[JasonADrury]

>I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.

If October 7th is an "insane horror", what words will suffice to describe the decades of far worse crimes committed by Israel?

Considering the scale of suffering caused by this conflict, October 7th was just a small blip.

[vehemenz]

Can you provide some support for your moral position? You’ve also put “insane horror” in scare quotes, which honestly I find troubling.

Does your moral account provide some justificatory, non-antisemitic framework based on colonialism or oppression that allows us to sidestep the issues with Gazans’ support of Jihad, other extremist doctrines, and the extermination of Jews?

It’s kind of a rhetorical question, but it’s the least I would expect for someone to argue credibly about the morality of the conflict.

[albedoa]

They're not "scare quotes", they're quotes.

[JasonADrury]

Yeah, they're just quotes. It's a quote.

>Can you provide some support for your moral position?

Yes, of course. A bunch of people from Europe decided to move to Palestine and start a religious ethnostate there. In doing so they expelled and murdered lots of local residents.

The surviving locals are understandably less than happy about this, and have continued to fight to defend their lands to this day.

Since then, the those people have caused far more harm to non-jewish Palestinians than non-jewish Palestinians have caused to the those people.

>allows us to sidestep the issues with Gazans’ support of Jihad, other extremist doctrines, and the extermination of Jews?

It's perfectly natural that Gazans would support the extermination of jews. In the extreme environment that Israeli jews force Palestinians to live in, it's fundamentally ridiculous to even describe it as an extremist position.

In a comfortable European context it's certainly extreme, but that's a fundamentally dishonest way of portraying it.

[epolanski]

While I agree, and I find that Israel is on the wrong side of history, I'm not entirely into seeing this whole matter as black and white.

I have the opinion that modern world history is mostly shaped around each countries/population traumas that echo through society till today.

E.g. the biggest trauma of Ukrainians aren't even the events that are playing recently, but the Holodomor that happened 100 years ago. On the other hand the biggest trauma on Russian side is still the German invasion and war of annihilation happened during the second world war. As both sides see themselves as the victims and see the other side as the aggressor (or collaborator) and none has ever taken a step back to recognize their actions, they simply cannot communicate.

The biggest trauma of China is the century of humiliation where western powers and Japan went above and beyond any decency in their actions. Thus, Chinese society and leadership is all about never being dictated conditions and terms by foreign powers. They see themselves as victims of events that they don't want to see ever again.

The jewish Israeli population biggest trauma are centuries if not millenia of animosity, racism and violence coming from any side, last but definitely not least the Holocaust. Thus Israel is all about security at all costs, even if it means bending any sign of human decency. Again, they see themselves as victims and their actions will always go in that direction.

Sadly many parts of the world, many countries, many societies, are simply too scarred and unable to take a step back from the victim mentality and recognize their own actions.

Israelis are unable to recognize they are Goliath and not David from the longest time, they are unable and unwilling to say sorry, the last Israeli leader that tried, got assassinated by one of his own.

The arabic/muslim population in the area too see themselves as victims of the post world war 2 events, and they are as well unable to recognize how scarred and traumatized is Israeli society from centuries of events, including modern ones where they had to survive against hostile Arab coalitions aimed to annihilate them.

So, without a generation of leaders able to recognize and understand the role of history and those traumas and empathize with the other sides we're trapped in those loops of aggression.

[jknutson]

You’ve just explained my own thoughts better than I ever have been able to, especially what with the political minefield that is literally anything mentioned in your post. Brilliantly articulate. I have half a mind to commit your entire comments text to memory and just repeat it ad verbatim whenever I am asked about my opinions on these things.

[pzo]

you are simplifying too much - whats then US trauma in this case and all other cases of invasion and coups in the lat 75 years?

Maybe trauma you are talking about it's just excuse to control opinion of voters and manufacture consent but under the hood its just all about power and being rich (not always but in many cases).

[huevosabio]

This is a great post. It really sheds light to basically all the modern conflicts. Thanks.

[cossray]

This really puts so many modern conflicts into perspective. Everyone sees themselves as victims. Unfortunately, a consensus on who is and isn't a victim will always be highly elusive.

[bavell]

One of the most sane and dispassionate takes I've seen. Kudos.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I agree that we should remember historical traumas, but I don't agree they suffice to explain international politics.

Take the Greeks (that's my people! Us!) and the Turkish. I guess people in the West don't remember this but the Israelis are not the only people in the Middle East who have a word that means "disaster" (Shoah, for the Israelis; Καταστροφή- Catastrophe for us), that when anyone says it everyone knows exactly which disaster is spoken of. They are not the only people who lost the land their ancestors inhabited for thousands of years (Ionia, for us Greeks), who lost their greatest city (Constantinople, the City), who lost their greatest temple that was turned into a Mosque (the Hagia Sophia). Us, Greeks, too, have suffered these ignominies at the hand of the Turkish. Our common history with the Turkish is one of war, destruction, violence and blood. So much blood.

Genocide? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide Check. Ethnic cleansing? Check. Death marches through the deserts? Check, check, check.

And yet, since the Catastrophe, in 1922, we have been at peace with the Turkish, even through serious hot episodes in the Mediterrannean, like Cyprus. That's 100 years of peace, after 1500 years of history of war.

It can be done. The trauma can be overcome, if both sides agree to it. To quote none other than Moshe Dayan: if you want to make peace you talk to your enemies, not your friends.

[whearyou]

Preach brother. Collective trauma traps us all

[ignoramous]

> The jewish Israeli population biggest trauma are centuries if not millenia of animosity, racism and violence coming from any side ... is all about security at all costs, even if it means bending any sign of human decency. Again, they see themselves as victims and their actions will always go in that direction.

I don't see this any different to terrorism apologia (the trauma of 1mn dead in Iraq and another million in Afghanistan, for example). I guess, if the leaders wear suits & ties and hide behind the garb of democracy, then we should all understand why military they command commit crimes against humanity.

  Every perpetrator of terrorism sees himself as a victim. Such is the case not only with individual terrorists, who often compete with their enemies over who is more victimized, but also with terrorist groups and nation states.

- Bessel van der Kolk (author, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma).

The problem isn't the "trauma". The problem is the excuse.

> they are as well unable to recognize how scarred and traumatized is Israeli society from centuries of events

First, 400mn Arabs (or 2bn+ muslims) aren't a monolith or brainless zombies. Second, the "centuries of events" is just European guilt. Nothing to do with the Arab world.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Extremely great post with detailed examples

> So, without a generation of leaders able to recognize and understand the role of history and those traumas and empathize with the other sides we're trapped in those loops of aggression.

The sad reality (imo) about this truth is that the qualities needed to be a leader aren't empathy. There was a vid about it which went more into detail but When you observe leaders, you find that they are extremely weird and sometimes psychopathic.

To me it also feels like if a leader is emphatetic towards the other part, other leaders more extreme would spring up saying that he's an enemy from within or something equivalent to it.

The empathy of the leader is one of the most disregarded qualities. I would go so far as to say that leaders aren't even empathetic towards the general population of their own nations/community sometimes.

It's really sad but the Empathy you mention and cowardice can look the same to many & the Empathatic leader would get booted out of/not given a chance.

For example, within America itself, I feel like John mccain was a good guy and I would consider him empathetic in the sense that I remember seeing interviews of him saying that he and Obama just have some minor differences in policy making when there were people attending his rallies asking that they don't feel safe about Obama.

I am just gonna say that This leader of republican party was lost for what is now Donald Trump.

Oh I just watched the rally/interview again[0], when he said that you don't have to be scared of Obama, he was audibly booed by the public. (But also they clapped once when he said later in the campaign that Obama was decent person?)

It isn't impossible to have empathetic leaders but I do think that perhaps as a civilization, we would need to take class act/honesty/integrity more into account than we take in the current system which to me all across the world sometimes feel like picking the lesser evil/not-greater-good at times though I can only speak for myself.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk

[dijit]

"small blip" isn't a political take, it's just wrong.

October 7th was the deadliest per capita terrorist attack since the Global Terrorism Database started recording in 1970 [1]. Globally, it's third on the all-time list (behind only 9/11 and one IS attack [1]. The confirmed death toll from Israeli social security data (not government press releases) is 1,139, which still makes it 31 times deadlier than the next worst attack in Israeli history [2][3].

You invoked scale. Those are the numbers. They don't say what you wanted them to say.

And for the record: one atrocity not excusing another cuts both ways. Nobody here argued otherwise. What was actually said (by the person you're replying to) is that you cannot use scale as your framework whilst hand-waving away the single largest data point in the argument.

If you mean the Nakba, Sabra and Shatila, or the current death toll in Gaza — those are serious. But "decades of far worse crimes" doing the work of making October 7th a "small blip" doesn't follow. You can have a long ledger of serious grievances and still recognise that one morning where 1,139 people were massacred (including at a music festival, in kibbutz bedrooms, in bomb shelters) was not a blip. It was the deadliest single terrorist attack per capita since records began.

There is no moral argument for October 7th, and the reaction is disproportionate and unjustifiable - but inevitable. We should all be so unlucky to have neighbours like those, and nobody knows how we would all act if we did.

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...

[2] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social...

[3] https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visual...

[Supermancho]

> October 7th was the deadliest per capita terrorist attack since the Global Terrorism Database started recording in 1970

> You invoked scale. Those are the numbers. They don't say what you wanted them to say.

1200 Oct7 vs tens of thousands in annexation and retaliation.

The numbers speak for themselves. No need to cherry pick.

[JasonADrury]

I notice that your database does not for whatever reason contain any of the actions taken by the Israeli government, why is that?

How are we supposed to get an understanding of the scale of these events while totally disregarding Israeli actions?

[Gud]

The reaction by the Israelis against the Palestinians is even worse

[tovej]

How can you claim this with a straight face, when Israel has slaughtered Palestinians like cattle every chance they have. And when they're not killing them with direct violence, they are robbing them of basic necessities and human dignity.

And how can you claim October 7th wasn't an act if war? The main thrust of the attacks were targeting military installations. Much more than Israeli actions in Gaza before or since, which have clearly been done in service of genocide since Israel was created.

The Palestinian genocide has not been a regular war, it has been an absolute extermination campaign that is still ongoing.