Israel/Palestine

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Israel/Palestine

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

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Madkal posted:

Tell me about it. On the one hand I will hear from people from my folks generation say "If Israel ceased to exist tomorrow all the Jews there will be killed and the world wouldn't care" and then hear from people my in my generation say "Israel is a ethno-Apartheid state that needs to cease to exist at once" and have to figure out how to fix one problem without causing the other. Add to this the idea that I have always had that as Jews we should be better than all this after all we have gone through. It's kind of wild talking to Jews here in Canada and talking to Israelis and how the differences in what each side thinks Israel should/shouldn't be.

People burn hot and moralizing can obscure events. Israel isn't going to cease to exist tomorrow because it has a big army and nuclear weapons. One of the immediate problems though is that there's a dangerous criminal sitting in the prime minister's office who is desperate to cling onto power by any means necessary.

# ¿ May 12, 2021 00:59

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 23:40

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

RandomPauI posted:

I'm seeing reports on discord that a military base was captured. How is an Israeli military base captured?

By a bunch of guys who charge in really fast and start shooting (a lot) with guns on a Jewish holiday.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2023 08:45

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

It's impossible to justify what Hamas does within a western liberal framework because it doesn't operate within that framework. It's a totally different mindset from the average person reading this, you, a D&D poster on Something Awful. It's about sacrifice, vengeance to the enemy, wrath, and the personal honor of being able to keep firing as you're bleeding out from being shot by IDF troops as your name is repeated in the hearts of everyone inside your neighborhood or your refugee camp.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2023 22:36

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Yudo posted:

It is honorable to murder unarmed hippies?

I think people on the internet can sometimes have difficulty when others describe something without intending any endorsement (as if I would paraglide into a rave and start shooting people). But I think that's more like collective vengeance and one's steadfastness in that pursuit is honorable in this mindset. This kind of thing is about taking one side and being loyal until victory. The mindset we're used to is all about choices, like choosing good and bad. That's not operating here.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2023 22:56

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Yudo posted:

I never suggested you endorsed anything, despite the undertones of lionization in your post. I asked if it was honorable to kill helpless civilians in this particular honor culture. You seem to think yes.

I'm not sure but I suspect if you said to those guys, don't you realize that shooting these people is wrong? They might reply, "not according to my religion, it isn't." Since that what it goes back to. If you believe in God, there's a Heaven, so why is this life important? Only the next life is important, and it's not like your life has any dignity anyways.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2023 00:35

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

emanresu tnuocca posted:

It's like Zizek said, the IDF and Hamas are the two most moral armed forces in the world, perhaps in a hundred years or so when the dust settles more people will realize this.

Some people who claim to be well-informed say that God is on the IDF's side. But others say that Allah is on the side of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades so it balances out. But then there are Christians in other Palestinian brigades, so it might be that there are many gods who take different sides, and some gods who take multiple sides at the same time.

I've noticed a few other things. The GOP has decided to exploit the deaths of Israelis as a local political weapon. I guess grasping at anything to get attention is what is what rudderless, leaderless groups do. The news media still sucks balls, by the way, and there was little coverage of a coup attempt in Jordan with Israeli and Saudi backing in 2021, which some well-informed people have said was an attempt to do post-Abraham Accords regime change and carving out a Palestinian state there, which would be the place for Israel to dump the Palestinians after ethnically cleansing them. That was one of the "gifts" from the Trump administration.

Netanyahu's unpopular attempts to avoid conviction for corruption has also led him down a dangerous path. Israel is at a crossroads, and after every attack Israel is quick to launch information operations in the United States. Support is lower than most people think, but any sense of a "solution" is lower still. If you're an American, you really don't have to support any side except your own, since God is also on your side -- some people who say they are well-informed say he blesses America too.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2023 05:27

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Dopilsya posted:

Becoming ungovernable wasn't done by attacks on whites! It was done by strikes, work stoppages, constant protests/rioting, and sabotage of infrastructure. Actions like Port Elizabeth were utterly crippling to the white economy and all those white petit bourgeoisie who were happy when SAP was gunning down people in the townships were screaming at the government to meet the demands of the blacks within a year. As for marshalling international support, the ANC attacks did nothing for that. International observers watched as protestors and rioters were gunned down, police beat the poo poo out of people for such crimes as walking while black, the Koevoets massacred their way across SW Africa, and the government hauled journalists off to jail for violations of ridiculous censorship laws.

The negotiations in the 80s weren't because of violence against white people (and if you think Botha was entering negotiations because black police informants and the like were getting killed, lmao). South Africa was crushingly isolated. We had troops fighting across southern Africa and a brutal occupation of now-Namibia, and starting in the late 70s it was illegal for any country to sell arms to South Africa. The economy was crippled by disinvestment and the internal economy which was subject to large scale boycotts, sabotage actions, strikes and work slowdowns couldn't take up the slack while the government was hemorrhaging money shooting up protestors. The national debt was defaulted on in the mid-80s. Barnard took it on himself to talk to Mandela seeing it as the only way to save the country while Botha was screaming about how he'd never give in to the blacks while comparing himself to Ceasar and centralizing power in himself.

We don't have that kind of proletarian internationalism anymore. We have this kind of pogrom nationalism and it's global.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 05:09

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Blut posted:

In the 1980s almost everywhere outside of Reagan's US and Thatcher's UK viewed the ANC as occasionally going too far (the odd civilian bombing etc) but generally as having the moral highground, and being right to fight for their freedom. There were regular public protests in Western democracies that were a more popular equivalent of today's BDS movement. That would have been a realistic, attainable, level of global support for Hamas - and could have achieved things long term, as the public opinion driven sanctions on South Africa did.

Instead Hamas have gone out murdering babies, raping festival goers, and kidnapping/murdering international civilians and condemned themselves to ISIS level revulsion.

Like even aside from the very real huge moral issues with this approach they took, theres just no defending it on a strategic level. Attacking military/administration targets instead would have cost them nothing, and would have had only more positive impact for the Palestinian cause.

I'm not exactly posting from a command post in a guerrilla hideout, but everything I've read about asymmetrical strategies is to divide the enemy into two. That might've been their plan but it didn't work out that way. Israeli politics was divided into two but now they've settled on this state of exception so what was once two has recombined into one. That's the opposite of what I'd think Hamas would want to see happen. I think it also probably comes down to ideology in the broad sense of the term. Hamas confronts Jews in Israel as an existential threat. Contrast what Hamas did to this in terms of guerrilla warfare strategies. There were some things Hamas did well but other things they did not do well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90UKrrp5JG4

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Oct 12, 2023

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 23:38

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

mitztronic posted:

Isn�t there a second carrier group being moved to the area now for this exact reason? The US doesn�t need to put �boots on the ground� to provide assistance if Hezbollah decides to gently caress around.

Looks like just the Ford right now.

https://news.usni.org/2023/10/10/usni-news-fleet-and-marine-tracker-oct-10-2023

# ¿ Oct 13, 2023 02:05

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

khwarezm posted:

Usually I'd broadly agree but I was genuinely shocked and sickened by the scale of Hamas's attack in a way that I feel I haven't seen in, say for example, Ukraine's attacks on Russian civilian targets. Like 1000 Israeli civilians dead, would I be right in saying that that's the highest death toll for the Israeli side in a single day since the state was established?

There's something about it that's unusually shocking. I don't know why, but if rockets had hit the rave, that would be bad, even if the same number of people had been killed (which would be unlikely), but it would not be as horrifying as militants walking up to people and shooting them in the face.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Is there a single group who did not have some factions target civilians when they were targeted by civilians of their oppressors? Every group will have members across the political spectrum with matching solutions and will try to enact them.

Hamas likely doesn't see this as an unprovoked escalation by them to attack civilians, they see it as a reprisal for pogroms in the West Bank on Palestinians. They see it as one of many events in a conflict that has included things like this.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/middleeast/huwara-west-bank-settler-attack-cmd-intl/index.html

Attacking civilians is morally horrific but it was normalized in this conflict a long long time ago.

Warfare today seems like it has changed in such a way that civilians are much more involved as targets, victims and perpetrators of violence. There are Jewish settlers who perpetuate violence against Palestinian civilians while being protected by the Israeli army. There are Palestinian civilians in Gaza who seemed to just follow Hamas fighters through after they blew holes in the wall and then kidnapped other civilians (some of the people who were dragging captives back to Gaza just seemed like random guys, not the dedicated Hamas death squads, and Hamas might not even know where some of these "hostages" are; there's some Israeli person in some guy's house somewhere in Gaza and nobody has any clue what's going on). In Ukraine, the Russian army shot civilians in Bucha, some of whom were just walking down the street, some whom they thought were collaborators (real or perceived), in a context where civilians were shooting at Russian soldiers or calling in their positions for the Ukrainian army to hit.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Oct 14, 2023

# ¿ Oct 14, 2023 23:41

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Paladinus posted:

I have a question about the Arabic used in the alleged plans. Wouldn't Palestinian Arabic dialects be fairly different from what google offers in translations?

I don't think so. Would the differences in dialect be more in spoken language rather than written Arabic? (As a general rule, native Arabic speakers use MSA in text, formally, almost all writing is in MSA, etc. across dialects, at least that's my understanding.)

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Oct 15, 2023

# ¿ Oct 15, 2023 00:31

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

mannerup posted:

the ISIS flag(s) that were reported to be found at the site of the massacre is something that hasn�t sat right with me at all. it�s the absolute perfect prop for all the ISIS = HAMAS rhetoric that has been part of Israel�s core message. just doesn�t make sense

Who knows. It's the Jerusalem Post... they're a hangout for the Israeli military and intelligence services and spend more effort influencing foreign audiences particularly in the U.S.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2023 01:37

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Hryme posted:

It is possible to have a negative reaction to suffering and perceived injustice. No matter what country you happen to be from. People who are insanely cynical are tiresome.

It makes me sad but I am pretty cynical. How can you not be? If you're not already, you will be. Israel will smash Gaza and that will inflame sentiment against Israel, but that's what Hamas wants. Hamas wants Israel to destroy the place. In a sense Hamas has already "won" but Hamas' leaders are corrupt, nihilist shitheads sitting in big comfy chairs in Doha. The guys who comprise the political bureau are not the ones getting bombed. It's also what Hamas' sponsors want (such as Qatar), which is to delay the normalization of Israeli and Saudi relations, so Qatar can strengthen its relative advantage.

Then I see videos of protesters who look really anguished, but what can they do? People want to believe that justice will prevail. That one day Palestine will be free. Or the people who have a just cause, who are right, will win. But there are many cases in history where people who were right were destroyed, or had legitimate grievances and just lost.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2023 08:24

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

CuddleCryptid posted:

Call me a bleeding heart but I wouldn't call it an unreasonable demand for a military to flatten occupied buildings off more than a guess.

The Geneva Conventions is some globalist internationalist idea from the 20th century. Everyone is a nationalist now (they can even be nationalists for countries other than their own). "Stop flattening buildings," you say. They'll reply, "you're doing the both-sides thing, how dare you compare what we're doing to Hamas terrorists." Tell Russia to lay off on the bombing, they'll say you're defending Nazis.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2023 23:16

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

i fly airplanes posted:

From a Western perspective these things don't feel important but religion's role being intertwined with demography and history in the Middle East goes back millennia.

Usually I see those on the right try to play it up as a religious war and those on the left downplay it and focus on the settler colonial occupation/apartheid side. Religion might not be a root cause but will certainly affect the overall character of everything.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 13:04

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Orthanc6 posted:

On top of being a horrific war crime, this attack on a hospital (and apparently another on a UN school?) massively complicates Biden's visit. Yes he was going to give support, but the US has also just started to press for humanitarian aid to Gaza. I suspect Biden realized he needed to make a large political gesture, which became this extremely hasty visit, to press home how serious the US is about this humanitarian aid.

Knowing Biden was less than a day away and was probably going to push for some aid to Gaza, Israel went ahead striking the worst civilian target possible. It's almost a political threat to Biden, "don't criticize us for literally any action or we'll only embarrass you more for being forced to support us"

Which aside from being horrific, is probably a bad idea for Israel. There's a reason Biden's feeling pressure to push for aid; both sides of the political spectrum have growing camps that either don't want to go back into the Middle East, or are against Israel for either humanitarian or other political reasons.

US support is still massive and won't disappear soon if for no other reason than strategic goals, but Israel is grossly overestimating both how much the US public supports them, and how stable the US political system providing the support is. See the US House of Representatives right now; the whole thing is falling apart at the seams.

It's similar in substance (but obviously far more lethal) to the bombing of the AP building during the last war. If Biden criticized Israel, then Israel would smack him as a reminder. And if he presses the point, there are also the Republicans who will back Israel up.

This toxic relationship is similar to a dysfunctional arrangement between a mother and a stepfather and a child. The Republicans are like Israel's mother, and the Democrats are the stepfather. But the mother and stepfather get into arguments, and when the child acts out and the stepfather tries to discipline the child, the mother shouts "don't you hurt *my* child!" And the mother might even encourage the child to act out as a way of slapping the stepfather who can't strike back, which is obviously a shameful situation.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 20:32

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Ms Adequate posted:

"Yeah they're saying PIJ hosed up. That they fired it from the cemetery next to the hospital and it fell right away."

I think they're right.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2023 10:16

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Serious question: when has a single Hamas rocket ever managed this level of explosion?

The video I saw looked like a single blast. Ammo stockpiles cooking off go bang bang bang bang bang bang in a row, not one big KABOOM. One big KABOOM is a single payload and all else considered I don't see Hamas possessing that kind of munition.

Kchama posted:

That's where I don't have any certainty. I don't know enough about Israeli rockets/missiles/bombs to know if they got anything specifically around that boon, but it doesn't seem Hamas has anything that'd boom like that. As far as I know, they have a big gap in explosive ability between their big and small stuff.

The IDF claims it was Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Hamas, but the explanation that seemed plausible to me is that it was the solid rocket motor landing and exploding. Basically a mix of sugar and potassium nitrate which then turned into a big fireball. It's not the warhead, it's the fuel that propels it onto a trajectory and is supposed to burn out over Israel and then gravity takes over.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

Sunak and Biden are confirming they believe Israel and that it was a Hamas rocket misfire, seemingly citing the barely damaged car park as evidence. But they also seem to be sickened by the 500 killed in the hospital? Surely there aren't those casualties if it was a crappy rocket?

What if there isn't 500 killed? That's probably not true. But if you don't know, do you say there weren't? I dunno. Basically they were trying to cover their rear end in case Israel did it.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Oct 18, 2023

# ¿ Oct 18, 2023 13:06

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Kchama posted:

That's where I don't have any certainty. I don't know enough about Israeli rockets/missiles/bombs to know if they got anything specifically around that boon, but it doesn't seem Hamas has anything that'd boom like that. As far as I know, they have a big gap in explosive ability between their big and small stuff.

I'm not a rocket scientist but people who claim to be well-informed think it could've been a Badr-3 with plenty of solid fuel left. I dunno though.

https://twitter.com/AuroraIntel/status/1712103626057908641

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Oct 18, 2023 13:26

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Mid-Life Crisis posted:

And when he isn�t taking softballs from AJ he is claiming they only killed soldiers and making it clear the purpose was to incite all Arabs into war against Israel. He knows who this reporter is and is playing right into Israel talking points. Dumb leader.

Probably the dumbest thing they could have done for the Palestinian people is to give Israel every reason they needed to attack. Does he really think Egypt and Lebanon is going to come to their rescue?? People can defend them as innocents all they want, the civilians born into this are, but there was a huge number of ways their �elected� government could have taken advantage of their resources to advance the cause of international pressure against Israel, which has come a long way over the last decade, but instead they slaughtered hippies in kibbutzim and got an American backed war declared on them.

They're not that different from Bibi and the Israeli far right -- also Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah -- and they're almost guaranteed to screw up eventually and bring down their countries like exploding jetliners. Not to get all philosophical but there are many people who want to believe that things will resolve themselves in a satisfactory way and not end in suckers following a bunch of self-deluded doinks to their collective doom. Their incompetence is a historical force that lives in all of our lives.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2023 10:56

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Groovelord Neato posted:

Do you think Hamas didn't expect this? Israel killed over 2000 Palestinians when three teenagers were killed. They killed hundreds when a soldier was kidnapped.

Also yeah taking people hostage is better than killing them. I would say if they took 1000 civilians and a few hundred cops and military hostage it would've been a lot better than killing them.

They might have a G�tterd�mmerung-like death wish like the Nazi Party in Germany. The guys in the military brigades in Gaza that is. Hamas' political leadership might not have even been aware of what was going to go down because the organization is so compartmentalized to allow for flexibility and security.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2023 13:19

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Lovely Joe Stalin posted:

People care about who is responsible for the hospital attack precisely because the ambiguity has allowed Israel and its shills to now openly question every strike that makes the news. Any time a spectacular atrocity occurs we'll get to hear how it was another rocket gone wrong, as with the night market strike. Or there will be an initial ambiguity in reporting a 'blast', as if the thousand Israeli bombs dropped each day are all coincidental.

That's the magic of propaganda. It doesn't matter who did it as long as it fits the narrative of a black/white moral universe. You either stand with people who blow up apartment buildings full of civilians with laser-guided bombs or you stand with people who butcher babies and burn entire families.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2023 12:20

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Hong XiuQuan posted:

Think you need to revise your opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcT_KL4kxQA

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Oct 23, 2023 14:02

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

celadon posted:

I don't really understand this sentiment. "I like the good parts that lead to the revolution but i categorically reject the bad parts'" just seems like an extremely weak position to hold. Basically ever act of progress in human history required civilian casualties to implement, its kinda dogshit to say the means are bad and unjustified and you dont support them but the outcome is good and justified and you're proud to support that.

And if someone's position is 'I support revolutions and the freeing of slaves just as long as noone gets hurt' then they dont actually support basically any disruption to the status quo.

It seems like the debate is really about whether the means justify the ends, or whether the ends justify the means. If the Palestinian cause is just, then are there any limits on what can be done to pursue that end? Does that justify blowing up a schoolbus of Jewish children with an RPG? Or shooting Olympic athletes or hijacking airplanes? Even the last one while less bloody put civilians in harm's way in a very intentional way. And maybe I'm wrong, but a lot of people seem to think that's justified. The ends justify the means.

I tend to believe the means justify the ends. People are almost always responsible for what they do, and if they're not, then it can only go back to God, which can justify anything.

From a practical or strategic point of view too, "the ends justify the means" also seems to reinforce what the right-wing Israeli Zionist people say anyways. They dig in further if they're hearing (whether real or perceived) that the liberation of the Palestinians entails the mass murder of their people but that's justified because the end is just. Are they wrong? The result of Hamas' raid into Israeli territory didn't seem to divide the Israeli population, it unified them in this emergency war mode, and that doesn't seem desirable if your goal is to beat them. If you're weak and are taking on the strong, you have to divide the strong and then defeat them one-by-one in more manageable bite-sized chunks. Israel was much more divided before the raid. Now it is united. So either Hamas is just incompetent, which doesn't bode well for them, or what they're doing only uses the name of liberation but is really about something else and Palestinians are being exploited as tools in the pursuit of whatever that is. I don't have a high opinion of the Palestinian leadership.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Oct 25, 2023

# ¿ Oct 25, 2023 21:56

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

i say swears online posted:

it is incredibly important to point out that this is not how to operate an armored brigade. y'all have been watching video of the ukraine war for nearly two years now and you know how this goes. this is overconfidence and underplanning. if this were near-peer instead of a turkey shoot they'd already be dead

I think it's a "reconnaissance-in-force." They want Hamas to shoot at them to give their positions away, or try to make Hamas be unsure if the main push is happening or not, while bringing enough armor and guns to pound anyone who shoots at them, but it's not enough to break into the city. They're doing this in multiple places and are switching it up. The best thing for Hamas is if the Israelis just stepped on the gas and drove directly into the middle of the city.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2023 09:10

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Irony Be My Shield posted:

This article speculates that their plan will just be to slowly clear Gaza and its tunnel system one "slice" at a time, rather than invading every front at once. I do think that's possible - the operation is likely to continue to focus on Israel's complete air and artillery supremacy, with the troops just moving in to smoke out anyone who remains hiding in the wreckage (who will then be bombarded with artillery and air strikes once they make their presence known).

Reading a little bit about the 2008-2009 invasion which went on for several weeks, Israel sent in better units first and spent the time refreshing the reservists who came in later. They would also bypass Hamas strongpoints when possible by clearing paths with armored bulldozers, and then leave the strongpoints there to be destroyed with their heavier weapons and bombs.

I also wouldn't be shocked to see Israel use kamikaze drones to clear out buildings as much as possible before committing troops. Here's some nightmare fuel brought to the world by the Israeli MIC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7yIzY1BxuI

# ¿ Oct 28, 2023 12:08

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

I'm not sure I'd ever call war reasonable. There is no such thing.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2023 13:28

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Young Freud posted:

Grenade-dropping drones aren't a hypothetical, Hamas had video of their drones blowing up listening posts and brewing up Merkavas.

I saw one video of a Hamas drone dropping a bomb on a Merkava but it looked like it hit the storage rack behind the turret so it made a big cloud but I don't know if it did tangible damage to the tank.

Sephyr posted:

Well, they got what they wanted. Once Hamas was th only game in town, they pulled out of Gaza, because it wasn't worth the headache of having a patrol ambushed every month of so and then having to negotiate prisoner exchange (And said exchanges got Hamas a lot of good PR inside the strip for freeing arrested civvies) and focused on quietly digesting the west Bank, which is the best land they can get right now. Once that was done, they could ignore or empty Gaza at their leisure.

There's one argument made by Israeli right-wingers with ties to the military that the situation became worse for Israel by pulling out of Gaza, because the wall also keeps the IDF away from Hamas. A wall is a binary way of thinking: they're over there, and we're over here. But while they're over there, they're building tunnels and organizing a command-and-control structure for an army of tens of thousands of soldiers and equipping them. Also Israel doesn't control the border between Gaza and Egypt, Egypt does, and Egypt is about as effective at stopping smuggling as Egypt is (not very).

In the West Bank, there's just not that level of organization that Hamas has achieved in Gaza because Israeli troops would bust them. You live in the West Bank and smuggle in an RPG, then if the Israelis get a whiff of it, a couple of jeep loads of soldiers can show up and kick in your door. In a way, Hamas has replicated the Hezbollah model in relative security, and Hezbollah were the innovators of this model. Hezbollah is a highly innovative and creative organization based in South Beirut and southern Lebanon, and it's an all-but-officially-declared separatist region there where Hezbollah runs the schools, the hospitals, provides the security, and calls the shots.

In the West Bank, there's a constant but lower level of "friction," but from -- again this right-wing Israeli military POV -- that's preferable to nothing happening and then Gaza blowing up in a war every few years, because Israel cannot control what's going on inside. The walls are keeping them out.

This argument, of course, creates the theoretical justification for the permanent occupation of the West Bank. They don't want a Hamas-like organization taking over the West Bank, and the settlement strategy is part of this too, there's this web of Israeli settlements and the Jordan River valley to the east that's being populated with Jews (many of them armed), which creates a buffer zone between these Palestinian ghettos and Jordan. It's not peace, but it's not war, it's somewhere in between in a gray area.

One of the retired Israeli generals who advocates this is Gershon Hacochen. He's also linked with religious Zionism. His views about geopolitics are also not that pro-U.S., he has said he thinks Israel is too reliant on the U.S. and it may be better to wean Israel off U.S. aid, because much of it goes into the air force, which incentivizes Israel to try to fight wars from the air rather than on the ground through this settler-colonial armed farmer strategy. He wants balanced relations with Russia and China. And he really wants to arm as much of the civilian population as possible.

quote:

�The God of the Givati Brigade,� I heard him say in the wake of the controversy surrounding one brigade commander�s pre-Gaza campaign address to his soldiers last summer, �goes to war.� He does not stay in the study hall and the synagogue, coming out only on special occasions. �I also take God with me wherever I go,� he said during our interview. �The Ashkenazim are too enlightened,� the lineally Ashkenazi and philosophically Eastern general explained, �I am not enlightened.�

[...]

The Western man, the German rationalist, he said, what does he want? �To go back to international borders. That is the main point for stability, to freeze the situation. They have an obsession that fixed equals stability. They can�t accept that reality is in constant flux.� This notion of high-resolution Divine intervention and nonlinear reality is why, he said, both the Palestinians avoid an end-of-claims peace accord and the Israeli Bedouin refuse to end their decades-long land struggle against the state. �Because nothing is final,� he said. �Nothing.�

This is also why, he added, �I prefer Hamas to Abu Mazen.� Because Hamas �helps me prevent a two-state solution� and is, covertly �an ally, because neither it nor I want a final solution and neither in my terms nor in its is there something that is everlasting.�

But even if there were, he said, land is worth fighting for. �I think of land like a Russian,� he stated, adding that a homeland is �not an abstract idea� but rather a tangible place of soil and stone. The long-term Palestinian plan, as articulated by PLO official Abbas Zaki, he said, is to pry Israel off the real cornerstones of the Zionist project � Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus � and then wait for the entire enterprise to implode. Tel Aviv, he said, is important in that it is the gateway to Jerusalem; �without that it�s just another Brooklyn, another shtetl,� or Eastern European village.

Beyond mentioning that he prefers an Iranian nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv to a two-state solution, he also said that he would happily forgo prosperity � �I prefer to eat bread and olives� � in exchange for the perpetuation of the status quo and that, in the future, in the face of pressure, he would be willing to grant all Palestinians the vote. Emphatically denying that such a move would be the death knell of the Zionist project, he said he was �utterly convinced� that the Jews of the United States would answer Israel�s call and immigrate in large numbers � �three million Jews and the matter is finished� � either on account of a rise in anti-Semitism or in order to save the Jewish majority.

[...]

And, since his perception of the world is that �the elemental state of man is struggle,� he prefers the one-state reality �and the internal struggle over the identity of the Jewish state� over the two-state reality in which the IDF has to repeatedly travel across a static borderline, which he tapped with my pen, between Netanya and Nablus.

The case for past and future withdrawals � a decrease in civilian Israeli blood spilled � is not a reasonable consideration, he indicated. �This is the idiocy of people who think that war is numbers,� he said. �War is spirit. It�s not soccer. You don�t count goals. It�s not overall expected utility. Who won the Vietnam war? The US lost 50,000 men and Vietnam 1.5 million. Who won? There�s no question.�

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-evacuating-gaza-a-lonely-general-of-faith-struggles-for-israels-salvation/

I was watching a documentary about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 which involved the IDF removing Jewish settlers by force. Hacochen was the operational commander tasked with doing it, which he didn't want to do, but he felt he had to do it because it was his job, and seemed to reconcile it all by projecting religious qualities onto the Israeli army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exyQ724_2nk

# ¿ Oct 28, 2023 15:54

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Party In My Diapee posted:

I think we all know that if Hamas instead was a liberal or socialist organization that never hurt civilians, as soon as they did any kind of armed resistance they would be called antisemitic terrorists anyways. It loses all meaning when terrorist/freedom fighter is based on who the west supports at the time. If we rightly can call Hamas terrorists, we can not at the same time describe Israel as a state just "defending itself" against thousands of dead children, toddlers and infants.

There was a precedent for this called the PLO and affiliated organizations like the PFLP. Part of the issue as I see it, is that most of the debate around these matters is essentially media criticism. It's about texts and framing in the discourse.

The PLO carried out attacks on civilians. They hijacked airplanes. There was also the Black September Organization which was a breakaway group that killed Israeli athletes at the Olympics. We can debate the morality of all that and whether they were "anti-Semitic," but that doesn't interest me as much as the logic behind these actions which I have hard time understanding even when reading about the leftist groups. Killing an Israeli soldier or police officer, that I can understand as a legitimate target in a just war. But I can't see how hijacking a civilian passenger plane and taking hostages accomplishes anything, or blowing up a school bus with Jewish kids on it, it just seems illogical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDi4wxp5Pz8

This is usually justified as their conditions being very bad. But people who live in good conditions seem to be able to behave monstrously too, so how does anyone explain that? What then tends to happen is a reduction back to moralizing black/white categories: they're simply "evil" and that's why they behave that way. But I'm still confused. Then there are plenty of Palestinian militants who haven't done that stuff, and they live in the same conditions as the ones who did the bad stuff. And I'll read about resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe who weren't doing stuff like that.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 03:00

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

What else would you call the acceptance that the hostages have to die to protect Israel's pride than a death drive? No one can surely believe that the IDF can raid the tunnels, survive, and bring back the hostages alive.

I think if you asked Bibi about it, he'd say it's not giving into blackmail and prioritizing the state's responsibility to the general public over the security of the hostages because any concessions to Hamas poses a much greater security risk in the future. He has said as much. It's a hardline position and so I don't think there will be any negotiation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEzi0SMCu5A&t=1723s

It's a lose/lose situation though which is the point. For example, take the Beslan siege in Russia. The Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs took hostages and put the Russian government in a dilemma. If they gave in, they'd lose legitimacy. If they stormed the schools (which is what happened) and caused the death of hostages, then they'd lose legitimacy. There's no right answer, really, you're wrong either way.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 07:32

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Lid posted:

What's the point of any of this posting if when I try to take a stated opinion at face value it just gets shut down despite it being the stated political position of numerous posters in this thread?

That is the point. It's blackmail.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 07:44

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Marenghi posted:

It's not a serious suggestion, anymore than asking Hamas to lay down and die.

I dunno. The Israelis seem pretty serious about it.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 11:51

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Willo567 posted:

Is Hezbollah about to get fully involved in this?

Everybody is saying "Nasrallah this" and "Hezbollah that" but nobody is saying "worship this" and "Jericho that."

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 01:08

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Main Paineframe posted:

The anti-Nazi resistances in WWII were generally working with the Allied militaries fighting against the Nazis. They thus had a clear path to victory and clear goals to achieve: sabotaging and impeding the German war effort to help the Allies beat them on the frontlines and get their countries liberated faster. ... Similarly, the lack of any international campaign against Israel defines the tactics of Palestinians and other anti-colonial guerilla resistances.

It makes sense. The actions of Palestinian militants seem like an act of desperation, and if they weren't so desperate and unhappy, they wouldn't resort to such actions. But I disagree with some goons who condone them, I don't think it follows that such actions are justified on the basis of them being desperate actions. I've even seen some real cynicism: the world is a violent place and innocent people are gonna die, and in the end, there's nothing wrong with that. But if that's the case, you might as well support the IDF because they believe the same thing and behave the same way, the only difference is in the quantity at the present time. Or those settlers had to die because the people who killed them were put in a desperate situation which defined their tactics and nothing else worked, so there was a cause, but the cause also has the consequence of the settlers' government bombing where those guys came from just to make them stop.

I dunno. At the least, I can't say I find the Hamas leadership particularly inspiring. I saw one official tell the FT the other day that they were "surprised" that the U.S. is getting involved. �An Israeli response? Yes, we expected that ... But what we�re seeing now is the entrance of the US into the battle, and this we didn�t count on.� That seems like a pretty bad plan if that's the case. But he also said the goal was to only grab 10-20 hostages. Instead they exceeded that by 12x. They didn't seem to have control over their own soldiers, and there were other groups and even random civilians who ran through the fence and grabbed people and Hamas doesn't even know where they are -- so they might not even be able to negotiate the return of some of these people even if they want to. I read someone else describe what happened as an example of "catastrophic success" resulting in blowback. I think it'll lead to Hamas' destruction -- and I'm not endorsing this, either. I'm trying to think as rationally as possible. There was a former U.S. Middle East envoy writing in the NYT the other day that (and take this with a grain of salt) that Arab officials he's talking to all tell him they believe Hamas must be destroyed but they're just not saying that publicly.

If that's true, that's disastrous. To condone that is to condone a grievous miscalculation by inept resistance leaders and the suckers who are following them toward doom. People are living in these propaganda bubbles where they just consume their own misinformation, and they misjudge the objective situation or the consequences of their actions; and even during the disaster there's plenty more of it telling them the flames from the exploding car they're riding in are actually just making it go faster. But people are incentivized to spread this stuff for fame and profit. Just as an aside on media stuff: I've seen all kinds of people who mocked Elon Musk for turning X (formerly Twitter -- as every news article refers to it) into a toxic waste dump that's useless for information now who are using that as their main source, and I'm gazing stupefied on the whole phenomenon.

Main Paineframe posted:

No, hostage negotiations is what people who want to see the hostages freed do. If somebody has taken hostages, and you want them to release the hostages, then you have to negotiate with them. Period. Doesn't matter if taking hostages is unethical, doesn't matter if taking hostages is against international law, doesn't matter if the head of state tried to prove his toughness to voters by vowing to never negotiate with enemies. If you want the hostages freed safely, you negotiate. That's the only way to accomplish it.

Not sure how "lecture them about ethics and international law while making demands and offering nothing" works as a negotiation tactic, but I do know I'd pay good money to watch the looks on Hamas leaders' faces as an Israeli diplomat lectures them about international law and protection of civilians. A couple of them might just die laughing from the sheer hypocrisy of it.

Of course, you could try just rescuing the hostages by force, but modern military tactics seem to have a rather poor success rate at rescuing hostages without getting them killed in the crossfire, and Israel apparently doesn't even know where the hostages are this time anyway.

On taking hostages, what if Taiwanese militants started hijacking Chinese passenger planes in different countries? And then forced them to land in foreign airports, and threatened to shoot the passengers unless those governments restored Taiwan's seat on the U.N. Security Council? What do those governments do? They could risk sacrificing the lives of hundreds of innocent Chinese if they storm the planes, or give in to the Taiwanese militants to save them and wreck their relations with Beijing. It's an impossible dilemma. The only way it can be solved is with an international agreement, which is basically what happened (as far as I understand) which stopped airplane hijackings -- governments now will just arrest hijackers and imprison them in addition to the thing being more difficult to do.

In this case of the Israeli hostages and POWs (somewhat different in the case of soldiers taken prisoner) then I don't see any resolution without a cease fire and then an international agreement between the different warring parties. But the competition between Israel and Iran and the involvement of the United States on the side of Israel for example is making that impossible for the time being, so it's a wretched situation.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Oct 30, 2023

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 03:08

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Now, particularly, it seems absolutely ghoulish. So much so that, in my estimation, still continuing to argue about it would be at cross-purposes with any goal except to try to distract and confuse on the behalf of the apartheid regime as amateur (?) propagandists. Just my opinion, though!

For me, personally, I can not bring myself to condemn the HAMAS freedom fighters, even if I were to disagree with their methods, considering they are Palestine's only means of striking back against the depraved fascists that build and operate their concentration camp.

A group of people slaughter hundreds of other people at a dance party. Why? Because they're "Jews" or "settlers" or "Zionists," the "thinking" goes. And we, the "Palestinians" or "Arabs" or "Muslims," are oppressed by them. The "Jews" are responsible. We kill them. The Israeli response then says "the Palestinians" have "only themselves to blame" for allowing themselves to be ruled by Hamas, and behaving as though two million people in Gaza or all Palestinians are responsible, which is a form of "thinking" that they know to be at the center of anti-Semitism too and an illegitimate justification for wide-scale violence which Israel is now engaged in. And even if I was on the other side of the world when the whole thing happened, any disagreement with the underlying moral ontology can only be to stand in solidarity with and further the annihilation of the other depending on who's responding. But I hope you'll admit that the racism and nationalism of the last couple of centuries haven't really been that wonderful, that millions of people have perished in ethnic cleansings as a result, and that the most evil ideologies lean on it.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 04:40

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Lid posted:

Hamas is a far-right wing oppressive conservative political party and you can't separate that from them.

*Hamas paragliders descend onto a rave with people from different countries.*

Israel: "Hamas is trying to kill me!"

No one's trying to kill you.

Israel: "Then why are they shooting at me?"

They're shooting at everyone. They're trying to kill everyone.

Israel: "And what difference does that make!?"

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 07:19

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I reject the (seeming, to me anyway) implication of your argument that this conflict is one of ancient and maybe intractable racisms, when that is clearly not the case: Jews and Muslims are perfectly capable of living together, and in many cases in share a special solidarity between their communities, especially within Christian-majority areas in Europe and the middle east. I will note that this sort of interethnic/interfaith co-mingling is something that the Zionist entity fights against.

I think I'd overstate the case if I said it was ancient. A few hundred years isn't that long. Or call it the early 19th century, with "the nation" really driving the bus at first. Some of these concepts are viciously problematic, and nationalism has caused world wars. Some of them are in-your-face fictional, like races. I doubt we could really tease out very clearly what an "ethnicity" is, but the ethnicities seem to be bottom-line social categories or fictions that are widely accepted.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 15:51

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I completely agree that concepts about nationality and ethnicity/race are inherently problematic and can drive action in an ideological sense, especially on the individual level, but I reject that anything like nationalism "caused" a world war: the engine of history is the actual, physical material of the world. Like the world wars -- like heretofore all human conflict -- the genocide of Palestine is motivated by wealth and power, the literal, physical control of the means of production. The "power" that concepts like race have is a phantom; it's epiphenomenal to material power structures. If the Zionist entity were to disappear tomorrow and the Palestinians free to live their lives without fear of genocide, omnipresent racialized violence, theft and destruction of their lives and livelihood, dehumanization and humiliation, etc., the race-based hatreds between Muslims and Jews would also dissolve, over time.

I more or less agree with you. Marx and Engels asserted that the human symbolic order is ultimately a result of the material conditions in which people live, but I'd caution against a square economic reduction in which material power structures are the only determining element and if we just change that then history will just do the work for us. It just happened that they emphasized the economic side at a time when few people were doing that and didn't have the time to give the other element their due. Gramsci tried to re-balance the base/superstructure model, thinking that the order of material production and the order of symbols interacted historically in complex ways, and such thoughts were later extrapolated on by the Frankfurt School. In other words, ideology matters, and while these concepts like "race" and "religion" are ultimately nonsense the social organization they attach themselves to are not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz2QisQNCh0

Anti-Semitism too can function as like a warped version of socialism. I wouldn't call it socialist but it holds that Jews are oppressors who are hiding in the mountains hoarding all the gold. So we kill them and take their gold. It's like a monster hunt. Anger about the imagined power of Jewish capital, as well as fears of treason and racial degeneration, made anti-Semitism a convenient banner behind which social and political factions could fall in line. Anti-Semitic feelings that simmer for decades can come boiling to the surface.

But one of the benefits of making the social relations around wealth the focus is that you can redistribute the wealth without necessarily taking someone's life.

Concerning ideology, one of the gross things I've seen is how Israel is taken by its supporters to be a "Jewish issue," but the comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany end up reproducing the same logic. The people who do that seem highly opportunistic. It's not like Israel doesn't inflict violent collective punishment on people, but the "unity" between these two things -- while existing in a field of tension -- help sustain the other. I remember an image of a man holding up a portrait of a swastika on his phone at a rally in New York, and I'd reckon he was probably doing that to troll the pro-Israel side, like "this is what you are" and then showing them the swastika to call them the new Nazis. Of course this is all over the New York Post and the Jewish press to frighten their readers into thinking anyone who waves a Palestinian flag around are Nazis who want to wipe them out. And that has an effect.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2023 16:59

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

PT6A posted:

Perhaps out of self-hatred or what might be better described as morbid curiosity, I decided to look up what Christopher Hitchens had said about the Israel/Palestine conflict and I was actually quite surprised to find it was quite sane, and perhaps even custom-tailored to this moment despite his shuffling off this mortal coil some time ago: namely: Zionism is poo poo, Palestine is oppressed, and Hamas are absolute bastards who rose to and maintain power because there was no decent alternative -- referring to Arafat at one point as "a person who instituted a dictatorship over his people before they even had a state."

What strikes me about Hitchens' words isn't that they're inarguably correct, because I doubt they are -- he was a drunken prick, and you can't always trust that sort of person -- but that his strident atheist bent refuses to allow him to understand this conflict as primarily religious, even if religion is involved, which I think separates him from a complete rear end in a top hat like Bill Maher. He goes on to bemoan the death of secular pan-Arab nationalism and its subversion by religious forces, which is of course his personal bugaboo, but that's neither here nor there. He also points out that the only possible motivation for Zionism is religious, as of the three groups of six million Jews each -- Israel, America, and the wider diaspora -- there is only one that lives under constant threat, and you'd have to be a lunatic to think that group has a good idea if it weren't for God.

I don't know where I'm going with this, beyond the fact that, for a person who supported the invasion of Iraq, it seems like a very man-bites-dog sort of story. Perhaps it's being Canadian, where our politicians were always very against Iraq, but will STAND BY ISRAEL come hell or high water. Even after he explains it, I can't make complete sense of it.

It's really an aside but Hitchens had a peculiar ideology since he was influenced a lot by the British Trotskyist Tony Cliff. They had a group called the International Socialists, different from but ideologically similar to the International Socialist Organization in the United States, which no longer exists. They were also called Cliffites. He had been involved with them in the 60s/70s. This had worn pretty thin for Hitchens by the 2000s and it's all pretty obscure, but they were basically anti-Soviet except for a brief period during the revolutionary period of 1917 until it all became a bit naff for them, and fit the stereotype of leftists who always love a revolution until it wins and forms a new order and then they hate it. But there was a very strong commitment against the "lesser of two evils" compromises and not cheating yourself with that, so the idea of critically supporting Saddam Hussein or Bashar Assad against American imperialism wouldn't make sense to them, since that's just not a social revolution, and can turn into active support by self-declared communists (or a particular fringe) for... say... the Iranian government suppressing protesters because that's a color revolution.

The problem is that for Hitchens this ended up turning into a kind of lesser-of-two-evils approach anyways, which then turned into endorsement but from the other direction, so he supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But I think his position on Israel-Palestine was consistent with his earlier commitments.

Hitchens also had a way of sliding into the crevices of an argument and focusing his attacks on something others were not doing. So if he was alive, I could imagine him writing a bunch of columns attacking chickenshit European leaders for not providing enough support to Ukraine, which is not something your typical NAFO person will do.

Neurolimal posted:

A fraudulent hoax story about a mob of pro-Palestine protestors hunting Jews in libraries started circulating, and in less than 24 hours a motion condemning it unanimously passed in the highest legislative circle in America. Hell, the press is still pushing the state on doing more to "combat antisemitism on college campuses" multiple days after the event turned out to be fake.

When people are emotionally energized and divided, that provides propaganda horsepower for completely unrelated solutions. Right now is an opportunity to crack a club over college student heads and break up BDS groups.

I said come in! posted:

They are a conscript army that has lost over 300 soldiers since the war began, and 6 tanks that have entered Gaza have been destroyed. They are great at dropping bombs on innocent people, but their soldiers are not well trained, they dont have experience in urban warfare. They are entering a type of combat that even the U.S. was unable to be successful in.

Israel has experience with urban warfare. The U.S. also had relatively little difficulty leveling cities and massacring people going room to room. It just takes a few Marine battalions.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2023 12:43

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 23:40

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

idontpost69 posted:

Israel geographically is a horrendous choice for Jewish security in a hostile world. It is a tiny, narrow strip of land surrounded by enemies that at best are temporarily stymied by the US's waning global reach.

I think the problem with "safety" and "security" is that it makes for a rather brittle raison d'etre for a state. If it was about maximum effective utility, you'd be right: it would be much better to live in New Jersey than in Israel. But for example, if you watch this IDF ideological propaganda, that's not really the language being used here, but about the self-transformation of Jewish people into a self-reliant people who succeed or fail (or live or die) by their own efforts. I'm not Jewish but that's a sense I get from the early Labor Zionist ideology too which elevated manual labor and tied to the "land of Israel." There's also a religious component that's integrally bound up in this: salvation, the in-gathering of the exiles, stuff like that. Which requires a sense of duty and sacrifice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDcopmNc3xs

Or consider the people in the U.S. who are IDF reservists who dropped everything they were doing and got on a plane and flew to Israel to fight in the war. I don't get the sense they felt it was a "choice" necessarily, but a matter of "necessity."

Ms Adequate posted:

My own conclusions lead me in totally the opposite direction, and I believe that we should be abolishing borders and creating a world where anyone of any creed and race is safe anywhere on its surface. And obviously this is not the sole or uppermost reasoning for many zionists. But it is a sincere consideration for at least some, and I have no idea how you even begin to crack through such a belief when it is rooted in so much historical experience.

But are you willing to fight to abolish borders? Are you willing to make sacrifices? Is abolishing borders and creating this new world just about being safe? If safety is the main reason, there are powerful incentives working against you considering what's necessary to achieve that. It's not like the borders will simply tear themselves down.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Nov 1, 2023

# ¿ Nov 1, 2023 14:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Israel/Palestine

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