>I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
If October 7th is an "insane horror", what words will suffice to describe the decades of far worse crimes committed by Israel?
Considering the scale of suffering caused by this conflict, October 7th was just a small blip.
Can you provide some support for your moral position? You’ve also put “insane horror” in scare quotes, which honestly I find troubling.
Does your moral account provide some justificatory, non-antisemitic framework based on colonialism or oppression that allows us to sidestep the issues with Gazans’ support of Jihad, other extremist doctrines, and the extermination of Jews?
It’s kind of a rhetorical question, but it’s the least I would expect for someone to argue credibly about the morality of the conflict.
Yeah, they're just quotes. It's a quote.
>Can you provide some support for your moral position?
Yes, of course. A bunch of people from Europe decided to move to Palestine and start a religious ethnostate there. In doing so they expelled and murdered lots of local residents.
The surviving locals are understandably less than happy about this, and have continued to fight to defend their lands to this day.
Since then, the those people have caused far more harm to non-jewish Palestinians than non-jewish Palestinians have caused to the those people.
>allows us to sidestep the issues with Gazans’ support of Jihad, other extremist doctrines, and the extermination of Jews?
It's perfectly natural that Gazans would support the extermination of jews. In the extreme environment that Israeli jews force Palestinians to live in, it's fundamentally ridiculous to even describe it as an extremist position.
In a comfortable European context it's certainly extreme, but that's a fundamentally dishonest way of portraying it.
"It's perfectly natural that Gazans would support the extermination of Jews."
That's not a point about colonialism or occupation; that's a justification for ethnic extermination based on the conditions of the people holding the position. By that logic there is no floor: any atrocity becomes "perfectly natural" if the grievance is large enough.
In your broader argument you're describing a blood debt with no statute of limitations and no mechanism for resolution. Skåne (where I live) was Danish. Alsace was German. Most of Europe was Roman. At some point borders exist, people live within them, and the only available direction is forward. You haven't described a political framework- you've described a permanent state of war with no exit condition except one side's disappearance.
You just said it's perfectly natural to want to exterminate an ethnic group. Read that back.
>By that logic there is no floor: any atrocity becomes "perfectly natural" if the grievance is large enough.
This is mostly true, yeah. Do you not believe that humans act like that?
>In your broader argument you're describing a blood debt with no statute of limitations and no mechanism for resolution
Nonsense.
>Skåne (where I live) was Danish. Alsace was German. Most of Europe was Roman. At some point borders exist, people live within them, and the only available direction is forward.
Except Israel does not want Palestine to move forward.
There are approximately zero living people that give a shit about the things you mentioned, there are millions of living Palestinians who do care and suffer at the hands of Israeli state every single day.
How did you intend for this comparison to be even vaguely relevant?
>you've described a permanent state of war with no exit condition except one side's disappearance.
This is deliberately obtuse, Israel has had a plenty of ways to largely exit this conflict. At the very least they could've given all Palestinians Israeli citizenship and equal rights decades ago.
Of course, that's not really compatible with the ideals of the jewish ethnostate. I'm sure the Palestinians wouldn't seriously object though.
>You just said it's perfectly natural to want to exterminate an ethnic group. Read that back.
I'll repeat it if you want me to. We've seen it over and over again in history, it's hardly a new thing.
Considering how the jewish people choose to treat the Palestinians, it is not surprising that Palestinians want to exterminate the jewish people. It is a perfectly predictable reaction, and not some special quirk of the Palestinians.
Since I already wrote a reply to your now-deleted comment:
>You've just made my point. The reason Skåne isn't contested is that there are no living people suffering under Danish occupation of it. You've described the mechanism yourself: time plus resolution. That's exactly what a two-state settlement would produce. You've argued for the process without noticing.
Israel has explicitly rejected that over and over again, and continues to do so every day through ongoing annexations.
There will never be moral high ground for the state of Israel as long as it allows the settlements to exist and doesn't at the very least honor it's internationally recognized borders.
>On citizenship: Israel granting full citizenship to all Palestinians would mean the end of a Jewish majority state within a generation, by demographics alone. You know that. Proposing it as a "simple solution Israel refused" is not a good faith argument; it's describing the dissolution of Israel but painting it as moderation.
A jewish ethnostate is as morally unacceptable as an aryan ethnostate.
>On extermination: you've moved from "perfectly natural" to "perfectly predictable." Those aren't the same thing. Predictable means understandable given the circumstances. Natural means it requires no further justification. You've retreated and you haven't noticed.
No, it's both. It's predictable because it's a natural reaction.
Deleted it, yeah, I've decided it wasn't worth it. Still isn't, mostly.
This will be my last comment to you, I don't want to engage with someone so comfortable at defending genocide.
One final fact check for you: a state with 20% Arab citizens who vote, sit in the Knesset and serve on the Supreme Court is not comparable to a state founded on racial extermination. That comparison doesn't survive contact with the facts.
The settlements are illegal and indefensible. I said so already in this thread.
Everything else you've written today you can own.
>One final fact check for you: a state with 20% Arab citizens who vote, sit in the Knesset and serve on the Supreme Court is not comparable to a state founded on racial extermination. That comparison doesn't survive contact with the facts.
It is an indisputable historical fact that jewish zionists expelled vast amounts of Palestinians from their homes and forced them out of the territory of what is now modern Israel.
>This will be my last comment to you, I don't want to engage with someone so comfortable at defending genocide.
I'm not defending genocide, that's a ridiculous interpretation of my words. I'm just pointing out the fact that if you keep poking someone long or hard enough, you shouldn't be surprised when they eventually want to get rid of you.
I certainly don't think the extermination of Israeli jews would in any way be a positive outcome.
Israel has been at the table at Oslo, Camp David, Taba and Annapolis. Palestinian leadership walked away from each without a counter-proposal. That's not a secret.
No one disagrees that the Gazans feel the way they do. But your position is a stronger one. You seem to be excusing or justifying the moral behavior of Gazans in a way that looks self-undermining.
It’s not morally credible to focus on the Jews’ actions alone, given the broader context of the conflict, Islamic conquest and domination. I don’t want to be patronizing and give history lessons, but antisemitism, Jihadism, and other Islamicist extremist doctrines predate the state of Israel by centuries.
So, are you saying that it's not justified for Gazans to feel the way they do? Why not?
> It’s not morally credible to focus on the Jews’ actions alone, given the broader context of the conflict, Islamic conquest and domination. I don’t want to be patronizing and give history lessons, but antisemitism, Jihadism, and other Islamicist extremist doctrines predate the state of Israel by centuries.
That's just whataboutism and has approximately nothing to do with the conflict started by the creation of the modern state of Israel.
The only people who you could reasonably blame besides the zionist jews are the other Europeans.
They're not "scare quotes", they're quotes.
Huh? In English orthography, quotes can serve multiple purposes.
Most native English speakers wouldn’t see the parent’s use of quotes (quotation marks) as merely mention.
This isn't the least bit confusing man. The author confirms the purpose of the quotes, which is effortlessly understandable by native and non-native speakers alike. They were used to quote and comment on a direct phrase from the parent comment.
You absolutely do not need to double down on whatever it is you are doing here lol. Say you were wrong and move on.
"small blip" isn't a political take, it's just wrong.
October 7th was the deadliest per capita terrorist attack since the Global Terrorism Database started recording in 1970 [1]. Globally, it's third on the all-time list (behind only 9/11 and one IS attack [1]. The confirmed death toll from Israeli social security data (not government press releases) is 1,139, which still makes it 31 times deadlier than the next worst attack in Israeli history [2][3].
You invoked scale. Those are the numbers. They don't say what you wanted them to say.
And for the record: one atrocity not excusing another cuts both ways. Nobody here argued otherwise. What was actually said (by the person you're replying to) is that you cannot use scale as your framework whilst hand-waving away the single largest data point in the argument.
If you mean the Nakba, Sabra and Shatila, or the current death toll in Gaza — those are serious. But "decades of far worse crimes" doing the work of making October 7th a "small blip" doesn't follow. You can have a long ledger of serious grievances and still recognise that one morning where 1,139 people were massacred (including at a music festival, in kibbutz bedrooms, in bomb shelters) was not a blip. It was the deadliest single terrorist attack per capita since records began.
There is no moral argument for October 7th, and the reaction is disproportionate and unjustifiable - but inevitable. We should all be so unlucky to have neighbours like those, and nobody knows how we would all act if we did.
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...
[2] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social...
[3] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...
I notice that your database does not for whatever reason contain any of the actions taken by the Israeli government, why is that?
How are we supposed to get an understanding of the scale of these events while totally disregarding Israeli actions?
Because the Global Terrorism Database records non-state terrorist attacks.
State military action is categorised separately: that's not an omission, it's a definition, but you know that- you're playing stupid. The same database doesn't record US drone strikes or Russian artillery either, weird, right? Must be suppression!!!
If you want Israeli state violence, OCHA tracks it. That data has been cited in this thread already.
I know that, but why are you referring to this database then? It's just not really relevant in this particular context.
You're saying that the numbers don't say what I want them to say, but then you choose a rather weird set of numbers to demonstrate this with. It's weird!
> October 7th was the deadliest per capita terrorist attack since the Global Terrorism Database started recording in 1970
> You invoked scale. Those are the numbers. They don't say what you wanted them to say.
1200 Oct7 vs tens of thousands in annexation and retaliation.
The numbers speak for themselves. No need to cherry pick.
Nobody cherry-picked anything. Per capita, single-event, it's the number that answers the claim that was actually made — that October 7th was a "blip."
What you're doing now is a different argument entirely: aggregate conflict deaths over 77 years vs. one morning. That's not context, it's a category error dressed up as one.
For what it's worth, the full Palestinian death toll since 1948 is ~136,000 [1] — a Palestinian source, so spare me the bias complaint. That's across eight decades, multiple Arab-Israeli wars, three intifadas, and several state actors. October 7th still isn't a blip. It's a massacre inside a war.
Which is exactly what everyone's been saying.
[1] https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/145161
> What you're doing now is a different argument entirely:
I've not made an argument. I've provided the proper context that supports the original point.
>> Considering the scale of suffering caused by this conflict, - Jasonadrury
your response:
> That's not context, it's a category error dressed up as one.
You have shifted goalposts in every post. The context was the conflict in aggregate. Continue arguing with yourself. It's not compelling.
"I've not made an argument" is a fascinating claim immediately after quoting someone who used aggregate scale to call October 7th a "blip"- and agreeing with them.
Providing context in support of a conclusion is making an argument. That's what arguments are.
The goalposts that moved: "blip" (single event framing) -> "scale of the conflict" (aggregate framing) -> "I wasn't arguing anything." Three posts, three different claims, now apparently none of them count.
Noted.
What’s an ‘event’?
...
A discrete incident with a defined start, end, perpetrator and location.
(As opposed to a 77-year conflict involving multiple states, wars and actors.)
Now ask me one on sport.
That is pretty much the definition of cherry picking right there.
You sure have a big stake in defending a genocide, Jan.
The OCHA data is linked above. Read it or don't.
Rockets regularly target Israel. If that happened to USA the war would start with the first one no matter if it was intercepted or not. Same with any other self-respecting country. Israel is fully justified trying to eliminate threats to itself. It's not only about October 7th.
The reaction by the Israelis against the Palestinians is even worse
The reaction is worse in what sense, exactly? Raw numbers? Then you're back to the same argument as above, where October 7th (again, the third deadliest terrorist attack since records began in 1970) somehow doesn't count.
Nobody serious disputes that Gazan civilians are suffering enormously. The argument isn't about that. It's about whether Hamas represents them, and the answer is: less and less, given that Hamas hasn't held an election since 2006, has siphoned aid money into tunnels and rockets for two decades [1], and on October 7th sent men with garden tools to decapitate Thai agricultural workers [2] and film themselves doing it.
You can condemn Israel's conduct (and there's plenty to condemn) without pretending the people who started this particular escalation were freedom fighters having a bad day.
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...
[2] https://www.nationthailand.com/world/middle-east-africa/4003...
I think wholesale genocide of an entire population by the Israeli state is worse. The plan is obviously drive the Palestinians onto the sea (metaphorically) and make the place uninhabitable.
Israel (and I want to be clear, I am referring to Israel the state) has blood on their hands. This went way beyond a "self defense" thing - flattening the entire country, indiscriminate killing of civilians and children, murdering paramedics and bombing ambulances, destroying schools hospitals apartment buildings etc. By a modern democratic state with the most accurate smart weapons available. It's simply unbelievable to me that they are getting away with it.
>I think wholesale genocide of an entire population by the Israeli state is worse
would be worse, but wasn't contemplated nor attempted so contributes no weight to the balance.
"from the river to the sea" on the other hand is a statement of genocidal intent.
Most of what you say I don't disagree with. Israel's conduct since October 8th (the civilian death toll, the aid blockade, the flattening of hospitals) is legitimate to call out. The ICJ found the genocide claim plausible enough to issue binding provisional measures, which Israel then ignored [1]. That's not nothing.
But "wholesale genocide" and "the plan is obviously to drive them into the sea" are stronger claims than the evidence supports right now, and that matters a lot because the moment you overreach, everyone who wants to dismiss Palestinian suffering has a rhetorical exit. The ICJ's own careful language exists for a reason.
None of that touches the original argument anyway: that October 7th was not a "small blip." Israel's conduct after October 8th doesn't retroactively change what happened on October 7th. Both things are true simultaneously. That's the whole point I'm making.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/26/israel-not-complying-wor...
No, I think I have to respectfully disagree: in the continuum of the Palestine-Israel conflict, this was a small blip. Israel has been killing civilians indiscriminately for years/decades, annexing territory, bulldozing homes etc.
What was different this time was that it was Israel who was the victim, not the Palestinians. And the only way that Israel knows how to respond to these kinds of things is to kill and to destroy.
"What was different this time was that it was Israel who was the victim."
You've just described the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust [1] as a blip because, in your accounting, it was Israel's turn to absorb one.
The "continuum" framing doesn't hold up numerically either. In non-war years, OCHA records roughly 100–200 Palestinian deaths annually at Israeli hands [2]. Hamas killed 1,139 people before lunchtime. That's not a blip in a continuum, it's five to ten years of equivalent deaths in eight hours.
The youngest victim was 14 hours old [3]. The oldest was a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor [3]. None of those facts change based on who you think had it coming.
[1] https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/museu...
[2] https://www.ochaopt.org/content/casualties-thousands-killed-...
[3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/youngest-october-7-victim-just-00...
I would have figured the families of the Jews who built Israel would have realized "holocaust bad, never again".
What they learned was "never again to us".
Just because your family had a holocaust executed against them, doesnt give you any (legal, ethical, moral) right to run your own holocaust.
And Israel is running a holocaust in Palestine, and has been for decades.
Everything is a holocaust or genocide to pro-Islamist lefties. Y'all've so discredited those terms that if at some point Israel actually does start a genocide, people will just shrug.
"There's a genocide going on in Gaza? Yeah I know, you've been whining about it for years now."
You do realize that there were live Israeli hostages Hamas held up until the last ceasefire?
> Nobody serious disputes that Gazan civilians are suffering enormously. The argument isn't about that.
Why isn’t it?
Because it's a different argument to the one being made, and addressing seventeen things at once is how threads become unreadable.
But since you're asking: go up four comments and you'll find it already addressed there in some detail. Keep up.
"Nobody serious disputes that Gazan civilians are suffering enormously."
This is blatantly untrue. There are people who are saying there's no such thing as a "Gazan civilian".
Come off it, that's a technicality and everyone knows the meaning.
An uncharitable person would easily debunk this by making claims about the idea that 'because of israel they can't have a state to be civilian of' and then the topic gets super muddy because that's technically not true and we go around and around and around.
The Israeli government has been dehumanising the Gazan population in rhetoric for decades. Claiming that no one would deny their suffering is straight up false. It's not a technicality, it's a deliberate technique.
It's one of the things that could be stopped to prevent us going "around and around and around."
How can you claim this with a straight face, when Israel has slaughtered Palestinians like cattle every chance they have. And when they're not killing them with direct violence, they are robbing them of basic necessities and human dignity.
And how can you claim October 7th wasn't an act if war? The main thrust of the attacks were targeting military installations. Much more than Israeli actions in Gaza before or since, which have clearly been done in service of genocide since Israel was created.
The Palestinian genocide has not been a regular war, it has been an absolute extermination campaign that is still ongoing.
"The main thrust targeted military installations"— of 1,139 confirmed dead, 828 were civilians. That's 72%. They also massacred 364 people at a music festival, which Hamas later described as a "coincidence" because they "may have thought" ravers were soldiers "resting". That's the defence you're endorsing.
Nobody serious disputes that Gaza's suffering is real or that Israel's conduct warrants scrutiny. But "genocide since Israel was created" is doing a lot of work for you; the ICJ found Palestinian rights were "plausibly" at risk, not that 1948 was a genocide.
Words mean things. Overreaching doesn't help the people you're claiming to defend, it just makes it easier for the other side to dismiss everything else you say.
A reminder: Israel counts Hamas soldiers as military targets, even when they are out of uniform and in civilian life.
If we apply the civilized world's standards of war then yes, Israelis who are also off-duty soldiers or reservists don't count as military targets.
If we apply Israel's standards, however, they are.
Are Gazans not allowed to apply the same standards to their adversaries that their adversaries openly apply to them? Would you be this courteous, in their position?
Of the 378 people killed at and around Nova, 16 were off-duty soldiers attending the rave and 4 were killed fighting [1]. That's 20 out of 378 ... so about 5%.
So even by the standard you're proposing, Hamas massacred around 358 people who wouldn't qualify as military targets under anyone's rules of engagement. Including theirs, apparently, since Hamas's own explanation was that they "may have thought" the ravers were soldiers "resting"; i.e. they didn't know and killed them anyway.
The argument you've constructed requires Hamas to have been applying a targeting framework. The evidence is that they found a large crowd of Israelis and opened fire.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-okayed-nova-music-festival...
Ah, so they'd only previously been members of the IDF?
Do you suppose Israel doesn't consider previous members of Hamas legitimate targets?
>The argument you've constructed requires Hamas to have been applying a targeting framework. The evidence is that they found a large crowd of Israelis and opened fire.
But that's effectively indistinguishable from the Israeli targeting framework where everyone connected to Hamas is a legitimate target.
This is settled in international humanitarian law. Per Human Rights Watch, citing ICRC guidance: "reservists of national armed forces are considered civilians except when they go on duty." [1] Off-duty at a music festival unambiguously qualifies as not on duty.
The argument that prior military service permanently strips civilian status has no basis in IHL. If it did, every Israeli who'd ever served (which is nearly all of them, given conscription) would be a legitimate target forever.
So: not a targeting framework, more like a justification for killing the entire population.
On your second point: Israel's targeting decisions are also subject to IHL, and where they kill civilians unlawfully that's also a war crime. That's not a defence of Hamas... it's the same standard applied consistently.
"They do it too" doesn't make either lawful.
For what it's worth, joining Hamas is a choice; IDF service is compulsory. The cases aren't analogous.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/09/questions-and-answers-oc...
> This is settled in international humanitarian law
Neither participant in the Israel-Hamas conflict subscribes to that.
And I'm not really sure how you could expect the small resistance group to follow international humanitarian law when the big state they're fighting doesn't either? That seems absurd.
> This is settled in international humanitarian law.
Many things are settled in international humanitarian law, thus far it hasn't stopped either side from ignoring it wholesale.
A wonderful quote that demonstrates how Israel applies different standards to itself: even its active duty combatants are painted as helpless innocents!
“Nimrod Cohen was abducted from Tank 3”
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjzgyg9txg
Israel has to apply that standard because Hamas operates without uniforms unlike IDF. So yeah, Gazans shouldn't apply the same standard because unlike them Israeli military operates in uniforms so it's easy to distinguish between them and civilians. That Gazans do the opposite is on them.
Are you sure? Israel is kind of notorious for having people in civilian clothes kill its enemies.
Sure, if that happens then it needs to be investigated as a potential war crime. It still doesn't change the fact that Israel is in no position to apply that standard because fighting Gazans don't use uniforms. Obviously they will not treat people shooting at them and launching rockets at them as civilians.
So the best you can say about Israel’s conduct over the course of the past 2.5 years is that it “warrants scrutiny”?
And if you want to play the number of victims game, even pre Oct 7 one side has always had it significantly worse than the other. After all, one side is a sovereign state that has a technologically advanced military, an air force, a navy, and air defense systems.
Remarkable. You've managed to read a comment that cited the ICJ, called out Israel's non-compliance with binding provisional measures, and explicitly said there's "plenty to condemn"; and concluded the position is that Israeli conduct merely "warrants scrutiny."
This isn't a conversation, it's not even engagement: that's just not reading.
On asymmetry: you've accidentally made the case for holding Israel to a higher standard. A nuclear-capable state with F-35s, Iron Dome and a $3.8bn annual US military subsidy [1] bears more responsibility for its choices than a militia in a blockaded strip of land; not less. That's what asymmetry actually means.
What it doesn't mean is that a music festival full of civilians somehow doesn't count. But nice try.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12587
> that Israel's conduct warrants scrutiny.
Was this not your choice of words?
> On asymmetry: you've accidentally made the case for holding Israel to a higher standard.
Huh? Are you replying to someone else?
Israel has killed 10s of thousands of civilians, a large portion of which are children. This along with many other factors - in addition to the higher standard expected from a sovereign state fighting an occupied people - is the reason we call it a genocide.
No, I think you're accusing me of a position I don't really have because I don't like Hamas or Israel, but you think my condemnation of Hamas is support of Israel or that by pointing out Israeli suffering I am turning a blind eye to Palestinian suffering.
It's almost as if we genuinely believe that because there are more deaths on one side, that the other is deserving and should not be condemned despite innocence.
Isn't that interesting.
[flagged]
For onlookers: the final paragraph is in Swedish. It calls me a far-right nationalist and racist. Draw your own conclusions about how that fits the pattern of this exchange.
On substance: 72% of October 7th victims were civilians by Israel's own social security data [1]. tovej's argument that this was primarily a military operation depends on not counting them.
The Hannibal directive is a separate and legitimate concern. It has nothing to do with whether Hamas targeted civilians — it addresses what Israel did in response.
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social...
I'm going to call a racist a racist when I see it. I've had enough interactions with you on this site (and have given you many second chances to show good faith) to see a blatant pattern.
You're playing devils advocate any time a white supremacist, Israel, or racist bigot is under scrutiny.
And every time you deploy bad faith debate tactics. E.g. here you're strawmanning my argument to say I ignore the percentage of civilians dead. That's not true at all. My argument does not depend on not counting civilian victims. October 7th was a military operation, a guerilla warfare operation.
Most of the Supernova ravers Hamas killed on October 7th who died that day did not die at the rave, but at ad hoc checkpoints far away from the rave. Military checkpoints set up to intercept military re-inforcements.
The rave was not announced until the 6th of October, and Hamas was not aware of it. When people fled the rave, this triggered a massive flow of car traffic. And based on Hamas' limited intelligence, it is not unreasonable to assume that a sudden rush of car traffic could be related to the conflict.
The IDF also set up a road block near the rave, which led to a huge throng (3000 ravers) being caught near the site of the firefight.
In other words, the biggest tragedy of October 7th, the Supernova rave, was not a target, and the deaths in this tragedy seem to have been due to an unfortunate coincidence.
And the Hannibal directive absolutely plays a role. We don't actually know how many civilians died due to it. It could easily be hundreds. The only actor who could verify this is Israel, and they are not keen to do so.
Playing devil's advocate for consistency isn't racism. I'm not Israeli, not Jewish, this isn't my nation. I object to the reasoning.
You're defending a position that doesn't actually care about Palestinian lives. Iran has funded Hamas for decades not because it wants a Palestinian state: it wants the end of Israel. Those aren't the same goal. You've let a theocracy that hangs gay people and flogs women position itself as the voice of Palestinian liberation and you haven't noticed.
I've seen the footage of Shani Louk. German tattoo artist, half-naked, paraded on a truck while people celebrated. Then months of stories she was alive in a Gazan hospital, used to extort money from her family. I saw a Thai farmer gruesomely beheaded by a shovel while the perpetrator screamed with joy on camera. You want to call that resistance? Go ahead. I'll call it what it is.
Criticising Hamas doesn't mean supporting the IDF. Find one line in this thread where I defended an Israeli war crime. One.
You called me far-right. The far-right wants ethnic cleansing. I want a two-state settlement and both sides held to the same legal standard... which is apparently a controversial position in this thread.
Palestinians are people. Israelis are people. The children dying in Gaza are a catastrophe. So is raising children to believe their highest calling is killing their neighbour. You can hold both of those thoughts unless you've decided one side's dead children count and the other's don't.
While I agree, and I find that Israel is on the wrong side of history, I'm not entirely into seeing this whole matter as black and white.
I have the opinion that modern world history is mostly shaped around each countries/population traumas that echo through society till today.
E.g. the biggest trauma of Ukrainians aren't even the events that are playing recently, but the Holodomor that happened 100 years ago. On the other hand the biggest trauma on Russian side is still the German invasion and war of annihilation happened during the second world war. As both sides see themselves as the victims and see the other side as the aggressor (or collaborator) and none has ever taken a step back to recognize their actions, they simply cannot communicate.
The biggest trauma of China is the century of humiliation where western powers and Japan went above and beyond any decency in their actions. Thus, Chinese society and leadership is all about never being dictated conditions and terms by foreign powers. They see themselves as victims of events that they don't want to see ever again.
The jewish Israeli population biggest trauma are centuries if not millenia of animosity, racism and violence coming from any side, last but definitely not least the Holocaust. Thus Israel is all about security at all costs, even if it means bending any sign of human decency. Again, they see themselves as victims and their actions will always go in that direction.
Sadly many parts of the world, many countries, many societies, are simply too scarred and unable to take a step back from the victim mentality and recognize their own actions.
Israelis are unable to recognize they are Goliath and not David from the longest time, they are unable and unwilling to say sorry, the last Israeli leader that tried, got assassinated by one of his own.
The arabic/muslim population in the area too see themselves as victims of the post world war 2 events, and they are as well unable to recognize how scarred and traumatized is Israeli society from centuries of events, including modern ones where they had to survive against hostile Arab coalitions aimed to annihilate them.
So, without a generation of leaders able to recognize and understand the role of history and those traumas and empathize with the other sides we're trapped in those loops of aggression.
You’ve just explained my own thoughts better than I ever have been able to, especially what with the political minefield that is literally anything mentioned in your post. Brilliantly articulate. I have half a mind to commit your entire comments text to memory and just repeat it ad verbatim whenever I am asked about my opinions on these things.
you are simplifying too much - whats then US trauma in this case and all other cases of invasion and coups in the lat 75 years?
Maybe trauma you are talking about it's just excuse to control opinion of voters and manufacture consent but under the hood its just all about power and being rich (not always but in many cases).
I am not simplifying, and my lenses aren't an explanation for every world event.
Humoring the notion, America is a capitalist enterprise that put on the religious and humanist airs that were conveniently en vogue at the time of its founding, and which it always goes back to when its economic reality becomes too onerous. The contradiction baked into our existence is felt subconsciously by most, and there is a psychological toll taken in knowing that your society is built, in part, on hypocrisy, and having to be vigilant for when the other shoe inevitably drops, so that you can at least get out alive.
This is a great post. It really sheds light to basically all the modern conflicts. Thanks.
This really puts so many modern conflicts into perspective. Everyone sees themselves as victims. Unfortunately, a consensus on who is and isn't a victim will always be highly elusive.
One of the most sane and dispassionate takes I've seen. Kudos.
I agree that we should remember historical traumas, but I don't agree they suffice to explain international politics.
Take the Greeks (that's my people! Us!) and the Turkish. I guess people in the West don't remember this but the Israelis are not the only people in the Middle East who have a word that means "disaster" (Shoah, for the Israelis; Καταστροφή- Catastrophe for us), that when anyone says it everyone knows exactly which disaster is spoken of. They are not the only people who lost the land their ancestors inhabited for thousands of years (Ionia, for us Greeks), who lost their greatest city (Constantinople, the City), who lost their greatest temple that was turned into a Mosque (the Hagia Sophia). Us, Greeks, too, have suffered these ignominies at the hand of the Turkish. Our common history with the Turkish is one of war, destruction, violence and blood. So much blood.
Genocide? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide Check. Ethnic cleansing? Check. Death marches through the deserts? Check, check, check.
And yet, since the Catastrophe, in 1922, we have been at peace with the Turkish, even through serious hot episodes in the Mediterrannean, like Cyprus. That's 100 years of peace, after 1500 years of history of war.
It can be done. The trauma can be overcome, if both sides agree to it. To quote none other than Moshe Dayan: if you want to make peace you talk to your enemies, not your friends.
I wonder how Greek-Turkish relations would look like if both nations were stuck in a relatively small piece of land - say, the size of the European part of Turkey. And with Constantinople/Istanbul ethnically mixed in about 50:50 ratio.
It is a lot easier to conclude peace if both adversaries have a plenty of "their own" land to live on and can sorta-kinda ignore each other while doing so.
Preach brother. Collective trauma traps us all
> The jewish Israeli population biggest trauma are centuries if not millenia of animosity, racism and violence coming from any side ... is all about security at all costs, even if it means bending any sign of human decency. Again, they see themselves as victims and their actions will always go in that direction.
I don't see this any different to terrorism apologia (the trauma of 1mn dead in Iraq and another million in Afghanistan, for example). I guess, if the leaders wear suits & ties and hide behind the garb of democracy, then we should all understand why military they command commit crimes against humanity.
- Bessel van der Kolk (author, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma).The problem isn't the "trauma". The problem is the excuse.
> they are as well unable to recognize how scarred and traumatized is Israeli society from centuries of events
First, 400mn Arabs (or 2bn+ muslims) aren't a monolith or brainless zombies. Second, the "centuries of events" is just European guilt. Nothing to do with the Arab world.
Extremely great post with detailed examples
> So, without a generation of leaders able to recognize and understand the role of history and those traumas and empathize with the other sides we're trapped in those loops of aggression.
The sad reality (imo) about this truth is that the qualities needed to be a leader aren't empathy. There was a vid about it which went more into detail but When you observe leaders, you find that they are extremely weird and sometimes psychopathic.
To me it also feels like if a leader is emphatetic towards the other part, other leaders more extreme would spring up saying that he's an enemy from within or something equivalent to it.
The empathy of the leader is one of the most disregarded qualities. I would go so far as to say that leaders aren't even empathetic towards the general population of their own nations/community sometimes.
It's really sad but the Empathy you mention and cowardice can look the same to many & the Empathatic leader would get booted out of/not given a chance.
For example, within America itself, I feel like John mccain was a good guy and I would consider him empathetic in the sense that I remember seeing interviews of him saying that he and Obama just have some minor differences in policy making when there were people attending his rallies asking that they don't feel safe about Obama.
I am just gonna say that This leader of republican party was lost for what is now Donald Trump.
Oh I just watched the rally/interview again[0], when he said that you don't have to be scared of Obama, he was audibly booed by the public. (But also they clapped once when he said later in the campaign that Obama was decent person?)
It isn't impossible to have empathetic leaders but I do think that perhaps as a civilization, we would need to take class act/honesty/integrity more into account than we take in the current system which to me all across the world sometimes feel like picking the lesser evil/not-greater-good at times though I can only speak for myself.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk
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I don't think parent is presenting an excuse. They are suggesting that generational trauma is one cause of conflict.
what US trauma supposed to be in this case? Only Americal Civil War and American Revolutionary War comes to my mind but have no clue how middle east mess could trigger those traumas?
The only traumas maybe related to money is ... Great Depression but it's not like somebody else was responsible for that
epolanski didn't mention US?
Well what I guess what else do you really do without historical materialism? Playing pop psychology on billions of people, its always quite bizarre.
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