50 years to the day

[MultiVerse]

Given the completeness of your knowledge of my views, particularly in the specific instance cited, I can't imagine a better example. Thank you. For a second I was afraid "Donald??" was going too far.

It is going too far, and your snark rather than making an argument belies your views.

It’s a process more and more people seem to be getting first hand experience with lately.

Nonsense. There's no process. In fact the opposite is true. Jong seeks to silence truth by misrepresenting and telling lies about past discussions.

[jono]

And similarly, my argument is that the two are not in fact entirely separable. That's an inconvenient truth that people must contend with. It's not a narrative. Hamas does in fact enjoy majority support among Palestinians and is itself made up of Palestinians.

Entirely seperable! Exactly. I'd prefer if you'd separate them better in the future, I don't have time for this self-indulgence.

[MultiVerse]

*not* entirely separable is the key point. It's an unfashionable truth, I'll grant you, but it is the truth nonetheless. So the only self-indulgence here is people showing up almost daily to argue Hamas somehow exists outside of and separate from the Palestinian cause.

[jono]

*not* entirely separable is the key point. The only self-indulgence here is people showing up almost daily to argue Hamas somehow exists outside of and separate from the Palestinian cause.

If there is a universe in which that's entirely true, even in that universe it's still a counterproductive waste of time to refuse to (accurately!) ascribe the murderous intent of Hamas to Hamas instead of using the inflamatory, obviously over-broad "Palestinian cause."

Unless your intent is to be inflammatory, which is certainly true for a lot of people. But I'm not buying that you're just a bigot. It's much more likely that by suggesting you could have been wrong I've pushed you into a corner so you feel you have to double down. I'm sure you can see how counterproductive that was of me. I tried not to, but I'm not prefect.

[MultiVerse]

You're missing the point, entirely. And I'm not wrong nor am I pushed into a corner.

I'm arguing it's counterproductive to support the Palestinian cause as defined by Palestinians because it makes the situation worse for Palestinians. People should instead stop falsely claiming Jews stole the land, that Israel was a gift b/c of the Holocaust, etc. and instead call for Palestinians to cooperate with Israel against extremism.

That's my argument. I changed "killing Jews" to "destruction of Israel" because one is a euphemism for the other and so the argument still stands:

"people in the West can stop enabling the Palestinian cause which is explicitly in their own words: [the destruction of Israel} . The Iranian/Hamas way of warfare is to use civilian casualties as their principal ammunition for winning the strategic information battle. So, instead of calling for the destruction of Israel, people should instead call for Palestinians to cooperate with Israelis.

Israelis have a higher PPP per-capita income than Germans. Israel needs workers. Apart from Israelis, Palestinians are the most highly educated people in the surrounding region. Israeli companies would happily pay Palestinians, rather than hiring workers from places like Thailand, if Palestinians weren't a clear and present terrorist threat. On top of which, Gaza has lovely Mediterranean beeches that could be a thriving tourist destination.

The combination of Israeli wealth and Gazan resource wealth would easily lift Palestinian society in a generation if they cast off their desire to [destroy Israel] and instead embraced a good life well lived. Unfortunately, the addictive pleasure of anti-semitism is just too powerful of a drug for far too many people. "

[jono]

Maybe I'm leaving out the obvious here. It's not that you're wrong. It's that you're so wrong that you can't even see how ridiculous it is to try to defend it. You're focused on the pedantic silliness of "killing Jews" = "destruction of Israel" or not when the most obvious mistake is assigning whatever that cause is to all Palestinians. Which you don't bother to defend in any detail, so why do it?

The obvious:

A baby is born in Gaza. That baby is accurately described as a Palestinian. That baby is not a member of Hamas. That baby does not support killing jews or destroying Israel or any other variation on that theme.

Hamas is a lot of things: political group, criminal enterprise, terrorist organization yadda yadda yadda. But all of the ways you can describe it make membership some level of choice. Palestinian is not an attribute of choice.

It would be worth it as a human being to build the habit of never assigning the worst stereotypical chosen attributes of any non-chosen group to every member of a non-chosen group. Mind opening, even. The opposite of bigotry, perhaps.

"The Palestinian cause" is non-existent. Cannot exist. Hamas can have a singular cause--maybe. Palestinians can't.

[MultiVerse]

Pedantic? lol, pot meet kettle. And I agree support for Hamas and calling for the destruction of Israel is a choice. Polls clearly show majority support for Hamas among Palestinians. Support for Hamas even went up after Hamas engaged in the mass murder of Jews. Polls show somewhere around two-thirds of Palestinians thought the Oct. 7 attack was the correct decision. A majority of Palestinians call for dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. Many Gazans even poured into Israel on 10/7 and engaged in atrocities independently of Hamas, including taking hostages of their own. Those aren't stereotypes. Those are just some of the things making the Israeli-Gazan war have the strangest framing of any war, ever.

[jono]

Polls clearly show majority support for Hamas among Palestinians.

Majority. See what I mean? You don't defend it. Because you know what a Venn diagram looks like.

If the goal was to convince Palestinians and change those poll numbers it would obviously be counterproductive to lump them with Hamas. Call it the deplorables effect.

But obviously that's not the goal. The goal is to validate feelings. And I wish I could help, the feelings run justifiably deep. But the chosen path in this thread has been to find people you mostly agree with and argue that they're just as bad as the raping, murdering terrorists. It's satisfying the same way blaming all Palestinians is satisfying.

But I'm never going to be able to provide anything as satisfying as burning strawmen in your head. Which, to answer the question Summit seemed to be asking, is why I don't feel obligated to get all the way down in this discussion.

Carry on. I hope you find some peace.

[MultiVerse]

Polls also show somewhere around two-thirds of Palestinians thought the Oct. 7 attack was the correct decision. Setting aside your irritable mental gestures seeking to resemble ideas, are you OK with calling it a supermajority?

[summit]

Hamas... membership some level of choice. Palestinian is not an attribute of choice.

...

"The Palestinian cause" is non-existent. Cannot exist. Hamas can have a singular cause--maybe. Palestinians can't.

jono,

There are always those who do not fit in with that grouping. That's your venn diagram. That is why Palestinean and Hamas are seperable.

But, as MV said, not wholly separable. Most, not all, Palestineans supported Hamas.

When you have populations who largely do not agree with their despotic governments hazarding them into war against their will, it is a greater tragedy than a popular war. But, that is not the case in this current tragedy.

On Oct 6 there was peace. Hamas took a choice for war on behalf of the Palestineans of Gaza... and most supported it... and the majority still do.

It is illogical in a war to completely divorce a popularly supported government from the people supporting it.

War is horrible and innocents die. That is why war is to be avoided, and rules to be followed. Hamas chose for the Palestineans, and with most Palestineans, to go to war in the worst way rejecting all rules. It was a war predicated on abomoninable causus belli to spur a conflict with massively stronger opponent. The intent of such an apparently pyrric victor was to trade the lives and wellbeing of Gazan civilians and militants for the international sympathies needed to create a wider war to destroy Israel. It failed to do that, but the civilians and fighters still died.

The result is horrible for Palestineans and Israelis.

What baffles me is when:
1. The blame is cast mostly on Israel, somehwat on Hamas, and none on the Palestineans, throwing to the winds their agency over something most supported.
2. The responsibility for stopping the war is considered to fall entirely upon Israel and Israelis, and not at all on Hamas or the Palestineans.
3. The view exhibited here by my fellow Americans is too often that our job is to make Israel simply stop and give up, even if that is not going to create a lasting peace, just a pause.

When MV says we should instead stop emboldening those who advocate for the destruction of Israel and Palestine, and instead encourage Palestineans to cooperate with Israel against extremism, that is the only way I see there could be a hope for the peace we all truly want: a stable peaceful lasting two state solution.

[bodywhomper]

Propaganda is a strong force. The newshour recently aired a piece on Hamas’ propaganda among Palestinians living in Lebanon. There’s also a lot that I see emboldening the Israel/Jewish far right, including strong support for mass slaughter of Palestinians from some American Jews who my wife and/or I know. “You get what you deserve” type of hateful rhetoric.

“Palestinian cause” seems far from unified, especially since the early 90’s. My Google fu seems to indicate that the concept means very different things to different people, and “Hamas cause” is the correct term that y’all are looking for.

This was interesting https://www.timesofisrael.com/time-f...rolling-hamas/

[jono]

jono,

There are always those who do not fit in with that grouping. That's your venn diagram. That is why Palestinean and Hamas are seperable.

But, as MV said, not wholly separable. Most, not all, Palestineans supported Hamas.

When you have populations who largely do not agree with their despotic governments hazarding them into war against their will, it is a greater tragedy than a popular war. But, that is not the case in this current tragedy.

On Oct 6 there was peace. Hamas took a choice for war on behalf of the Palestineans of Gaza... and most supported it... and the majority still do.

It is illogical in a war to completely divorce a popularly supported government from the people supporting it.

War is horrible and innocents die. That is why war is to be avoided, and rules to be followed. Hamas chose for the Palestineans, and with most Palestineans, to go to war in the worst way rejecting all rules. It was a war predicated on abomoninable causus belli to spur a conflict with massively stronger opponent. The intent of such an apparently pyrric victor was to trade the lives and wellbeing of Gazan civilians and militants for the international sympathies needed to create a wider war to destroy Israel. It failed to do that, but the civilians and fighters still died.

The result is horrible for Palestineans and Israelis.

What baffles me is when:
1. The blame is cast mostly on Israel, somehwat on Hamas, and none on the Palestineans, throwing to the winds their agency over something most supported.
2. The responsibility for stopping the war is considered to fall entirely upon Israel and Israelis, and not at all on Hamas or the Palestineans.
3. The view exhibited here by my fellow Americans is too often that our job is to make Israel simply stop and give up, even if that is not going to create a lasting peace, just a pause.

When MV says we should instead stop emboldening those who advocate for the destruction of Israel and Palestine, and instead encourage Palestineans to cooperate with Israel against extremism, that is the only way I see there could be a hope for the peace we all truly want: a stable peaceful lasting two state solution.

I understand why those things would be baffling. There are very few things to disagree on about the causes of this conflict or even its eventual conclusion (if you look out far enough--and we don't blow up the world first).

Also, numerous things can be true, even when one truth makes us less comfortable about another. If there was ever a case where that was more obvious I can't think of it.

We're not talking about whataboutism as a rhetorical distraction like Russian disinfo where the small sin is used to ignore the large one. Is someone doing that? Maybe, I certainly haven't read the thread in perfect detail. But legitimate concerns have definitely been met with the ad hom "anti-semite." Can we agree this response is not always justified? I'm not terribly interested in digging through the shit for examples.

On the other hand, there was this:



I'm gonna skip the old arguments about joking and the other steps and point out the unspoken fact: step 3a is war and suffering and death and destruction. That's literally the function that violence performs in human relations and what it means to say war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means: it convinces groups of people to accept some sub-optimal solution in lieu of hell. Maybe people suffer so much they give up and maybe all the people with a strong taste for war kill each other until those willing to negotiate gain a majority. Usually a little of each.

In any case the end of any war is a diplomatic solution among those who survived.

Regardless of what polls say today, by the time peace can be achieved they're going to favor peace. Assuming violence is the only means to get there is the longest possible path. And it's no excuse to say "they want war" because the goal is for that not to be true. The question is how many will be convinced to fight first? How many have to die? If the only answer that comes to mind is "all of them" then there's nothing to discuss. If it's less than all then there are choices. Even if none of them are "good." A simple one is how we frame the conflict and its victims.

We're not going to solve any problems in here, though, are we?

[Bunion 2020]

He may not be in office, but Donald Trump has been speaking with the powers that be about Israel’s war on Gaza—but it’s not in an effort to end the genocide.

Instead, Trump has allegedly been talking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avert a cease-fire deal, fearing that doing so could help Vice President Kamala Harris win in November, according to PBS.

“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the Prime Minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign,” said PBS’s Judy Woodruff Monday night. “So, I don’t know where—who knows whether that will come about or not, but I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, and that’s to work on that one.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if Woodruff was referring to a new report, or an Axios story last week that cited two U.S. sources as claiming that Trump and Netanyahu had spoken on the phone about cease-fire and Gaza hostage talks. Netanyahu’s office and Trump both separately denied the report.

“I did encourage him to get this over with. You want to get it over with fast. Have victory, get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop, the killing has to stop,” Trump said at a New Jersey press conference on Thursday, referring to their meeting at Mar-a-Lago last month. But he also criticized cease-fire demands.

During Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, the president promised that his administration is working around the clock to bring “humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” “peace and security to the Middle East,” and to deliver a “cease-fire” and an end to the war.

The president also nodded to the more than 3,500 protesters who took to the streets of Chicago on Monday, demanding an immediate cease-fire to the war, claiming that the demonstrators “have a point.”* The war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since it began 10 months ago.

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who escaped the besieged country in December, reported on Monday that the humanitarian area in south Gaza is little more than 14 square miles.

“Crammed in it are more than 1.8 million people, with no water, no electricity, no food, no clinics or pharmacies, and no shelters,” he wrote, lamenting in a separate post that he cannot “understand how this government continues to fund the genocide but cannot put an end to it” and “force the aggressors to stop dropping bombs.”

[MultiVerse]

There’s also a lot that I see emboldening the Israel/Jewish far right, including strong support for mass slaughter of Palestinians from some American Jews who my wife and/or I know. “You get what you deserve” type of hateful rhetoric.

“Palestinian cause” seems far from unified, especially since the early 90’s. My Google fu seems to indicate that the concept means very different things to different people, and “Hamas cause” is the correct term that y’all are looking for.

In some sense the phrase "Palestinian Cause" can mean lots of different things. It could mean helping Palestinians in any number of different ways. To some people it could mean providing better education and more access to opportunity. Like granting full citizenship rights to Palestinian children born in foreign countries. Or, throughout the Middle East, hiring Palestinians instead of importing foreign workers from India & Africa. Or ending military occupation in the West Bank.

That's not what Arab countries, a majority of Palestinians, or people in the West who equate Zionism with settler colonialism think the Palestinian Cause is, however. It's not about civil rights or peace. It's about taking back land, all of it, from Jews in Israel.

Jono, per Yglesias, is right, both sides need to change their preferences. And as you've observed, the Israeli right, who also want all of it, is currently ascendant. The difference is in Israel in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, there were majorities who wanted social justice for Palestinians. In the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s Israeli majorities wanted a two-state bilateral agreement with Palestinians.

Israelis no longer believe in a two-state solution because waves of suicide bombers scuttled the Oslo Accords. Following the Camp David summit in 2000, Israel experienced the second intifada. Following unilateral withdrawals from Gaza in 2005 and legitimate proposals to do the same in the West Bank, the security situation for Israel became even worse.

So yeah, both sides need to change. But only one side tried everything before deciding occupation is the only way to preserve security in Israel. It only helps the Israeli right wing to argue Israel is the problem.

[MultiVerse]

During Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, the president promised that his administration is working around the clock to bring “humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” “peace and security to the Middle East,” and to deliver a “cease-fire” and an end to the war.

The president also nodded to the more than 3,500 protesters who took to the streets of Chicago on Monday, demanding an immediate cease-fire to the war, claiming that the demonstrators “have a point.”* The war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since it began 10 months ago.

Despite the fact Biden is working around the clock to bring “humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” “peace and security to the Middle East,” and to deliver a “cease-fire” and an end to the war, Pro-Palestinian activists at the DNC are acting in a way to elect Donald Trump.

Trump is campaigning against pro-Palestinian activists in the same way he campaigned against BLM activists four years ago. Trump argues only he can protect America against radical chaos. Wittingly or not, by not protesting in large numbers at the RNC pro-Palestinian massed protesters at the DNC are helping elect Trump, not unlike Vietnam protestors helped elect Nixon in 1968.

[Cisco Kid]

It's not 1968. Comparisons are interesting but not valid.

[MultiVerse]

Agreed, it's not the same thing but it still rhymes. Pro-Palestinian activists want the DNC to embrace their cause but the problem is they're unpopular. So the next best thing by their calculus is to act as a spoiler to gain influence and power. Their protest essentially argues give us what we want, or else...

[gravitylover]

The civility of the discussions in here today has been encouraging. Thanks folks.

[bodywhomper]

MV in this brief discourse of two days, you’ve changed your definition of “Palestinian Cause.”

[riser4]

Agreed, it's not the same thing but it still rhymes. Pro-Palestinian activists want the DNC to embrace their cause but the problem is they're unpopular. So the next best thing by their calculus is to act as a spoiler to gain influence and power. Their protest essentially argues give us what we want, or else...

Gee, that sounds a lot like terrorism.

[MultiVerse]

MV in this brief discourse of two days, you’ve changed your definition of “Palestinian Cause.”

I have not. People can ascribe different meaning to the phrase “Palestinian Cause.” That's Jono's point. If people in the West want to define the phrase differently that's fine. The fact is though, the majority of Palestinians in the Middle East call for the complete destruction of Israel and act on those beliefs accordingly.

There is an enormous gap between what Westerners think the Palestinian cause is and what Palestinians think the Palestinian cause is. For peace to happen, there has to be elected Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza that do not want to see Israel destroyed as their main goal.

[californiagrown]

Agreed, it's not the same thing but it still rhymes. Pro-Palestinian activists want the DNC to embrace their cause but the problem is they're unpopular. So the next best thing by their calculus is to act as a spoiler to gain influence and power. Their protest essentially argues give us what we want, or else...

Polls say that the majority (or at least a VERY significant percentage) of palestinians in gaza support Hamas. Id be curious what they actually think it means to support Hamas- do they know about the extent of the Oct 7th atrocities, or do they believe the atrocities are propaganda/false flag? Basically, do they support Hamas, which to them means supporting resistance to Israeli occupation, or do they support hamas and all of their despicable tactics? I can imagine in a tightly controlled authoritarian war time society (like gaza), that propoganda is strong and atrocities against israelis are minimized or discounted and atrocities against palestinians are amplified and exaggerated. And remember that just because you support a political party, doesnt mean you support their whole platform (see how many people hold their noses and vote for trump). I think a better poll would be to ask how many palestinians support the actions of hamas on Oct 7th... and those actions would need to be clearly defined (this is the important part as propoganda plays a huge role in what people think actually happened).

I would also be curious to hear what the polls say about how many expat Palestinians in the West support hamas, and how many expats in the west there really are. And how their view on the current conflict differs/echoes the view of their friends and family stuck in gaza.

[MultiVerse]

People should stop infantilizing Palestinians. Gaza was self governed and not occupied by Israel. Gazans either supported Hamas or they were oppressed by Hamas. If it's the latter, then only the IDF alone can free Palestinian enclaves from terrorism.

[californiagrown]

People should stop infantilizing Palestinians. Gaza was self governed and not occupied by Israel. Gazans either supported Hamas or they were oppressed by Hamas. If it's the latter, then only the IDF alone can free Palestinian enclaves from terrorism.

I dont think you are giving enough weight to the effects of propoganda and living under a brutal autocratic theocracy, while simultaneously being sanctioned by someone you are being constantly told is "the enemy". Do gazans actually know the full extent of what hamas did and is curently doing? Or are they kept in the dark and all they see is terror and destruction caused by the IDF over the past 10 months?


FWIW, i actually agreed with you last sentence (though i think it should be more than just the IDF). The issue folks have is with the, at times, seeming lack of regard for civilian casualties and civilian suffering from the IDF and Israelis in general. There is always a subjective call on how much collateral damage is acceptable in an operation, and for many, the Israelis seem to be too liberal in their judgement.

[MultiVerse]

There's this idea of decontextualizing the Israeli blockade as if it was put in place out of malice and not security. Due to terrorist attacks, Israel alternated between allowing and disallowing imports and exports. After Hamas was elected, Gaza experienced some of the world's highest unemployment rates after four major wars and many other clashes between Hamas and Israel. In 2023 Israel lifted export bans on Gaza as well as issuing ~17,000 permits for Gazans to work in Israel. The choice for Gazans is either trade or war, not both at the same time.

As for Palestinians seeing what Hamas did, the videos were posted by Hamas for the whole world to see including Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians have cell phones and internet access. It's not twentieth century communist Russia. There's no ‘Great Firewall’ like there is in China.