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I often don't endorse the behavior of Israeli settlers. I'm responding to the question of what Israelis think about the news in general, a question to which I w

by Liron 1y ago

I often don't endorse the behavior of Israeli settlers. I'm responding to the question of what Israelis think about the news in general, a question to which I wanted to contribute the context of Israel's precarious existential security as a sovereign Jewish state.

rafram 1y ago
"Precarious" strikes me as a misleading way to describe a nuclear-armed state (and the only nuclear-armed state in its region).
- tome 1y ago
  Do you believe Israel's continued existence is assured?
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    Even without nukes it would be because the arabs in the region are bad at fighting. But with nukes it for sure is because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
    - tome 1y ago
      I suspect most Israelis think differently. Even if "the arabs in the region are bad at fighting" they still outnumber the Israeli population by something like 20 to 40 times, depending on how you count. About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective. EDIT: There are a couple of axes that helped me get a broader perspective: 1. Whether one supports Israel's continued existence 2. Whether one believes Israel's continued existence is guaranteed Having started about midway between yes and no on 1, and at yes on 2, it was extremely enlightening to reinterpret my observations from the point of view of yes on 1 and no on 2. All Israeli behaviour that I had previously found incomprehensible finally made sense.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        > About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective. During a surprise attack. The conflict that was started by Oct 7, according to Wikipedia, has seen 81,526+ dead on the Palestinian and associated side*, vs. 2,053 on the Israeli side. That said, from the point of view of your edit: the ratio is irrelevant when someone's convinced they're facing an existential threat. Given Oct 7 was proportionally worse for Israel than 9/11 was for the USA, and the USA didn't seem to stop justifying everything through that lens for about a decade afterwards… it's going to suck for everyone that Israel thinks is so much as looking at them funny. (That isn't a joke even if it sounds like one: the people who see Israel as their home and their safe-space are collectively likely to be hyper-vigilant, to their own cost, in this kind of way, for a long time). * With the footnote that '"Indirect" deaths may be multiple times higher' and 'In addition to direct deaths, armed conflicts result in indirect deaths "attributable to the conflict". Mortality due to indirect deaths could be due to a variety of causes, such as infectious diseases.[27] Indirect deaths range from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths in recent conflicts.[28] In Gaza, estimated 51,000 natural deaths, natural death rate has gone up from 3.5/1000 to 22/1000 (late June 2024)[29]'
        tome 1y ago
        > During a surprise attack. Yes indeed, I'm talking about the surprise attack phase. (Israel has experienced a surprise attack before that has put its continued existence in question: the Yom Kippur war.) And in fact, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks it seems as though the ratio was closer to 3:2. In any case, Israel is surrounded by a hostile population of hundreds of millions (yes, still hostile despite the cold peace treaty it has with Egypt and the lukewarm one it has with Jordan), and it itself numbers about 10 million. So it is outnumbered by double figures to one. I certainly don't see Israel's continued existence as guaranteed despite "nukes" and despite "American support" and despite having the "nth most powerful army in the world". And that point of view has helped me to understand the conflict like no other explanation.
    - ashoeafoot 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - fahhem 1y ago
        Who de-escalated the 12 day war? Iran did, the "Ayatollahs". Who has a religious decree against nuclear weapons since they cannot be used without massacring civilians? Iran, the Ayatollah, not Israel and it's 3 digits of nukes that it threatens to use all the time.
        tome 1y ago
        > Who has a religious decree against nuclear weapons since they cannot be used without massacring civilians? Did Iran kill any civilians when they bombarded Israel with ballistic missiles a few weeks ago? > Israel and it's 3 digits of nukes that it threatens to use all the time. When did Israel threaten to use nukes?
        ben_w 1y ago
        I don't trust the Iranian government, not for any deeply researched reason but because basically everyone I meet who talks about them says that government is not trustworthy. Some of those people are themselves Iranians, and one told me that the Iranian government is speaking literally when describing the USA as "the Great Satan" (and Israel as the little satan). But: there is a big difference between "we killed some people while targeting actual military assets" and "this city we levelled, it was full of civilians as well as a handful of valid military assets, and now it doesn't exist".
  - PontifexMinimus 1y ago
    No, because of their own behaviour. Israel might well lose the support of the USA and Europe, and if that happened the continued existence of their state would be far from certain.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Europe is certainly shifting. I think the USA is unlikely to shift for as long as it's one single democratic nation, owing to internal political demographics. Same reasons it hasn't shifted on Cuba. But the USA keeps surprising me by failing to implode despite what all the politicians have been saying about each other, and by the anti-government language often used to justify gun ownership, so if I was in a position to influence Israel, I would be suggesting a diversification of international support.
    - tome 1y ago
      Do you think Israel is acting against its own survival?
      - PontifexMinimus 1y ago
        Clearly the Israeli government don't think that. But many times in history governments have done dumb thnings that backfired.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
istjohn 1y ago
It's the "Jewish" in Jewish state that lies at the root of the conflict, isn't it? There aren't many options to maintain a dominant ethnic identity in a democracy when the land the nation was founded on was already inhabited by people who don't share in that identity. The only option is to either cede that ethnic identity or to engage in mass displacement and disenfranchisement. It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.
- streptomycin 1y ago
  There are currently about 40 countries that have a higher Muslim percentage than Israel's Jewish percentage. Many of them much higher. Many of them kicked out all their Jews in recent history.
  - lo_zamoyski 1y ago
    What exactly is your argument here? Jews were kicked out of Muslim countries, therefore, Jews can treat Palestinians like subhumans?
    - streptomycin 1y ago
      My argument is that people seem to get very worked up when the Jews do something, but basically nobody cares about other similar or even worse things done by other people. I suspect this is most likely because of antisemitism (not that every anti-Israel person is an antisemite, but that the movement would not have become so prominent without a large core of dedicated antisemites).
      - xg15 1y ago
        Yeah, that's just whataboutism. Edit: To elaborate, because there was another comment comparing this to Assad in Syria: I think the difference is that Assad already belonged to the "enemy" is of the West (rightly so) and was immediately hit with sanctions. What is special about Israel is that the government and, as it seems, large parts of the population, are displaying the same mentality - but unlike with Assad, no one is putting on the brakes here or threatening sanctions. On the contrary, our governments are protecting and enabling Israel in its behavior. I think the aggression specifically towards Israel stems from the feeling of being on the wrong side this time.
cherry_tree 1y ago
>often don't endorse So you do not condemn the behavior of the illegal settlements?

by Liron 1y ago

rafram 1y ago

"Precarious" strikes me as a misleading way to describe a nuclear-armed state (and the only nuclear-armed state in its region).

tome 1y ago
Do you believe Israel's continued existence is assured?
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  Even without nukes it would be because the arabs in the region are bad at fighting. But with nukes it for sure is because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
  - tome 1y ago
    I suspect most Israelis think differently. Even if "the arabs in the region are bad at fighting" they still outnumber the Israeli population by something like 20 to 40 times, depending on how you count. About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective. EDIT: There are a couple of axes that helped me get a broader perspective: 1. Whether one supports Israel's continued existence 2. Whether one believes Israel's continued existence is guaranteed Having started about midway between yes and no on 1, and at yes on 2, it was extremely enlightening to reinterpret my observations from the point of view of yes on 1 and no on 2. All Israeli behaviour that I had previously found incomprehensible finally made sense.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      > About one Israeli was killed for every three Hamas fighters on Oct 7, and it's not an exact comparison for many reasons, but hopefully it provides some perspective. During a surprise attack. The conflict that was started by Oct 7, according to Wikipedia, has seen 81,526+ dead on the Palestinian and associated side*, vs. 2,053 on the Israeli side. That said, from the point of view of your edit: the ratio is irrelevant when someone's convinced they're facing an existential threat. Given Oct 7 was proportionally worse for Israel than 9/11 was for the USA, and the USA didn't seem to stop justifying everything through that lens for about a decade afterwards… it's going to suck for everyone that Israel thinks is so much as looking at them funny. (That isn't a joke even if it sounds like one: the people who see Israel as their home and their safe-space are collectively likely to be hyper-vigilant, to their own cost, in this kind of way, for a long time). * With the footnote that '"Indirect" deaths may be multiple times higher' and 'In addition to direct deaths, armed conflicts result in indirect deaths "attributable to the conflict". Mortality due to indirect deaths could be due to a variety of causes, such as infectious diseases.[27] Indirect deaths range from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths in recent conflicts.[28] In Gaza, estimated 51,000 natural deaths, natural death rate has gone up from 3.5/1000 to 22/1000 (late June 2024)[29]'
      - tome 1y ago
        > During a surprise attack. Yes indeed, I'm talking about the surprise attack phase. (Israel has experienced a surprise attack before that has put its continued existence in question: the Yom Kippur war.) And in fact, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks it seems as though the ratio was closer to 3:2. In any case, Israel is surrounded by a hostile population of hundreds of millions (yes, still hostile despite the cold peace treaty it has with Egypt and the lukewarm one it has with Jordan), and it itself numbers about 10 million. So it is outnumbered by double figures to one. I certainly don't see Israel's continued existence as guaranteed despite "nukes" and despite "American support" and despite having the "nth most powerful army in the world". And that point of view has helped me to understand the conflict like no other explanation.
  - ashoeafoot 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - fahhem 1y ago
      Who de-escalated the 12 day war? Iran did, the "Ayatollahs". Who has a religious decree against nuclear weapons since they cannot be used without massacring civilians? Iran, the Ayatollah, not Israel and it's 3 digits of nukes that it threatens to use all the time.
      - tome 1y ago
        > Who has a religious decree against nuclear weapons since they cannot be used without massacring civilians? Did Iran kill any civilians when they bombarded Israel with ballistic missiles a few weeks ago? > Israel and it's 3 digits of nukes that it threatens to use all the time. When did Israel threaten to use nukes?
        ben_w 1y ago
        I don't trust the Iranian government, not for any deeply researched reason but because basically everyone I meet who talks about them says that government is not trustworthy. Some of those people are themselves Iranians, and one told me that the Iranian government is speaking literally when describing the USA as "the Great Satan" (and Israel as the little satan). But: there is a big difference between "we killed some people while targeting actual military assets" and "this city we levelled, it was full of civilians as well as a handful of valid military assets, and now it doesn't exist".
- PontifexMinimus 1y ago
  No, because of their own behaviour. Israel might well lose the support of the USA and Europe, and if that happened the continued existence of their state would be far from certain.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Europe is certainly shifting. I think the USA is unlikely to shift for as long as it's one single democratic nation, owing to internal political demographics. Same reasons it hasn't shifted on Cuba. But the USA keeps surprising me by failing to implode despite what all the politicians have been saying about each other, and by the anti-government language often used to justify gun ownership, so if I was in a position to influence Israel, I would be suggesting a diversification of international support.
  - tome 1y ago
    Do you think Israel is acting against its own survival?
    - PontifexMinimus 1y ago
      Clearly the Israeli government don't think that. But many times in history governments have done dumb thnings that backfired.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

istjohn 1y ago

It's the "Jewish" in Jewish state that lies at the root of the conflict, isn't it? There aren't many options to maintain a dominant ethnic identity in a democracy when the land the nation was founded on was already inhabited by people who don't share in that identity. The only option is to either cede that ethnic identity or to engage in mass displacement and disenfranchisement. It's exceedingly subtle the way ethno-nationalism gets smuggled into the phrase "as a sovereign Jewish state," but it is no less terrible and ugly than the ethno-nationalism in other parts of the world and eras in history.

streptomycin 1y ago
There are currently about 40 countries that have a higher Muslim percentage than Israel's Jewish percentage. Many of them much higher. Many of them kicked out all their Jews in recent history.
- lo_zamoyski 1y ago
  What exactly is your argument here? Jews were kicked out of Muslim countries, therefore, Jews can treat Palestinians like subhumans?
  - streptomycin 1y ago
    My argument is that people seem to get very worked up when the Jews do something, but basically nobody cares about other similar or even worse things done by other people. I suspect this is most likely because of antisemitism (not that every anti-Israel person is an antisemite, but that the movement would not have become so prominent without a large core of dedicated antisemites).
    - xg15 1y ago
      Yeah, that's just whataboutism. Edit: To elaborate, because there was another comment comparing this to Assad in Syria: I think the difference is that Assad already belonged to the "enemy" is of the West (rightly so) and was immediately hit with sanctions. What is special about Israel is that the government and, as it seems, large parts of the population, are displaying the same mentality - but unlike with Assad, no one is putting on the brakes here or threatening sanctions. On the contrary, our governments are protecting and enabling Israel in its behavior. I think the aggression specifically towards Israel stems from the feeling of being on the wrong side this time.

cherry_tree 1y ago

>often don't endorse So you do not condemn the behavior of the illegal settlements?