If Egypt is afraid of the consequences of accepting refugees into their country, would they become more receptive if told it would be temporary and that the UN would help with the running and...
If Egypt is afraid of the consequences of accepting refugees into their country, would they become more receptive if told it would be temporary and that the UN would help with the running and security of this temporary dislocation?
This would help both sides and let those who want a humanitarian pause to put their money where their mouth is by contributing to this UN/Egypt effort.
Why would America want to veto a humanitarian agreement which takes civilians out of Gaza, making it easier to fight Hamas? Reneging on an agreement to save civilian lives sounds diplomatically...
Why would America want to veto a humanitarian agreement which takes civilians out of Gaza, making it easier to fight Hamas? Reneging on an agreement to save civilian lives sounds diplomatically expensive and terrible for the region in general.
Being UN run also means there is an international force to screen for Hamas fighters; hopefully meaning the conflict doesn't spread.
So you're saying it is Israel's intention to annexe Gaza rather than eliminate the Hamas threat and (as most of the world has said) implement a 2 state solution?
So you're saying it is Israel's intention to annexe Gaza rather than eliminate the Hamas threat and (as most of the world has said) implement a 2 state solution?
Israel has no intention of implementing a two state solution, nor can it annex Gaza without destroying itself. It has no real long term plan. The plan has been to manage the occupation eternally,...
Israel has no intention of implementing a two state solution, nor can it annex Gaza without destroying itself. It has no real long term plan. The plan has been to manage the occupation eternally, but this attack probably ended that delusion.
I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to be short here, it's just... that's already the case. Short of the US, Israel has no real other allies. The country feels like its existence is at stake. It doesn't...
I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to be short here, it's just... that's already the case. Short of the US, Israel has no real other allies.
The country feels like its existence is at stake. It doesn't care what the world thinks.
I disagree. There is no shortage of leaders supporting Israel's right to defend themselves; they just want them to do it in a way that limits civilian casualties and complies with...
I disagree. There is no shortage of leaders supporting Israel's right to defend themselves; they just want them to do it in a way that limits civilian casualties and complies with international/humanitarian law. This Egyptian proposal is one such way towards that objective.
Wait, what? Why world Europe want a geopolitical disaster in their back yard? What action would be in their long term interests and not in Israel's? What signal would it send if Hamas were able to...
Wait, what? Why world Europe want a geopolitical disaster in their back yard? What action would be in their long term interests and not in Israel's? What signal would it send if Hamas were able to launch a terrorist attack without consequence; and more broadly, why would the larger region want a terrorist state as a neighbour?
Israel fears that anti-semitism is endemic to the West, and any deals it makes are going to be reneged on once they lose whatever leverage they had, because they fear Westerners have never, don't...
Israel fears that anti-semitism is endemic to the West, and any deals it makes are going to be reneged on once they lose whatever leverage they had, because they fear Westerners have never, don't and will never actually give a shit about the fate of the Jewish people. Israelis see protests in every western capital chanting "from the river to the sea", which can only mean the destruction of the state of Israel, and say to each other "told you so".
So extremist minorities taking over a state and acting against their countries self interest. Maybe one or two, but unlikely to be everyone. Domestic anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic is a problem, and...
So extremist minorities taking over a state and acting against their countries self interest. Maybe one or two, but unlikely to be everyone. Domestic anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic is a problem, and large civilian casualties on either side will only fuel this. This is one more reason to facilitate a humanitarian solution (in this case: temporary dislocation) and their eventually return to a more accountable Palestinian state.
Don't misunderstand me, what Israel doing is monstrous. 8,000 have died, mostly women and children. I'm just explaining why this solution doesn't work. Israel won't agree to it.
Don't misunderstand me, what Israel doing is monstrous. 8,000 have died, mostly women and children. I'm just explaining why this solution doesn't work. Israel won't agree to it.
Okay, then can we agree that there will be fewer civilian casualties from an invasion/bombing in a city where the civilians have left than one where they are still there?
Okay, then can we agree that there will be fewer civilian casualties from an invasion/bombing in a city where the civilians have left than one where they are still there?
Yeah, and no doubt something the Americans are trying to advise them against. America's counter insurgency efforts in the Middle East were an incredibly expensive failure. Israel doesn't have the...
Yeah, and no doubt something the Americans are trying to advise them against. America's counter insurgency efforts in the Middle East were an incredibly expensive failure. Israel doesn't have the resources America has, so a prolonged counter insurgency doesn't seem like a viable option.
They need a plan to win the peace; for the sake of both Israel and the broader region.
The US is probably the one reason Israel hasn't suicidally sent its army on an impossible mission to Gaza. Biden and the military have been warning them against it all week. I honestly, truly have...
The US is probably the one reason Israel hasn't suicidally sent its army on an impossible mission to Gaza. Biden and the military have been warning them against it all week.
I honestly, truly have no idea what the solution here is. Everything's fucked.
I think they are talking about something more akin to South Africa in the late 1980s, where it became harder and harder to do business with South Africa. And at the time, South Africa had a more...
I think they are talking about something more akin to South Africa in the late 1980s, where it became harder and harder to do business with South Africa. And at the time, South Africa had a more robust industrial economy than Israel does today.
There's three big differences in the two apartheid systems. First, South Africans had a way out. There were many countries that they could go to. They did not feel the existence of their state was...
There's three big differences in the two apartheid systems.
First, South Africans had a way out. There were many countries that they could go to. They did not feel the existence of their state was the only thing separating them from genocide, and thus weren't going to fight this to the death. Israeli Jews will kill every single Palestinian before letting their country collapse. There is nowhere else for them to go, and they know it.
Second, white South Africans were a tiny minority in the country. It was never going to be sustainable. Israeli Jews are not. Even counting all Israeli Arabs and Palestinians together, they're barely more. In Israel itself, they're a vast majority. Israel has the countours of a nation-state even without the occupation in a way South Africa never did. White South Africa could never have existed without apartheid, whereas Jewish Israel can.
Three, South Africa lost all major allies. Israel has not, it still has the US. As long as it has US backing, it cannot fall.
Palestinian refugees have a bit of a reputation in the area that would lead to none of the arab or arab adjacent countries to really want to let them in. When Jordan took in a large contingent of...
Palestinian refugees have a bit of a reputation in the area that would lead to none of the arab or arab adjacent countries to really want to let them in. When Jordan took in a large contingent of Palestinian refugees, they promptly tried to launch a coup in the country by assassinating the royal family, and successfully assasinating the prime minister. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
After being kicked out of Jordan, they were involved in the Lebanese civil war and the Syrian civil war.
In Egypt in particular, Palestinian refugees from the strip were linked to large numbers of car bombings in the country, which is one of the reasons Egypt participates in the all-sides blockade of Gaza - the number of terrorist incidents in Egypt fell dramatically after doing so.
No amount of lobbying is going to get Egypt to accept any Palestinian refugees, let alone take over the area.
The fact that Gaza and the farmers and pastoral people of the West Bank are both Palestinian make the issues tough to talk about fairly. In the West Bank, people get murdered for going to a...
The fact that Gaza and the farmers and pastoral people of the West Bank are both Palestinian make the issues tough to talk about fairly. In the West Bank, people get murdered for going to a funeral or harvesting olive trees.
Of course the people in Gaza have their own stories about how they got there. But I am not going to support terrorism no matter how sad the back story.
I agree with you mostly. Any and all wipe em out rhetoric is reprehensible. Edit, I am quite familiar with the long history of persecution of jewish people, leading up to the Shoah, and ongoing in...
I agree with you mostly. Any and all wipe em out rhetoric is reprehensible.
Edit, I am quite familiar with the long history of persecution of jewish people, leading up to the Shoah, and ongoing in mostly milder forms these days. I am quite aware of Hamas' brutality.
I don't see a good solution, but babies have been killed on both sides and it is terrible and is going to continue to be terrible.
Edit again @Olrox , I don't claim moral high ground here. When my ancestors or their neighbors or friends experienced atrocities from displaced indigenous people, my government inevitably chose genocide in response.
When I was 22 I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and it broke my heart what had been done to conquor the land but I am still not donating property to the descendants of the displaced people as an individual. I might support reparations, but that is an open question.
Best of luck to everyone currently in Israel and Palestine except terrorists and warmongers.
I brought up native americans because one side of my family did actually settle the frontier in the Midwest immediately after the revolutionary war. But as it applies to Israel, there is no way to...
I brought up native americans because one side of my family did actually settle the frontier in the Midwest immediately after the revolutionary war. But as it applies to Israel, there is no way to guarantee that individual people who have been pushed out and displaced or whose grandparents were, will choose to live with it rather than die fighting.
There are many many many histories of displaced peoples, conquests, genocides, atrocity, reprisal, counter reprisal etc. It's still ugly as hell when it happens.
Is your question that people seem to be talking about current events more than stuff that’s not in the news cycle? Seems pretty facile to imply “Western lefties” don’t know or care about other,...
Is your question that people seem to be talking about current events more than stuff that’s not in the news cycle? Seems pretty facile to imply “Western lefties” don’t know or care about other, similar issues just because you’re not seeing massive protests about them at the moment.
I don’t think that this is a problem to do with The Left so much as with social media amplifying reductionist hot takes that claim to speak with more authority than they actually have. Reasoned...
I don’t think that this is a problem to do with The Left so much as with social media amplifying reductionist hot takes that claim to speak with more authority than they actually have. Reasoned discussion of these issues from a left-wing perspective does exist even if it’s not going viral. And obviously, having a major war happening is going to turbo-charge a specific issue rather than just the odd infographic being shared around.
With regards to Palestine, even though there are people being reductionist about it from an American perspective, the left has been very united in calling for a ceasefire to stop what has become a war of revenge and annihilation against Palestinians. There have been vastly more bad faith claims that criticizing Israeli war crimes means supporting Hamas than there have been actual expressions of support for Hamas’ attack. No one can argue in good faith that all these protests are just calling for ethnic cleansing of Israelis instead of their actual, stated demands to stop an ethnic cleansing that’s currently happening.
With regards to the slogan, I don’t think it inherently means “ethnically cleanse Israel of all Jews” and that’s definitely not the message people are going for in these protests. The idea that...
With regards to the slogan, I don’t think it inherently means “ethnically cleanse Israel of all Jews” and that’s definitely not the message people are going for in these protests. The idea that Israel must be a country run only by and for Jews, with Palestinians as a grudgingly tolerated minority at best, is an inherently toxic ethnonationalist concept that their current government seems firmly wedded to. Although people may wrongly translate American concepts of race onto it, all the talk of how transforming both Israel and Palestine into a single secular state would cause demographic replacement of Israelis does feel close to white nationalist language about birth rates.
To deescalate this conflict, Israel could make even the slightest of concessions to Palestine as a whole, like rolling back the settlements of the West Bank and releasing the thousands of Palestinians held in extrajudicial detention (and the second of which is something that the families of the hostages have been pushing for). Although that wouldn’t be enough for hardline nationalists, there’s so much bad blood caused by Israel’s policies that only they have the choice to stop. If they instead keep bombing away and enforcing collective punishment, they’re only turning the survivors into the next generation of Hamas or a similarly uncompromising group. However, that would require Israel to be led by a very different group of people than Netanyahu and his fellow nationalists like Ben-Gvir.
Within Palestine itself, it’s obviously not a good thing if they hate all Jews, but the conflation can hardly be avoided when Israel constantly proclaims itself as The Jewish State and uses that...
Within Palestine itself, it’s obviously not a good thing if they hate all Jews, but the conflation can hardly be avoided when Israel constantly proclaims itself as The Jewish State and uses that to justify its settlements and constant attacks on them. It’s not good, but it’s completely expected. I read an article by Mohammed El-Kurd, Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish. In my opinion, it lays out the basic issue clearly.
The issue of antisemitism in other countries isn’t caused by the same dynamic of oppressed vs. oppressor, but if they haven’t all been constantly attacking Israel (and in fact have been getting closer in Saudi Arabia’s case) then it’s not an insurmountable issue. I’m not saying this as a way to just shrug and dismiss the myriad obstacles in public opinion and nationalist rhetoric, but I don’t think there’s a way for it to even start to be resolved until the oppression also stops.
I’m not saying that every country in the region is an honest broker, nor am I shrugging at the issues of antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. However, without getting into a “who started it?”...
I’m not saying that every country in the region is an honest broker, nor am I shrugging at the issues of antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. However, without getting into a “who started it?” debate, it makes sense that Muslims in other countries would have a negative view of Israel due to its oppression of their fellow Muslims in Palestine, the same as how any other group would react, and that it would unfortunately spill over into a generalized negativity toward Jews even though Israel isn’t representative of all Jewish people.
In terms of security guarantees, my view is that even with this toxicity, the international relations of other Muslim countries towards Israel haven’t spiraled towards war for decades. They also have their own disputes and aren’t just a monolith, regardless of Western perceptions of the region. The siege mentality Israel appears to have is unjustified and only makes things worse when they use it to justify what they’re doing now.
You're asking a question that you've already answered in your own response. The reason China is better-regarded by many Arab countries' governments is in part because they've been offering them...
You're asking a question that you've already answered in your own response. The reason China is better-regarded by many Arab countries' governments is in part because they've been offering them investment and trade, so they have little incentive to rock the boat by criticizing them. The other major reason is that they've never fought a war against China and don't see it as an enemy—even in the worst-case scenario, they'd be a more distant threat.
I've never claimed that antisemitism isn't an issue in other West Asian countries, but from my end it feels like you're implying that I'm ignorant of it or purposefully downplaying it. I'm also not trying to blame the whole situation on Israel. However, I refuse to accept the framing that this is an intractable issue that can never change even with a secular government, especially if it's because of some stereotype that Muslims are more violent and intolerant by nature. If there can be reconciliation, and there must be, then that has to come from both sides.
Are you intentionally conflating these ideas? Because they are not the same. Beyond that, I do not recall having seen repeated calls for dissolution in any threads here, even in removed ones. What...
repeated calls for Israel's complete dissolution even on here
"wipe 'em out" as accepted by the American left
Are you intentionally conflating these ideas? Because they are not the same. Beyond that, I do not recall having seen repeated calls for dissolution in any threads here, even in removed ones. What I have seen is a historical counterfactual, that the state of Israel should not have been formed as it stands today, which is at least as valid a position as your
fighting tooth and nail to just have neighbors accept you have a right to exist
Are they here? "Israel should not have been formed in its current state" and "Israel shouldn't exist" are different statements. Quit this bad-faith conflation. The former is a statement of moral...
Are they here?
"Israel should not have been formed in its current state" and "Israel shouldn't exist" are different statements. Quit this bad-faith conflation. The former is a statement of moral judgment that encompasses historical context. The latter can only mean, like you're saying, "we should remove Israel from existence". Treating everyone who thinks that it's a bad idea to colonize and genocide a region and expect peace an antisemite is just poor tact.
"Israel should not have been founded as it is" can't be solved, like you said, we just have to deal with it. But understanding what went wrong is a pretty crucial aspect of fixing the larger...
"Israel should not have been founded as it is" can't be solved, like you said, we just have to deal with it. But understanding what went wrong is a pretty crucial aspect of fixing the larger issue, which is apartheid and terrorism.
I reject any and all justifications of nation-states and the conflation of protecting individual autonomy with racialized ethno-states. There was no obvious need, and in fact, to pretend there was is ultimately defending the logic of the Holocaust.
I don't really know what you mean by that last question. They're a literal reactionary force. If you mean it in the same spirit as "the state of Israel should not have been founded as it was", then I would have to say "not exist". If you mean in the sense of "what is their moral duty right now?", then I would say I honestly don't know, beyond stopping the terrorism, because it probably isn't helping, and actually helping "their people". If you mean in the sense of "what is the right tactic for them?", I'd have to imagine they're succeeding at their goals: maintaining a fiefdom with enough moral outrage to justify it to themselves.
Yes. If states need to exist, I'd rather they be secular. Well, when I see arguments for minority states, they usually fall back on pointing the finger at unjust nation-states which purport to be...
Yes. If states need to exist, I'd rather they be secular.
Well, when I see arguments for minority states, they usually fall back on pointing the finger at unjust nation-states which purport to be nondiscriminatory, like Spain. The Basques should not be forced into Castilian culture by the supremacist nation they're beholden to, but that doesn't justify them doing the same to their own inevitable enclave of minorities.
There's always going to be hatred and bigotry. It's horrible. That's why I don't believe in "it can't happen here" either. We must constantly be conscientious and aware. We cannot mince our words and pretend that the status quo of neoliberal "western" countries are in any way achieving or even working toward their claimed goals, nor can we pretend that somehow the solution to a "German" ethnostate being capable of committing genocide is to make more ethnostates.
Just look at all the discourse of intra-hebrew bigotry that comes out of Israel. Should the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim all have their own "secure" countries? What about the inevitable, you know, "miscegenations"? Doesn't any Hebrew state imply that children of a married secular Jewish man and a goyish woman are second-class citizens already? Or is this somehow a country for Jews, by Jews, that doesn't actually privilege them over other citizens? Or are we not allowing non-hebrew people to attain citizenship? Or just not get married to the True Citizens?
Do you see the fundamental concerns here that have nothing to do with wanting Jewish people to disappear?
And what about the "right to self-determination" of a hypothetical 30% who do? This is not a context I'm remotely familiar with, but I think my point is clear. Regarding spiraling into...
most Japanese ... [,] including buraku
And what about the "right to self-determination" of a hypothetical 30% who do? This is not a context I'm remotely familiar with, but I think my point is clear.
Regarding spiraling into hyperspecific identities, I feel you may have misunderstood my point above. The discussion there was meant to point out the tendency to do so and interminable "goal" of nationalism and the slippery slope of conflating the values of personal autonomy with such historically fraught concepts, not to argue in support of Balkanizing the globe. Quite the opposite.
You keep saying things that make me think you aren't fully considering my arguments. Primarily, your third and fourth paragraphs seem to be responding to a proposed solution, rather than an attempt to correct a gross miscommunication. I don't think the solution here is to somehow magically dissolve the Israeli government or transplant every Jewish person out of the region. I don't think I have one, but I do know that rampant mischaracterization of the issue will hardly contribute to any possible solution.
I'm not asking anybody to agree with my or anyone else's political views, just that you not engage with myself and everyone else as an amalgam of worst-case assumptions about the issue.
I don't believe that we can have remotely universal answers to these questions. If that seems like a cop-out, I promise it isn't: it means that every issue needs to be handled emergently and every...
I don't believe that we can have remotely universal answers to these questions. If that seems like a cop-out, I promise it isn't: it means that every issue needs to be handled emergently and every regulation needs to be constantly reworked, with a pretense of achievable perfection, but no expectation of its eventuality. In the case of Israel, I don't live there; I'm not a journalist there; I'm not a family member of someone who is. It would be foolish of me to pretend to have remotely the requisite sorts of knowledge or emotional investments to even start answering questions about what next. What I do have an understanding of is the sorts of harm that people can and do enact upon each other. Far from comprehensive, but there's a concrete limit to horror, and an infinite different arrangements of polity. I can look at the past, and with patient study of various sources, see how the previously-alive were motivated and the ends of their means. I can't come close, and I don't believe anyone can, to understanding emerging phenomena and events in real time. The best outcome, whatever it will be, can only happen if everyone involved is doing their sincere best, and it seems unlikely that an outsider will stumble into alignment with their best interests. Politics as we generally conceive of it seems like a fool's errand.
My goals are that everyone just, like, gets along, you know? More seriously, that autonomy is preserved and cultivated to isolate social failure states and maximize individual agency, and that justice, as defined by each and all of us through iterative processes, is ubiquitous.
I asked you a pretty simply question. Are any of these people on Tildes? I don't understand why you are making baseless assumptions about my beliefs, or why you expect me to "solve for...
I asked you a pretty simply question. Are any of these people on Tildes? I don't understand why you are making baseless assumptions about my beliefs, or why you expect me to "solve for contradictions" in different people's.
There is a real difference of culpability between a bunch of terrorists who literally live in holes and a developed state. That's about the closest you're going to get as an answer from me. Now shove off, you've wasted my time and insulted me enough. I have tried to answer your questions in good faith and rephrase my own, and you're only interested in ranting.
If you aren't accusing me of anything, you've done a terrible job of accusing anyone else. Especially since I asked about somebody calling for Israels imminent destruction. Not a general moral...
If you aren't accusing me of anything, you've done a terrible job of accusing anyone else. Especially since I asked about somebody calling for Israels imminent destruction. Not a general moral statement which would, as I already pointed out, probably also deny any Arab "Palestinian ethnostate".
Sure, and that government...lives in holes. I don't have sympathy for them, but I'm gonna judge the people who can order steak dinners from Tuscany more than the people who can't when they bomb children. Beyond that, as I have repeatedly stated, I do not know.
I'm not saying you're lying in general. Nobody made you pretend that any and all antizionism is the same as antisemitism, nobody made you make the claims you have. I'm sympathetic. Which is why...
I'm not saying you're lying in general. Nobody made you pretend that any and all antizionism is the same as antisemitism, nobody made you make the claims you have. I'm sympathetic. Which is why I'm pissed at your conduct throughout this attempt at a conversation.
In fact, I never once said you lied. This is the fundamental issue with your conduct I have. I have given you the benefit of the doubt after you repeatedly accused me of antisemitism.
Yeah, you just repeatedly insisted I explain nonsensical positions that nobody except antisemites would believe. I wouldn't deny it, but I would be hard-pressed to answer it at all. I never met a...
Yeah, you just repeatedly insisted I explain nonsensical positions that nobody except antisemites would believe.
I wouldn't deny it, but I would be hard-pressed to answer it at all. I never met a single antisemite in real life until I went to Europe in my teens. I'd met:
antihispanic racism
antiblack racism
misogyny
antiasian racism
homophobia
transphobia
a whole net of stuff around native Americans
antiarab bigotry cast as antiislamism
the tiny number of actual political misandrists in the USA
And none of that is to say that antisemitism isn't real or widespread or to imply that there aren't plenty of people willing to conflate Zionism and the existence of Hebrew people and pretend to stand against the former only. It's only to say that it's really not very relevant to my life, so I'm not going to sit around psychoanalyzing bigots I don't know for you. The holocaust happened, it clearly has a foothold, but my opinion on the specific prevalence of antisemitism is not important.
I've tried to make nuanced arguments this whole time and you've steamrolled them. My point is this: I'm not ignoring antisemitism, I'm just also not willing to ignore antiarabism, or to pretend that we can assume most antizionists are secret antisemites when there is a lot more in the world to understand.
Call them, hell, call me, a useful fool for the powers of antisemitism. But I haven't jumped on a cause célèbre, and I'm not going to apologize for offending the sensibilities of a political movement that I find fundamentally unjust, and it isn't fair for you to dress down everyone who disagrees with you in pursuit of finding out the secret Nazis.
I have Jewish family, and I have. They've experienced it here and there, but do you seriously not get my point? The fact you've experienced antisemitism doesn't prove it's widespread, there are...
I have Jewish family, and I have. They've experienced it here and there, but do you seriously not get my point? The fact you've experienced antisemitism doesn't prove it's widespread, there are actual surveys and academic discussions of this that do.
If I'm entirely honest, I'm not very concerned about the fact that 60% of Gen Z in that cohort thought it was 2 instead of 6 million. I know it matters to you, but it's the same thing in principle, rounding up and slaughtering millions of people. Certainly not justification for disingenuous argumentation.
...but it is in some journal. Antisemitism has entire publications dedicated to it. That's my point. It is real. You don't need to imply I know nothing about it because I haven't lived it: I know...
...but it is in some journal. Antisemitism has entire publications dedicated to it. That's my point. It is real. You don't need to imply I know nothing about it because I haven't lived it: I know my knowledge is limited, I've said as much. The fact you missed that point is why I can't trust you're actually engaging in this conversation, at this point the only reason I know you aren't essentially concern trolling is that you'd have gotten bored by now if that were your motive.
I don't frame this up to other groups,1 because they seem to understand when I say "my life experience is not the sum total of my knowledge", and most feminists don't sit around demanding I justify my opinion on every level when I say "yeah, but sometimes a prolifer just thinks a fetus is a human", the conversation actually moves forward.
1: edit to clarify that I don't mean to imply a contrast between groups, but between yourself as an interlocutor and other individual members of minority groups. I haven't had an intentional conversation go this unproductively in a long time.
Do you have any recommendations on where I can read more about this?
...but that doesn't necessarily mean the better alternative is to dissolve that nation-state and create fractals of more and more specific societies. Haidt makes a good point that trying to divide ourselves further and further into microcosms is bad for representative democracy...
Do you have any recommendations on where I can read more about this?
A slightly less cynical take than @stu2b50's is also that if Egypt allow the Palestinians to move into the Sinai Peninsula, they will have basically let Israel win and conduct a forcible...
A slightly less cynical take than @stu2b50's is also that if Egypt allow the Palestinians to move into the Sinai Peninsula, they will have basically let Israel win and conduct a forcible population transfer (serious violation of international law) of 2 million people without any consequences. The entire issue will be over and the Palestinians will never be able to obtain an equitable settlement.
This is Israel's, not Egypt's, mess and the burden shouldn't be on Egypt to bear responsibility for the Israeli decision to invade.
I think you're overstating how bad the MB was in Egypt. The biggest problem was that they were debating how much to oppress women in the middle of a food and oil crisis. No democratic backsliding...
I think you're overstating how bad the MB was in Egypt. The biggest problem was that they were debating how much to oppress women in the middle of a food and oil crisis. No democratic backsliding had happened yet. Other Islamist governments in the region had lost elections and took it well (eg. Tunisia).
Sisi took power because an opportunity presented itself, and the military wanted to get back in power again.
Of course it wasn't what they wanted, it was the MB. They suck at governing. At the next elections, they would've lost. Now there's no more real elections, and Mubarak v2 is in charge. Military...
Of course it wasn't what they wanted, it was the MB. They suck at governing. At the next elections, they would've lost. Now there's no more real elections, and Mubarak v2 is in charge.
Military coups never lead to more democracy, because the military is an inherently anti-democratic institution, and owns all the guns.
Of course the MB are shitty towards women, they're Islamists! US Republicans are also shitty towards women. Should the military take over DC too? A military coup is not the solution to regression...
Of course the MB are shitty towards women, they're Islamists! US Republicans are also shitty towards women. Should the military take over DC too? A military coup is not the solution to regression on social progress, particularly when nothing had happened yet. Nothing had happened yet because the MB is full of incompetent idiots who wouldn't be able to govern a Bedouin village, let alone Egypt.
A weak, fragile Muslim Brotherhood that was eminently defeatable at the next elections was preferable to the current military dictator who has ran out or imprisoned the liberals out of the country.
I'm sorry, I'm not angry with you, I'm just angry. The Arab Spring failed in every country. The entire region returned to autocracy.
The stupid thing is that revolutions usually fail. We remember the American and French revolutions, and forget the Paris Commune and Cromwell's commonwealth. Anyone calling for a revolution needs...
The stupid thing is that revolutions usually fail. We remember the American and French revolutions, and forget the Paris Commune and Cromwell's commonwealth. Anyone calling for a revolution needs to be damn sure that it's the last possible option, because more often than not, you'll either outright fail, have it collapse around you, or lose it to the counter-revolution.
Anyone calling for the military to take over to help with climate change is just delusional. Yes, the military, that organisation usually known for using force to help leftists.
I think building on your point, social media has allowed us to never have to deal with an opposing viewpoint again. We just talk to people who already agree with us, and never have to confront ourselves anymore.
Revolutions that succeed also get highjacked and repurposed by sociopaths more often than not. The moment of revolution is like a patient anesthetized for surgery, the usual safeguards are not in...
Revolutions that succeed also get highjacked and repurposed by sociopaths more often than not. The moment of revolution is like a patient anesthetized for surgery, the usual safeguards are not in play. Legal concepts like due process and open government records and meetings are not sexy but they prevent or penalize after the fact a lot of harm that would otherwise go unchecked.
Yup, that's a good point too. And usually, it's by whatever organisation managed to remain coherent through the autocracy. It's why the Islamists won everywhere during the Arab Spring, and why the...
Yup, that's a good point too. And usually, it's by whatever organisation managed to remain coherent through the autocracy. It's why the Islamists won everywhere during the Arab Spring, and why the Iranian revolution led to a brutal theocracy. Liberals did the legwork, but Islamists were actually organised.
If Egypt is afraid of the consequences of accepting refugees into their country, would they become more receptive if told it would be temporary and that the UN would help with the running and security of this temporary dislocation?
This would help both sides and let those who want a humanitarian pause to put their money where their mouth is by contributing to this UN/Egypt effort.
By whom? If the Palestinians leave the Gaza strip, Israel will never allow them to return.
By the UN as a precondition to the deal.
How could the UN follow through on such a promise? How could the UN ensure that the Palestinians can move back to the land where they currently live?
Through a security council resolution?
US veto.
Why would America want to veto a humanitarian agreement which takes civilians out of Gaza, making it easier to fight Hamas? Reneging on an agreement to save civilian lives sounds diplomatically expensive and terrible for the region in general.
Being UN run also means there is an international force to screen for Hamas fighters; hopefully meaning the conflict doesn't spread.
It wouldn't just be humanitarian, it'd require the threat of force to make Israel comply. The US will never put itself into that situation.
So you're saying it is Israel's intention to annexe Gaza rather than eliminate the Hamas threat and (as most of the world has said) implement a 2 state solution?
Israel has no intention of implementing a two state solution, nor can it annex Gaza without destroying itself. It has no real long term plan. The plan has been to manage the occupation eternally, but this attack probably ended that delusion.
Which is why, if there is to be a temporary dislocation in Egypt with UN help, Israel needs to commit to this agreement before it happens.
And then Israel pulls back from the agreement, then what happens? Goes to the UNSC, US vetoes, world condemns Israel.
Yeah, diplomatic isolation. Not a good long term strategy.
I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to be short here, it's just... that's already the case. Short of the US, Israel has no real other allies.
The country feels like its existence is at stake. It doesn't care what the world thinks.
I disagree. There is no shortage of leaders supporting Israel's right to defend themselves; they just want them to do it in a way that limits civilian casualties and complies with international/humanitarian law. This Egyptian proposal is one such way towards that objective.
Again, Israel doesn't trust any of those leaders. I am not telling you what I think, I am telling you that Israel expects a stab in the back.
Wait, what? Why world Europe want a geopolitical disaster in their back yard? What action would be in their long term interests and not in Israel's? What signal would it send if Hamas were able to launch a terrorist attack without consequence; and more broadly, why would the larger region want a terrorist state as a neighbour?
Israel fears that anti-semitism is endemic to the West, and any deals it makes are going to be reneged on once they lose whatever leverage they had, because they fear Westerners have never, don't and will never actually give a shit about the fate of the Jewish people. Israelis see protests in every western capital chanting "from the river to the sea", which can only mean the destruction of the state of Israel, and say to each other "told you so".
So extremist minorities taking over a state and acting against their countries self interest. Maybe one or two, but unlikely to be everyone. Domestic anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic is a problem, and large civilian casualties on either side will only fuel this. This is one more reason to facilitate a humanitarian solution (in this case: temporary dislocation) and their eventually return to a more accountable Palestinian state.
Don't misunderstand me, what Israel doing is monstrous. 8,000 have died, mostly women and children. I'm just explaining why this solution doesn't work. Israel won't agree to it.
Okay, then can we agree that there will be fewer civilian casualties from an invasion/bombing in a city where the civilians have left than one where they are still there?
Yes, but Israel currently doesn't care about civilian casualties. This response is based on wrath, not logic.
Yeah, and no doubt something the Americans are trying to advise them against. America's counter insurgency efforts in the Middle East were an incredibly expensive failure. Israel doesn't have the resources America has, so a prolonged counter insurgency doesn't seem like a viable option.
They need a plan to win the peace; for the sake of both Israel and the broader region.
The US is probably the one reason Israel hasn't suicidally sent its army on an impossible mission to Gaza. Biden and the military have been warning them against it all week.
I honestly, truly have no idea what the solution here is. Everything's fucked.
I think they are talking about something more akin to South Africa in the late 1980s, where it became harder and harder to do business with South Africa. And at the time, South Africa had a more robust industrial economy than Israel does today.
There's three big differences in the two apartheid systems.
First, South Africans had a way out. There were many countries that they could go to. They did not feel the existence of their state was the only thing separating them from genocide, and thus weren't going to fight this to the death. Israeli Jews will kill every single Palestinian before letting their country collapse. There is nowhere else for them to go, and they know it.
Second, white South Africans were a tiny minority in the country. It was never going to be sustainable. Israeli Jews are not. Even counting all Israeli Arabs and Palestinians together, they're barely more. In Israel itself, they're a vast majority. Israel has the countours of a nation-state even without the occupation in a way South Africa never did. White South Africa could never have existed without apartheid, whereas Jewish Israel can.
Three, South Africa lost all major allies. Israel has not, it still has the US. As long as it has US backing, it cannot fall.
This is an archive link.
Palestinian refugees have a bit of a reputation in the area that would lead to none of the arab or arab adjacent countries to really want to let them in. When Jordan took in a large contingent of Palestinian refugees, they promptly tried to launch a coup in the country by assassinating the royal family, and successfully assasinating the prime minister. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
After being kicked out of Jordan, they were involved in the Lebanese civil war and the Syrian civil war.
In Egypt in particular, Palestinian refugees from the strip were linked to large numbers of car bombings in the country, which is one of the reasons Egypt participates in the all-sides blockade of Gaza - the number of terrorist incidents in Egypt fell dramatically after doing so.
No amount of lobbying is going to get Egypt to accept any Palestinian refugees, let alone take over the area.
The fact that Gaza and the farmers and pastoral people of the West Bank are both Palestinian make the issues tough to talk about fairly. In the West Bank, people get murdered for going to a funeral or harvesting olive trees.
Of course the people in Gaza have their own stories about how they got there. But I am not going to support terrorism no matter how sad the back story.
It's a terrible situation.
I agree with you mostly. Any and all wipe em out rhetoric is reprehensible.
Edit, I am quite familiar with the long history of persecution of jewish people, leading up to the Shoah, and ongoing in mostly milder forms these days. I am quite aware of Hamas' brutality.
I don't see a good solution, but babies have been killed on both sides and it is terrible and is going to continue to be terrible.
Edit again @Olrox , I don't claim moral high ground here. When my ancestors or their neighbors or friends experienced atrocities from displaced indigenous people, my government inevitably chose genocide in response.
When I was 22 I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and it broke my heart what had been done to conquor the land but I am still not donating property to the descendants of the displaced people as an individual. I might support reparations, but that is an open question.
Best of luck to everyone currently in Israel and Palestine except terrorists and warmongers.
I brought up native americans because one side of my family did actually settle the frontier in the Midwest immediately after the revolutionary war. But as it applies to Israel, there is no way to guarantee that individual people who have been pushed out and displaced or whose grandparents were, will choose to live with it rather than die fighting.
There are many many many histories of displaced peoples, conquests, genocides, atrocity, reprisal, counter reprisal etc. It's still ugly as hell when it happens.
Is your question that people seem to be talking about current events more than stuff that’s not in the news cycle? Seems pretty facile to imply “Western lefties” don’t know or care about other, similar issues just because you’re not seeing massive protests about them at the moment.
I don’t think that this is a problem to do with The Left so much as with social media amplifying reductionist hot takes that claim to speak with more authority than they actually have. Reasoned discussion of these issues from a left-wing perspective does exist even if it’s not going viral. And obviously, having a major war happening is going to turbo-charge a specific issue rather than just the odd infographic being shared around.
With regards to Palestine, even though there are people being reductionist about it from an American perspective, the left has been very united in calling for a ceasefire to stop what has become a war of revenge and annihilation against Palestinians. There have been vastly more bad faith claims that criticizing Israeli war crimes means supporting Hamas than there have been actual expressions of support for Hamas’ attack. No one can argue in good faith that all these protests are just calling for ethnic cleansing of Israelis instead of their actual, stated demands to stop an ethnic cleansing that’s currently happening.
With regards to the slogan, I don’t think it inherently means “ethnically cleanse Israel of all Jews” and that’s definitely not the message people are going for in these protests. The idea that Israel must be a country run only by and for Jews, with Palestinians as a grudgingly tolerated minority at best, is an inherently toxic ethnonationalist concept that their current government seems firmly wedded to. Although people may wrongly translate American concepts of race onto it, all the talk of how transforming both Israel and Palestine into a single secular state would cause demographic replacement of Israelis does feel close to white nationalist language about birth rates.
To deescalate this conflict, Israel could make even the slightest of concessions to Palestine as a whole, like rolling back the settlements of the West Bank and releasing the thousands of Palestinians held in extrajudicial detention (and the second of which is something that the families of the hostages have been pushing for). Although that wouldn’t be enough for hardline nationalists, there’s so much bad blood caused by Israel’s policies that only they have the choice to stop. If they instead keep bombing away and enforcing collective punishment, they’re only turning the survivors into the next generation of Hamas or a similarly uncompromising group. However, that would require Israel to be led by a very different group of people than Netanyahu and his fellow nationalists like Ben-Gvir.
Within Palestine itself, it’s obviously not a good thing if they hate all Jews, but the conflation can hardly be avoided when Israel constantly proclaims itself as The Jewish State and uses that to justify its settlements and constant attacks on them. It’s not good, but it’s completely expected. I read an article by Mohammed El-Kurd, Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish. In my opinion, it lays out the basic issue clearly.
The issue of antisemitism in other countries isn’t caused by the same dynamic of oppressed vs. oppressor, but if they haven’t all been constantly attacking Israel (and in fact have been getting closer in Saudi Arabia’s case) then it’s not an insurmountable issue. I’m not saying this as a way to just shrug and dismiss the myriad obstacles in public opinion and nationalist rhetoric, but I don’t think there’s a way for it to even start to be resolved until the oppression also stops.
I’m not saying that every country in the region is an honest broker, nor am I shrugging at the issues of antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. However, without getting into a “who started it?” debate, it makes sense that Muslims in other countries would have a negative view of Israel due to its oppression of their fellow Muslims in Palestine, the same as how any other group would react, and that it would unfortunately spill over into a generalized negativity toward Jews even though Israel isn’t representative of all Jewish people.
In terms of security guarantees, my view is that even with this toxicity, the international relations of other Muslim countries towards Israel haven’t spiraled towards war for decades. They also have their own disputes and aren’t just a monolith, regardless of Western perceptions of the region. The siege mentality Israel appears to have is unjustified and only makes things worse when they use it to justify what they’re doing now.
You're asking a question that you've already answered in your own response. The reason China is better-regarded by many Arab countries' governments is in part because they've been offering them investment and trade, so they have little incentive to rock the boat by criticizing them. The other major reason is that they've never fought a war against China and don't see it as an enemy—even in the worst-case scenario, they'd be a more distant threat.
I've never claimed that antisemitism isn't an issue in other West Asian countries, but from my end it feels like you're implying that I'm ignorant of it or purposefully downplaying it. I'm also not trying to blame the whole situation on Israel. However, I refuse to accept the framing that this is an intractable issue that can never change even with a secular government, especially if it's because of some stereotype that Muslims are more violent and intolerant by nature. If there can be reconciliation, and there must be, then that has to come from both sides.
Here is a discussion of possibilities for developing different, less polarizing social media algorithms. The article links to a research study.
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-ranking
Are you intentionally conflating these ideas? Because they are not the same. Beyond that, I do not recall having seen repeated calls for dissolution in any threads here, even in removed ones. What I have seen is a historical counterfactual, that the state of Israel should not have been formed as it stands today, which is at least as valid a position as your
framing implies.
Are they here?
"Israel should not have been formed in its current state" and "Israel shouldn't exist" are different statements. Quit this bad-faith conflation. The former is a statement of moral judgment that encompasses historical context. The latter can only mean, like you're saying, "we should remove Israel from existence". Treating everyone who thinks that it's a bad idea to colonize and genocide a region and expect peace an antisemite is just poor tact.
"Israel should not have been founded as it is" can't be solved, like you said, we just have to deal with it. But understanding what went wrong is a pretty crucial aspect of fixing the larger issue, which is apartheid and terrorism.
I reject any and all justifications of nation-states and the conflation of protecting individual autonomy with racialized ethno-states. There was no obvious need, and in fact, to pretend there was is ultimately defending the logic of the Holocaust.
I don't really know what you mean by that last question. They're a literal reactionary force. If you mean it in the same spirit as "the state of Israel should not have been founded as it was", then I would have to say "not exist". If you mean in the sense of "what is their moral duty right now?", then I would say I honestly don't know, beyond stopping the terrorism, because it probably isn't helping, and actually helping "their people". If you mean in the sense of "what is the right tactic for them?", I'd have to imagine they're succeeding at their goals: maintaining a fiefdom with enough moral outrage to justify it to themselves.
Yes. If states need to exist, I'd rather they be secular.
Well, when I see arguments for minority states, they usually fall back on pointing the finger at unjust nation-states which purport to be nondiscriminatory, like Spain. The Basques should not be forced into Castilian culture by the supremacist nation they're beholden to, but that doesn't justify them doing the same to their own inevitable enclave of minorities.
There's always going to be hatred and bigotry. It's horrible. That's why I don't believe in "it can't happen here" either. We must constantly be conscientious and aware. We cannot mince our words and pretend that the status quo of neoliberal "western" countries are in any way achieving or even working toward their claimed goals, nor can we pretend that somehow the solution to a "German" ethnostate being capable of committing genocide is to make more ethnostates.
Just look at all the discourse of intra-hebrew bigotry that comes out of Israel. Should the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim all have their own "secure" countries? What about the inevitable, you know, "miscegenations"? Doesn't any Hebrew state imply that children of a married secular Jewish man and a goyish woman are second-class citizens already? Or is this somehow a country for Jews, by Jews, that doesn't actually privilege them over other citizens? Or are we not allowing non-hebrew people to attain citizenship? Or just not get married to the True Citizens?
Do you see the fundamental concerns here that have nothing to do with wanting Jewish people to disappear?
And what about the "right to self-determination" of a hypothetical 30% who do? This is not a context I'm remotely familiar with, but I think my point is clear.
Regarding spiraling into hyperspecific identities, I feel you may have misunderstood my point above. The discussion there was meant to point out the tendency to do so and interminable "goal" of nationalism and the slippery slope of conflating the values of personal autonomy with such historically fraught concepts, not to argue in support of Balkanizing the globe. Quite the opposite.
You keep saying things that make me think you aren't fully considering my arguments. Primarily, your third and fourth paragraphs seem to be responding to a proposed solution, rather than an attempt to correct a gross miscommunication. I don't think the solution here is to somehow magically dissolve the Israeli government or transplant every Jewish person out of the region. I don't think I have one, but I do know that rampant mischaracterization of the issue will hardly contribute to any possible solution.
I'm not asking anybody to agree with my or anyone else's political views, just that you not engage with myself and everyone else as an amalgam of worst-case assumptions about the issue.
I don't believe that we can have remotely universal answers to these questions. If that seems like a cop-out, I promise it isn't: it means that every issue needs to be handled emergently and every regulation needs to be constantly reworked, with a pretense of achievable perfection, but no expectation of its eventuality. In the case of Israel, I don't live there; I'm not a journalist there; I'm not a family member of someone who is. It would be foolish of me to pretend to have remotely the requisite sorts of knowledge or emotional investments to even start answering questions about what next. What I do have an understanding of is the sorts of harm that people can and do enact upon each other. Far from comprehensive, but there's a concrete limit to horror, and an infinite different arrangements of polity. I can look at the past, and with patient study of various sources, see how the previously-alive were motivated and the ends of their means. I can't come close, and I don't believe anyone can, to understanding emerging phenomena and events in real time. The best outcome, whatever it will be, can only happen if everyone involved is doing their sincere best, and it seems unlikely that an outsider will stumble into alignment with their best interests. Politics as we generally conceive of it seems like a fool's errand.
My goals are that everyone just, like, gets along, you know? More seriously, that autonomy is preserved and cultivated to isolate social failure states and maximize individual agency, and that justice, as defined by each and all of us through iterative processes, is ubiquitous.
I asked you a pretty simply question. Are any of these people on Tildes? I don't understand why you are making baseless assumptions about my beliefs, or why you expect me to "solve for contradictions" in different people's.
There is a real difference of culpability between a bunch of terrorists who literally live in holes and a developed state. That's about the closest you're going to get as an answer from me. Now shove off, you've wasted my time and insulted me enough. I have tried to answer your questions in good faith and rephrase my own, and you're only interested in ranting.
If you aren't accusing me of anything, you've done a terrible job of accusing anyone else. Especially since I asked about somebody calling for Israels imminent destruction. Not a general moral statement which would, as I already pointed out, probably also deny any Arab "Palestinian ethnostate".
Sure, and that government...lives in holes. I don't have sympathy for them, but I'm gonna judge the people who can order steak dinners from Tuscany more than the people who can't when they bomb children. Beyond that, as I have repeatedly stated, I do not know.
If it doesn't matter, you wouldn't say it, and you wouldn't be conflating innocent statements with despicable ones.
I'm not saying you're lying in general. Nobody made you pretend that any and all antizionism is the same as antisemitism, nobody made you make the claims you have. I'm sympathetic. Which is why I'm pissed at your conduct throughout this attempt at a conversation.
In fact, I never once said you lied. This is the fundamental issue with your conduct I have. I have given you the benefit of the doubt after you repeatedly accused me of antisemitism.
Yeah, you just repeatedly insisted I explain nonsensical positions that nobody except antisemites would believe.
I wouldn't deny it, but I would be hard-pressed to answer it at all. I never met a single antisemite in real life until I went to Europe in my teens. I'd met:
And none of that is to say that antisemitism isn't real or widespread or to imply that there aren't plenty of people willing to conflate Zionism and the existence of Hebrew people and pretend to stand against the former only. It's only to say that it's really not very relevant to my life, so I'm not going to sit around psychoanalyzing bigots I don't know for you. The holocaust happened, it clearly has a foothold, but my opinion on the specific prevalence of antisemitism is not important.
I've tried to make nuanced arguments this whole time and you've steamrolled them. My point is this: I'm not ignoring antisemitism, I'm just also not willing to ignore antiarabism, or to pretend that we can assume most antizionists are secret antisemites when there is a lot more in the world to understand.
Call them, hell, call me, a useful fool for the powers of antisemitism. But I haven't jumped on a cause célèbre, and I'm not going to apologize for offending the sensibilities of a political movement that I find fundamentally unjust, and it isn't fair for you to dress down everyone who disagrees with you in pursuit of finding out the secret Nazis.
I have Jewish family, and I have. They've experienced it here and there, but do you seriously not get my point? The fact you've experienced antisemitism doesn't prove it's widespread, there are actual surveys and academic discussions of this that do.
If I'm entirely honest, I'm not very concerned about the fact that 60% of Gen Z in that cohort thought it was 2 instead of 6 million. I know it matters to you, but it's the same thing in principle, rounding up and slaughtering millions of people. Certainly not justification for disingenuous argumentation.
...but it is in some journal. Antisemitism has entire publications dedicated to it. That's my point. It is real. You don't need to imply I know nothing about it because I haven't lived it: I know my knowledge is limited, I've said as much. The fact you missed that point is why I can't trust you're actually engaging in this conversation, at this point the only reason I know you aren't essentially concern trolling is that you'd have gotten bored by now if that were your motive.
I don't frame this up to other groups,1 because they seem to understand when I say "my life experience is not the sum total of my knowledge", and most feminists don't sit around demanding I justify my opinion on every level when I say "yeah, but sometimes a prolifer just thinks a fetus is a human", the conversation actually moves forward.
1: edit to clarify that I don't mean to imply a contrast between groups, but between yourself as an interlocutor and other individual members of minority groups. I haven't had an intentional conversation go this unproductively in a long time.
Do you have any recommendations on where I can read more about this?
A slightly less cynical take than @stu2b50's is also that if Egypt allow the Palestinians to move into the Sinai Peninsula, they will have basically let Israel win and conduct a forcible population transfer (serious violation of international law) of 2 million people without any consequences. The entire issue will be over and the Palestinians will never be able to obtain an equitable settlement.
This is Israel's, not Egypt's, mess and the burden shouldn't be on Egypt to bear responsibility for the Israeli decision to invade.
I think you're overstating how bad the MB was in Egypt. The biggest problem was that they were debating how much to oppress women in the middle of a food and oil crisis. No democratic backsliding had happened yet. Other Islamist governments in the region had lost elections and took it well (eg. Tunisia).
Sisi took power because an opportunity presented itself, and the military wanted to get back in power again.
Of course it wasn't what they wanted, it was the MB. They suck at governing. At the next elections, they would've lost. Now there's no more real elections, and Mubarak v2 is in charge.
Military coups never lead to more democracy, because the military is an inherently anti-democratic institution, and owns all the guns.
Of course the MB are shitty towards women, they're Islamists! US Republicans are also shitty towards women. Should the military take over DC too? A military coup is not the solution to regression on social progress, particularly when nothing had happened yet. Nothing had happened yet because the MB is full of incompetent idiots who wouldn't be able to govern a Bedouin village, let alone Egypt.
A weak, fragile Muslim Brotherhood that was eminently defeatable at the next elections was preferable to the current military dictator who has ran out or imprisoned the liberals out of the country.
I'm sorry, I'm not angry with you, I'm just angry. The Arab Spring failed in every country. The entire region returned to autocracy.
The stupid thing is that revolutions usually fail. We remember the American and French revolutions, and forget the Paris Commune and Cromwell's commonwealth. Anyone calling for a revolution needs to be damn sure that it's the last possible option, because more often than not, you'll either outright fail, have it collapse around you, or lose it to the counter-revolution.
Anyone calling for the military to take over to help with climate change is just delusional. Yes, the military, that organisation usually known for using force to help leftists.
I think building on your point, social media has allowed us to never have to deal with an opposing viewpoint again. We just talk to people who already agree with us, and never have to confront ourselves anymore.
Revolutions that succeed also get highjacked and repurposed by sociopaths more often than not. The moment of revolution is like a patient anesthetized for surgery, the usual safeguards are not in play. Legal concepts like due process and open government records and meetings are not sexy but they prevent or penalize after the fact a lot of harm that would otherwise go unchecked.
Yup, that's a good point too. And usually, it's by whatever organisation managed to remain coherent through the autocracy. It's why the Islamists won everywhere during the Arab Spring, and why the Iranian revolution led to a brutal theocracy. Liberals did the legwork, but Islamists were actually organised.