Re: Great summary

More clarity.

Great summary

quozzel

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Dec 31, 2023, 10:55 AM

Dude, you have one note and it's literally Neanderthal level: Me Tribe Good. Your Tribe Bad.

But the world is just not that simple, and if you're going to make peace with your enemies, you have to own your own sins first.

Mind, I'm in pretty much complete agreement that Hamas is a pack of very dangerous animals and there's only one way to deal with them. I'm also in agreement that Palestinian culture has morphed into such because of their conviction - which is indeed supported by fellow Arab states, the UN, and even (bizarrely) liberals here in the US - that they are the rightful owners of land that is currently in the possession of someone else. When you come surging across a border like the Orcs of Mordor and do what Hamas did while crowds of Palestinians cheer you on in the streets when you come flooding back with the hostages you didn't rap-e, murder, and mutilate in your murder spree through the Israeli countryside, there's going to be a war and it's going to be incredibly vicious and bloody. With you so far.

What I don't like is the tone, tenor, and complete lack of nuance in that post you linked. It's nuts. For starters, the level of dehumanizing language the writer is using is distinctly troubling - it's exactly how Hamas talks about the Jews. ("Animals. Degenerates." Not good.) For another, the Israelis themselves have not exactly engaged in good faith - their own militant settlers are systematically (and illegally) pushing Palestinians (and even non-Palestinians like the Beduins) off their land in the West Bank, and for decades now Israeli regimes like Netanyahu's have basically propped up Hamas because Hamas doesn't get along with the Palestinian Authority and they don't want the two groups unifying. Why's that? Because then the Israelis would have to start legitimately entertaining the two-state solution, that's why, which is the only possible way out of this mess that doesn't involve eventual genocide. And that's exactly where this is headed if the violence continues to escalate...and it does come across like that's exactly what some of the more strident militants on the far right of the Israeli government do want.

So the Israelis bear a great deal of responsibility here...and "European colonialism" has nothing to do with it, whatever Ivory Tower leftists may say. But the Israelis did sow the seeds of this mess in a great many ways with their divide-and-conquer strategy...which just blew up in their faces. They were the ones who allowed Hamas to metastasize into the cancer it is today. This is not how you lower the temperature.

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Of course I believe in barbarism, and Hamas absolutely qualifies as one of the worst. There's no dealing peacefully with them and they have to go. Nor is it as rare as you seem to believe.

There's two main approaches to dealing with the world - cooperative and tribal. The cooperative approach requires two main things: a genuine desire to live as peacefully as possible with the people around you and an acknowledgement of your common humanity with them no matter how different they might be from you, and mutual good faith. Two people of mutual good faith trying to get along almost always can find a way.

Tribals don't care about people different than themselves, they could care less about getting along, and they don't care about principle either, though they do care about orthodoxy. Their approach is far more basic and less nuanced: anyone in their perceived group who acts within a narrow band of acceptable behaviors is good. Anyone outside of that is bad and not fully human.

But not all tribals are necessarily violent, or even necessarily bad people, though they're complete d!cks to everyone outside their tribe. Some of them just circle the wagons and associate only with people like themselves. When you're talking a "barbarian", you're not only talking about someone with a tribal mentality who views those outside their group as inhuman (an attitude all tribals share), but one who also leans heavily on violence to take that which belongs to someone else. There's thousands of examples of barbarism across the globe, from street gangs to ethnic groups bent on cleansing the group next to them.