Israel/Palestine

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(Thread IKs: Main Paineframe, Irony Be My Shield, punishedkissinger)

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Whether or not something conforms to an esoteric or colloquial definition of "genocide" is a really stupid discussion, because if whatever a government is doing is in fact abnormally or extraordinarily bad, then you can just describe it without having to try to shoehorn the word "genocide" in there as a rhetorical cudgel.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 02:24

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 02:55

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

MonsieurChoc posted:

What level of hilarious corruption are we looking at here? Quebec? America? China? A 70s banana republic?

A Middle East 5, which is an 8 everywhere in Europe outside of Greece and Italy.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 06:44

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

In a country that practices conscription, "youths in their twenties" and "soldiers" are just about synonyms.

No, it's not. You have a terrible understanding of LOAC.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 03:47

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Argas posted:

They could stick to non-violent protests and hope their Israeli oppressors have a change of heart.

Violent resistance and stabbing random Israelis don't seem to have moved the needle much either, so...

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 07:25

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Argas posted:

Clearly the Palestinians don't deserve their own state until they suffer enough.

I'm not seeing your point. You seemed to be saying that the Palestinians weren't getting what they want through non-violent resistance, so they should abandon it in favor of further violence. But Hamas' violent resistance has done nothing to improve the situation of Gaza, the Palestinians lack the means to impose a settlement on Israel through violence, and arguments about pointless violence as a symbolic gesture are all either absurd or disgusting once you drill down into them.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 07:32

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Friendly Humour posted:

Individual Palestinians are turning to random attacks on things that look like targets because that's what happens when people are put into an intolerable situation with no way of resolving the deadlock. It's not a strategic decision that aims at achieving anything, no matter what Hamas of all loving people claim. It's a natural human reaction, but the question you should be asking is, what is it that's making normal everyday people act like this.

Odd how most of the things that look like targets to the Palestinians carrying out these attacks are random civilians minding their own business.

Is the rest of your post trying to argue that oppressed people lack agency, that they shouldn't have accountability, or something else entirely?

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 07:55

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Friendly Humour posted:

That's because the Palestenians aren't actually deep strategic thinkers picking out appropriate targets based on internationally acceptable standards of warfare. They just people, like you and me. They all know that they're going to die no matter what target they choose, and I suspect a lot of the attacks are people just snapping and saying "gently caress you, I quit". Agency or accountability sure, you can hold them both if you want to. But you shouldn't expect this not to happen as consequences for the situation that Israeli government has but them into. There is no justice here, but there is causality.

You're kind of explicitly minimizing agency in your last two lines there. Even the most resigned individual can tell the difference between civilians and soldiers, and taking a bunch of civilians with you in order to spice up your suicide-by-cop is wrong no matter how much you try to equivocate.

Cat Mattress posted:

What agency do the Palestinians have in effect? If they do something, the Israeli oppress them. If they do something else, the Israeli oppress them. If they don't do anything, the Israeli oppress them.

You're referring to Israeli agency, which is exactly the issue I was pointing out. No matter what Israel does, the Palestinians always have the option of not killing civilians. If you truly think that nothing the Palestinians do moves the needle on Israeli oppression, the only way your argument makes sense is if you think Israeli civilians deserve to be stabbed to death.

Cranappleberry posted:

I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.

I think most people can distinguish between "a riot" and "randomly killing and bombing members of The Other in order to express your defiance", which was the thing most normal people condemn the KKK for doing.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 09:16

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

If we were talking about, say, North Korea, it'd be something else. North Koreans don't have much choice in what their country does. But Israeli is a democracy (the only democracy in the middle east, a light unto nations) and therefore the Israeli policies of constant, brutal, relentless oppression are the will of the Israeli people and therefore Israeli citizens are fully responsible for the treatment of Palestinians. What is happening is what they want to happen. Israel is what the Israeli want it to be -- and they want it to be a brutal Apartheid state built on racism and religious fundamentalism.

Do you understand how monstrous this argument is? The majority of people in the Gaza Strip voted for a Hamas government, which is literally a terrorist group dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel. By your logic, Israel would be fully justified in targeting the population of Gaza for supporting violence against Israeli civilians. There is a reason that every strain of international law and norms that address the issue prohibits targeting civilians as a means of punishing them for the decisions of elected officials.

Friendly Humour posted:

Pointing out the consequences of Israeli governnment policy of disenfranchisement and oppressive apartheid colonialism has nothing to do with agency. Israelis have no right to act surprised about any of this when it's the decades of State policy that has made ordinary people crack up and lash out. Say it's wrong all you want, it's still going to keep happening so long as nothing changes.

Framing the Palestinians' actions as disconnected "consequences" is either denying their agency, or attempting to excuse their murder of civilians by obscuring their choice. You're basically saying, "If Israeli civilians don't want to get killed, they should stop pissing off people who kill civilians." It's victim blaming.

emanresu tnuocca posted:

Many of the attacks in this alleged third intifada have had the characteristics of a suicide-by-cop, in my opinion.

Suicide-by-cop is when you antagonize the police into killing you. What these Palestinians are doing is murdering as many civilians as possible in order to terrorize them.

Higsian posted:

Sometimes I wonder if there's a gene that makes people interpret understanding as approval.

It's pretty obvious that I'm not conflating understanding with moral justification.

I get it, I understand why people don't want to acknowledge the fundamental immorality of Palestinian violence; they think it distracts from what they feel is more significant Israeli wrongdoing, and acknowledging that some of the arguments that the Israeli right uses to justify their policies would muddle the moral absolutism with which most people prefer to frame the issue.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 23:39

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

NLJP posted:

Maybe you need to post drunk less friend

Honestly he makes some interesting points. Has anyone tried getting the leadership of Likud and Hamas frat pledge wasted together?

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 08:27

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

I was thinking more a wall-sized map of the Levant, a whole box of crayons, and a lot of really good coke.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 08:57

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

I want to get off Mr. Bibi's Wild Border Wall Ride.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 09:33

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Preen Dog posted:

Yessssss

Preen Dog posted:

Don't forget to get your dead child plushie at the gift shop.

Gift shop? Didn't you hear? The ride never ends.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2017 02:12

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Or behind, those launchers have a large back-blast area.

Orange Devil posted:

So do you not worry that this sets a standard where we all agree that it's acceptable for countries to use military force to annex territory?

It's always been an absurd fantasy that borders created by military force are illegitimate. I would say the majority of modern borders were either drawn with the point of a sword, or imposed by colonizers. If nothing else, it's ridiculous to assert that land seized before some arbitrary date is legitimate, but afterwards is illegitimate.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 17:12

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

The Geneva Conventions relate to the treatment of the sick, wounded, shipwrecked, POWs, and civilians in war, and aren't relevant to whether a particular seizure of territory is justified.

Your probably thinking of the non-intervention principle as articulated in Article 2.4 of the UN Charter, and yeah, I'd say that has been a joke since the day it was inked. Which UN members have stepped up to prevent the normalization of the status quo post bellum in Crimea?

There are plenty of reasons an invasion or occupation can be wrong, but arguing that no country has the right to seize territory by force has been ridiculous for a while now.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Dec 8, 2017

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 17:55

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Orange Devil posted:

Since WW2 it has not been the standard that we find annexation of territory by force *acceptable*.

As with all discussions on I/P, I find that I really don't give a poo poo about what people did or thought 2000+ years ago.

So every nation that has seceded from the territory of another without mutual consent since September 2, 1945 is illegitimate?

Ze Pollack posted:

it is remarkably illustrative how quickly authoritarians switch from "legality defines what is right" to "actually the larger world defines rightness" the split second the law becomes inconvenient to them

When you're talking about sovereign nations, the concept of legal obligations and restraints gets a little bit wonky.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 19:43

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Orange Devil posted:

I'm inviting you guys to stop dancing around your actual positions and just say what you believe.

The date when a country kicked the previous sovereign off a piece of land is immaterial in determining the final status of the territory and must give way to the facts on the ground. Whatever claims Mexico, Spain, or various native tribes may have on the western United States are irrelevant. It's ridiculous to assert that Israel must return all land seized after 1967 as a moral imperative, but that it is morally acceptable for them to keep the land they seized in 1947.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 21:18

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ze Pollack posted:

Kind of related to my point though. You've got this result you want ("Israel should be legally obliged to withdraw from the territory it seized in 1967, but I'm not quite comfortable publicly calling for its annihilation, so I have to rationalize it existing on territory seized in 1947/48") and are trying to back a legal justification onto it, except there is no coherent or logical way to draw that distinction.

Futuresight posted:

But something being not okay after a certain date is how laws work everywhere. It's not a strange and alien concept to we decide at some point that a thing is no longer okay going forward.

You can't really frame it as a moral issue then. And if you're going with the notion that "all seizure of territory is wrong unless it was before 1949 or one of the many modern examples I will say was wrong but will not agree that we should use force to roll back" then you should at least be prepared to defend how you are drawing those distinctions.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2017 10:01

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Futuresight posted:

It was always wrong from my perspective. And I morally condemn each and every conflict borne of territorial conquest. When you say "what about these people who conquered" yes, they were morally wrong, absolutely. But we can't act legally against people who break our moral standards. To act legally we have to first make the law and then enforce it going forward. If Israel did nothing morally wrong then most of the left would just ignore what they are doing because they're much more interested in morality than legality. If they did something morally wrong but not legally wrong we'd still complain but we'd have no legal standing to make demands, and our demands would have to be to the international community getting those laws enshrined. The morality defines position on the subject, the law defines what can be done from that position.

The concept of law as most people experience it doesn't really apply to nation states, because the definition of sovereignty precludes by definition any higher legal authority. In a lot of cases, "international law" derives its authority from either normative practice, or the willingness of powerful states to enforce it. The latter doesn't care about morality, but the former is basically impossible to decouple from it. It's absurd to claim that Israel has an obligation to return all territory it gained since 1948 without A) bothering to explain why seizures before that point shouldn't be reversed, and B) insisting that all other post-'48 seizures are equally invalid.

VitalSigns posted:

Dead Reckoning: Are you arguing that it would be morally okay to reduce Israel back to its pre-1967 borders as long as it's done the manly way through superior force of arms and not cravenly at the negotiate table because the conqueror is always right.

Or are you arguing that if conquest is wrong it must always be wrong and therefore the only morally consistent solution is a one state solution on the borders of Mandatory Palestine?

If conquest before a certain point is morally OK, you have to logically explain why that division exists, and then be consistent about it, two things I suspect you are not capable of.

I'm not arguing that re-drawing Israel or any other nation's borders through force is inherently right or inherently wrong, but I am saying that, if you were somehow to do so today, it would be foolish in 50 years time to argue that the border needed to be reverted as a moral imperative, irrespective of any developments in the intervening 50 years.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 03:01

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Main Paineframe posted:

You could easily use the same argument to defend genocide. After all, no one complained when Americans nearly wiped out the Native Americans two hundred years ago, so why insist that 20th-century genocides are wrong? After all, maybe millions died, but that's not as important as logically explaining why genocide started being wrong at a given time and not before!

No one is trying to somehow reverse genocide years afterwards though, so it's not really a relevant comparison.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 06:44

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Again, you're missing the point. Plus, people are conflating the wrong with the remedy. For example, it is pretty uncontroversial that slavery is wrong, and was always wrong, even though it was a common feature of bronze age societies and was legal in the United States until relatively recently. It would make little sense to argue that slavery wasn't wrong until December 18, 1865. However, the question of the appropriate remedy for that wrong is not settled. (I'm sure someone is furiously typing a, "but this is like if Israel was keeping slaves today" comparison, but land isn't people, and keep in mind the original proposition was that reversion of all land conquered in 1967 was morally necessary because it had been taken by force in 1967, not because of the ongoing suffering in the Palestinian territories.)

Again, if you want to claim that Israel is morally obligated to vacate all the land it conquered in 1967, but not the land it seized in 1948, you need to explain that distinction.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 08:54

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

VitalSigns posted:

Okay let's pick the whichever remedy for past crimes results in the least amount of harm happening as a result.

While the conquests in 1949 were undoubtedly illegal, morally wrong, and accompanied by terrorism and ethnic cleansing, reversing them would require another round of ethnic cleansing of millions of people, most of whom were not complicit in the original crime because they were either born after it happened or arrived as a result of being ethnically cleansed from their own birthplaces. So it would be bad to try to fix this now.

On the other hand, let's take say settlements established in recent decades. Removing them would be relocating people who are mostly guilty of illegal actions, and also would enable a country of millions of people to have a country with functional borders and achieve freedom and self-determination. So this would be good to do.

That's how you can apply one remedy to a crime someone committed five minutes ago, without going all the way back to 11,000 BC retroactively righting every wrong without regard for the consequences.

First, you've completely switched from restoring the status quo prior to '67 to evacuating settlements, which are very different things.

More to the point, your post is a full throttle embrace of practicality and preventing future harms over morality and remedying past wrongs, which is the angle I was going for with respect to the original proposal.

Dead Reckoning posted:

The date when a country kicked the previous sovereign off a piece of land is immaterial in determining the final status of the territory and must give way to the facts on the ground.

It sounds like we agree: in terms of the territory Israel gets to keep in a final agreement, how and when Israel acquired that territory is irrelevant to its right to it, and should give way to whatever border can be reasonably implemented and is likely to result in a durable resolution that can be implemented and maintained with the least amount of bloodshed possible.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 09:25

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

The why matters.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 10:06

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Gregoriev posted:

There's no such thing as a good-faith argument for a 2 state solution.

How about this: A one state solution is just a reset to 1945, (which didn't go super well last time,) because any one state solution both sides as they exist now might conceivably agree to would not resolve the underlying tensions between the two communities.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2018 02:35

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Gregoriev posted:

Any one-state solution that both sides agree to would presumably not disenfranchise the Palestinians. I don't see how it would approximate 1945, given a Palestinian voting bloc with voting rights would outnumber the White Jewish vote. That doesn't resolve your second point, which is obviously an issue, but that realistically isn't resolved with a two state solution between the two sides as they exist now either.

As PM noted, the Palestinians were a majority in 1945. Even if we could remove a bunch of obstacles and get both sides to agree in principle to the notion of a one state solution, there is no way the Israelis are going to turn over the reins of the Mossad and IDF to a government of Palestinian ministers. You'd have to have some sort of power sharing arrangement like Northern Ireland that gives Jewish Israelis an undemocratic and disproportionate veto power over popular initiatives. Even assuming you manage all that, you end up with (former) Israelis as a minority upper class that owns most of the land and controls most of the money and a massive permanent underclass of (former) Palestinians who are impoverished and have little ability to compete in a modern services/tech/tourism based economy. The Israeli side will never agree to more than symbolic reparations, because why on earth would they agree to impoverish themselves for the sake of their enemies?

So even if you could manage to create a single binational state, given the two nations as they exist now, you would simply be building a tinderbox that would reignite sectarian/ethnic strife and division at the slightest spark.

The advantage of the two state solution is that it bypasses the staggeringly difficult questions of shared governance, economic disparity, and managed coexistence. I'm not optimistic about any "good" outcome for the I/P conflict, but I think both sides segregating themselves to opposite sides of a mutually recognized border and not killing each other for a few decades would be a decent start.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2018 16:51

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Gregoriev posted:

Those are all completely fair criticisms of a one state solution cobbled out of the current situation. However, "mutually recognized border" is as much of an insane pipe dream given Jerusalem, not to mention the geographical distribution of Israel's Jewish and Arabic populations.

I'm not sure what the solution would be cobbled out of, if not the current situation.

The two state solution & mutual border has a ton of obstacles, but all those obstacles are present in the one state solution, as well as a ton more issues. The only things the one state solution skips are having to divide up Jerusalem and deal with the settlers, which frankly are the least intractable obstacles of the intractable obstacles to peace.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2018 19:20

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Lightning Knight posted:

We just can�t find a workable solution in South Africa, because white South Africans won�t feel safe.

We just can�t find a workable solution to segregation in America, because white Americans won�t feel safe.

Etc, etc.

Almost as if the parallels between South Africa and Israel are superficial. Even if you could snap your fingers and magic the two sides into a binational state with a power sharing arrangement, the tensions and disparity between the two communities would still exist. I don't think a legal & economic status equivalent to post-Reconstruction black Americans' is what most Palestinians want. Which part of that do you find objectionable? Do you think there shouldn't be a power sharing arrangement in a hypothetical binational state?

Hong XiuQuan posted:

4) Well, they did elect Hamas - this is not a death sentence. Nor is it an obstacle to peace. Israelis have elected and dealt with various unsavouries in the past. Assuming that a Palestinian loses his or her innocence because Hamas exists is racist.

How do you square this with people arguing that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets because they support a government that targets and oppresses Palestinians?

Hong XiuQuan posted:

6) There's two sides to this - there's no parity. The Palestinians' land is occupied, the Palestinians' have a separate code of justice applied to them. There is no equality of arms here.

Why do you think that equality of arms has any bearing on moral rightness of combatants' actions?

Hong XiuQuan posted:

7) The Palestinians are itching to destroy us/Israelis if they have a chance - the Palestinians have plenty to be aggrieved about. Assuming they all want to murder you is, simply, racist.

Why do you find pointing out that there are Palestinians who want to kill/punish Israelis and Israelis who want to kill/punish Palestinians objectionable? Defusing or marginalizing this bad blood would be necessary for any durable solution.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 19:57

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Groovelord Neato posted:

the palestinians elected hamas because of decades of brutality at the hands of israel.

the israelis have no excuse for electing far right hawks.

Sure, but "the Palestinians are justified in wanting revenge on Israel" is different from "it is unreasonable/racist to think that the Palestinians want revenge on Israel."

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 20:09

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

VitalSigns posted:

I am p sure the right of return doesn't mean Palestinians going around and kicking people out of houses.

I am pretty sure it just means Palestinians being allowed to return to the state of Israel if they originally lived there, so what you mean by "the new party is displaced" seems to be the same thing white suburban Americans mean when they whinge about a black family moving into the neighborhood.

Actually, it's commonly argued to include anyone who claims to have lived in Israel (since most people aren't going to have proof of prior residency from 70 years ago) and their descendants. So... pretty much any member of the Palestinian diaspora that chooses to make a claim. It's also usually asserted to include a right to citizenship, reparations, or both.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2018 17:56

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

VitalSigns posted:

The claim was, specifically, that it means ethnic cleansing and removing Israelis from their homes. So you appear to be agreeing with me, as believing undocumented claims, bestowing citizenship, and paying monetary damages for property lost in the Nakba are not equivalent to ethnic cleansing or population removal (even if you don't like those proposals, they are unambiguously not comparable to ethnic cleansing)

Characterizing other people moving into the same general area where you live as "replacement" is the Charlottesville Nazi Rally's position.

The fact that his claim is not direct or intuitive does not make what you posted correct.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2018 20:03

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Nebalebadingdong posted:

That's part of his shtick. Keeping refugees out is paramount to Israeli nationalists, so if a refugee wants to return home, they are "pro-war" because nationalists cannot accept peace on those terms.

Keeping refugees out doesn't square with his hollow liberal values tho, so you also get a bunch of cowardly mischaracterizations about Palestinians, or BDS, or JVP, or IfNotNow, or whoever else to make their nationalism look reasonable and pragmatic by contrast.

guidoanselmi posted:

Can you explain how this 1000x terrible outcome would come to pass? Like what series of events do you envision?

I feel like you guys are being rather deliberately obtuse here. KJI is arguing that the right of return as advocated by its strongest proponents would have horrible consequences, and it can be quite reasonably argued that it would.

Most people advocating for the right of return aren't arguing for a limited right that only extends to those displaced in 1947 (because there are few of them left) or that is controlled, limited, or litigated by Israel. Most advocates argue for a broad, normative right that any member of the Palestinian diaspora can "return" to Israel. Given that I don't think these advocates foresee the returnees as a permanent underclass, the right is understood to include a right to citizenship, and presumably franchise.

So, unless you are willing to countenance limitations on what is supposed to be a moral right, the right of return would allow every Palestinian (most of whom are at best ambivalent about Israel continuing to exist as a homeland for the Jews) to go to Israel, become a citizen, and vote in elections.

It is pretty reasonable for the population of a country to be concerned about the prospect of allowing people who have a separate national identity, and who are indifferent to hostile to the country continuing to exist in its current form, to suddenly have a voting majority.

In other countries, these sort of sudden political upheavals, where a formerly downtrodden majority suddenly overtakes the power of the previously dominant minority, have often resulted in the majority exacting retribution against the minority, civil war, or even ethnic cleansing against the minority. See: Zimbabwe, Angola, Eritrea, Iraq, etc.

Given that part of the shared belief of the Palestinian diaspora is that the Israelis are invaders who literally stole their homes, the ones that they still carry the keys to, it is not unreasonable for someone to believe that a Palestinian majority government would undertake retributive and confiscatory actions against the Israeli minority in the name of reparations or "land reform."

I've seen several explicit replies to this line of reasoning. One is that the right of return is enshrined in international law, and that no security concerns are sufficient to abrogate a human right. Unfortunately, completely dismissing security concerns reads as, "Reap what you sow, if you didn't want bad things to happen, you shouldn't have created all these stateless refugees in the first place."

Another is, "But South Africa." While it is true that South Africa managed to negotiate a fairly bloodless end to apartheid, that is not a guaranteed outcome. Plenty of other countries have failed to make that political transition in a way that respected minority rights.

You don't have to agree with him, but acting like "letting every Palestinian have free movement and voting rights in Israel the way the right of return demands would be incredibly dangerous for Israelis and Israel itself" is some insane or racist proposition isn't helpful.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 20:07

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Like I said, you don't have to agree with him. If your position is, "Security concerns must always give way to human rights because states will always be able to come up with a justification for abrogating human rights. I don't care how many people die, if treating your enemies with humanity lets them destroy you, that's too drat bad" then that's fine. You're just working from different principles. Hell, you can even come at it from, "Israelis' security concerns are irrelevant to me because <reason>" but someone who does think that Israelis have a right to be concerned about their security is not going to agree. The question then is the underlying assumptions.

kidkissinger posted:

I love how, by default, Israeli concern about having to share power with other ethnic groups is deemed reasonable, but Palestinian concern about having more or less no political power at all is "too demanding".

Each group's desire not to be ruled by the other is why the two state solution is the only feasible solution.

Nebalebadingdong posted:

Dead Reckoning is really thinking of the future, worrying specifically about the return of the children of refugees

UNHCR recognizes the children of refugees as having derivative refugee status. Do you think most Palestinians would accept a right of return that only applies to the handful of still living people who were displaced in 1947 and their immediate nuclear family?

fool_of_sound posted:

it is both those things

Which part of the example I provided was racist or illogical?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 21:31

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

fool_of_sound posted:

Denying an ethnic group fundamental rights, particularly franchise, on the grounds that it would be 'dangerous' is racist on it's face.

It's not about denying franchise, it's that Israelis don't want to grant citizenship to a group of people they are still de facto at war with.

Like I said, if your position is, "all Palestinians have a right to be citizens of Israel, all citizens have a right to vote, drat the consequences" then that's fine, but surely you can understand how people who can easily foresee themselves or their families bearing the brunt of those consequences might see it differently.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 21:45

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

I'm not taking a side here, I'm just trying to point out that there is actually room for discussion.

fool_of_sound posted:

This is literally the reason used to deny black people franchise in the US, down to rhetoric of race war

It's not at all the same though. Black Americans didn't have a separate, non-American national identity, and we didn't fight the Civil War against black Americans. The parallel you are trying to draw is superficial at best.

Heck, the argument about whether to deny voting rights to soldiers and officials of the Confederate states (who did have a separate national identity and who we did go to war against) seems like a more accurate parallel, and there are still arguments that letting former rebels vote again was a mistake.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 21:58

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

VideoGameVet posted:

If you truly believe that, then why would you support settling Israelis in the midst of 'hostiles.'

And why would you want these hostiles employed in your nation?

I don't understand your question. I think Israel ought to be halting all settlement activity and should be actively rolling back the smaller and more far-flung settlements, because they are an obstacle to establishing a two state solution.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 22:40

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

qkkl posted:

Are there other examples of successful decolonization besides Algeria, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Two of those three required a war before decolonization, so South Africa's peaceful transition might have been an exception rather than a rule.

Just

at lumping Zimbabwe in as "successful."

# ¿ Apr 19, 2018 19:06

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

i am harry posted:

Can a country be guilty of war crimes while not being at war?

Sure, "at war"/"not at war" isn't really a strict binary. But if Israel isn't at war with any recognizable belligerent, then you're conceding that Hamas has no moral standing as a combatant and are bandits/terrorists. The problem with applying LOAC to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is that both sides argue that it's an occupation or a conflict between two responsible belligerents depending on which one is most convenient to their argument at that instant.

E: also, you can't really hold a country guilty of war crimes; you have to charge individual members of its armed forces or government (unless you're Stalin, then Yolo)

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 19:14 on May 15, 2018

# ¿ May 15, 2018 18:58

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ytlaya posted:

Couldn't you say the same thing about stuff like slave rebellions? I mean, I guess you could call that "terrorism," but only if you concede that that type of "terrorism" isn't actually bad.

Your rationale can be used to condemn literally any sort of violent resistance by an oppressed people against their oppressor, provided the former are inside the latter's country and don't have their own state (or are part of an occupied state).

LOAC as a Jus in Bello concept (which is mainly what people mean when they talk about war crimes) is intentionally agnostic to the moral rightness of a cause, on the assumption that both sides (if they're the sort of people who care about LOAC) probably think they're the good guys: it prescribes certain standards of behavior that all combatants have to follow to be considered lawful. It's perfectly possible to be a lawful belligerent without a state of you follow the rules (responsibility to higher authority, carrying arms openly, etc). If it allowed an exception for "righteous" causes, then every side would claim to be righteous and the rules would be meaningless.

A rebellion which seeks to liberate, or which fights a more powerful foe, isn't excused from the minimum standards for lawful warfare, no matter how just their cause or vile their enemies.

Ultramega posted:

What does Stalin have to do with anything?

First example which came to mind was post-WWII Soviet policy towards Germany in the lead up to Nuremberg. IIRC, they (and a few notable figures in the western allies) pushed pretty hard for collective guilt for the Germans.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 20:22 on May 15, 2018

# ¿ May 15, 2018 20:18

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Ze Pollack posted:

is it just me or is arguing we were too hard on nazi war criminals in the I/P thread in defense of Israel a new and exciting low

You're missing the point hard here: the question after the was whether a distinction could or should be drawn between the actions of Nazi war criminals and the population of Germany as a whole. Which is pretty relevant ITT.

I'm not trying to defend a side here, I'm trying to help people understand the law of armed conflict in a more nuanced way.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 15, 2018

# ¿ May 15, 2018 23:10

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 02:55

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

sexpig by night posted:

this is really weird because literally nobody, not even the most hardcore anti-zionists, has ever said we need to put every Israeli on trial so what are you even saying you loving weirdo

i am harry asked if a "country [could] be guilty of war crimes while not being at war", which I answered by saying that war crimes do not require a declared war to occur, with an aside that war crimes are generally charged against individuals rather than countries.

# ¿ May 16, 2018 00:36

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