Israel-Hamas War 2023

[Josquius]

So you declare the death of Israelis insignificant in the larger picture of things, and I do the same for Palestinians. I guess that's the same position in a way, we are just on different sides of a tribal existential conflict. Except my side is a civilised democratic country with some shitty practices and a shift toward the far-right while staying democratic and fighting early autocratic tendencies within its own politics. Your side is a terrorist state.

No. My side is the Palestinian people. A people whose fundamental survival is actively under threat. A people whose children are being killed in large numbers on an ongoing basis. Who are steadily having their land taken from them and being pushed into an ever smaller area whilst their plummeting living standards leads to an increased birth rate. Not to mention a large chunk of them being under the rule of a group of religious terrorists.
Hamas are one of the shitty side effects of the Palestinian situation, not the instigators of it.

I feel like this take removes any agency from Palestinian people, either Hamas or the population at large.

"Agency" is such a loaded word. Very commonly used by conservatives to dismiss attempts to understand and tackle the root causes of crime.
Of course the people who end up joining Hamas and murdering people are personally entirely to blame for their poor choices.
But we shouldn't pretend they were given all the opportunities of a middle class westerner yet still decided terrorism was the option for them.

[Barrister]

"Agency" is such a loaded word. Very commonly used by conservatives to dismiss attempts to understand and tackle the root causes of crime.
Of course the people who end up joining Hamas and murdering people are personally entirely to blame for their poor choices.
But we shouldn't pretend they were given all the opportunities of a middle class westerner yet still decided terrorism was the option for them.

Actually I think it's much more a term on the left, which is why I chose it.

Understanding "root causes" can be a useful exercise, but you absolutely can't end there.

I saw on Twitter that there's been a Tik Tok trend of people reading Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America" and deciding that Bin Laden had a point.

I haven't read the 2002 letter myself, but to the extent you think he had a point - it never justified the murder of 3000 people on 9-11.

https://www.newsweek.com/osama-bin-laden-peace-warrior-article-resurfaces-tiktok-1844380

[OttoVonBismarck]

The ObL letter highlights a common reality--no country or no 'side' is beyond valid criticism. The Soviets during the Cold War and even the Nazis during WWII put out critiques of American society, for example. Many of them valid.

Them being valid in no way diminished the many misdeeds and outright evil of the Soviet and Nazi regimes.

[Josquius]

"Agency" is such a loaded word. Very commonly used by conservatives to dismiss attempts to understand and tackle the root causes of crime.
Of course the people who end up joining Hamas and murdering people are personally entirely to blame for their poor choices.
But we shouldn't pretend they were given all the opportunities of a middle class westerner yet still decided terrorism was the option for them.

Actually I think it's much more a term on the left, which is why I chose it.

Understanding "root causes" can be a useful exercise, but you absolutely can't end there.

I saw on Twitter that there's been a Tik Tok trend of people reading Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America" and deciding that Bin Laden had a point.

I haven't read the 2002 letter myself, but to the extent you think he had a point - it never justified the murder of 3000 people on 9-11.

https://www.newsweek.com/osama-bin-laden-peace-warrior-article-resurfaces-tiktok-1844380

I don't get your point.
Successful extremists usually do have some valid concerns. Its how they work. Whether its the US quest for oil propping up dodgy dictators or the decline of heavy industry and how hard it is to be a young working class guy in poor parts of the west. The extremists successfully identify the problems. They then offer simple shit non-solutions.
Its like the "Hitler was a vegetarian" bit. Just because an arse-hole has a view doesn't make that view instantly wrong .

[Threviel]

Yeah, but a nice guy having an asshole view doesn't make that view nice either.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

"Agency" is such a loaded word. Very commonly used by conservatives to dismiss attempts to understand and tackle the root causes of crime.
Of course the people who end up joining Hamas and murdering people are personally entirely to blame for their poor choices.
But we shouldn't pretend they were given all the opportunities of a middle class westerner yet still decided terrorism was the option for them.

Actually I think it's much more a term on the left, which is why I chose it.

Understanding "root causes" can be a useful exercise, but you absolutely can't end there.

I saw on Twitter that there's been a Tik Tok trend of people reading Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America" and deciding that Bin Laden had a point.

I haven't read the 2002 letter myself, but to the extent you think he had a point - it never justified the murder of 3000 people on 9-11.

https://www.newsweek.com/osama-bin-laden-peace-warrior-article-resurfaces-tiktok-1844380

I don't get your point.
Successful extremists usually do have some valid concerns. Its how they work. Whether its the US quest for oil propping up dodgy dictators or the decline of heavy industry and how hard it is to be a young working class guy in poor parts of the west. The extremists successfully identify the problems. They then offer simple shit non-solutions.
Its like the "Hitler was a vegetarian" bit. Just because an arse-hole has a view doesn't make that view instantly wrong .

you seem to assume you're not part of the extremists...

[Barrister]

"Agency" is such a loaded word. Very commonly used by conservatives to dismiss attempts to understand and tackle the root causes of crime.
Of course the people who end up joining Hamas and murdering people are personally entirely to blame for their poor choices.
But we shouldn't pretend they were given all the opportunities of a middle class westerner yet still decided terrorism was the option for them.

Actually I think it's much more a term on the left, which is why I chose it.

Understanding "root causes" can be a useful exercise, but you absolutely can't end there.

I saw on Twitter that there's been a Tik Tok trend of people reading Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America" and deciding that Bin Laden had a point.

I haven't read the 2002 letter myself, but to the extent you think he had a point - it never justified the murder of 3000 people on 9-11.

https://www.newsweek.com/osama-bin-laden-peace-warrior-article-resurfaces-tiktok-1844380

I don't get your point.
Successful extremists usually do have some valid concerns. Its how they work. Whether its the US quest for oil propping up dodgy dictators or the decline of heavy industry and how hard it is to be a young working class guy in poor parts of the west. The extremists successfully identify the problems. They then offer simple shit non-solutions.
Its like the "Hitler was a vegetarian" bit. Just because an arse-hole has a view doesn't make that view instantly wrong .

So let's go back to what I was objecting to:

No. My side is the Palestinian people. A people whose fundamental survival is actively under threat. A people whose children are being killed in large numbers on an ongoing basis. Who are steadily having their land taken from them and being pushed into an ever smaller area whilst their plummeting living standards leads to an increased birth rate. Not to mention a large chunk of them being under the rule of a group of religious terrorists.
Hamas are one of the shitty side effects of the Palestinian situation, not the instigators of it.

By saying Hamas is just a "shitty side effect of the Palestinian situation" you're saying that Hamas's terrorism was inevitable, and that Palestinians had no choice but to go and murder all those Israeli civilians.

I totally reject that assertion.  There is always a choice.  There are always other solutions.  To deny that is to deny humans agency.

If an oppressed person is shown a "simple shit non-solutions" they always have the choice to not take that solution.


You know what my job is.  Most of the people who come before the court have some kind of disadvantaged background.  Heck some of them come from literally refugee camps before coming to Canada.  Such a disadvantaged background is not ignored - it is taken into account, often in a reduced sentence, but it never ever excuses the behaviour.

[Malthus]

Hey everyone!

Been lurking the past little while, thought I'd add my two cents worth about something I've been considering.

It seems to me, from a historical perspective, that the Palestinians and Israelis are in many ways mirror images: two dueling ethnic nationalisms, both arising at around the same time, both benefiting from a certain amount of foreign backing. Both have extremists who are pretty extreme. Yet one group has been largely successful, and the other not. What factors explain this?

No doubt there are plenty, but to my mind, the two most significant are the following.

First, the Zionists were able to reign in their extremists when it really counted. Way back in the 1940s, there were plenty of extremist Zionists, such as the Irgun, who engaged in terrorism (though pretty minor by modern standards). The more mainstream Zionists, the Jewish Agency, decided that allowing these guys to run their own policy was a bad idea; it was WW2, and the Agency threw its lot in with the Allies, despite the Brits cracking down on Jewish immigration; they ended up helping the Brits suppress the Irgun etc, with violence (an episode known as the "saison" or "hunting season"). Many in the Irgun, having been forced underground, emerged to join Israeli politics ... but the battle had already been won.

This was absolutely pivotal for Zionist success. In the coming war for independence, the Zionists would have only one leadership, with the extremists basically out.

Israel has had plenty of trouble with extremists ever since (assassination of Rabin, "settlers" in the WB, Bibi's political supporters, etc.) but none of these were an existential threat to the state itself.

Compare with the unfortunate fate of the Palestinians. They have never been able to curb their extremists. In fact, by and large, their extremists have proved the most popular; Hamas won the only actual election ever held; and they remain popular to this day.

Why is this bad for them? Well, extremists aren't noted for rational and workable solutions to their problems, or for having realistic and achievable goals. All things being equal, in an existential struggle, a group run by non-extremists has a better chance; it is better able to build up power, use it for its own ends realistically, and not give in to the temptation to make "grand gestures" that are perhaps satisfying to other extremists but do not actually work to achieve their goals.

This feeds into the second issue: the ability to reflect on what went wrong, when bad shit happens.

A whole mythology has grown up, among Israeli supporters and haters alike, about how all-powerful and competent Israel is. Hence a lot of surprise at how they screwed up so badly in allowing Hamas to commit the current attack. Yet Israeli history is rife with Israel screwing up badly. They have done so a lot in the past  - indeed the current attack was on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, in which they were also totally taken by surprise.

The issue is this: when Israel has screwed up badly, the do in fact reflect on what went wrong. It is widely expected that Bibi's political days are numbered for this reason ... just like Golda Myer, who was turfed from office after the Yom Kippur war.

In short, when things go visibly badly for Israelis, there is a tendency on their part to ask "how did we screw up?"

Contrast with the Palestinian situation. When things go badly for the Palestinians, the tendency is to ask "how did the Israelis screw us this time?". The disasters they suffer are rarely traced to their own choices. Even if they are clearly caused by choices they have made, those choices are always contextualized - of course they made bad choices, this is because the Israelis have been screwing them for years, bad choices are to be expected if people have been screwed for years, etc.

Point is not whether any of that is true or not (though one may well ask why the Zionists did not take up the same habit before they seized their state - after all, they too had been screwed for years ... many of them were Holocaust survivors, and you don't get any more screwed than that).

Point is that of the two tendencies - blaming yourself for screw-ups versus blaming others - the "blaming yourself" tendency is much better correlated with success.

Personally, I think the two issues are related: extremists are in general less prone to self-reflection.

The Israelis certainly are not immune from having extremists with a tendency to blame  everyone but themselves for problems - I mean, look at Bibi. The hope, though, is that the historical tendency to reject that line will hold consistently.

Another question is whether the Palestinian cause can be salvaged from its  tendency to rely on extremism.

In that respect, the signs are not encouraging. The Western supporters of Palestine are not helping in this respect - if anything, they tend to re-enforce and reflect the Palestinian tendency to blame screw-ups on others, specifically on their Israeli adversaries.

I think this is at the base of the talk about "agency".

Again, it must be emphasized the issue isn't whether the "agency" point is in some sense true or not; that's a question to which there is probably no definitive answer, like whether people have free will vs. being destined by circumstances to some outcome or other.

The issue is that people who believe and act like their every choice is dictated by circumstances, circumstances created by their adversaries, are much less likely to succeed at their goals; and if their goals are set by extremists, they likely aren't reasonable or achievable.

[The Minsky Moment]

Anyone who reads the 2002 bin laden letter and concludes he has a point is either a fundamentalist sociopath, stark raving mad, or illiterate but enamored of the calligraphy.

[Iormlund]

What about Gazaans, are they Hamas or Palestinians in this scenario?


Yes, they lost all the wars and Palestine was abandoned by all it's allies.

Mostly not part of Hamas considering literally half of them are kids.

What makes you think Hamas doesn't "employ" kids?

[Savonarola]

Anyone who reads the 2002 bin laden letter and concludes he has a point is either a fundamentalist sociopath, stark raving mad, or illiterate but enamored of the calligraphy.

I saw that was had made a comeback on TikTok from CNN.  I thought this was the best take (even if it does use the term "Incentivize" ):

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, explained that TikTok incentivizes high engagement at all costs. The platform "is utterly ruthless about whether it uses hate, disinformation, or positive content to keep you addicted." As such, "the smart takes aren't the ones that succeed. It is the dumb takes that get the most virality on a platform like TikTok."

Ahmed, who has been studying the rise of conspiracy theories among young people, told CNN that TikTok "claims to be an entertainment machine" but is really "an indoctrination machine." Right now, "we have no visibility nor any control over the algorithms that are shaping the minds of young people in America today," he explained.

[Savonarola]

Meanwhile in Washington DC:

Ceasefire protest at Democrats' national headquarters turns violent

So, you're militant pacifists?

[Barrister]

Anyone who reads the 2002 bin laden letter and concludes he has a point is either a fundamentalist sociopath, stark raving mad, or illiterate but enamored of the calligraphy.

I wasn't familiar with it before - so here it is for anyone else:

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ubl2016/english/To%20the%20American%20people.pdf

I mean I can see why certain people would find it appealing.  It has a simple message that has convinced many over the years - the Jews control the world financial system and are making everyone else poorer in favour of rich corporations (which are controlled by the Jews).  I mean it's not even coded or hidden - it's right there in the text.

It's also worth noting he doesn't talk about Palestine and the Palestinians until right at the very end.  And of course when he does talk about it there is only one possible solution - that this is Islamic land and must be returned to Islam (leaving unsaid that the same reasoning applies to Spain and the Balkans).

I think I can also say that anyone who finds this convincing is an unapologetic anti-semite.



Edit: apologies, this is a different letter.  This is his "Letter to the Amereican people" which was obviously written during the Obama Presidency.

The 2002 "Letter to America" is a different letter, but it has mostly been scrubbed from most locations.  I'll keep looking.

[Sheilbh]

Yes. I've got a few questions for the Guardian based on this:

Guardian removes viral Bin Laden 9/11 letter over antisemitism
Alex Farber, Media Correspondent
Thursday November 16 2023, 5.41pm, The Times

The Guardian has removed a letter written by Osama bin Laden from its website after it was seized on to make antisemitic comments on social media about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Written 21 years ago and dubbed a "letter to America", the eight-page open letter was published in full in 2002, a year after the 9/11 attacks. It was taken down on Wednesday night.

The hashtag #lettertoamerica has been viewed almost 10 million times on TikTok, helping to propel the article to become one of the most-viewed stories on the Guardian's website.

Bin Laden, who masterminded the terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people, used antisemitic language in the letter and blamed the 9/11 attack on Jews. "Your former president warned you previously about the devastating Jewish control of capital and about a day that would come when it would enslave you," he wrote.

"The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily."

The antisemitic comments have been picked up and recirculated to support conspiracy theories involving Jews.

The Guardian's decision to remove the letter angered some users on social media, who held up the decision as further evidence of state oppression.

A Guardian spokesman said: "The transcript published on our website in 2002 has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualised it instead."

Love to know the full context in *checks notes* 2002 that made comments about "Jewish control of capital" enslaving people okay (Possible context is that at that point Corbyn's comms chief was opinion editor at the Guardian....maybe....)

[Admiral Yi]

Not claiming it as a quote.
But its very much the vibe of a lot of posts on here. Big reluctance to admit that this is a cunts on both sides situation.
Elsewhere on the web of course its much stronger.

I've made it explicit in my posts that I condemn Israel's continued occupation and its theft of Palestinian land.  That's the "vibe" I'm getting from virtually everyone you're debating with, with the exception of Edgelord Otto.

I also believe Israel has a right to respond to violence against its citizens.  I can hold both of these thoughts in my head simultaneously.  This is the gray.  This is the gray that I don't see the advocates for Palestine acknowledging. 

"An eye for an eye leaves the world blind" is silly.  Anyone who doesn't take an eye to begin with will have two eyes.  Anyone who takes an eye to begin with and then says shit I won't do that anymore after having his own eye taken will have one eye.

Given the layout of the land, I understand that the IDF will inevitably kill civlians while it goes about killing Hamas.  This is another part of the gray.  The information I have been receiving makes me believe they are attempting to minimize these civilian casualties.  Yet Palestinian advocates are presumably processing the exact same information and have come to the conclusion that Israel is conducting a genocide.  What should I conclude from that?  Maybe the word genocide has a different meaning in progleft circles.  Maybe progleft rage means you don't have to tell the truth.

There is exactly one person I can think of that seems to be processing the same information as me, using words the way I use them, who has an attachment to the truth over fiction and after all that has come out in favor of a cease fire.  Macron.  Good for him.