this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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I appreciate your tone and demeanor, it's nice to have a civil discussion with someone who disagrees, especially in this domain where emotions can run so hot.
I know that's the motivation for many Jews and Muslims, I don't personally care about ancient claims nor do I believe they are very relevant to the present conflict. What matters more is who controls it now, and fighting over holy cities just ensures that this will never end because it's hard to compromise with people who believe God is on their side and granted them access to specific lands. On some level I think the world would be better off if neither party had Jerusalem and it was independent, like the original partition plan called for, but now that ship has sailed and Israel controls it. I don't see this changing any time soon.
Unfortunately I don't think any of that is viable except perhaps for the security and separation part, it would be hard for the losing side to get the winning side to agree to such terms and pay war reparations for a war they didn't start and won.
I'm not sure they have the right, legally speaking annexation hasn't been legal internationally since WWII although it still happens, but it's certainly justifiable in the name of self-defense. Returning territories while their enemy remains belligerent seems like a bad strategy. The problem is that war is not a transitory state in this part of the world like the UN assumes are their nature, it is a permanent condition. Palestine refuses to concede despite being defeated time and time again. From the polling I've seen, most Palestinians don't want to compromise for anything less than the '48 lands back with a one-state solution they control, which is a non-starter. International laws regarding war seem to be written with the idea that wars end when peace is sued for, and this conflict doesn't fit into that mold because of a desire for endless resistance regardless of realpolitik.
I don't think either should be destroyed, but that's probably what will happen if Palestine doesn't surrender and pacify itself. Endless intifada will just push Israel to keep responding to violence with harsh responses and annexations, and they hold all the cards militarily speaking. If I were in charge, I think the best solution would be to eventually make the entire west bank the state of Palestine, contiguous and autonomous, provided it remains peaceful. This is not possible while the population wants revenge more than viable peace.
I just looked up current polling regarding what Israelis want regarding Palestine, evidently it's a contentious issue with the Israeli public generally split regarding how to proceed:
Certainly I can understand their outrage, but how to logically respond would depend upon a nation's ability to change that situation. I'm reminded of the saying, "give me strength to change what I cannot accept and wisdom to accept what I cannot change."
We're arriving at the end of the discussion then, because we can argue about their chances but in the end none of us (can pretend to )know.s the future. Here's why i think that the law of the strongest doesn't necessarily work against them :
Afghanistan is the best modern example of people who won against impossible odds.
Since you mentioned "realpolitik", and while you may have heard of it before, you could have heard it again recently with John Mearsheimer and others during the war in Ukraine, it is linked to Afghanistan in that, if all ukrainians were (traitors )like those in eastern Galicia, i doubt that Russia could have kept these territories : they would have had to face constant "terrorism" by more numerous inhabitants.
In the same spirit, wars for decolonization could also count as other examples of successful fights against overwhelming odds.
Yet when i'm thinking of such examples it's about locals united in their perception of foreign armies as the enemy, and couldn't be applied for Israel(, not occupied by a majority of locals/palestinians).
Even without that, they can win(, i.d.k. if they will,) if the ummah was united.
If it wasn't enough of a weight(, i doubt it), they would certainly change the scale by uniting with Africa, the rest of Asia, Russia, and also South America. That'd mean even more coups by the west in order to keep control, and then by the rest, we(sterners) are lucky that they're still closer to us.
(What interest me more is whether they should win(, and on what terms), the law of the strongest shouldn't matter, but even through that lens, )Here's a (naive )picture of how it could happen :
If 'fairness is excluded'/'might makes right'/'the only factor is strength', then they're not weak.
Only God would know how to solve this situation in the most perfect manner(, ideally if we were perfect/'never doing anything that another being would consider bad for h.er.im' then we wouldn't rely on states, laws, borders, ..., for protection, just freely join and leave communities with their own rules and paradise would come unto Earth, lands wouldn't belong to anyone and we wouldn't possess anything else, only living to do good to each other, but since we're not perfect it's useless to point that out(, Israel would be destroyed if they acted like that, and Palestine wouldn't be recovered, and more generally societies would collapse, Christ is/shows the Way but if the other don't also believe that he's one with you it obviously quickly becomes useless, sry for the unproductive rambling).
Israel is literally fighting for its existence and has nowhere to retreat to should they lose. Afghanistan, like Vietnam, was not an existential threat to the US. It's not really comparable because of this.
For Israel this isn't a fight to colonize, it's a fight to exist. There are many Arab nations that could take in Palestinians, not so for Jews who have already been expelled from the Muslim world, and are facing enemies who quite explicitly want to genocide them.
Wasn't that what happened in '48 and '67? It didn't work out well for other nations who went to war on their behalf. Israel is much stronger now than it was then.
Interesting
It is not the only factor but it is the most relevant one in this conflict, because it's so very asymmetrical.
If such creatures exist, they haven't weighed in, which is curious given that Allah/Yahweh supposedly care so much about their followers and who controls their holy cities. Funny how gods are always concerned with the same things that their followers and the men who claim to speak for them are, rather than what I'd expect from omnipotent creatures beyond our understanding. It would be like humans trying to control ant societies in our backyards, why would we care?
I hope we get there one day, albeit through secular means.
It's not comparable because the disparition of Israel would be an existential threat to the u.s. ?
Without discussing what should be, only how to do it(, and usually without considering the morality of the path taken, only its assumed effectiveness, there're reasons to believe that Machiavel wrote The Prince as a criticism and not a support b.t.w.).
If i remember correctly J.Mearsheimer liked realism for its predictive power.
Only because Israel's territory isn't populated by palestinians, which is why i mentionned Ukraine, whose annexed/liberated territories aren't anti-russians like in eastern Galicia, perhaps because they believe that Russia is large enough to become a.n 'future continent'/'original culture' by itself, and want to believe in this idea, and/or perhaps for other reasons. But w/e.
They can go in "the first&free world" if that's your argument.
And they're colonizing more territories because it's a fight to exist ?
As this comment pointed out : palestinians are at most a threat in the future, but aren't strong enough currently to be deemed a serious threat, a fight for survival implies an enemy strong enough to kill you, and as you previously recognised, if we're only talking about palestinians, then they're not there( yet).
Israelis were relatively safe all these decades(, compared to their neighbours), and i could only imagine that Palestine's destruction would enhance their security if arabs/muslims accept it and refuse to stand for palestinians, and if israelis stop there, because they would still have to invade/coup such countries as Iran or political movements such as Hezbollah, and would continue as long as they're not accepted.
If you presented Israel's survival as 'a moral argument'/'what should be', which would probably not be "realist" to do so, then i could return the same argument for palestinians, and ask you why you don't support the intifada on these same moral grounds, but you more likely said that to explain their motivation and give an estimation of their strength/resolve.
As you saw afterwards, i wasn't talking of a military fight, but of a.n economic&diplomatic one(, even if coups generally imply a military role, sometimes bloodless but very often not).
Unreasonable because they won't ever win ? Well, who knows ?
I don't see them supporting Israel and abandoning palestinians(, only Morocco's gains would be significant, yet they're still seemingly hesitant), i'll agree that they still have a margin of retaliation/pressure towards the west though, perhaps are they forced to wait for a more opportune time to act or, as you said, have accepted such unconditional loss, not sure that we would have if the roles were reversed. As previously mentioned, they wouldn't win anything by complying, and i don't see clearly the extent of what they'd lose by resisting(, some could include their honor or other immaterial examples).
In my opinion Saudi Arabia has more reasons to be afraid of the u.s.a.&co than of Iran, since, except for the Gulf monarchies, every single one of their neighbours 'has been'/'is being' destroyed : the color revolutions, Mohamed Morsi, Lybia, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and even Lebanon is in an economic crisis(, and kinda Türkiye as well), you just have to open a map and list every country. If we're going a bit further then we have Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, almost all countries destroyed by the west, and i haven't counted kurd separatists or the islamic state, it's not a stretch to think that they desire stability, but what a f*cking world, we don't understand that, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Congo, Chad, Niger, central asian republics, Georgia, ..., these countries seems far away, if the realist choice is just to always follow the strongest regardless of what's right/fair, then i don't want to be a realist.
Is there a single non-western country more active than them around the world currently ?
As if they didn't lose enough historical territory in 1991, V.Putin's party isn't called United Russia for nothing, of course we(sterners) supported the separatists terrorists(, but hated them when these "orks" fought on the side of Russia&'south-eastern ukrainians' recently).
The first hostage released by Hamas was an israeli who also had a russian nationality, and there were other gestures if this kind of things matter, the timing of the l.g.b.t. ban may perhaps also be linked in some way, i.d.k.(, they also have their own muslim republics in the russian federation, Chechnya is apparently very homophobic, and it's not only inside their borders or in the Middle-East, but in Africa as well), just to say that i wouldn't count on their islamophobia.
The (uncaused )Cause is the only being which isn't a creature(, and the only to be the Being), i don't think a direct visible interference would be that desirable, everything would just be solved and there wouldn't be anything else to do, i prefer to feel free, but in any case there's always determinism and God as the Cause for this kind of interrogation.
Not sure that despite our imperfection we wouldn't be a part of the All/One, and there's always the law of karma among other laws of our reality, parts of the All do care, and if we look/seek the Greatest we/ants do care.
You didn't wrote that to imply that we should only get there through secular means(, by fighting other paths), but i find interesting that we fight communism and islamism : apart from these two, and royalism, do you know of a single large ideology that survived the colonization and isn't the western one of a constitutional capitalist secular republic ?
I wrote about these communities with their own rules because i feel that we're unfortunately looking for unity at the expense of diversity, instead of looking for a permanent peace in harmony, ensuring both our unity and our diversity, we're not looking towards this direction, and there's even this selfish nationalism saying that it's not our role to help each other, i can't like it, we should aim to live together.