Israel-Gaza war

[Open Source Intelligence]

Why should maintaining a Jewish majority even be a factor? Nobody cared about maintaining a white majority in Rhodesia or South Africa. Israel should be held to the exact same standard.

Because history has shown wherever not a majority they tend to face persecution.  There are loads of countries with white majorities so no need for Rhodesia or South Africa to be one.  By contrast there is only one country with a Jewish majority, Israel.

That is just beyond stupid. Should we then have a country for the Quebecois and your First Nations?

As an American (by American I mean from the Americas, not the U.S.), the notion of states based on ethnicity is this horrid 20th-century European monstrosity pushed by that complete dumbass of a President Woodrow Wilson which clearly influenced Hitler's thoughts when it came to what the nation-state should look like and created several wars and deaths with people drawn on the wrong side of the line. You can't have an ethnic-based state and for example be for immigration, because immigration naturally makes your state less ethnically pure therefore robbing the state's raison d'etre, yet the free movement of people is considered a cornerstone to the modern cosmopolitan world.

[Meclazine for Israel]

'Sinwar is not above ground. Our job is to kill him'.

The latest headline out of Israel. It's interesting how the West likes to label bad guys, and then puts them in the press as target number one. The ISIS militants then praise the guy as a leader as he has made international news, so his stature grows. But just like any aspiring CEO in business on Wall St, his career can be short lived.

Once the military get's justification to track them down, the little red dot comes searching.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381547


IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday that the IDF is making significant progress in its war against Hamas in Gaza. (Daniel Hagari)

"Our forces are encircling the area, and the commando forces are currently conducting raids and battling Hamas terrorists. Our forces are striking targets using precise real-time intelligence; the soldiers are battling valiantly, eliminating terrorists, identifying underground infrastructure, and destroying weaponry."

[Red Velvet]

Why should maintaining a Jewish majority even be a factor? Nobody cared about maintaining a white majority in Rhodesia or South Africa. Israel should be held to the exact same standard.

Because history has shown wherever not a majority they tend to face persecution.  There are loads of countries with white majorities so no need for Rhodesia or South Africa to be one.  By contrast there is only one country with a Jewish majority, Israel.

That is just beyond stupid. Should we then have a country for the Quebecois and your First Nations?

As an American (by American I mean from the Americas, not the U.S.), the notion of states based on ethnicity is this horrid 20th-century European monstrosity pushed by that complete dumbass of a President Woodrow Wilson which clearly influenced Hitler's thoughts when it came to what the nation-state should look like and created several wars and deaths with people drawn on the wrong side of the line. You can't have an ethnic-based state and for example be for immigration, because immigration naturally makes your state less ethnically pure therefore robbing the state's raison d'etre, yet the free movement of people is considered a cornerstone to the modern cosmopolitan world.

You’re from a continent of immigrants, so the Notion of Nation-States looks something completely absurd to us two exactly because we don’t define ourselves that way but literally every other continent values that ethnic purity stuff A LOT. And not just in White Europe threatened by outside-continent immigrants darkening their population at all. Being immigrant in Asia or Africa, depending of where you’re from, is not that easy either.

Theoretically, I agree with the idea Israel should just drop the idea of being a Jewish State simply because I think defining your country excessively through a religion or race is naturally bigoted - but that multicultural interpretation can also be validly interpreted as something that weakens the idea of national identity that many places have and WEAKENS diversity too because of that.

Like, if Israel isn’t a Jewish majority State, then where you would find a Jewish majority State? I don’t think it’s inherently wrong for these elements to define a country - the only thing that it cannot happen is for it to be an open goal to be pursuit at all costs. Ex: It’s okay if you want to stimulate a specific characteristic for your country - like a religion majority - as long as you’re not ERASING or OPPRESSING people who don’t fit into your mold.

That’s when you know what Israel does is pure bigotry and not valid: They want Palestines out of Gaza so that they don’t have to be integrated into Israeli society, threatening the Jewish identity that it has. And if it’s totally valid for Israel to want to stay as a large Jewish majority, then it’s an obvious prerogative that they should leave Gaza alone or else they don’t get to complain sh*t about Jewish identity being threatened.

[All Along The Watchtower]

It’s Time to Scrap the Abraham Accords

…the real premise of the Accords was proving that the Palestinian issue was no longer an obstacle for Israel’s relationships in the region, as Arab states dropped their demand for a Palestinian state as a condition to normalizing ties with Israel. The pact promised regional security despite allowing Israel to bypass the rights of 6 million Palestinians living under daily brutality, military occupation, and apartheid rule to establish alliances with authoritarian regional regimes.As many of us predicted at the time—myself included—that was always bound to fail. The shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people in Israel, has now made that clear to all.

Rather than curbing Israeli abuses, the Accords emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights. In the first year after the Accords, settler violence dramatically increased in the West Bank. Following the election of Israel’s most right-wing government in history in 2022, cabinet ministers openly called for the annexation of the West Bank and announced massive settlement expansions. In the year leading up to Oct. 7, Israeli forces had already killed almost 200 Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has rained destruction on Gaza since the Hamas attack, killing at least 15,500 people, 70% of them women and children, while floating plans echoed by Israel’s Intelligence Minister to forcibly displace Gazans to Egypt and pushing the Egyptian government to offer them permanent housing and residence permits in the Sinai. Dozens of scholars have described Israel’s campaign as a genocide.

Let’s be clear: Continued Arab adherence to the Accords signals continued support for Israel, rewarding it with the military, economic, and trade development that were always the primary goal. That is why we at the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a rights group set up by Jamal Khashoggi, have publicly called on the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan to immediately withdraw from the Accords and, alongside peace treaty signatories Egypt and Jordan, end all military coordination with Israel.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations hailed the Accords as an important effort to expand peace in the Middle East, going so far as to coax signatory Arab states with a host of goodies to persuade them to establish a formal relationship with Israel. These include selling 50 long-desired F-35 fighter jets to the tiny UAE; recognizing Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, making the U.S. the first country in the world to do so; and removing Sudan from the list of designated terrorist states and loaning it $1.5 billion. The Accords were focused on each state’s own strategic interests, particularly in building a regional alliance less reliant on Washington.

[PSOL]

No one took the Abraham Accords seriously

There’s nothing to scrap given there’s no copies passed out that haven’t been discarded ages ago.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Why should maintaining a Jewish majority even be a factor? Nobody cared about maintaining a white majority in Rhodesia or South Africa. Israel should be held to the exact same standard.

Because history has shown wherever not a majority they tend to face persecution.  There are loads of countries with white majorities so no need for Rhodesia or South Africa to be one.  By contrast there is only one country with a Jewish majority, Israel.

That is just beyond stupid. Should we then have a country for the Quebecois and your First Nations?

As an American (by American I mean from the Americas, not the U.S.), the notion of states based on ethnicity is this horrid 20th-century European monstrosity pushed by that complete dumbass of a President Woodrow Wilson which clearly influenced Hitler's thoughts when it came to what the nation-state should look like and created several wars and deaths with people drawn on the wrong side of the line. You can't have an ethnic-based state and for example be for immigration, because immigration naturally makes your state less ethnically pure therefore robbing the state's raison d'etre, yet the free movement of people is considered a cornerstone to the modern cosmopolitan world.

The notion of states based on ethnicity has led to unprecedented peace in Europe. Around the world, multiethnic states tend to be highly unstable and one of the main (justifiable) criticisms of colonialism is that it created states with no concerns as to the demographics living there. Your utopian vision leads only to war and destruction.

[Vosem]

It’s Time to Scrap the Abraham Accords

…the real premise of the Accords was proving that the Palestinian issue was no longer an obstacle for Israel’s relationships in the region, as Arab states dropped their demand for a Palestinian state as a condition to normalizing ties with Israel. The pact promised regional security despite allowing Israel to bypass the rights of 6 million Palestinians living under daily brutality, military occupation, and apartheid rule to establish alliances with authoritarian regional regimes.As many of us predicted at the time—myself included—that was always bound to fail. The shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people in Israel, has now made that clear to all.

Rather than curbing Israeli abuses, the Accords emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights. In the first year after the Accords, settler violence dramatically increased in the West Bank. Following the election of Israel’s most right-wing government in history in 2022, cabinet ministers openly called for the annexation of the West Bank and announced massive settlement expansions. In the year leading up to Oct. 7, Israeli forces had already killed almost 200 Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has rained destruction on Gaza since the Hamas attack, killing at least 15,500 people, 70% of them women and children, while floating plans echoed by Israel’s Intelligence Minister to forcibly displace Gazans to Egypt and pushing the Egyptian government to offer them permanent housing and residence permits in the Sinai. Dozens of scholars have described Israel’s campaign as a genocide.

Let’s be clear: Continued Arab adherence to the Accords signals continued support for Israel, rewarding it with the military, economic, and trade development that were always the primary goal. That is why we at the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a rights group set up by Jamal Khashoggi, have publicly called on the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan to immediately withdraw from the Accords and, alongside peace treaty signatories Egypt and Jordan, end all military coordination with Israel.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations hailed the Accords as an important effort to expand peace in the Middle East, going so far as to coax signatory Arab states with a host of goodies to persuade them to establish a formal relationship with Israel. These include selling 50 long-desired F-35 fighter jets to the tiny UAE; recognizing Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, making the U.S. the first country in the world to do so; and removing Sudan from the list of designated terrorist states and loaning it $1.5 billion. The Accords were focused on each state’s own strategic interests, particularly in building a regional alliance less reliant on Washington.

Yeah, ultimately a consistent anti-Israeli stance in 2023 means turning on a large number of Arab countries. It's the logic of the Libya intervention times a zillion.

[NOVA Green]

Although perhaps it is slightly tangential to the thread, although just much OT as some of the obscure items of recent discussion, should be noted that the DOJ has now launched investigations into the murder of 30+ Americans by Hamas terrorists on 10/7/23.

For the first time, Mr. Garland also acknowledged that the department had begun a formal investigation of the “murder of more than 30 Americans” by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, either under the same war crimes law being used against the Russian soldiers or through the use of antiterrorism statutes. He provided no other details.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/russia-ukraine-war-crimes-hamas.html

[PSOL]

It’s Time to Scrap the Abraham Accords

…the real premise of the Accords was proving that the Palestinian issue was no longer an obstacle for Israel’s relationships in the region, as Arab states dropped their demand for a Palestinian state as a condition to normalizing ties with Israel. The pact promised regional security despite allowing Israel to bypass the rights of 6 million Palestinians living under daily brutality, military occupation, and apartheid rule to establish alliances with authoritarian regional regimes.As many of us predicted at the time—myself included—that was always bound to fail. The shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people in Israel, has now made that clear to all.

Rather than curbing Israeli abuses, the Accords emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights. In the first year after the Accords, settler violence dramatically increased in the West Bank. Following the election of Israel’s most right-wing government in history in 2022, cabinet ministers openly called for the annexation of the West Bank and announced massive settlement expansions. In the year leading up to Oct. 7, Israeli forces had already killed almost 200 Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has rained destruction on Gaza since the Hamas attack, killing at least 15,500 people, 70% of them women and children, while floating plans echoed by Israel’s Intelligence Minister to forcibly displace Gazans to Egypt and pushing the Egyptian government to offer them permanent housing and residence permits in the Sinai. Dozens of scholars have described Israel’s campaign as a genocide.

Let’s be clear: Continued Arab adherence to the Accords signals continued support for Israel, rewarding it with the military, economic, and trade development that were always the primary goal. That is why we at the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a rights group set up by Jamal Khashoggi, have publicly called on the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan to immediately withdraw from the Accords and, alongside peace treaty signatories Egypt and Jordan, end all military coordination with Israel.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations hailed the Accords as an important effort to expand peace in the Middle East, going so far as to coax signatory Arab states with a host of goodies to persuade them to establish a formal relationship with Israel. These include selling 50 long-desired F-35 fighter jets to the tiny UAE; recognizing Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, making the U.S. the first country in the world to do so; and removing Sudan from the list of designated terrorist states and loaning it $1.5 billion. The Accords were focused on each state’s own strategic interests, particularly in building a regional alliance less reliant on Washington.

Yeah, ultimately a consistent anti-Israeli stance in 2023 means turning on a large number of Arab countries. It's the logic of the Libya intervention times a zillion.

You want me to pull up the articles made by western leftists against Morocco, Sudan, Syria (especially v/ Rojava), and Algeria? Really not that hard to find solidarity for Kabylies and Palestinians.

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://web.archive.org/web/20231206210057/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/12/06/idf-israeli-defense-force-hamas-hostages-hospital-gaza/

[Vosem]

It’s Time to Scrap the Abraham Accords

…the real premise of the Accords was proving that the Palestinian issue was no longer an obstacle for Israel’s relationships in the region, as Arab states dropped their demand for a Palestinian state as a condition to normalizing ties with Israel. The pact promised regional security despite allowing Israel to bypass the rights of 6 million Palestinians living under daily brutality, military occupation, and apartheid rule to establish alliances with authoritarian regional regimes.As many of us predicted at the time—myself included—that was always bound to fail. The shocking Hamas attack on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people in Israel, has now made that clear to all.

Rather than curbing Israeli abuses, the Accords emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights. In the first year after the Accords, settler violence dramatically increased in the West Bank. Following the election of Israel’s most right-wing government in history in 2022, cabinet ministers openly called for the annexation of the West Bank and announced massive settlement expansions. In the year leading up to Oct. 7, Israeli forces had already killed almost 200 Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has rained destruction on Gaza since the Hamas attack, killing at least 15,500 people, 70% of them women and children, while floating plans echoed by Israel’s Intelligence Minister to forcibly displace Gazans to Egypt and pushing the Egyptian government to offer them permanent housing and residence permits in the Sinai. Dozens of scholars have described Israel’s campaign as a genocide.

Let’s be clear: Continued Arab adherence to the Accords signals continued support for Israel, rewarding it with the military, economic, and trade development that were always the primary goal. That is why we at the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a rights group set up by Jamal Khashoggi, have publicly called on the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan to immediately withdraw from the Accords and, alongside peace treaty signatories Egypt and Jordan, end all military coordination with Israel.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations hailed the Accords as an important effort to expand peace in the Middle East, going so far as to coax signatory Arab states with a host of goodies to persuade them to establish a formal relationship with Israel. These include selling 50 long-desired F-35 fighter jets to the tiny UAE; recognizing Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, making the U.S. the first country in the world to do so; and removing Sudan from the list of designated terrorist states and loaning it $1.5 billion. The Accords were focused on each state’s own strategic interests, particularly in building a regional alliance less reliant on Washington.

Yeah, ultimately a consistent anti-Israeli stance in 2023 means turning on a large number of Arab countries. It's the logic of the Libya intervention times a zillion.

You want me to pull up the articles made by western leftists against Morocco, Sudan, Syria (especially v/ Rojava), and Algeria? Really not that hard to find solidarity for Kabylies and Palestinians.

You can if you want; I know that they exist. The point is to demonstrate how incoherent a foreign policy where Israel isn't supported would be (particularly if someone supports peace, yikes), much as my recent post on the Guyana thread is meant to underline how ridiculous the arguments brought up here would seem if they were brought up consistently in discussions about other conflicts.

[PSOL]

For one most of Venezuelan Indians aren’t indigenous to Guyana, so the people there do not have a stake.

Now if a sizable amount of natives in Guyana wanted autonomy or independence, that’s a different story

[gerritcole]

had pan arab socialism had a chance to fully take root, we'd likely have seen a decline of religiously motivated conflicts in the middle east

[Reactionary Libertarian]

had pan arab socialism had a chance to fully take root, we'd likely have seen a decline of religiously motivated conflicts in the middle east

Yes, one of the US' big mistakes in the 70's/80's was supporting radical Islamists against secular socialists in the Middle East and South Asia. They were NOT the lesser of two evils. We funded the precursors to the Taliban, Al-Queda, and possibly Bin Ladin himself in Afghanistan against the socialist government. Socialism never killed 3,000 Americans on US soil.

[OSR stands with Israel]

had pan arab socialism had a chance to fully take root, we'd likely have seen a decline of religiously motivated conflicts in the middle east

Yes, one of the US' big mistakes in the 70's/80's was supporting radical Islamists against secular socialists in the Middle East and South Asia. They were NOT the lesser of two evils. We funded the precursors to the Taliban, Al-Queda, and possibly Bin Ladin himself in Afghanistan against the socialist government. Socialism never killed 3,000 Americans on US soil.

The USSR was more evil than the Mujahedeen and its also false to say the Mujahedeen was the same as the Taliban.

[Meclazine for Israel]

The USSR was more evil than the Mujahedeen and its also false to say the Mujahedeen was the same as the Taliban.

Rambo fought with the Mujahedeen, but he said he wouldn't have made the film, Rambo III, with the Taliban or ISIS.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

had pan arab socialism had a chance to fully take root, we'd likely have seen a decline of religiously motivated conflicts in the middle east

Yes, one of the US' big mistakes in the 70's/80's was supporting radical Islamists against secular socialists in the Middle East and South Asia. They were NOT the lesser of two evils. We funded the precursors to the Taliban, Al-Queda, and possibly Bin Ladin himself in Afghanistan against the socialist government. Socialism never killed 3,000 Americans on US soil.

The USSR was more evil than the Mujahedeen and its also false to say the Mujahedeen was the same as the Taliban.

It was not the same, it was the precursor. If the USSR stayed in charge there would be no Taliban and no 9/11.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Theoretically, I agree with the idea Israel should just drop the idea of being a Jewish State simply because I think defining your country excessively through a religion or race is naturally bigoted - but that multicultural interpretation can also be validly interpreted as something that weakens the idea of national identity that many places have and WEAKENS diversity too because of that.

Like, if Israel isn’t a Jewish majority State, then where you would find a Jewish majority State?

"If Utah isn't a Mormon majority state, then where would you find a Mormon majority state?"

Reactionary Libertarian:

The notion of states based on ethnicity has led to unprecedented peace in Europe.

It helped create World War II and led to the Yugoslavian genocides, which were only 30 years ago.

If you believe in states based on ethnicity, you're saying Hitler was justified for the Anschluss and taking the Sudetanland. You're saying modern-day Republika Srpska should be ceded by Bosnia and become part of Serbia. (The Balkans as a whole would be greatly redrawn, I'll appoint you to be the guy that gets to deal with the aftermath of that.) You believe Turkish Cyprus should be recognized as a country because the people on that side of Cyprus are ethnically different from those in the South. Quebec should be its own separate country on the American border, splitting the rest of Canada in two. All Indian and First Nations reservations in the U.S. and Canada become sovereign. Sections of the American Southwest should become a new Latino-based state. You believe that the state of Belgium should disappear. You believe that there needs to be a bunch of Arab/Muslim-based island states all around Europe that would make it look like all the German minor states prior to confederation. You believe Hungary should get larger. You believe that all Russian-dominated exclaves outside Russia's borders should be assumed into Russia proper. While Russia would probably then separate into, I don't know, 10-20 different countries. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq should get disintegrated. Israel should be made smaller to have a section ceded for its residents that are Arabs.

That is your principle you stated of nation-states based on ethnicity.

[CumbrianLefty]

And you didn't even mention the UK or Ireland

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

had pan arab socialism had a chance to fully take root, we'd likely have seen a decline of religiously motivated conflicts in the middle east

Yes, one of the US' big mistakes in the 70's/80's was supporting radical Islamists against secular socialists in the Middle East and South Asia. They were NOT the lesser of two evils. We funded the precursors to the Taliban, Al-Queda, and possibly Bin Ladin himself in Afghanistan against the socialist government. Socialism never killed 3,000 Americans on US soil.

The USSR was more evil than the Mujahedeen and its also false to say the Mujahedeen was the same as the Taliban.

"X was more evil than Y" is a pretty facile reading (outside a few extreme cases) and, in the abstract, does not conflict with the point that Reactionary Libertarian is making anyway.

[Vosem]

The Mujahideen were not a unified front, but it strikes me as meaningfully incorrect to say that the groups that went on to be the Taliban had a less harmful worldview than the USSR. Supporting the Mujahideen made sense in the context of the Cold War (I've argued elsewhere that supporting the Khmer Rouge made some sense in the context of the Cold War), but this does not mean that they were good.

I think the Soviet wars in Central Asia -- both the 1920s-era wars against the Basmachi and the later 1980s intervention in Afghanistan -- are understudied as examples of wars besides WW2 waged with so much forcefulness that they actually managed to change the culture of a place in ways that the winners wanted to see. Communism in Afghanistan survived for longer than the Soviet Union itself did (even if the main reason for this was just disunity among the Mujahideen), and -- with the interesting exception of Tajikistan -- most of Central Asia continued to be relatively secular dictatorships even after the fall of the USSR.

It helped create World War II and led to the Yugoslavian genocides, which were only 30 years ago.

If you believe in states based on ethnicity, you're saying Hitler was justified for the Anschluss and taking the Sudetanland. You're saying modern-day Republika Srpska should be ceded by Bosnia and become part of Serbia. (The Balkans as a whole would be greatly redrawn, I'll appoint you to be the guy that gets to deal with the aftermath of that.) You believe Turkish Cyprus should be recognized as a country because the people on that side of Cyprus are ethnically different from those in the South. Quebec should be its own separate country on the American border, splitting the rest of Canada in two. All Indian and First Nations reservations in the U.S. and Canada become sovereign. Sections of the American Southwest should become a new Latino-based state. You believe that the state of Belgium should disappear. You believe that there needs to be a bunch of Arab/Muslim-based island states all around Europe that would make it look like all the German minor states prior to confederation. You believe Hungary should get larger. You believe that all Russian-dominated exclaves outside Russia's borders should be assumed into Russia proper. While Russia would probably then separate into, I don't know, 10-20 different countries. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq should get disintegrated. Israel should be made smaller to have a section ceded for its residents that are Arabs.

That is your principle you stated of nation-states based on ethnicity.

I don't think you're saying any of these things. You are simply saying that countries can choose to represent ethnicities, and this is fine so long as other minorities are treated with respect. Immigration policy is usually central to this, and indeed it sometimes exists on a subnational level; Canadian law permits Quebec to choose Francophone immigrants. (And, in fact, immigrants to Utah have at least in the past disproportionately been members of the LDS Church). It does not mean that every part of a country must have a majority belong to the titular ethnicity, or that everywhere where that ethnicity is a majority belongs to that country, or that that ethnicity deserves special rights within that country's borders (although it usually does mean a form of "special relationship" with members of that ethnicity living outside that country).

The problem in the Israeli case is that an independent Palestine obviously makes sense from everyone's point of view, but that the political organizations which would run it in a way not hostile to its neighbors (most obviously the Israelis but not just the Israelis) don't exist. This is partially, as the polls OSR posts describe, because Palestinian society is f**ked up, but also substantially because of foreign efforts to keep it f**ked up, as with teaching racial hatred in UNRWA-run schools. Fixing it has to begin with the destruction of things like the UNRWA, which treat Palestinian liberationism as normal or obvious, and preventing Palestinian governments from doing things like hanging people who sell land to the wrong race. (The victims of this policy should see memorials built to them and be described as Lei Feng-style heroes in the education system.) That has to mean that sympathy for Palestinian liberationism dies abroad.

[Logical]

Eisenkot is in the war cabinet and an MK for Gantz's party.
https://twitter.com/manniefabian/status/1732796199818740023

[Open Source Intelligence]

It helped create World War II and led to the Yugoslavian genocides, which were only 30 years ago.

If you believe in states based on ethnicity, you're saying Hitler was justified for the Anschluss and taking the Sudetanland. You're saying modern-day Republika Srpska should be ceded by Bosnia and become part of Serbia. (The Balkans as a whole would be greatly redrawn, I'll appoint you to be the guy that gets to deal with the aftermath of that.) You believe Turkish Cyprus should be recognized as a country because the people on that side of Cyprus are ethnically different from those in the South. Quebec should be its own separate country on the American border, splitting the rest of Canada in two. All Indian and First Nations reservations in the U.S. and Canada become sovereign. Sections of the American Southwest should become a new Latino-based state. You believe that the state of Belgium should disappear. You believe that there needs to be a bunch of Arab/Muslim-based island states all around Europe that would make it look like all the German minor states prior to confederation. You believe Hungary should get larger. You believe that all Russian-dominated exclaves outside Russia's borders should be assumed into Russia proper. While Russia would probably then separate into, I don't know, 10-20 different countries. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq should get disintegrated. Israel should be made smaller to have a section ceded for its residents that are Arabs.

That is your principle you stated of nation-states based on ethnicity.

I don't think you're saying any of these things.

I disagree, I think that's what he's saying, and if you apply this half-thought out principle to one selective case and ignore everything else that principle means, it is the definition of hypocrisy. That or you don't really believe in your principle and it's a convenient excuse to get the end result you want. Because there's such a thing called history we can look at and conflicts happen all the time over the most invented reasons. Ethnicities on the wrong side of borders has always been a great invented reason for a war to serve ulterior means.

You are simply saying that countries can choose to represent ethnicities, and this is fine so long as other minorities are treated with respect.

Who makes that definitive determination, and does everyone agree with it without complaint?

Immigration policy is usually central to this, and indeed it sometimes exists on a subnational level; Canadian law permits Quebec to choose Francophone immigrants.

Yeah, that is hardly uncontroversial to say the least.

The problem in the Israeli case is that an independent Palestine obviously makes sense from everyone's point of view, but that the political organizations which would run it in a way not hostile to its neighbors (most obviously the Israelis but not just the Israelis) don't exist. This is partially, as the polls OSR posts describe, because Palestinian society is f**ked up, but also substantially because of foreign efforts to keep it f**ked up, as with teaching racial hatred in UNRWA-run schools. Fixing it has to begin with the destruction of things like the UNRWA, which treat Palestinian liberationism as normal or obvious, and preventing Palestinian governments from doing things like hanging people who sell land to the wrong race. (The victims of this policy should see memorials built to them and be described as Lei Feng-style heroes in the education system.) That has to mean that sympathy for Palestinian liberationism dies abroad.

It's never going to. Do you think sympathy for IRA liberationism in the U.S. ever died? No, it didn't. What happened is they had a peace process and the temperature on the conflict went significantly down. It used to infuriate the hell out of a Scottish friend of mine present in Belfast one day a bomb went off around him that he could go into a bunch of bars in the U.S. where on the counter money could be put in a jar with a label saying it was to be used on bullets to kill British soldiers.

[pppolitics]

Killing of Reuters Journalist Was ‘Apparently Deliberate’ Israeli Strike, Group Says

An Oct. 13 strike that killed a videographer for the Reuters news agency and injured six others in southern Lebanon was carried out by the Israeli military and appeared to be a deliberate attack, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

The watchdog group said that evidence it had reviewed — including dozens of videos of the incident, photographs and satellite images, and interviews with witnesses and military experts — showed that the journalists were not near areas where fighting was taking place and that there was no military objective near their position.

“The attack on the journalists’ position directly targeted them,” the report said, labeling the attack a war crime.

The Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the report.

Reuters published its own investigation on Thursday and said that an Israeli tank crew had killed its journalist and wounded the others.

“The evidence we now have, and have published today, shows that an Israeli tank crew killed our colleague Issam Abdallah,” the Reuters editor in chief, Alessandra Galloni, said in a statement. She called on Israel “to explain how this could have happened and to hold to account those responsible.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/world/middleeast/reuters-journalist-killed-lebanon-israel-hrw.html

Israel's war crimes just keep piling up.

[OSR stands with Israel]

had pan arab socialism had a chance to fully take root, we'd likely have seen a decline of religiously motivated conflicts in the middle east

Yes, one of the US' big mistakes in the 70's/80's was supporting radical Islamists against secular socialists in the Middle East and South Asia. They were NOT the lesser of two evils. We funded the precursors to the Taliban, Al-Queda, and possibly Bin Ladin himself in Afghanistan against the socialist government. Socialism never killed 3,000 Americans on US soil.

The USSR was more evil than the Mujahedeen and its also false to say the Mujahedeen was the same as the Taliban.

"X was more evil than Y" is a pretty facile reading (outside a few extreme cases) and, in the abstract, does not conflict with the point that Reactionary Libertarian is making anyway.

Cause he said the Mujahdeen were the greater evil and then his second point was they were responsible for 9/11 which is inaccurate.