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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Since special thread dedicated to current Middle Eastern issues fell into abeyance, I am posting latest war culture war report from the scorching sands of Middle East cold and brutal streets of Gotham City.

And the latest victim of the war is one Stuart Seldowitz, former humanitarian diplomacy consultant, National Security Council member and deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs,who fell in glorious struggle against terrorism was arrested by NYPD for persistent harrassment of halal food street vendor.

In one widely shared video, Seldowitz is heard to ask the unidentified vendor: “Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” In another, he states: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.”

When the vendor says he doesn’t speak English, Seldowitz laughs and says, “That’s why you’re selling food in a food cart, because you’re ignorant,” before suggesting that the vendor will be deported to Egypt and tortured by intelligence agents.

“The mukhabarat in Egypt will get your parents,” Seldowitz said in the video. “Does your father like his fingernails? They will take them out one by one.” The vendor is heard asking Seldowitz to “please go” and saying that he would call the police.

An NYPD spokesperson told the outlet that they are aware of the videos and monitoring the situation but that no reports had been filed. The woman who posted the videos, who is believed to be a social activist and Columbia University graduate, said Seldowitz had been harassing the vendor for weeks.

According to some reports, the street vendor was allegedly previously tearing down posters with dead and kidnapped Israelis.

Whole incident was covered on dead bird site in every possible angle, if you are even only casual deadbirders, you already learned about it and made your own minds.

What is my take?

In the best possible world, no one would be tearing these posters, because there would be no such posters on the streets of Gotham City, because whole world, including Middle East, would live in peace and harmony, there would be no wars, no one would be killed, no one would be kidnapped, no house would be bombed or bulldozed.

In the second best possible world, no one would be tearing these posters, because there would be no such posters on the streets of Gotham City, because no one living in Gotham City would care enough about some war going on the other side of the world to deface their beloved city.

In the third best possible world, no one would be tearing these posters, because there would be no such posters on the streets of Gotham City, because laws of Gotham City against posting and graffiti would be strictly enforced and people splattering around unauthorized posters and leaflets would be fined (and, in case of repeated and persistent vandalism, deported from the city).

Well, we do not live in any of these worlds.

Dead bird site. Hilarious.

He’s been allegedly walking around NYC for the past 6 months harassing Russians as well. This dude literally lost his mind over The Current Thing. I wonder if we’ll be having a conversation about how the MSM encourages stochastic hate crimes?

https://x.com/dpol_un/status/1727384762262671494?s=46

How does a guy nuts enough to think his time is well spent harassing people on the street end up an influential diplomatic consultant? It sounds like an absurdist sketch.

former humanitarian diplomacy consultant, National Security Council member and deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs,

This is it in a nutshell. People wonder why the US has been so incapable of resolving this conflict (that causes huge and direct costs to US interests regarding relations with the Arab, oil-producing world, a conflict that has motivated substantial anti-US terrorism, including Osama Bin Laden). Could it be that the Palestinians just really hate negotiating? That millions of Arabs just mysteriously hate the US, for no reason at all?

No, the US has never made a genuine effort to solve the conflict because it is so heavily influenced by extremely partisan Israel-lovers, both of Jewish and evangelical backgrounds. It's insane, the US could dictate terms to Israel on this matter tomorrow! In theory, the US has all this leverage as military supplier, donor of billions every year, source of loan guarantees, superpower sponsor, UN veto provider... The US just showed up in Taiwan and shut down their nuclear weapons program (twice). The US has great latent power over their smallest, most dependant clients.

But in practice, there are people like Mr Seldowitz deeply integrated in the US diplomatic machinery, presumably doing as much as they can to sabotage Palestine without it being totally, overtly obvious. The US is incapable of rationally managing its Israel policy, they get sucked into conflicts and end up haemorrhaging money and blood to advance Israeli interests. My primary example is the Iraq War.

Everyone and their dog admitted the real cause was the US looking out for Israeli interests:

In January 2003, a German journalist asked Ruth Wedgwood, a prominent neoconservative academic and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board (chaired by Richard Perle), why the journalist should support the war. I could "be impolite," Wedgwood said, "and remind Germany of its special relationship with Israel. Saddam presents an existential threat to Israel. That is simply true." Wedgwood did not justify the war by saying that Iraq posed a direct threat to Germany or the United States.

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001-03), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (2005-06), told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002, that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

General Wesley Clark, the retired NATO commander and former presidential candidate, said in August 2002 that "those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid that at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel."

The Israelis themselves were also begging for a US war, everyone from Netanyahu to Peres and Sharon was fearmongering about weapons of mass destruction - they also sent some false intelligence about WMDs: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/feb/04/iraq.israel

If Israel and the Israel lobby have the power to encourage the US into a full-scale war, they absolutely have the power and the motivation to get the US to help them suppress the Palestinians. Sure enough, billions in military aid was rushed off to Israel the moment they suffer a small reverse. I have plenty of quotes for that point directly (that Israel was undermining US peace efforts) but this post is already quite long. My broad point is that we should not do anything to help Israel ever, they are a colossal drain and possess unhealthy amounts of influence.

Israel is the kind of ally that makes you prefer your enemies, it's an incredible deadweight dragging the West down. About a third of the world absolutely hates them and us by extension, they delegitimate the NPT, they drive oil-producers towards China/Russia, they sell US military tech to China, eat up billions in military aid and they get us bogged down in disastrous Middle East wars. And yet there are still loads of people who reflexively support Israel, even in this thread. Forget 'apartheid state' and 'human rights abuses', we should be dishing out the same selfish contempt for Israeli interests that they have for ours. Let them handle their own problems.

No, the US has never made a genuine effort to solve the conflict because it is so heavily influenced by extremely partisan Israel-lovers ...

Didn't his happen in NY? Not one mention of 9/11?

Why was Osama Bin Laden so angry with the US? Palestine was a primary concern of his, albeit not his sole motivation.

According to Michael Scheuer, who directed the CIA's intelligence unit on al Qaeda and its founder, the young bin Laden was for the most part gentle and well behaved, but "an exception to Osama's well-mannered, nonconfrontational demeanor was his support for the Palestinians and negative attitude towards the United States and Israel." After September 11, bin Laden's mother told an interviewer that "in his teenage years he was the same nice kid . . . but he was more concerned, sad, and frustrated about the situation in Palestine in particular, and the Arab and Muslim world in general.

Moreover, bin Laden's first public statement intended for a wider audience—released December 29, 1994—directly addressed the Palestinian issue. As Bruce Lawrence, compiler of bin Laden's public statements, explains, "The letter makes it plain that Palestine, far from being a late addition to bin Laden's agenda, was at the centre of it from the start."

When the CNN reporter Peter Arnett asked him in March 1997 why he had declared jihad against the United States, bin Laden replied, "We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous, and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Land of the Prophet's Night Journey [Palestine]. And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq."

There was also the other guy who tried bombing the WTC, who was also angry about Palestine.

According to the transcript of his trial, Yousef hoped that his explosion would topple Tower 1 which would fall into Tower 2, killing the occupants of both buildings, which he estimated to be about 250,000 people[11] in revenge for U.S. support for Israel against Palestine.[12]

The US alliance with Israel has caused huge problems for America and the rest of the West.

What's the obvious deal that America should dictate to Israel that'd solve the I/P conflict? The only thing I can think of is 'actually occupy, subdue, and govern Palestine', but that's less pro-palestine than US policy currently is.

The US could adopt all kinds of approaches. They could tell the Israelis to quit settling Palestinian land, they could recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, they could tell the Israelis to conduct good-faith negotiations instead of unilaterally invading or withdrawing from various parts of the occupied territories as they like...

Take the 2002 peace proposal for instance, the US could work from there:

The new proposal, like the original one, offered Israel peace and normal relations not just with the Palestinians but with all twenty-two members of the Arab League. In return, Israel would have to withdraw from all of the Occupied Territories and the Golan Heights, accept the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories with East Jerusalem as its capital, and negotiate a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem that was "agreed upon" by the relevant parties. The Saudis made it clear that the proposal was a basis for negotiation, not a take-it-or-leave-it deal.

The Israeli prime minister was unhappy with some parts of the proposal, such as the stipulation that Israel would have to withdraw from all of the Occupied Territories. He also rejected any compromise on the issue of a Palestinian "right of return," telling the Jerusalem Post in March 2007, "I will not agree to any kind of Israeli responsibility for this problem. Full stop." He went on to say that the return of even one Palestinian refugee to Israel was "out of the question.

The US could do almost anything except what they actually did and do, which is facade-negotiations organized by people like Mr Seldowitz. All prior negotiations have been fundamentally unserious, since the Israelis know that they have such great influence in Washington that they can derail negotiations at their leisure without risk to their military and diplomatic aid.

During this entire period, the Israelis continued building settlements in the West Bank, despite American protests and despite the fact that the Road Map explicitly calls upon Israel to "freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)." They also continued assassinating Palestinian leaders, sometimes at the most unhelpful moments—at least from a U.S. perspective. For example, the IDF scuttled a proposed Palestinian cease-fire on July 22, 2002, when it killed Sheik Salah Shehada, a prominent Hamas leader, and fourteen others (including nine children). The White House denounced the attack as "heavy handed" but did not force Israel to end its targeted assassinations policy. As noted previously, the IDF undermined another emerging cease-fire in June 2003, when it tried but failed to kill Rantisi, another Hamas leader. On March 22, 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin with American-made Hellfire missiles. This move was generally perceived as a serious blow to America's position in the Middle East, not only because U.S. weapons were used but also because many in the Arab world believed that the Bush administration had given Israel the green light to kill a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

All the US has to do is start trying and they could swiftly impose a peace deal. Israel would quickly fold since it's a small country and can't sustain itself in the face of South-Africa style economic and diplomatic suppression. The credible threat alone would almost certainly be enough to achieve a two-state solution.

Bullying the Israelis into giving up what they've taken would give the US a lot more moral weight in opposing Russian annexation of Ukrainian provinces, it would greatly diminish anti-Western sentiment in the oily lands, free up resources to confront China and would be just deserts for the Iraq War, amongst other Israeli perfidies. It's also totally impossible for the US in its current political environment.

All the US has to do is start trying and they could swiftly impose a peace deal. Israel would quickly fold since it's a small country and can't sustain itself in the face of South-Africa style economic and diplomatic suppression. The credible threat alone would almost certainly be enough to achieve a two-state solution.

Yes, but the US doesn't want the two states to be Hamas and Fatah.

The US could propose making Palestine a UN protectorate that will gradually democratize (taking many decades), similar to how Palestine was a League of Nations protectorate in the past or how Kosovo was a UN protectorate. Then poor in lots of money, open up the borders to Egypt, give them a sea harbor, etc.

Then the support for Hamas and other radicals should dry up as the Palestinians can then get (real) jobs and are mostly safe from IDF and colonist attacks.

Support for Hamas and other radicals is not a result of their material conditions. Their material conditions are largely a result of their support for Hamas and other radicals.

Nonsense, they only started to support Hamas after the deradicalized PLO was unable to offer meaningful improvement to their lives, which was in no small part due to Israel losing even a modest will to find a real solution after the killing of Rabin.

One can read what one wants into old Jewish men. My grandfather was ‘cancelled’ from events at a professional body he co-founded because he kept raising HBD talking points at them. He also (foolishly, it must be said) spent two decades commissioning extensive genealogical research into our family in the hopes of proving we were descended from some kind of famous rabbinical lineage (we are not). It is what it is.

If your grandpa is still alive, let him know I'm calling him immensely based.

In much the same manner people claim wisdom from the mouth of babes, being old lets you get away with stating things that most can't, even if he did get canceled for it.

One of the things that I really can't get worked up is taking down of those posters - it is performative cringe on all sides. Cheap tearjerkers deserve to be taken down or ignored.

For this specific case - when you single out someone and start harassing them repeatedly if we take at face value the 1 month - I don't think that you are in the right unless you have been provoked personally. And even then you may cross over a boundary.

You do realize that Gotham City is a fictional place, don't you?

Gotham City and Metropolis are both thinly fictionalized versions of New York City, much like Fort Repose from Alas, Babylon is a thinly fictionalized Mount Dora. Though the fact that both exist in the same universe leads to some issues.

90% sure the it's an old-timey nickname for NY, adopted by the comics.

The NY nickname is just "Gotham". Gotham City is Bruce Wayne's home and a subrepticious instance of RAS syndrome.

It originates from a parodic folk tale from 1807 called The Wise Men of Gotham that lampooned the culture of then New York.

In the story, the village of Gotham in medieval England (the term literally means Goat's town and is a real place in England) is trying to prevent King John from visiting their village because that would disturb everything, they feign madness as a scheme to convince the king to skip their town and visit a more sensible place.

Nah man. Jews are Americans and semi-western. Geopolitical allies. As much as I hate Jews for being the leaders of anti-white bigotry at the end of the day I still have their back. The international arena does matter. An attack on their people is an attack on me. They are part of the civilized world and I will defend them from barbarism.

In an ideal world we would deport the food cart guy. He clearly doesn’t share our values.

My issue with Jews are basically mistake theory. My issue with Isis and Hamas and those organizations is conflict theory.

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In what way does the food cart guy not share our values? I don't get it.

You know, there's something uniquely wrong in this popular genre of «Western» «conservative» reasoning, that goes beyond what Seldowitz or any Arab terrorist could do. You serve unashamed tribalism of another tribe, and defend it with lofty universalist rhetoric about «civilization and barbarism».

What are those «our» values that the civilized abuser Seldowitz represents and the street vendor, whose transgression is in line with transgressions of white leftists, does not? Civilization is not about being educated enough to do more than sell street food. If there is anything to the Western civilization as a proposition and not pure empirical capability, it's the belief that «values» go beyond alliances of convenience, brute kinship and right of the mighty, that there exist principles and morally sound laws. Who plays more by the rules and laws of the West, and who exploits them more in this situation? Who reciprocates goodwill, and who has defected barbarically?

And, as you say, an attack on the Israeli is an attack on you, but does this work the other way around? Say, Bari Weiss, the kind of person who generates pretraining data for your soul, argues that antisemitism is a sign that the society itself is breaking down. Was the long culture war against whites and «the West», discussed in this community for so long, seen as a dire sign for the Jews? I suppose some clever and provocative ones saw it this way – in outlets so radioactive nobody would in their right mind cite them. Most others were just content to clarify they're not white, or at least not the hate-deserving shade of white.

And, I mean, that's fair enough. Every bloodline for itself, that's how the game is played since protozoa. I'm not under the impression that the CNN and the Guardian are paragons of «The West» or advocate for equal standards either: they report on Seldowitz solely because the progressive faction they represent and pander to is currently more sympathetic to Muslims, even Hamas supporters, than to Zionist Jews. But I appreciate that they do not invoke those ideas which I think would really deserve protection.

Why is ‘civilization and barbarism’ such a poor reasoning tool, after all?

It is entirely legitimate to value a people by the quality of civilization they are able to create. It is why it is inherently more reasonable to have respect for Yamato than for Fulanis, for example, it is why - for all my disagreement with mass immigration of Central Americans - I still respect the heights of Aztec civilization and wonder, sometimes here, what they did that modern governments in the region seem incapable of.

And the same, of course, is true in reverse, because there too civilizational quality is critical. Were Ashkenazi Jews of 90 IQ we would be a forgotten population. At most, we would be like the Roma, somewhat disliked in parts of Mitteleuropa but otherwise irrelevant. It is only because of the heights and the low points of outsized Jewish achievement that this is even a discussion at all.

‘Every bloodline for itself’ perhaps, but I have respect for great civilizations and disdain for poor ones, regardless of their opinion of me. That isn’t to say I would fight for people who hate me, or would not make peace with barbarians who are amenable to me, but it is to say, in Scruton’s words, that beauty matters. If Jewish civilization is incapable of beauty (and as I have argued here, this is at best an open question) then we deserve to perish. I leave it to you to determine whether the same is true for your own people.

It is entirely legitimate to value a people by the quality of civilization they are able to create.

Value is arbitrary, as are dimensions of quality under consideration. The particular kind of value system implied here is very Western and not Israeli at all. I suppose West Bank settlers create a certain kind of civilization; from the modern Western perspective, it's worthy of sanctioning, while from the Israeli one it deserves being subsidized and protected, even as they rebel against the secular powers. Because the latter's function of «quality» more or less collapses into boolean «Jewish or not».

More complex matters could be discussed but it doesn't matter. Only Westerners are weird enough to forget that, before all admiration for «civilization» measured in homing missiles or GDP or Nobel prizes per capita, there's the very simple concept of the political. Neither Arabs nor Jews will ever forget it.

I would not want to live in Central America, but I don't think that modern governments there are worse than the Aztecs. Modern Central America is actually pretty stable politically, I don't remember the least time there was a major conflict, civil war, or revolution there. Many parts of it are poor and corrupt, of course, and there are problems with cartels, but it is not an utter civilizational disaster. The Aztec Empire was not very stable, it lasted only about a hundred years and many of its subject people hated it so much that they gladly sided with the Spanish when those came over from Europe. Plus of course there was the constant ritualistic bloodshed.

"In an ideal world we would deport the food cart guy. He clearly doesn’t share our values."

Free speech is one of our values though.

I no longer believe that. Within reason free speech is fine. If it threatens everything else then I don’t.

I’ve said before and maybe got a ban for it but I had no problem with Chile killing all the communists. And that made them the richest country south of us. I’m fine with saying free speech is good within our culture. I’m fine with free speech for people who don’t threaten the state. I got no love of free speech that Can conquor me.

An attack on their people is an attack on me. They are part of the civilized world and I will defend them from barbarism.

I'm glad you feel that way because some members of the Israeli Knesset and Israel's intelligence minister have found ways to help defend them: The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees & Victory is an opportunity for Israel in the midst of crisis - opinion

We must try something new, and we call on the international community to help make it a reality. It could be a win-win solution: a win for those civilians of Gaza who seek a better life and a win for Israel after this devastating tragedy.

Those refugees, if spread out, will have a relatively low impact on the West and will benefit themselves and Israel will be closer to a secure ethnostate. A win for the "civilized" world and an example of the value of allies. So better make some room.

No interest in accepting Gazan refugees into the west. The Arab world can take them. They don’t fit the values of the western world. And yes I see the issue that the Arabs don’t want them either. But they are there people. Nobody wants them until they give up death cult.

But they are there people

They won't take them. What can we expect? They're not of the "civilized world"!

But Israelis are your people. Your struggles are their struggles, their struggles are your struggles. This really is the neatest possible solution. As the article points out: they've tried other things (including allowing an election that led to Hamas, on the behest of their allies) and it hasn't worked. If everyone is standing shoulder to shoulder against barbarism, think how dire the straits had to be (or how limited the downsides to allies with more demographic inertia) for them to suggest this.

Dripping sarcasm aside, no wonder the zoomers aren't sold on a nation that demand much and offers nothing in return.

If you're not bound by the WW2 truth the boomers operate on, all you really see is your elites and a foreign power colluding to fuck you over for nebulous foreign policy goals or yet another manifestation of colonialist white supremacy.

Israelis are fond of answering criticism of their military operation by asking what they should do to respond to Hammas attacks instead. But I want to ask in turn: what should be the answer of western youths to this utter contempt for their interests? Why should zoomers not hate Israel if it's going to dump its undesirables onto them?

They’re not dumping anything. They’re saying, if you want ‘em, take ‘em. Why is that nefarious? Clearly gazans hate jews even more than they hate the west, so there is no hypocrisy. And western zoomers are just as deluded as western elites, when it comes to the ease of assimilating millions of muslims.

Those people believe that any immigrants is an asset. They also criticize israel for its cruel treatment and ‘apartheid’ towards them, as if the concept of just being nice had never entered an israeli’s mind. It’s completely fair for israelis to call their bluff. Only it’s not a bluff, because once the assimilation fails, the same people will say it’s because the EU was cruel to them.

Israel made us do it. The boomers made us do it. The brussels burocrats made us do it. The elites made us do it. Then why are the people all around me spouting the same naive view? They have not been forced. No, it’s us, our family, friends, girlfriends and neighbours, it’s always been us.

Israel made us do it. The boomers made us do it. The brussels burocrats made us do it. The elites made us do it. Then why are the people all around me spouting the same naive view? They have not been forced. No, it’s us, our family, friends, girlfriends and neighbours, it’s always been us.

Third world immigration was never popular anywhere in the west, there was no referendum on this. Italians voted for less immigration, got more. UK voted for brexit expecting less immigration and got more. Quit victim blaming ordinary Europeans.

You don't see the contradiction? It changes, but it's always someone else.

UK voted for brexit expecting less immigration and got more.

So I guess it wasn't the brussels burocrats after all. Boomers? Ah, probably not, polls say they're opposed. Try politicians. Try the media. Try the jews. Try the freemasons. Try billionaires. Try davos. Keep trying.

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So either we support Israel genociding Gaza and stealing the land or we have to accept Gazans into the west so Israel can steal the lend, those are our only options?

With allies like these, who needs enemies.

No of course not. As a random european country you just say "no thank you" and wash your hands of the matter. Where's the "being a bad ally" part? People and countries are responsible for their own decisions.

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No, it’s us, our family, friends, girlfriends and neighbours, it’s always been us.

Nope. They're not the ones deciding which views can be expressed on social media, and which get deboosted or banned. There's also way too many views that all my family, friends, neighbors, and girlfriends considered absolutely batty, and claimed no one serious believes, that are now being pushed by the mainstream on full blast, to let you lay the blame on them.

It’s true that Israelis aren’t bleeding hearts about whether Gazans move to the west. But it’s also a poor WN talking point, it’s not like Israel wants them to go to Europe, they just want them to go anywhere but their backyard, and they don’t really care.

When Britain says they want Channel migrants to stay in France, this isn’t some grand racial action against French ethnic sovereignty, it’s just ordinary politics of not wanting to continue to import a problem.

The Israelis would be fine with the Gazans in their back yard if they'd stop pissing over the fence. But they won't, and that's why no one else wants them either.

But that’s exactly my point. When an Israeli MP says ‘why don’t the Gazans just move to Europe’, wignats on Twitter go crazy because it’s “confirmed proof” that “Jews want to import Muslims into Europe”. In reality, it’s anything but, it’s just an Israeli politician saying “I don’t care where they go, I just don’t want them here”.

Sure. The juxtaposition between naked self-interest and "an attack on them is an attack on me (justifying the deportation of some hot dog vendor)" is what I find very amusing.

it’s not like Israel wants them to go to Europe, they just want them to go anywhere but their backyard

And they think Westerners - unlike Arabs, Indonesians Kenyans and so on. - are dumb enough to be prodded into facilitating this.

It's not so much about some general theory about Jews possessing an innate hostility towards the West or other people's societies.

It's just...I'm in awe of the sheer audacity to think you can manufacture consent for your hegemon/allies to eat these costs and to let them know you think that.

When Western nations play games over migrants I think it's with a clear-eyed view that everyone wants to pass the hot potato insofar as they can. There's not an implication of "those guys are soft-touches" (since there's basically zero reason for them to indulge you - unlike EU countries that have at least some pragmatic arguments).

Getting high on Western amity seems to harm you here: Britain was going to pay Rwanda to take refugees, there was no pretense they were going to be humanitarians just cause they're all in this "civilization" thing together.

And they think Westerners - unlike Arabs, Indonesians Kenyans and so on. - are dumb enough to be prodded into facilitating this.

The Israelis certainly have tried others, and I don’t think they expect Gazans to move to the West (as you say, it’s very unlikely any Western nation would take them).

Rather, it’s a rhetorical tool. ‘If European politicians keep critiquing Israeli action in Gaza, why don’t they take the supposedly peaceful Gazans?’ To then turn this around and suggest that Israel is deliberately encouraging mass immigration of Muslims into Europe is ridiculously dishonest.

It's just...I'm in awe of the sheer audacity to think you can manufacture consent for your hegemon/allies to eat these costs and to let them know you think that.

Why? It’s ultimately the fault of the ‘hegemon/allies’ that the Palestinian situation exists because the US was willing to accept the UNRWA’s world historically unique terms for solely Palestinian migrants to placate Arab states versus the Soviet Union.

I can think of several parties more responsible for the Palestinian situation than the new hegemon.

Rather, it’s a rhetorical tool. ‘If European politicians keep critiquing Israeli action in Gaza, why don’t they take the supposedly peaceful Gazans?’

That isn't really clear in either article but using it as a move is at least more understandable to me. If someone pulled it out in a panel debate against some leftist I wouldn't have blinked there. Those articles seem to be treating it as an actual solution and the WSJ seems to be offering it up as a moral alternative to a Western audience.

Why? It’s ultimately the fault of the ‘hegemon/allies’ that the Palestinian situation exists because the US was willing to accept the UNRWA’s world historically unique terms for solely Palestinian migrants to placate Arab states versus the Soviet Union.

Shit. That's a good point.

So what happens in the counterfactual? The refugee claims of the Gazans just die out over time and they're pushed to become Egyptians or various forms of Arabs? Would they see it that way?

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When Britain says they want Channel migrants to stay in France, this isn’t some grand racial action against French ethnic sovereignty, it’s just ordinary politics of not wanting to continue to import a problem.

The analogy would make sense of Britain was scheming to send their Muslim population to France, not if they're merely not letting French Muslims in. If Brits were planning such a scheme, it definitely would look like some grand racial action against France.

Are the Israelis scheming to deport Muslim Israeli citizens? While it might be a distant goal in the eyes of some hardcore religious Zionists (no different to the mass deportation of Muslim French being a distant goal of some hardcore French reactionaries, which it is) it certainly isn’t in the regular Overton window.

Who said anything about citizens? If the UK schemed to send all it's Muslim immigrants, who have not yet been granted citizenship yet, to France, that would also qualify as "some grand racial action against France".

If the UK invaded a Muslim territory, and schemed to send all it's inhabitants to France, that would be even worse.

Stay on topic, please.

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You can't stand against barbarism by importing it.

This is an excellent idea all things considered. The west can basically absorb this easily, Europe is close to 500 million people, another 2 million is just 0.4% of the population, which given Europe is now losing people in net is going to stem that decline too for a few years.

Plus the usual "It's all fighting aged men" doesn't apply here, almost half of the Gazans are women, and their low age means they won't be putting pressure on the healthcare/retirement systems for a long time.

You can't just say 0.4% increase in the population is easily manageable. If the current European welfare/support structure can currently only support 500,000 in excess, a 2 million increase is a 1,500,000 overload of what the system can support. Let's not forget there will still be migrants coming in from other places while this is going on.

As an example New York City, as of August 13, has had an increase of 58500 migrants come into their care system. That's 0.75% of the population of New York City, but New York has a ton of money and resources put into a support/welfare structure. Yet that increase is overstraining the New York support system, to the point where local residents are now frustrated with the incoming migrants taking away city resources that should have gone to them, and the city is offering tickets out of New York City to the migrants now.

There is also the question of how likely are the people of Gaza to be absorbed peacefully into Western society and culture? The low age and the fact that this is a more equal gender split is an interesting point you brought up, but it's also a fact that nearby Arab/Muslim countries like Egypt don't want to accept Gazan refugees. The countries containing the people who have the most in common with Gazans and have greater proportions of people that are in agreement with Gazan's wants and desires don't want to take them in.

Then there is the issue of the people who don't want to leave Gaza. What percentage of the people in Gaza actually want to seek aslyum and leave compared to wanting to stay and create a Palestinian state? Hamas's open stated goal is the complete destruction of Israel and a large portion of the Gazans (58%) have a positive or very positive view of Hamas. Are we going to just force these people to be absorbed into the west as well?

Europe is having trouble assimilating Muslims now. No need to add new before the current batch is done. And the gulf states could use a lot of laborers anyway.

They need laborers who don't have strong political opinions especially about Islam. South Indian migrants are fine, Palestinians; however, cause civil wars and coup attempts, just ask Lebanon or Jordan.

This is why I’m much more of a nationalist in international affairs. It’s actually harmful to everyone involved to have the entire planet watching the war. If this conflict were treated like any of the dozen other low grade conflicts going on in the world, it would be over quite quickly and would not flair up as often. It would also mean less division in America and Europe as people wouldn’t be using it as another front in the culture wars.

Oh right, see no evil, hear no evil...

Given that lives are on the line, a countries foreign interventions should ethically be of great concern, both for the lives of their own citizens but also foreign citizens. Even if you hold your own nationals as being more important, it would still be important to want to limit unnecessary foreign deaths where there are no strategic gains.

The idea that you would be happy just for innocent people to die, would put you in a pretty small set of people. Some people speak rhetorically in such a fashion but I question whether they would actually be able to kill an innocent person themselves if they knew there was no justification. As you point out, the key is not to know about it or to be in the fog of war.

If you're looking for relevant examples, think Iraq war. Lot's of innocent civilians dead, no strategic gains beyond regional chaos perhaps. This sort of thing is only possible when the truth is hidden. Otherwise people tend to understand that it's bad, because most of us value self-consistency and aren't psychopaths.

I don’t think it’s psychopathic to suggest that you not give inordinate attention to conflicts happening half a world away that don’t concern the vast majority of Americans except in the form of aesthetics. I think it honestly holds back lasting peace because a lot of the decisions are made in a grandstanding way with no thought to the possibility of securing a peace. If the world weren’t protesting and watching and following everything on social media, then there’d be a lot more reason to end things quickly. And point of fact, we are actually pretty selective about the conflicts we pay attention to and follow let alone protest. Nobody’s breaking into Grand Central Station over the plight of Uyghurs, Yemenis, or Armenians. Syria has had a decades long civil war, and again the mental space that conflict has on us is pretty small. Those conflicts exist, and others exist around the world, but again they’re not fixtures in our collective imaginations even if thousands die there.

And furthermore, there’s only so much a country can do about these conflicts. We cannot get involved in every single conflict as we have limited resources. We’d have to at some point be selective about who we back and why, and it makes more sense to base the decisions about who to back on what’s in our interests than on whether or not one party or another is posting tear jerky videos on Twitter.

Well I don't have a solution to the larger problem of national rivalries over various interests. And I admit that my tendency is also to gloss over these things as well.

But we are influenced by our goverments and media. This prevents us from seeing our agency in at least some matters. The Iraq war was a coterie of hawks who hoodwinked the US and UK into a war. If journalism had highlighted true facts and enquired more deeply, they could have, perhaps, been stared down.

It was also a war we were directly involved in. It was our troops, our bombs our leaders making the decisions. Yes, in that instance we could and should have done what we needed to to stop the war we started in a way that doesn’t destroy what remains of Iraq.

The problem with us getting involved in wars that we have no interest or stake in is that it artificially prolongs and deepens the strife because they know the west in general is there to play cop and stop things before they get too crazy. Hamas doesn’t think that attacking Israel is a potentially lethal move for them because they know that Biden will negotiate a “pause”, that the retaliation will be decried as genocide, and that they’ll get billions in aid and other middle eastern countries will resupply them with weapons as soon as the coast is clear. Israel has no fear of the consequences of their actions because they know that nuclear aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean is a warning to all the Arabs that the American empire and her Allies will bomb the shit out of them if they intervene. What this means is that the war continues to infinity because we prevent them from fighting to the conclusion, and thus creating whatever the final outcome of the war that’s been going on since 1948. Instead we have the war flare up every few years, fight it to the exact same stalemate we’ve been stuck at for 75 years and know that whatever happens in this round is ultimately meaningless as the ceasefire just means rearming and preparing for the next round of the forever war.

I can see what you mean, and agree with the drawn out nature of many wars, especially proxy wars. But Im not sure previous wars where fighting was less restrained necessarily resolved issues such as contested land, though might-is-right was certainly understood well by the loser in heavy defeats. But these memories stay until fortunes change presumably and then the chance to even the score presents itself. I'm thinking regions like the Balkans - I mean they had a decent war not so long ago, but it hasn't resolved the tensions.

I mean the thing for me is that those wars ended decisively with one victor who won strongly enough to prevent the losing party from being able to spin back up to relight the fuse and try to win again. In 1850, if two countries went to war, they fought until one capitulated to the other, and it was known by all parties that the matter was settled. If the Ukraine war had happened in 1903, then we’d probably find ourselves redrawing the map to reflect that Western Ukraine wasn’t able to control Donbas and Crimea. Instead, we’re still trying to keep the war going instead of having West Ukraine simply cede the territory and shore up defenses.

Because now we have a principle that you can't acquire territory by conquest. It means that some conflicts will be considered ongoing for a long time, but it's also supposed to mean that most countries don't even consider starting a war of conquest in the first place, because no one will recognize their gains, so we have many fewer wars of conquest.

That seems true from my limited knowledge of war contexts. Yes I'd say we are at a new time in history in that we have many perspective takers neutral to this or that conflict that see various wars, beyond geopolitical reasons and parochial local forces, as being somewhat pointless. US foreign policy has this sense of arbitrariness, where every action is completely justifiable from some strategic perspective, even if just undermining the region or wanting to spoil a rivals influence. But when the accounting is done some period after, the reasoning drops away and the action is ceased, reverted, like a cat that gets tired of playing with some half-dead mouse. Meanwhile the massive loss of infrastructure and often civilian life plants the seed for further deprivation and violence down the track, this justifying the next intervention.

The consequence for perspective takers that are not linked to either side is that they can start to make connections from war, to other bad outcomes, such as an influx of immigrants into your country.

In the Xth best world, the media would stop signal-boosting all the evil cardiologists. Assuming that this actually happened as described, there's a difference between a non-representative person and a representative one. Rejoicing in the death of innocents is official activity of Hamas and common among Gazans. Signal-boosting the extremists on the other side to make it look like both sides do this equally is media deception.

Also note that "former X" is a variety of "not actually X".

Rejoicing in the death of innocents is official activity of Hamas and common among Gazans.

What if your opinion was not rejoicing but "we have to break some eggs", except you want to take it far farther than most reasonable observers or even Israelis want to? Is there a point where it gets problematic from a consequentialist perspective?

Second the evil cardiologist point. Don’t agree that Gazans in Gaza are the relevant comparison group - this behavior wouldn’t be as bizarre or noteworthy coming from some Israeli official living in Israel, where it makes more sense for tensions to run hot.

Random related detail - looked up a very prominent IR professor, Bruce Hoffman, the other day due to a favorable reference in another book. His twitter was full of retweets of pictures and videos of people tearing down the missing signs with requests to identify them (still has a similar one as his top tweet as of this writing). Hard to picture what the point of that is if not to encourage targeted harassment, so it’s not limited to this guy. Still just anecdotal though, not hard to evil cardiologist a group in a setting like this.

this behavior wouldn’t be as bizarre or noteworthy coming from some Israeli official living in Israel

And that is exactly why this resonates. Here we have a person who ostensibly was responsible for an equitable peace between the Palestinians and Israel, but whose response clearly shows an extreme bias to one nation, more like being a citizen of that one nation.

In the Xth best world, the media would stop signal-boosting all the evil cardiologists. Assuming that this actually happened as described, there's a difference between a non-representative person and a representative one.

If this person was just old geezer of no importance, no one would care about dispute between Stuart the Pensioner and Mohammed the Halal Vendor.

But this person is someone of note, and it is worthy to ask whether he is representative of his class and milieu, and, if so, what it means for understanding of American diplomacy and foreign policy, what it means for trust in American-negotiated "Mideast peace process".

one Stuart Seldowitz, former humanitarian diplomacy consultant, National Security Council member and deputy director of the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs

And, I suppose, in the fourth best possible world, such goons would never get promoted to such positions.

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