War, what is it good for?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

You don't get to collectively punish Jews and Israelis for this crime. It's really not that hard of a principle to understand.

Israel should be restrained by the international community to a much greater extent. Israel is committing a genocide and should be stopped, not encouraged in this direction by the likes of Trump. But genociding Israelis is just so obviously stupid, unprincipled, and moreover , unlikely to happen. Advocating this makes you as bad as Hamas and Netanyahu. It also makes you a deeply unserious person whose views on this issue are worth nothing.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

If someone illegally forced you out of your home at gunpoint and stole all your possessions, at what point would you decide "oh well it probably belongs to them", then?

I'm assuming 24 hours from the way you're posting? Maybe a couple of days?

By this logic, should my half-native friend get to genocide colonizers (including the more-white parts of his family?)? Or should he himself be genocided for the sins of some of his great great grandparents?

I'm a 5th generation settler Canadian. Is that long enough to have a claim? Or could I be expelled to America is enough white Canadians acted poorly? What about all the Vietnamese and Indians who came in the last 30 years?

There really might be a magical line that determines when a person belongs somewhere. If you stole it yesterday, give it back. If your great grandkids are walking around the city you built it's a lil too late.

[Jamiet99uk]

On 10th April 1948, the Deir Yassin massacre took place when around 120 fighters from the Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, in which most of the residents were stonecutters and quarry workers.

Around 150 Palestinians, including many women and children, were killed, among them people who had been decapitated, disembowelled, mutilated, and raped.

One Zionist militiaman, Yehuda Feder, described his part in the massacre:

“I killed an armed Arab man and two Arab girls of 16 or 17 who were helping the Arab who was shooting. I stood them against a wall and blasted them with two rounds from the Tommy gun”.

He also recounted looting from the Palestinians' homes:

"a lot of money and silver and gold jewelry fell into our hands", and described the massacre as a "tremendous operation".

Dozens of bodies were then piled up and burned. The incident led to many Palestinians fleeing in terror, and was a key event in the ethnic cleansing of the area, during which over 700,000 of the 900,000 Palestinian Arab residents of what became "Israel" were expelled or forced to flee from their homes.

The Israeli army, which incorporated Irgun, today still refuses to release its photographs and documentation of the massacre.

Israel is the Nazis; it has no more legitimacy than a Nazi state; it should be dismantled.

[Jamiet99uk]

The IDF and the Waffen SS are now indistinguishable.
It was already heading that way in 1948.

[CaptainFritz28]

Ah! The ol' "ignore the opposing points and they'll go away" trick, I see.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Maybe it helps to meet Jamie halfway? Kind of hard to have a discussion with someone whose view is explicitly pro-genocide.

Nazi Germany was terrible and was rightly "dismantled". That has little bearing on the legitimacy of modern Germany.

The UK was committing all sorts of massacres, and supporting many genocides, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Its colonial regimes were terrible and were rightly "dismantled" in the decades that followed. That has little bearing on the legitimacy of the UK in the 2020s.

Israel's crimes in the 40s don't invalidate the state forever. But the continuing atrocities, which are rightly characterized as genocide, do invalidate the Israeli governments that perpetrate them in my view.

Bibi is a jailable war criminal. IDF members responsible for okaying, then committing, human rights abuses should face a Nuremburg-style reckoning. The same is true for Hamas' leadership, its members who kill and kidnap citizens, and the Iranian and Qatari elites who back them.

So are the Netanyahu/Hamas governments an intolerable scourge that should be opposed until they are disempowered? Absolutely. If that were all that was meant by "dismantle," I’d be onboard—overthrowing governments that commit crimes against humanity is justice. But Jamie is saying millions of civilians should be expelled. That’s not justice. That’s ethnic cleansing, and it mirrors the very crimes he claims to oppose. A reverse genocide was not required to rectify the crimes of UK colonialism or German Nazism.

[Jamiet99uk]

Maybe it helps to meet Jamie halfway? Kind of hard to have a discussion with someone whose view is explicitly pro-genocide.

Nazi Germany was terrible and was rightly "dismantled". That has little bearing on the legitimacy of modern Germany.

The UK was committing all sorts of massacres, and supporting many genocides, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Its colonial regimes were terrible and were rightly "dismantled" in the decades that followed. That has little bearing on the legitimacy of the UK in the 2020s.

Israel's crimes in the 40s don't invalidate the state forever. But the continuing atrocities, which are rightly characterized as genocide, do invalidate the Israeli governments that perpetrate them in my view.

Bibi is a jailable war criminal. IDF members responsible for okaying, then committing, human rights abuses should face a Nuremburg-style reckoning. The same is true for Hamas' leadership, its members who kill and kidnap citizens, and the Iranian and Qatari elites who back them.

So are the Netanyahu/Hamas governments an intolerable scourge that should be opposed until they are disempowered? Absolutely. If that were all that was meant by "dismantle," I’d be onboard—overthrowing governments that commit crimes against humanity is justice. But Jamie is saying millions of civilians should be expelled. That’s not justice. That’s ethnic cleansing, and it mirrors the very crimes he claims to oppose. A reverse genocide was not required to rectify the crimes of UK colonialism or German Nazism.

This is insightful and balanced and I think I agree with it.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Imagine all the things the West could / should be doing to restrain Israel that don't involve the evil and impossible task of forcibly relocating all Israelis:

• We could make military, trade, investment and diplomatic ties with Israel contingent on its human rights record.

• We could sanction individual members of the Israeli government, or Israel as a whole.

• We could more forcefully assert ourselves as providers of aid and security for Gazans.

• We could diplomatically isolate Israel.

• More countries could sign on to enforce the ICC's ruling against Netanyahu.

There are, however, practical limitation to the actions we might take even if we thought they were morally justified.

Israel gets leeway from the West to behave criminally in huge part because we're currently relying on them to contain Iran. That makes cutting military support trickier than it would otherwise be. It also rules out potential last-resort military actions that could be taken against Israel (which is anyhow prevented by Israel's nuclear weapons). This is morally repugnant, but nothing new in international affairs. It's not unlike our deference to the Saudis.

[CaptainFritz28]

Maybe it helps to meet Jamie halfway? Kind of hard to have a discussion with someone whose view is explicitly pro-genocide.

Nazi Germany was terrible and was rightly "dismantled". That has little bearing on the legitimacy of modern Germany.

The UK was committing all sorts of massacres, and supporting many genocides, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Its colonial regimes were terrible and were rightly "dismantled" in the decades that followed. That has little bearing on the legitimacy of the UK in the 2020s.

Israel's crimes in the 40s don't invalidate the state forever. But the continuing atrocities, which are rightly characterized as genocide, do invalidate the Israeli governments that perpetrate them in my view.

Bibi is a jailable war criminal. IDF members responsible for okaying, then committing, human rights abuses should face a Nuremburg-style reckoning. The same is true for Hamas' leadership, its members who kill and kidnap citizens, and the Iranian and Qatari elites who back them.

So are the Netanyahu/Hamas governments an intolerable scourge that should be opposed until they are disempowered? Absolutely. If that were all that was meant by "dismantle," I’d be onboard—overthrowing governments that commit crimes against humanity is justice. But Jamie is saying millions of civilians should be expelled. That’s not justice. That’s ethnic cleansing, and it mirrors the very crimes he claims to oppose. A reverse genocide was not required to rectify the crimes of UK colonialism or German Nazism.

This is insightful and balanced and I think I agree with it.

It's the very thing we've been saying for a while...

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-struggle-find-water-clean-sources-become-increasingly-scarce-2025-04-11/

Israel is destroying itself with its callousness towards Gazans. Is there anyone left in the West defending Israel's actions other than Douglas Murray? Evil shit like denying aid while destroying civilian infrastructure makes their genocidal intentions quite clear. Gazans will be radicalized by this in perpetuity.

[Jamiet99uk]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-struggle-find-water-clean-sources-become-increasingly-scarce-2025-04-11/

Israel is destroying itself with its callousness towards Gazans. Is there anyone left in the West defending Israel's actions other than Douglas Murray? Evil shit like denying aid while destroying civilian infrastructure makes their genocidal intentions quite clear. Gazans will be radicalized by this in perpetuity.

The problem is, yes. They have lots of supporters in the West.

Trump supports them.
The UK is providing the IDF with weapons and military equipment.

[Octavious]

The UK provides trainer aircraft and telecoms equipment, as well as a few naval bits and pieces, that in total amounts to a princely sum equivalent to the value of a small residential street of houses. We are less crucial to the Israeli war effort than the Nazi's armband supplier was to Hitler's dreams of world domination. The anti Israel lobby has been utterly victorious in the arena of arms supply, and it's crazy to pretend otherwise.

The US and Germany are important to Israel. We are not. Which is one of the reasons why we have feck all influence

[Jamiet99uk]

I was not commenting on the precise economic or military value of the UK's supplies to Israel.

I was responding to Bert's question about whether "anyone in the West" still supports Israel.

[Octavious]

Indeed so, and from a weapons and military equipment perspective we don't. Diplomatically we are not actively hostile, but not particularly supportive either. Very much taking the "I say, you probably shouldn't be doing that. That's really just not on, chaps" approach.

Like I say, your people have largely won the argument as far as offering support goes

[Jamiet99uk]

I don't agree.

But, as long as the USA supports the Israel killing machine, nothing else matters very much I guess.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-americans-view-israel-and-the-israel-hamas-war-at-the-start-of-trumps-second-term/

An interesting read on US impressions of Israel. In short, the old, the white, the protestant, and Trump voters still hold mainly favourable views of Israel's current government and its conduct in this conflict.

But support for Israel has declined across the board, even among those groups that still have an overall favourable view.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

~5 months into Trump II, how are folks feeling about the US' role in global conflicts?

Russia-Ukraine has clearly been more difficult to resolve that Trump characterized it (to put it mildly). The rather embarrassing US capitulation to Russia's preferred narrative and material interests re: the war don't seem to have made any meaningful difference. But maybe we should give the admin credit for at least trying something different? Steadfast adherence to the Biden approach didn't seem likely to work either. Europe might be less secure than before, but how else were the Americans going to ween them off their dependence on US security, which seems to me like a legitimate goal?

It seems to me Israel has gone full genocide in Gaza, with what seems like Trump's explicit blessing. Again, the former Biden policy obviously wasn't optimal, but on this issue I feel quite comfortable saying the Trump approach is worse.

I'm just confused about Trump's approach to China this time around. My uncharitable view is that Trump is playing dangerous games with trade brinksmanship without much forethought or strategy, in search of short-term gains among his own base. The US played its hand way too early with a de-facto embargo, which probably makes the prospect of a Taiwan blockade/invasion much easier to contemplate. It seems fairly obvious to me the US' un-strategic belligerence on trade in general has greatly strengthened China's hand among countries that find themselves caught between US and Chinese influence.

[Octavious]

Pretty good for the most part.

The Ukraine situation has progressed well. Trump has to take credit for changing the mood music in Europe from the ridiculous "win at any cost" narrative to a realistic approach to peace. Forcing Ukraine to accept the reality that regaining all lost territory wasn't going to happen proved challenging but was successful. Convincing Russia that there is no prospect of quick wins beyond the territory they've captured is also proving challenging, but scheduled peace talks in Turkey give some hope of imminent improvement, although a lasting peace still feels distant.

Gaza remains grim. What is remarkable is that despite the Gazan situation Trump’s relationship with various Arab states seems to be at an all time high. What is also remarkable (and I don't know if this is true across the West, but it certainly is in the UK) is that Gaza has very much slipped from the headlines. You get the occasional story, but unless you specifically seek out Gaza news you could be forgiven for assuming things had settled down. I can't say I understand either of these... in many ways as baffling as it is depressing.

As far as China goes, I don't think that demonstrating that Trump is willing and able to play mutually damaging trade cards has done the strength of his hand any harm. It has similar value to a nuclear test. A little reminder of what could happen if Trump was suitably motivated. I suspect that China could have reasonable confidence that if they acted under Biden there was a good chance that sanctions would be pretty tokenistic. China knows with certainty that if Trump is angered the sanctions will be immediate and potent.

But yes, I agree that the likelihood is that US diplomatic influence has taken a bit of a hit. Whether that's enough of a hit to make China look relatively attractive (their own heavy handed diplomacy doesn't exactly inspire friendship) remains to be seen, but it's potentially a dangerous situation

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I basically agree with the entirety of your post, but I'd quibble on the trade war with China. I suspect the US revealed that they are more vulnerable to a full embargo than China, if not economically than at least politically. Maybe the Chinese leadership already intuited that, but it seems rather unfortunate to have proved that out in what looks an awful lot like a totally unforced error by the Trump admin (and for what gain?).

I guess I'd also quibble on calling Trump's middle east policy a success. It is interesting that the Arab states (and basically everyone else) have just given up on Gaza. I guess that's a "success" from an American foreign policy perspective...but I think it's probably more important to focus on whether Trump's complacency / encouragement allowed for the escalation of Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign. Not that Biden was any good on this, but I really don't know if Democrats could have stood idly by during a "finish the job" phase of the conflict.

[Octavious]

You may well be right, and for want of access to China's inner circle I suspect we'll never know for sure. Still, interesting to speculate about.

As you say, the success of the Middle East is very much a matter of perspective. From Trump's point of view it seems a clear and obvious win on every matter he gives a damn about. From the point of view of Palestine, something of a disaster. From Israel's point of view, which I have a lot more time for than many here, it also feels like a disaster. They have allowed tragedy to push them into embracing a darker side of their national character, and it is hard to recover from such a journey