreme fringe, but can anyone guarantee they will remain a fringe?

That was just an example, you know. No doubt a 1-state solution where the Palestinians are full citizens, backstopped by the CANZUK nations pledging to accept any Israeli Jewish immigrant who applies, would not result in a Jewish genocide(although it might well result in far fewer Jews in a generation as some of the conditions leading to a high Israeli-Jewish birthrate are probably unique to Israel).

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