Random Vosem and eadmund conversation

[Vosem]

And it’s not just X who has publicly taken the role on the cross, Virginia—descended from anti-soviets—former veteran Texasgurl, and Britain33 are also the ones who have gone publicly to voice the same attitudes [...]

lmao almost the entirety of my public posts here weighing in on that conflict amount to asking users to not advocate for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Come to think of it, that might be all of it. Anyone who actually knows me here would know my thoughts on this are much more nuanced than what you are saying.

Without any comment on what PSOL has said, it is darkly funny that what G-Mac got banned for back in October is now allowed to be openly supported—including by moderators who call anyone who disagrees with them a racist troll—with no repercussions whatsoever.

Also the refusal to accept the reality that is the genocide taking place is very interesting. Unfortunately, sticking your head in the sand and pretending that actually nothing is happening doesn't work. What a thing it'll be when we revisit all this twenty years from now.

Anyway if what PSOL has said deserves a reply I certainly deserve one. Or is it just that nobody on the mod team is able to actually defend the action, and also it's easier to attack PSOL's post? I'm shocked.

What, when evangelicalism is the dominant religious tendency in Latin America and "populist" right-wing governments in Europe and North America have defunded the global NGO/"humanitarian" organization complex? I suspect that we are kind of unlikely to revisit the issue in 20 years (as a society; a forum like this one well might), precisely because the pro-Palestinian movement in Western countries is just not a very sustainable one. Its pillars are built out of collapsing ideas.

[Vosem]

And it’s not just X who has publicly taken the role on the cross, Virginia—descended from anti-soviets—former veteran Texasgurl, and Britain33 are also the ones who have gone publicly to voice the same attitudes [...]

lmao almost the entirety of my public posts here weighing in on that conflict amount to asking users to not advocate for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Come to think of it, that might be all of it. Anyone who actually knows me here would know my thoughts on this are much more nuanced than what you are saying.

Without any comment on what PSOL has said, it is darkly funny that what G-Mac got banned for back in October is now allowed to be openly supported—including by moderators who call anyone who disagrees with them a racist troll—with no repercussions whatsoever.

Also the refusal to accept the reality that is the genocide taking place is very interesting. Unfortunately, sticking your head in the sand and pretending that actually nothing is happening doesn't work. What a thing it'll be when we revisit all this twenty years from now.

Anyway if what PSOL has said deserves a reply I certainly deserve one. Or is it just that nobody on the mod team is able to actually defend the action, and also it's easier to attack PSOL's post? I'm shocked.

What, when evangelicalism is the dominant religious tendency in Latin America and "populist" right-wing governments in Europe and North America have defunded the global NGO/"humanitarian" organization complex? I suspect that we are kind of unlikely to revisit the issue in 20 years (as a society; a forum like this one well might), precisely because the pro-Palestinian movement in Western countries is just not a very sustainable one. Its pillars are built out of collapsing ideas.

Of course you'd reply to the throwaway line. Your commitment to being wrong is admirable. Latin American evangelicalism is completely and utterly irrelevant, while concern about Palestine is hardly the sole realm of (or, for the most part, originating from) NGOs. There's more of a case that the unhesitating support for Israel is unsustainable; there is little love for it in Europe among younger generations. Support for Israel as Staatsräson is a(n absurd) sentiment confined to the middle-aged and elderly not just there but in America as well.

But, like, it isn't: this is generally not what polls show when not hopelessly cherrypicked, many Democratic campaigns in the 2020s hire staffers from pro-Israel campus movements, and the large-scale growth in support for Israel in the United States only began in the 1980s and clearly accelerated during the Second Intifada. (One rather strongly suspects, comparing things like Sunak's policies to Thatcher's, or the emergence of governments like Austria/Czechia whose stances are the thing G-Mac was banned for, that this is also the case in western Europe, with support for Israel having been unusual outside of the West German state apparatus in the 1970s but being broadly common across society today.) There exists a pious fiction that modern Western support for Israel is a holdover from the wars against the Arab states, but that was when it was weakest: modern support for Israel is either religiously motivated or (primarily) motivated by an active distaste for the Palestinian movement, and a desire for it to be destroyed.

Western concern about Palestine held above other global conflict hotspots is broadly what is keeping the conflict going, considering things like UNRWA's budget coming largely from Western sources, and in the absence of funding for such organizations (and the likely evolution of demographic reality in the region) the conflict becomes much likelier to simply end. Western funding for these organizations is a holdover from where public opinion was in the 1990s, and doesn't reflect opinion in the 2020s. It'll go away one way or another.

(Latin American evangelicalism is relevant in the sense that large parts of the world have religious motivations for supporting the state, and this was not true 50 years ago. 'World opinion' is commonly cited as a source of Palestinian strength, but I think this is hopelessly outdated -- if we revisit the question in 20 years, like you suggest, we'll find much more 'world opinion' supporting Israel in a literally religious way.)

[Vosem]

Don't derail the thread, please.

I'll move the answer elsewhere if you insist (and I won't be very upset if the chain of posts is deleted by mods, really).

Of course you'd reply to the throwaway line. Your commitment to being wrong is admirable. Latin American evangelicalism is completely and utterly irrelevant, while concern about Palestine is hardly the sole realm of (or, for the most part, originating from) NGOs. There's more of a case that the unhesitating support for Israel is unsustainable; there is little love for it in Europe among younger generations. Support for Israel as Staatsräson is a(n absurd) sentiment confined to the middle-aged and elderly not just there but in America as well.

But, like, it isn't: this is generally not what polls show when not hopelessly cherrypicked, many Democratic campaigns in the 2020s hire staffers from pro-Israel campus movements, and the large-scale growth in support for Israel in the United States only began in the 1980s and clearly accelerated during the Second Intifada. (One rather strongly suspects, comparing things like Sunak's policies to Thatcher's, or the emergence of governments like Austria/Czechia whose stances are the thing G-Mac was banned for, that this is also the case in western Europe, with support for Israel having been unusual outside of the West German state apparatus in the 1970s but being broadly common across society today.) There exists a pious fiction that modern Western support for Israel is a holdover from the wars against the Arab states, but that was when it was weakest: modern support for Israel is either religiously motivated or (primarily) motivated by an active distaste for the Palestinian movement, and a desire for it to be destroyed.

Western concern about Palestine held above other global conflict hotspots is broadly what is keeping the conflict going, considering things like UNRWA's budget coming largely from Western sources, and in the absence of funding for such organizations (and the likely evolution of demographic reality in the region) the conflict becomes much likelier to simply end. Western funding for these organizations is a holdover from where public opinion was in the 1990s, and doesn't reflect opinion in the 2020s. It'll go away one way or another.

(Latin American evangelicalism is relevant in the sense that large parts of the world have religious motivations for supporting the state, and this was not true 50 years ago. 'World opinion' is commonly cited as a source of Palestinian strength, but I think this is hopelessly outdated -- if we revisit the question in 20 years, like you suggest, we'll find much more 'world opinion' supporting Israel in a literally religious way.)

I forgot your commitment to arguing the impossible. Know that I appreciate the part about 'cherrypicked polls'.

Support for Israel among Americans of any generation closely correlates with the percentage that claim to be following news closely, which of course rises with age. I don't think there is actually a cohort effect here, substantially because I think support for Israel among American news-watchers is of recent vintage and its causes are still active/strengthening.

There is a distinction between support for Israel and the notion that it constitutes Staatsräson. You're also confusing public attitudes with elite attitudes, and failing to understand the significance of cohorts in opinion changing over time. Those are the main issues.

But I don't think support for Israel depends on the notion of it being a Staatsräson. (And, while it being a Staatsräson is commonly invoked in rhetoric, I'm not sure any country besides Israel has actually behaved in that way, except maybe like 1940s Czechoslovakia.)

Going point by point, I'm not sure what Democrats still hiring staffers from pro-Israel groups is supposed to prove?

It is meant to demonstrate that pro-Israel organizing among young left-wing Americans exists and is relatively active. I may come from a particular campus (Ohio State) where it was unusually common, but the fact that it was very successful makes me suspect that it could be expanded easily.

If anything is to be proved by which staffers are hired, more indicative as to attitudes seems the whole controversy about staffers not being supportive enough of Israel (and accusations that they were racist and/or stupid because they didn't agree) a few months back.

Why would this be more indicative? Your occasional pro-Palestinian statements among staffers are virtually always anonymous, as if those signing don't want to know that they hold an opinion which they know to be unpopular. (In fairness to those staffers, they're probably likelier to be afraid of the opinion being unpopular among the electorate rather than among other staffers. But still.)

Going back and checking news from the time—looking at Jonathan Chait's article, I can understand why you might not want to remember all this—I would assume those staffers hired from pro-Israel groups were the minority opposed to them, conflating their opinions with those of "liberal and progressive Jews" supposedly let down by their allies and saying that their colleagues would applaud swastikas being painted on their cars!

I really don't find your writing or allusions clear at all and I don't understand who "they" are meant to be in the context of this sentence. Is it meant to be pro-Palestine staffers? They definitely don't behave as if they were a majority; nor would it make sense for them to think their opposites would applaud swastikas drawn on their cars? What are you even saying here?

Support for Israel growing over time is completely irrelevant to this. I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make by mentioning it. Do you think that it'll indefinitely continue or something like that?

My point is that the reasons for it continue to be present and are mostly strengthening in Western societies, and I don't think we have very good reasons to think that the continuing shift will peter out. (The shift away from police reform over the last half-decade in the United States happened for basically similar reasons; it is because pro-Palestinian individuals and groups in civil society have adopted a style that repels, such that demagogues like Fetterman can score easy points even among the left by adopting comical pro-Israel stances.) There's no reason to think this is going away in the near-term future.

Support for Israel growing has more to do with cohort replacement and the growth of evangelicalism than anything else. The spikes of support during the Intifadas are just that. Also not sure what "actually there are lot of dog pfp 60-year-olds who cheer Palestinian children dying" has to do with anything? Anyway: things like the difference of Thatcher and Reagan's responses to Sunak's and Biden's have more to do with elite attitudes.

I don't think elite attitudes are as divorced from popular attitudes as you imply; nor do I think that cohort effects are as important as predictable outcomes to news events.

"a holdover from where public opinion was in the 1990s, and doesn't reflect opinion in the 2020s"—I get that this is your whole thing but it could at least be a bit more convincing. I don't for a single second think that you actually, sincerely believe this.

Oh, trust me, I have opinions about the future of public opinion much more exotic than that one. Do I need to find my posts where I argue that it is plausible that in the absence of a World Wars-level calamity that the American public school system and the NHS will eventually be destroyed in a mass popular movement?

Your interesting euphemism for ethnic cleansing: "the likely evolution of demographic reality". It's quite something when you are using such language.

This is a forum about demographics, and those of us that discuss Israel know that the long-term trend is Palestinian emigration and Jewish immigration; that over the long run the Jewish TFR is rising; and that Palestinian emigration tends to spike during periods of conflict. It's no more genocide than the fact that the once-heavily-Russian neighborhood I grew up in in Brooklyn is now heavily-Chinese.

Also if we're looking at religion twenty years from now, Israel is going to be in the process of transforming into a halachic state, which should about finish off any support from secular or mainline/Catholic quarters.

Probably not; unlike in the Anglophone world in Israel there is heavy attrition from ultra-Orthodox Judaism. It'll be more like 80 years. (I also don't see why that would finish off support from secular or mainline/Catholic quarters? Most current support for Israel comes from distaste or opposition to the Palestinian movement in the West, which would probably not fundamentally change in such an event. Some of the support for Israel is undergirded by sympathy for ultra-Orthodox Judaism -- consider the Lubavitcher Rebbe having been a relatively prominent public intellectual in the US in his time, or everything about Javier Milei -- and while most of it isn't, I don't really think this would change much even if it happens in the way you describe.)

Finally and frankly, it is irrelevant if tens of millions of Brazilians join American evangelicals—who, conversely, are relevant and in decline—in placing the interests of Israel before their own state's. It has as much value as Russia appealing to third-worldism and the 'global south'. 'World opinion' is irrelevant. This century is still the West's and China's.

So long as this is true, the West and China will eventually eviscerate the current culture which exists among humanitarian organizations, and my suspicion is that without their propaganda that the left-wing pro-Palestinian movement will wither away, and I indeed expect this to happen over the next few decades. As with all long-term predictions there is substantial uncertainty, but I think this is the path of least resistance.

[Vosem]

Where did I say that Gaza is special? I don't think it is. I think the war is similar to other recent episodes of urban warfare (and if anything stands out for the relative safety of civilians, in comparison to Mosul and Mariupol), and I think the war's rationale is clearly similar to that of the wars in Afghanistan or Chechnya. I think the international law position of Gaza is definitely unusual, but even in that case there is a ready analogy to be made with Chechnya, where individuals tendentiously pretended the territory's government was a valid state.

I don't think you can have a 'genocide' without a deliberate effort to kill all individuals belonging to some ethnicity in a particular territory. I think in the case of the present war it is fairly obvious that Israel could carry on a campaign within the bounds of international law which would kill many more people (consider Chechnya, whose high-level planners have never even really been accused of crimes in any forum, even if lower-level individuals have), and that they aren't doing this is pretty clear evidence that there isn't one. WW2-style rhetoric from ministers is not evidence of anything at all, in the same sense that quotes from Morgenthau do not prove Dresden was a genocide.

There is plenty of proof that support for Palestine is dying: you can observe the changes in the policy of different governments across decades, you can observe the differences in polling over the course of decades, and you can use your pattern recognition skills to observe that similar movements are also dying for reasons which clearly seem to apply. I understand that this makes you angry.

I responded to you on the question of generations: I don't think there's a real cohort effect, and I think the mirage of one is a byproduct of younger people paying less attention. YouGov and Gallup polls in the US consistently have support for Israel correlated with the fraction of individuals claiming to pay attention to the conflict, such that a lower level of support can be easily explained by the phenomenon. I have very little to say about 'denial of reality' to someone who doesn't think Britain supplied the Arab Legion, or who thinks that modern Israel poses a threat to Britain because they sold weapons to Argentina 40 years ago. I authentically have no idea what you mean by Staatsräson here -- contrary to German rhetoric I don't think support for Israel is really a Staatsräson in any country at the moment. It certainly animates many political parties across the democratic world, of course.

No, John Fetterman is now beloved by a decent chunk of Democrats among whom previously he was not very popular. This is an example meant to demonstrate that his attitude (of flagrant disrespect to pro-Palestinian protesters) is what voters on the American left want: other politicians have copied it, but have generally been covered less by media. Fetterman appears particularly interesting merely because he was a Sanders '16 supporter (this is probably also the reason Ritchie Torres's views get play).

Yes, I think the reason that support for Israel began increasing across the West after the 1980s is a backlash to a Palestinian movement which is often visibly violent or racist. I think this is unlikely to change (unless there is some very large change to Palestinian society), and so long as this continues to be true they will continue to lose support. I think this is the primary mechanism by which support for Israel tends to increase during periods of warfare, which is a pretty clear in US polling. I think the primary reason for support for Palestine is not TikTok videos, the reactions to which seem very mixed as a whole, but persistent propaganda from media associated with organizations like UNRWA, which I think are unlikely to survive hostile public opinion in Western societies. I think this would continue even if Israel were to become an overtly authoritarian society, which is presumably what you mean by 'halachic state', although in the immediate future this is really no more likely than the US or UK becoming such an authoritarian society.

Where did I use the word 'speculation'? I think you have been pretty consistently dishonest about the role Britain played in the 1947-1949 war (although this is not something which is very relevant to the present of UK-Israel relations), and you have insisted on a definition of 'genocide' which is dishonest, and if consistently applied would probably prevent any country from existing.

If portions of your posts are replies to direct excerpts of my posts, you should probably quote the specific excerpt you are responding to: otherwise, you can call me out for saying things like 'special' or 'speculation', and then after I don't find those words using Ctrl+F I will be confused about what you are imagining. (As a general pointer to writing English, incidentally, sentences with many pronouns are difficult to understand, especially if you are also using definitions of common words which are unique to you or meant to mislead: when writing essays you will be better served with fewer 'theys' and 'thems', and more writing out subjects and direct objects.)