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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Do you imagine that a lasting peace is going to be achieved by killing thousands of innocents to get rid of Hamas?

It’s pretty easy to imagine when you look at some historical examples, eg. pacification of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan in WWII, which in fact resulted in not only lasting peace, but in fact strong alliance with the former adversary who killed hundreds of thousands of innocents using the same tactics used by Israel today.

This is a great point, and one I've never thought about. I was about to push back on the possibility of Palestinian culture being able to recover from something like this, but is it really that much of a departure from Imperial Japan's levels of hatred/propensity to commit atrocities?

I suppose one challenge is even if you pacify Palestine, you still have hotbeds of radical Islam outside of it (nationally, geographically) to support the ideology. Germany could be encircled, Japan is an Island, but you can't put a palm over the entirety of the middle east and west Africa at the same time.

Yeah, I don’t really want to argue for high likelihood of this scenario in Palestinian context, just that it doesn’t seem at all impossible considering the plentiful historical examples.

Part of the reason we have lasting peace with those countries is the vast amount of economic resources we spent to help build those countries back up after the war. Do you think that's going to happen here? After Israel's war with Hamas is over are they going to deliver a bunch of resources to Gaza and the West Bank to help the development of a peaceful Palestinian state? I am skeptical!

Israel provided jobs to gazans before this. West bank is noticeably wealthier / HDI / whatever your metric is comparee to Gaza. I think Gaza would economically grow it fully embraced Israeli economic partnership

After Israel's war with Hamas is over are they going to deliver a bunch of resources to Gaza and the West Bank to help the development of a peaceful Palestinian state? I am skeptical!

If they thought that this was a viable possibility? Maybe. I think that the hatred is a bit more entrenched than it was in Japan/Germany.

I mean, it's hard to imagine that they won't use resources to try to destroy Israel. When given a choice they have show that that is exactly what they will do.

If Hamas formally surrendered and then allowed Israel occupation the aid would flow in. Same terms as Japan or Germany accepted - unconditional surrender.

I am not convinced. What was the situation in Gaza pre-Israeli withdrawal?

You could give Hamas all of the aid we gave to Israel and they would waste it trying to kill Israelis instead of building up their country.

Sure, I agree. I think Hamas is evil. But I don't think that's true of Palestinians in general. Same as the Nazi Germany government or the imperial Japanese government.

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