From CNN: Israel says it is ‘at war’ after Hamas surprise attack
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared his country “at war” Saturday, after Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a deadly barrage of rockets and sent gunmen into Israeli territory in a major escalation of the long-running conflict between the two sides.
Israeli authorities say at least 40 people are dead and nearly 800 more wounded in Israel after the early morning surprise attack. Meanwhile, Palestinian authorities say nearly 200 people were killed after Israel launched air strikes. Fighting is still taking place on the ground.
A good twitter thread can be found here:
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BBC was claiming several dozen Israelis were kidnaped.
Ideally we’ll see Israel pull back from some of the more problematic settlements after all this is done.
Less ideally we’ll see “the lawn mowed” (I think that’s the expression) and then nothing will happen.Report
I hope she stops wearing short skirts, too.Report
The classic headline formula: Israel commits aggression in response to incidentReport
The UN Human Rights Office has released a statement:
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The UN human rights chief is shocked by Palestinian violence against Israel. OK.Report
The opening salvo was against a bunch of hippies at a music festival that was celebrating the possibility of peace.
Bodies were paraded.
It looked bad even for Hamas.Report
I can’t find it on Google but apparently an Israeli Journalist stated on MSNBC that Israeli intelligence and upper military brass warned Netanyahu and he was dismissive because like Trump, he can be dismissive of people he sees as “elites.”*
Basically, this appears to be a massive blunder on all sides. If the statement above is true, Netanyahu’s blunder has led to a 100 deaths so far and an unverified number of citizen-hostages. For Hamas and its cheerleaders Iran and Hezbollah, it is going to be a suicide mission in the long run.Report
I suppose that’s much more enlightened than comparing Hamas to Trump.
“This surprise attack on the Kibbutz was our January 6th.”Report
If the Israeli state apparatus warned Bibi and have the receipts he’s going to have a mighty hard time getting away with this. It’s the biggest failure of Israeli intelligence since, what, Yom Kippur?Report
It is more Bibi’s failure for his constitutional coup but yes. Link below.Report
I agree emotionally and intellectually but for that posture to be adopted by Israelis broadly there needs to be something way more specific. The IDF and intelligence services need to be able to say “We warned the PM something specific was brewing in Gaza SOON and he ignored us” or else I fear Bibi may be able to shunt the blame onto his enemies in the State services.Report
Not just Israeli intelligence, US intelligence too.
Dunno if I should include Europe in there.
(It’s resulting in a lot of LIHOP speculation.)Report
Anyone outside Israeli intelligence could expect more of just a “hmm that’s annoying/interesting” stance towards this. Within Israel though we’re talking about something that is existential and central to the purpose of those organizations. If the Mossad didn’t know, then heads should roll in the Mossad like they have never rolled before and if the Mossad did know, warned the politicians and got ignored then heads should roll among the politicians like they never have rolled before.Report
One of the reasons for Gaza pulling this now is the whole peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia that seemed to be showing up slowly but surely. Such a deal would be one of those things that the US would be delighted with as well.
I would *HOPE* that we’d have a different attitude than that…Report
Sure, sure, sure but there is, what, one Gaza desk in the CIA? One in the various other agencies as well? Monitoring the Palestinians is virtually the sine qua non of the Israelis parallel organizations. There’s simply no comparison.Report
A handful of people are blaming these attacks on the small steps taken toward normalizing our relationship with Iran. The NSC Spokesperson has clarified things:
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And under the watchful eye of South Korea who holds said funds.Report
Personally, I think that this would be a bad idea.
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The Taliban doesn’t understand geography terribly well.Report
War is God’s way of teaching geography to
Americansthe Taliban.The most difficult task in the days ahead is learning how to tune out the voices of people who yesterday couldn’t find Gaza on a map.Report
Lots of people who could find Gaza on the map are going to have the bad take like the International version of Murc’s Law where only Jews have agency in Jewish-Muslim relations while the Muslims get to hate.Report
They would also have to go through Iraq, Jordan, or Syria as well. Good luck with that. If the Taliban managed to start attacking Israel than Israel becomes Brave Little Belgium rather than Prussia again for everybody but the most hardcore anti-Zionists and critics of Israel.Report
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-07/ty-article/.premium/october-7-2023-a-date-that-will-live-in-infamy-in-israel/0000018b-0bbf-dc5d-a39f-9fff47680000
‘Hamas’ attack on Saturday is an epic Israeli debacle, in which the state led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces spectacularly failed to protect its citizens’
‘You cannot overstate the magnitude, the scale and the reverberating shock waves of Saturday’s attack on Israel. This is Yom Kippur 1973 all over again, with one fundamental difference: the toll on Israel in 1973 (3,000 killed) was exacted on the military. Saturday’s attack, sure to escalate, claimed civilian lives, terrorized an entire country and was insulting as much as it was lethal.
‘The State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces failed miserably to protect Israelis. It’s that simple. The speed with which the country’s leaders already started to shed responsibility and shift the burden of blame to the IDF is astounding, even by the very low Israeli standards of political accountability. This is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fiasco. He owns it, and he should and will be held accountable the day after the war ends…. But the hard truth needs to be clearly stated, even when the numbers and names of the murdered are unconfirmed and the heartbreak is only beginning: This was an epic debacle, and there’s no way around it.
‘There are bound to be military, diplomatic, regional and political repercussions, but assessing them at this stage would be grossly premature and wildly speculative. What is abundantly clear is that the Israeli paradigm of the security and political approach to Gaza, and indeed to the Palestinian issue, thoroughly collapsed.
‘The idea that Israel could effectively strengthen Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and make any political solution unviable collapsed in the most conspicuous, shattering and bloody way.
‘Second, the working assumption according to which Hamas (and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) is really interested in “governing the Gaza Strip,” is averse to confrontation and is deterred by Israel’s potential disproportionate retaliation, came crashing down on the arrogant and myopic minds that conceived it. That goes for both Netanyahu and the IDF.
On the other hand, the IDF has been warning Netanyahu for months that the military’s readiness and preparedness has been significantly diminished as a result of his constitutional coup. He famously refused to see Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, who tried to warn him. The army’s Military Intelligence branch assessed – and reported to the government – that Israel’s enemies and adversaries are sensing a vulnerability and an opportunity created by distrust toward Netanyahu in broad swaths of the public, and the loss of social cohesion and unity as a result of unprecedented political schism. Netanyahu and his government derided, dismissed and ignored the warnings, instead blaming the “elites” that constitute the IDF’s upper ranks of undermining his political agenda.
‘Mr. Netanyahu is a prolific advocate of “obliterating Hamas,” just as he is a gung-ho militant on Iran whenever he is out of power. In 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, someone in Netanyahu’s government saw fit to leak an IDF document detailing the risks of taking over Gaza – a prerequisite for an effective uprooting of Hamas’ military infrastructure. In it, Military Intelligence assessed that such an operation would take five years, exact a high casualty rate, require an entirely new intelligence network to be developed and could endanger the peace accord with Egypt. In the last nine years, little changed.
‘Whether Hamas acted against Israeli occupation or creeping annexation, whether this was opportunism made possible because of Israel’s political crisis or whether it was against the mooted Saudi normalization deal that shortchanges the Palestinians, Saturday October 7 was a game-changer. A day that will live in infamy.’Report
On the plus side for the right, it has a new Big Lie to run with.Report
Hamas blundered this attack because even most of their fellow Muslim nations in the Middle East are not supporting this. Vocal support for Hamas has come from Iran, Pakistan, and the Taliban. Everybody else might not like Israel but their words are “Hamas you bleeping idiots, you shouldn’t have done this.”Report
Mmm didn’t Saudi Arabia also voice support for Hamas? That’s the whole ballgame as to why Hamas (and their sponsors) launched this attack. It’ll be terrible for the Palestinians, but since when has Hamas ever given a fig about the Palestinians? If it scuttles the Israeli/Saudi raproachment it’ll have accomplished its goal and I don’t see how it doesn’t.Report
They are trying be neutral and calling on both sides to cool down/show restraintReport
Good, though unfortunately what happens next will hinge on what Bibi’s administration does.Report
I would guess we’re going to start seeing Hamas videos of captives, including children.Report
Sure to be measured. /sReport
Hamas parades around the body of a 30 year old tattoo artist from Germany who was going to attend a peace festival in the area:
https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/israel-attack-30-year-old-german-tattoo-artists-body-paraded-by-hamas-terrorists-mother-makes-emotional-appeal-in-a-heart-wrenching-video
People who are inclined to look badly on Israel keep really trying to downplay the religious craziness of Hamas and say it is all about desperation or something. I get that this angle is popular because it seems something can be done. But Hamas really believes that Jews should not be in the Middle East at all or if they are in the Middle East should be subjected to Islam as clear inferiors. They say this repeatedly but Westerners refuse to believe this because if this is true, what can be done?Report
Calling a 30 year old woman, a girl is interesting war time propagandaReport
I mean we have people trying to defend 40 and 50 something men who participated in January 6 as boys and youths, so a 30 year old woman who dresses on the youthful side seems less bad in this regard.Report
She is a 30 year old trying to look like she’s 20 and has her mom showing pictures of her. I’m going to give them a pass on this one.Report
I’m not sure what anyone is supposed to say about her other than it is probably not a smart idea to go party in a sectarian war zone no matter your age. People who do this stuff take their lives in their own hands.Report
Not sure Re’im counts as being “in a sectarian war zone”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re'imReport
The entire ME is a sectarian war zone, including Israel. All sides have guns trained on each other at all times. It’s naive to think there’s some guarantee they won’t start firing when your drum circle is in the middle of them.Report
I think the Germans and all decent people are rightly pissed at her murder and the further mauling of her corpse. But it is an interesting and perhaps unconscious tick of the human mind.Report
Religion is what the people want to believe.
Yes, by Western standards Hamas is crazy. But by local standards, they’re mainstream. Last time Gaza held elections, Hamas won.
Totally destroy Hamas and Israel will still have the problem that this line of thought is very popular and will be expressed somehow.Report
Hamas has appeared to decide that starting a war is preferable to slow suffocation in the open-air prison that is called the Gaza Strip. The timing seems to make sense, the Israel government is barely handing on thanks to the current far-right coup, and the Saudi Arabia normalization would be bad, so…now is indeed the time.
I can’t really fault their logic, especially since it was entirely possible that Netanyahu would seize total power and actually destroy Palestine, like he and the other hard-liners keeps saying. (It’s weird how that never gets reported while the Hamas rhetoric in the opposite direction does, but it really is the official policy of the Likud party is that Israel is ‘between the river and sea’, aka, literally all of Palestine too.) They needed to start this thing before it happened.
Now, their actions have been rather horrific in a lot of places. But…and I don’t want to make excuses for them, but we do all know that Israel has been, like, killing _their_ civilians for literally decades, right? Not just outright shooting them in the street, which to be clear has happened in fairly disturbing amounts, but the naval blockade that has been going on _a decade and a half_ has resulted in starvation and medical disaster.
Being suddenly horrified that Hamas is doing the same thing is…really kinda showing how bad the reporting on this has been for decades. It is horrifying, yes, but maybe we also should have been horrified a decade ago and made Israel stop? Or, at minimum, stop funding them?Report
The last sentence is really what it should come down to for Americans. I don’t think anyone has to defend any atrocities to acknowledge that sometimes people being conquered and colonized will have something to say about it, and it won’t be nice or pretty. The real question is and always has been what interest does the US have in arming and running interference for one side, especially one that periodically spits back in our faces? None.Report
Hamas has repeatedly stated that the only solution they consider a just solution is No Israel, No Jews. This has been the position of the entire Palestinian movement and it never changed. They have rejected every offer when dealing with more sympathetic governments and the supporters of the Palestinians believe that Israel just needs to endlessly tolerate their terrorism. The entire burden of agency is placed on Israel while the Palestinians never have to answer to their bad choices. This is part of the problem of placing the entire agency of Jewish-Muslim relationships on Jews while allowing Muslims to engage in every anti-Semitic fantasy possible.
Israel withdraw from Gaza nearly twenty years ago and the immediate response of Hamas was not to do anything productive but to launch a missile barrage against Israel. Repeatedly. The only pragmatic reason why they did this attack is that they wanted to delay or prevent formal diplomatic relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It has nothing to do with leftist fantasies of an open air prison or Palestinian despair.Report
Whereas Likud just…takes land and…uh…says exactly the same thing.
That was back in 2015. He backpeddled almost immediately, but…he’s stopped backpeddling at this point. Hey, what’s the alternatives being proposed by Israel if not a two-party solution?
Hey, did anything perhaps happen _before_ that?
Like, um, Israel invading the West Bank (Which they were claiming was no longer under their control) and raiding a house in Tulkarem, killing three Islamic Jihad members? It’s _really_ odd you didn’t mention, didn’t mention that literally the first thing Israel does after ‘withdrawing’ is to…come back in and kill people.
And…Islamic Jihad (Not Hamas) responded by firing rockets at Israel, which honestly seems somewhat reasonable because whatever truce was in place logically didn’t seem to apply to them.
Israel sent a helicopter into the West Bank, and…a refugee camp exploded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_23,_2005,_Jabalia_Camp_incident
Israel says they didn’t do that, Hamas says they did, but…Israel has pretty serious history about lying about this sort of thing. (If you don’t believe they lie, google ‘2006 Gaza beach explosion’, which happened literally the next year.)
But even if we assume they are not lying, Israel still ‘Leaves West Bank, immediately sends a raid into West Bank to kill enemy soldiers, who then shoot back at them’, so doesn’t get to ask ‘Hey, wait, we gave them their land back, why are we still being attacked?’.
Actually, what generally happens is that the bad actions of Israel are not acknowledged in any manner _at all_. Literally ignored. You just decided to pretend ‘Israel gave the West Bank back, and Hamas continued the war’, without noticing it was _Israel_ that continued the war. Just, straight up, Israel decided to continue to attack ‘enemy soldiers’ in the West Bank, which, yeah, makes people, uh, shoot back.Report
These guys, seriously, need to listen to John Lennon’s song “Imagine”.
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The Pro-Palestinian activists don’t realize how much damage Hamas has done to the Palestinians with this vicious raid. Whatever distance existed between Israel and the Democratic Party was more or less healed yesterday. European nations and Ukraine see Hamas as the Russia not as a brave little anti-colonial force. Other Muslim nations besides Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan said in nice words “Hamas, you idiots.”Report
Oh, yeah. Gaza is boned. Israel declared actual war. Like, they totally skipped over the “authorization of use of force” step.
But I think that the old mindset of “well, the most important thing is how Israel reacts to this” is going to kick in starting… well, it started yesterday.
And the academics who teach stuff like “Border Studies” are using this as an opportunity to discuss the importance of understanding real-world pragmatism when it comes to looking at Palestine and the importance of high moral standards when it comes to Israel.Report
The more important geo political question is whether Israel hasn’t also boned itself for this conflict. As I read it their government is increasingly subject to the will of its own religious fanatics who demand protection of the nominally secular state but who excuse themselves from the sacrifices necessary to maintain it. This won’t be like the 60s and 70s when Israel’s aspirations and people were more normal, and Western. Which isn’t to say they’ll be defeated in a traditional military sense, just that they’ll continue their march towards resembling the other failed states in the region, particularly those with secular trappings like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. So of course Hamas and the Palestinians will lose and lose bad but I’m not sure I see how the Israelis win.Report
I’ve seen it said that this is Israel’s 9/11.
Which means that it will have about a year of righteous fury and about a decade of shooting itself in the foot.Report
I mean, at the very least an open war is going to screw up a lot of Israel’s defense of their war crimes. Or, I guess, show we don’t care about war crimes _at all_.
Israel blew up a residential apartment on live TV, and were pretty clearly aiming for it: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/residential-building-in-gaza-city-flattened-by-israeli-airstrike-194652741731
This isn’t the only residential building they’ve brought down.
There’s no excuse of ‘Hamas was firing rockets out of there’ that Israel usually makes up. Just…a lot of straight up murder of civilians, right on camera. They just aim wherever, they talk about ‘retaliatory’ attacks for civilian deaths. This isn’t war, this is two sides attempting to kill each other _civilians_.
Again, I repeat what I said: ‘But…and I don’t want to make excuses for them, but we do all know that Israel has been, like, killing _their_ civilians for literally decades, right? ‘
Now it’s just…right in front of everyone. Maybe we’ll start talking about it at some point, stop pretending the only side killing civilians is Hamas.
But probably not.Report
The last time Israel waged war in Gaza, Israel claimed there was no way for them to kill Hamas leadership because their operation center was in the basement of the main Gaza Hospital.
If Israel is serious about dealing with Hamas, then a lot of human shields will get killed.
The war crime is putting a command center in the middle of a hospital, not blowing it up.Report
Hey, look, we have someone repeating Israel propaganda _even when Israel isn’t using it_.
As I said, Israel has not attempt to justify the fact it has destroyed _multiple_ residential buildings. Literally has not claimed they were used by military operation.
I know that’s a common lie they make, but _they have not actually made it_ here.
But anyway, you mean this: https://www.thetower.org/0810-israelis-know-hamas-leaders-hiding-in-shifa-hospital-because-they-built-the-bunkers/
Hey, have you ever asked yourself why, exactly, Israel built a military bunker under a hospital? Because, fun fact, the _Israel_ military used it before they withdrew in 2005. I guess that was fine somehow?
Have you also noticed…that’s a pretty unique circumstance that Hamas, who obviously cannot build actual headquarters because the blockade has basically meant nothing can be built, is using an existing structure, one that, it must be pointed out, is merely _offices_ because you can’t actually attack from there. You can’t launch attacks from bunkers.
Tell me, where exactly is Hamas, which remember is _the government_ of the Gaza strip, supposed to be operating from? The government building that were destroyed decades ago and cannot be rebuilt? The military based that do not exist and they cannot rebuilt?
This is, of course, assuming they are indeed using the bunker for anything, which…is unknown.Report
My expectation is we’ll get explanations eventually but this level of review in an active war is hard or not done.
It might be mistake, it might be something/someone important was there but whatever.
Picture trying to put the same level of accountability on Hamas. Every rocket sent into a civilian city to randomly blow up civilians is a new war crime. They openly do this, and their actual purpose in doing so is to terrorize a civilian population.
As we speak, they’re running around murdering civilians and kidnaping children to hold them for hostage.
If all you’ve got is “the Israelis are just as bad”, then I don’t see it.Report
You’re mistaken. All news reporting in war is complete before 12 hours have passed.Report
Hey, let’s rewind time. It’s 2021 now! And Israel is _also_ bombing a bunch of residential and commercial buildings. Back then, at least, they often warned people.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/what-is-behind-israels-targeting-of-prominent-buildings-in-gaza
Did they ever explain _why_ or present justifications for any of _that_?
Nope.
Although…warning people seems to imply it isn’t to kill someone specific in the building, or stop attacks from there.
It seems like they just wanted to destroy those buildings.
Destroy civilian infrastructure with no military justification in a war is a WAR CRIME.Report
Destroying civilian infrastructure with no military justification in a war is also a waste of explosives. So either they were really inefficient, or hated those buildings, or there was military value.
I also noticed that you jumped from the killing of civilians to the destruction of buildings. Were people killed in those attacks on buildings?
ETA: Also, Israel did claim that at least one of the buildings contained military targets.Report
…unless you want to hurt civilians, which is, incidentally, why it is a war crime. It serves no military objective.
I actually jumped from ‘destroying occupied building’ to ‘destroying unoccupied buildings’, for two reasons: 1) Both those are actually war crimes, even if the first is worse, and 2) that destruction of ‘unoccupied’ buildings also killed civilians.
Blowing up buildings via missiles and bombs, and I know this sounds weird, is actually incredibly dangerous and impossible to do without risking loss of life.
Part of that is because the warnings were _also_ firing missiles at the building, just…in a somewhat less destructive manner.
Some of these missiles did kill people, because they are indeed missiles and hit a building. Crazy, I know.
Some of these missiles actually missed, which sounds good until you realize that means the people were not warned and died when the building was brought down.
Sometimes, when these buildings fell down, people were injured and killed even without being in the building.
Indeed, the article itself talks about the deaths: ‘At least 227 Palestinians, including 64 children, have been killed and more than 1,500 others wounded, in what observers say has been Israel’s harshest targeting of civilian areas in the enclave to date’
Although for some reason that sentence has a typo and says ‘harshest targeting of civilian areas’ instead of ‘most war-crime-y’.
And, before anyone says anything, yes, this was in response to Hamas rocket attacks which killed 13 Israelis. Which _also_ was bad and a war crime…and was in response to yet another war crime committed by Israel. Etc, etc.Report
First of all, great link. Very much worth reading.
I tried to do a deep dive on some of them.
First building I can’t research. There are multiple other buildings with that name which are apparently popular.
2nd building is al-Jalaa tower.
I found another good link which basically asserts that you’re correct. Disproportional destruction, given the population density of Gaza there’s probably no way for Israel to legally bomb buildings there. So the conclusion is what Israel is doing is almost certainly illegal.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-claims-gaza-israel-army-bombing-jalaa
Link also goes over that Hamas is doing is openly and totally illegal, i.e. firing rockets at civilians and so on.
What’s missing is what is Israel supposed to do that’s legal?
If the answer is “suck it up”, then that doesn’t work. If the answer is “do good things for them and ignore that this will create more dead Jews, not fewer”, then that sounds a lot like “suck it up”.Report
It’s difficult to square circles, sometimes.
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The navel blockade was put there because Gaza, run by Hamas, was using trade to get resources to create dead Jews. If that’s changed, then you have a point. If it hasn’t, then it’s unrealistic to get Israel to fund the killing of Jews or to not step in when others are.
Gaza is an open air prison because Israel wants to keep the number of dead Jews to a minimum.
Israel and Gaza have a dysfunctional marriage. The worse Israel treats Gaza the better Gaza treats Israel. The better Israel treats Gaza the more dead Jews are created.
It’s hard to overstate just how nasty the side effects are. If Gaza wanted to simply hate Israel and long for a day when their army could defeat Israel’s, then they’d be a normal country with a territory dispute. If they use their armed forces to constantly attack civilians, then we’re in “nasty active war” territory.
Embracing terrorism at scale causes poverty and repression.Report
Okay, Dark Matter, I’m going to propose a hypothetical to you.
Imagine a world in which a repressive reign managed to have published in newspapers only the stuff that was done _to them_, and not the stuff they did.
Imagine how your viewpoint of people under that reign behaved would be skewed.
I made a response above which has a link in it to Wikipedia, and I want you to notice something coincidentally in it…not what it actually says (Although read that too), but the note at the bottom that Wikipedia has to provide:
The September 23 raid is not to be confused with the August 24 shooting in Tulkarem in which Israeli forces killed five unarmed Palestinians, including three teenagers. In the aftermath of the August 24 shooting, Israel offered an apology. In the September 23 raid, the three persons killed were actual Islamic Jihad members, according to Israel.
…Wikipedia has to disambiguate _which_ shooting by Israeli forces in Tulkarem they are talking about, as there was one a mere month earlier.
But the funniest thing is, there isn’t a cite for that, which is weird for Wikipedia. Israel admits they killed five people who were not armed or any sort of bad guys, and…there’s not a English newspaper for Wikipedia to cite. Not even offline. It didn’t make the papers at all. The only reason any of us know about, indeed the only evidence it happened, is this little note….which again, and I don’t think anyone is lying here, as apparently Israel admitted it screwed up and was at fault!
Meanwhile, we have literally every rocket attack in detail here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel_in_2002%E2%80%932006#2005
In fact, that list _itself_ talks about other attacks by Israel that, somehow, have no cite:
‘Hamas said it was in retaliation for an attack in which one Palestinian was killed near an Israeli settlement.’ // ‘The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said the Gaza rocket fire was in retaliation for the earlier IDF killing of a Palestinian in the northern West Bank.’
Did those killings happened? Probably. Did they make the papers enough for anyone to be able to track down? Nope.
Meanwhile, you know what we do have a lot of detail on? ‘Two Qassam rockets landed in kibbutz Karmia, south of Ashkelon, one of them in a football field, where children played only hours earlier, and injured one person’
It’s almost as if what is being presented to us is very deliberately distorted.
You know what actually might be more convincing to you? You know how you talk about unarmed Black people getting killed at the hands of police officers is way overblown, how statistically it is extremely rare. And you think people are sorta making mountains out of molehills, and we only ever hear one side of the story? Well…imagine if a whole country did that. Imagine if they managed to convince everyone that the people they were oppressing were violent thugs who just acted completely irrationally, mostly because people were not informed of anything happened _to those people_.Report
What is the claim here?
Are you claiming Hamas doesn’t randomly attack/kill civilians to create terror?
Are you claiming Israel does the same thing?
The number of Jews living in Gaza is zero, everyone on every side expects they’d be murdered. Israel’s Arab population is about 20 percent. If Israel is randomly killing Arabs then it’s weird that they’d go to Gaza for that.
Faict, the two sides are not ethically equivalent.
For example as a non-Jew non-Arab, my expectation is I could live in Israel as a minority just fine but if I lived in Gaza I could reasonably be killed or forced to convert simply because my religion is wrong.Report
Yes. That is the premise of everything I’ve been saying.
That’s not why there are no Jews in Gaza. There are no Jews in Gaza because Gaza is an incredibly shitty place to live if you have any other options, and Jews do, under the law. Why would any Jew move there? Well, except the ones that moved into specially created settlements that were defended by Israel and actually were pretty nice, but those got removed from Gaza back in 2005 when Israel ‘withdrew’.
And you’re about to ask where the Jews went who originally lived there…there weren’t actually that many to start with, but there probably were a few Jewish people living there who got killed in the Nakba. Pretty unlucky place for Jews to live to during all that, what with a lot of incredibly angry Palestinians refugees extremely pissed that Jews had just stolen their land and forced them out of their homes.
Why? It’s obviously easier to get away with murder somewhere else.
Moreover, you’ve suddenly switched from _terrorizing_ as a goal to _killing_ as a goal.
Israel does not need to terrorize people living under it with not enough population to have political power, who, it should be noted, tend to be extremely poor (So even less political power) and segregated from Jewish areas. Why would it bother to do that?Report
BSDI!Report
BSDI would be a quasi-reasonable objection if I was trying to defend Hamas’s war crimes, which I am not.
What I am saying is ‘We need to stop supporting _any_ side of this.’ (And, also, maybe pay a bit more attention to what is actually happening and not solely perceive this conflict via what Israel says, especially as they have repeatedly demonstrably lied about things. And, again, so does Hamas…but we believe the Israeli lies and not the Hamas ones, for some reason.)
To put it in a historical context : Let’s not support the Soviets _or_ al-Qeada in Afghanistan! Or let’s not support the Iranian Shah _or_ the Iranian Revolution in Iran.
Maybe, we shouldn’t unconditionally support an oppressive regime doing horrific things _or_ unconditionally support the people doing horrific things to overthrow said reign.
Maybe our goal should actually be that other countries were operated as some sort of liberal democracy with free elections and representation of all people, instead of us meddling to prop up the governments we want and remove the governments we don’t.
Just a wild and crazy idea, I know.
In fact, if we were to actually step back a second, we could probably reign in some of these war crimes by _selectively_ offering conditional support with strings attached. We could perhaps attempt to reach our goal, which again should be ‘a liberal democracy with free elections and representation of all people’, with the minimum bloodshed.
But we absolutely refuse to even consider doing that.
Sometimes BSDI is correct, because both sides are, in fact, horrific monsters. And it’s valid to point out we are inexplicably helping one of those monsters do horrible things to the other monster, and maybe that a) isn’t very moral, and b) almost certainly isn’t helping anything!Report
The Israeli conflict hits the radar as similar to England’s Northern Ireland’s “troubles”.
If the principals suggest we shouldn’t have helped England against Germany in WW2 because both of them are unethical, then there’s a flaw there.
That’s over and above the issue that the Palestinians being genocidally anti-sematic predate the occupation. They don’t want to be members of a Jewish state and the Jewish state will never allow genocidal anti-Semites to be members.
In theory Israel could end the occupation and unilaterally declare peace. They’d take the land they want, declare that to be their boarders, and do some forced relocations.
That’s basically what happened with Gaza. Israel sent in the army and forced the Jewish settlers to leave.
However if we’re going to use Gaza as a model of what peace looks like, then there’s a flaw there.Report
What? Check your Irish timeline again. The ‘Troubles’ didn’t even vaguely start until 1956, and really didn’t start until the late 60s.
Moreover, the implicit argument you’re making is that ‘WWII is was too important to not have helped on’, which…requires an external enemy. And us both fighting a war against _them_.
If you want an analogy of what is happening now, it would be like if we had funded Britain in the 90s with the understand they would used it to repress Northern Ireland, which…we shouldn’t have done that? I feel that’s sorta obvious.
In fact, that situation actually solved itself pretty damn quickly on the scale of things, with Northern Ireland and Britain coming to rather sane compromise that probably eventually is going to result in NI leaving, but not yet. (Maybe sooner due to Brexit)
If only Israel had to deal with, you know, both the cost and threat to personal safety for _their_ occupation. Instead of us funding a military that allows them to pour unlimited cash into doing whatever they want while keeping entirely safe.
…and now we rewind all the way back to why Hamas started this war. Israelis are scared, and worried Palestine can hurt them, and that was the point.
…before the occupation? You mean…the period of time where a bunch of Jewish people bought a bunch of land there and lived mostly in harmony? Until they…um…displaced all Palestinians from a large chunk of the country and seized their land, declaring themselves in charge?
What are you talking about?
Congratulations, you have just described why ethnostates can’t actually function as liberal democracies. You cannot privilege a certain group of people and operate as a democracy…especially if those people are outnumbered.
Um…that _is_ what they’re doing? What do you think the difference is?
They just can’t do it all at once because they have literally nowhere to _put_ the Palestinians besides land that they want. Because, spoiler, the land they want is all the land.
Although give everyone a couple of years and we’ll be justifying outright overt genocide because Palestinians were throwing rocks again.Report
I agree with the first part but disagree with the second. Standing back and letting Na.zi Germany take over Europe with the blithe claim that we weren’t involved ignores that the world is a small place.
Claiming all the players were ethically equal also seems a non-starter.
And there we go. The “occupation” includes the results of the war of 1949.
Most of the so called “liberal democracies” we deal with are ethnostates. The United States is the extreme exception, not Poland.
If we’re going to not help Israel because they’re an ethnostate, then we’re treating the Jews differently because they’re Jews.Report
With these kinds of numbers; We should see young lovers in love, businessmen seeing opportunities, do-gooders seeing opportunities to do good, and so on.
Attractive females in Gaza should be getting married to males outside of Gaza so they can move out, followed decades later by them going to back.
For there to be zero there must be people with guns involved threatening to use them. Thankfully for the sake of math and common sense, we don’t need to look far for that.
We have Hamas openly proclaiming that all the Jews must die and attacking Jewish civilians when they can. I don’t know why we need to search for a different explanation.Report
…how would this result in Jews in Gaza? Jews and Muslims aren’t allowed to marry under Israeli law. Also, I question where they would meet.
Yes, starting factories in a location where Israel blows up buildings instead of _in_ Israel seems like a good plan.
Also, a place with rolling blackouts for the last five years and limited medical care.
It’s pretty hard to get in: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/19/gaza-humanitarian-aid/
…why the _hell_ would they go back?
But also…what does that have to do with Jews being there?
You know what the big problem with this absurd logic of yours is? No _Arab_-Israelis migrate to Gaza. No Christians do it, and yes, there are about 1% Christians in Gaza that seem to be doing fine.
Hell, almost no Arabs from the _West Bank_ do it, and the West Bank itself is not a good place, but it is better than Gaza.
It’s almost as if it’s a place no one wants to live. And Jews, very specifically, have a legal _right under Israeli law_ to move literally next door to somewhere much nicer.Report
Hamas, using thousands of soldiers, killed or kidnaped every Jew they could get access to.
With that being showcased right now, the claim is this has nothing to do with why there are no Jews in Gaza? It’s purely an economic thing?
So if any Jews wanted to do something useful in Gaza (like the peace activists killed at the music festival for example), the expectation should be that Hamas would leave them alone?Report
Brutality is cheap. Targeted weapons are expensive.
If Israel has to choose between being more brutal to the Palestinians or letting them create more dead Jews, my expectation is they’ll choose the former.Report
US officials believe that Iran backed Hamas to do this attack to derail the Israel-KSA talks.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/significance-hamas-chose-attack-israel-now-rcna119351Report
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/09/no-evidence-yet-of-iran-link-to-hamas-attack-says-israeli-military#:~:text=The%20Israeli%20military%20has%20said,by%20the%20Iranian%20foreign%20ministry.Report
Bleeding out elsewhere… it’s now being reported that an Egyptian policeman has opened fire on a group of Israeli tourists (killing two, injuring six).Report
Andrew Tate comes out for Hamas because of his anti-Vaxx stance. We have found the stupidest take: https://x.com/ArmandDoma/status/1710900729794174983?s=20Report
The Pro-Palestinian Protests have begun in Times Square:
Report
This is extremely unscientific and anecdotal observation but I am seeing a lot of sympathy for Israel from people, nations, and organizations (ordinary and/or powerful) expressing sympathy and solidarity with Israel and these are people who would normally be Likud suspicious and/or critical of Israel’s actions in Palestine and to Palestinians directly. The indiscriminate nature of the Hamas attacks and terrorist strikes and hostage taking is not doing them any favors on the world stage.Report
Daily Kos has a long post on how Hamas learned all the wrong lessons from Russia and is basically committing own goals with this attack especially with the unmitigated violence against civilians: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/8/2198125/-Ukraine-Update-Hamas-learned-the-wrong-lessons-from-Russia?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=webReport
That Kos article was very good. What it boils down to is that the Israeli’s priority is protecting Israelis and if Palestinians get hurt as they try and do that (and many do because the Israelis somewhat desultorily try not to cause excessive collateral damage but it’s a profoundly second order goal), so be it. Hamas’ priority is hurting Israel and Israelis and if Palestinians get hurt as a consequence of that, so be it.Report
The WSJ has additional evidence that the attack was a realpolitik attack organized by Iran and Hamas to derail the Israel-Saudi diplomatic negotiations:
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25?mod=world_lead_pos2
This is one of the biggest own goals in Hamas and Iranian history. The Pro-Palestinian forces in the West from International Answer nuts to the Squad are engaging in massive misreadings of the room by either presenting Hamas at it’s most ghoulish as brave freedom fighters or calling for an immediate ceasefire before any shot by Israel into Gaza has been fired. Within one day Israel went from Prussia to Brave Little Belgium. It is always possible that Netanyahu or other Israeli politicians could mess this up but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be.Report
While I might wish that they were misreading the room, I’m not entirely certain that they are.
It’s a big room with a lot of corners in it.
Have you seen the CBC’s direction to its various affiliates?
The media has a lot of humanities majors in it. Maybe even a majority at this point.Report
Reposting ragebait from obvious hacks really gives me the impression that you have a good handle on the situation, Jaybird.Report
Eh, I’m not posting it to get you to rage. I’m posting it to show that the argument that “The Pro-Palestinian forces in the West from International Answer nuts to the Squad are engaging in massive misreadings of the room”.
It’s a big room. The big room has lots of corners.
Yesterday I probably would have agreed that Israel is going to win in the court of public opinion for at least a couple of months.
Today I don’t know that they will.Report
If someone starts with the conclusion that Israel is at fault for existing, then the murdered people are Israel’s fault.
The more neutral people are going to watch Israel take their army on a tour through one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. They’re going to be dealing with solders disguised as civilians, so they’re going to have to shoot anyone who might be a solder.
We’ll have a 90/10 percent male/female death rate (what we had last time), which probably translates into one out of five being a civilian.
However 100% of them will be dressed up as civilians and will claimed to be civilians by the civilians there. We’ll have otherwise serious people talk about how illegal all this is.
And Hamas will kill some of their captives and then plant their bodies where the Israeli army is and then claim the army killed them. Of course they might also release more videos of them torturing and sexually abusing their captive women and children so there’s that.Report
Where do the more neutral people get their news from?
Report
Weird question I know, but who exactly do you think _is_ at fault for Israel existing? I mean, it’s obviously not Israel, Israel can’t do things before it exists, but whose fault do you think it is?Report
I’m making a point to you about your information consumption habits. Mr. Atherton is making an effort to imply something about the CBC to make a crude and underhanded political point to people who don’t know how the CBC works. Your comments imply you bought his framing because you didn’t catch how you fell for the effort to manipulate you.
I’m suggesting you vet your information flow better.Report
The argument is not “oh my gosh, the CBC is *BAD*!”
The argument is “the narrative that you’re saying will be there will not, in fact, be there”.Report
Jaybird, clearly there are dozens or hundreds of people who aren’t like that, just off the screen to the left, shaking their heads and frowning but not saying anything out loud. There’s just gotta be.Report
Like I don’t understand why the Pro-Palestinian supporters can’t keep themselves quiet when Hamas is at it’s most ghoulish, I can’t understand why you are posting this besides the fact that you both can’t seem to control yourselves.Report
Because I am disagreeing that the pro-Palestinian forces are misreading the room.
Here. Check out this headline from the Washington Post:
Israel formally declares war against Hamas as more than 1,000 killed on both sides
I don’t think that Hamas is good and I don’t think that the two sides are morally equal.
But neither do I think that Israel is going to win in the court of public opinion. War is too sanitized now and the general idea is that “both sides” need to work together for peace.
It’s not “Israel is justified in defending itself”.
I mean, sure. On Fox News it is. But there are a lot of places that people get their news.Report
The Secretary of State is calling for a cease-fire.
Report
Huh. Blinken deleted it.Report
To most normies they look like a bunch of weirdos celebrating ghouls committing atrocities. Every major politician is denouncing them. You are just trying to say that the Democratic Party are the real anti-Semites and engage in some nut-picking by doing a comparison between the type of diplomacy that usually occurs in these events and these weirdos.Report
Right this minute the world mostly stands with Israel. Hezbollah launched one rocket to show they were standing with Hamas without actually standing with Hamas.
In a month we could have 20k dead Palestinians and there will be massive squeaks about “disproportional force” and massive calls to end the fight “without preconditions”.
We could also have torture vids released by Hamas to showcase just how vile they are and how justified Israel is.Report
Israel should not respond with an aerial bombardment of Gaza. Not only will it create many dead Palestinians and kill all or most of the hostages, it would be a big strategic political blunder on their part. One that they are capable of making. However, a carefully executed land incursion into Gaza that manages to rescue many hostages will make the IDF everybody’s darling again.Report
And the cop should have just shot the gun out of the guy’s hand.Report
The non-twitter normies have not seen any of the atrocities (seriously, the twitter timeline is *FULL* of stuff that would have only appeared on 4chan 10 years ago).
They, instead, see headlines like “Israel formally declares war against Hamas as more than 1,000 killed on both sides”.
What’s at the top of the New York Times right now?
“Israel and Hamas Battle; Netanyahu Warns of Long War”
Here. Look at it for yourself:
“Death Toll Rises as Families Search for News of Missing”
“Gaza Residents Express Surprise and Shock at the Brazen Attack by Hamas on Israeli Soil”
“The Attack Forced Israel Once Again to Confront the Conflict that has Haunted it since its Creation”
You are just trying to say that the Democratic Party are the real anti-Semites and engage in some nut-picking by doing a comparison between the type of diplomacy that usually occurs in these events and these weirdos.
Nope.
I’m disagreeing that this is an own goal and that the response is single-minded.
It is, at best, nuanced and calling for both sides to come to an agreement.
The nuts that I am picking are not AOC and Tlaib and the rest of the squad.
The nuts that I am picking are the Secretary of State and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Report
Nut picker, nut picker. They might not have watched the videos but they have heard of Hamas parading about the body of dead young woman.Report
Yes, they have. And they will also hear about the videos of Israel striking an apartment building.
“But the apartment building was also harboring Hamas! It was a *WEAPONS DEPOT*!”
“Yeah. The newspaper story said that the Palestinians denied that but the Israelis asserted it.”
Again: This is not me giving my opinion on either Israel or on Palestine.
My opinions on the Palestinians are a heck of a lot more risible than the ones about the Israelis, I tell you what.
But the debate isn’t going to play out in stuff that is obvious to me.
Good lord, the stuff that is obvious to me is missed by a lot of people.
In this case, it’s obvious to me that the narrative is not “this is a huge blunder on the part of Hamas, everybody is on the side of Israel now!”
The narrative seems to be “This is awful, both sides need a cease-fire and to come to some sort of peaceful agreement!”Report
It is a weird day that I agree with Jaybird on this, although I think he disagrees with these people, whereas I think these people are…I mean, they are not ‘right’, a ceasefire cannot possibly solve any of these problems, but they are right in that they do actually see the problem as being caused by both sides.
I think it’s actually a lot to do with age, and honestly I suspect age is doing a lot here at OT. We are old people.
Young people have actually paid a lot more attention to this situation than older people have, or at least haven’t ingested the steady stream of ‘everything Palestine is evil and bad and everything Israel does is merely a reasonable response to that no matter how obvious illegal it is or if it kills a bunch of people’ that the media has put out for some time. Also they have noticed that Israel is using just as genocidal rhetoric as Hamas, and has been for a decade, it just doesn’t seem to get any airtime.Report
Here’s another nut:
“But he’s lying! It’s obvious to everyone!”
“Yes. He’s lying. I don’t know that it’s obvious to everyone.”Report
Oh, it’s obvious to everyone, but these days everyone’s decided that lies are the real truth.Report
To me it this a prime example of why pro-Palestinian people generally don’t go well on mainstream media in the United States. I think it is obvious to everybody accept the most deluded members of the Extremely Online that this is a bold faced lie or he believes every Israeli Jew is a military target.Report
Really? Because what I saw was the interviewer making claims about Hamas attacking civilians without any footage of, for example, the hippiechicks at the rave but when the Palestinian spokesperson started talking about Israel destroying apartment buildings, there was helpful footage showing an apartment building being felled.Report
Jaybird, you know that media isn’t going to show these videos because it is very gruesome. The felling of apartment buildings looks less gruesome.Report
I wasn’t talking about the ones where they were parading her body.
Merely the ones where she was dancing happily and/or the one where paratroopers landed in the middle of everything.Report
And we have a street fight in Florida.
(Florida *MAY* be an outlier.)
Report
Street fights in Seattle.
Report
You just can’t help yourself, can’t you?Report
Semi-related to all of this but there is a strain of Western Leftist thought that basically goes it makes sense for X group not to trust the world because of Y history. X group could be the Palestinians, the Iranians, African-Americans, LGBT people or many others. Now you can make this same sort of argument for Jews. “It makes sense for Jews not to trust because the world turned a blind eye during the Holocaust when six million Jews were killed during the culmination of hundreds of years of anti-Semitism.” Nobody makes this argument. Funny that.Report
I am just finding the reaction of the people holding pro-Hamas rallies and cheering on what they did to be inexplicably dumb. Most normies are going to see this as cheering on the death of innocent Jews plus tourists and immigrant workers in Israel. They aren’t going to see it as settler-colonialists getting their own just desserts. It makes the argument that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism really apparent because here we have the anti-Zionists clapping on what looks like a pogrom. The only explanation is that they spend so much time talking among themselves alone that they can’t comprehend anybody not agreeing with them and see everybody else as an NPC in the video game in their headspace.Report
According to some BBC interviewer, most or all of the deaths were in areas the UN considers to be Israeli.
It lays bare that “the occupation needs to end” means “all of Israel” for some groups rather than the west bank.
They are highlighting that this is where their heads are at. For them this was a victory because all of Israel needs to be destroyed and the land given to the Palestinians.
I would call the West dumb for not understanding this is where they’re at and what they want.
They’re still fighting over whether or not the Jews get a state. Occupation of the West bank and the settler movement certainly don’t help the cause of peace, but big picture they don’t matter because peace isn’t an option.Report
I actually think your framing here is far more misleading, by presuming there is anything like symmetry between the actors involved. The Israelis have a state, secured by conventional supremacy of their military and nuclear weapons. They have also done a decent enough job at de facto normalizing relations with many of the regional actors (all of whom are objectively poorer and weaker), the exception being Iran. That question of their statehood is completely settled by facts on the ground, no matter what Hamas or anyone else says or puts on some piece of paper. The open questions are the size of their state and what kind of state it’s going to be, particularly with respect to the non citizens within the area the Israeli government controls, or until very revently controlled, by force of arms.Report
A conversation I had yesterday with someone only tangentially aware that there was an attack of some kind in Israel.
“Yeah. It’s bad. Israel formally declared war and everything.”
“Against who? Themselves? Is Palestine a country now?”Report
That is the fundamental unreality that I think the Israelis need to walk away from if they want to stay a democratic state that functions as well as secular societies while remaining a Jewish sanctuary. It’s not that different from what we dealt with after 9/11 where there was constant fixation on what bin Laden and other Muslim terrorists said instead of a realistic assessment of what they were actually capable of doing. Given Israel’s history it’s a bit more understandable that they cling to that mentality since their being an actual underdog under siege by their neighbors was reality in living memory, but it just isn’t the case anymore.Report
The payments to Palestinians that were going to be suspended are no longer suspended.
Report
Thoughts that keep running through my mind are “What is the end game?” and “So how’s that workin’ out for ya?”
These are applicable to all parties involved.
For as long as I have been old enough to read the news, the Palestinians have been fighting with the Israelis and over the course of 50 plus years, their situation has steadily deteriorated to resemble our Native American reservations in their worst times.
And during the same course of time, the situation of the Israelis has deteriorated also to the point where they are virtually prisoners in their own land surrounded everywhere by checkpoints and armed guards and with the suffocating fear of something like this.
So it amazes me, really does, that in all this time there hasn’t been much of a groundswell of people asking “So how’s this workin’ out for us?” and “What is our end game here?”Report
As somebody on the other blog pointed out, whether we in the West like this or not, regardless of where our sympathies lie, there is a lot of religious motivation on both the Israelis and Palestinian sides. A sizable minority of Israeli Jews believe that they a right to all of Eretz Israel because of the Torah. Many more people on the Palestinian side believe that Palestine is part of the Realm of Islam and could never leave the Realm of Islam and that all the Jews need to go away because of the Prophet. Not recognizing this and continuing to see the thing in entirely secular terms won’t get us anywhere.
Another issue is that both sides have been egged on to the point of impractical thinking forever. Less so for the Israelis because they get plenty of criticism from other Jews and Westerners but the Palestinians have been told by their fellow Arabs, Muslims, and activist sympathizers that they are entirely right. Every Jews in Israel is a settler-colonialist even if they live in Tel Aviv or Haifa and they have a right to demand Jews out. I can’t think of anybody sympathetic to the Palestinians who ever told them to get a more realistic perspective on their situation like people sympathetic to the Israelis have.Report
Even if we imagine the most idealistic scenario, like suppose there is a total unconditional surrender by the Gazans and Israel can simply dictate terms like the US in 1945.
What would those terms be? From my reading, and I can easily be mistaken, it sounds like the bulk of Israel’s population doesn’t have a coherent answer to that.
Like, do they want the Palestinians to live as happy Israeli citizens in a secular multicultural European style nation?
Or to live forever as a subjugated underclass?
Same question could be directed in the other direction. The official position of Hamas (unlike Al Fatah) is genocide. Aside from being insanely implausible, do they really in their minds eye envision a future where the state of Palestine exists, atop mass graves of millions of Israelis?
And they imagine that someone like Chip in Los Angeles is going to say “Oh yes, that certainly sounds like a plan, here let me donate to to your cause”?Report
This is why Israel needs to keep its head but also work to whatever that plausible answer is. They may not be able to totally dictate the terms but they’re going to be in the infinitely stronger position.
This tactic from Hamas reads as a sign of desperation after Israel’s slow, but successful rapprochement with its neighbors. If all Palestinian militias are reduced to proxies of Iran instead of a nationalist movement with support from the rest of the Muslim ME then they have lost forever. From that vantage the worst possible thing to do would be to accept Hamas’ demand to reignite the conflict as something existential between Jews and Arabs.Report
For Hamas, yes. They imagine killing all the infidel Jews. The PLO just wants the Jews to go home. I agree that the Palestinians are not going to go away either.Report
Like in 1945?
Israel takes the land it wants, gives away the land it doesn’t want, and the Palestinians on the land which Israel wants move to the new land.
This is exactly what Russia did with Poland in 1945. Russia took about 70k square miles of Poland’s land and told the natives to move. Germany lost land which was given to Poland. The Polish people who had to move mostly relocated to the previously German land.
These sorts of large population transfers probably need to happen in this situation if we’re going to square the circle of Israel wanting to be both Jewish and Democratic.Report
How’s that “large population transfer” thingy workin’ out for them?
Putin said that Poland appears to have interests in retaking eastern territories it lost to former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin, including “a good chunk of Ukraine … to take back the historic lands.” He added that “it’s well known that they dream of Belarusian lands as well.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit back later on Friday, tweeting that “Stalin was a war criminal, guilty of the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles.” He said that the ambassador of the Russian Federation will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-warns-poland-attack-belarus-russia/#:~:text=Putin%20said%20that%20Poland%20appears,of%20Belarusian%20lands%20as%20well.%E2%80%9D
Maybe its too soon to tell. Lets give it another century.Report
Almost every country’s creation was a crime where the land was stolen from whoever owned it before.
The only country I can think of off hand which didn’t do this is South Sudan.Report
On the other blog as Lee puts it, there are commenters who seem to me to be getting close to kind of secretly hoping that Netanyahu and the Israeli Right go for a maximalist response that involves not caring about the hostages. The reasons for this seem to be:
1. A hope that it finally does in the dreaded Bibi and Israeli Right; and
2. Hopefully leads to a sudden reversal of the past forty-eight hours where Israel went from Big Bad Apartheid State/Prussia to Brave Little Belgium as Lee puts it.
Pardon me but this is pretty ghoulish and off-putting. No one is stating it directly but I get the distinct impression that a number of people are dog whistling about it.Report
There is a lot to be said for punishing hostage taking and mass murder rather then rewarding them.
If that’s going to happen here, then it needs to happen at scale.Report
Deteriorated? Before yesterday, the current situation is a vast improvement on what they had before.
For a long time it was widely assumed that Israel’s neighbors would get their act together and exterminate them. After the 80’s expansion there was wave after wave of bombs on buses and other acts, effectively multiple 911s.
After the failed 2000 peace agreement it was assumed that there would never be peace. Unfortunately if there’s nothing that Israel can do which will make the Palestinians happy then they might as well be unhappy with less.
Israel is the strongest entity there but as long as we’re stuck on the issue of whether or not there will be a Jewish state, there’s not much that can be done for ending the conflict.
For Israel the end game is “the Palestinians accept that they’ve lost the wars and leave or accept they live as minorities in a Jewish state”. For the Palestinians the end game is “the Jews leave or are destroyed”.
Those two positions are far apart.Report
The Palestinians to leave and go where? That’s where they were born. There’s nowhere they can go to. Expulsions worked in the XV or the XIX century, but not in these days of passports and nations.
Live as minorities how? Like blacks in the USA in 2023? It might not be great, but there’s formal equality, there’s voting, there’s a lot. Or as blacks in South Africa in the 1970s? Formal apartheid, for generations.
It is clear that Israel will always militarily win whatever war the Palestinians throws at them. Israel has to decide what the peace is going to be. And for whatever reason, they have never put forth what is Israel’s end plan.Report
Expulsions, on both sides, created Israel and were the rocket fuel of it’s growth.
Israel was created with tens of thousands of Jews, that increased by 10x by the surrounding nations kicking their Jews out who fled to Israel.
Modern day Poland’s borders was created by expulsions in ’45.
Modern day India and Pakistan also were created by this sort of thing in ’47 (ish).
Armenia and Azerbaijan are doing this to redraw borders right now (they might be done, it’s been a week or two since I was listening to this).
As fun as it is to propose Israel become a multi-ethnic non-ethnostate, no one there on any side wants it.
If we’re going to insist that Israel force a cram down peace without the consent of any of the other players in the region, then it’s probably going to look a lot like what the USSR did to Poland+Germany after WW2 or what Great Britain did to India (later India plus Pakistan).
We have two peoples who have opposite ideas on what ethnostate should be there. I’m not sure how we get peace without separating them. Israel as the strongest player would presumably be the one doing that.Report
Turkey and Greece ‘exchanged’ populations in 1923 via Treaty. Primarily after Greece attempted to assert irredentist claims on the mainland after WWI and the Ottoman demise (and, it should be noted, in the face of Turkish genocide of Christians esp. Armenians between 1919-1922); famously striking for Ankara and retreating in disorder through Smyrna, the Greek part of which was burned to the ground with the English fleet watching in the harbor.
My Grandmother (15) and her family were among a minority who made it on to a boat as Smyrna burned. The formal exchange happened approximately a year after Smyrna when the Greek ‘Liberation/Invasion’ was destroyed by Ataturk.
Notably, the Armenians had fewer options by virtue of geography and mis-aligned cultural affinities.
Muslims and the remainder of Christians were ‘exchanged’ based specifically on Religion, not language or culture. Massive hardships for everyone involved. Was it better in the end? Probably? But it’s not entirely a rational policy you invoke outside of the dust settling after war where the alternative to rebuilding in a hostile land is State Mandated self deportation.
Are there lessons learned? A repeatable model? I don’t think so, not in the way most people try to use History. Just something to recognize that human affairs contain every sort of attempt at resolving conflicts — and none ever end-up in the ‘dustbin of history’.Report
There’s a semi parallel with ethnic Germans who were expelled from Poland and other parts of eastern Europe/the Baltics. Even now there’s a small constituency of them that still make noise periodically in Germany but for a host of obvious reasons no one outside of the crank community is eager to take up their cause in any more than a cursory way. And from a practical perspective they ended up in a pretty good country to live in compared to the alternatives.
To your point though I think we shouldn’t look post hoc at things that from a safe distance kinda sorta worked out as a blueprint for solving current conflicts.Report
Yeah, I don’t think there’s a blueprint; just things that will happen after other things happen. I’ve looked at and written so many position papers, case-studies and essays about the Middle East since approx. 1987 that my youthful exuberance for the topic is gone. I can honestly say that in a shape-turning sort of way, the problem looks mostly the same despite 40-yrs of events. Will this materially change the shape? Don’t know.Report
Good for you, you corrected my chronology, but reminding me that:
Poland expelled Germans into Germany
India expelled Pakistanis into Pakistan
Pakistan expelled Indians into India
Azerbaijan will probably expel Armenians into Armenia
And of course, Greece expelled Turks into Turkey, and Turkey expelled Greeks into Greece, and we are probably forgetting some others
However, after all this nitpicking you ignored the substantive question:
Where will Israel expel the Palestinians to/ Palestina?Report
It’s good to have a territory with your name on it. The Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran haven’t been expelled, just suffered from attempted suppression, assimilation, and/or genocide. Clearly they’ve been trying, without success, to get the US to back a Kurdistan. I don’t know if there’s a global/regional power willing to force creation of a Palestine again.Report
The poor Dutch went to the Nether Lands.Report
Israel’s neighbors could absorb the Palestinian population, if their own countries were more stable. The Palestinians have been in Palestine a long time, but it’s not like they have deep roots in their current locations. It’d be like moving from Seattle to Tacoma. The neighbors don’t want them, though, because they’re not governable, and in their current location they’re an embarrassment to Israel, and that outweighs anything.Report
The Arab regional governments that could take them in have of course been cynical about the subject, and definitely anything but constructive. But I think it’s a little more complicated than that. Israel has (or at least once had) aspirations as a liberal society, founded by people who were themselves expelled. While I can’t imagine the level of disillusionment liberal Israelis have experienced over the last decades I’m not sure expelling the Palestinians is something they feel they can do unilaterally.Report
I must have been unclear. In theory Israel could implement by force something like the peace deal that was offered to Arafat in 2000.
They take the land they want. They give the land they don’t want (less than what was on the table in 2000 but whatever). They force a population transfer. They end the occupation and let the Palestinians set up a “country”.
The advantage would be it’d tear the bandage off and stop the bleeding. Defined boarders. Israel can be a democracy for it’s entire land. Separated populations. The various land issues settled.
The disadvantage is it’s illegal and unethical and would cause a massive squeak among everyone who dreams of peace with no Jews.
The serious disadvantage is they tried this with Gaza. The new government might put every dollar into terrorism and Israel would have to go to war again and again.
The aspect that isn’t a disadvantage is it doesn’t really settle the conflict. However as far as I can tell, nothing can settle the conflict.
There are ways to make it somewhat less unethical. Israel could offer to pay people and so on. However at the end of the day they’d need to send in the Army to force both sets of fanatics (Jewish and Arab) to leave “their” land if it’s on the wrong side of the line.Report
You keep whistling right by the issue that Israel wants all the land and is not ultimately willing to give the Palestinians any land. You can’t effect your transfer when there’s no place to go.Report
The peace plan of 2000, which Israel was willing to do, had land transfers.
If we picture them implementing that by force, then the huge painful difference will be they keep more land and especially keep all that both sides consider holy.
So this is really ugly from the Palestinian point of view right there.Report
Hamas is showing us they’ve the same lesson that school shooters in America did, which is that if you have a gun and they don’t, and you don’t mind dying, then you can kill quite a lot of people. And in the end, that’s what they’ve always wanted, is to have fun killing Jews.Report
This is a good point DD and core to the dilemma on the Palestinian side. Hamas wants to kill israelis no matter the consequences, the Israelis want to defend Israelis and will accept dead Palestinians if that’s what it costs to defend Israelis. The Palestinians don’t really have an organized group who’s primary goal is to defend and advance Palestinian interests- just ones who’s goal is to kill Israelis. There is the PA but their goal is more to simply suck up money and stay in power, nothing more.Report
From the horse’s mouth from 2 hours ago:
Twitter translate says that this translates as: “we started. Israel will win”Report
Scott Adams is nuts, sure, but he had an interesting tweet:
Text, in case it gets deleted:
Due to timing, I read that tweet about 10 minutes before I read this one:
So… should Israel be willing to engage in talks for Peace or what?Report
Looks like Israel isn’t willing to engage in talks for Peace.
Report
Haaretz reported that Hamas threatened to kill one hostage for every building destroyed by Israel. I don’t think this is going to work out for them the way they think it will. The West has been sympathetic towards Israel in this. Currently I see Facebook profiles changing to add small Israeli flags. Murdering hostages is not going to make anybody who wasn’t in agreement more sympathetic towards Hamas. The Pro-Palestinian forces in the West have been making absolutely fools of themselves for the most part by treating Hamas as brave freedom fighters rather and celebrating their most ghoulish atrocities as defiance against colonialism. Like not one of the Pro-Palestinian advocates can come out and say the right thing in this situation. Instead we get “Hamas only targeted military installations” or calling an attack in Israel proper against a rebellion against colonialism.Report
Yeah, “We will kill one hostage for every building” is straight up a Joker line from some new version of Dark Knight.
Hard to imagine this resonating with anyone not in the jihadi mindset.
And if an American is one of them, I would expect some missiles being launched.
If the execution is televised, the possibility of American boots on the ground becomes very high because that’s how we roll.Report
Per NPR, 9 Americans have been killed so far.Report
I mean the Pro-Palestinian supporters in the West turned out to be utterly tone deaf and were having rallies to support Hamas as brave freedom fighters as their most ghoulish. Even if you don’t like Israelis or Jews that much, some common strategical thinking would dictate now is the time to shut up. Instead we have the DSA and others having massive rallies about brave Hamas when most of the West is seeing Israel as Brave Little Belgium.Report
Think about the USA celebrating the fire bombing of Tokyo in WW2. They think this is total war, they think there is no such thing as a Jewish civilian, and the war needs to end with all the Jews being driven away or killed.
This was a massive victory from their point of view.Report
The problem with fanatical true believers is that they probably do not do normal risk calculations. We should take Hamas seriously and literally when they state they want a Jewish-free Middle East. The issue for Westerners with Palestinian sympathies is that recognizing this in Hamas means possibly having to give some deference to Israeli hardliners that they despise.Report
This, writ large, is the central problem confronting all secular democracies.
I think the primary assumption to this point has always been to assume that all people everywhere are as you call it, a secret Disney liberal and just naturally yearn for a secular egalitarian society.
We’re discovering that even right here in America maybe only a slim majority actually do.Report
The Secret Disney Liberal is my term. As George Orwell noted, a lot of people are drawn to extreme ideologies like Stalinism or Fascism because they provide a sense of meaning and grand adventure. They offer epic clashes between the forces of good and evil. Liberalism does not. This makes it lack visceral excitement too many people.Report
Should the fact that Israel could nuke Gaza off the face of the Earth, or has modern aircraft, tanks, artillery, and 1st world caliber infantry that can make mince meat out of Hamas gunmen in any conventional fight weigh into how we consider those threats? Whereas what we saw over the weekend is probably about the best Hamas could ever hope to do? It’s ugly, stupid, and brutal but it can’t inflict any serious damage on the Israeli military or hold captured territory, much less wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Anyway I don’t see how that perspective is any less delusional than the people under the impression that Palestinian militiamen would totally be sane, peaceful liberals but for the boots on their necks.Report
They don’t need to defeat Israel in order to win.
Modern guerilla wars have proven that even at some massive disparity of conventional power, a guerilla force can make an entire nation virtually ungovernable.
And unlike traditional colonizing forces, Israel can’t withdraw to the safety of thousands of miles of sea. No matter what happens, those Hamas fighters will always be within sight distance of Israeli settlements.
As I mentioned above, living in an apartheid settlement means living in a state of constant terror and rage, always waiting for the bomb on the bus or the gunman to open fire at a ballet recital.
On Friday night, Israelis went to bed living in a fortress and today the walls have been shown to be worthless.
I’ll say it again- both sides have been pursuing the same strategy of guerilla warfare and hardening of target for longer than most people here have been alive, and neither one has brought them even an inch closer to any recognizable goal.Report
I take Hamas at their word when they say their goal is to remove Jews from the Middle East. So they kind of do need to defeat Israel.Report
Israel can’t really nuke Gaza without doing a lot of damage to Israel communities as well.Report
To be clear I don’t think Israel would ever actually do that. I mention it, along with their modern military, because it means that Israel and its people cannot be eliminated by force, not by the Palestinians, not by any of the other states in the region.
To Chip’s point the threat to Israel is political in nature, not military. Contrary to what you see online I think all reasonable people understand that the Palestinians played their cards terribly. They destroyed their credibility and lost the sympathy they needed in the halls of power in the West after the 2nd intifida, and most of their regional sponsors have deteriorated into their own internal political and economic turmoil or simply lost patience with a cause they know is going nowhere. That creates both opportunities and challenges for Israel. The challenge is that finding a lasting solution is Israel’s cross to bear with very little constructive coming from the other side, but the opportunity arises from their having a relatively free hand by virtue of the fact that the threat is not existential anymore and hasn’t been for a long time.Report
As I wrote, True Believer and Religious Fanatics do not make the same risk/benefit calculations as normal people, and if things get really bad, that might be what is what suicide runs are for.
I’m not getting to why Hamas choose now. Geopolitics are complicated and there are probably a whole bunch of reasons. Israeli domestic politics forced Bibi to put a good chunk of the IDF watching over Settlers and the West Bank, so there was a sense of opportunity at least. But I simply don’t think they are making the same calculation of “Gee, killing 200 plus people at a music concert and kidnapping at least 150 civilians (probably more) is a going to hurt our cause and evaporate the goodwill the Palestianians have.” They are not thinking in those terms. If anything, I think they are kind of trolling Israel to a hopefully maximum response.Report
There are 1000 or more Israeli dead so far.Report
Hamas will get the ‘Lee Greenwood/Toby Keith’ treatment? lol.Report
Here’s how Forbes is covering that:
Report
Someone posted the title wrong. It’s not “unprompted”, it’s “without prior warning”.
Hamas Threatens To Execute Israeli Civilian Hostages For Attacks On Gaza ‘Without Prior Warning’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/10/09/hamas-threatens-to-execute-israeli-civilian-hostages-for-unprompted-attacks-on-gaza/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=forbes&utm_term=se-breaking&sh=2ff861b1417eReport
Huh. Your link still says “unprompted”.
I understand that the writers don’t write the headlines.Report
BBC has a list of foreign nationals killed
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67054825?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_link_type=web_link&at_campaign_type=owned&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_medium=social&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_link_origin=BBCWorld&at_link_id=BF0E80E6-66AB-11EE-9EE2-7859681DE14E&at_format=link&at_ptr_name=twitterReport
One argument that I see over and over again about the Palestinians in the West Bank is a variant of Gene Marks’ “If I were a Poor Black Kid” Forbes article (now removed from the web entirely) and I have to admit that both arguments miss a lot of points.
While I appreciate where Mr. Marks is coming from…
Well, it won’t work for the Palestinians either.
And here we are.Report
Not going to post the link but Israeli Defense Forces found the bodies of 40 dead babies at liberated Kfar Aza. This is not going to go well.Report
The DSA types and the various “elite” college Palestinian Liberation Front social groups didn’t really surprise me. This has been going on for a while, after all.
The BLM people showing up kind of surprises me.
I mean, not because of Intersectionality. Anyone sufficiently intersectional would know where BLM would shake out on the issue.
But I thought that they were a bit more… myopic?Report
If extremist factions joining together to support illiberal groups surprises you, you should probably refrain from talking about politics:
On October 8, a group of individuals associated with the white supremacist White Lives Matter California posted an image of themselves on Telegram holding a “No More Wars for Israel” banner.
https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/white-supremacist-leaders-applaud-hamas-and-violence-against-israelisReport
BLM is extremist?
Golly, it’s only 2023!
Wacky.
Yeah, I am nowhere near good enough to keep up with fashion.Report
I think we can conclude that BLM is run by DSA elite college types. Or at least whoever is running a BLM twitter accounts is.Report
Or some crank who decided to type “B-L-M” into a Xitter accountReport
BLM (Global Network) was always very invested in Intersectional Theory; when I first looked into them prior to their breakout moment with George Floyd it was interesting to me to see it as explicit as it was. The website was modified in (or around) 2020 during the protests to refocus a bit more on their ‘core’ mission.
Which, by-the-by: “It’s Still Defund the Police. 10 years later, our vision hasn’t changed. Defund the police. Invest in our communities. Watch our latest video, released during the week of our movement’s 10 year anniversary.” https://blacklivesmatter.com/defund-police/
It was (and is) fundamentally a ‘hothouse flower’ organization more than anything else.Report
Nut picking in Aisle 11, nut picking in Aisle 11.Report
And now BLM is also nuts.
Seriously. This is making me totally reevaluate 2020.
I can’t *WAIT* until “CRT” comes up again.Report
What you are attempting to do is so obviously transparent, there is no need to take it seriously.Report
The stuff that needs to be taken seriously is stuff that constantly needs to be hammered out, isn’t it?Report
They’ve apologized. Kinda. Sort of.
Report
That twitter post has been taken down.Report
Yeah, and they’ve apologized. Kinda. Sort of.Report
AOC calls out DSA Protest at Times Square filled with bigotry and callousness:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/aoc-slams-democratic-socialists-of-america-for-supporting-pro-palestine-rally
The New York Democratic Party also denounced the DSA rally and Biden minced no words against Hamas today.Report
The best explanation on how some groups are being so boneheaded about this comes from the other blog. Basically it was safe for Western groups to support Palestinian hardliners for a long time because it didn’t look like they could carry out any significant threat against Israeli Jews and Israeli Jews were being needlessly paranoid. This shows that the Palestinian hardliners not only say they are going to kill every Jew, they are willing to do so if the opportunity presents itself. This means that the Western groups supporting the hardliners either have to come to “are we the baddies ” type realization or just keep on going.Report
There are a bunch of Harvard Student Groups that are retracting their signatures from the Joint Statement Calling Attention to Historical Injustice in Palestine.
Apparently, some enterprising people started naming the names of the people who were members of the various groups that signed and, whoa doggies, they’re retracting.
Report
This or similar events might have been extra motivation.Report
I’ve seen a handful of people tweet fairly stupid (if I may say so) things and then getting fired. A sports writer, a Content Creator…
Seeing a guy who was going to go into BigLaw get his offer rescinded is…
Well, I have to assume that it’s fake because it makes me laugh.
How do you get a $200,000/year job defending Corporations and not know that you can’t celebrate Kinetic Decolonialism LOUDLY IN PUBLIC WHERE YOUR BOSSES WILL SEE YOU.
Jeez louise, we’ve had Cancel Culture for almost a decade now.Report
Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of tumblr posts about this.
Report
And private citizens making the student names public. Google these names in the future and you’ll see this document.
Curious, I googled a few of the names on the list and, yep, this website is among the first 10 that showed up for two of the three.
Those of you close to your HR departments where you work… do they google people?Report
Heh. This is a publicly usable form.Report
To edit?
Or just to submit information?Report
Well, in the hard light of morning, it looks like it is no longer publicly usable.
The form has this addition since yesterday (presumably prior to the submission form being yanked):
“Note: one student contacted us to endorse terrorism; it is unclear whether he belongs to any organization
“My name is (redacted), year 2024 undergrad of Harvard College. I stand with the freedom fighters fighting against the Zionist state of Israel.”
(I, Jaybird, redacted it. The name is still visible on the form.)
And the first thing I thought was that this would be a good way to screw over that guy in Economics class who kept irritating you by arguing with the professor.Report
I understand the whole thing about hypocrisy being the tribute vice pays to virtue but I think this sort of reaction is worth condemning as much as any other. It goes without saying that these petitions are stupid. But is this form of unhinged radicalism really worth singling out from the other forms of unhinged radicalism on race, sex, ‘gender,’ and whatever other leftism being cooked up in academia? Seems like the two things that can get this kind of reaction are saying something that might be vaguely to the right of the furthest left 5% of the population or something less than 100% sympathetic about Israel. What a triumph.
There’s not a person out there who has never expressed a stupid opinion. Especially a person in college. The response to people who sign things like this is to roll your eyes and express a better supported opinion. The students are dumb but Bill Ackerman and whatever CEOs he’s talking about asking for lists are bad people.Report
I’m torn — on the one hand I absolutely agree with you, it’s just part of the college period to flirt with some kooky ideas that dwindle away after time in the real world. It would be a shame to see a random signatory of one of these lists actually lose opportunities because of it. On the other hand, the real possibility that you might be held accountable for the things you say or sign on to is a necessary counterbalance to youthful excess. If this largely remains a threat rather than an actuality, it’s probably a healthy learning opportunity; and having a small number of prominent outliers be impacted is a useful part of that, pour encourager les autres.Report
Supporting murderous anti-Semitism is not just a kooky idea.Report
Asking a university to dox its own students seems to me to be a bridge too far. Likewise those students being doxed by random people. Nevermind the whole First Amendment issue – which as usual conservatives are whistling right by.Report
Nevermind the whole First Amendment issue – which as usual conservatives are whistling right by.
Private companies can do whatever they want.
And that includes *NOT* hiring law students who say stuff like “I didn’t read the statement before I signed it!”Report
If that’s the actual outcome, and given how fleeting these outrages are I’d be a bit surprised if it’s even that, then it’s hard to get too upset about it. My beef is with the idea that illiberalism must be met with illiberalism. I assume we can all see the irony of suggesting that the solution to a bunch of people signing an illiberal statement is to start putting them on a list.
Now, I am very conscious of the fact that any action between ivy league college students and CEOs and senior partners at Big Law is in practice not a matter of much impact for the vast majority of society. I also am typically of the mindset that the best cure for some of the nuttier ideas out there is exposure to the real world outside of hot house academic environments. Would that all of these things were subject to far more pressure testing than they ever seem to be.
But there also has to be a point where we say radicalism is counter productive, especially with this sort of issue. Radicalism begets radicalism. Yglesias had a good post to this effect this morning.
Using this example, does anyone think this kind of reaction to the petition makes people skeptical of the Israelis more likely to reconsider their stance? It goes without saying that unhinged statements about how it’s actually all Israel’s fault in the immediate aftermath of innocent Israeli civilians being massacred isn’t doing any favors for the Palestinians, and that the encouragement of implausible, maximalist demands in the West is a contributing factor to why they have failed to rise to every opportunity. However Ackerman is guilty of exactly the same kind of thing. Extremism is many things but in particular it is a way of letting oneself the hook.Report
Assume that petition shows up in a google search.
If I’m the head of a law firm, then one of my lawyers supporting mass murder is going to reflect badly on the entire firm.
Now that assumes holding insane ideas has no other effects which isn’t the way to bet.
It’s a massive red flag akin to a very poor credit rating or a record for drunk driving.Report
No, words are not the same thing as a crime or fiscal irresponsibility. We all understand that even as it has become fashionable to say otherwise. That’s the whole mentality we have to get away from, not just because it’s arbitrary and capricious but because it drives the radicalism. You know as well as I do that no one can seriously or consistently police for ‘has never said something stupid, controversial, or downright wrong.’ The idea that it is going to or has to happen because of this specific event is no less performative nor does it take the actual facts of the situation any more seriously.Report
I don’t post under my real name because I assume we do police for “has said something stupid, controversial, or downright wrong”.Report
I agree that’s a smart thing to do. Nevertheless I would bet that everyone can think of something ill-advised they’ve said or written at some point in life and are glad to not be forever held accountable for it, particularly not by implacable strangers. Anyone who says otherwise is probably lying or beyond oblivious.
Maybe Ackerman should volunteer is e-mails and text messages for evaluation. Technically he has sent all of those to his ISP, wireless provider, and a bunch of other tech companies, not just the intended recipient.Report
I think the reality is that for almost all legal positions, there are more qualified applicants than openings, and controversy is going to make it easier to eliminate choices.
I get that internet searches are increasing the risk that people are getting cancelled for things that were unknowable not too long ago, and Ackman trying to organize a employer boycott also take it too another level. But in some sense, he’s expressing reality and students should know it.Report
I appreciate that, and to some degree one has to assume that HR departments and hiring managers are going to google applicants. I’ve also said that when I am in a position of reviewing applicants I tend to treat resumes and cover letters soaked in certain types of academic theories as a red flag with respect to critical thinking ability and the disposition necessary for legal work.
I think that’s a little different though than saying post hoc that a particular response to a particular moment in time is the litmus test, especially when we all know that a lot of law schools are now teeming with all sorts of agitprop and highly politicized absurdities that the students are strongly encouraged to personally endorse. My guess is that if one dug in they could find any number of ridiculous things coming out of law student organizations every day of the week. That’s a sad statement about them and the state of legal education, and the institutions need to get more serious. But I also think fundamental fairness requires a consideration of whether there is an actual principle in play. I don’t think there is.Report
“On the other hand, the real possibility that you might be held accountable for the things you say or sign on to is a necessary counterbalance to youthful excess.”
So… you endorse Cancel Culture, do you?Report
I have seen this distinction with Cancel Culture:
1) Things that would get you fired if you said them
2) Things that wouldn’t get you fired if you said them but suddenly there’s a bunch of internet pressure and now the way to get the heat off is to fire you
The second is Cancel Culture.
I don’t think that that’s *PERFECT* but there have always been things that you could say in public that would get you fired from your job.
Here’s a blast from the past that the oldheads will enjoy:
Watt quickly resigned after merely asking forgiveness and, well, that wasn’t enough.
Cancel Culture? Or are there things that you can say that are bad enough that you’ll get fired?
And is support for Hamas one of these things?Report
Expressing support for mass murder and torture of civilians? That’s a massive red flag, especially for a lawyer or anyone else who is being hired to think clearly.
At best they’re engaging in “I’m happy my team won so I’m going to ignore the facts”.
But picture someone expressing support for the Whites who committed the Rosewood Massacre.
Or maybe even expressing support for the Holocaust.Report
A timeline.
Fortune 500 Companies, Big Law, 2016-2022: Wow the times sure have changed what with all this turmoil in the world. It’s time we changed our ways and adopted leftist claptrap into our PR, branding, and recruitment efforts.
Elite Universities: Yes! We’ve been saying that for years! We are going to redouble our efforts to institutionalize and encourage students to embrace leftist craptrap. Students, what say you?
Students: Leftist claptrap! Leftist claptrap!
And so, for 6 heady years the three rejoiced in their embrace of leftist craptrap, responding to every controversy, tragedy, or other incident, no matter how complex or nuanced with leftist craptrap, and man was it sure fierce. Then in 2023 Hamas successfully breached the Gaza strip barricades and massacred Israeli civilians.
Students: Leftist craptrap! Leftist craptrap!
Fortune 500 Companies, Big Law: People should know better than to say this kind of leftist craptrap in the face of tragedy. You are hereby blacklisted.
Internet Commenters Everywhere: Yes, it is the students who are wrong and should have known better.Report
Yup. Agreed with all that.
You can add to that timeline that a year ago Russia went full genocidal fascist and the Fortune 500 fled en masse, leaving all their money behind.
Nothing focuses minds like a noose.Report
What I’m saying is a little bit different, namely that Big Law, Fortune 500s, etc. are completely complicit and in some ways the real driver of this kind of nonsense. I think it is wrong to let them wash their hands of it and pretend to be shocked, SHOCKED that students would sign off on this kind of thing.
The students on the other hand are responding to the incentives of the institutions they inhabit. No doubt some are true believers but most are engaged in a Pavlovian response learned from being rewarded for saying the most radically stupid thing possible on any matter remotely related to identity, and the elite places they want to work paying lip service to the same. I’ve been a hiring manager on and off for over a decade and the learned behavior is obvious. In the early teens I never saw cover letters and resumes full of pop social justice buzz words and now 90% have at least something to that effect, and the more elite the school the worse it is. So this isn’t a noose, it’s students being screwed by a combination of the idiots running elite universities and elite law and business flapping back and forth in the breeze of the zeitgeist, desperate not to be caught on the wrong side of public opinion, something they’re as remote from understanding as ever. They have no principles and their reaction here should be looked at with the same contempt we would a flip flopping politician.Report
They’ve been building on houses of sand.
Being dragged back to reality is a good thing, it was always going to happen sooner or later.Report
And who gets to decide which is which?
ETA: This would seem to put Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney squarely in the “Cancel Culture” category, no?Report
Who gets to decide which is which?
Well, in this case, I’d say that the hiring departments at biglaw get to decide whether support for Hamas is sufficient reason to not hire a summer intern.
I don’t know how to properly yell at people who switch from Bud Light to Coors Light, though. I mean, I can’t tell the difference between the two drinks.
What *IS* Cancel Culture anyway? I understand JK Rowling is still making video games.Report
They can definitely hire who they want. They’re still assholes who if asked 3 years ago about looting the local storefronts and attacking police would have said something just as dumb as the groups on that list.Report
I’ve thought about it and the whole cancel culture thing probably deserves its own thread.
Submitted to Editorial.Report
This is a dumb gotcha to be directed my way — I’ve been consistent in my read on “cancel culture”, and I’ve previously linked to this Alan Cole thread as a pretty good match for my opinion. Lefties like you and many here are too busy reacting defensively and forcing it into the usual left-vs-right model to really engage with the phenomenon.Report
Well that was a useless word salad. Which is about what I expect from someone who claims with a straight … pen … to be “just a couple of steps farther along on some of the main axes of debate than the letter-signers.” The seething concept for those to his left is not well hidden.Report
I understand the whole thing about hypocrisy being the tribute vice pays to virtue but I think this sort of reaction is worth condemning as much as any other.
I absolutely understand and have sympathy for the “should” argument. Totally.Report
They thought they were doing safe-edgy, but it was actually edgy.Report
Okay, I need to apologize to Danielle. She wrote me an email today and it said:
So. I would like to apologize to Danielle and retract my statement that she was backtracking. I was wrong.Report
And she has asked me to redact her name from the thread. Okay, fine.
Note: I just went to a commuter college and now I’m running errands for Harvard folks.
Same as it ever was.Report
Some people look at facts, see that their worldview is wrong, and change their worldview.
Others double down and decide the facts are wrong.
The first is easier if they’re not strongly vested, although 911 probably helped too.Report
From what I understand, the headlines aren’t written by the writers.
Are the subheds?
Report
I have yet to see one Muslim come out and give an unequivocal denunciation of what Hamas has done. Yes most Jews are firmly behind Israel in this but it is trivially easy to find Jews calling for restraint and humanity in Israel’s response or even blaming Israel in its entirety if they are treacherous anti-Zionist traitor Jews. I have even seen much more pro-Israel Jews for me asking that Hashem allow them to feel mercy when there heart is filled with rage.
Form Muslims, absolute nothing. It is all whataboutery and context free images of the Dome of the Rock and some bloke wearing a Palestinian flag as cape or something similar. Always about the poor, poor Palestinians but nothing about the fact that Hamas brutally murdered and raped Jews. This is really enraging. The enemies of the Jews accuse us of tribalism but we have nothing on Islam. This isn’t hard, It is very easy but not one freaking Muslim in the entire world can seem to bring themselves to say we condemn Hamas for killing over a 1000 innocent Jews for no reason but sheer brutality.
There is Murc’s law operating in Jewish-Muslim relationships where only Jews have agency. We have tp offer all the olive branches and Rabbis have to lead multi-faith DEI diversity events but Imams get to rant and rave about evil Jews in front of their ocngregations. We can produce evidence after evidence of this and nobody says or does anything about it. They just go on TV and make bold faced lies about Hamas attacks being against military installations. They are enabled by hundreds of thousands of Western activists that say that the Jews are white and evil but the Palestinians are of color and good and revolutionary. Just damn it.Report
I thought Gigi Hadid’s statement was pretty good — supporting the Palestinian cause & people but forthrightly condemning the attacks.Report
No points. There can be no ritual support for the Palestinians for it to be real. I can find statements by Jews that place the entirety of blame on this for the Israelis.Report
I’m not sure you ever will get unmitigated condemnation from the Muslim world, just as you are unlikely to get Israel to admit its policies play a heavy hand in all this.
As you may recall, a great many Muslims openly and frequently condemned the 9/11 attacks after they occurred and for several additional years. Some still do. And yet for every condemnation they issued, they endured weeks of “that’s not real. That’s not sincere” with no explanation of what they were missing. The lesson they learned was that they could do nothing to satisfy Western needs for self flagellation.
In addition it might be useful to remember that many Muslim countries contain Hamas-like organizations within them, and those countries keep peace with those groups precisely by not openly condemning terrorists. Heck the Saudi’s exported their to Afghanistan, where we trained them against the Soviets and they thanked us by committing 9/11. Not exactly fertile ground for swift open full throated condemnation of anything.Report
I am not even seeing many if any examples of mitigated condemnation. From the Jewish side, I see calls for caution or even outright blaming this on Israel from the tougher anti-Zionists.Report
End goal for the Jews is a liberal democracy ethnostate. Poland. Although “how much of a finger should be on the scales of Justice when dealing with minorities” is a thing, it’s largely understood that there will be equality under the law except for rare exceptions.
End goal for the Arabs is an Islamic republic. Being a minority in an Islamic republic is not fun (especially in that region) because there are schools of thought that say you’re not supposed to be there, or better yet, not supposed to exist.
In a liberal democracy ethnostate, if there’s a traffic accident, the cops won’t first check to see the ethnicity of the drivers. Talking to ex-Pats for Saudi Arabia, if you a Western Engineer are in an accident with an Arab, then it’s your fault because you’re in the country.
The dead people are enemies of Islam and it’s their fault for being on land that’s supposed to be an Islamic republic. A view like that in the West would be so extreme that it’s only held by a tiny minority. In that region it’s much closer to being mainstream.
This is not a side effect of the Israeli conflict. A breathtakingly high percentage of that region want Sharia law and the death penalty for Apostasy (i.e. leaving Islam).Report
I honestly have no idea what a “liberal democracy ethnostate” is.Report
What would you call Poland?Report
I call it “Poland, a liberal democracy.”Report
Ireland, Italy, and Greece are probably good examples. The history and culture emphasized by the government in schools and elsewhere is that of the main ethnic group but minority rights are recognized. Japan and South Korea might be another example.Report
A Palestinian professor compares the Hamas atrocity to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Now my history might be rusty but the people behind the Warsaw Ghetto uprising fought against soldiers and not young people at a music festival or decapitating babies. The Palestinians and their supporters do not get and never will. Why on earth should Jews seek good relationships with Muslims when the Muslims can at best go “well maybe we went to far this time.” What utter rot.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/10/gaza-2023-our-warsaw-uprising-momentReport
You want the steelmanned version of the argument? Here it is, as best I can tell.
Premises:
A: The Rave was a Dance Party
B: The Gaza Strip is an Open Air Prison
C: Prison Guards holding a Dance Party in the middle of an Open Air Prison is an act of aggression
D: It is appropriate to respond to an act of aggression with a greater act of aggression
So, I’m pretty sure that we all agree that A is true. 100%.
Is the arguments over whether B is true or how D is only true when we do it that gets us into problems.Report
More people are walking back more stuff that went viral.
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Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office released the photos of the 40 babies murdered at Kfar Aza. The pictures are so brutally gruesome that every media outlet is resorting to merely describing them rather than showing them at all. Others are showing them but basically so heavily censored that you can’t look at them.
Despite the fact that Israel released this evidence many people have decided to die on the “babies weren’t literally decapitated so it is just propaganda” hill.Report
Israel had to halt its ground operation because of torrential rain.
IT’S G-D VS ALLAH IN THE PLACE THAT STARTED IT ALL
ELIJAH DID IT FIRST AND NOW WE’RE DOING IT AGAIN
BOTH SIDES GET YOUR BULLReport