naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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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.
This highlights the difference between a deontological vs consequential framework. Using an inverse categorical imperative, I have a hard time pin pointing exactly what actions Israel has done that I would forbid everywhere and that would have changed the outcome. I admit that in total the actions of the Israelis has caused grief in the region. I don't see a way out without an atrocity on the part of Israel or Hamas. Several of Israel's individual actions are bad, but the substantive, broad strokes actions that created the bulk of the mess seem ethical to me.
Regardless of what Jews called their organization (at a time when "Colonialism" was an acceptable activity, and therefore calling it that might have been propaganda to make their actions appealing to Euopeans), the majority of Jews came as refugees. They had a real, genuine, rational fear for their lives in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They don't have anywhere they could conceivably go back to. Jews have always lived on "other people's land."
Let's play alternative Earth. Groups of Indigenous people in South America are under severe persecution by their governments. Simultaneously, the Native American lobby in the USA is able to convince the Federal Government to fast track immigration for these persecuted refugees. Both refugees and locals buy large swaths of Wyoming over several dozen years through legal and fair transactions. Several thousand white Americans lost their homes and were evicted as their landlords sold their houses out from under them, but they were able to move to other parts of Wyoming or the US. These people were upset and anti-Native American sentiment increased.
Gradually the number of South American refugees outnumber the local Wyoming Native American population 10:1, and achieve parity with the white Wyoming population. The local Wyoming Native American population mostly does not mind, and is happy to bond with the newcomers over shared history and goals.
Fifty years later, the US Federal Government decides Manifest Destiny was a bad thing with terrible consequences. Therefore, they are reducing their territory to just the original 13 States. Every other state is going to need to self-govern. They want to do this with the least amount of bloodshed, and the case of Wyoming poses a problem. The Federal Government is aware that the white population of Wyoming hates the natives, and left to their own devices without US Marshals keeping the peace, a massacre will likely happen. Therefore, the Federal Government performs one last act, splitting up Wyoming into two seperate States. The Native Americans agree to the deal, the Whites attack the Native Americans once the Federal Government exits. Astoundingly, Native Americans win, and even take over more territory than was allocated to them by the Federal Government.
Which parts of this process would you object to? Which specific action would you universally outlaw?
The analogy you set up differs in important respects from the Israel-Palestine situation. Notably, the Ottomans repeatedly refused mass Jewish immigration to the region, which continued due to their limited state capacity. The temporary period of imperial promotion of Zionism occurred during the British Mandate, which would be more like China taking temporary control of the western United States following WWIII and initially encouraging the foreign immigration before reversing course when the policy provokes a rebellion.
Again, the bad situation arose from the settlement and the whole project. By the 1940’s, partition was a reasonable least-bad option.
The original sin (which isn’t a real thing) was setting up a new ethnic enclave in inhabited territory with ethnonationalist aims. It’s creating a Bosnia/Lebanon/Syria/Kresy-type situation where there didn’t need to be one.
Edit: But yes, that was a crucial contributing factor, and I think that large-scale Muslim immigration to Europe is a potential catastrophe (due to mission creep on the part of immigrants as they gain relative power)
I sympathize with the position of the Ashkenazim during the age of democracy and nationalism. The new ideologies screwed over ethnic minorities everywhere by creating strong incentives to expel or forcibly assimilate them for security reasons. This tended to cause bloody chaos in areas like Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Levant. The Ashkenazim were unusual but not unique in being numerous but thinly dispersed without a large contiguous territory due to their niche in the pre-nationalist order.
The initial settlers weren’t refugees, and the later absorption of pogrom refugees depended on the settlements and international organizations previously established. People don’t like accepting refugees anyway, much less people specifically organizing to establish a de novo ethnic enclave on their territory who claim entitlement to the whole area based on their religion that you don’t share. I wouldn’t accept that. I know Israelis wouldn’t accept it. Would you accept it?
The Ashkenazim had reasonable security concerns in Eastern Europe. As with many other Eastern European group, including Poles, Germans, Czech, Ukrainians, Croatians, Serbs, Greeks, Turks, etc., this led them to take steps that ultimately resulted in wide-scale bloodshed and ethnic cleansing. They wanted land, so they took it using the means at hand, current residents be damned. In the run up to independence they consciously imported at many Jews as possible to ensure electoral dominance - by that point it would have been suicidal not to, but only because of the situation that Zionism itself had created.
This doesn’t distinguish them that much from other peoples. Other successful land seizures with partial or complete ethnic cleansing occurred in the new western Poland, the Kresy, the Sudetenland, Vilnius, Galicia-Volhynia, etc.
Now that I'm near my computer I am more confident that I can reject the idea that all the Jewish immigration during the Ottoman empire were Zionist settlers, but rather the majority were still refugees during this era.
The First Aliyah was assisted and funded by Zionists, but as Wikipedia states:
Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine from Eastern Europe occurred as part of mass emigrations of approximately 2.5 million people[12] that took place towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. A rapid increase in population had created economic problems that affected Jewish societies in the Pale of Settlement in Russia, Galicia, and Romania.[7]
Persecution of Jews in Russia was also a factor. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, and the authorities blamed the Jews for the assassination. Consequently, in addition to the May Laws, major anti-Jewish pogroms swept the Pale of Settlement. A movement called Hibbat Zion (love of Zion) spread across the Pale (helped by Leon Pinsker's pamphlet Auto-Emancipation), as did the similar Bilu movement. Both movements encouraged Jews to emigrate to Ottoman Palestine.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, a large number of other Jews in the Ottoman Empire, primarily Yemen, moved to Ottoman Palestine at the same time.
The Second Aliyah was also driven by widespread emigration from Eastern Europe. Two million Jews emigrated, only twenty thousand went to Ottoman Palestine. There were many pogroms at this time, the most well-known being the Kishinev massacre.
The Third-Fifth took place during British rule, so I don't know if I need to keep going to make my point.
If I amended my above scenario to state "Some indigenous groups in less hostile South American countries helped pay for these people's flight to Wyoming, because they were one day hoping for a Native American State" does that substantially change the morality of these people's flight to Wyoming?
I’m having trouble finding too much information on the demographic history with high enough granularity to interpret. I don’t have expertise here, to say the least, and it’s very possible my views would move toward yours if I were informed in more detail. Regarding the first Aliyah, the Bilu do seem to have had Zionist ideology in the modern and (to me) objectionable sense David Engel’s book Zionism describes them as refugees, but neither that book nor the Wikipedia articles goes into much detail on composition. Currently trying to read some very poorly-edited books on the history of Hamas (as in, clearly written by non-native speakers and Routledge didn’t feel the need to provide good editors I guess) - will need to find something good on the relevant demographic history next.
Internal movement of Yemeni Jews, assuming it was legal under the Ottoman framework, doesn’t particularly bother me, even if it happened to have bad effects later (not claiming that it did). Supposing that the Yemeni movements did have net negative effects - I would compare that to the forces that led to ethnic town-country differences in Eastern Europe that ultimately led to so much violence, where the process is less worthy of blame because the bad outcome wasn’t reasonably foreseeable at the time.
The Second Aliyah seems to have been in response to the Russian Revolution. It seems most of the refugees went elsewhere as you said. To the extent that in-migration at this stage was guided or motivated by Zionism, I think that’s blameworthy (not in each individual case) for the same reason that I’d disapprove of the Russian Mennonites engaging in Mennonite-homeland-ism at the same time for the same reasons.
The third and onward occurred after the Balfour declaration - at that point I blame the British and those Zionists who had laid the groundwork for the declaration. To my understanding, this early stage of British rule is what created the conditions that underlie the current situation (e.g., Engels claims, IIRC, that the Yishuv didn’t realistically foresee a Jewish-majority anything until the 30’s).
With regard to the South America analogy, if I’m following correctly the difference is that an indigenous diaspora is now organizing and financing the enclave-formation rather than it being refugee-driven? I think that’s morally worse overall (because I’m less forgiving of wrongdoing not done out of desperation), with more of the wrongdoing shifted from the refugees to their backers.
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Notes -
This highlights the difference between a deontological vs consequential framework. Using an inverse categorical imperative, I have a hard time pin pointing exactly what actions Israel has done that I would forbid everywhere and that would have changed the outcome. I admit that in total the actions of the Israelis has caused grief in the region. I don't see a way out without an atrocity on the part of Israel or Hamas. Several of Israel's individual actions are bad, but the substantive, broad strokes actions that created the bulk of the mess seem ethical to me.
Regardless of what Jews called their organization (at a time when "Colonialism" was an acceptable activity, and therefore calling it that might have been propaganda to make their actions appealing to Euopeans), the majority of Jews came as refugees. They had a real, genuine, rational fear for their lives in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They don't have anywhere they could conceivably go back to. Jews have always lived on "other people's land."
Let's play alternative Earth. Groups of Indigenous people in South America are under severe persecution by their governments. Simultaneously, the Native American lobby in the USA is able to convince the Federal Government to fast track immigration for these persecuted refugees. Both refugees and locals buy large swaths of Wyoming over several dozen years through legal and fair transactions. Several thousand white Americans lost their homes and were evicted as their landlords sold their houses out from under them, but they were able to move to other parts of Wyoming or the US. These people were upset and anti-Native American sentiment increased.
Gradually the number of South American refugees outnumber the local Wyoming Native American population 10:1, and achieve parity with the white Wyoming population. The local Wyoming Native American population mostly does not mind, and is happy to bond with the newcomers over shared history and goals.
Fifty years later, the US Federal Government decides Manifest Destiny was a bad thing with terrible consequences. Therefore, they are reducing their territory to just the original 13 States. Every other state is going to need to self-govern. They want to do this with the least amount of bloodshed, and the case of Wyoming poses a problem. The Federal Government is aware that the white population of Wyoming hates the natives, and left to their own devices without US Marshals keeping the peace, a massacre will likely happen. Therefore, the Federal Government performs one last act, splitting up Wyoming into two seperate States. The Native Americans agree to the deal, the Whites attack the Native Americans once the Federal Government exits. Astoundingly, Native Americans win, and even take over more territory than was allocated to them by the Federal Government.
Which parts of this process would you object to? Which specific action would you universally outlaw?
The analogy you set up differs in important respects from the Israel-Palestine situation. Notably, the Ottomans repeatedly refused mass Jewish immigration to the region, which continued due to their limited state capacity. The temporary period of imperial promotion of Zionism occurred during the British Mandate, which would be more like China taking temporary control of the western United States following WWIII and initially encouraging the foreign immigration before reversing course when the policy provokes a rebellion.
Again, the bad situation arose from the settlement and the whole project. By the 1940’s, partition was a reasonable least-bad option.
So the original sin is illegal immigration and porous borders, if we can use such terms when discussing the Ottoman Empire?
The original sin (which isn’t a real thing) was setting up a new ethnic enclave in inhabited territory with ethnonationalist aims. It’s creating a Bosnia/Lebanon/Syria/Kresy-type situation where there didn’t need to be one.
Edit: But yes, that was a crucial contributing factor, and I think that large-scale Muslim immigration to Europe is a potential catastrophe (due to mission creep on the part of immigrants as they gain relative power)
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I sympathize with the position of the Ashkenazim during the age of democracy and nationalism. The new ideologies screwed over ethnic minorities everywhere by creating strong incentives to expel or forcibly assimilate them for security reasons. This tended to cause bloody chaos in areas like Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Levant. The Ashkenazim were unusual but not unique in being numerous but thinly dispersed without a large contiguous territory due to their niche in the pre-nationalist order.
The initial settlers weren’t refugees, and the later absorption of pogrom refugees depended on the settlements and international organizations previously established. People don’t like accepting refugees anyway, much less people specifically organizing to establish a de novo ethnic enclave on their territory who claim entitlement to the whole area based on their religion that you don’t share. I wouldn’t accept that. I know Israelis wouldn’t accept it. Would you accept it?
The Ashkenazim had reasonable security concerns in Eastern Europe. As with many other Eastern European group, including Poles, Germans, Czech, Ukrainians, Croatians, Serbs, Greeks, Turks, etc., this led them to take steps that ultimately resulted in wide-scale bloodshed and ethnic cleansing. They wanted land, so they took it using the means at hand, current residents be damned. In the run up to independence they consciously imported at many Jews as possible to ensure electoral dominance - by that point it would have been suicidal not to, but only because of the situation that Zionism itself had created.
This doesn’t distinguish them that much from other peoples. Other successful land seizures with partial or complete ethnic cleansing occurred in the new western Poland, the Kresy, the Sudetenland, Vilnius, Galicia-Volhynia, etc.
Now that I'm near my computer I am more confident that I can reject the idea that all the Jewish immigration during the Ottoman empire were Zionist settlers, but rather the majority were still refugees during this era.
The First Aliyah was assisted and funded by Zionists, but as Wikipedia states:
Meanwhile, a large number of other Jews in the Ottoman Empire, primarily Yemen, moved to Ottoman Palestine at the same time.
The Second Aliyah was also driven by widespread emigration from Eastern Europe. Two million Jews emigrated, only twenty thousand went to Ottoman Palestine. There were many pogroms at this time, the most well-known being the Kishinev massacre.
The Third-Fifth took place during British rule, so I don't know if I need to keep going to make my point.
If I amended my above scenario to state "Some indigenous groups in less hostile South American countries helped pay for these people's flight to Wyoming, because they were one day hoping for a Native American State" does that substantially change the morality of these people's flight to Wyoming?
I’m having trouble finding too much information on the demographic history with high enough granularity to interpret. I don’t have expertise here, to say the least, and it’s very possible my views would move toward yours if I were informed in more detail. Regarding the first Aliyah, the Bilu do seem to have had Zionist ideology in the modern and (to me) objectionable sense David Engel’s book Zionism describes them as refugees, but neither that book nor the Wikipedia articles goes into much detail on composition. Currently trying to read some very poorly-edited books on the history of Hamas (as in, clearly written by non-native speakers and Routledge didn’t feel the need to provide good editors I guess) - will need to find something good on the relevant demographic history next.
Internal movement of Yemeni Jews, assuming it was legal under the Ottoman framework, doesn’t particularly bother me, even if it happened to have bad effects later (not claiming that it did). Supposing that the Yemeni movements did have net negative effects - I would compare that to the forces that led to ethnic town-country differences in Eastern Europe that ultimately led to so much violence, where the process is less worthy of blame because the bad outcome wasn’t reasonably foreseeable at the time.
The Second Aliyah seems to have been in response to the Russian Revolution. It seems most of the refugees went elsewhere as you said. To the extent that in-migration at this stage was guided or motivated by Zionism, I think that’s blameworthy (not in each individual case) for the same reason that I’d disapprove of the Russian Mennonites engaging in Mennonite-homeland-ism at the same time for the same reasons.
The third and onward occurred after the Balfour declaration - at that point I blame the British and those Zionists who had laid the groundwork for the declaration. To my understanding, this early stage of British rule is what created the conditions that underlie the current situation (e.g., Engels claims, IIRC, that the Yishuv didn’t realistically foresee a Jewish-majority anything until the 30’s).
With regard to the South America analogy, if I’m following correctly the difference is that an indigenous diaspora is now organizing and financing the enclave-formation rather than it being refugee-driven? I think that’s morally worse overall (because I’m less forgiving of wrongdoing not done out of desperation), with more of the wrongdoing shifted from the refugees to their backers.
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