What? Why? This is a lot better than the alternative, which is Israel being in control of Gaza. And this is coming from someone who actually has friends living in Gaza. This is very good news in my opinion. Americans are an almost neutral party compared to the IDF.
Yes ideally, no one would occupy Gaza but again, the alternative is to let the army that's been genociding them for months occupy Gaza.
Edit:
Though if they actually go through with the plans to displace the local population, then yes it's just a continuation of said genocide. But as a temporary measure, this is still better than the Israeli alternative.
> This is a lot better than the alternative, which is Israel being in control of Gaza. And this is coming from someone who actually has friends living in Gaza.
Did you miss the part where he explicitly envisions all Palestinians in Gaza being relocated (to another country in the middle east, of course; America won't be accepting them)? Are you naive enough to think that's going to go well?
I hope for your friends' sake that this boondoggle gets exactly as much traction as the border wall and buying Greenland.
Edit: I posted this before you acknowledged the relocation plans. However, I have to point out, FTA:
> Earlier, in the Oval Office, when he also raised the idea, a reporter asked if Palestinians relocated would have the right to return.
> "Why would they want to return?" he responded.
> "It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn't want to return," he said. Why would they want to return? That place has been hell. It's been one of the meanest, one of the meanest, toughest places on earth," he said.
I agree with you that if it actually goes through (always a doubt with this administration lol), it will be really bad. But, imo letting people getting bombed while doing nothing about it is not much better. If it actually stops the current large scale humanitarian disaster, it's still better than what has been going on for more than a year with complete inaction from the US.
Israel was open about their goal of razing the city to the ground, regardless of what it meant in terms of human cost. And Israel would have gone through with it, as they have had absolutely no consequences up until noe. It was their end goal since October 7.
Whereas this can at least stop the bloodshed, and Americans are much less likely to be fully committed to actually erasing Palestinians from the territory than Israelis would be.
Again, in this case I'm just in favor of any action that puts something between Israel and the Gaza population.
That they even seriously discuss nazi-like population displacement is insane, but this entire situation has become so desperate, and the Israel government has been given so much leniency by every western government... that this lunacy is still better than the inevitable results of letting israel have free reigns over Gaza.
> If it actually stops the current large scale humanitarian disaster
There is absolutely no chance that it "stops" the large scale humanitarian disaster; the only thing on the table here is continuing the large scale humanitarian disaster to the exact same conclusion that Israel wanted.
> That they even seriously discuss nazi-like population displacement is insane, but this entire situation has become so desperate, and the Israel government has been given so much leniency by every western government... that this lunacy is still better than the inevitable results of letting israel have free reigns over Gaza.
Never forget that you said this; perhaps at least you will learn a lesson from it.
Why? Again, what do you think is the current alternative? The previous administration was basically letting israel do whatever it wants, so again, I'm not sure what's your point?
The only thing that was going to happen was Israel taking control over Gaza as a whole. Do you actually believe that that would've been better than American troops acting as a (very weak, for sure) tampon between the IDF and Gaza? As you said, the worst that can happen is Israel getting its way in Gaza anyways... but that's exactly what was going to be happening given the complete inaction from every (relevant) nation/state.
There's no lesson to learn from what I said. And I'm way past the point of having any delusions that something better could've happened for Gaza at this point. Westerner idealism is fine sometimes, but in this case, no one cares about Gaza. No country was going to save Gaza from Israel, and no one was going to stop Israel from doing anything it wanted to do there. In fact, no western nation was even willing to even just condemn Israel. That's just the reality.
I guess the previous administration made Americans feel better by just looking the other way while fully supporting the deaths of the Palestinian population? Like what's the lesson to be learnt here?
Clear takeaway is that the US does what benefits it, so has no problem being part of ethnic cleansing of a nation where it sees an opportunity to do so.
Which is a strong argument against allowing the US to have direct control of more land in the middle east, or anywhere else. Expansionism and Nationalism are a toxic mix.
Under no circumstances is the US having a presence in Gaza a benefit to anyone, even long term the US.
> That they even seriously discuss nazi-like population displacement is insane,
This sounds more Allied-like than Nazi-like.
The Allies engaged in a campaign of mass deportations in the aftermath of WW2, as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed at the Potsdam conference in 1945.
Nazis generally weren’t interested in deportation as a primary objective, only as a prelude to enslavement and extermination. Deporting populations without ever enslaving and exterminating them was more of an Allied thing than a Nazi thing.
It is also more of a Greece/Turkey thing than a Nazi thing.
Historians have two theories about the Holocaust, and there still isn’t a consensus on which is most correct:
1. Intentionalism: Hitler planned the Holocaust all along. When the Nazi leadership talked about deporting Jews, from the very start they were doing so as a conscious prelude to mass murder
2. Functionalism: the Holocaust wasn’t planned ahead of time, the Nazis made it up as they went along, it evolved through a bottom-up process of bureaucratic innovation. Initially, when the Nazis said “deportation to the East”, they literally meant just that; the Nazi officials who were receiving the deportees struggled to work out what to do with them, and adopted mass murder as a local bureaucratic solution to their problem. Hitler had explicitly ordered the mass murder of communists, he hadn’t done so for Jews, but they decided to apply his communist murder order to the Jewish deportees as well. The Nazi leadership soon learned of this local innovation and decided to tacitly endorse it rather than condemn it
Do people actually think that’s what is going to happen here though? I don’t think the Gazans are actually going anywhere, I think this is just an unrealistic proposal from Trump that will never be implemented, maybe it’s even some kind of negotiating strategy: Trump may think if he opens negotiations with the Arab states with some ultra-radical proposal, they’ll concede more in the end than he if hadn’t made it, even though this proposal will never be agreed. But suppose against the odds, Gaza does actually end up depopulated with its inhabitants moved to Egypt or Jordan or wherever - will the Egyptians/Jordanians/Americans/Israelis/etc end up murdering them all once they get there? That seems unlikely.
I regard Israel's actions in Gaza as genocidal, and I think it's now going to increase 10x. Your belief that the US is just talking big and won't actually do any of the insane stuff Trump is talking about is imho wildly misplaced. This is an unpleasant thing to say but I don't know how to put it any other way.
what's literally genocide here? Taking over Gaza with U.S. forces? Relocating the population? (hint, neither is actually genocide, literally or otherwise if you bother to look at any legitimate definition of the term)
As for calling Netenyahu's ferocious bombing campaign genocide, things get blurrier. That it was grotesquely inhumane and violent, absolutely, that it could be called a war crime? I'd say yes, though good luck finding any western power willing to genuinely prosecute. That it was a literal genocide? Not quite so certain. Motive matters. Genocides are a very particular type of tragedy, and re-defining every barbarity of war into one risks diluting the import of unambiguous genocide when it does happen.
If it wasn't genocide, then the world would have an easier time supporting them. Israel has used their "defense" forces since the beginning to attack, disable and displace ethnic Arabs living in their claimed territory. They did it in the 40s and 50s, they did it through the 60s and then again in the 80s, and in the 90s they did it once again with the Golan Heights law. It's a genocide as we know it, unless you're of the Chomsky brand of denial a-la Bosnia.
Ordinarily, nations with a preeminent claim to "living there" have a stronger defense when they say they were protecting themselves. Israel has a particular tenacity for moving their borders arbitrarily, ignoring international outcry and playing victim when the natives fight back.
The alternative view is that in every single war the neighbouring enemy had openly declared that it wanted to destroy the whole of Israel proper, and either attacked or were massed on its borders waiting to attack.
No "natives" have a right to pursue terrorism in order to grab land (Israel proper) back that they lost through war and international consensus, which is what the Palestinians and other neighbouring enemies have been doing for in the 30s (Hebron massacre 1930s, Sefad massacres 1830s), 40s (multi pronged war on the just-declared Israel), 50s (1953), 60s (1967), 70s (1973), 80s (Lebanon, PLO), 90s (intefada), etc etc
This is not defence by the natives, this is the grandchildren of a small population proving time and time again that allowing them independence will simply increase their continuous existential on threat to the established neighbouring state.
I decry the 25,000 civilian deaths in Gaza and even the 15,000 terrorist deaths but I put the blame for this on Hamas for committing true genocidal acts against Jews and then turning civilians into legitimate (proportional to the threat) military targets, and for the international community for very misguidedly hammering Israel with 10x times ferocity that they reserved for the terrorist who instigated this war.
Forced relocation is actually considered genocide of done with genocidal intent.
With Trump it's hard to tell, but I'd say Netenyah and Israel has been operating with genocidal intent and considering Trump said this sitting next to him, then yeah I'd be inclined to classify this as genocide.
Accusation of genocide is simply ridiculous considering this was without question an entirely defensive war against an enemy Hamas who wanted to commit the same atrocity repeatedly and embedded itself in civilians. International law as it exists today in allows civilian infrastructure to be targeted when it is used for military means, and each and every Israeli strike had to be approved by its legal team and were proceeded by warnings in the many situations when the military value would not be lost by pre-warning.
Having consumed far too much content and arguments throughout the past 16 months I have not once seen those that accuse Israel of war crimes being able to suggest and effective and reasonable alternative way to uproot the hamas threat (and suggesting that the two state solution which has remained elusive for 75 years and in the context of October the 7th would reward terrorism, is not a reasonable suggestion to an immediate threat)
If you listened to Trump, Gazans have to leave because every building in Gaza is demolished. Which was done under the careful watch of our previous president. So I doubt they feel much other than helplessness
First off, Gaza is not entirely demolished. It's a faux-pas like saying Lebanon is demolished, it's a hyperbolic euphemism for saying it needs to be annexed. If America wasn't systemically opposed to foreign aid we might... yunno, save these people like we do with the PKK.
Second off, the attacks on Gaza have been tolerated by several administrations including Trump's own first stab at office. He deliberately avoided conflict resolution because any international negotiations would draw attention to Israel's presently illegal borders.
Third off, any ethnic Arabs that voted for "Zion Don", a man who's name emblazons Trump Heights in illegally occupied Israeli territory, knew what they were getting into. The bigger problem was people abstaining to vote entirely and letting the opposition get their leverage.
> Here is what the Israelis would do: cut off food, power and water to Gaza, do their best to give everyone a safe way to walk out unarmed, house them in spartan but livable conditions, and send the Gazans to another country—preferably one in which they speak the language.
> ... And the site will be ready for development. Did I hear someone say “beachfront?”
> .. [Israel] could collectively grant them a slice of equity in the new Gaza. The new Gaza—developed, of course, by Jared Kushner—is the LA of the Mediterranean, an entirely new charter city on humanity’s oldest ocean, sublime real estate with an absolutely perfect, Apple-quality government
Radical polemicists like Yarvin seem to believe that they're impervious to real-world consequences when publishing venomous blather like this. I guess it's inevitable when you live your entire life like a jar-brain in an era of relative lawfulness and tranquility. They would do well to reflect on La Mort de Marat: the country has no shortage of rage and weaponry and we're all made of the same meat in the end.
Remember Trump/Vance is the peace ticket. They will end the Ukraine war day one and won't let special interests drag the US military into any more conflicts (other than Gaza, the 51st state of Canada, Greenland, Panana, fighting the Mexican Cartels).
Continuation of neoliberal policies. The Biden administration having no spine (or desire) to stop Israel from blowing up children 24/7 has led to the logical conclusion of finishing the genocide with a dash of nihilistic capitalism allowing beachfront investment properties to be built in Palestine’s place, cementing the USA and Israel’s legacy.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 91.5 ms ] threadYes ideally, no one would occupy Gaza but again, the alternative is to let the army that's been genociding them for months occupy Gaza.
Edit: Though if they actually go through with the plans to displace the local population, then yes it's just a continuation of said genocide. But as a temporary measure, this is still better than the Israeli alternative.
Did you miss the part where he explicitly envisions all Palestinians in Gaza being relocated (to another country in the middle east, of course; America won't be accepting them)? Are you naive enough to think that's going to go well?
I hope for your friends' sake that this boondoggle gets exactly as much traction as the border wall and buying Greenland.
Edit: I posted this before you acknowledged the relocation plans. However, I have to point out, FTA:
> Earlier, in the Oval Office, when he also raised the idea, a reporter asked if Palestinians relocated would have the right to return.
> "Why would they want to return?" he responded.
> "It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn't want to return," he said. Why would they want to return? That place has been hell. It's been one of the meanest, one of the meanest, toughest places on earth," he said.
Israel was open about their goal of razing the city to the ground, regardless of what it meant in terms of human cost. And Israel would have gone through with it, as they have had absolutely no consequences up until noe. It was their end goal since October 7.
Whereas this can at least stop the bloodshed, and Americans are much less likely to be fully committed to actually erasing Palestinians from the territory than Israelis would be.
Again, in this case I'm just in favor of any action that puts something between Israel and the Gaza population.
That they even seriously discuss nazi-like population displacement is insane, but this entire situation has become so desperate, and the Israel government has been given so much leniency by every western government... that this lunacy is still better than the inevitable results of letting israel have free reigns over Gaza.
There is absolutely no chance that it "stops" the large scale humanitarian disaster; the only thing on the table here is continuing the large scale humanitarian disaster to the exact same conclusion that Israel wanted.
> That they even seriously discuss nazi-like population displacement is insane, but this entire situation has become so desperate, and the Israel government has been given so much leniency by every western government... that this lunacy is still better than the inevitable results of letting israel have free reigns over Gaza.
Never forget that you said this; perhaps at least you will learn a lesson from it.
The only thing that was going to happen was Israel taking control over Gaza as a whole. Do you actually believe that that would've been better than American troops acting as a (very weak, for sure) tampon between the IDF and Gaza? As you said, the worst that can happen is Israel getting its way in Gaza anyways... but that's exactly what was going to be happening given the complete inaction from every (relevant) nation/state.
There's no lesson to learn from what I said. And I'm way past the point of having any delusions that something better could've happened for Gaza at this point. Westerner idealism is fine sometimes, but in this case, no one cares about Gaza. No country was going to save Gaza from Israel, and no one was going to stop Israel from doing anything it wanted to do there. In fact, no western nation was even willing to even just condemn Israel. That's just the reality.
I guess the previous administration made Americans feel better by just looking the other way while fully supporting the deaths of the Palestinian population? Like what's the lesson to be learnt here?
Which is a strong argument against allowing the US to have direct control of more land in the middle east, or anywhere else. Expansionism and Nationalism are a toxic mix.
Under no circumstances is the US having a presence in Gaza a benefit to anyone, even long term the US.
Israel wants to expel every palestinian from the west bank, so no, the previous administration was in no way letting israel do whatever it wants.
This sounds more Allied-like than Nazi-like.
The Allies engaged in a campaign of mass deportations in the aftermath of WW2, as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed at the Potsdam conference in 1945.
Nazis generally weren’t interested in deportation as a primary objective, only as a prelude to enslavement and extermination. Deporting populations without ever enslaving and exterminating them was more of an Allied thing than a Nazi thing.
It is also more of a Greece/Turkey thing than a Nazi thing.
1. Intentionalism: Hitler planned the Holocaust all along. When the Nazi leadership talked about deporting Jews, from the very start they were doing so as a conscious prelude to mass murder
2. Functionalism: the Holocaust wasn’t planned ahead of time, the Nazis made it up as they went along, it evolved through a bottom-up process of bureaucratic innovation. Initially, when the Nazis said “deportation to the East”, they literally meant just that; the Nazi officials who were receiving the deportees struggled to work out what to do with them, and adopted mass murder as a local bureaucratic solution to their problem. Hitler had explicitly ordered the mass murder of communists, he hadn’t done so for Jews, but they decided to apply his communist murder order to the Jewish deportees as well. The Nazi leadership soon learned of this local innovation and decided to tacitly endorse it rather than condemn it
Do people actually think that’s what is going to happen here though? I don’t think the Gazans are actually going anywhere, I think this is just an unrealistic proposal from Trump that will never be implemented, maybe it’s even some kind of negotiating strategy: Trump may think if he opens negotiations with the Arab states with some ultra-radical proposal, they’ll concede more in the end than he if hadn’t made it, even though this proposal will never be agreed. But suppose against the odds, Gaza does actually end up depopulated with its inhabitants moved to Egypt or Jordan or wherever - will the Egyptians/Jordanians/Americans/Israelis/etc end up murdering them all once they get there? That seems unlikely.
As for calling Netenyahu's ferocious bombing campaign genocide, things get blurrier. That it was grotesquely inhumane and violent, absolutely, that it could be called a war crime? I'd say yes, though good luck finding any western power willing to genuinely prosecute. That it was a literal genocide? Not quite so certain. Motive matters. Genocides are a very particular type of tragedy, and re-defining every barbarity of war into one risks diluting the import of unambiguous genocide when it does happen.
Ordinarily, nations with a preeminent claim to "living there" have a stronger defense when they say they were protecting themselves. Israel has a particular tenacity for moving their borders arbitrarily, ignoring international outcry and playing victim when the natives fight back.
The alternative view is that in every single war the neighbouring enemy had openly declared that it wanted to destroy the whole of Israel proper, and either attacked or were massed on its borders waiting to attack.
No "natives" have a right to pursue terrorism in order to grab land (Israel proper) back that they lost through war and international consensus, which is what the Palestinians and other neighbouring enemies have been doing for in the 30s (Hebron massacre 1930s, Sefad massacres 1830s), 40s (multi pronged war on the just-declared Israel), 50s (1953), 60s (1967), 70s (1973), 80s (Lebanon, PLO), 90s (intefada), etc etc
This is not defence by the natives, this is the grandchildren of a small population proving time and time again that allowing them independence will simply increase their continuous existential on threat to the established neighbouring state.
I decry the 25,000 civilian deaths in Gaza and even the 15,000 terrorist deaths but I put the blame for this on Hamas for committing true genocidal acts against Jews and then turning civilians into legitimate (proportional to the threat) military targets, and for the international community for very misguidedly hammering Israel with 10x times ferocity that they reserved for the terrorist who instigated this war.
> Israel has a particular tenacity for moving their borders arbitrarily
Losing has consequences. Israels neighbors shouldnt keep attacking them if they want to keep all their land
With Trump it's hard to tell, but I'd say Netenyah and Israel has been operating with genocidal intent and considering Trump said this sitting next to him, then yeah I'd be inclined to classify this as genocide.
Having consumed far too much content and arguments throughout the past 16 months I have not once seen those that accuse Israel of war crimes being able to suggest and effective and reasonable alternative way to uproot the hamas threat (and suggesting that the two state solution which has remained elusive for 75 years and in the context of October the 7th would reward terrorism, is not a reasonable suggestion to an immediate threat)
Second off, the attacks on Gaza have been tolerated by several administrations including Trump's own first stab at office. He deliberately avoided conflict resolution because any international negotiations would draw attention to Israel's presently illegal borders.
Third off, any ethnic Arabs that voted for "Zion Don", a man who's name emblazons Trump Heights in illegally occupied Israeli territory, knew what they were getting into. The bigger problem was people abstaining to vote entirely and letting the opposition get their leverage.
> Here is what the Israelis would do: cut off food, power and water to Gaza, do their best to give everyone a safe way to walk out unarmed, house them in spartan but livable conditions, and send the Gazans to another country—preferably one in which they speak the language.
> ... And the site will be ready for development. Did I hear someone say “beachfront?”
> .. [Israel] could collectively grant them a slice of equity in the new Gaza. The new Gaza—developed, of course, by Jared Kushner—is the LA of the Mediterranean, an entirely new charter city on humanity’s oldest ocean, sublime real estate with an absolutely perfect, Apple-quality government