Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Dill]

(04-15-2024, 09:18 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: I’m afraid a stupid ass religious war doesn’t end. Unless God shows up and ends it or if we can convince all the hardcore religious types their religion is wrong. And I don’t see either of those happening.

So somebody needs to stand up and say enough is enough. Or they can just keep taking turns attacking killing and destroying until they pull the whole region and eventually the world into their bullshit fighting.

I'm aware of three different frameworks for understanding the conflict, each of which rests on differing degrees of history and assigns blame differently, thus implying very different "solutions."

1. Dispossession and occupation are the primary cause of the conflict, illegal and ongoing. Palestinians resist theft of their land and the murderous, asymmetrical violence of the occupation, and won't stop resisting until they achieve protection under their own state. This interpretation rests on a history which begins in pre-mandatory Palestine, when Jews and Muslims lived in greater mutual tolerance than Jews and Christians in Europe. Two-state/one-state solutions are possible in principle, but Israel cannot recognize this "cause" without acknowledging the dispossession as illegal and maintained by military violence. And most Israelis won't accept a one-state solution if that means ethnic equality of all citizens.

2. Two nationalisms are competing for the same territory. Their claims are rather equal and motivations similar, but possession is 9/10ths of the law, so advantage Israel. This interpretation is rooted in an ostensibly neutral "both sides do it" history. Various two-state and one-state solutions are possible in principle, but rendered unlikely by the history of violence and each side's view that the other's nationalism is an existential threat to its own. 

3. It's a religious war, and intractable because people won't give up their religious identity. Israel has a Biblical claim to the land which supersedes all others, so they aren't "dispossessing" anyone by taking back what's theirs. Palestinians really attack Israel because they hate Jews. Other Arabs, like those in southern Lebanon, also hate Jews for being Jews. Israel mostly wants peace, but the hate has always been there and always will be, so Israelis can't do anything about that but defend themselves for being Jews. The history of the conflict reveals nothing important beyond this eternal cycle of hate.

Political commentary and news reporting tend to endorse one of these. In Muslim countries #1 predominates. In GB and Europe there is a mixture, with #1 and lots of #2. In Israel it seems to be mostly #2 and #3. In the siloed US newscape, mostly #3 from politicians and right wing media, and a mixture of the rest in MSM and flagship news sources.