California and ICE actions in general are important to address, but I believe they were created as a distraction from the authoritarian provisions of the BBB tax bill.
they can be, and in fact are, both horrific actions as well as distractions.
you need to deal with both the reality and the background at the same time rather than letting them get a pass for daily actions that would have had any previous president impeached and convicted.
You might believe that but their past behaviour, plans and reasoning have all been unpredictable and ostensibly irrational so there's really no reason to believe this over anything else. The next person could say they believe he wants to enact martial law, and the next could say it wasn't even an expected outcome.
In fact I bet there would be as many seemingly reasonable beliefs as there would be people willing to comment on it.
The only thing for sure is that we don't know and anyone outside the administration claiming a level of certainty around it is doing nothing more than confabulating.
Trump is just the tool of the heritage Foundation and the federalist society, project 2025 is their plan. If trump goes against them he'll be out in no time and their true puppet can take his place, Vance.
I don't know about Vance. I don't think he's a true believer, but I could be wrong.
My best read on him is that his agenda is himself (to steal a line from Robert Parker). He's moving whichever way he needs to in order to continue to climb. I have no idea who he'd be as president.
But that's my impression. He could be on board with Project 2025 (as opposed to parroting it).
He worked for Thiel and his political career was funded by Thiel, is friends with him and Curtis Yarvin, who is the originator of many of the things they're doing in project 2025.
He could be in it for himself and using them, but I think he's a believer as he keeps quoting and repeating ideas from Yarvin. I dont think that trump is a believer, he is using them to execute his revenge and gain power.
The majority of Jewish people in Israel are Mizrahi Jews, ie they remained in the Middle East in places like Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria. There are also Ashekanzi Jews who are also Jewish but migrated to Europe, kept in isolated communities, and returned. 20% of the population are also Arabs that arrived from the Arabian peninsula.
I think this is directionally and importantly true, but, for the record, the notion of a "settler colony" was invented to capture the distinction between colonies that exist to shuttle resources and colonies that exist to create new homeland.
(The Mizrahim fatally complicate any effort to sum Israel up as any kind of simplistic entity, and the term "European" to describe it is practically a slur.)
A lot of Palestinian activists do support the Land back movement in the USA. I‘m curious if you do? Or if you support indigenous rights in general (with the exception of Palestinians)?
I‘m also curious why you seem so fixated on the Arab conquest of the region in the 7th century, but not the Roman occupation 6 centuries earlier, or the Ottoman conquest 8 centuries later (or the British occupation later still)? Especially since the Roman occupation was far more brutal and left a much greater wound in Jewish history than any of the later conquests and occupations of the region.
For clarification, in 136 CE Hadrian banned Jews (as well as Christians) from living in Jerusalem after having ethnically cleansed the city of Jewish presence. Neither the Arabs nor the Ottomans did that. This was reversed a couple of centuries later. Ironically, the city remained unsegregated (where Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all allowed to live in the city and practice their respective religion) all the way until Israel conquered half the city in 1948, and occupied the other half of it in 1967, where it now excludes any Palestinian presence, be they Christian or Muslim.
Joran ethnically cleansed all Jews from East Jerusalem and West Bank. And then annexed it.
With regards "unsegregated": " For example, in public baths in Jerusalem, where all residents are allowed to go, Jews must continue to be distinguished from Muslims. In everyday life, the Jew must wear a yellow turban. Removing it or wearing any other color is interpreted as an attempt to pass oneself off as a Muslim. Jewish women must wear a yellow garment or piece of cloth to distinguish themselves from Muslim women. The nudity of public baths meant that another distinctive sign was required: any Jew entering the baths had to carry a bell to signal his arrival." aka "the day to day live of dhimmi"
Also, you make it sound like there are no Palestinians in Jerusalem. Wikipedia helpfully states: " In 2022, Jerusalem had a population of some 971,800 residents, of which almost 60% were Jews and almost 40% Palestinians.[14][note 4] In 2020, the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%), and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%)."
Sorry, I misspoke in my posting. I was gonna say zones which exclude Palestinians, i.e. the city is now segregated as a result of the Israeli occupation and illegal annexation of the city.
The segregation of 1948 was a direct result of Israels unilateral declaration of independence. So I think we can say that the city was unsegregated from the fourth century, throughout the Arab and the Ottoman conquest, all the way up to the formation of Israel, at which point the city became segregated again for the first time since the Roman period.
Just to clarify: I’m not a fan of segregation, it was not OK when Jordan did it, it was very bad that the Romans did it. And it is even worse that Israel is still doing it.
Israeli Arabs and Druze are allowed into Jerusalem. It’s just not people from a specific territory with the history of causing violence towards Israelis.
Ramat Eshkol was established as a Jewish neighborhood soon after the 1967 occupation. It is one of 9 inner settlements in East Jerusalem where Palestinians are not allowed.
These “just not people from a specific territory” are Palestinians who are Christian or Muslim, because of their ethnicity, regardless of criminal history. This is segregation.
You know that doesn’t happen, and you know why. Israel has extreme racial discrimination, and the settlers that live in these neighborhoods are the some of the worst case of racial sectarian violence.
There are around 220,000 Jewish Israeli Settlers living in East Jerusalem, how many non-jewish Israelis do you think live in these neighborhoods? I tried to search for the number but couldn’t. I would be surprised if it is more then a 1000.
Whether this reality is because of policy or not is not what I am debating (although the answer seems kind of obvious; unless you dispute Israel’s apartheid policies). The reality is that Jerusalem is currently a segregated city.
I feel like you are trying to catch me in a contradiction. You may very well success (if you haven’t already) I am not good at debating. All I am trying to say is that Jerusalem is a segregated city now, like it was during the Roman period, but unlike during the Arab or the Ottoman rule.
> Both Ramat Eshkol and East Jerusalem more broadly are majority Arab.
East Jerusalem is yes. But there are inner settlements which exclude a certain ethnicity, which makes the city segregated.
Where did you get the information that Ramat Eshkol was majority Arab? I tried to search online and all I saw was the fact that it was a Jewish Neighborhood (a funny way to describe an illegal settlement).
If you said this about black people in the USA it would correctly be marked as extremely racist.
Saying this about Palestinians is also very racist, participatory since there are people on this very thread flat out denying the existence of Palestinians (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259547).
I didn’t accuse you of denying the existence of Palestinans, I merely pointed out there are other people on this thread that do. Your rhetoric about the displacement of Palestinians as if there is only some free-market/free-choice dynamic at play, but not a systematic exclusion of Palestinians from certain parts of the city lends it self well with the people on this threat that go even further then you in their racist beliefs.
> Also Mosab Hassan Yousef famously denies existence of Palestinians. Is he racist as well?
Yes.
Regarding Zuheir Mohsen there is a difference when you deny your ethnicity in solidarity with your neighbors with a common cause, then when you deny the existence of an indigenous population who are suffering at the hands of an oppressive settler colonial power. Zuheir Mohsen is doing the former while Mosab Hassan Yousef is doing the latter. Only the latter is racist.
i had no rhetoric on displacement of Palestinians. On the other side you repeatedly ignore that segregation of Jerusalem and ethnic cleansing of Jews from there and entire west bank was result of Jordanian aggression.
There is no systemic exclusion of palestinians from certain parts of the city. Your proofs are random real-estate articles about new neighborhoods been build.
>Regarding Zuheir Mohsen there is a difference when you deny your ethnicity in solidarity with your neighbors with a common cause,
You should revisit the quote. he doesn't deny it in solidarity. He says that it was invented: "The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine".
You also seems not to be familiar with Mosam Hassan Yousef. I'll suggest you to find some of his talks where he describes west bank in 80s and how things rolled from there.
To be honest, I find your rhetoric borderline racist, both towards jewish refugees that exercised their right of return and self determination and towards palestinians whom you deny any agency (you literally called palestinian racist towards palestinians, because you think that you understand local matters better) and touching base with blood libels
> A lot of Palestinian activists do support the Land back movement in the USA. I‘m curious if you do?
No. I wouldn’t want to send the arabs back to the arabian peninsula, or get that land my family had in Ireland back from the British either. But history is history. Jews were there 1600 years before arab colonisation.
> I‘m also curious why you seem so fixated on the Arab conquest
I’m not focused on the arab conquest, happy to talk about BGRBACOB rather than just A but people are discussing Palestinians (who before the 1960s referred to themselves as Arabs).
I’m not sure if you’re unaware of the concepts of Dhimmis and Jizya or the violence against Jews from Arabs in the early 20th century, which prompted the partition of British Palestine into one Jewish and two Arab states. Jewish people living as second class citizens under the Arabs was not a viable option.
Allowing Israelis and foreigners of all nations and religions to visit Jerusalem, yet not allowing Palestinians to enter Israel makes sense given security issues, I’m sure you would do the same.
Again though, HN isn’t a politics chat and we’re all about to be warned by Dan G or the new person to stop this conversation so I’m probably not going to participate.
I honestly do not think a geographically separated Palestinian state would work exactly for the same reasons it did not work out for east Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh.
Clearly one of two things will ultimately occur:
1. A right wing Israeli government will eject non-citizen Arabs from the land either by settlement, starvation, or ejection. Then Israel will annex that land. This can only occur because everyone else implicitly authorizes it. This is the most likely scenario.
2. An international military coalition will invade and impose a military occupation like NATO did to the Balkans in the 1990s. This is easier than it sounds from a military perspective because Israel is small and simple to isolate. Just like Israel isolates the occupied territories they too can be isolated just the same. It’s only challenging from a political perspective.
Neighbours have always attacked en masse: in 1948 they attacked en masse and lost and a Jewish state was established, in 1967 they attacked en masse and lost and Israel gained Judea and Samaria / West bank, in 1973 they attacked en masse and lost. Plus various combinations of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah attacking since, and losing.
Dear, past performance does not predict the future one. Israel hasn't done anything to build good will, on the opposite, they are increasingly negatively viewed, at least in Europe.
> This is easier than it sounds from a military perspective because Israel is small and simple to isolate.
Does that sort of thing even work against nuclear powers? You could certainly isolate them like North Korea, but no country would be willing to invade for fear of seeing a mushroom cloud over their capital.
Fortunately, not even the crazier dictators have opted for nuclear war. Even Putin shied away from it, he understood the political price is preferable to the material price.
Gaza is a challenge, to be sure. But the West Bank is a largish chunk of contiguous land, and is at least potentially a stable state.
But there are also Jewish settlements on the West Bank land, so it's not exactly the contiguous territory that it might be. Two-state solutions usually require either removing those settlements or putting them under Palestinian control, and the current Israeli government is extremely reluctant to accept either of those outcomes.
One could imagine a future government that is more amenable to that. That would still leave a disconnected Gaza, but it might just tamp down some of the hostilities.
Destabilization (e.g., military wars, trade wars, immigration wars, etc.) favors the strongest / wealthiest. Such chaos favors the status quo. The USA has no interest in peace in the Middle East.
The US just established the Abraham accords, with a large amount of majority Arab countries recognising Israel right before Hamas attacked. There’s a theory the attacks had a larger political goal which was to stop this widespread support for Jews living in their homeland.
No, you don't understand. US bad. Middle eastern "natives" good (the absurdity of calling anyone natives in a region that was conquered about 6 times, half the population deported and a fresh group of "loyal" subjects shipped in from elsewhere every 300 years since Julius Caesar vacationed in Egypt is too much for me)
Those natives just committed a large massacre? They're still good. Did a few massacres on their own people on the way? Still good.
US actually got close to a big peace deal? Still bad. The US doing everything for oil? EVIL! (... never mind that without oil the entire region, except Israel, would be worse than Afghanistan in every way imaginable, including human rights)
USA and the UK were also on the wrong side of the South African apartheid struggle. It's disheartening how the most horrible people keep deciding the fates of millions throughout history.
68 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadWe live in an Attention Economy that massively benefits Attention seekers.
So it become easy to mistake attention capture with getting complicated things done.
Tell that to California. Trump and his ilk are buffoons but they aren't simply putting on a show for the 'gram.
And if Trump is doing this just as a distraction (I'm not convinced), then would he be willing to invade Greenland as a distraction too?
They will use that. They'll use what's happening in LA to justify the need for more power vested in the president.
You're right, we do need to do something about ICEis, but it is urgent we do something about the authoritarian measures in BBB.
you need to deal with both the reality and the background at the same time rather than letting them get a pass for daily actions that would have had any previous president impeached and convicted.
In fact I bet there would be as many seemingly reasonable beliefs as there would be people willing to comment on it.
The only thing for sure is that we don't know and anyone outside the administration claiming a level of certainty around it is doing nothing more than confabulating.
My best read on him is that his agenda is himself (to steal a line from Robert Parker). He's moving whichever way he needs to in order to continue to climb. I have no idea who he'd be as president.
But that's my impression. He could be on board with Project 2025 (as opposed to parroting it).
He could be in it for himself and using them, but I think he's a believer as he keeps quoting and repeating ideas from Yarvin. I dont think that trump is a believer, he is using them to execute his revenge and gain power.
Either way, what we both stated is not mutually exclusive.
(The Mizrahim fatally complicate any effort to sum Israel up as any kind of simplistic entity, and the term "European" to describe it is practically a slur.)
Oh, like Europeans invaded North America a thousand years later? So who has the rights to Noth America?
I‘m also curious why you seem so fixated on the Arab conquest of the region in the 7th century, but not the Roman occupation 6 centuries earlier, or the Ottoman conquest 8 centuries later (or the British occupation later still)? Especially since the Roman occupation was far more brutal and left a much greater wound in Jewish history than any of the later conquests and occupations of the region.
For clarification, in 136 CE Hadrian banned Jews (as well as Christians) from living in Jerusalem after having ethnically cleansed the city of Jewish presence. Neither the Arabs nor the Ottomans did that. This was reversed a couple of centuries later. Ironically, the city remained unsegregated (where Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all allowed to live in the city and practice their respective religion) all the way until Israel conquered half the city in 1948, and occupied the other half of it in 1967, where it now excludes any Palestinian presence, be they Christian or Muslim.
With regards "unsegregated": " For example, in public baths in Jerusalem, where all residents are allowed to go, Jews must continue to be distinguished from Muslims. In everyday life, the Jew must wear a yellow turban. Removing it or wearing any other color is interpreted as an attempt to pass oneself off as a Muslim. Jewish women must wear a yellow garment or piece of cloth to distinguish themselves from Muslim women. The nudity of public baths meant that another distinctive sign was required: any Jew entering the baths had to carry a bell to signal his arrival." aka "the day to day live of dhimmi"
Also, you make it sound like there are no Palestinians in Jerusalem. Wikipedia helpfully states: " In 2022, Jerusalem had a population of some 971,800 residents, of which almost 60% were Jews and almost 40% Palestinians.[14][note 4] In 2020, the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%), and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%)."
The segregation of 1948 was a direct result of Israels unilateral declaration of independence. So I think we can say that the city was unsegregated from the fourth century, throughout the Arab and the Ottoman conquest, all the way up to the formation of Israel, at which point the city became segregated again for the first time since the Roman period.
Just to clarify: I’m not a fan of segregation, it was not OK when Jordan did it, it was very bad that the Romans did it. And it is even worse that Israel is still doing it.
Ramat Eshkol was established as a Jewish neighborhood soon after the 1967 occupation. It is one of 9 inner settlements in East Jerusalem where Palestinians are not allowed.
These “just not people from a specific territory” are Palestinians who are Christian or Muslim, because of their ethnicity, regardless of criminal history. This is segregation.
There are around 220,000 Jewish Israeli Settlers living in East Jerusalem, how many non-jewish Israelis do you think live in these neighborhoods? I tried to search for the number but couldn’t. I would be surprised if it is more then a 1000.
Whether this reality is because of policy or not is not what I am debating (although the answer seems kind of obvious; unless you dispute Israel’s apartheid policies). The reality is that Jerusalem is currently a segregated city.
> how many non-jewish Israelis do you think live in these neighborhoods
Both Ramat Eshkol and East Jerusalem more broadly are majority Arab.
> Both Ramat Eshkol and East Jerusalem more broadly are majority Arab.
East Jerusalem is yes. But there are inner settlements which exclude a certain ethnicity, which makes the city segregated.
Where did you get the information that Ramat Eshkol was majority Arab? I tried to search online and all I saw was the fact that it was a Jewish Neighborhood (a funny way to describe an illegal settlement).
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/real-estate/ar...
But in 1967 Israel put an end to segregation of Jerusalem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_Settlements%2C_East_Jerus...
on the other side, in "palestinian state" for selling real estate to Israeli there is a death sentence.
Saying this about Palestinians is also very racist, participatory since there are people on this very thread flat out denying the existence of Palestinians (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44259547).
But if you want to talk about denial, here is prominent PLO leader denying existence of Palestinians: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen . I guess he is racist ?
Also Mosab Hassan Yousef famously denies existence of Palestinians. Is he racist as well ?
> Also Mosab Hassan Yousef famously denies existence of Palestinians. Is he racist as well?
Yes.
Regarding Zuheir Mohsen there is a difference when you deny your ethnicity in solidarity with your neighbors with a common cause, then when you deny the existence of an indigenous population who are suffering at the hands of an oppressive settler colonial power. Zuheir Mohsen is doing the former while Mosab Hassan Yousef is doing the latter. Only the latter is racist.
There is no systemic exclusion of palestinians from certain parts of the city. Your proofs are random real-estate articles about new neighborhoods been build.
>Regarding Zuheir Mohsen there is a difference when you deny your ethnicity in solidarity with your neighbors with a common cause,
You should revisit the quote. he doesn't deny it in solidarity. He says that it was invented: "The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine".
You also seems not to be familiar with Mosam Hassan Yousef. I'll suggest you to find some of his talks where he describes west bank in 80s and how things rolled from there.
To be honest, I find your rhetoric borderline racist, both towards jewish refugees that exercised their right of return and self determination and towards palestinians whom you deny any agency (you literally called palestinian racist towards palestinians, because you think that you understand local matters better) and touching base with blood libels
No. I wouldn’t want to send the arabs back to the arabian peninsula, or get that land my family had in Ireland back from the British either. But history is history. Jews were there 1600 years before arab colonisation.
> I‘m also curious why you seem so fixated on the Arab conquest
I’m not focused on the arab conquest, happy to talk about BGRBACOB rather than just A but people are discussing Palestinians (who before the 1960s referred to themselves as Arabs).
I’m not sure if you’re unaware of the concepts of Dhimmis and Jizya or the violence against Jews from Arabs in the early 20th century, which prompted the partition of British Palestine into one Jewish and two Arab states. Jewish people living as second class citizens under the Arabs was not a viable option.
Allowing Israelis and foreigners of all nations and religions to visit Jerusalem, yet not allowing Palestinians to enter Israel makes sense given security issues, I’m sure you would do the same.
Again though, HN isn’t a politics chat and we’re all about to be warned by Dan G or the new person to stop this conversation so I’m probably not going to participate.
Clearly one of two things will ultimately occur:
1. A right wing Israeli government will eject non-citizen Arabs from the land either by settlement, starvation, or ejection. Then Israel will annex that land. This can only occur because everyone else implicitly authorizes it. This is the most likely scenario.
2. An international military coalition will invade and impose a military occupation like NATO did to the Balkans in the 1990s. This is easier than it sounds from a military perspective because Israel is small and simple to isolate. Just like Israel isolates the occupied territories they too can be isolated just the same. It’s only challenging from a political perspective.
My (quite pessimistic) prediction for Israel is that the moment US is busy somewhere else, neighbors will attack en masse.
Some wars you lose.
Europe has always disliked Jews, they’re just more open about it now that europe is increasingly Islamified.
Does that sort of thing even work against nuclear powers? You could certainly isolate them like North Korea, but no country would be willing to invade for fear of seeing a mushroom cloud over their capital.
But there are also Jewish settlements on the West Bank land, so it's not exactly the contiguous territory that it might be. Two-state solutions usually require either removing those settlements or putting them under Palestinian control, and the current Israeli government is extremely reluctant to accept either of those outcomes.
One could imagine a future government that is more amenable to that. That would still leave a disconnected Gaza, but it might just tamp down some of the hostilities.
Those natives just committed a large massacre? They're still good. Did a few massacres on their own people on the way? Still good.
US actually got close to a big peace deal? Still bad. The US doing everything for oil? EVIL! (... never mind that without oil the entire region, except Israel, would be worse than Afghanistan in every way imaginable, including human rights)
No stupid it requires Israel to return the invaded territory. Stop erasing Palestinian state.