“Never A Better Time to Visit”: Our Post-October-7 Trip to Israel
Dana, the kids, and I got back to the US last week after a month spent in England and then Israel. We decided to visit Israel because … uhh, we heard there’s never been a better time.
We normally go every year to visit Dana’s family and our many friends there, and to give talks. Various well-meaning friends suggested that maybe we should cancel or postpone this year—given, you know, the situation. To me, though, the situation felt like all the more reason to go. To make Israel seem more and more embattled, dangerous, isolated, abnormal, like not an acceptable place to visit (much less live), in order to crater its economy, demoralize its population, and ultimately wipe it from the face of earth … that is explicitly much of the world’s game plan right now, laid out with shocking honesty since October 7 (a day that also showed us what the “decolonization” will, concretely, look like). So, if I oppose this plan, then how could I look myself in the mirror while playing my tiny part in it? Shouldn’t I instead raise a middle finger to those who’d murder my family, and go?
Besides supporting our friends and relatives, though, I wanted to see the post-October-7 reality for myself, rather than just spending hours per day reading about it on social media. I wanted to form my own impression of the mood in Israel: fiercely determined? angry? hopeless? just carrying on like normal?
Anyway, in two meeting-packed weeks, mostly in Tel Aviv but also in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva, I saw stuff that could support any of those narratives. A lot was as I’d expected, but not everything. In the rest of this post, I’ll share eleven observations:
(1) This presumably won’t shock anyone, but in post-October-7 Israel, you indeed can’t escape October 7. Everywhere you look, on every building, in every lobby, hanging from every highway overpass, there are hostage posters and “Bring Them Home Now” signs and yellow ribbons—starting at the airport, where every single passenger is routed through a long corridor of hostage posters, each one signed and decorated by the hostage’s friends and family. It sometimes felt as though Yad Vashem had expanded to encompass the entire country. Virtually everyone we talked to wanted to share their stories and opinions about the war, most of all their depression and anger. While there was also plenty of discussion about quantum error mitigation and watermarking of large language models and local family events, no one even pretended to ignore the war.
(2) Having said that, the morning after we landed, truthfully, the first thing that leapt out at me wasn’t anything to do with October 7, hostages, or Gaza. It was the sheer number of children playing outside, in any direction you looked. Full, noisy playgrounds on block after block. It’s one thing to know intellectually that Israel has by far the highest birthrate of any Western country, another to see it for yourself. The typical secular family probably has three kids; the typical Orthodox family has more. (The Arab population is of course also growing rapidly, both in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.) New apartment construction is everywhere you look in Tel Aviv, despite building delays caused by the war. And it all seems perfectly normal … unless you’ve lived your whole life in environments where 0.8 or 1.2 children per couple is the norm.
This, of course, has giant implications for anyone interested in Israel’s future. It’s like, a million Israeli leftists could get fed up and flee to the US or Canada or Switzerland, and Israel would still have a large and growing Jewish population—because having a big family is “just what people do” in a state that was founded to defy the Holocaust. In particular: anyone who dreams of dismantling the illegal, settler-colonial, fascist Zionist ethnostate, and freeing Palestine from river to sea, had better have some plan for what they’re going to do with all these millions of young Jews, who don’t appear to be going anywhere.
(3) The second thing I noticed was the heat—comparable to the Texas summer heat that we try to escape when possible. Because of the roasting sun, our own two pampered offspring mostly refused to go outside during daytime, and we mostly met friends indoors. I more than once had the dark thought that maybe Israel will survive Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and its own Jewish extremists … only to be finished off in the end (along with much of the rest of the planet) by global warming. I wonder whether Israel will manage to engineer its way out of the crisis, as it dramatically engineered its way out of its water crisis via desalination. The Arab petrostates have been trying to engineer their way out of the Middle East’s increasingly Mercury-like climate, albeit with decidedly mixed results.
(4) But nu, what did our Israeli friends say about the war? Of course it’s a biased sample, because our friends are mostly left-wing academics and tech workers. But, at risk of overgeneralizing: they’re unhappy. Very, very unhappy. As for Bibi and his far-right yes-men? Our friends’ rage at them was truly a sight to behold. American progressives are, like, mildly irked by Trump in comparison. Yes, our friends blame Bibi for the massive security and intelligence failures that allowed October 7 to happen. They blame him for dragging out the war to stave off elections. They blame him for empowering the contemptible Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. They blame him for his failure to bring back the remaining hostages. Most of all, they blame him for refusing even to meet with the hostage families, and more broadly, for evading responsibility for all that he did wrong, while arrogating credit for any victories (like the rescue of Noa Argamani).
(5) One Israeli friend offered to take me along to the giant anti-Bibi rally that now happens every Saturday night in Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv. (She added that, if I left before 9pm, it would reduce the chances of the police arresting me.) As the intrepid blogger-investigator I am, of course I agreed.
While many of the protesters simply called for new elections to replace Netanyahu (a cause that I 3000% support), others went further, demanding a deal to free the hostages and an immediate end to the war (even if, as they understood, that would leave Hamas in power).
Watching the protesters, smelling their pot smoke that filled the air, I was seized by a thought: these Israeli leftists actually see eye-to-eye with the anti-Israel American leftists on a huge number of issues. In a different world, they could be marching together as allies. Except, of course, for one giant difference: namely, the Tel Aviv protesters are proudly waving Israeli flags (sometimes modified to add anti-Bibi images, or to depict the Star of David “crying”), rather than burning or stomping on those flags. They’re marching to save the Israel that they know and remember, rather than to destroy it.
(6) We did meet one ultra-right-wing (and Orthodox) academic colleague. He was virtually the only person we met on this trip who seemed cheerful and optimistic about Israel’s future. He brought me to his synagogue to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, while he himself stood guarding the door of the synagogue with a gargantuan rifle (his volunteer duty since October 7). He has six kids.
(7) Again and again, our secular liberal friends told us they’re thinking about moving from Israel, because if the Bibi-ists entrench their power (and of course the demographics are trending in that direction), then they don’t see that the country has any worthwhile future for them or their children. Should this be taken more seriously than the many Americans who promise that this time, for real, they’ll move to Canada if Trump wins? I’m not sure. I can only report what I heard.
(8) At the same time, again and again I got the following question from Israelis (including the leftist ones): how bad is the situation for Jews in the US? Have the universities been taken over by militant anti-Zionists, like it shows in the news? I had to answer: it’s complicated. Because I live my life enbubbled in the STEM field of computer science, surrounded by friends and colleagues of many backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, and political opinions who are thoughtful and decent (otherwise, why would they be my friends and colleagues?), I’m able to live a very nice life even in the midst of loud protesters calling to globalize the intifada against my family.
If, on the other hand, I were in a typical humanities department? Yeah, then I’d be pretty terrified. My basic options would be to (a) shut up about my (ironically) moderate, middle-of-the-road opinions on Israel/Palestine, such as support for the two-state solution; (b) live a miserable and embattled existence; or (c) pack up and move, for example to Israel.
An astounding irony right now is that, just as Israeli leftists are talking about moving from Israel, some of my American Jewish friends have talked to me about moving to Israel, to escape a prejudice that they thought died with their grandparents. I don’t know where the grass is actually greener (or is it brown everywhere?). Nor do I know how many worriers will actually follow through. What’s clear is that, both in Israel and in the diaspora, Jews are feeling an existential fear that they haven’t felt for generations.
(9) Did I fear for my own family’s safety during the trip? Not really. Maybe I should have. When we visited Haifa, we found that GPS was scrambled all across northern Israel, to make targeting harder for Hezbollah missiles. As a result, we couldn’t use Google Maps, got completely lost driving, and had to change plans with our friends. For the first time, now I really feel angry at Hezbollah: they made my life worse and it’s personal!
The funniest part, though, was how the scrambling was implemented: when you opened Google Maps anywhere in the north, it told you that you were in Beirut. It then dutifully gave you walking or driving directions to wherever you were going in Israel, passing through Syria close to Damascus (“warning: this route passes through multiple countries”).
(10) The most darkly comical thing that I heard on the entire trip: “oh, no, I don’t object in the slightest if the anti-Zionists want to kill us all. I only object if they want to kill us because of an incorrect understanding of the relevant history.” Needless to say, this was a professor.
(11) After my two-week investigation, what grand insight can I offer about Israel’s future? Not much, but maybe this: I think we can definitively rule out the scenario where Israel, having been battered by October 7, and bracing itself to be battered worse by Hezbollah, just sort of … withers away and disappears. Yes, Israel might get hotter, more crowded, more dangerous, more right-wing, and more Orthodox. But it will stay right where it is, unless and until its enemies destroy it in a cataclysmic war. You can’t scare people away, break their will, if they believe they have nowhere else on the planet to go. You can only kill them or else live next to them in peace, as the UN proposed in 1947 and as Oslo proposed in the 1990s. May we live to see peace.
Anyway, on that pleasant note, time soon to tune in to the Trump/Biden debate! I wonder who these two gentlemen are, and what they might stand for?
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Comment #1 June 27th, 2024 at 6:56 pm
(slightly off-topic, but not that much, since you mentioned debates)
Lex Fridman recently posted that his dream is to have an interview with someone like Einstein, Feynman or Turing.
I know there is one guy by the name of Avi Wigderson that has *the* Turing award and resides in the same green garden as the Einstein and (briefly) Feynman cameos in Oppenheimer (IAS).
I really wanna know if there is a branch in the universe where Lex is interested, Avi is healthy and interested, and they host a video 🙂
Comment #2 June 27th, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Filip #1: As someone who’s been on Lex’s podcast twice and who’s known Avi for 25 years, I indeed see no reason whatsoever why Avi shouldn’t go on Lex. I’m sure they’d have a great conversation.
Comment #3 June 27th, 2024 at 8:14 pm
Meanwhile, the debate is so dreadful and depressing that I’ve already stopped watching it. I’ll vote for Biden of course, and donate money, and do what else I can, but I feel like it’s the last years of the Roman Republic, and the US will soon go the way of so many of the world’s lapsed democracies. May God have mercy on us.
Comment #4 June 27th, 2024 at 10:42 pm
“… but I feel like it’s the last years of the Roman Republic, and the US will soon go the way of so many of the world’s lapsed democracies…” Why do you say this?
Comment #5 June 28th, 2024 at 12:03 am
(7): yes, I think it is serious. As an Israeli 20 something lefty in academia basically all of my friends are thinking seriously of leaving, discussing plans and working on getting foreign passports. Those in a PhD are planning not to return after the post (this is our plan). Note that much of it was pre-war sentiment starting mostly during the judicial reform protests (although the sense of urgency changed).
You can’t wipe a country, but you can definitely effectively eliminate its intellectual class (I understand Lebanon, Chile and Argentina to be previous examples).
Comment #6 June 28th, 2024 at 5:13 am
QMA(2) #4: Why do I say it? I mean, did you watch the friggin debate? The contest to lead the United States through a terrifying period for the planet is between the pathological liar, gangster, and narcissist and the guy who struggled to form coherent sentences and look into the camera. Obviously my vote is with the nursing-home guy.
Comment #7 June 28th, 2024 at 5:19 am
> To make Israel seem more and more embattled, dangerous, isolated, abnormal,
To the extent that normal countries don’t accuse prime ministers of European nations or POTUS to be Hamas members and sympathizers, or shred the United Nation charter with a shredding machine in front of the representatives, or kill 35K people in less than a year while being cheerful and utterly unrepentant about it, it looks like you’re doing an imperceptibly small part in making Israel look “Normal”.
You might as well pour a fistful of salt into a river so that you can claim that you’re making it more like a sea.
(How many people visit Russia or North Korea or Syria or Iran every year? Are those “Normal” countries?)
#(2) If you had looked less than 100 kilometers south, you would have also seen tons of Palestinian children playing outside, except most of them are (a) orphaned to the last adult in their bloodline (b) without limbs (c) with failing lungs (d) with starving stomach (e) all of the above.
And yet, you continue to cheerlead for the state that kills them. What a badass #Girl_Boss Israel. So full of hope, so full of life, so full of determination to kill more Palestinian children and shred their limbs with 2000-pound unguided bombs and decimate every adult who could raise and protect them.
Very western, democratic, and ***normal***.
#(5) “””rather than burning or stomping on those flags”””
You’re upset that people are burning flags of a state that they see burning people every day on their smartphone screens. Apparently burning a bunch of flags is more of a problem for you than burning humans.
Comment #8 June 28th, 2024 at 5:23 am
Computer science professor discovers that it’s hot in the middle east in summer.
Comment #9 June 28th, 2024 at 5:51 am
I’ve been here the whole time and yes, this covers description is exactly right and covers what I’d say about it.
The part I’d add though to your second point – The most blatant thing I notice about the high-fertility culture is that my adult friends and coworkers spend so much more time and energy on their kids. This shows up everywhere, like conversations about vacation plans almost always including “would the kids enjoy going to X”, which is far less common with friends my age in America.
They’re also, I think, more tired (on the whole, I think this is a good tradeoff).
Comment #10 June 28th, 2024 at 6:35 am
Scott
#6
Russian poet Bulat Okudzhava have poem with such words “kingdoms aren’t dying when life is difficult, but they die when people don’t respect this kingdom anymore”. I here about America is dead, Isreal is dead, west has fallen, everything is lost for long time now.
But do you know who don’t think everything is lost? Ukrainians. It looks like fighting in war against biggest country in the world is somehow easier, then living under Trump next 4 years.
You dislike Trump? So what is the problem? He is only elected president with restricted powers, who will be changed in 4 years. It isn’t irony or joke, I absolutely seriously can not comprehend what is the reason for this doom mentality. His support for Ukraine is main thing wich bothers me, but even here I don’t see everything as totaly black.
Comment #11 June 28th, 2024 at 8:17 am
TFG #7: I didn’t visit Gaza for the very obvious reason that I wouldn’t be allowed in—and if I did somehow enter, not under the IDF’s protection, I could be murdered immediately, my dead body paraded through the streets, as happened on October 7. Gaza is not a liberal democratic place like Israel, where you see women wearing hijabs on every bus and every street corner and every college campus.
I could’ve visited the West Bank, but I’d imagine that you of all people would not have wanted me to.
Let’s cut the bullshit: Israel has been engaged in a brutal war for its continued survival on earth. Furthermore, this is no longer a case that I need to make, since the other side now makes the case for me! They’re the ones who scream from the rooftops that their issue is not settlements, not checkpoints, not Bibi, but Israel’s founding in 1948. They’re the ones who’ve made clear that there’s nothing Israel could do that would satisfy them, short of dissolving itself, and offering up its citizens for a thousand more October 7ths.
Look, I live to think and argue about hard problems and hard choices. When someone’s final negotiating position is that Israel gets destroyed and my friends and family there all get murdered, they make the whole matter too easy and therefore too boring for me. What do they then expect me to say?
I grieve for every single innocent Palestinian who’s been killed or maimed in this war, as I grieve for the innocent Germans killed in Dresden and the Japanese killed in Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The suffering in Gaza will end when, and only when, Gaza gets a government that takes the welfare of its people rather than Israel’s destruction as its fundamental goal. Reasonable people can disagree about how that should happen, but not about the fact that it has to happen.
Comment #12 June 28th, 2024 at 8:46 am
Thanks for your report from Israel, enjoyed reading it.
I stand with you in begging god for mercy on us. I’m sure, historians some 100 years in the future will look back at our current time with deep interest, analyzing, whether humanity came good out of this insane geopolitical situation, or not. It’s just not so fun actually living through this…
Comment #13 June 28th, 2024 at 8:47 am
Good luck to Israel and to all of us. It seems to be that kind of world.
I switched back and forth between Shark Tank and the debate. Shark Tank was much more uplifting. My first, immediate reaction to the first debate snippet I saw was “Biden is sun-downing.” I saw a similar thing happen to Reagan in his first debate with Mondale in 1984. Also, I suspect that Biden was on some sort of heavy-duty cold medicine. (He was hoarse and had difficulty getting words out similar to recent lung problems I have had.) Under my most generous scenario, however, I don’t see him as fully fit to serve as president. In my dream world, in which Israel and Palestine reconcile, Elizabeth Warren would be the Democrat candidate.
Comment #14 June 28th, 2024 at 9:07 am
JimV #13: Thanks for the comment and LOL about Shark Tank!
I could go for basically any younger moderate Democrat—John Fetterman (my favorite person in American politics right now), Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Adam Schiff, Mayor Pete…
But yes, what I saw of last night’s “debate” definitively shifted me from Team Biden to Team “Obviously Biden Over Trump, A Rotting Corpse Over Trump, But Please Oh Please Can Biden Step Down While There’s Still Time.”
Comment #15 June 28th, 2024 at 10:20 am
I see the death of democracy in how you write about your political opponents.
The highest widely recognized temperature on Israeli territory was 129 degrees Fahrenheit in 1942.
Comment #16 June 28th, 2024 at 10:27 am
OhMyGoodness #15: It’s obvious and undeniable that average temperatures have gone up, in the Middle East as in most places, and that weather has become more erratic in a way that affects daily life. If it were only the world’s scientists saying so and not our lying eyes, or only our lying eyes and not the world’s scientists, maybe you could gaslight people, but not when there’s both.
Comment #17 June 28th, 2024 at 10:39 am
For what it’s worth, I don’t see Joe lasting another 4 years, maybe not even another 4 months.
So, as things stand, voting for Joe is in effect voting for Kamala as president.
I still take Kamala over that other f’ing orange piece of shit lying narcissistic scumbag moron.
Comment #18 June 28th, 2024 at 10:48 am
At least we now know for sure that Kamala must have many of the qualities of a hospice nurse. 😀
Comment #19 June 28th, 2024 at 10:58 am
Scott, Jehovah still doesn’t exist, and your perspective reads myopic. It’s somewhat depressing that you cannot even imagine a democratic one-state solution, let alone peace across the region; it’s more depressing that your empathy is so blatantly one-sided. I believe that you could be less exceptionalist and more caring.
Comment #20 June 28th, 2024 at 11:09 am
Scott comment 6,
Sorry, but this looks like “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to me. Why do you always have to hate on Trump, don’t you know what he did for our country? Can you even name one thing Trump did wrong? It sounds like you just parroting fake news media talking points. You rather have a nursing home patient, whose own son had the bad laptop and the corrupt and everything else, instead of the guy who made the biggest economy and greater success than anyone thought possible? Why do you have so much hatred in your soul for this great man? And “end of democracy?” That’s a fake news talking point and also obviously totally deranged, how can you seriously think that?
Comment #21 June 28th, 2024 at 11:22 am
> Gaza is not a liberal democratic place like Israel
Which makes it somewhat okay to kill ~1.5% of its population and counting without a flinch, right?
Your definition of “Liberal” and “Democracy” is curious, which “Liberal Democracy” today has 3.5 million people under its military control for 55+ years without giving them a single vote?
> I could’ve visited the West Bank, but I’d imagine that you of all people would not have wanted me to.
I’m not sure where exactly did I say or imply this, I will chalk this up to another failure in your mental model of an average anti-Israel person as someone who hates Jews and opposes their existence on any land in any time and place on general abstract principles. Instead of, you know, just opposing settlement and colonization (by Jews or any other ethnicity), the default political position in the 21st century.
By all means, do visit the West Bank, do see the violence of the state you’re cheerleading for, go see the human shields uses (the documented ones by the IDF, not the constant propaganda spewed on Channel 14) and all the rest of the things that turn IDF soldiers into Breaking The Silence witnesses. Go see for yourself what B’Tselem catches on camera. Maybe it would re-calibrate your views toward sanity and humanity a bit.
> When someone’s final negotiating position is that Israel gets destroyed and my friends and family there all get murdered, they make the whole matter too easy and therefore too boring for me. What do they then expect me to say?
Sure, I’m sure that everyone who opposes Israel is another Hitler reborn who isn’t worth your time. I’m also sure that anyone who opposes Russia is a Slav-hating Nazi who must hate it when Russians live, as Russia is locked in a brutal war for its very survival against NATO and was only defending itself in February 2022. I’m also sure that anyone who opposes abortion-till-the-9th-month is just a Woman-hating rapist who must love it when women bear unwanted children.
Everything is infinitely simpler when you can assign arbitrary views to people without first checking if this is actually what they do believe, you can compress any amount of data to absurdly good sizes if you don’t have to preserve any recognizable signal.
> Reasonable people can disagree about how that should happen, but not about the fact that it has to happen.
It can happen without endless rows of dead children and hundreds of thousands starving, I would assume that any non-racist “reasonable” person would agree to this, which includes and implies not cheering or supporting any state doing the opposite.
Comment #22 June 28th, 2024 at 11:23 am
Scott #16
It was a simple statement of fact so not sure how that can be construed as gaslighting and yes temperatures have been on a generally upward trend for the last ten thousand years.
Comment #23 June 28th, 2024 at 11:34 am
“When someone’s final negotiating position is that Israel gets destroyed and my friends and family there all get murdered, they make the whole matter too easy and therefore too boring for me. What do they then expect me to say?”
Well, exactly.
This reminds me that everyone has their reasons.
You were born on the Jewish side, so you’re thinking like the average guy in that tribe is thinking, and you care about your fellow tribe members in priority.
But, had you been born in Gaza, you’d be thinking what the average Gaza dude is thinking.
Of course one can argue that there’s some universal truth, like for each war there’s a right side and a wrong side… it could well be… but people’s brains are such that tribal pressure and our egos are typically too strong to see it.
In the end the only thing that’s at play here is the power of evolution. Ideas against ideas, yes, but also how many people carry these ideas in their brain.
And tribalism is such that it’s easier for humans to split up and divide further and further than it is to unite beyond their differences (as we can see at the religious dogma level between Sunis and Shias, or at the political level within Isreal, etc).
If the crux of the Middle East issue is around religion (that seems hard to dispute), then it’s a fact that Islam (and Christianity) has always been an expanding religion, i.e. conversion is easy, and bringing more converts by force is okay,… which is why there are nearly 2 billion Muslims in the world today.
while Judaism is pretty much the polar opposite, making conversion quite difficult, and relying only on breeding within the tribe to increase their rank.
So it’s kind of a losing battle for Judaism.
Of course ideally all that religion bullshit would go away and we’d all turn agnostic, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon.
Comment #24 June 28th, 2024 at 11:38 am
OhMyGoodness #22: More gaslighting. Temperatures have risen about 2F since the start of the Industrial Revolution, because of human activity, and this has affected daily life. Anyone who denies that excludes themselves from sane conversation as surely as a creationist, a flat-earther, or a Holocaust denier. And I have less and less patience for such people.
Comment #25 June 28th, 2024 at 11:51 am
fred #17
I agree with your personal characterization except maybe moron but that doesn’t mandate that he still isn’t possibly the best choice. 🙂 I am starting to see the pluses in parliamentary democracy versus the essentially two party system in the US.
Comment #26 June 28th, 2024 at 11:53 am
thank you for the report, more reliable than any journalism I’ve read recently.
I left South Africa in the 80s to escape white Christian nationalism and its effects. It seems everyone in the world except maybe Scotland and the Nordic countries would now like to leave their country for a better one. It’s odd how many still think the US is that place.
‘Let us go to another country,
Not yours or mine,
And start again.’
To another country? Which?
One without fires, where fever
Lurks under leaves, and water
Is sold to those who thirst?
And carry drugs or papers
In our shoes to save us starving?
– William Plomer
Comment #27 June 28th, 2024 at 12:05 pm
Buckwing #20
“Sorry, but this looks like “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to me.”
Lol, it’s clear now that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is indeed a thing, but it’s on the side of his blind cultist followers, not on the side of those who see him for what it is.
I can tolerate that clown as a reality TV show host, but certainly not as leader of the free world…
If you don’t believe me, your very own master said it, 8 years ago:
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Even he was baffled at how stupid all you people are…
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters
Comment #28 June 28th, 2024 at 12:09 pm
Scott comment 23,
2 farenheight? That’s almost nothing, I wouldn’t even notice two farenheight. Why is this such a big deal? And do you know that many cycles of heat and cold have happened before on earth, like the one that killed the dinosaurs? Why do they think it’s cars causing it? CO2 is actually good for the earth because it makes the plants grow more. That’s science. Anyway, most of the so called scientists you talk about are radical left democrats, believing them is like believing scientists in the soviet union or in china.
Comment #29 June 28th, 2024 at 12:09 pm
TFG #21: The Allies killed something like 3-4% of the populations of Germany and Japan in WWII, because Germany and Japan had started genocidal wars against their neighbors, and bombing them until they surrendered was the least terrible response. I don’t understand what moral principle could justify the Allied war effort but not justify a war against the Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas/Houthi axis of evil. The differences are entirely in the realm of strategy, e.g. of how many innocent people on both sides would have to die in exchange for what legitimate military objective. If you want to make an argument in that realm, complete with a better strategy for Israel, feel free to do so.
Russia always had the option of simply not invading Ukraine, which never posed the slightest threat to it. Israel never had the option of not fighting neighbors who boasted of how they’d exterminate all Jews and who tried to do so, in the most gruesome ways, whenever they saw an opportunity. That’s a pretty clear and obvious difference to anyone interested in reality rather than TikTok memes.
Yes, Israel is (still) a liberal democratic country, at least to whatever extent the US is still one. And again and again, at crucial moments in its history, Israel sought to live next to a second liberal democratic country that would’ve been called Palestine. To realize that dream, all the Palestinians needed to do was renounce their dream of retaking all of Israel and killing or expelling all the Jews. Alas, they couldn’t bring themselves to do that—Arafat said he would, then walked away at the last moment. So instead, there remains this horrible occupation, which I don’t like any more than you do. And alas, every year that the Palestinian side continues to choose jihad and martyrdom over coexistence, the Israeli right grows stronger, gets to crow more loudly “you see?!? what did we always tell you??” But Palestinian recognition of Israel’s existence is the core of the conflict and always has been.
Comment #30 June 28th, 2024 at 12:22 pm
Interesting travelogue. That “gargantuan rifle” part is a fascinating detail. This isn’t my area, but I’ve seen claims that in Israel it’s not uncommon for fairly ordinary people to go around with some really high-powered firearms, and this is completely socially acceptable. That in theory it’s nominally being part of the military, but in practice it’s a pretty low bar (i.e. if you show up and are not obviously nuts/criminal, you qualify). It would be intriguing to hear confirmation or refutation from people who aren’t US gun partisans. For example, where does that guy keep the gargantuan rifle if he has six kids, and does he worry about any of them getting it?
I don’t think “the situation for Jews in the US” is bad at all. Humanities departments are a tiny, tiny, proportion of the population. On the pogrom/Holocaust scale, having to shut up about Israel/Palestine in some fairly obscure environments is very small potatoes. Any American Jews talking about moving to Israel because of a few media-hyped protests are catastrophizing. There’s really no comparison between some fringe kids, and living very close to thousands of state-sponsored literal terrorists.
There never was any scenario where Israel quietly disappears. Israel has nuclear weapons, for heaven’s sake! And not just those ordinary garden-variety A-bombs, they’ve got *H-bombs*. If you want nightmare fuel, don’t speculate if a glorified autocomplete will suddenly turn into Skynet, instead ponder the probability of a nuclear war between e.g. Iran and Israel.
Comment #31 June 28th, 2024 at 12:34 pm
Seth Finkelstein #30:
– Before Oct. 7, it was common to see uniformed soldiers in Israel (including 18-year-old girls) carrying rifles around, but hardly any civilians had guns. Because of the catastrophic delay in the IDF showing up on Oct. 7, that’s now quickly changing, and Israel is developing more of an American-style civilian gun culture.
– Yes, I know universities are an unrepresentative part of the US. But you’ll have to forgive me, as they happen to be the part where I spend my life! And if you look at any Jewish magazine, you’ll find story after story about students and writers and teachers and activists who’ve effectively had to choose between their Zionism and their careers. And that’s consistent with what I’ve heard from my own humanities colleagues.
– Oh, Skynet and Israel/Iran nuclear war are both perfectly fine nightmare fuel! I’ll even leave it as an exercise for the reader to combine the two. And for whatever it’s worth, I talked to at least a dozen Israelis who, after we’d finished on Oct. 7, wanted to spend the rest of the conversation on what I thought about the risks of AGI. 🙂
Comment #32 June 28th, 2024 at 12:34 pm
As an Israeli, what really shocks me is how serious researchers can say that there’s a genocide in Gaza. I mean, if you’re reviewing a paper, and the first claim would be: P = NP, you would pour yourself some hot beverage, take a deep breath and check in detail this sensational claim. A sensational result would have a huge impact on many fields, and it would be very easy to come up with simple tests that it should pass (likely it won’t).
But when it comes to the genocide in Gaza, somehow, critical thinking is gone. No one is checking references to previous genocides. No one is asking military experts how would a war where one side uses civilian population for cover would look like. People are constantly shocked by hospitals being bombarded as if we didn’t see that Hamas would weaponize all that is holy – children, hospital, historical sites. The involvement of UNWRA in the crimes of Hamas is undeniable, and yet both are treated as a trusted source of information.
I’ll do the work for you (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau7292)
Rwanda: 800,000 dead over 100 days
Holocaust: 1.47 million victims murdered over 100 days (or 6M in 6 years)
Armenian genocide: 600-1.5M people in ~2 years.
Gaze: 1000 civilians killed in less than 10 hours.
Spot the different one.
And also no one seems to see the motive. The motive to say that there’s a genocide in Gaza is to prepare the hearts to a genocide of Jews in Israel.
Comment #33 June 28th, 2024 at 12:47 pm
Buckwing #28: Thank you for raising three points that each have straightforward anwers!
(1) 2F doesn’t sound like a lot, but because the Gaussian distribution goes like exp(-x2) rather than exp(-x), it massively increases the frequency of extreme heat events. It’s similar to how, if you raised the average height of some population by 1 inch, you’d massively increase the number of potential NBA players in that population, rather than increasing it only by a little.
(2) Yes, CO2 is good for plants and has fluctuated wildly through the earth’s history, and yes, humans could survive with a much hotter climate like the one during the Age of Dinosaurs. What we won’t so easily survive is a hyper-rapid (by geological standards) change in CO2 concentrations, which is more closely analogous to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, or to the volcanoes, sulfur releases, etc. that caused the earth’s other mass extinctions. Particularly since so much of the current human population happens to live in low-lying coastal areas, or in equatorial regions that will soon be barely habitable.
(3) Those moderates and conservatives who have functioning truth-seeking modules, acknowledge the reality of the anthropogenic climate change crisis as surely as the left-wing radicals do. It’s just that they add: “well, why not solve it using nuclear power and geoengineering?” As it happens, they’re 100% correct to ask that, and the left-wing radicals are 100% wrong to shout them down.
Comment #34 June 28th, 2024 at 12:51 pm
> The Allies killed something like 3-4% of the populations of Germany and Japan in WWII
In response to an invasion that took a continent and a good chunk of another continent, and a military that dwarfed all of continental Europe combined. Not in response to an attack that left the equivalent of 4 years of traffic accidents in deaths [1].
> bombing them until they surrendered was the least terrible response.
Plenty of people with military expertise dispute the efficiency of carpet bombing, but okay.
> I don’t understand what moral principle could justify the Allied war effort but not justify a war against the Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas/Houthi axis of evil
The principle looks a bit like this in the most general sketch of it:
(1) People have the right to start wars when they’re credibly threatened. Ideally, people should never start war unless there is indisputable evidence that the war is going to start anyway with the other party as an aggressor.
(2) This was satisfied with Nazi Germany as an aggressor in 1939 and the 1940s.
(3) This is not satisfied today with Hamas as the aggressor, as Hamas doesn’t pose a credible threat to Israel, and – furthermore – Israel has decades of provocations and oppressions, such a prolific history of ethnic cleansing and military prisons and other shit that people lose minds over when Iran or Russia does it, that it can no longer claim it’s the aggrieved party.
Israel never once tried scaling back its policies of oppression and provocations, even the much-parroted-by-Israel-supporters disengagement from Gaza is – in the literal words of Israeli officials at the time – a ploy to gain time and further isolate the West Bank [2]. A ploy that exploded in their face, but a ploy nonetheless, a ploy whose purpose they admitted in their very own words, “Until Palestinians turn into Finns”, this being a reference the indigenous people of Finland, of course, the Sami people, who are now less than 1% of the Finland’s population. That’s the model that Israel – NOT Netanyahu, that convenient scapegoat that you love to promise that everything Israel did in the last 60 years was all due to him – envisions for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
> Russia always had the option of simply not invading Ukraine, which never posed the slightest threat to it.
Ukraine has a state army with an air force, a navy, and a tanks corp. Hamas is a bunch of militants whose heaviest weapon is unguided mortars and 1960s-era RPGs.
> Yes, Israel is (still) a liberal democratic country
Based on what evidence? Just you saying so? I’m sure 1950s America was the epitome of Liberal Democracy to Whites at the time as well, or 1980s South Africa to its Whites too. Were those liberal democracies in any meaningful sense to all of their inhabitants?
Do you want to unironically argue Israel, settlers-in-the-West-Bank-who-burn-Palestinian-children-alive Israel, is a Liberal Democracy? be my guest. But you do have to engage with the question, not just declare “I define Israel to be a Liberal Democracy” and expect me to roll with it.
[1] https://www.gov.il/en/pages/trends_2022,, “”””In 2022, 56,948 road accidents involving casualties occurred in Israel. These accidents took the lives of 351 people; 2,593 were seriously injured””””
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza,, “”””The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda.””””
Comment #35 June 28th, 2024 at 1:00 pm
Corbin #19:
It’s somewhat depressing that you cannot even imagine a democratic one-state solution, let alone peace across the region
Not only can I imagine peace across the region, I did imagine it in the very post you criticize, as well as all my other posts on this subject (see this one for example)!
But as for the “democratic one-state solution”: as our elderly President might say, here’s the deal. The absolute prerequisite to such a solution is Palestinian acknowledgment that 7+ million Jews are there to stay permanently—speaking Hebrew, upholding women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and just generally existing in an economically and scientifically modern country. They’re not leaving, nor are they going like sheep to the slaughter the way their grandparents did.
Now for the crucial insight. A Palestinian public that was ready to accept such a thing, would presumably also be ready to just let Israel be, and form its own peaceful, democratic country of Palestine next to Israel in the West Bank and Gaza (as Oslo proposed, and as the UN also proposed in 1947, and as the Palestinians turned down … can’t repeat it often enough!).
In other words: in any future where the one-state solution was feasible, it would also be superfluous.
Comment #36 June 28th, 2024 at 1:08 pm
Hi, Scott ; i am quite surprised that obvious trolls like Buckwing and OhMyGoodness are not filtered. I can understand you let stay one of their messages as testimony, but more than one ?
Comment #37 June 28th, 2024 at 1:18 pm
F3et #36: On reflection, you’re completely right.
In a subsequent comment (which I’m not letting up), Buckwing fully outed himself as a right-wing troll. I’m now finished with him.
OhMyGoodness has been commenting here since forever, pretty much always smugly and condescendingly, but “troll” seems more like the hit-and-run type, no?
Would you recommend that I adopt the same attitude with pro-Hamas, Israel-should-be-obliterated trolls? There, it seems somehow harder than with right-wing trolls to draw the line, even though clearly many commenters have been on the wrong side of it.
Comment #38 June 28th, 2024 at 1:43 pm
Scott#37 : Actually, I suppose there can be a dispassionate intellectual debate on those subjects (like the one you had with this professor agreeing for his own destruction, as long as it was a consequence of the correct historical analysis), or as one can discuss peacefully of the pro and cons of Vlad Dracul methods. But I really wonder if you would agree to have the same discussion in your real living room, especially in a time when the wounds are still bleeding.
Comment #39 June 28th, 2024 at 1:45 pm
Scott
“The Allies killed something like 3-4% of the populations of Germany and Japan in WWII, because Germany and Japan had started genocidal wars against their neighbors, and bombing them until they surrendered was the least terrible response. I don’t understand what moral principle could justify the Allied war effort but not justify a war against the Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas/Houthi axis of evil.”
What’s going on is that for a huge chunk of the population in the West, especially the youth, the WW2 standards of conducting a war (when air power and massive bombing were a totally new experimental thing and already controversial) no longer apply at all 80 years later in a modern connected world, especially since they also think that the WW2 ways of conducting a war have already been wildly shown as obsolete and massively problematic in Vietnam, Irak, etc.
They also don’t see Iran/Hamas on the same level of threat as imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
Comment #40 June 28th, 2024 at 2:14 pm
“They also don’t see Iran/Hamas on the same level of threat as imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.”
I’m probably being too generous there, I don’t think the new generation really has any clue about the history of WW2, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany… just like my generation had no clue about the 1850 Crimean war between Russian, France/UK/Turkey/Sardinia or even WW1.
The only reason I’m personally very verse in WW2 history is because, for decades, Hollywood made so many WW2 movies (often as a heroic war from the allied side, but sometimes more even, showing Japanese and German point of view too), while the Vietnam war has always been depicted as problematic (also because journalists were free to report about it, with very little censorship, and the military learned from this).
The new generation has no interest in those movies, they see them as propaganda.
Comment #41 June 28th, 2024 at 2:59 pm
Scott, I feel that I owe you a bit of an apology. The last time I commented on your blog, I left a rather lengthy and negative comment regarding Israel, comparing the situation there to that in the Indian subcontinent in various ways (https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7845#comment-1973168). I still agree with most of what I wrote, but there are 2 things I should amend.
The first is that I got carried away with the analogy, writing ‘ignoring centuries of history where they mostly did live together peacefully’. Perhaps this was mostly true of subcontinental Hindus/Muslims, and of Arab Muslims and Mizrahi Jews. But of course it was not for Ashkenazi Jews (whose plight Zionism was more directly intended to remedy) who had an extended and brutal history of being targeted in pogroms, culminating in the horror of the Holocaust. In trying to extend an analogy, I stretched too hard and ended up minimizing real, horrible suffering. This made me realize partisanship was distorting my thinking and has caused me to take a step back.
The second is that I had a long conversation with an old friend of mine, who is Israeli. When the topic turned to Israel, I mainly just listened to his thoughts on the conflict. It is one thing to hold strong political opinions on certain issues in the abstract, and yet another to talk to someone who is directly affected by those issues. My holding and enunciating strong views on this conflict is not significantly contributing to emancipating Palestinians, while simultaneously contributing to a discourse whose not-so-small fringes are anti-Semitic in nature. Much as how debating whether homosexuality is caused by nature or nurture furthers homophobic discourse, or debating whether 3rd trimester abortion should be legal furthers anti-abortion discourse.
All this to say, fundamentally, my view on the conflict has not changed. But I have decided to change the way in which I express myself on the issue. Apologies for the way in which I commented last time, and I hope I’m still welcome to comment on your more mathematical posts in the future.
Comment #42 June 28th, 2024 at 3:06 pm
Scott #37
Keeping a small interaction with trolls is like having a vaccination. Without that the immune system could lose defenses. And they evolve too, by the way.
Comment #43 June 28th, 2024 at 3:11 pm
SR #41: I don’t even remember what you said last time! And I don’t feel like looking it up. But in any case, your new comment displays so much introspection and intellectual humility that I welcome you here based on it alone.
I’ve always welcomed commenters interested in emancipating the Palestinians and will continue to do so. I’m interested in emancipating the Palestinians. I just think the Palestinians need to be emancipated, first and foremost, from their own leaders and from the generations-long obsession with reversing the Nakba and destroying Israel. Then there can be a Palestinian state that’s actually focused on the welfare and rights and economic development of the Palestinian people. And I think maybe 20-30% of Palestinians realize this, despite a staggering amount of brainwashing, and despite a wider Arab world and global activist class enthusiastically keeping them stuck in their current local minimum. The challenge is how to make that into 70-80%.
Comment #44 June 28th, 2024 at 3:27 pm
Scott #42: Thank you! And 100% agreed on the need for better Palestinian leadership and goals. Getting over past traumas is not easy, but it is the only thing that will lead to a lasting peace in the region.
Comment #45 June 28th, 2024 at 3:45 pm
Hamas don’t want to kill your Israeli family, Scott. It’s a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose endspiel is replacement of Israel (and the rest of the Middle East) with a Sharia Islamic state (Khalifat) where Jews (and Christians) will be dhimmis, ie second class citizens, as in the Middle Ages under Muslim rule.
Any talk about Jewish sovereignty even within Ramat Aviv borders is a non-starter and no feminists or LGBT welcome. Which makes any talk about democracy and the two-state solution a non-starter (and, incidentally, suits hundreds of thousands of anti-Zionist Haredim Jews just fine).
What would be your best solution if you were not craving for the two-state one?
Comment #46 June 28th, 2024 at 4:10 pm
Maybe you can’t visit Gaza in person Scott, but you can at least visit it in your imagination if only for half an hour or so.
“Hold firm! Do not let your misfortune and the wickedness of others rob you of your love for mankind!”
Comment #47 June 28th, 2024 at 4:22 pm
I’m glad you enjoyed your trip, Scott!
I’m sorry I could not be there. Your argument in the second paragraph made me feel even more guilty for not going, even for a very short visit.
Observations 2 and 11 (and to a lesser extent 6) made me feel far more hopeful about the future of Israel, despite the war and despite Netanyahu. People are still having kids, living their lives, building the country. Zionism was always a project for optimists (“If you will it, it is no dream.”), and it is very gratifying to hear that, even in days like these, optimism is alive and well in Israel.
Regarding observation 5: I am dismayed by the protests your friend invited you to, specifically the ones that want to cut a deal with Hamas and end the war. I understand where they are coming from: no one wants to send their children die on a battlefield, and it is much better to have quiet than to live in a war zone. The problem is, this exact attitude is what got Israel into this mess in the first place. Sure, cut a deal, give concessions in return for hostages and for quiet, but for every life you save now, a dozen more will die in the inevitable next war with the death cult you just empowered. This was policy from the Madrid Conference of 1991 up to the early morning hours of Oct. 7, 2023.
As I see it, the only way out is through: Hamas and Hezbollah need to be crushed, in an extremely costly war that might end up being Israel’s biggest. After the “end of major combat operations”, the IDF will need to maintain a permanent occupation of Gaza and Lebanon, with monthly or weekly raids on terror nests. There is no alternative: Islamist terrorist groups will naturally fill any power vacuum in the Middle East, and they can only be suppressed, not eradicated, given their large base of support within the local civilian population. That is what the US learned in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, and what also happened in northern Iraq in 2014, Lebanon in 2000, and Gaza in 2007. Once they take over, Islamist terror organizations waste no time in digging in and building weapons factories, tunnels, training camps, etc, making it more difficult and expensive to root them out later.
None of this is impossible: it requires Israel to face the grim reality, stop trying to buy quiet, and prepare for a war in the long haul. It ends up with Israel going back to the status quo of the 1980s, before the peace process, when the IDF was in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Lebanon. Israel already pulled off a version of this in Judea and Samaria to crack down on the Second Intifada. The crackdown on terror there never ended, and so far it has been successful: there were neither rockets nor Oct. 7-style attacks from east of the Green Line. It definitely requires the exact opposite approach of the protesters that want, after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, to cut deals with the modern day Nazis that perpetrated it.
Regarding observation 3: Of course Israel will engineer its way out of the problem of hotter days! On the agricultural front, there is lots that can be done with genetically engineering heat-resistant and drought-resistant crops. On making hot days more bearable for people, I recommend planting lots of shade trees along every street and footpath in every village, town, and city. I would also recommend the other standard remedies offered by urban planning activists: more pedestrianization, more trams trains, more parks, more density and mixed-use zoning so that everything is within walking/biking distance of one’s apartment, etc.
Not sure how to feel about observation 7. I hope that the high-tech and university crowds will not go, even though it probably is true that if they are in STEM and avoid being visibly Jewish/Israeli they will have better lives abroad. Then again, it has always been true, and many decided to remain. I also don’t know how many will decide to remain going forward, given the increasingly right-wing and religious demographic future, and given the inevitable future wars with terror groups and likely with Iran. Some of the high-tech and university people may sing “Ein Li Eretz Acheret”, but do they really mean it if they are seriously considering moving abroad?
And yes, I fully see the irony of writing that as an Israeli Jew living abroad, with only vague plans of returning eventually.
I suppose the best counterargument to observation 7 is observation 11. I completely agree with it.
Comment #48 June 28th, 2024 at 4:53 pm
@Turing’s Faint Ghost, Comment #34:
>> I don’t understand what moral principle could justify the Allied war effort …
> The principle looks a bit like this in the most general sketch of it:
> (1) People have the right to start wars when they’re credibly threatened. Ideally, people should never start war unless there is indisputable evidence that the war is going to start anyway with the other party as an aggressor.
In the case of Israel and Hamas, of course, the evidence that Hamas was planning to launch an invasion of Israel is that … they launched an invasion of Israel. Pretty ironclad, I’d say.
> (2) This was satisfied with Nazi Germany as an aggressor in 1939 and the 1940s.
> (3) This is not satisfied today with Hamas as the aggressor, as Hamas doesn’t pose a credible threat to Israel, and – furthermore – Israel has decades of provocations and oppressions, such a prolific history of ethnic cleansing and military prisons and other shit that people lose minds over when Iran or Russia does it, that it can no longer claim it’s the aggrieved party.
Well, then, you seem to be wrong about #2. After all, all the Allies had decades or more of provocations and oppressions, including a prolific history of ethnic cleansing and military prisons and other shit that people lost their minds over when Nazi Germany did it. So I guess it’s OK for Germany and Japan to try to conquer them after all, right?
Comment #49 June 29th, 2024 at 1:34 am
@Ben Standeven # 48:
> the evidence that Hamas was planning to launch an invasion of Israel is that … they launched an invasion of Israel.
You forgot the “being credibly threatened by it” part. See source 1 in the comment you’re replying to, October 7th is less than 4 years of traffic accidents.
> all the Allies had decades or more of provocations and oppressions, including a prolific history of ethnic cleansing and military prisons
Not against Germans. If a coalition of African or Asian armed resistence groups started WW2 against the Allies then sure, I would have supported them conditional on no war crimes.
I don’t support Hamas over the war crimes they did against Israeli civilians, and also because they’re delusional islamists and I’m atheist, but I also have very little tolerance against the kind of bullshit that starts with “Israel was just chilling on October 6th, completely innocent, God’s fucking gift to mankind”.
I consider anyone who peddles said delusion to be (a) an ignoramus to be educated (b) a not very successful liar (c) a racist who sees no problem with Israel’s crimes because they’re against people who don’t look like him. They’re all pretty bad choices, so if one takes offense at being accused of any of them, one should be careful to know the entire 75 years history and especially starting from 1967 before attempting to do apologetics for war criminals.
> So I guess it’s OK for Germany and Japan to try to conquer them after all
I already explained why this is wrong, but even if it was right, it wouldn’t justify all the other territories and people that Nazi Germany and imperial Japan committed war crimes on.
Comment #50 June 29th, 2024 at 5:58 am
Scott
“The Allies killed something like 3-4% of the populations of Germany and Japan in WWII, because Germany and Japan had started genocidal wars against their neighbors, and bombing them until they surrendered was the least terrible response”
3% of the Gaza population (2.3 millions) would be ~70,000 people killed, which is on the same order of magnitude (for a factor of 2) of what the IDF actually killed after 6 months.
The WW2 standards were very low – very little regard for human life and civilian casualties, primitive technology compared to today (carpet bombing vs guided missiles, no night vision, no advanced communication, no satellite data, no cell phone tracking, no GPS, no observation drones, …).
So it’s striking that in 6 months the IDF had already almost reached that rate of killing, while hearing many defenders of Israel’s action claim that the IDF is the army that, in the entire history of the world, is taking the most care ever to avoid killing civilians. So I think it’s not surprising if a lot of people are skeptical about that claim. An army that’s achieving WW2 level of killing can’t be trying that hard to avoid civilian casualties, you’d expect 10 or 100 times less victims, not half.
And then, on top of that, with little result to show since the war is still going on with no end in sight.
Comment #51 June 29th, 2024 at 6:24 am
But, to be fair to Israel:
In WW2, at least the Nazis and Imperial Japan were willing to surrender at some point, at least once Hitler was out and once the Emperor told them to do so.
It’s not like the Allied had to kill every single German or Japanese soldier out there.
It doesn’t seem to be the case with Hamas, because they’re counting on the casualty level (with the IDF playing right into their hand) to impact world opinion, which wasn’t a thing in WW2.
Comment #52 June 29th, 2024 at 7:22 am
TFG #49: There’s only one bit that I feel like responding to. Namely, that October 7 was merely “4 years’ worth of traffic accidents,” and Israel should therefore have just shrugged it off or something. This is precisely like saying that the US should’ve just shrugged off Pearl Harbor. Indeed, Pearl Harbor “merely” killed soldiers on some faraway island base, rather than women and children in their homes, and killed a smaller proportion of the American population than 10/7 did of the Israeli population.
Normal people intuitively understand the game-theoretic difference between traffic accidents and an adversary determined to murder your entire people, but to spell it out: the adversary will keep going unless stopped. If it matters, Hamas has been 100% clear in its promise to keep repeating October 7 until Israel is no more.
Since October 7, something like 100,000 Israelis (including a family member of mine) have been internally displaced, living with relatives or in hotel rooms, rather than in their homes in the north or in the Gaza envelope, which are threatened by Hezbollah and Hamas respectively. Israel has effectively shrunk. To be clear, we’re not talking about settlements or occupied territories here, but about pre-1967 Israel, what even the UN and Egypt and Qatar (and anyone else who concedes that Israel gets to continue existing at all) agrees is Israel’s territory.
Nor are we talking just about ragtag little Hamas, which has become just a proxy of Iran—a state that’s committed to “wiping Israel off the map,” that also controls the vastly more powerful Hezbollah, and that could assemble nuclear weapons right now if it wanted to.
Given this situation, even the saner anti-Israel people concede that Israel’s options were either to fight back hard or to dissolve itself. It’s just that they preferred that it dissolve itself! Do I take it that that’s the camp you’re in?
Given the acidity of your comments, there’s sort of only one question remaining to which your answer would still interest me (and I’m inclined to leave further comments from you in moderation unless you answer it).
Namely, suppose Israel announces tomorrow that it’s dissolving itself into the secular state of Palestine. And then suppose that, just as they’ve promised to do, a portion of the Palestinians respond to that event by joyously invading the former Israel to kill as many Jews as possible, in a second Holocaust or October 7 times a thousand, and that the remaining Palestinians do nothing to stop this. My question is, what should happen next? Should any surviving Jews be airlifted or loaded into ships bound for the US or Canada or the UK, and made citizens of those places? Given your apparent animus toward the Israeli people, it’s not clear to me that you’d support such a rescue even then (as, indeed, a majority of the American public was against taking Jewish refugees on the eve of the Holocaust).
OK, I guess I have one other question before I kick your ass out of here. You say you’re an atheist. Where do you suppose an atheist’s chances of survival would be the greatest: in Gaza, Iran, or Israel?
Comment #53 June 29th, 2024 at 8:02 am
Faibsz #45: Oh, I grant that Hamas might allow a few Jews to remain in Israel as dhimmis. But would they let 7 million Jews remain? Not if you listen to their own words: there would be a mass expulsion, a mass slaughter, or both.
(Note that dhimmitude didn’t protect almost a million Jews living in Arab countries from being expelled, their property confiscated, as soon as Israel was founded—a “nakba” that the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit about, proving the double standard.)
What would be your best solution if you were not craving for the two-state one?
Well, I’m very open to the idea of a two-state “confederation,” rather than two entirely separate states. But in the world as it currently exists, Jews having a place on earth where they get to defend themselves as Jews is totally non-negotiable.
Comment #54 June 29th, 2024 at 9:09 am
As a long-time follower of your blog, it’s been difficult to witness these recent conversations.
I’d like to make an observation: at this stage, we can reasonably conclude that rationality has its limits. Those with strong emotional ties to either side of this issue are unlikely to maintain an unbiased perspective. Discussions and arguments seem unlikely to resolve the conflict, which ultimately comes down to power dynamics – who has more resources and military strength.
This situation, coupled with other existential crises facing humanity, leads me to question our species’ trajectory. Our evolution of property rights – essentially dividing up the Earth as if it inherently belongs to us, narcissistically breaking away from evolutionary norms – and the subsequent development of weapons to protect and acquire more territory, has led us into intricate, recursive zero-sum conflicts. I wonder if this path might ultimately contribute to our own extinction.
Comment #55 June 29th, 2024 at 9:45 am
@Scott #52:
Are you sure I’m the one being acidic and behaving with “Animosity”, given your language at the end of post? For all you complain about my posts, I didn’t direct a single insult, explicit or implicit, at you or at any other commenter.
I don’t really care about you “expelling” me out of here by the way, I suppose you could use one piece of advice before I leave: States don’t care about you. If you gave every single member in Israel’s government the choice to kill 50% of American Jews in exchange for more guaranteed weapons shipments to Israel, **Not A Single One** of them would think twice before answering yes. They don’t give a shit about their own people. They don’t give a shit about you.
When you cheerlead for a state, you lose your humanity and respect.
> If it matters, Hamas has been 100% clear in its promise to keep repeating October 7 until Israel is no more.
Sure, a promise they can’t make good on unless Israel fails in exactly the same devastating failure mode they failed in on October 7th.
Israel had had documents detailing Hamas’ plans since 2022. Israel was warned by the US and Egyptian intelligence since September 2023 that October 7th was going to happen, possibly just missing the exact day. The observers in Nahal Oz base kept screaming for weeks before October 7th about anomalies and the Hamas training being done on the borders.
Unless you have so very little faith in the Israeli political machinery that you think this catastrophic perfect storm of fuckups is going to happen “again and again and again”, it seems like October 7th is and will remain a fluke.
(and by the way, some settlers celebrate October 7th because its victims were primarily left-wing peace advocates, and because it allows them to keep ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank.)
> something like 100,000 Israelis (including a family member of mine) have been internally displaced, living with relatives or in hotel rooms, rather than in their homes in the north or in the Gaza envelope
They deserve sympathy just like any refugee, just like the 1.9 million Gazans that have been ping-ponging since October as internal refugees all over Gaza, unlike their Israeli counterparts, most of them don’t have hotels or even their 1 daily meal.
60K of those 100K refugees are from the North according to both Haaretz and Times of Israel, the same North that Hezbollah has been declaring since October 8th it will leave alone if only Israel leaves Gaza (an offer still standing).
Since your style is always blaming the Nakba and everything that happened to Palestinians on their leadership, it sounds fair to ask you: Why don’t the 60K refugees from the North blame Israel first? Israel is the one that made them refugees for nothing (Hamas is still standing and kicking after all, nearly 9 months into the war). This war could have taken no less and no more than the lives of 1200 Israeli, it could have even been not worthy of being called a “war”.
Instead, it inflicted billions of dollars in losses on the Israeli economy, made Iran attack homeland Israel for the first time in history, stressed to the limit the 45 years old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, made 100K Israeli refugees, and destroyed Israeli reputation from the USA to China to Australia.
> that Israel’s options were either to fight back hard or to dissolve itself.
This is called the Politicians’ syllogism, “Israel must fight back, killing 35K in Gaza is fighting back, therefore Israel must kill 35K in Gaza”. Could it be that there is another way to fight back other than killing ~1.5% of one of the densest population centers near you and guaranteeing a limitless source of fighters and animosity for the foreseeable future?
> Should any surviving Jews be airlifted or loaded into ships bound for the US or Canada or the UK, and made citizens of those places?
Your hypothetical doesn’t make sense, and is a regular feature of far-fetched Israeli propaganda. But I will answer you nonetheless: No. The war criminals who mass-kill Israelis should be tried for war crimes and genocide, and the remaining Jews should be given reparations and settled in what used to be their homeland before the genocide. Given no other choices, the surviving Israelis should be rescued by any means necessary.
This is essentially a lite version of the expelling of Mizrahi Jews from the Arab world, the “Nakba that nobody gives a shit about”, in your eloquent phrasing, and indeed, my opinions about this Nakba is the same as the other one: the Mizrahi Jews should be given reparations and resettled where they used to live, if they want to.
> Given your apparent animus toward the Israeli people, it’s not clear to me that you’d support such a rescue even then
Because you spend your time on Twitter. Your sense of what is normal for anti-israel people to believe is warped by the biggest and most insane memetic experiment in the history of Earth. Maybe you should take a look at the comment sections of Times Of Israel or the r/israel subreddit, to gain a sense of what your own side lunatics look like from afar.
I do not have “Animus” toward ordinary Israelis. I was insulted and silenced by my circle of friends because I don’t believe Israelis are all complicit in the war crimes their government is doing. I don’t want your validation or recognition either, I’m doing this because this is how sanity is going to prevail, I count myself on the same team as B’Tselem activists and Breaking The Silence and Standing Together.
> Where do you suppose an atheist’s chances of survival would be the greatest: in Gaza, Iran, or Israel?
Israel. Now what do you think you have accomplished by this question?
> Before I kick your ass out of here
Stay classy.
Comment #56 June 29th, 2024 at 9:50 am
Scott #53: the Jews expelled from the Arab states were at the mercy of local despots, sworn enemies of Muslim Brotherhood; Nasser and Saddam had thousands of MB members executed. On the whole in the Middle Ages dhimmitude provided the degree of protection undreamt of by Jews in the Christian world.
Your idea of a “confederation” is not acceptable for Hamas for the same reason as the two-state solution: it requires a (shared with Arabs) Jewish sovereignty over part of Muslim land.
Comment #57 June 29th, 2024 at 10:00 am
Whenever I go to Israel I’m also struck by how many children there are, and how much building is happening. it feels like one of the few countries I’ve visited that is growing and evolving rather than just resting on its laurels.
Comment #58 June 29th, 2024 at 10:10 am
Faibsz #56:
Your idea of a “confederation” is not acceptable for Hamas for the same reason as the two-state solution: it requires a (shared with Arabs) Jewish sovereignty over part of Muslim land.
Good, then all the more reason to destroy Hamas, as Nazi Germany and so many other evil regimes were destroyed before it, and elevate more moderate Palestinians in its place.
It was, of course, Jewish land thousands of years before it was Muslim land, or before Islam existed. And there’s already hundreds of times as much Muslim land all around it.
Comment #59 June 29th, 2024 at 10:13 am
Scott, I’d like to anticipate for avoiding misunderstandings, that I have many Israeli friends and physics colleagues in Israel and I totally understand their reaction after the October’s attack.
But….
I have a question. In your two-weeks investigation, did you collect opinions about the dimension of the war? I mean: for each dead Israeli there are probably 10 dead Palestinians, millions of refugees, no infrastructures or homes left. Do they think this is acceptable and/or “human”?
My contacts do not discuss this. They discuss what you reported in the post: hostages, internal politics, Iran, … and I find difficult to ignore also the gigantic asymmetry of this war. Again: please do not misunderstand me: I’m generally on Israel’s side, but I find difficult to ignore the tragedy of millions of people which will generate the next generation of terrorists..
It seems like an invisible line has been crossed (maybe since years…): stopping considering Palestinians as other human beings but just a problem to deal with. This “line” has been crossed many many times in the history of mankind: dis-umanizing the enemy. And when this point is reached, everything is possible.
Comment #60 June 29th, 2024 at 10:29 am
Lim #54:
As a long-time follower of your blog, it’s been difficult to witness these recent conversations.
I’d like to make an observation: at this stage, we can reasonably conclude that rationality has its limits. Those with strong emotional ties to either side of this issue are unlikely to maintain an unbiased perspective.
Totally understood. From my perspective, I’m a moderate, peace-loving guy who wants to get to where the Israelis have their place in something close to the 1967 border, the Palestinians have their place in the West Bank and Gaza, everyone gives up the fantasy of taking everything and annihilating the other side, everyone is free, and no one else gets killed. And I’m eager to have a calm, rational conversation with anyone who shares that goal about what’s the best way to get there.
The trouble is just that that valuable conversation keeps getting derailed by people whose counterproposal amounts to, “well, how about the Israelis simply surrender their whole country to those who’ve sworn to exterminate them? And then it will be up to me, and my mood, how many I choose to rescue from the ensuing genocide?” So then I get emotional, because how could I not? Keeps happening.
Comment #61 June 29th, 2024 at 11:26 am
LK #59: Yes, pretty much to a person, my left-wing Israeli friends expressed horror and disgust about the death toll in Gaza. (How many Gazans, one might wonder, expressed horror over the humanitarian toll of Oct 7 … rather than disappointment that the toll wasn’t much greater?)
What Israeli leftists want is for their government to have been competent at intelligence and security, and therefore for Hamas’s invasion to have failed, and therefore for the war never to have happened. Where they differ from the shrieking masses of American college campuses and Twitter is that they don’t have the luxury of a fantasy-based existence: they understand that, once Hamas did invade, war was inevitable. They have, as I said, many disagreements about the conduct of the war (as even the Israeli center does; Gantz of course quit Bibi’s war cabinet over his disagreements).
Comment #62 June 29th, 2024 at 11:35 am
After cooling down a bit, I apologize for the following:
0- I came across as minimizing October 7th. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.
Saying that October 7th is the same as “4 years of Traffic accidents” is the same as saying that traffic accidents in the US kill an order of magnitude more Americans than 9/11, yearly. It’s not a minimization or a call for the victims and their family and those hurt by all the pain to “stop complaining”, it’s putting things in perspective, a perspective that vengeful emotions – a totally normal thing that we all succumb to – all too often obscure.
1- I should have led in my first comment by saying that I think all people and all animals and all living things have the right to live. I didn’t. I’m sorry.
I admit that the pro-Palestinian side has an obscene and alarming amount of people calling for the genocide of Israelis. So maybe it’s slightly on me that I didn’t immediately identify myself as a pro-humanity pro-animals human first and anything else second, before I say anything else.
2- In one of my comments I used the words like “ignoramus” and “racist”, this doesn’t describe anyone I responded to here. I’m sorry I used them in a phrasing that implied I’m using them to describe someone I was responding to.
3- I let my anger get the best of me. I’m a quite angry man. And this often leads people to think I’m rude and hateful. I’m sorry.
There is a thing that Pro-Israel people often do that drives me crazy with indignant rage, namely: blaming everything and every single milestone in the history of the conflict on Palestinians, simultaneously and seamlessly circuit-switching between “Palestinians as people” and “Palestinians as governments”. The first meaning of “Palestinian”, – like any multi-million amount of people, is “too big to fail”: too large to demonize in aggregate, too huge to actually wish ill on without becoming a monster. The second – like all politicians – are of course always a fair game for all insults and satire and calls to bear responsibility.
You can blame the misfortune of any victim on the victim not being smart enough. It’s so obviously and trivially true that it doesn’t translate to anything except “I’m happy that the victim is a victim”. Of course if the sexually assaulted woman was more careful and paranoid, she would have never been sexually assaulted. Every victim’s misfortune is ultimately the result of someone not being as smart as, as strong as, as present in mind as, some victimizer.
Consider a certain kind of anti-semitic comment, “Didn’t the Jews learn anything from the Holocaust”, I have seen this being described as anti-semitic by a lot of people, some not too thrilled about what Israel is doing. And I agree, actually. It’s distasteful. It’s quite distasteful because it’s an implied threat, the subtext is “”If those Jews don’t quit, maybe they will get another Holocaust”. Distasteful, right?
Here’s the thing though: that kind of comment is routine in lots of Pro-Israel circles. “The Palestinians never forget an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. “The Arabs always want yesterday’s deal today”. “Maybe Palestinians should try living in peace”. A terrible afflictions on millions of people, is first re-framed as the just dessert of the victims (“If only they weren’t/didn’t/… so and so”), and then presented as a learning opportunity, with a sprinkling of an implied threat on top (“If they didn’t learn it this time, we will just have to do it again, and again and again and again till they learn”).
My advice for anyone coming to this conflict from the primarily pro-Israel point of view: if you want to actually arrive at the heart of someone coming from the pro-Palestinian angle – and not just performatively insult and aggravate them for brownie points from your ingroup – start by saying that nobody deserves death except murderers, start by acknowledging the historical sin that is Israel’s founding, how utterly unnecessary it was, how outrageously unfair it is. How easily and trivially it could have been walked back by Israel in 76 years, and it never was.
Comment #63 June 29th, 2024 at 11:51 am
A correction because it’s too late to edit the post:
>>> the historical sin that is Israel’s founding
I meant the historical sin that was done **during** Israel’s founding. Not Israel’s founding itself.
I’m not necessarily thrilled about Israel’s founding either, I do believe that the non-leftist type of 1930s Zionism is a pretty racist ideology that explicitly erased Palestinians and thought of itself as European first. There were a strange kind of Marxist/leftist Zionism that saw Arabs as equals and thought of themselves as partners to Arabs in the Decolonization of the Middle East. But my impression is that it was as rare as Israel’s leftists are, always were.
But even with all of this, Israel’s founding would have been ok – at least as ok as any country founded post-WW2 – as long as “No Palestinians were harmed during the founding of this nation” can be credibly said about it.
Comment #64 June 29th, 2024 at 11:54 am
‘Israel’s Population Is Growing at a Dizzying Rate. Is It Up for the Challenge?’
‘By 2065 Israel is slated to be the second-most crowded nation on earth. Can it continue to grow like Nigeria while maintaining a standard of living like the Netherlands?’
”Professor Dan Ben-David of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research says that in terms of per capita density per square kilometer, Israel currently ranks fourth among OECD countries, after South Korea, the Netherlands and Belgium. By 2031, it will be second only to South Korea, and by 2065 Israel is on track to become not just the most densely crowded nation among the developed countries, but the most crowded of all the 180 nations on earth, with the exception of Bangladesh.’
https://archive.ph/v99X1#selection-1177.213-1177.702
Comment #65 June 29th, 2024 at 12:11 pm
TFG #62: Thank you for those apologies, all four of which are gratefully accepted. They show more self-reflectiveness than I’ve ever seen from any of the militant anti-Zionists who haunt Twitter and college campuses and my nightmares.
I apologize on my part for being … less than maximally classy in some of my replies to you.
To me, saying that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity is fundamentally different from saying that Jews learned nothing from the Holocaust. The former is urging the Palestinians to make better choices and thereby obtain a better result for themselves. The latter, as you say, implicitly accuses Jews of the very monstrous crime that was perpetrated against them, and thereby appears to justify that crime.
Now, regarding your advice for the pro-Israel side:
start by saying that nobody deserves death except murderers
Absolutely, 200% with you there…
Starr by acknowledging the historical sin that is Israel’s founding, how utterly unnecessary it was
Nope, sorry, that part will never happen. I don’t think Israel’s founding was a historical sin at all; I think the millennia of persecution and then near-extermination of the Jews (enthusiastically supported by the Palestinian leadership of the time) that necessitated Israel’s founding was a historical sin.
I’ll readily acknowledge that there was suffering for everyone, including both Jews and Palestinians, in the aftermath of WWII, and that everyone now deserves to have a country committed to their survival and flourishing.
Comment #66 June 29th, 2024 at 12:25 pm
Scott, In declaring your support for the “nursing home guy” I wonder if you have priced in the following:
– If Biden is elected to a second -term Iran will, with near certainty, build a nuclear warhead. When that happens the probability of Jewish holocaust in our lifetime increases from trivial to non-trivial.
– The defining issue for the left-wing of the Democratic Party is antisemitism, to which the rest of the Democratic Party – including its leader – is compelled to accommodate to some extent.
For me, these prices are higher than I am willing to pay.
Comment #67 June 29th, 2024 at 12:40 pm
Scott #14: I share your admiration of John Fetterman and I believe he can beat Trump.
I was struck by the closing paragraph/sentence in the profile which was just published in the New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/01/john-fettermans-war
At one point, I asked Fetterman what end he saw for the war—would it be Hamas’s dismantling, or something else? “I do think that it’s a fact that when you have that kind of an evil, or that kind of a movement that came out of a society, whether it was Nazi Germany or imperial Japan or the Confederacy, right here in the South, that kind of movement has to be destroyed into submission,” Fetterman said. He had reframed the question. It wasn’t just Hamas’s political movement that needed to end, but the underlying support for it: “That kind of society that gave birth to it now has to reach a point where it has to turn its back to those kinds of uses and pursuits.” Fetterman seemed to seize upon the Civil War analogy. After a moment, he added, “And that’s why Atlanta had to burn.”
Comment #68 June 29th, 2024 at 12:57 pm
@Scott 63
For what it’s worth, there is another comment of mine correcting “The sin that is Israel’s founding” to “The sin done during Israel’s founding”. It’s probably stuck in the moderation queue or possibly dropped. By the time this comment gets through it might be up. Still totally on me for not being more careful and for not reading the comment quickly enough before the 5 minutes edit timer expired.
There is an infinite amount of true things to say during a disaster, not all of them are actually optimal to say. The Palestinians might make bad choices, but so do the Americans, so do the Israelis, so do every fallible human-or-less brain on Earth.
Sure, Palestinians – like a lot of Arabs – do not rebel on leaders that kill and hurt them by stupidity and corruption more than any air force or tank corps could, but the Americans elected a literal convict (though not at the time) and a massive portion want to do so again AFTER he was convicted, and the North Koreans deified their dictator (or stayed silent as he did so himself). I don’t see similar witty remarks about the bad choices of Americans or North Koreans.
The worst time to say “You suck” to somebody is when he’s dying. There’s are infinite ways to rephrase things so as to better respect the grieving. The factual content of a remark is orthogonal to its tune, that’s the same effect that friends use when they call each other “bitch” and make it sound more friendly, genuine, and sweet than when enemies’ “buddy”.
Re: countries, I will never agree because I’m an Anarchist. I readily acknowledge the world is not yet ready for Anarchism, but statism isn’t and shouldn’t be the ceiling of our expectations.
I agree that sometimes people want to live in demographic majorities and that’s completely okay. Sometimes I hear Europeans complain about immigration because they hate hearing a foreign tongue all the time, and I feel bad for them. Sometimes people need to hear familiar syllables, common assumptions, homogeneous faces, I don’t demonize this desire, though all too often it can be hijacked and nitrous-boosted to extreme xenophobia.
Comment #69 June 29th, 2024 at 1:01 pm
Scott
“This is precisely like saying that the US should’ve just shrugged off Pearl Harbor. Indeed, Pearl Harbor “merely” killed soldiers on some faraway island base, rather than women and children in their homes, and killed a smaller proportion of the American population than 10/7 did of the Israeli population.”
It wasn’t about the body count of the attack (although the fact that the attack was seen as cowardly did shock and finally mobilized the American public behind Roosevelt, who had tried to find a way to enter the war) – it was expected that Imperial Japan was about to declare war on the US in the near future, because Japan had been expending for years in China and South East Asia, and tension between the US and Japan over the Pacific were reaching a boiling point (diplomatic efforts had failed, etc).
On Dec 8th 1941 Japan tried to sink as much of the US Pacific Fleet as they could to make sure they would have a few years of domination in that area. And on that same day Japan also attacked Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore, all held by the British.
So it wasn’t a matter death toll on that day at all, it was a matter of Imperial Japan talking control of the entire Pacific and South East Asia.
The comparison would be as if Hamas attacked not just Israel (in the hope of crippling a significant chunk of its military), but also successfully invaded Cyprus, Malta, Sardinia, Sicily, in effect taking control of the Mediterranean.
Similarly Hitler never attacked France, it was France that decided to declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland. France knew what was coming and didn’t even wait for the first french casualty (the invasion of Poland was a trigger point for them).
With Hamas it was a matter of triggering Israel to respond with all its might against Gaza, they knew it would happen.
Comment #70 June 29th, 2024 at 1:11 pm
The only apt comparison is between October 7th and 9/11.
9/11 triggered the invasion of Afghanistan and Irak.
We all know how that went…
So it’s no surprise that those who support the action of the IDF in Gaza avoid making the comparison and keep bringing up WW2, which is a poor comparison.
Comment #71 June 29th, 2024 at 1:18 pm
Scott #60:
The trouble is just that that valuable conversation keeps getting derailed by people whose counterproposal amounts to, “well, how about the Israelis simply surrender their whole country to those who’ve sworn to exterminate them? And then it will be up to me, and my mood, how many I choose to rescue from the ensuing genocide?” So then I get emotional, because how could I not? Keeps happening.
Nope, not “then”. You were already emotional from the outset which colors your perspective in evaluating every counterproposal to the most extreme version lacking in any nuance (specified by you in the quote). And the counterproposal people were similarly emotional, evaluating Israel’s actions in the past and present at their worst and your words extrapolated to their extremes. There is enough of inflammatory evidence and rhetoric in this cacophony to support a wide enough variety of viewpoints that raw emotions predominate. This idea of “I am very emotional but I’m being more rational than those nazis” is naive at best. We’re squarely in emotional, zero sum adversarial territory with people acting out traumas, and it’s heartbreaking to watch.
Comment #72 June 29th, 2024 at 1:21 pm
I realize there’s been very little emigration-from-Trump, or from Bibi, but if any group is going to be serious when they consider it, it’s Jews, who almost universally live wherever they live now because some ancestor judged (correctly) that it was time to get the hell out, NOW.
Comment #73 June 29th, 2024 at 4:06 pm
Scott, I’m glad that you visited Israel. And commiserate with your being “in Beirut” where I have found myself in google maps for most of the past 9 months
Comment #74 June 29th, 2024 at 4:39 pm
Lim #69: I mean, I noticed myself becoming emotional when “Turing’s Faint Ghost” showed up, and not before then. And I noticed myself becoming less emotional after TFG apologized for their more outrageous remarks.
You can claim that I was subconsciously emotional all along. But I don’t see how you can tell by this method whether one side or the other actually started out reasonable, and was only driven to emotionality by the other side’s intransigence.
One decent method would be to look at “neutral third parties,” whether that’s the UN in 1947, or Bill Clinton in the 1990s (who orchestrated the Rabin-Arafat handshake), or John Kerry, or [endless list of others who’ve been involved]. Again and again, those “neutral mediators” converged to the exact same idea, of partitioning the land and letting each side have national self-determination on its side of the line. Not coincidentally, that’s also what I support.
Comment #75 June 29th, 2024 at 4:47 pm
fred #68: Oh, I’m happy to discuss the comparison to 9/11. Once 9/11 happened—if you like, once the Bush administration failed to prevent it—it was then utterly inconceivable that the US wouldn’t go to war against the Taliban. We would’ve had to do it if AOC or Bernie Sanders had been president. It was likewise inconceivable that even the most left-wing Israeli government wouldn’t go to war with Hamas after 10/7.
The weird and contingent thing was the invasion of Iraq, which was based on Bush’s personal obsession and sold to the public by lies, and which has no clear analogue in Israel’s case.
Comment #76 June 29th, 2024 at 5:09 pm
Scott #72: Yes, I am claiming that you were “subconsciously emotional” all along, as most people are at most times without being fully aware of it. I’m not Jewish but run in predominantly Jewish circles in NYC, and it’s absurd at this point to say that severe trauma/fear isn’t driving opinions and animus. I don’t know any Palestinians but I presume it’s the same case. There isn’t any way to prove it but I encourage you to introspect honestly.
You’re clearly cherry picking “neutral third parties” that overfit your perspective – today’s UN doesn’t count, for instance, because how can they be neutral of they aren’t fully in line with your moderate and unbiased opinion?
I will also point out that when you talked about your visit to Berkeley, you misreported “Anti Zionism Zone” as a slightly more malicious “Anti Zionist Zone”, refuted by the letters right behind you in the photograph you attached. I know you corrected it, and sure, you can dismiss it as an innocent careless unrelated mistake, but then you’re claiming 100% self awareness of the complexities of trauma distorting your perspective. You decide.
Comment #77 June 29th, 2024 at 5:19 pm
Daniel Aronoff #64: Of course I’ve priced that in! An extreme of my own party that wants me dead is not the sort of thing I’m able to ignore. I would point out:
– The extreme rightists (who, yes, I also read on Twitter) are not exactly friends either! As David Deutsch has argued, every sufficiently nutty and conspiratorial worldview, regardless of its political valence, eventually merges into antisemitism, which is sort of the global sink of all bad ideas (Deutsch calls this “The Pattern”). So it didn’t surprise me at all that this has now happened with Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and other prominent MAGA figures—what’s surprising is only that it took as long as it did.
– Iran, alas, will now assemble a nuclear weapon if it wants to regardless of who’s president next, now that we’ve followed the “worst of all possible worlds” approach of flooding them with money under the JCPOA and then unilaterally pulling out of it.
– I think “nursing-home guy” is a fundamentally decent and empathetic man, who sacrificed enormous political capital (including, possibly, his chance of winning Michigan) to defend the Zionism he learned from Golda Meir half a century ago. Trump, by contrast, has shown interest in Israel’s suffering on and after October 7 precisely to the extent that he could make it about himself—same as with every other issue. Even narrowly on Israel (as opposed to, say, the survival of liberal democracy on planet earth), I don’t see that Trump is better.
In summary: Trump vs. Jamaal Bowman for president would indeed be an excruciating choice for me (maybe I’d write in Fetterman). Trump vs. Biden is still a complete no-brainer.
Comment #78 June 29th, 2024 at 5:31 pm
Incidentally, exciting news: the first reaction to this post on Twitter is now in!
I had heard of Scott Aaronson for years, but never bothered to read his work. By the end of his fourth observation, I found him completely, utterly contemptible in a myriad of ways. This despite us both being Ashkenazi from secular backgrounds, similar IQ and education, etc.
Is this another left-winger attacking me for my Zionism? Not at all: it’s an extreme right-winger angry at my sympathy for the Israeli left. If I weren’t getting called “utterly contemptible” by both sides, I really would worry what’s happened to me.
Comment #79 June 29th, 2024 at 7:57 pm
Lim #76: I mean, my views on Israel/Palestine are well to the left of the median Israeli’s, and pretty close to the median American’s, to whatever extent that American thinks about it at all. That doesn’t mean that I’m “neutral and unbiased”: who among us is? are you? But it means that, if being Jewish has biased me, then the bias must have picked me up from a starting point that was very far to the left, and then set me back down way short of where it could’ve taken me on the path to right-wing Zionist militancy. And it suggests that further progress will require actual object-level arguments rather than psychoanalysis!
Comment #80 June 29th, 2024 at 8:17 pm
Scott #33:
This struck me as a powerful analogy and I thought it could be made more visceral with a little demo so I asked Claude to code one up. It made https://shiftygauss.replit.app/ which… doesn’t seem to match your prediction. At least not in an obvious way? Any ideas for what to tweak or add to the model to get it to drive the point home?
Comment #81 June 29th, 2024 at 9:10 pm
I disagree. People don’t have visibility into their subconscious motivations and people who share your disposition especially so.
Has any object level argument in this issue convinced you about any single position of yours being misguided? Hundreds of commenters have been trying, surely your rational upstream-of-emotion position wouldn’t be inflexible and perpetually growing more adversarial just like an emotion based position would be? I don’t particularly want to beat this dead horse, just pointing out what’s been pretty obvious for months.
Comment #82 June 29th, 2024 at 10:17 pm
Scott #3
The power of democracy lies in independence of institutions and distribution of power among them. So the hope is that even worst of democratically elected leaders cannot overpower others due to constitutional safeguards. I think the populace should focus on strengthening those institutions as part of democratic evolution process – for example one such idea is making more parts of constitution immutable, like what Germany did post WWII, or moving towards Switzerland style referendum based decisions (with everyone having smartphones, its not logistically challenging for even large populations).
Comment #83 June 30th, 2024 at 12:07 am
What do you think about project 2025? Do you think if Trump wins, they will implement it?
Comment #84 June 30th, 2024 at 6:03 am
“…our secular liberal friends told us they’re thinking about moving from Israel, because if the Bibi-ists entrench their power (and of course the demographics are trending in that direction), then they don’t see that the country has any worthwhile future for them or their children… just as Israeli leftists are talking about moving from Israel, some of my American Jewish friends have talked to me about moving to Israel, to escape a prejudice that they thought died with their grandparents.”
What if the secular American Jews moved here (to Israel), shifting the demographic balance back towards liberalism? We’d solve both problems in one fell swoop 🙂
Comment #85 June 30th, 2024 at 7:02 am
QMA(2) #83:
What do you think about project 2025?
Seems pretty horrifying.
Do you think if Trump wins, they will implement it?
Of course they’ll implement as much of it as they can. They’ve made it clear that they want Christian nationalism, not a liberal democracy, and with hardly any non-MAGA Republicans left to block them, they’ll be way more effective than last time in pursuing it.
Comment #86 June 30th, 2024 at 7:09 am
Daniel Reeves #80: I played around with your demo and didn’t understand how it was supposed to work — why is there only one Gaussian shown, rather than two with slightly different means? (Feel free to email if that makes it easier.)
The probability of someone having a height of x that’s much larger than the mean height μ goes like exp(-(x-μ)2). So now calculate:
exp(-(x-1)2) / exp(-x2)
And out pops a factor of exp(2x), which gets bigger and bigger as x grows! This does not happen with the standard exponential distribution (exp(-x)), and is one of the fundamental facts about Gaussians.
Comment #87 June 30th, 2024 at 7:42 am
Lim #81: See, the entire framing of your questions only really makes sense if you start from the presupposition that I’m wrong and commenters who are more anti-Israel than I am are right, so that it’s my position and not theirs that requires psychoanalysis.
If you started from the presupposition that I was right, then my getting emotional would look a lot like my getting emotional when confronted with creationists and UFOlogists and Holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers (as, alas, I’ve also done many times in my life). I.e., it would look like the emotionality of someone who gets increasingly flustered because reason and truth are forced to submit themselves to the Alice-in-Wonderland rules of a kangaroo court.
And then there are the many commenters, who you ignore entirely, who argue that the truth is much more Zionist than my position—basically, that my sentimentality and social conformity bias cause me to fall for obvious ruses like “the two-state solution,” when a rational understanding of history shows that only Jewish control of everything from the river to the sea, plus a preemptive war against Iran, would suffice to prevent another Holocaust. If I want to be less emotional, then maybe I should move closer to their position?
This is why, as I keep saying, you can’t really make progress on this by analyzing who’s being “emotional” and who isn’t. You can offer actual arguments.
And to answer your question—yes, I’ve constantly updated my views in response to new information and arguments. E.g., my certainty that Bibi has been a disaster for Israel steadily increased over the past 15 years, the more I listened to the arguments of my left-leaning Israeli friends and colleagues (and, of course, witnessed events unfold). But in the other direction, the fact that so many activists around the world would explicitly defend Hamas even after October 7 was also a monster update for me. Cynical though I am, that one hadn’t been in the cards for me. It caused me to put more weight on the millennia-old theory that says that Jew-hatred, often dormant but never eradicated, can no more be defeated by arguments than cancer can, but only met with strength.
Comment #88 June 30th, 2024 at 8:31 am
Scott #87: You’re baiting and switching by refusing to introspect on the obvious emotional drivers of your arguments but resorting to false generalizations (“Anti-zionists want to murder us all”) cherry picking, mockery, name-calling and suggestive analogies. I mean, do what you want, it’s pointless anyway, but this pretense of engaging in good faith “actual arguments” with sympathies towards the dead is disingenuous at best and not doing anyone (including you) any good.
Comment #89 June 30th, 2024 at 9:00 am
Lim #88: At this point, your own failure to introspect seems much more conspicuous than mine.
If Jews’ fear of being murdered for being Jews is not rationally justified, then no fear in all human history has ever been rationally justified. It would be strange, and would require special explanation, if I weren’t emotional about that. But at least I’m open and honest about it! Whereas, what are your emotional drivers for refusing to let go of this? Behind your veil of anonymity, who can say?
Comment #90 June 30th, 2024 at 9:10 am
Scott #89: Oh I’m not refusing to let it go, good luck with everything.
Comment #91 June 30th, 2024 at 10:30 am
Dr Aaronson (F3etj
I apologize but intended this as a response to F3et’s claim that I was an obvious troll but posted in the wrong darn thread. If you would allow me to repost here where he is more likely to see and respond then I promise it won’t happen. again. I also add that I agree with you that replacement of fossil fuels by nuclear power is sensible and I only disagree with elements of the AGW narrative that I see as bad science. I also disagree that my position is tantamount to Flat Earthers or Deniers.
The link below shows a high quality global climate reconstruction from 2020. Please note in Figure 6 the higher temperatures 6000 years ago referred to as the Holocene Optimum. Please note the uptick 1000 years ago referred to as the Medieval Climate Optimum.. The Roman Empire Optimum about 2500 years ago is visible but not prominent on this reconstruction.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0530-7
Climate models are simulations with coarse grid and standard practice is to hindcast (match available historical data) prior to making forecasts. The climate models I am aware of were never able to match the temp increase of the Medieval Warm Period and so classically the historical data was disregarded in favor of the modeling results. The approach was that the MWP was only a weather anomaly in Europe and not a global phenomena. The fact is it shows a signal in temp proxies globally. This was the period during which Viking agricultural settlements were established in Greenland that changed to fishing settlements and finally abandoned as the climate cooled. I have never built climate models but have built other models of complex natural systems and ignoring hindcast actual data is an absolute classic mistake.
For me the value of this work is to make predictions and if anyone wants I will make a long list of failed predictions with full references.
My comment on the death of democracy were based on my observations elsewhere that once politicians start pursuing imprisoning their political opponents democracy suffers. It is the same on the left and right in the US and I take this as a bad omen. Democracy requires some measure of respect for political opponents.
Do I think 7,000,000,000 70 kg bipeds have had an effect on the planet-absolutely. Do I think we are facing climate Armageddon-absolutely not. If it were a scientific discussion there would be agreement.
Comment #92 June 30th, 2024 at 11:17 am
TFG
“Sure, Palestinians – like a lot of Arabs – do not rebel on leaders that kill and hurt them by stupidity and corruption more than any air force or tank corps could”
I can’t decode what you mean by this, can you clarify?
In Libya, Qaddafi got kicked out by the people, and there was the Arab spring in Egypt, etc.
And in Iran (non-Arabs, I know) there was plenty of protesting and people giving away their life in the last decade.
So, it’s not for a lack of trying.
But, as almost it’s always the case for popular uprising, when it fails it tends to make the regime stronger, and even when it succeeds, the next guys in charge are often as bad (in a less obvious way) as the dictator that got kicked out.
In the meantime I don’t see Israel, a supposedly thriving democracy, able to shake off Bibi’s grip, which the war has made even stronger. I bet that all that talk about investigating him for October 7th is never gonna amount to anything.
Comment #93 June 30th, 2024 at 1:58 pm
Scott,
Tucker Carlson is not an antisemite. He’s actually a really nice guy and open-minded and engaged with everyone who comes on his Twitter show, including prominent left-wing commentators. What makes you think he’s an antisemite? Do you have any video clips or quotes to back up this assertion? Have you watched his show on twitter at all?
Comment #94 June 30th, 2024 at 2:06 pm
Scott #75
“Oh, I’m happy to discuss the comparison to 9/11. Once 9/11 happened—if you like, once the Bush administration failed to prevent it—it was then utterly inconceivable that the US wouldn’t go to war against the Taliban. “
Right, and then, guess who’s back in power now in Afghanistan, after 22 years of war? That’s right, the Taliban.
No lesson learned here. Let’s just all repeat the same mistakes… But, granted, unlike Israel and Gaza, the US didn’t try to pulverize Afghanistan into dust.
Comment #95 June 30th, 2024 at 4:51 pm
So I don’t know if this will be posted or if I’ll get banned and I’m probably wasting my time, but my plea to you is just to *listen* and step back from the brink.
The most tragic part of reading all these arguments is that our politics are almost identical. I too oppose Trump with all my might, and think that Netanyahu is destroying Israel and so on. I too see Israel as a rare beacon of freedom and prosperity in the Middle East and don’t want to see it end.
I don’t doubt that there is real, honest-to-goodness anti-semitism in the world. I’ve seen some of it myself. But I think you’re also making a mistake where you’ve drawn the line in too tight a circle around yourself and declared “you’re either with us or against us”, and tricked yourself into thinking that the entire world is against you, even your natural allies. It’s a great trick for feeling righteous anger and fear and a terrible practice for actually achieving the effects you want to see in the world.
When Amazon’s Rings of Power came out, the show runners tried to deflect all criticism by claiming that anyone who criticized the show was just being racist. But that failed because the show was very obviously bad in many ways, including things that had nothing to do with racism. It wasn’t just right wing trolls who criticized the show. Even the most woke left wingers, even people who bent over backwards to praise the diverse casting, gave up on the show because it was just so bad.
I don’t even think they were being disingenuous about it. It’s really hard to see criticism of something you worked hard on, that is so near and dear to you. And obviously there *were* real racists and right wing trolls who would have criticized the show no matter what. And looking at them is great if you want to dismiss criticism and feel good about yourself. But it is terrible if you actually want to make a successful show.
It’s a great trick whenever you have opposition. Find the most extreme and unreasonable elements of the opposition and focus only on them, and pretend that everyone who disagrees with you is a carbon copy hivemind. This is a natural human instinct, and it happens all the time, even in say, U.S. politics. But it can blind you to reality. I remember being surprised at how often Republicans in congress compromise with Democrats over the last few years. It’s easy to focus on the statements of the most extreme members and not realize that there are Republicans and there are Republicans. And again, I’d rather replace them all with Democrats, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a gradient, not a hivemind.
And that goes double with ordinary voters. Some people out there just want to destroy women or own the libs or whatever, but most people probably just want to get on with their lives and support Trump because of vague cultural associations or because they’re angry about gas prices and don’t understand economics or whatever. Doesn’t mean they’re right, but they’re not evil and out to get you.
You’ve even alluded to recognizing this before, for example when you said that Paul Graham seemed more reasonable than all the Twitter caricatures you inexplicably devote your life to hate-reading. But I suspect that you still haven’t really internalized this. That you still seem to think that the entire world is an evil anti-semitic conspiracy arrayed against you.
—
Anyway, that’s a lot of words just as a preface, but I’m trying to be very thorough and gentle because I really don’t want you to just dismiss me as yet another evil anti-semite and pat yourself on the back. As far as I can tell, we already agree on *most* things. It seems to me that the crux of the disagreement are your beliefs that
1) Israel can never be secure until every neighboring country is destroyed and
2) The current war on Gaza makes Israel more, rather than less, secure.
For most of history, the world has been ruled by constant warfare. The strong preyed on the weak, and if they didn’t, they’d be preyed on in turn. The Security Dilemma ruled the world, where every state must make war on and conquer its neighbors in order to become more powerful and thus secure, and that very war in turn made other states fear and militarize and conquer so they don’t become the next victim themselves.
In the modern period, the security dilemma gave way to a fragile balance of power system in Europe, but even that didn’t work all that well, as WW1 and WW2 will attest. Nowadays, the solution is hegemony. The US is the most powerful military in the world, and allied to almost all of the other major countries, and it uses this power to enforce a system of international law and norms, so that countries can be free of fear. They don’t have to militarize and war all the time, because of the security blanket of the American-led world order. That blanket is a *little* less strong than it used to be after Ukraine and the rise of Trump, but it is still remarkably successful, and almost immeasurably preferable to the alternative. The U.S. led international order is the only reason that people can even put goods on ships to trade across the ocean, let alone avoid spending 100% of their economy on nukes and military.
In order for this system to work, people have to follow the norms, and be punished when they don’t. And those norms include things like trying to minimize civilian casualties and not prosecuting wars that are opposed by the international community. And of course, I’m not going to pretend that this system is perfect or perfectly just or peaceful or anything. After all, the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, with the latter under dubious pretenses, and there have been all sorts of civil wars in the third world where the rules are less strict. And then there was the invasion of Ukraine, which received such a huge response precisely because it was such a blatant challenge to this peaceful international order.
At one point, you asked “What would be your plan for the survival of Israel’s Jews?” To me, this is almost as strange as asking “what is your plan for the survival of *the moon*?”. Israel is a dominant regional power *and* close U.S. ally, and the biggest danger to it *is its own government*.
Yes, I know that Israel was established in opposition to the locals and it was touch and go in the early years and neighboring countries went to war against it several times and it only won through pluck and grit and Arab military incompetence and support from the winning side of the Cold War. Of course, that was over 50 years ago, and since then, Israel grew much stronger and got nukes and made peace with its neighbors. To me, the 1973 war is just as distant as say, the 1971 Bengali genocide, but it’s only natural for people to celebrate the founding myth of their country, much like Americans would celebrate Saratoga and Yorktown.
And yes, I know that people have continued launching rocket attacks and occasional bouts of terrorism in Israel since. But I think you’re failing to realize the depth of Israel’s might and American support here. Empirically, Israel is more than capable of defending itself apart from the moment of incompetence last October. The rocket attacks are bad, but they barely do any damage. From the outside, it looks like a grown man getting kicked by a small child. Yes, it is annoying for the adult, but our social norms still say that the man has to just suck it up, and doesn’t get to respond by beating the child to a bloody pulp.
That leaves the question of Oct 7, which I think is pretty clear would not have happened if Israel had been taking security seriously. Claiming that there is no way to prevent a repeat other than massacring the population of Gaza seems more like a condemnation of Israel than anything. Do you really believe that they are so incapable? I know you argued before that Hamas will adapt and make different plans next time, but you’re neglecting the fact that *so can Israel*. In the real world, everyone can grow and adapt all the time. This implicit accusation of incurable incompetence on the Israel part also seems hard to square with the pro-Israel propaganda claiming that they’re all powerful-over Gaza, somehow only striking down the guilty and sparing all the civilians.
You’re also neglecting the depth of American security and diplomatic support. It’s to the point where the possibility of America not pushing for Israel 100% all the time is interpreted as a rank betrayal, as if the US is somehow suddenly filled with Nazis.
The pro-Israel side often likes to complain that Israel is being held to a double standard. “What about all those Islamic militants in the Sahel slaughtering civilians and so on?”, they ask. The answer of course is “how many tanks and missiles are we sending those Islamic militants?” Israel *is* held to a double standard, just not that one. Not only does the US back Israel militarily, it also covers for it on the UN Security Council and turns a blind eye as it repeatedly bombs Gaza and Lebanon and illegally annexes the West Bank. And I’m not even saying that that is necessarily a bad thing (after all, Israel is unusual in the amount of rocket attacks it faces – it’s not like it would make sense to give missile defenses to everyone). But it is what it is.
If Israel *were* held to the standards of a normal country, rather than Best Friends Forever, the topic of discussion would be “how much sanctions to apply?”, not “how much aid should we continue sending, and should we include a sternly worded letter in the package?”
—
You write
> So, you tell me your plan for how to protect Israel’s 7 million Jews from extermination at the hands of neighbors who have their extermination—my family’s extermination—as their central political goal, and who had that as their goal long before there was any occupation of the West Bank or Gaza.
But this is just the sort of Security Dilemma thinking that leaves the world a pile of corpses. This sure sounds a lot like “we have to genocide them before they genocide us”, to which the answer is “no, no one is genociding *anyone* on our watch, not if we have anything to say about it.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, most people just want to survive and get on with their lives. And in fact you have often stated a desire for the civilians to survive and so on. It’s just that you don’t *not* want Gaza destroyed *enough* to actually prevent it from happening.
You seem to think that “destroy Hamas” is a militarily achievable outcome, that you can just bomb people into loving you. For example, you write
> how can you ever get to peace without removing Hamas, and how can you remove Hamas except by war?
And yet, without a hint of irony, you also write
> You can’t scare people away, break their will, if they believe they have nowhere else on the planet to go.
Without realizing how that applies to people in Gaza just as much. Hamas is the only government that Gaza has been allowed to have. It’s the force that maintains some semblance of order and infrastructure in Gaza. Probably a lot of people joined it just because it’s the only game in town, even for non-ideological reasons. But in any case, that ship sailed nine months ago.
Again, you can’t bomb people into loving you. If you’re an ordinary Gaza civilian, just trying to survive, do you think that seeing Israel destroy your home and family will make you *turn against* the people saying “see, we told you Israel can’t trust you, and wants to kill you all?”
Look, I’m not saying that there’s any easy recipe for regime change. If we knew how to do that, there’d be a *lot* of governments in the world that look different than they do in this timeline. But not knowing the answer doesn’t mean you can’t say “No, definitely not that, STOP DIGGING YOURSELF DEEPER”. You don’t have to know how to play fine music to know that setting your piano on fire isn’t the answer.
—
Another common trick is to pretend that you have no agency and are just helplessly responding to incentives, and thus *everyone else* are the people truly responsible for everything bad in the world. But of course, that viewpoint doesn’t generalize, since everyone will absolve *themselves* of responsibility and disagree about the others.
At one point you wrote
> my first-order model is that Hamas, with the diabolical brilliance of a Marvel villain, successfully contrived a situation where Israel could prevent the further massacring of its own population only by fighting a gruesome urban war, of a kind that always, anywhere in the world, kills tens of thousands of civilians. Hamas, of course, was helped in this plan by an ideology that considers martyrdom the highest possible calling for the innocents who it rules ruthlessly and hides underneath. But Hamas also understood that the images of civilian carnage would (rightly!) shock the consciences of Israel’s Western allies and many Israelis themselves, thereby forcing a ceasefire before the war was over, thereby giving Hamas the opportunity to regroup and, with God’s and of course Iran’s help, finally finish the job of killing all Jews another day.
If Israel knew that it was doing exactly what Hamas *wanted* it to do, *why did it do it anyway?*. They could have just *not done that*. Pretending to be a helpless puppet of Hamas doesn’t actually make you look better. From the outside view, everyone has responsibility for their own actions.
And I’m not even saying that Israel had to stay out of Gaza. Israel had already bombed Gaza lots of times, and after Oct 7, it had widespread international support. I’m sure people would have understood if it did some more “grass mowing”, perhaps a bit bigger than before. But *this* was on a whole other level. It really is astonishing how Israel managed to take the moral high ground and dive off it so fast that even the most patient of allies are now upset with it. That *really* takes some doing.
This isn’t the only place where you pretend that Israel has no agency. Even putting aside Oct 7, Israel has been sabotaging the peace process for decades, which I think you even acknowledge at some points. And yet you still write stuff like this
> do you acknowledge that the Israelis wanted to leave the people of Gaza in peace and be left in peace by them
And yet you cite the settlements, which Israel never demolished and in fact has continued expanding the entire time for decades. I’m not saying the Palestians were blameless either. There were those assassinations in the 90s and the Second Intifada and so on. But Israel never took the most obvious step towards the peace process, despite outsiders begging them to do so for decades.
Elsewhere, you write
> I want the Palestinians to have a state, comprising the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem. I want Israel to uproot all West Bank settlements that prevent such a state. I want this to happen the instant there arises a Palestinian leadership genuinely committed to peace—one that embraces liberal values and rejects martyr values, in everything from textbooks to street names.
Why not ask the same of Israel? Would you be ok with Palesitians saying the same thing, that there will be peace “the instant there arises Israeli leadership genuinely committed to peace”? I mean, I’m sure if Hamas *said* that you wouldn’t believe them anyway and perhaps for good reason, but let’s assume some hypothetical alternate government here.
Why do you qualify your call for peace with a caveat that makes it meaningless? “I wish there to be peace the second that frozen pigs fly through hell” is not actually a call for peace.
Israel *could* have taken steps towards peace at any time, but they consistently refused. Maybe it would have led to something, maybe it wouldn’t have. But we’ll never know, and the fault is not entirely on the Palestinian side.
—
One last point. I’ve tried to avoid talking about the conduct of the war, because there’s too much fog of war and propaganda to be completely confident. I have my suspicions based on bayesian priors and what little is known, but there’s no way to argue in a way that would convince someone who disagrees with you until the war is over and the cold hard facts become clear.
That being said, there is one thing which I think is agreed on, which is that Israel has repeatedly retreated and then occupied the same areas of land, and that the war has gone on for nine months and counting with no end in sight.
You write
> Israel can’t distribute food without imposing order, which would seem to mean reoccupying Gaza and earning the world’s condemnation for it.
But part of the problem is that Israel *isn’t* doing that. If Israel honestly *had* tried to occupy and administer Gaza, there still would have been a lot of deaths and it still would have received criticism, but that still would have been much better than the world we actually live in.
What would an *actual* attempt at occupation look like?
The U.S. invasion of Iraq lasted *one month*. The invasion of Afghanistan lasted a month and a half. And these are much bigger places than Gaza, and far more remote. Ok, maybe Gaza is extra tough because of urban combat or booby traps or whatever, but those excuses will only last so long. We’re getting pretty close to the length of the Battle of Mosul.
What does Israel have to show after nine months of war? As far as I can tell, they’ve created giant mounds of rubble and corpses, but they haven’t come close to actually *controlling* Gaza and are farther than ever from their stated goal of destroying Hamas.
You can’t destroy Hamas unless you offer people an alternative. And sure people would hate the Israeli occupiers for years to come, but well, that’s what you signed up for when you invaded. If Israel had actually tried to occupy Gaza, then they could have set up a government and started rebuilding infrastructure and offering food and electricity and so on. But that doesn’t seem to be what happened at all.
I don’t think this is even an anti-Israel position, because people in Israel’s own war cabinet have been complaining about the lack of a strategic plan in Gaza. It sure seems like Bibi went into Gaza just to slate public opinion and look like he was doing something, but with zero planning for what would come next and zero achievable objectives. They’ve just been in a holding pattern ever since, bombing and “clearing” and retreating from the same areas over and over again.
That’s the greatest tragedy of the whole thing. Not just the giant pile of corpses, but the giant pile of corpses *for no purpose*. There’s no way to look at this and imagine Gaza being better some day. In fact, the way things are going, Hamas looks like it will stick around and perhaps be stronger than ever.
Israel is so powerful that there’s no powerful way to defeat it militarily. The greatest danger to it comes from within, that the government manages to horrify and alienate the rest of the world to the point where it becomes isolated and vulnerable. And right now, Israel is trying as hard as it can to destroy itself and shows no signs of stopping. I want Israel to be successful and continue existing and so on, which is precisely why the war is such a disaster.
Anyway, it’s probably not healthy for me to have just spent four hours ranting about politics on the internet, but hopefully this will draw us just the slightest bit closer together in opinions.
Comment #96 June 30th, 2024 at 5:06 pm
Bob #95:
1) Israel can never be secure until every neighboring country is destroyed
WTF?!? I’ve never said anything like that, here or anywhere else. Most of your monster comment, the effort of which I’m in awe of, seems (alas) to be based on the assumption that this is my view when it’s far from my view.
Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states (and maybe soon Saudi Arabia…) dramatically illustrate the falsehood of this view. They show why it was reasonable to suppose that the Palestinians would likewise eventually see that peace was in their best interest. It’s tragic that most of them haven’t yet. Maybe in some future decade they will.
Iran is different, both because it will soon have nuclear weapons and because it’s explicitly defined Israel’s annihilation as a central foreign policy goal. I don’t know the solution to that one … do you?
Comment #97 June 30th, 2024 at 5:36 pm
Thanks for the report, Scott. I’ve been sending it around to friends.
Comment #98 June 30th, 2024 at 6:54 pm
I don’t want to subject you to hostile psychoanalysis. I’m not going to theorize about why you’ve been behaving this way. I’m also not going to mince words. I have noticed you becoming increasingly hysterical over the last few years (since the 2016 election, but especially since 2020). I commented a few times on another account, but I’m going to share this reflection anonymously, because it may come off as insulting.
Your worldview and your politics are becoming increasingly hysterical and detached from reality. You are becoming less and less amenable to reason or logic or argument. Sometimes it seems like you’re entirely driven by emotional reaction. Sometimes it feels like you’re living in a parallel reality.
I understand disliking Trump or even voting Democrat. Your hatred for Trump, however, has become pathological and completely detached from reality. You do literally have TDS. He had some successes as president, he had some failures, he even did some things I sharply disagree with. To say, however, that he is literally the worst President in U.S. history, or even to say that the bad things he did were completely outside the spectrum of what modern presidents have done, is detached from reality. The liberal TV news networks are a constant, Pravda-esque barrage of anti-Trump propaganda and gaslighting. It worries me to see you repeat many of their talking points here (about the so-called “Russiagate,” for example, which has been completely debunked).
To say he’s an existential threat to democracy literally sounds like the ravings of a schizophrenic. You literally think that some unarmed protesters interrupting a session of Congress constitutes a fucking coup d’etat or an “insurrection?” How can you be so fucking hysterical that you actually believe that? Nobody who actually watched what happened on Jan 6 who has their head screwed on right literally believes it was a “coup.” You think the grandmas taking pictures in the capitol building were given secret military orders or something? Do you even know what a coup is? What is wrong with you?
You are a person who is prone to hysteria and paranoia. You seem to constantly believe that the end of the world is nigh. You think climate change or global warming or whatever is going to end civilization as we know it—not even the actual climate scientists think that. If it is real, there are trivial solutions we can implement to reduce the warming. You think the end of abortion in America makes us a misogynist pre-enlightenment regime or whatever, when abortion was already illegal in several EU countries. You think the Supreme Court are a bunch of fascists or whatever. You’re living in a hysterical leftist bubble that’s far outside reality. Please, PLEASE stop being so obsessive and paranoid about politics and get a fucking reality check. Consider medicinal help if your brain is drawn to paranoid delusions. I’m not saying that to be nasty, I really think it might help.
Comment #99 June 30th, 2024 at 7:09 pm
Scott #86: I wonder if this feature of Gaussian distribution might play a role in the inflation being perceived as a bigger issue (apparently one of 3 issues of most concern to voters) than might be suggested by looking only on its increase “on average” (in addition, of course, to interest payments not being counted in computing inflation rate).
Also, when is comes to temperature increase, is it clear that the variance is unchanged (such a change might significantly affect the computation in question)?
Comment #100 June 30th, 2024 at 7:37 pm
Bart #98: Rather than me arguing with you, what I’d really like to have happen next is for you and anyone else who believes I suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and the many more left-wing commenters who believe my Zionism springs from Jewish Extermination Derangement Syndrome, to argue with each other. Which of the two fears is so irrational as to require psychoanalysis … or is it both, or neither?
Comment #101 June 30th, 2024 at 9:14 pm
I couldn’t count how many times you’ve admitted on this blog that you used to suffer, and continue to suffer, from anxieties, neuroses, paranoias, etc., far more than the average person does. It’s obvious to draw the line from those psychological traits that you freely admit, and your hysterical takes on politics. If you were more well-adjusted in terms of managing your anxieties, I doubt you would worry day and night over “oh my god Trump is literally gonna end democracy” or “global warming is gonna end the fucking planet” and “I just stew in fear and depression over all this.”
The fact that you refuse to engage with my comment on its terms is just further evidence that you’re no longer engaging in rational debate with people who disagree with you. You’re isolating yourself in your far-left bubble.
To answer your question, the Jews ACTUALLY WERE mass murdered in the millions in Nazi Germany, and Iran REALLY HAS vowed to wipe Israel off the map, and a thousands Jews REALLY WERE slaughtered in their homes by Hamas. The closest analogy would be if Trump really had successfully ordered some generals in the military to declare martial law, arrest Biden and seize telecoms and infrastructure and TV stations and broadcast that he’s the president, which is what a coup actually is. A coup is not unarmed protesters disrupting a session of congress, which has already happened in state capitols and many times around the world.
But yes, I see hysteria in your posts about the college protesters as well. Yes, they’re wrong and annoying, but saying that the bullshit at Columbia was literally another Kristillnacht is completely unhinged.
Comment #102 July 1st, 2024 at 12:33 am
Bart #98: As a lifelong political moderate and independent, your comment is interesting in that it really does read like the ramblings of someone who is “hysterical and detached from reality,” as you’ve accused Scott of being. No sane person would write what you have written.
I almost laughed out loud while reading it, so, if you’re trolling…congratulations? If not, maybe reconsider how you obtain and process information, and how you communicate with other people.
Comment #103 July 1st, 2024 at 5:25 am
Scott #35:
They’re not leaving, nor are they going like sheep to the slaughter the way their grandparents did.
They did not go like sheep to slaughter;
– for one thing, the entire state (police, militias, neighbors) was geared to round them up and there was hardly any place to go
– also, the films in documentaries were filmed by the nazis and collaborationists; Nazis wanted to project an image of order and control
– anecdotally, the Warsaw ghetto resisted longer than, for example, the country of France, despite disease, starvation and the shortage of weapons
Comment #104 July 1st, 2024 at 6:51 am
Scott #100: General comment – it’s not a new insight that social media functions as a system of domination by the most angry people of a group. Back when blog evangelism was all the rage (pun sort of intended), and its promoters would tell tales of the gems to found from community Wisdom Of Crowds, I would sometimes respond, what if I don’t want to sift through huge piles of manure trying to find a pony?
Topics like Trump or Israel/Palestine are going to draw, let us say, strongly opinionated views. And someone with perhaps a high-strung personality might feel very worried over both, there’s no contradiction there (also a big computer program spontaneously becoming an inimical god 🙂 and wiping out humanity).
One concept I’ve been pondering these days is the (not original with me) idea of “social media is CBT in reverse”. That is, an environment designed to increase unhappiness. The popular-media version of this is all the angst over kids/smartphones. But I wonder if that’s mostly pundits focusing on moralizing to the weak, which is much better for a career than opposing the strong. I guess my point is that it’s understandable to vent. However, maybe it’s not the best idea to do it in a context that’ll inevitably generate a lot of blowback.
Comment #105 July 1st, 2024 at 6:54 am
serge #103: Yes, I’m well aware of the history of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust (and “Defiance” is one of my favorite movies).
Then again, the one time in my life I’ve witnessed sheep being slaughtered (at the Samaritan Passover on Mount Gerizim), the sheep were pretty strongly resisting as well…
Comment #106 July 1st, 2024 at 7:06 am
Bart #101: Yes, I’ve suffered all my life from anxieties, neuroses, and paranoias. As the famous saying goes, those Jews who weren’t paranoid are mostly dead now, because the paranoias turned out to be justified beyond their wildest imaginings, so the paranoid ones are all that’s left. (Indeed, even those Jews who march in rallies to destroy Israel are, arguably, just as paranoid as I am — it’s just that they respond to their paranoia in a different way.)
Having said that, I never said that the protests at Columbia were Kristallnacht and explicitly said the opposite. Even now, when Jews trying to enter a synagogue in LA were beaten up while the LAPD watched and did nothing, we still have quite a ways to go until Kristallnacht.
From my perspective, my paranoia about Trump turned out to be 100% justified. He actually did try to end American democracy on January 6th, and if Mike Pence had been a different person, he plausibly would’ve succeeded. And he might still succeed.
Comment #107 July 1st, 2024 at 9:01 am
Scott #96
Thank you for this. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that previously I suspected your views to be exactly what you just emphatically denied in this comment.
I always thought of myself as anti-Zionist precisely because I think many Zionists want to see their country expanded by force and destruction of their neighbors.
This is not too far from reality. If Machiavelli was alive today he would advise Israel to never make long lasting peace, instead stoke the fire of enmity and keep it burning for generations so that it can capitalize on its staggering tech/military advantage to gain land and resources when the opportunity arises. To be honest, I feel like at some point in the next 100 years Israel will do just that.
However I find the anti Zionism on display today in protests and social media to be despicable. These fucking chants man. So cringe worthy. They want Israel’s destruction, which sounds as terrible now as it did in 1999 when I convinced myself to let go of things I was brain washed to believe.
I’m 100% Zionist in that I would fight against those wishing for Israel destruction and defend Jewish civilians with all my might (I was ostracized for this attitude when I was young). I’m about 40% Zionist when it comes to the legitimacy/morality of the historical creation of Israel.
There is a way to prevent both the scenario where Israel wins by destroying its neighbors and the other one where Israel is destroyed and its Jews are massacred (god forbid a million times).
The way is compassion, love, amnesty, forgiveness, reconciliation, etc. Israelis are much closer to these values than Arabs at the moment, although there is a significant hawkish tendency in Israel that might end up winning over. Arabs need to work a lot to attain this attitude. They need to love and embrace Jews. They need to reform their religious teachings and politics.
Let’s all wish that Oct. 7th and the razing of Gaza is the last tragedy in this story.
Comment #108 July 1st, 2024 at 9:03 am
Bart, you’re the one with TDS.
There’s clearly nothing Trump can do that will ever make you reconsider your support for him.
For me, as soon as I moved to New York, decades ago, I quickly recognized Trump for what he was, a sleazy narcissistic mediocre realtor who always cheated everyone around him.
But, yea, he’s an entertaining (like many high profile New Yorkers), so he became a reality show celebrity.
I wasn’t thrilled that he got elected, but I decided to give him a chance. And some of his policies were good in my book.
But once the 2020 elections came around, he made it 100% clear as the campaign winded down that he was never going to accept a loss no matter what (“the only way I could loose is if they cheat”).
But, unlike Scott, I never thought he was serious on this. Well, turns out Scott was right.
The second time around Trump will make sure all his people are in the right places and they’ll be able to challenge all future election results.
So, yea, that scumbag is a threat to democracy, no doubt about it.
Of course, the his fans like you, none of this matters, you’d be just fine with Trump as full on dictator, a la Putin or Xi, because you’re certain he’s the only one who can avert the downfall of the USA.
Comment #109 July 1st, 2024 at 9:34 am
fred #94:
Right, and then, guess who’s back in power now in Afghanistan, after 22 years of war? That’s right, the Taliban.
No lesson learned here. Let’s just all repeat the same mistakes… But, granted, unlike Israel and Gaza, the US didn’t try to pulverize Afghanistan into dust.
The US invasion of Afghanistan killed many more innocents than Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and with a broadly similar civilian/combatant ratio as far as I understand.
Beyond that, though, I’m someone who believes the US should never have let the Taliban return to power. And if that meant a quasi-permanent US occupation, so that girls could go to school and not be stoned for adultery … then so be it. (I find it bizarre that so many who call themselves feminists, who even floridly denounce nerdy men for their awkward stares and other sexist microaggressions, suddenly become cultural relativists when it comes to the literal Taliban.) Or if we were unwilling to stay as long as it took, then at least we should’ve let every Afghan who wanted to move elsewhere do so before withdrawing.
Comment #110 July 1st, 2024 at 9:53 am
As far as Scott is concerned, I did think that Scott was totally off-base when claiming that Trump election in 2016 would be bad news for Jews in America. It’s hard to imagine a more pro-Jewish/Israel president than Trump, not because of some ideological conviction, but just as a result of his admiration for successful and powerful people, but also some of his grandkids are actually Jewish.
Btw, all the New York Jews I know are now going to vote Trump.
As far as Scott’s “Jewish Extermination Derangement Syndrome” goes, I think he does suffer from some weird survival guilt complex because he didn’t go through the holocaust, like he’s in the wrong generation or something.
And he does seem to struggle deeply with this at every opportunity, often re-framing things in terms of the Holocaust, or bringing up Nazis in almost all discussions (going right for Godwin’s Law), like when processing pro-Palestine protests and Museum blankfaces (*):
“And thinking about those protesters, and their predecessors 80 years ago who perpetrated the Holocaust or who stood by and let it happen, is the only thing that really puts blankfaced museum employees into perspective for me. Like, of course a world with the former is also going to have the latter—and I should count myself immeasurably lucky if the latter is all I have to deal with, if the empty-skulled and the soul-dead can only ruin my vacation and lack the power to murder my family.”
Of course, I’m not Jewish myself, so I’m not blaming Scott here, it’s just an observation, but many famous Jewish Americans I’ve followed closely over the years (Woody Allen, Sam Harris, etc) just never seemed that obsessed with the Holocaust. But, for many of them, October 7th did change things.
(*) Scott’s own trademarked way to dehumanize those who don’t meet his standards of how people should behave when making minimum wage in a dead end job. Often with the subtext of equating an apparent lack of empathy towards Scott’s emotional distress with the lack of empathy of the Nazis who massacred his ancestors.
Comment #111 July 1st, 2024 at 10:01 am
Scott #109
Well I guess we disagree on strategy here.
The lessons for many is that permanent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (although the two are quite different) were pointless.
That the whole “capture the hearts and minds” is not practical tactics when you do a military occupation imposed on the locals.
This delusion is nothing new: it already started in Vietnam, when the South Vietnamese government and the US tried to get the support of the local populations, which were slowly sliding into supporting the Communists, as the war and horror dragged on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_and_Minds_(Vietnam_War)
Even if this was known, the US has forgotten the lesson over and over.
What Israel is doing now is not going to make it safer, on the long term. The only thing that’s being satisfied is a short-term desire for revenge, which is human nature.
Of course, at this point, after all that’s happened, it’s not clear that anything will make Israel safe again, ever.
Comment #112 July 1st, 2024 at 10:09 am
fred #111: And what of the US’s postwar occupations of Japan and West Germany, which were wild success stories? As far as I can tell, the biggest difference between those and the US’s later failed occupations is simply that the WWII generation of Americans still had a critical mass who cared about actual outcomes in reality, whereas since then the US has been increasingly overrun by blankfaces.
Comment #113 July 1st, 2024 at 10:15 am
I have many Jewish friends. I don’t think any of them are as obsessive or paranoid or anxiety-ridden as you are. You obviously spend far too much time worrying about politics, and as I explained, your political fears are completely detached from reality (will post another comment explaining why). Just blaming this on your Jewishness strikes me as unhealthy. Have you tried to get any help from a psychiatrist about these fears? Have you tried therapy or any medicines? This is no way to live. Such obsessive anxiety is not a positive or life-affirming thing. It’s a sickness that will eat away at your soul.
Comment #114 July 1st, 2024 at 10:20 am
I don’t understand your point about Trump. What do you mean, “it would have succeeded if Pence was a different person?” What would have succeeded, and why?
Can you at least acknowledge my point—that the only reason you’re perceiving some idiot protesters disrupting Congress as a literal coup is because of your cognitive distortions?
There’s so much evidence that the election was rigged in crucial swing states. There was a lot about the election process that was fishy. I’m honestly afraid to share that evidence here because you have a history of banning people from your blog who make such claims (how intellectually honest and open-minded 🙂 ). But if you went to debate that I’d be perfectly happy to.
As for Columbia: you literally called it an “incipient 1938 Germany.” How else should I interpret that?
Comment #115 July 1st, 2024 at 10:41 am
Scott #112
I don’t think it’s about the will of the Americans, it’s about the specifics of the people under US military occupation.
Pre-ww2 Japan and Germany were already very established and powerful societies with long traditions of governance and always had the capacity to take care of themselves through tough crisis and deep societal changes (e.g. for Japan the Meji revolution). Somehow they both had slipped into short-lived military dictatorships before WW2 (for Germany as a result of the humiliation of WW1).
In contrast, Vietnam had suffered a hundred years of brutal French colonization, with very little desire for any occupation. I really recommend Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War” series.
Afghanistan is a vast medieval like tribal land that has always been deemed impossible to tame (The Brits, the Russians, all tried and failed).
Comment #116 July 1st, 2024 at 10:49 am
H #107:
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that previously I suspected your views to be exactly what you just emphatically denied in this comment.
I always thought of myself as anti-Zionist precisely because I think many Zionists want to see their country expanded by force and destruction of their neighbors.
You see how there’s something weird and scary about the power of propaganda on this one issue?
I can say, in post after post, that I favor peace and the two-state solution and the dismantling of settlements, and people will assume that because I’m a Zionist I must be rooting for Israel to obliterate its neighbors.
Meanwhile, someone on the other side can scream from the rooftops that October 7 was glorious resistance, the Jews in Occupied Palestine (Tel Aviv, Haifa, etc) should go back to Poland, the intifada should be globalized with pretty much every synagogue a legitimate target for attack, etc etc, and people will assume that they can’t possibly mean what they say.
Comment #117 July 1st, 2024 at 10:51 am
Also obviously Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran are the real obstacles to peace in the foreseeable future and I have no idea what to do with them Things are heading for war unless something unexpected happens. Israel botched Gaza so hard I hope they don’t generalize their experiment to southern Lebanon. An international coalition can bring 100 times the resources and help Israel conduct a cleaner war. An alternative would be Hamas and Hezbollah agreeing to disarm, and Iran agreeing to make peace with Israel, both of which will take huge concessions and might as well be considered impossible.
Comment #118 July 1st, 2024 at 11:00 am
Bart #114:
I don’t understand your point about Trump. What do you mean, “it would have succeeded if Pence was a different person?” What would have succeeded, and why?
Trump put massive pressure on Pence to just set aside the real Electoral College totals and declare Trump the winner of the election. If Pence had gone along with that—and his history up till that point had been one of near-total acquiescence—the US could well have been plunged into a second Civil War.
I can’t tell whether you’re just pretending not to know this, or whether you’ve been in such a bubble for 4 years that you actually and genuinely don’t know.
Can you at least acknowledge my point—that the only reason you’re perceiving some idiot protesters disrupting Congress as a literal coup is because of your cognitive distortions?
ROFL. If this is a cognitive distortion, then it’s one that’s surely shared by most people on earth, most college graduates in the United States including nearly all the historians and legal scholars, and most readers of this blog!
Comment #119 July 1st, 2024 at 11:14 am
Scott, that Bart is clearly a troll.
Comment #120 July 1st, 2024 at 12:12 pm
fred #115
“Afghanistan is a vast medieval like tribal land that has always been deemed impossible to tame (The Brits, the Russians, all tried and failed).”
Afganistan was conqeed by mongols and everybody else without much trouble. Even famous asassins were destroyd by mongols. Actualy before mongols it was more developed prosperous country. The reason why it was ” impossible to tame” there was not so much interest in it. The same happened in Vietnam. US won war in Vietnam. Then becouse of internal politics they left, and several years later communists, baked by USSR and China, have taken power. Now people pretend that communists somehow were reflecting people’s will, as if somebody have ever make free elections there.
You know famous photo of small girl running wounded by napalm? People on the photo were running FROM vietcong TO south vietnam forces , not other way around.
Comment #121 July 1st, 2024 at 1:07 pm
fred #119: Yeah, fine, moving Bart to moderation.
It’s weird how the most extreme anti-Zionists very explicitly want my family dead, and yet I still feel like arguing with them more than I feel like arguing with the MAGA people. 😀
Comment #122 July 1st, 2024 at 1:18 pm
Scott, as a non-american reader I’d appreciate any insight you or another reader can provide on the ruling from the supreme court regarding Trumps presidential immunity. Sounds like yet more depressing news …
Comment #123 July 1st, 2024 at 1:33 pm
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/09/11/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-vo-van-thuong-of-vietnam-at-a-state-luncheon/
Comment #124 July 1st, 2024 at 2:06 pm
Mike #122: You’re not wrong. Yet another depressing sign of our slide into an autocracy. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the Democrats’ grand plan to save our republic is simply to lose.
At least Bart will be happy!
Comment #125 July 1st, 2024 at 2:11 pm
@H 107:
Agreed on all counts, from an Arab. I would give Israel’s historical founding a lower legitimacy rating (~25% Zionist, in your phrasing), and I would give more slack to dispossessed Palestinians who resent Israel. There is no excuse for non-Palestinian Arabs to have not formed something like B’Tselem.
@fred 92:
I didn’t mean to imply Arabs are uniquely non-rebellious, in fact my remark about a huge swath of Americans wanting to re-elect a convict and North Koreans deifying their dictator is an attempt to illustrate how utterly typical of humans living under tyranny to fail to overthrow the tyranny, and thus deconstruct the Pro-Israel narrative that Palestinians are uniquely hateful, submissive to tyranny, or a pliable tool for dictators.
If there’s anything that distinguishes most Arab people living under tyranny from Americans or Europeans, is that they don’t have a “golden age” of sufficient length to look back to and compare the current tyranny with. Since before the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East has been successively ruled by tyranny after tyranny after tyranny.
Incidentally, Israel has a hand in that too. Israel gave Arab dictators a threat to point to and launder their evil as “wartime measures”. That’s the same effect that Bush used to deprive Americans of many liberties because “Look over there, terrorism!1!1!1”, but much more intense because there is no precedent of liberty to begin with, Arab tyrants went downhill from the Ottoman Empire and its successor kingdoms.
Comment #126 July 1st, 2024 at 2:20 pm
“the ruling from the supreme court regarding Trumps presidential immunity. Sounds like yet more depressing news …”
In some parallel universe Biden is now making his last official presidential order for SEAL Team Six to take down citizen Donald Trump, threat to the Republic.
Comment #127 July 1st, 2024 at 3:43 pm
TFG #125
“If there’s anything that distinguishes most Arab people living under tyranny from Americans or Europeans, is that they don’t have a “golden age” of sufficient length to look back to and compare the current tyranny with. Since before the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East has been successively ruled by tyranny after tyranny after tyranny”
Hmm…
Democracy is quite the exception in the history of the world, the “normal” situation pretty much anywhere anytime was autocracy/dictatorship/arbitrary emperors put in placed based on who won the last war/invasion. It’s true about Europe and Asia.
If you look at France after the revolution, a republic was founded, but still ended up under the somewhat tyrannic rule of Bonaparte.
Islam actually had a Golden Age,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate
it “only” lasted 5 centuries because of the Mongol invasions, and Christians took part in the destruction of Baghdad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad
“According to Kirakos Gandzaketsi, an Armenian historian, the Christians in Hulegu’s army took special pleasure in Baghdad’s sack. It is unknown how many inhabitants were killed: later Muslim writers estimated between 800,000 and two million deaths, while Hulegu himself, in a letter to Louis IX of France, noted that his army had killed 200,000.”
Comment #128 July 1st, 2024 at 4:48 pm
Scott #112
The American people? They sent their tax dollars and sons and daughters who performed well (albeit against a third rate military) to be administered by fact deficient ideologue politicians and elite federal bureaucrats who are most concerned about the ideological narrative swirling around in their head. If anything Congress was an impediment to US investment post war and Chinese and Russian companies were happy to fill the vacuum. The rules of engagement imposed at some point could not have been imagined in WW2 except as a hope that your adversaries would adopt them.
It is far easier to tear something down than to build something equal or better to replace it. That is outside the scope of the fashionable ideological narratives.
Comment #129 July 1st, 2024 at 8:55 pm
The implication of a rapidly growing population is not just that Israel is there to stay. It is also that there is a constant to acquire more land as real estate becomes expensive. As I recall, around 40% of the settlers are there for economic reasons.
Furthermore, the Bibi vs others is an internal Israeli issue. For the rest of the world, regarding the Palestinian question, there probably isn’t much difference.
Comment #130 July 1st, 2024 at 9:19 pm
RB #129:
The implication of a rapidly growing population is not just that Israel is there to stay. It is also that there is a constant to acquire more land as real estate becomes expensive. As I recall, around 40% of the settlers are there for economic reasons.
And yet somehow, you can drive around pre-1967 Israel and still see plenty of undeveloped land and farmland (and not just in the Negev). Even within Tel Aviv, buildings are regularly getting demolished and replaced by taller buildings on the same lots. If Israel were to embrace a future as a high-tech Singapore-on-the-Mediterranean, which imports pretty much all its food and other supplies, there’d be plenty of room to fit more people even with the settlements gone.
Furthermore, the Bibi vs others is an internal Israeli issue. For the rest of the world, regarding the Palestinian question, there probably isn’t much difference.
Oh, I think there’s definitely a difference. A centrist PM would agree to a two-state solution under suitable conditions (as Barak and Olmert did before, only for the Palestinian side to reject their offers). While recognizing that the problem is one of the hardest in the world, they actually want to make progress on it. By contrast, Bibi’s entire political identity was formed around killing the two-state solution, denying the reality of the problem and deferring it forever into the future (how well did that work out?).
Comment #131 July 1st, 2024 at 10:53 pm
Scott,
From what I’ve read, real estate is cheaper in the West Bank than in Tel Aviv.
Benny Morris :
Comment #132 July 1st, 2024 at 11:03 pm
RB #131: OK, but
(1) The relevant comparison isn’t settlements vs. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which are presumably the two most desired locations in Israel, but rather settlements vs. some random town inside the 1967 lines.
(2) It won’t be surprising if that random town is still more expensive than a settlement—you should pay a premium for the assurance that your town will continue to exist as long as Israel does! It doesn’t contradict my point that there could be room in pre-1967 Israel for tens of millions more people—you’d “merely” need to (for example) build the whole area around Tel Aviv up to a Tokyo-like density.
Comment #133 July 1st, 2024 at 11:23 pm
Scott,
No doubt you could construct high-rises and Singapore type density, and smaller and more expensive residences, in the event that Israel pulls out of the settlements. Meanwhile, quality of life considerations imply that the path of least resistance is to acquire more land .
https://hir.harvard.edu/pragmatic-settlements-in-the-west-bank-and-implications-for-israel-and-palestine/
Comment #134 July 2nd, 2024 at 12:09 am
Turing’s Faint Ghost #7
Every time I see a person accusing Israel of killing “35K people in less than a year” (which, by the way, means that this person uses the number of killed provided by HAMAS), I always ask the same question, and for some reason, every time I don’t get an answer. 125 000 German civilians were killed during the Battle of Berlin, in three weeks. The population of 1945 Berlin was about 3 million people, compared with 2 millions living in the Gaza strip today. Does this mean the Soviets committed “genocide” of Germans? Does this mean the Soviets should have refrained from taking Berlin? From invading Germany?
Comment #135 July 2nd, 2024 at 1:11 am
@Fulmenius #134
You have your answer in my comment #34, if you had bothered to read all my comments.
Comment #136 July 2nd, 2024 at 8:09 am
I had to look it up cause I had no idea – when it comes to GDP per capita (and I don’t think that includes Gaza and the West Bank), Israel is on par with Belgium, Canada, the UAE, Finland, Germany, HK,…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
Comment #137 July 2nd, 2024 at 8:19 am
Fulmenius #134
“The population of 1945 Berlin was about 3 million people, compared with 2 millions living in the Gaza strip today. Does this mean the Soviets committed “genocide” of Germans? Does this mean the Soviets should have refrained from taking Berlin? From invading Germany?”
No, bro, it just shows that, unlike what they’re claiming, the IDF really isn’t trying that hard to avoid civilian casualties because the numbers are on par with what was done using methods of war from 80 years ago (aerial carpet bombing and artillery fire with dumb bombs, no GPS, no satellite data, no cell phone, no night vision,…), when the value of a human life was way cheaper because it was a World War after all (74 million deaths total), and not some super localized conflict against an enclave/ghetto (with a GDP per capita of 3,000$) that’s totally air tight (nothing comes in or out unless the IDF wants it).
Comment #138 July 2nd, 2024 at 9:03 am
“Turing’s Faint Ghost”: Since you’re still here, there’s one other bit of yours that I didn’t want to leave unanswered, in your comment #55.
If you gave every single member in Israel’s government the choice to kill 50% of American Jews in exchange for more guaranteed weapons shipments to Israel, **Not A Single One** of them would think twice before answering yes. They don’t give a shit about their own people. They don’t give a shit about you.
When you cheerlead for a state, you lose your humanity and respect.
I certainly don’t cheerlead for the current Israeli government. But I do cheerlead for the Israeli people, many of whom I’ve known all my life.
And to someone who knows as many Israelis as I do (including … well, not Knesset members and government ministers, but people who know such people), the idea that even a right-wing Israeli government would agree to a genocide of American Jews in exchange for more weapons shipments to Israel is so bizarre as to call your other confident assertions into question. Sure, they have their differences from American Jews. Sure, they’d probably prefer that American Jews move to Israel, or if they’re going to stay in the US, then at least send all their money to Israel. But come on.
Comment #139 July 2nd, 2024 at 9:45 am
Dr Aaronson
Thank you for the post on your visit to Israel. I would like to visit in the next year or so and do some small thing to support Israel. I have never been there and would be overjoyed to not only see myself but show my daughters sites that were important to the founding of Western Civilization.
Comment #140 July 2nd, 2024 at 9:57 am
OhMyGoodness #139: Great, email me if Dana or I can answer any travel-related questions. There are group tours that will get you to all the biggest sites within a week or so, or you can strike out on your own. Almost everyone there speaks at least some English. There are hotels e.g. in Jerusalem that cater to tourists and have amazing buffet breakfasts. Hopefully the internal refugees, who now fill many of the hotels, will be back to their homes by the time of your visit, and Israel’s tourism industry will be looking for all the business it can get. Enjoy!
Comment #141 July 2nd, 2024 at 12:17 pm
Found this post unexpectedly from a Hacker News thread on the BB (not Bibi) problem, but enjoyed the read nevertheless. I was briefly planning to visit later this yea, but that trip was cancelled for obvious reasons, so it’s interesting to hear about the perspective of someone who visited still. It’s also interesting to hear about the political reactions in Israel from a visitor — I often think that one can be critical of a country while still loving and supporting it and its core values (as an American liberal, I felt this way under Trump) so it’s cool to hear about that same kind of dissent taking place there as well. Thanks for your writing!
Comment #142 July 2nd, 2024 at 1:03 pm
The issue really is that people on Israel’s side keep claiming that Jewishness, because of all its painful history of persecution, should give Israel an automatic Carte Blanche to do whatever it wants to deal with Hamas in Gaza.
First, Israel did get a de-facto Carte Blanche because, clearly, no-one in the world is able to tell Netanyahu what he can do and can’t do, he just doesn’t give a fuck – their best allies like the US can’t do it, the UN can’t do it, even Israeli citizens can’t do it, no-one can…
But, still, anyone refusing to grant Israel this Carte Blanche “blindly”, or even suggesting that maybe it should be opened to discussion, is automatically accused of not just anti-Zionism, not just antisemitism, but it’s also implied that they’re probably itching to kill Jews at the first opportunity they get…
The same accusation that they make against the subset of pro-Palestine people who bundle all American Jews and Israelis together (e.g. “if you’re Jewish, you’re a supporter of Israel and its policies”), they also commit by bundling together all the people who refuse to give Israel a full, unquestionable Carte Blanche… the reasoning boils down to: “some of the people who condemn the actions of the IDF in Gaza happen to be actual antisemites, therefore everyone who criticizes the actions of the IDF in Gaza must be an antisemite”.
Again, it’s not about the right of Israelis to defend themselves, it’s about putting limits (or simply discussing) on the type of action that’s acceptable coming from a so-called democracy in a modern world… that the actions of Israel to respond to the crisis also reflect on all the other democracies in the world too, especially in this day and age where the idea of democracy is being undermined by Russia and China.
So, equating the criticism of Netayahu’s handling to antisemitism has got to stop!
It’s actually hurting the Jewish cause because people with no direct involvement in this can smell they’re being fed bullshit far-right binary logic propaganda.
It’s exactly the same thing being shoved by the extreme leftist on the other side, the ones who automatically frame the actions of Hamas as rightful resistance, and give them a Carte Blanche, because the Gaza population is clearly brown and clearly oppressed… the very same people with no direct involvement in this can just as well smell the same sort of bullshit far-left binary logic propaganda.
Comment #143 July 2nd, 2024 at 2:21 pm
From my point of view, it seems like a very easy slide for many people to go from Israel is attacking Gaza excessively to Israel shouldn’t exist, anyway.
Comment #144 July 2nd, 2024 at 2:33 pm
fred #142: Who’s claimed that the history of Jewish persecution means that Israel has carte blanche to do whatever it wants? Who’s claimed that all criticism of Israel’s government is inherently antisemitic? Did I claim those things? Where?
I say, criticize Israel’s government all you want—god knows I do, and most Israelis do too! But I draw the line at a very simple place: supposing you get what you want, does Israel still get to exist, or not?
If it doesn’t get to exist, it’s still possible that you’re not an antisemite, but the burden is now firmly on you to explain how, and what should happen to Israel’s 7 million Jews other than their expulsion or murder assuming that their new Palestinian rulers don’t want them.
Comment #145 July 2nd, 2024 at 2:53 pm
Just speaking for myself, but if someone goes from Israel is behaving badly in Gaza to a critical examination of how Israel was founded, I assume they don’t want Israel to exist. Or maybe Israelis should feel guilty enough about it to accept being murdered.
Comment #146 July 2nd, 2024 at 2:59 pm
Scott #144
I’ve never said you did, personally.
I’m taking about the general narrative that’s floating around, just like when you talk about what’s floated around in pro-Palestinian protests.
Also, I’ve clearly said that it’s not about the criticism of Israel’s government, that makes it sounds like it’s a political debate, but I can’t care less how Netayahu rules Israel, it’s really not my problem.
What I’m talking about is questioning the specific way Israel is responding with the Hamas threat in Gaza. That topic is apparently off the table, always.
“supposing you get what you want, does Israel still get to exist, or not?
If it doesn’t get to exist, it’s still possible that you’re not an antisemite, but the burden is now firmly on you to explain how, and what should happen to Israel’s 7 million Jews other than their expulsion or murder assuming that their new Palestinian rulers don’t want them.”
I don’t want anything besides not being bullshitted that Netanyahu/the IDF are really doing things in a way that’s minimizing collateral casualties in Gaza, and that we should all be so grateful to the IDF that they go so much out of their way to spare the innocent.
Sorry, but I just see no evidence that they care about collateral casualties.
Especially when WW2 is brought up as an acceptable benchmark for civilian casualties (and of course the fact that WW2 was the last/only “righteous” war on the allied side).
What I see is more evidence of all out retribution, making every Gazan pay for October 7th, or hit them so hard that they’ll remember the lesson for the next 1,000 years.
And then my caring of collateral causalities in Gaza implies that I’m anti-Israel, which implies I’m antisemite, which implies I’d be complicit in the death of 7 million Israelis?
So, apparently, there are only two options, and westerners have to choose their camp and shut up:
1) turn Gaza into dust to get rid of Hamas.
2) the end of Israel and all Jews.
Comment #147 July 2nd, 2024 at 3:22 pm
Scott
“but the burden is now firmly on you to explain how…”
No, there’s no actual “burden” on me to solve that situation, I’m neither Jewish nor Arab, and all that mess started long before I was even born, and my family never killed or hurt any Jew or Arab (my grandparents suffered a lot under the Germans in WW1 and WW2).
Equally, there’s no burden on me to solve the Chinese/Huygur question, the Eritrean–Ethiopian War, or the Mayanmar civil war.
But, maybe you mean that, since my taxes are actually directly paying for the bombs the IDF uses on Gaza, that makes me complicit and puts an obligation on me to solve the issue?
The truth is this: the only thing my tax contribution to the IDF does for me is put the weight of the 30,000+ civilian deaths in Gaza on my shoulders.
Sadly, it’s not an option for American citizens to choose how their government is spending their taxes, so that’s the way it is…
Comment #148 July 2nd, 2024 at 4:21 pm
Nancy Lebovitz
“From my point of view, it seems like a very easy slide for many people to go from Israel is attacking Gaza excessively to Israel shouldn’t exist, anyway.”
“Or maybe Israelis should feel guilty enough about it to accept being murdered.”
See! My point exactly!
They claim that people are “easily sliding” when in fact it’s them equating the two, i.e. anyone who has a problem with the level of casualties in Gaza (note that this has nothing to do with making up excuses for what Hamas did or this sort of crap) really don’t want Israel to exist.
And then apparently the Jews who happen to be critical of the level of casualties in Gaza (they must exist! Even if probably what they care about primarily and justifiably is making sure the hostages survive) really all have a secret death wish to be assassinated by Hamas.
Comment #149 July 2nd, 2024 at 6:16 pm
fred #147: One more time, if someone wants Israel to not exist, then I say the burden is on them to explain what should happen to the Jews there, if they don’t want me to consider them a murderous antisemite. If they don’t care about me considering them a murderous antisemite then they can think whatever they want (but they wouldn’t care about my opinion in the first place…).
Presumably none of this is relevant for you, since you would graciously allow Israel to continue existing. In which case, you’re welcome to contribute your ideas (as many in the Israeli left and center have been doing) for how Israel could be defending itself differently.
Comment #150 July 2nd, 2024 at 6:28 pm
Scott
“what should happen to Israel’s 7 million Jews other than their expulsion or murder assuming that their new Palestinian rulers don’t want them.”
“you’re welcome to contribute your ideas”
Sure, there’s always the option of growing a beard and converting to Islam, so everyone can finally just move on…
It’s kind of a win-win for everyone too – one less religion to worry about, and since Islam is based on Judaism, it all stays in the same happy family, so to speak.
Sure, you’ll just have to expend quite a bit your concept of who’s in and who’s out of your tribe, but I’m sure you can do it.
This isn’t without precedent: one way or another 11 millions Uyghurs are giving up their Muslim faith to become atheists, for the greater good and stability of China, and everyone finds that acceptable, apparently!
Comment #151 July 2nd, 2024 at 6:42 pm
fred #150: Why don’t you go first? Move to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or Iran. Just make sure not to do anything that could get you put to death as an apostate.
Or if you have reasons why not, then assume all the millions of secular Jews in Israel share your reasons. (The Orthodox, of course, have other reasons, but those need not concern us here.)
Comment #152 July 2nd, 2024 at 6:58 pm
Scott
“The Orthodox, of course, have other reasons, but those need not concern us here”
Ah really?
I don’t want to rain on your parade, but, in the long run, the Orthodox Jews are going to take over Israel, they just make way more babies, as you posted. Btw, the very same folks who don’t want to fight in the IDF.
Once that happens, I can guarantee you that they’ll be running society and the “secular” Jews (whatever that means) will be an impotent and irrelevant minority (the same crowd that already couldn’t even prevent Netanyahu from moving Israel away from democracy with his justice reforms… but, again, none of my business).
Women forced to be wearing a Hijab or shaving their hair and wear a wig, you pick!
After all, when it comes to a religious tribe, the current standard is to judge it based on its most radical members, right?
Comment #153 July 2nd, 2024 at 7:04 pm
fred #152: We’re not talking about hypotheticals (“who are these so-called ‘secular Jews’?”), but about millions of people who include a large fraction of all my family, friends, and academic colleagues, and who currently feel trapped: either the state of Israel will continue to be there for them or else they need to leave. So either lose the mocking tone or else get lost from my comment section.
Comment #154 July 2nd, 2024 at 8:16 pm
My questions for those who care illuminating me about it (besides calling me anti-zionist and antisemite because I dare ask them):
– Long term fate of Israel in the hands of the Orthodox? Who’s gonna keep Israel safe? American troops?
– Dealing with Gaza is easy relatively compared to dealing with Hezbollah. But Netanyahu seems pretty enthusiastic about opening a new front there. Who’s gonna keep Israel safe against Hezbollah? American troops?
– The fact that American tax payer money is subsidizing the massive innocent casualties in Gaza, with zero right to even question the tactics, given that those very tactics happen to be convenient for Netanyahu and is far-right, anti-democratic click, to stay in power?
– Anyone remembers when Trump got elected the first time around and covid hit, when the American extreme woke left started calling everyone who didn’t agree with them a racist or even a Nazi, and how utterly ridiculous and unfair that seemed to center liberals, because one was either entirely aligned with them on defunding the police and admitting responsibility as white oppressor, or one was part of the problem?
Now the same center liberals have to be called antisemites because either one is entirely aligned with what the IDF is doing in Gaza, or one is part of the problem?
Comment #155 July 2nd, 2024 at 8:27 pm
fred #154: If you keep falsely accusing people here of calling you an antisemite for criticizing Israel, when no one here has called you anything of the kind, at some point they might finally get tired of it and grant your apparent wish!
Comment #156 July 2nd, 2024 at 9:38 pm
Scott #140
Thank you and I will.
Comment #157 July 2nd, 2024 at 10:38 pm
Scott #138:
There’s something in between “Government” and “People”, that something I call a State. A state is something that outlives governments, even a massive and violent change between them (e.g. the 1979 revolution didn’t destroy the Iranian state).
I’m an Anarchist, but even if you’re not, it’s not hard to see that states are not your friend. They’re supra-human entities composed of people like people are composed of cells, and like cells are composed of atoms. You’re not antagonistic with your cells, you *simply don’t care*. If you woke up on a hospital bed and the doctor told you that you lost litres of blood but you’re fine, you would be relieved, even though those litres of blood contained tens of millions of your smallest building blocks, but who cares, the house is still standing, to hell with any set of bricks.
That’s how states look at people, they’re the original paperclip superintelligence (more like idiot savant in most cases). They care about people in exactly the same way you care about your liver cells : not at all, except if they threaten to kill you.
I stopped using anti-zionist as a self description since it was overrun by racists, but ironically I have the most valid of reasons to hate and oppose Zionism, Zionism is a long love letter to statism. Pre-Israel zionists talk about states like high libido male teenagers talk about girls. A creepy, all-consuming infatuation.
Everyone is the product of their time. But **you** are not the product of **their** time, you are the product of your time. It’s not like opposing Zionism has to mean anything in the current day for Israel, anymore than opposing colonialism has to mean anything for the USA or Canada or Australia. Just like opposing slavery doesn’t mean taking revenge upon the Viking-descendent Scandinavians. Just like opposing Islam doesn’t mean rolling back its 1450 years murder spree with another counter murder spree against Muslims.
But it’s relevant. When Israel bans the documentary Al-Tantura because it details how pre-IDF soldiers, some of them still alive and narrated their crimes on camera, killed and raped innocents in the eponymous Arabic village, that’s Zionism. When Smotorich threatens the world that for every state that recognizes Palestine he will recognize a new colony in the West Bank, he’s literally just being a good Zionist, using all circumstances and all events in his sacred quest for (more of) a state.
Those who don’t recognize the past’s crimes as crimes, are liable to stare in confusion as those crimes happen again and ask “huh ?”. You want people to recognize that October 7th was wrong even though it won’t matter one bit to Hamas (which is alive, and well, and kicking). It’s probably the least you could do, then, to similarly recognize that Zionism is a trashy, anti-humanist, state-worshipping ideology that literally needed a medium-sized genocide so that people can finally even begin to consider it as a serious suggestion.
Let’s get back to my assertion about Israel and American Jews. Maybe 50% is too much, but we know for a fact that Israel does indeed not give a shit about a certain number of Jews, namely: the 120 people currently in Gaza, not necessarily all breathing. Whether the actual number of Jews that Israel would sacrifice for whatever jingoistic demented schemes of military showmanship is closer to 120 people or 50% of American Jews is just haggling over price, the principle itself is already established, that Israel – as a state – doesn’t care. Why would it? Is a non human entity even capable of caring about a human ? Do you care about losing 50% of cells if I guaranteed to you that you will survive without any adverse health effects?
And what do you call Israel cozying up to the far right in France, in Italy, in Hungary? Those are quite literally the people writing “Jews will not replace us” on 4chan, quite literally ranting about the Talmud and the Goyiem and whatnot. But they love Israel, and Israel loves them back. What does that tell you? Does it tell you anything at all?
Comment #158 July 2nd, 2024 at 10:46 pm
Scott #155
You claim it’s okay to criticize Israel, which, in my case, is not even up to that level, I only question specifically the way Netanyahu is dealing with Gaza, yet you’ve answered to me twice with nothing on that specific point, but just some hand-waving implication that I have to decide whether I want Israel to exist or not:
“fred #147: One more time, if someone wants Israel to not exist, then I say the burden is on them to explain what should happen to the Jews there, if they don’t want me to consider them a murderous antisemite.”
“criticize Israel’s government all you want—god knows I do, and most Israelis do too! But I draw the line at a very simple place: supposing you get what you want, does Israel still get to exist, or not? If it doesn’t get to exist, it’s still possible that you’re not an antisemite, […]”
When one thinks he’s found a particularly ‘clever’ hammer, I guess everything starts to look like a nail indeed – i.e. switch the table around by putting the burden of solving decades of middle-East crisis on the ones who dare question the current solution.
But I never wrote (or meant to imply) that Israel has no right to exist.
It’s up to Israel to figure how it can exist, but I seriously doubt that the way Gaza is being treated is actually making Israel safer in the long run (*)
And daring to question the way Natanyahu and the IDF are treating Gaza is that special “line” for you?!
And anything other than the exact way Netanyahu and the IDF have decided to deal with Gaza would imply that Israel is doomed?
I’m told that asking for a milder treatment of Gaza (aka “you get what you want”) would doom Israel? How?!
We have something to base any speculation: Gaza has had 37,000 deaths, 87,000 injured, with their infrastructure, housing, and health system in total rubble, they’re starving, no prospect of future, and no option to leave… yet, they’re still enduring.
(*) typically I could be told that none of this is any of my business, except that:
1) my taxes are funding the bombs that have been raining on Gaza for the last 7 months. Same with Ukraine too.
2) it makes democracies look like a joke and weakens them because Americans have no say in any of this: Trump, Biden, RFK Jr, Dean Philips,… it doesn’t matter, they won’t ever stand up to Natanyahu. Bernie Sanders is the only one who had the balls to question the way things are conducted.
Somehow, when it comes to the Ukraine war, which is just as vital to Europe and the US than the Hamas/Israel conflict, an open discussion of the way things are handled on the ground is allowed…
3) citizens of a modern connected world can see things for what they really are, beyond propaganda (people aren’t that clueless, especially when they’re not part of the tribes involved).
Comment #159 July 3rd, 2024 at 6:06 am
TFG
“And what do you call Israel cozying up to the far right in France, in Italy, in Hungary? Those are quite literally the people writing “Jews will not replace us” on 4chan, quite literally ranting about the Talmud and the Goyiem and whatnot. But they love Israel, and Israel loves them back. What does that tell you? Does it tell you anything at all?”
Actually the details are even more unbelievable.
The French far-right used to be called Le Front National (FN), run by Jean-Marie LePen who called the Holocaust a “detail of WW2” and was making puns about cremation ovens.
The FN has moved away from the party which has now been run for a while by his daughter, Marine LePen, and the party is now called Le Rassemblement National (RN) and won 35% of the votes at the first turn of the parliementary elections (second round is this sunday), they also won big at the European elections.
M.LePen has been criticized for years for cozying up to Putin and Russian banks gave her loans to finance her campaigns.
In the meantime, following Oct 7th, the RN has framed itself as the real defender of the Jews in France, because some of the far left (Melanchon) have been pro-Palestine if not pro-Hamas, in the hope to gain the vote from french youth with Arab roots.
Some Jewish French intellectuals have even come out to say they’ll be voting RN if given the choice between RN and the left.
In the meantime, following Oct 7th, there’s been wide scale open antisemitic campaigns in the streets, like those two high profile ones, and (spoiler!) it turned out Russia was behind them
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67360768
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/22/france-russia-paris-holocaust-memorial-graffiti-red-hand
The same Russia that Israel refused to condemn after they invaded Ukraine.
Comment #160 July 3rd, 2024 at 7:08 am
Fred #148: You seem to think all the evil, or all the evil that matters, is on only one side. You are mistaken.
I think I was clear that my issue is with people who go straight from the attack on Hamas to saying or implying that Israel is evil because of how it was founded, and imply that what happens to Israelis doesn’t matter because the founding of their nation was evil.
Turing’s Faint Ghost: You’re doing better than Fred, but I think you’re still leaving what happens to Israelis out of your considerations. How do we disentangle ourselves from having governments?
Comment #161 July 3rd, 2024 at 8:08 am
Nancy Lebovitz #160
“I think I was clear that my issue is with people who go straight from the attack on Hamas to saying or implying that Israel is evil because of how it was founded”
ROFL, my reading comprehension may be below average, but you did not, you never even mentioned Hamas or a framing of their cause or their attack on October 7h. But, twice, you clearly went from people who criticize Israel for attacking Gaza excessively to Israel shouldn’t exist:
“From my point of view, it seems like a very easy slide for many people to go from Israel is attacking Gaza excessively to Israel shouldn’t exist, anyway.”
“if someone goes from Israel is behaving badly in Gaza to a critical examination of how Israel was founded, I assume they don’t want Israel to exist.”
Comment #162 July 3rd, 2024 at 8:34 am
Nancy Lebovitz #160
What happens to Israelis during what? I’m not advocating for anything to happen to Israel or Israelis. I’m advocating for a change in perspective. An epistemic shift. A change of heart. Call it what you want to call it, it’s a purely perceptual thing.
If you mean my belief in Anarchism, I gladly agree that the world is not ready for it yet. States will decline like religion did, very gradually and then all at once. And nobody who sees the trend will be able to reverse it. And hopefully it also happens in the Middle East this time, unlike the decline in religion that only fully happened in Europe. It doesn’t necessarily has to start with Israel, it almost certainly won’t.
We can’t completely disentangle ourselves from our governments, they have monopoly on violence for a reason. But we can full-throatedly declare that what they’re doing is not in our name. That’s precisely what many Israelis and Diaspora Jews did: say “Not In My Name”.
That’s all what I ask. Just like all what some Jews and pro-Israel people ask for is for pro-Palestine people to see October 7th as it is and say “Not In My Name”, an ask that is all too often not granted. Similarly, all what I ask of pro-Israel people is to see the war on Gaza as it is (from e.g. Haaretz) and say “Not In My Name”. No ifs. No buts. No whataboutisms about all the 69 other states engaged in wars that kill more people than Israel. No superfluous comparisons to WW2. No dehumanizing and taunting rhetoric about how Gazans brought it all on themselves and if only Hamas surrendered. Just. Condemn. The. War. On. Gaza.
Comment #163 July 3rd, 2024 at 8:45 am
Btw, why are the political heads of Hamas still walking freely in Quatar?!
Israel should do what it’s always done best, start with the top and work their way down.
If the claim is that Israel needs them to negotiate, I don’t see Netanyahu caring enough about this, and clearly those guys can’t be left alone if the long term goal is to get rid of Hamas permanently.
Then *seriously* look for all the reasons why Hamas was able to so easily pierce through the protection barrier (ignoring the intelligence, hacking of the systems, reallocation of the IDF troops to the West Bank, …). I say seriously and not some BS “we’ll have the courts look into it later, once Netanyahu decides it’s finally all done and he’s ready to face reckoning” (all after he’s done wrecking Israel democratic institutions, of course). And then make sure it can never happen again, at least not that easily.
Also, amazingly, after months of pounding on Gaza and IDF troops on the ground, the chief of the military wing of Hamas is still around.
The guy is unkillable apparently, Israel has tried so many times to eliminate him, with no success. If someone made a movie out of this, noone would believe it. The guy must think he’s really blessed by god:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Deif#Assassination_attempts
Comment #164 July 3rd, 2024 at 11:16 am
Turing’s Faint Ghost #162: I appreciate that you’re an anarchist—meaning, it’s not only the Israeli state that you’d like to see disappear, but all states! (Though there are several other states that I could suggest to ax first… 🙂 )
I confess to worrying a lot less about “states” than you do (in whatever ethereal sense, for example, that the “Iranian state” survived even the 1979 revolution). Mostly I think about actual populations (eg the Israeli and Iranian people, both of whom have millions who I love and want to protect), and then the actual governments that rule over those people, which as often as not I deplore.
As for anarchy, just like for (ironically) both utopian communism and extreme libertarianism, I tend to think of them as simply not equilibria. Destroy one political structure, and a new one will inevitably arise to fill its place. The question of whether the new structure will be even worse than what it replaced is not some minor detail, but the entire question.
Comment #165 July 3rd, 2024 at 11:45 am
For all the complaints about why Israel is being held to an unreasonable standard that states like Syria etc are not being held to, the answer is that a distinction is being made between Israel and various Middle eastern dictatorships. By no means is this bombing campaign small compared to WW2. More bombs, 70K tons in fact, have been dropped on a tiny strip compared to Dresden, Hamburg and London combined.
While Israeli citizens and the diaspora say that Israel has no choice, the IDF leaders themselves admit that the government is deceiving its people by saying that eliminating Hamas is a feasible goal. This was a security failure, easily addressed by strengthening the border. But there is an undeniable rage-bombing aspect to this campaign similar to post 9/11 that serves no useful purpose other than to be an extreme form of ‘mowing the grass’ as the description often goes.
NYT:
Comment #166 July 3rd, 2024 at 12:03 pm
fred: See, I’m certain that I want Israel to continue existing, and uncertain of what it should do to win against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the others who want it destroyed, short of time travel to the past. This is an honest and consistent if profoundly unsatisfying position. The fact that I’m not opining on various aspects of the Gaza war right this second doesn’t mean they’re not important, or that you shouldn’t opine on them and debate with other commenters here. I’ll read everything and comment if I have something to add.
As for who I’m rooting for in the French election—Macron, of course! I must’ve read a dozen articles about why his support has cratered but I confess I still don’t understand it (nor do I understand why he called this election, given that his support has cratered).
If you removed Macron, and forced me to choose between the militant anti-Zionists of the far left and the former(???) Nazis and antisemites but now Zionists of the far right, I’d be paralyzed and would probably just sit the election out.
Comment #167 July 3rd, 2024 at 12:09 pm
RB #165: I’d caution that questions like the feasibility and meaning of “eliminating Hamas” are being hotly debated right now within Israel, including within the government. In this context, Admiral Hagari saying something is a strong indication of what Admiral Hagari thinks (and he might be right), but is not equivalent to “the government admitting” something.
Comment #168 July 3rd, 2024 at 12:14 pm
Scott,
I’m not saying that the ‘government is admitting’ anything. But Hagari’s comments are just the most recent. In February, the military intelligence circulated a report that Hamas as an organization will survive.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-idf-intel-assesses-that-hamas-will-survive-as-terror-group-post-war/
Comment #169 July 3rd, 2024 at 12:55 pm
RB #165, #168
The important question isn’t whether Hamas survives as an organization, but whether it survives as Gaza’s government.
Comment #170 July 3rd, 2024 at 1:18 pm
Vladimir #169
If that was the goal, it’s a new one since there was and is no planning for the ‘day after’. The goal enunciated was absolute elimination of Hamas, even if it sounds vague now.
Comment #171 July 3rd, 2024 at 1:20 pm
fred #163:
Btw, why are the political heads of Hamas still walking freely in Quatar?!
Israel should do what it’s always done best, start with the top and work their way down.
There you and I are in total agreement. The fact that Israel hasn’t sent an elite squad of assassins to Haniyeh’s luxury hotel seems to cry out for explanation—possibly involving some agreement among the Israeli, Qatari, and American governments that hasn’t been made public?
Comment #172 July 3rd, 2024 at 1:59 pm
For the record, I have previously on Scott’s blog not just criticized Israel’s actions but outlined alternative approaches that I think could have been taken:
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7957#comment-1975434
Item #4, among others, that I made there three months ago and repeating here:
Comment #173 July 3rd, 2024 at 2:02 pm
Scott
“If you removed Macron, and forced me to choose between the militant anti-Zionists of the far left and the former(???) Nazis and antisemites but now Zionists of the far right, I’d be paralyzed and would probably just sit the election out.”
Yes, it’s quite a conundrum.
The Macron movement is now pretty much dead and buried (especially since it’s Macron’s last term). It was the last united centrist coalition that gathered left-centrists and right-centrists. Now all those people have turned their back on Macron and gone back to their niche centrist families.
On the plus side, the left has created a wide artificial coalition to win a majority of seats in parliament (they did the same during the last presidential election). I say artificial because they all have a ton of disagreements at the policy level, and whatever they share is quite thin (like, undo the increase of retirement age that Macron forced on the French, and increase taxes for the super rich).
That unification of the left is mostly LFI (La France Insoumise, with Melanchon as their leader) and The Socialists. The smaller parts are the French Communist party, the Greens, etc. After the last presidential, LFI took the tactics of systematically undermining Macron’s government (which didn’t have a majority in parliament) at every occasion. Basically forcing the government to force the passing of laws under some kind of exceptions, knowing that this would make Macron even more unpopular, propping themselves and the RN too as alternatives. Then, after October 7h, Melanchon refused to blame Hamas for October 7th, and made statements like “antisemitism remains residual in France”… and now both the center and the RN openly call the LFI as antisemitic. This has caused lots of soul searching on the Left (not everyone in LFI was going along with this), and Macron didn’t expect them to unite again after he dissolved the parliament, but they did.
On the socialist side, Raphaël Glucksmann got a big boost of popularity during the European campaign, and he suffered some antisemitic attacks from some on the LFI side.
I still think it’s likely that the center will rally behind a union of the left. The Left has called for their candidates to drop in places where they ended up third and fall back to the Macron/centrist candidate. Macron has not called openly to do the same for the Left, at least explicitly. But they’re still hope things will move enough to keep the RN in minority when all is said and done.
If the union of the left takes a majority, it would be quite a puzzle to find a Prime Minister, because Melanchon (who has fantasies of being president or prime minister) is just too problematic at this point.
Note that the trend in France is that parties have changed from being about ideas to beings about personalities, with Macron, Melanchon, Le Pen, and Zemour.
During the last presidential, Eric Zemour, who is a Jewish writer/commentator but very nationalist (he doesn’t like the US), was running a very far-right program, which got very popular for a while, but eventually totally collapsed (he even managed to drag the niece of Marine Le Pen to his side, but she has now gone back to her aunt… lots of drama).
Comment #174 July 3rd, 2024 at 7:18 pm
Scott, would you consider a future in which a state called Israel whose borders were the Green Line, and the majority of whose population were Jewish for at least the medium term (i.e. at most a partial right of return for the Palestinians), but which explicitly rejected any notion of being a specifically Jewish state in favour of being a state for all its citizens, and adopted laws analogous to the 1st, 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the US constitution (thereby necessitating replacing the right of “return” for Jews with a non-racist immigration law), and views the era of its history stretching from 1890ish to whenever the change happens as an appalling and shameful era to be condemned and atoned for (in the same way that America, Canada, Australia etc increasingly feel about their treatment of their indigenous populations, and European nations are coming to feel about their colonial pasts) exists as “Israel continuing to exist”?
That’s not “what I want” exactly – ideally, I’d like to see the Israelis and Palestinians abandon their separate national, cultural and religious aspirations and become good little secular anti-nationalists like me, and for the rest of the world to do the same and live as one people without boundaries, but clearly this isn’t a realistic or helpful aspiration!
It’s not even “the best possible scenario that I consider realistic” – that would be an apartheid greater Israel stretching from the river from the sea and moving progressively further right (on average – I think the modal outcome is that the next Israeli government will be marginally less far right than this one, but the one after is more likely to be further right again) as its demographics change, and with the Palestinians driven into ever-smaller and more miserable bantustans but not actually ethnically cleansed wholesale. (To be clear, I am in no way advocating this – I think it will be a terrible outcome, but nothing better has any meaningful chance of happening while Israel can rely on US support, and that shows no sign of changing).
But “non-racist, liberal, post-Zionist Israel” is a key point on the boundary of my realism/optimism tradeoff space, that feels relevant to your standards – would you consider that as “Israel continues to exist” or “A state with the same name continues to exist, but it’s no longer in the spirit of what Israel has always aspired to be”?
In other words, by Israel, do you specifically mean “a state that discriminates in favour of Jews”, or just “a state where Israel’s current Jewish population can live without being discriminated against”?
Comment #175 July 3rd, 2024 at 8:32 pm
Scott #16: “weather has become more erratic in a way that affects daily life…our lying eyes”
Scott #33: “increases the frequency of extreme heat events”
Many people claim that theory predicts and measurement finds increasing variance, so if you not are claiming this, it is important to be clear. People claim that they notice variance. This seems a lot more plausible to me than noticing frequency over an arbitrary threshold. But I doubt people remember past variance. Some people even claim that IPCC talks about variance. I would be very interested in a precise citation to IPCC endorsing theoretical or empirical increase in variance for any variable, but as far as I can tell this is precise enough to be false.
Do extreme heat events affect your daily life? Do you notice? This seems implausible to me. If the variance is unchanged, it means that the hottest day of the year is 2 degrees hotter (and substantially less change since you were a child). Why would you notice this? If you have built an AC system powerful enough to maintain a delta of 30 degrees with the outside air because you expected the hottest day of the year to be 30 degrees above your target temperature and the outside is actually 2 degrees hotter, then your AC system cannot keep up and the inside temperature will rise 2 degrees. The frequency of the old hottest days doesn’t matter.
Yes, the frequency of days above a threshold changes dramatically, but what threshold matters? Is there a particular threshold you consider unacceptable to go to the beach? Is it the same as when you were a child, or is the difference that your children are pampered?
There are some sharp thresholds that matter, particularly wet bulb temperature of, say, 90F, but I doubt you have come anywhere near this in your life. On the other side, frost is an important threshold. The difference between places that has no frost, occasional, or annual is important to agriculture and M falciparum.
Comment #176 July 3rd, 2024 at 8:52 pm
Jacob Steel #174: Honestly, I would sooner die than tell you that the return of the Jews to their ancestral land was in any way “appalling” or “shameful.” I regard it as one of the least appalling and shameful things that ever happened in the whole appalling and shameful history of the world. I wish it had gone much faster. I wish all the millions of European Jews had been allowed to emigrate to Israel in the 1930s, rather than being blocked by the British at the Palestinians’ behest, so that they could be gleefully murdered by their neighbors in the great orgy of Jew-killing, in one European country after the next, while the international community stood by and did nothing, and while the Palestinian leadership cheered the genocide and offered its assistance. I think that, if the Holocaust (and the support for the Holocaust that persists to this day) doesn’t sufficiently explain to you why Israel needs to exist, then you’re morally defective and bankrupt.
As for the Law of Return—well, I’d support loosening it, to provide automatic citizenship in Israel to anyone being persecuted for antisemitism, whether or not they can establish Jewish ancestry or conversion to Judaism or other criteria for which the Nazis would have murdered them. If Israel wants to offer refuge to other victims of oppression as well, I say more power to them.
But should there exist a country on earth whose fundamental purpose is to provide a safe haven for Jews, to prevent the next Holocaust? I say hell yes. Before we even talk about dismantling that country, let’s dismantle the reason why that country came to exist—namely, the world’s oldest, shapeshifting hatred, the one so malleable that we now see it infect millions who congratulate themselves for their inclusiveness and anti-racism. Before we dismantle Israel, where Arabs serve in the IDF and the Knesset, let’s dismantle all the countries around Israel that expelled all their Jews in 1948 and that criminalize atheism and homosexuality … how about that?
I should mention that I just listened to an amazing conversation between Sam Harris and Michal Cotler-Wunsh, who’s Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism. That conversation inspired me to state my moral convictions with clarity rather than pulling punches. I hope you enjoyed! 😀
Comment #177 July 3rd, 2024 at 8:57 pm
RB #172
> India did not respond in kind to the Mumbai attacks
I actually remember reading this three months ago. I hadn’t heard of the Mumbai attacks, so I looked into it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were about a thousand times less deadly than Oct 7 (per capita), zero hostages taken, and carried out by a handful of Pakistani terrorists rather than by the combined effort of Pakistan’s army and random civilians, numbering in the thousands. At the time, I interpreted this as strong evidence that you’re a deeply unserious person at best and an antisemite at worst, but now it occurs to me you might simply be Indian, though still unserious.
Comment #178 July 4th, 2024 at 3:34 am
Scott #166: For understanding why Macron’s support has cratered, I think his lunatic decision to call this election is a good example. He’s been the kind of leader who makes decisions like that one: decided in a tight circle behind closed doors, arrogantly certain he knows best, dismissive of all the people saying it’s a bad idea, and ultimately working to strengthen the far right.
Most politicians at anything like his level of success have a core skill of making people feel they’ve been listened to. Macron gives the opposite impression, again and again. And I don’t think it’s just a matter of poor communication, either – it’s pretty clear he really doesn’t listen even to other high-ranking politicians. (He kept his own prime minister in the dark about this decision to dissolve the National Assembly; and almost all the other ministers; and the heads of the other parties in his coalition. All of them were vigorously opposed as soon as they heard of it, just an hour or two before the announcement. To no avail.) When people feel they aren’t being heard by their leaders… well, that’s been one of the themes people cite who decide to vote for the far-right party.
Comment #179 July 4th, 2024 at 4:11 am
Fred #137
1) 35 K is the number given by HAMAS. The same HAMAS that claimed 400 dead from “Israeli airstrike on a hospital”, that turned out to be one of the Kassam rockets flying off-course and detonating on a parking lot near the hospital, destroying several cars and maybe killing or injuring several persons passing by.
2) Compare 35 K per 6 months per 2 million people with 120 K per three weeks per 3 million people. 6 months is roughly 24 weeks, so we have intensity of killing 0.0007 persons per capita per week in case of the current IDF operation compared with 0.013 persons per capita per week in case of Battle of Berlin: an 18 times difference. So, no, even according to HAMAS numbers, IDF is 18 times more effective at not killing civilians in urban combat than 1945 Red Army.
3) The fact that this war is waged against an “enclave” does not help at all. However vicious Wehrmacht was, it was fighting the Red Army in open combat and mostly in uniform, not deliberately hiding among civilians. And no, sadly, the control of Israel over the borders of the Gaza strip is not “airtight” (and never can be), otherwise Oct.7 and months of HAMAS resistance would not be possible.
And yes, all this does not mean IDF do not commit war crimes. But there is a clear double standard in assessing their performance regarding violation of human rights and protection of civilians. And claims that IDF disregard the lives of civilians completely (let alone the claims that the whole operation is a pretext for genocide) have no ground whatsoever. Militarily IDF is so much more powerful than HAMAS that, if IDF disregarded the lives of civilians completely, it could probably end the whole thing in the same three weeks it took the Red Army to take Berlin, maybe less (HAMAS is clearly less powerful than the German forces that protected Berlin in 1945, and I would guess that the 1945 Red Army would lose to 2024 IDF).
Comment #180 July 4th, 2024 at 4:32 am
On “the former(???) Nazis and antisemites but now Zionists of the far right”:
Those triple question marks are apt. The party’s top leaders have learned to talk smoothly and to denounce antisemitism, but an ever-growing list of their candidates have lauded Nazi collaborators and leading figures of France’s pre-Nazi antisemitism, or have gone for bald-faced antisemitic remarks of their own:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/06/22/anti-semitism-russia-conspiracies-the-far-right-candidates-contradicting-the-rn-s-mainstreaming_6675451_13.html
And that’s the candidates they’re running in this election, whom they’ve selected to represent them at a time when a key part of their strategy is to not look like antisemites. So the rate of people willing to openly say that stuff is probably higher still among their overall base of party activists, the people they’ll be installing in power all over France if they win a majority this Sunday. Not to mention the rate of people who *think* that stuff but are smart enough not to say it in public.
Comment #181 July 4th, 2024 at 4:38 am
Scott #176:
This response is one of the reasons why you’re never going to convince anybody who hasn’t already made their mind, it is a perfect illustration of your shortcomings when it comes to this conflict. The person you’re responding to haven’t written a single word about dismantling Israel or even tightening up Israel’s so-called “Right of Return” policy for Jews, Jews who have never been to the Middle East for a single day the past 2 millennia, and yet you responded with a completely irrelevant speech about how Israel could have prevented the Holocaust and anyone hating it is just a morally defective bigot.
Apparently history can never be appalling or shameful as long as some refugees are being accepted. I guess this means we can never call US history of slavery or genocide of native Americans appalling or shameful anymore, since the US has accepted tens of millions of refugees from Irish fleeing famine to Eastern European Jews fleeing the Tsar.
What’s curious is the fact you are surprised when pro-Palestine people you talk to don’t make any concessions. You make zero concessions yourself, you choose to think of Palestinians primarily as “people who cheered on genocide” – i.e. literally a single guy who was on the run from the British Empire for his role in the 1936 Arab rebellion and had to flee to Berlin -, instead of primarily as “People who were killed and raped and displaced and put under military rule, willingly and deliberately by Israel”, as 600-700K Palestinians were.
One is almost led to the conclusion that you value non-Jewish life less. Israel saved at most 1 million Jews (sum total of all refugees from 1948 till now, wildly overestimated), and made 7 million Palestinians suffer under half a century of occupation and oppression, but that’s completely okay and anybody having problems with it is “morally defective”, because…. Because what? Because Jews matter more ? Because Palestinians are poor and voiceless and don’t have as many nobel prizes? Because they are stupid and brought it upon themselves and they should just be grateful they get to live? All the above ? Which one do you usually go with ?
You share far more with those who call Hamas “armed resistence” and conjure a thousand reason and justification for its massacres than you’re willing to admit. You lose any right to complain about them from now on in my book.
Comment #182 July 4th, 2024 at 5:54 am
Scott #166: Macron is hated by millions in France as an ex-banker in the service of the French and EU establishment.
He called the election to try and stop the far-right or the hard-left from taking the presidency in 2027 by appointing an opposition PM after the elections. He hopes that a far-right or a hard-left prime minister will mess up in the next three years and the voters would go back to the centrist parties in 2027.
Comment #183 July 4th, 2024 at 8:27 am
Faibsz #182: Wow, if that’s the actual plan, it’s more galaxy-brained than I expected! I thought he just obliviously/deludedly assumed that “surely” the voters would return to him if he asked nicely.
Comment #184 July 4th, 2024 at 9:08 am
TFG #181: The person I’m responding to generously offered that “Israel” might continue to exist in some form … but only if Zionists admit they were racist and evil when they sought to create a haven for the world’s persecuted Jews in their original home, at peace with its Arab neighbors. Only if they disown Herzl and Ben-Gurion and abandon the Law of Return, and with it the idea that Israel exists to safeguard the world’s Jews from the next Holocaust.
At that point, as far as I’m concerned, he might as well offer me that the Israelis can all get burned alive in their homes in five thousand more October 7ths. That proposal would have the virtue of being more straightforward and honest.
Contrary to what you say, I’m willing to make massive concessions to the Palestinians, the moment they agree that Israel gets to continue to exist near the 1967 borders with its original mandate in perpetuity. I’m willing to uproot a half-million Jews from their homes in the West Bank, violently if need be, even if they’ve now lived in those homes for generations. I’m willing that Israel should compensate the descendants of the 1948 refugees for their lost property—even though the equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands in 1948 will never be compensated for their lost property, and no international body has ever bothered to pretend to think they should.
And once an independent state of Palestine exists in the West Bank and Gaza, no longer committed to reversing 1948, I will root for that state’s prosperity and success. May it attain a higher GDP than Israel. May it win 10 times as many Nobel Prizes as Israel has.
But yes, since you’ve engaged here honestly, I feel like I owe it to you to be honest about the lines I’ll never cross. I’ll never, ever renounce the early Zionists—the people who correctly foresaw the Holocaust and set out to prevent it in a way maximally consistent with liberalism and democratic ideals, and were blocked at every turn, and tragically failed to save the six million but succeeded in saving the seventh million. And I’ll abandon the idea that Israel needs to exist to protect the world’s Jews, when and only when the rest of the world abandons its obsession with murdering the Jews.
Do I believe that the Jews are “chosen” or special? In one respect, I do: I believe they were chosen to have the longest history of persecution and oppression of any people that still exists to talk about it. (As the classic Jewish refrain goes: “God, why couldn’t you choose someone else??”) The Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals and Turing Awards, the stunning literary and cultural achievements, are relevant mostly insofar as they put an exclamation point on how senseless and resentment-driven the persecution has been.
I also think Jews are special in one other respect, that for 3000 years they’ve been the world’s universal barometers of goodness and horribleness. Those cultures and ideologies and political systems that best tolerated their Jews were also the best ones for everyone else, while those that most zealously persecuted their Jews were also the worst ones for everyone else. And if anyone never learned that from history, or forgot it, I’d say that October 7 and the world’s reaction to it has provided an amazing refresher course.
Comment #185 July 4th, 2024 at 1:38 pm
As a fellow ethnic Jew here in the U.S, Scott, I find your stance on these issues misguided. As Fred said there are over 2 billion Muslims on Earth. In the long run, I don’t think this is a battle that can be won and some peaceful solution must be found.
I am an advocate for a unilateral return to the 1967 borders and abandoning the occupied territories. This Gaza war and continued expansion delegitimizes Israel’s claims to nationhood.
In the long, run, a single state in that region should be pursued like in South Africa, but only after a stabilization of the conflict and a peaceful coexistence with the 1967 borders.
I do agree that any attempt to kick the Jews out of Israel should be met with scorn. If you are born in a country you should be considered a citizen of that land and the fact that half of Israel are Mizrahi who were essentially forced to leave their home.
In the end, I think the formation of a Jewish state was a mistake that probably endangers Jews around the world more than it solves any problems. In the end, we as a people have to try and make homes where we live just like others.
If we don’t advocate for change in the U.S. and Israel on this front this bloody mess will continue and escalate.
Comment #186 July 4th, 2024 at 2:53 pm
PeaceInTheMiddleEast #185: Reflecting on it just now, it occurred to me that you and I might have no disagreement over values, but only a practical, empirical disagreement. We’d both like the world to be such that Israel didn’t need to exist. The disagreement is just that I think that, in the world as it currently exists, the dissolution of Israel into a Palestinian confederation would, in actuality, most likely be a prelude to the extermination of the Jews there, or if we’re lucky, their mere expulsion. I believe that, however crazy and paranoid that view seems on priors, actual examination of history (including but not limited to the pronouncements and actions of Israel’s neighbors for the past century) forces an absolutely massive shift in its favor on posteriors. Basically, I believe that Israel-as-Jewish-state will continue to be needed until the day Enlightenment liberalism conquers the whole world, or at least the Middle East.
And now for the real brain-bender: the hypothetical future where Israel would no longer be needed, would also be a future that would have no problem with Israel’s existence.
Comment #187 July 4th, 2024 at 6:59 pm
Faibsz #182, Scott #183: I think he’s had both plans at different times.
Initially it’s pretty clear his hope was that the moderate left (the Socialists, the Greens, and the Communists – yes, the French “Communist” Party is part of the moderate left) would rally to him. This wasn’t a completely wild hope, because they’d had bitter divisions with the farther-left LFI, plus Macron and his allies had worked hard to demonize LFI so that the moderate left would fear being associated with them.
(LFI had cooperated in their own demonization, too, as part of a mobilize-the-base strategy. There were many reasons for their estrangement from the other left parties, but the breaking point was after Oct 7 when those three loudly condemned the Hamas terrorist attack but LFI’s leaders pointedly refused to say Hamas were terrorists.)
One sign that was his strategy: the day after dissolving the assembly, at a commemorative event, a reporter overheard Macron boasting to a supporter that he’d “thrown an unpinned grenade at the legs” of the other parties, adding “let’s see how they get out of this”.
Another: the night of the dissolution, just an hour or two after Macron announced it on TV, the aide he’d installed as head of his party told the press they’d be seeking to assemble a broad electoral alliance of those who share “republican” values – a reference to the moderate left and to the much smaller LR party on the right, excluding both LFI and the far-right RN. The prime minister and other senior figures said similar things over the next 24-48 hours or so, until it became clear neither the left nor right were interested.
I think he did see the truly galaxy-brain plan as an acceptable Plan B all along, though. And in the last week, as it’s become clear even to him that Plan A isn’t happening, it’s been reported that he’s explicitly talked about it: appointing a far-right PM and government, watching them flail incompetently yet viciously for three years, and hoping that takes the shine off so voters in 2027 don’t elect Le Pen as president. Those three years of far-right government seem an awful steep price to pay for a bet that they help in the 2027 elections, though.
Comment #188 July 4th, 2024 at 7:10 pm
Greg #187: Thanks for that cogent analysis!
It’s fascinating to me how, in country after country far away from the Middle East, “do you unequivocally condemn what Hamas did on Oct 7?” has turned out to be the crucial wedge question splitting the sane left from the insane left.
Comment #189 July 4th, 2024 at 8:38 pm
Scott #184:
>TFG #181: The person I’m responding to generously offered that “Israel” might continue to exist in some form … but only if Zionists admit they were racist and evil when they sought to create a haven for the world’s persecuted Jews in their original home, at peace with its Arab neighbors. Only if they disown Herzl and Ben-Gurion and abandon the Law of Return, and with it the idea that Israel exists to safeguard the world’s Jews from the next Holocaust.
>At that point, as far as I’m concerned, he might as well offer me that the Israelis can all get burned alive in their homes in five thousand more October 7ths. That proposal would have the virtue of being more straightforward and honest.
What makes you think I am being dishonest? I promise that I’m genuinely mean every word I’ve said, and even if I’m wrong I’m making honest mistakes. I think it’s pretty clear that a non-racist Israel would make future attacks /less/ likely, not more.
While my knowledge of Herzl is limited to Altneuland and a few internet articles, based on that alone I don’t have much problem with him – he was absurdly unrealistic, but I don’t see evidence that he was a bad person. I think he might well have been appalled by the fact that the state that came into being 44 years after his death owed so much more to Geier than to Kingsland – you’ll note that the Israel I’m saying I wouldn’t have a problem with is much closer to his vision than the reality is!
I absolutely /do/ have a problem with Ben-Gurion, who was responsible for deliberate large-scale ethnic cleansing in the Nakba. Don’t you?
If your concern is a safe haven for Jews in the event of a future holocaust, remember that all states are legally required to offer asylum to anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race or religion. Most interpret that obligation creatively, but a non-racist Israel that took it seriously would be just as safe a haven not just for Jews but for others as an Israel that allowed Jews but not others in regardless of persecution.
>Before we dismantle Israel, where Arabs serve in the IDF and the Knesset, let’s dismantle all the countries around Israel that expelled all their Jews in 1948 and that criminalize atheism and homosexuality … how about that?
If you have ideas for effecting regime change or even just cultural change for the better in Arab nations, that wouldn’t do more harm than good, I’d love to hear them, but I certainly don’t! (Except possibly Western governments distancing themselves from the Saudis, but I’m very unsure what the consequences of that would be?) In particular, supporting the Iranian opposition is superficially tempting, but I suspect that making them in any way “Western-backed” would be the kiss of death for them.
But even if you do have such ideas, I think that this is what-about-ism, not a defence of Israel.
Also, I personally care more about Israel’s crimes than others because I’m Jewish, but obviously personal isn’t the same as important.
Comment #190 July 4th, 2024 at 9:52 pm
Old joke, I grabbed this version:
old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2uuii3/a_man_goes_to_prison_joke_with_two_opposite/
(begin joke)
A man goes to prison and the first night while he’s laying in bed contemplating his situation, he hears someone yell out, “44!” Followed by laughter from the other prisoners.
He thought that was pretty odd, then he heard someone else yell out, “72!” Followed by even more laughter.
“What’s going on?” he asked his cellmate.
“Well, we’ve all heard every joke so many times, we’ve given them each a number to make it easier.”
“Oh,” he says, “can I try?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
So, he yells out “102!” and the place goes nuts. People are whooping and laughing in a hysteria. He looks at his cellmate rolling on the ground with tears in his eyes from laughing so hard.
“Wow, good joke huh?”
“Yeah! We ain’t never heard that one before!”
(end joke)
I feel that the Israel/Palestine debate could benefit from adapting that joke. Every point has been asserted so many times, that we might as well as give them each a number to make it easier. And then simply recite the numbers.
Comment #191 July 5th, 2024 at 6:44 am
Seth Finkelstein #190: You’re right of course. Because I blogged about my actual experiences visiting post-Oct-7 Israel, I was hoping that I might get questions focused on what I saw and heard there, and things might go in an interesting direction. Instead, it 95% degenerated to the usual Israel/Palestine debate. I’ll close the thread shortly.
Comment #192 July 5th, 2024 at 9:29 am
Since Scott mainly met with left oriented citizens, this interview with Bartov on his meeting with right wing reservists may give a perspective of the other side.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-holocaust-scholar-meets-with-israeli-reservists
Comment #193 July 5th, 2024 at 9:38 am
Similarly, if someone visited Gaza right now and blogged about it, they’d better give us a list of their top 10 “all you can eat” buffet restaurants.
Comment #194 July 5th, 2024 at 9:48 am
Seth Finkelstein #190
Sure, when the goal is to trivialize, ignore, and dismiss the other side’s arguments, that’s certainly one way to do it.
Comment #195 July 5th, 2024 at 10:50 am
Probably already commented on, but with respect to this passage:
“… had better have some plan for what they’re going to do with all these millions of young Jews …”.
The truth, unfortunately and sadly, being that many do have a plan, and it’s to dispose of them, often in a grueling and inhuman manner. Hence why the state of Israel despite the poor political environment and disdain for the government in power, must exist!
Comment #196 July 5th, 2024 at 1:00 pm
Jacob Steel #189
In private, Herzl was fine with (and even argued for) the creation of his state involving (at least partial) removal of the local population. He famously wrote in his diary:
“We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
At best Herzl was only targeting the local poor, not the landowners, and naive about expropriation being doable in a nonviolent manner. However, the systematic denial to a group of people of the ability to live in their homeland is still immoral, even if done without physical violence and without breaking the prevailing laws.
(It is possible that this was written with a different candidate location for the state in mind, but that does not change the immorality, only its eventual victims.)
Comment #197 July 5th, 2024 at 2:36 pm
RB #192
very interesting read, thanks.