You can’t have a functioning economy in the West Bank. It is divided into miniature bantustans, bisected by settlements and settlement roads - it takes you half a day to go from one village to another.
By the way, literacy rates in the West Bank and Gaza are over 98%.
Islamism is the issue in last forty years or so - Hezbollah and Hamas were founded in the early 1980es. The inventor of the term nakba was a Christian, Constantin Zureiq, as was the founder of the PLFP George Habash.
It was typical radical leftwing terrorism, from where modern-day support for Islamic terrorism on the left comes from. It just that the people the woke left is supporting right now are vastly different from the Arab nationalists and socialists of the 1960ies and 1970ies.
Palestinians are fucked, largely due to their own making (Black September in Jordan and Lebanese Civil War) and the fact they lost the war that mattered, the 1948 war where they had numerical and technical superiority (Glubb’s Arab legion comes to mind). No platitude about “literacy rates” and “economic outcomes” will change that.
Hamas fires rockets into Israel so that the IDF kills Palestinians, not to “win” anything. The IDF is more than happy to oblige because it’s much easier taking out your pent up energy every five years on your favorite punching bag than wresting with the more capable Shiite threat.
In regards to the argument Trevor Noah seems to be making in the link, I have several problems with the expectation of proportionality.
First, Israel and Palestine are not people. It may be the case that Hamas cannot overthrow the Israeli government as an entity, but that doesn’t mean that Hamas can’t kill individual Israelis. In fact, it can and does. Trying to kill the people that are killing your people is proportionate, even if the overthrow of your entire government is unlikely.
Second, taken in the larger context of the Middle East as a whole, Israel is threatened by Arab states, even if not by Hamas individually. Israel has a right and duty to its people to defend itself from the threat posed by its neighbors. They are trying to wipe out Israel. It’s not disproportionate.
Third, many Americans have a weird illusion where they assume that if two groups of people are trying to kill each other, the one that is better at it is the bad guy. Israel doesn’t lose moral authority just because it has a more effective and professional military. Israel exercises far more restraint and is far more targeted in the attacks that it does make.
You know I have some friends (islamic) that support Hezbollah, believe China isn’t persecuting Uyghur Muslims, promote communism, believe Assad runs a competent and ethical regime etc. I don’t bring up these topics as they frustrate me (I’ve tried), the one talks about how great it’d be (as a Woman) if they were to reside in Lebanon or Syria whereas they’re very, very, very lucky their descendants were given access to Aus.
They’re not bad people, they live in (what I perceive to be) toxic, impoverished communities with sky high crime rates (in Aus mind you) wherein extremest ideology/indoctrination appears almost systemic. The progressive/woke members of society talk about freedom of cultural expression, yet bringing up the fundamentalist natures/toxic aspects within these communities equates to me being a racist. A large portion of gang related activity here pertains to the men within these communities, including firearm related violence (rare over here)
I can’t disclose further details on here, however I’ve met some very troubling people in relation to this social paradigm that I’ve interacted with. I distance myself from further members aside from the 1-2 people I legitimately consider to be my friends.
It’s more that when you are dealing with an enemy that can potentially completely destroy you, proportionality is no longer a good standard at all. That is particularly true if you think the enemy might be willing to attack you without regard to his own self interest, which seems to be relevant in the Middle East. Proportionality is only ever relevant when dealing with a foe that can’t seriously hurt you. Even then I would argue that there might be better options.
Keep in mind that I am not suggesting that total war is the right course of action. I’m just suggesting that a sovereign nation should take the actions that best protect its citizens from harm, and I don’t think the situation in Israel makes proportionality the best standard for choosing that course of action.
Which enemy? Hamas can’t destroy Israel, and Arab states in the ME are either best buddies with Bibi (bin Salman, bin Zayed) or with the Israel security apparatus.
You’ve had a situation where Bibi intentionally soured relationship with Jordan in order to score political points against Gantz.
As I’ve said repeatedly, the main issue of this flare up are Israeli Arab riots and the Israeli far right vigilantism in return.
So in short… pretty much yes - you would consider all out war with all neighbors as proportional, but it just doesn’t really matter all that much?
Why?
Disproportionate responses with an enemy that can seriously hurt you is called escalation
I would expect for proportionality to be more relevant with a bigger threat, as it would be risking more
I can see one way that a threat could be so serious so as to make proportionality irrelevant - and only one - and that would be an all out hot war, which is not the current situation
But maybe I’m missing something and if so I think I would be glad to hear it
I didn’t really get that from his post. I think he was talking about self-defence when attacked but the advanced weapons Israel has inevitably causes disproportionate damage when used in retaliation.
I think it’s called “don’t start something you can’t finish” in reality. I wouldn’t want to fuck with Israel.
But seriously, I don’t know much about all this. But I gotta state that, also in reality, you can’t really control the amount of damage the type of weapons you use based on certain defence protocols cause. I don’t know what Israel’s protocols are.
He brought up the threat of neighbors that are not currently attacking and said since they might, therefore that affects proportionality
I didn’t see anything about advanced weapons
If you read the quote chain again I think you’ll start to see what I saw
[quote=“Silyak, post:50, topic:273747”]
Look at the first part that drew my attention the first time
Israel feels threatened by all Arab non attackers, therefore proportional
Something else about it that caught my eye:
the (singular) threat posed by its (plural, different, separate) neighbors, which are all (allegedly) trying to wipe out Israel means that nothing ever even could possibly be disproportionate
You can call “it” whatever you want, I’m standing by my assertion that a bigger threat should make proportionality more relevant. Your quip does not explain why that should be reversed
Israel has pretty advanced weapons. We buy a lot of our high end stuff from Israel over here. They scare the fuck out of me lol. That’s all I can say.
I think what I wrote below what you quoted includes a probable rationale for Israel’s actions.
I’m also not just calling “it” what I did for no reason. Their military prowess displayed during the 6 Day War would be a great reminder to enemies AND I’m not expecting Israel to forget what can potentially happen to them again either.
I’m definitely open to being wrong since I don’t know much about what’s happening.
The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail, to productively intervene
This strikes me as true across the full spectrum of their activities. Story telling to push a narrative.
I wasn’t disputing what you wrote, I guess I read the way you phrased it as if you were correcting a mistake of mine when really just changing the subtopic
Maybe
I’m about to get very annoying, hopefully just for a short time tho
I don’t understand this either:
A group of people can control their choice of weapons, ok yeah there’s constraints, and Israel has more choice than any other relevant group.
A group of people can control their choice of strategies, ok yeah there’s constraints, and Israel has more choice than any other relevant group.
So lack of control due to two factors that there’s not much limit on isn’t really making sense to me either
You quoted me and responded with an answer I didn’t understand to a question I didn’t ask - so I just left it at first man.
I honestly can’t be bothered to keep up with what’s going on given that I’ve got lots of COVID related shit to deal with on my end and I’m not really in the mood for all this violence and shit, to say the least lol. I think all I was really adding was that military decisions and strategies are pretty hard to understand from the outside. I don’t know their protocols, let alone the intel they currently have.
I’m personally just taking a “wait and see” kind of approach. This thread really only intrigued me because an idiot like Trevor Noah decided to start spouting a whole load of crap.
