War in the Middle East, again

[keenir]

They are also known as the Kerguelen Islands.

Thank you. People might oppose colonizing it because it might endanger seal habitats or something. There might also be better options. What do you think?

In the late 1940s, I don't think that'd be a concern. The need for regular shipping, on the other hand, likely would be.

[Torco]

One this that has to be considered is that while israel *worked* (took off, as it were: it could have perfectly been a failure), it probably only worked because it was in the holy land, a bit of land of immense value in terms religious, cultural, touristic, positioning vis a vis trade routes, natural resources, symbolic, you name it. as much as I'd have *liked it* not to be a settler colonial regime, would that many jews *really* have moved to some middle of nowhere island in the atlantic or something? fact is, colonialism is super profitable.

[keenir]

One this that has to be considered is that while israel *worked* (took off, as it were: it could have perfectly been a failure), it probably only worked because it was in the holy land, a bit of land of immense value in terms religious, cultural, touristic, positioning vis a vis trade routes, natural resources, symbolic, you name it. as much as I'd have *liked it* not to be a settler colonial regime, would that many jews *really* have moved to some middle of nowhere island in the atlantic or something?

mmmmmm...if it had been any time other than in the wake of WW2, I'd say, maybe but probably not. (granted, there were other tries at a Jewish state - wasn't one of the islands between the US and what became Canada such a try at a Jewish nation?)

[bradrn]

My impression is that the antisemitism and other extremism is mostly pushed top-down from the government; of course it’s hard to avoid picking up antisemitic beliefs in that environment, but at the same time people are able to recognise government propaganda for what it is.

I suspect that, while many Iranians disagree with their government on many things, many others mostly or entirely agree with it. That is, after all, the usual political situation in the countries about whose politics I actually know something.

Sure, of course. I’m just making the point that many of them don’t. (After all, they’re fully aware they live in a totalitarian state.)

...If I say spoken human languages involve sound, a statement I make despite not having carefully checked that fact in over twenty years...am I wrong?

As it happens, this is wrong: you forgot sign languages.

[keenir]

...If I say spoken human languages involve sound, a statement I make despite not having carefully checked that fact in over twenty years...am I wrong?

As it happens, this is wrong: you forgot sign languages.

Thats why I said spoken human languages.

[bradrn]

...If I say spoken human languages involve sound, a statement I make despite not having carefully checked that fact in over twenty years...am I wrong?

As it happens, this is wrong: you forgot sign languages.

Thats why I said spoken human languages.

In that case, it’s just a tautology…

[keenir]

As it happens, this is wrong: you forgot sign languages.

Thats why I said spoken human languages.

In that case, it’s just a tautology…

Tautologies are facts, right? (i'm serious - I asked a few times over the course of my life, and nobody wanted to give me an answer)

[bradrn]

Thats why I said spoken human languages.

In that case, it’s just a tautology…

Tautologies are facts, right? (i'm serious - I asked a few times over the course of my life, and nobody wanted to give me an answer)

Well, this is ultimately a question of definition, hence a somewhat useless question. But personally, I’d say that the ‘fact’ in the usual sense excludes tautologies.

[Torco]

Thats why I said spoken human languages.

In that case, it’s just a tautology…

Tautologies are facts, right? (i'm serious - I asked a few times over the course of my life, and nobody wanted to give me an answer)

If we take tautologies to be facts, then yes. If not, then no.

more seriously, I would say that they're facts, but merely facts about a certain lexicon: or perhaps that they represent, or maybe point towards, a few facts about language: like, "squares are not circles" is true, but only by virtue of what the words there mean, so it's at least not a fact about the world.

[Ares Land]

One this that has to be considered is that while israel *worked* (took off, as it were: it could have perfectly been a failure), it probably only worked because it was in the holy land, a bit of land of immense value in terms religious, cultural, touristic, positioning vis a vis trade routes, natural resources, symbolic, you name it. as much as I'd have *liked it* not to be a settler colonial regime, would that many jews *really* have moved to some middle of nowhere island in the atlantic or something? fact is, colonialism is super profitable.

Leaving aside the colonialism thing -- though I still insist it wasn't -- no.
The other proposals were unworkable and amounted to forced deportation. (I mean Alaska? The other end of Siberia? Let's be serious.)

I wonder if there are any lands free for those of us who despise all major factions of 21st century politics. Are the Desolation Islands livable? Are there better options? Patagonia has a low population density.

As for the Kerguelens, I think maximum summer temperatures are around 12°C; the one thing that grows is some sort of cabbage. I guess that answers the question

[Torco]

One can insist but its better to have reasons for it. can't fathom how its not colonialism for an ethnic group to take over some land and make the natives second class citizens, but yeah, that's my intuition. I do seem to remember one idea floated was Madagascar, which is quite paradisiac. then again, we'd probably be talking about the merina and betsimisaraka genocide by now. there's simply very few places where people could potentially comfortably live where someone doesn't actually live (or who isn't owned by some rich guy).

[Ares Land]

One can insist but its better to have reasons for it. can't fathom how its not colonialism for an ethnic group to take over some land and make the natives second class citizens, but yeah, that's my intuition.

I have my reasons, which I already explained -- many of the Jews were persecuted and/or refugees which doesn't fit the usual colonialism formula. But I think we'll have to agree to disagree!

I do seem to remember one idea floated was Madagascar, which is quite paradisiac. then again, we'd probably be talking about the merina and betsimisaraka genocide by now. there's simply very few places where people could potentially comfortably live where someone doesn't actually live (or who isn't owned by some rich guy).

That was the Nazi plan. 'Paradisiac' isn't quite the right world, since the idea IIRC was to more or less let the Jews die there.
Incidentally, Madagascar was a colony at the time.

[Travis B.]

One thing to consider, as I mentioned earlier, is that the Yishuv did not have to ethnically cleanse much of what became the State of Israel, and even if one regards that as having been unavoidable, the State of Israel did not have to occupy the remainder of Palestine, turn its inhabitants into stateless people, and allow the settlers to drive them out of their homes and take their land however they see fit. Yes, Palestine was not exactly peaceful even before the 1947-1948 war (there were major riots between Jews and Palestinians in the 1930's), but that did not justify ethnic cleansing.

[Linguoboy]

I think we should be quite clear that this isn’t whataboutism. I fully respect people’s right to criticise Israel, as long as they in turn respect my right to argue back. But I could take protesters a lot more seriously, if they showed any sign of being as upset about the other problems in the world as they did about Israel. At some point, we do have to wonder why they care so much about what is, after all, a tiny little strip of land in western Asia. (I care about it because my family lives there; do they have that reason?)

Seriously? We have a protest encampment here on campus and the protesters are quite explicit about why they're singling out Israel: Because this university has a $14 billion endowment and a significant portion of that is invested in Israeli firms and firms which supply the IDF with the munitions and weapons systems it's using to bomb the living shit out of Gaza. (How much of the $14 billion? We don't know because they won't say; one of the protesters' demands is greater transparency in this area.)

And, yeah, a lot of them do care because they have family there. There's a Palestinian diaspora community here close to 100,000 strong (gee, wonder how that happened?) and, yes, some of those people are students here or have friends who are. By contrast, there's no real Burmese or Sudanese community here to speak of.

It's hard not to take these arguments as disingenuous when Israel and Palestine are so much more obviously connected to the rest of the developed world than whatever failed state is tearing itself to shreds this week. Why Israel? Because my government just voted to spend $26 billion of my tax dollars to fund mass slaughter there. Isn't that alone reason enough? Spare me.

[Travis B.]

I think we should be quite clear that this isn’t whataboutism. I fully respect people’s right to criticise Israel, as long as they in turn respect my right to argue back. But I could take protesters a lot more seriously, if they showed any sign of being as upset about the other problems in the world as they did about Israel. At some point, we do have to wonder why they care so much about what is, after all, a tiny little strip of land in western Asia. (I care about it because my family lives there; do they have that reason?)

Seriously? We have a protest encampment here on campus and the protesters are quite explicit about why they're singling out Israel: Because this university has a $14 billion endowment and a significant portion of that is invested in Israeli firms and firms which supply the IDF with the munitions and weapons systems it's using to bomb the living shit out of Gaza. (How much of the $14 billion? We don't know because they won't say; one of the protesters' demands is greater transparency in this area.)

And, yeah, a lot of them do care because they have family there. There's a Palestinian diaspora community here close to 100,000 strong (gee, wonder how that happened?) and, yes, some of those people are students here or have friends who are. By contrast, there's no real Burmese or Sudanese community here to speak of.

It's hard not to take these arguments as disingenuous when Israel and Palestine are so much more obviously connected to the rest of the developed world than whatever failed state is tearing itself to shreds this week. Why Israel? Because my government just voted to spend $26 billion of my tax dollars to fund mass slaughter there. Isn't that alone reason enough? Spare me.

Agreed completely. It is easy to identify random failed states and say "but but but they are just as deserving of criticism!" but the thing is that Israel is a developed nation and not a random dictatorship or chronically coup-and-civil-war-prone country. Of course one can criticize this view, but this is for entirely different reasons, i.e. the unfortunate implication that Brown or Black people can't be expected to live up to the same standards as Westerners, which is another story.

[bradrn]

It's hard not to take these arguments as disingenuous when Israel and Palestine are so much more obviously connected to the rest of the developed world than whatever failed state is tearing itself to shreds this week. Why Israel? Because my government just voted to spend $26 billion of my tax dollars to fund mass slaughter there. Isn't that alone reason enough? Spare me.

Surprisingly enough, I actually find my opinion changed by this argument. Of course, it’s only valid for the US.

(Also, even so, I think that antisemitism is still present as an underlying motivator. Some of the slogans which have been chanted are simply blood-curdling.)

[Linguoboy]

I just toured the perimeter of the encampment. There's an iron fence on the west side of it which is covered with signage. There are tables with craft materials and folks are being invited to make their own signs. A lot are just generic messages of solidarity (e.g. "Jewish Alumni for Palestine", "Sierre Leonean Students 4 Palestine") but many explicitly tie the violence there to violence being perpetuated elsewhere (e.g. "From Palestine to the Philippines, Stop the US War Machine!", "From Gaza, to Congo, to Sudan, to Kashmir, to Haiti, to Tigray, NONE of us are free till we're ALL free.") So much for critics ignoring crimes occurring outside that narrow strip by the Mediterranean.

The closest thing to an "antisemitic" sentiment is variations on "from the river to the sea". I acknowledge that for many Jews, this slogan is inseparable from Hamas' deployment of it in support of ethnic cleansing, but FWIW, the speakers at the encampment have explicitly distanced themselves from this interpretation:

When we say ‘from the river to the sea,’ we’re talking about a land where you don’t have to get harassed. You don’t have to go through checkpoints to get to school. [University President] Michael Schill implied that by saying (‘from the river to the sea’), we’re supporting terrorism, but we’re not going to let people tell us to shut up, because we know what we’re fighting for.

Someone spraypainted "Death to Israel" on one of the nearby buildings Saturday night, but organisers said that it wasn't anyone from within the encampment. Although it was after 2 in the morning, the university immediately sent someone to cover it up. There have been some very aggressive counterdemonstrators, including people entering the encampment to disrupt presentations and a 100-strong counterdemonstration of mostly outsiders organised by the Anti-Defamation League, so it's not implausible that it was an attempt by one of them to discredit the protest.

[bradrn]

[…] many explicitly tie the violence there to violence being perpetuated elsewhere (e.g. "From Palestine to the Philippines, Stop the US War Machine!", "From Gaza, to Congo, to Sudan, to Kashmir, to Haiti, to Tigray, NONE of us are free till we're ALL free.")

This is quite interesting. Good to get a firsthand report.

The closest thing to an "antisemitic" sentiment is variations on "from the river to the sea". I acknowledge that for many Jews, this slogan is inseparable from Hamas' deployment of it in support of ethnic cleansing, but FWIW, the speakers at the encampment have explicitly distanced themselves from this interpretation:

When we say ‘from the river to the sea,’ we’re talking about a land where you don’t have to get harassed. You don’t have to go through checkpoints to get to school. [University President] Michael Schill implied that by saying (‘from the river to the sea’), we’re supporting terrorism, but we’re not going to let people tell us to shut up, because we know what we’re fighting for.

On the other hand, you get students chanting ‘burn Tel Aviv to the ground’, or the protest organiser who said ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’. (And we all know who they mean by ‘Zionists’: the linked article makes it quite clear that they mean ‘anyone who is identifiably Jewish’.) Even in my own city of Sydney, we’ve seen young kids encouraged to call for ‘intifada’. Maybe, luckily, there was no antisemitism that you saw, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t simmering beneath the surface.

[Torco]

That was the Nazi plan. 'Paradisiac' isn't quite the right world, since the idea IIRC was to more or less let the Jews die there.
Incidentally, Madagascar was a colony at the time.

Yikes. yeah, relevant fact there lmao.
(oppressed people can in turn oppress others, but honestly fair enough on the agree to disagree)

It's hard not to take these arguments as disingenuous when Israel and Palestine are so much more obviously connected to the rest of the developed world than whatever failed state is tearing itself to shreds this week. Why Israel? Because my government just voted to spend $26 billion of my tax dollars to fund mass slaughter there. Isn't that alone reason enough? Spare me.

Surprisingly enough, I actually find my opinion changed by this argument. Of course, it’s only valid for the US.

well, my country does a lot of business with the Israeli armed forces (in fact, the chilean standard issue battle rifle is, IIRC, the Galil, produced under licence by the army factory in Talagante) so it would work for here as well. similarly, a lot of european countries are actively supporting the relevant massacres with money, arms, and experts blabla.

of course there's going to be antisemitism in protests against the palestinian genocide: the israelis and zionists have strongly transmitted the message of "if you're against us you're antisemitic": no one should be surprised that *some* people with react to this, which is a mistake ofc, with "okay then fuck jews" or something. plus, paleonazis love an opportunity to go "see? (((they))) are evil, we told you" etcetera. if we let israel do anything cause all large-scale criticism of it will have more-than-zero femtohitlers of antisemitism, then we would have to decide israel gets to do whatever evil it wants.

[Travis B.]

One thing that should be remembered in all this is that Jewish opposition to what the Israeli gov't is doing in Gaza is in particular being ruthlessly suppressed (e.g. IIRC one third of the protestors against the war who were arrested in Germany were Jewish). So Jews only matter when they support oppression, rather than oppose it?