The Palestinians have a tiny amount of territory, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, that has been under Israeli control since 1968. Israel controls the air space, all of the entry points, and is allowed to let its military freely enter. All utilities, water, electricity, communications, etc. in these territories is completely controlled by Israel. Israeli settlers have been colonizing the territories. The Palestinians are treated as residents of a vassal state, with limited freedoms, and occasionally Israeli soldiers bulldoze a home or shoot a citizen.
The US has given Palestine $235 million in aid, mostly dedicated to supporting refugees. The US has given Israel almost $4 billion in aid, virtually entirely dedicated to propping up their military.
The US has responded to a terrorist attack in Israel by promising to send more aid, more arms, to Israel. They’re also moving an aircraft carrier to the coast in support.
This is insane.
Israel does not need more money, arms, and encouragement to continue their oppression of the Palestinian people. It is inarguably horrible and criminal that Hamas militants murdered civilians, and I cannot excuse that; but neither can I excuse the decades of brutal oppression of Palestinians by Israel. These are criminal acts all around, and none can be forgiven.
The only reasonable answer, though, is to give Palestinians greater freedom and autonomy. They’re turning to violent assholes in Hamas because there is no alternative, and because Israel has become increasingly tyrannical. The US ought to be working to moderate the relationship, not giving Israel the tools and the encouragement to commit genocide. That’s all the current pattern of behavior can end in, in the violent, bloody destruction of an entire people.
Current US policy is enabling that genocide.
There never was a Palestinian homeland; the large area in question was a sparsely settled home to both Jews and Arabs when it was part of the Ottoman Empire, and then when it was a British protectorate after WWI. The relationship between the Jews and Arabs was mixed, good in places, highly contentious, even violent in others. The British actually created a Palestinian nation in the protectorate when they gave a huge part of the area to one of their Arab allies in 1946 which they called the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordanian Palestine. What was left of the protectorate was divided into a second Palestinian state, and a small Jewish state. The Jews accepted the partition, the Arabs did not, and the Arab Legion launched a war against the new state of Israel in 1948, as soon as the British pulled out. Some side facts: the Palestinian leadership sided with Hitler during WWII. There was terrorism on both sides in the years leading up to the partition. When the British pulled out, they left all their armored vehicles and weaponry with the Arabs, after confiscating as much weaponry from the Jews as they could; to this day, Israelis dislike the British. Most people think Israelis are largely descended from European Jews who escaped the Holocaust. Actually, the vast majority of Israelis are of Middle East and North African descent, having been expelled from the Muslim countries in which they had lived for thousands of years, allowed to leave only with the few items they could carry. At least as many Jews were expelled from Arab countries as Arabs were expelled from Israel, but Israel chose to absorb the refugees, the Arab states did not. Transjordanian Palestine changed its name to Jordan after it captured the entire West Bank in 1948. The Arab nations could have created a Palestinian nation there, or they could have annexed that territory and absorbed the people living there. Instead, they exploited the refugees, leaving them in squalid camps, and training them to carry out terrorist missions against Israel. From 1948, until Israel captured the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1967 (a war that Israel did not start) Israelis living within rocket range of those territories spent their night in bunkers, and children in the northern farming region went to school in underground bunkers. I was in Israel right after the 6 Day War; buildings in Jerusalem had blank walls without windows facing the Jordanian side, and the walls of those buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes. There are good reasons why the Israelis don’t trust the Palestinians to maintain peace when they have their own state in addition to Jordan.
That said, I support the creation of a Palestinian state, as long as there are conditions and safeguards. I oppose the settlements in the West Bank, though they were originally put in place for security purposes. I absolutely abhor Netanyahu, and his extremist coalition. It’s a complicated situation.
Kind of ironic that a people whose ancestors suffered one of the worst genocides in human history have been committing (albeit at a smaller scale and lesser ambition) a similar crime against humanity, under the watchful eye of the rest of the world, and with the assistance of American money. “Never again” doesn’t mean “never again shall we let something happen to people of Jewish descent” it means “never again shall this happen to any group of people.” Of course, that was an almost unbelievably naive proclamation. We are human, after all…there’s nothing we do better than killing each other (apparently). It is because of this reality that I could never be a pacifist. Some people only respond to violence or the threat of violence. It’s too bad that the most powerful nation on Earth is backing the villains of this story, but such a reality does not make Israel immune to violent reprisal, which to me, seems to be the only thing left to the people living as second-class citizens on their own land. Will it help? Probably not, but what else is there to do?
I support the creation of a Palestinian state, as long as there are conditions and safeguards…
That’s always sounded like a good idea, but it’s one the Israelis have exploited and misdirected to end up giving the Palestinians the worst of both worlds: they have none of the actual powers a sovereign or even semi-autonomous state would have, but all of the responsibilities for “internal” affairs over which they have no real control.
Perhaps, in hindsight, it would have been better to let Jordan re-annex the West Bank, and Egypt re-annex Gaza, so both could at least be parts of larger states that could actually take better care of the people living there.
operabuff,
A new state, indeed. In what was British Palestine before that.
So they took the place over, no?
Before, it was British Palestine, after it was Israel.
So the West Bank and the Golan Heights remain conquered territories.
Homelands to people who now are conquered people.
Mmm.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Conquered, oppressed people get angry and lash out.
(But then, so does the Ukraine war)
—
Thing is, this has been going on for basically my whole life. And it is not Israel that suffers most from these episodic breakouts of fighting and resistance.
Weird how the Palestinians are yet to give up, given that asymmetry of suffering, no? Well, no. And every single time, another generation of children is duly traumatised and alienated and angered. An occupied people.
As if all the foregoing weren’t complicate enough, Hamas–which is the de facto government of the Gaza Strip–has fundamental documents calling for the complete elimination of Israel. Kind of hard to work out actual “peace” with someone determined to destroy you.
I don’t know if it’s excuse or understand, but I don’t know what options are left for Palestinians. Peacefully hoping to stop their slow extermination isn’t much of a choice.
An interesting interview on the subject. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/could-the-attack-on-israel-spell-the-end-of-hamas
No.
That was easy.
The Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed by Israel, systematically and in slow motion.
No one can stop them and most everyone including the Arabs have given up.
This is obviously morally reprehensible.
The Palestinians strategy and tactics of sporadic violence are idiotic, counterproductive, and morally reprehensible too.
There is 75 years of history that says no one can beat Israel by military force.
The Palestinians can be as violent as they can and it isn’t going to do anything.
None of this makes any sense but it is a human thing so why should it?
So, do I have a realistic solution?
The best minds in our world haven’t come up with one so I’m not going to even pretend.
My unrealistic solution would be to just move all the Palestinians in Gaza, 2.3 million of them, somewhere else with huge amounts of money and support to allow them to build new lives.
We are talking mega billions of dollars here.
Is this fair? Not in the least.
Is it better than living in a concentration camp which is what Gaza is? Yes.
Is it going to happen? No.
This is when a people get tired of being used as part of big power politics. Israel is our bud in that area (along with Saudi Arabia) so screw the little guys who get caught up in the middle. Kind of like Ukraine. Just think Israel=Russia here, except Israel is on our side. As far as the people who run the world are concerned it has nothing to do with freedom or justice, it is just power. Just be happy you aren’t there. And remember we and our allies are always on the side of freedom and justice.
A considerable amount of US support to Israel is because conservative Christians need Israel to exist because it’s mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
Hamas, meanwhile, receives much of its money and equipment support from Iran, which I shouldn’t need to point out is also one of Russia’s only allies. Russia would benefit considerably from the US getting distracted from Ukraine due to renewed violence in Israel, while Iran considers Saudi Arabia to be one of its major rivals in the region since the fall of Iraq and has been looking at various ways to undermine SA. Such as new violence in Israel disrupting the negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that have been going on recently.
And the Palestinian people get to suffer.
@9 Ronald Couch,
That is, we’re on the side of freedom for the plutocrats in getting more wealth and power and justice for the downtrodden in getting more boots on their necks.
Thanks for the Jackson Browne track!
And crooked Beni gets a lifetime lock on power in Israel.
…wow. One comment in, and we’re starting with the blatant lie that “Palestine never existed”.
Gross.
operabuff@1–
The history of the founding of Israel and Palestine is complex, but the version you’re giving is dangerously close to the ‘terra nullius’ argument that was used to oppress indigenous rights in Australia for many years. Yes the area was sparsely populated, yes it was a remnant of the dissolved Ottoman empire rather than a recognised nation. But it’s pretty uneven to present these as arguments against a Palestinian state given (1) population size should not be an argument against sovereignty or human rights, (2) other parts of the region that became nations were sparsely populated, not just Palestine, (3) in 1947 Israel was founded with a population of 800K — at the time Palestine’s population was 1.9M, (4) the British Mandate was supposed to be a transition stage to nation status for the old Ottoman districts; of the four territories, all became independent nations except Palestine, so it’s not like lack of prior nation-status was an impediment to any other territory. Those other territories are now Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and for comparison here are their populations in 1947: 1.3M, 3.3M, 4.8M respectively. So Palestine’s population sat between Lebanon’s and Syria’s.
Here’s the UN’s historical summary, which can only cover the basics given the depths and complexities involved, but it clearly shows that the British Mandate failed to follow its own covenant specifically in Palestine and not in other Ottoman territories, and that this was almost entirely because of the Brit’s prior agreement to establish a Jewish state in the area. I’m not going to argue the moral or pragmatic pros and cons of that agreement, but the British put themselves in an impossible situation and then dropped the problem into the UN’s lap in 1947.
And this, my friend, is you spouting ahistorical rubbish: ‘Some side facts: the Palestinian leadership sided with Hitler during WWII.’ This is a gross simplification. Many Arab leaders wanted Britain out of the Middle East for obvious reasons, and it;s true that Amin el-Hassani of Palestine openly so-operated with the Axis powers. But he ended up fleeing Palestine after a failed uprising, and then spent most of his energy in exile sending assassins back into Palestine to kill other Palestinians who did not support him. This did not help his position in Palestine of course, and his secret plan to retake power failed dismally, with all his agents being arrested within days, often by the same Palestinian police force that had helped smuggle him out of Palestine in the first place. Other Palestinian leaders and almost all of the Palestinian press sided with the Allies. Around 12,000 Palestinians chose to enlist in the British Army. And on the flip side, using your way of describing history, many Zionists sided with Hitler! (See the Haavara Agreement, 1933). Meanwhile the British severely limited immigration to Palestine during WW2 to appease local sentiment…but this is the same British government that had made agreements to create a Zionist state. It’s almost as if the situation was incredibly complex and saying ‘Palestinian leaders supported Hitler’ is a simplistic and historically inaccurate bad-faith argument that is, by the way, not even relevant to the question of Palestinian statehood.
operabuff @ # 2: There never was a Palestinian homeland…
Pls read your Exodus 15:14 —
— written, putatively, before the founding of the first Israel.
If you search for the earlier spelling/pronunciation, you’ll find eight references just in the preceding book. Genesis 21:34, f’rinstance, clearly asserts their claim to the land before Abraham purportedly began his clan.
If you’d rather appeal to the recent history, particularly in the present context, please do not again fail to mention the expulsions of 1948 or what happened in Deir Yassim. You accidentally omitted those because you felt so eager to tell us what we’d somehow missed before now, right?
PZ, thank you for bringing up this very contentious but important issue.
In the past I have talked about this with thoughtful honest friends who were Jews and Muslims. They agree with my thoughtful stance that both Palestine and Israel have a right to exist and to do so in peace. However, the land that both live on is covered with so much blood nothing can be reconciled. This horrible murderous feud has been going on for centuries in one form or another. Long ago it was institutionalized as a mindset of the governing powers in both Palestine and Israel. It has continuously escalated and seems to have reached a point where there appears neither party is willing to take a substantive first step toward peace without the other side using that as an excuse for more massive vengeful destruction and murder. Even though there are decent Jews in Israel that want peace and an honest government, sadly, I have observed a horrible powerful bully in netanyahoo and his hard-line rightwing gov’t with their massive military and monetary power hypocritically playing the ‘assaulted victim’. There are xtian nationalists who keep pouring money and influence to keep this escalating for their own twisted zealous reasons. Some barbarians in the u.s. government and the bloody cheerleader mainstream media decided years ago to jump onto the Israeli government bandwagon and vilify all palestinians without any objective justification. I am at a loss to see how the bloodshed can be stopped given the maniacal governing mindsets involved. I will not recant or debate my position on this. It saddens me deeply.
post script: I can see no flaw in what PZ has related in his post.
To add to some of the other corrections, Israel did absolutely start the 1967 war. It was in the midst of escalating hostilities and there are claims that it was a justified preemptive strike but Israel started it but it was started by the Israeli Government and then they initially lied about it.
The tragedy of Israel is that it has real enemies. The far worse tragedy of Palestine is that it has no real friends. I do not include as real friends whoever gave Hamas 2000 missiles and paraglider troop training. I assume that’s Iran, who are using Hamas and Gaza as catspaws.
The tribal knives are out & sharpened after generations of an industrialized, postmodern media & diplomatic effort to polarize public perception in regards to this region. And it’s being reported that up to 4 US citizens have been killed by Hamas. It’s fucking horrible already & about to get worse.
This video explains it all.
https://youtu.be/8tIdCsMufIY?si=YzOZ0Cc5RXbt-Wp0
Mano warned us about this, but I don’t think I’ve seen one in the wild before:
@ 1 operabuff
Yeah there never was a nation because it was part of the Ottoman Empire and then the British one. Just because they were dominated by occupying powers doesn’t mean people weren’t farming the land for centuries.
You know why Trans-Jordan is called Trans? It means on the other side of the Jordan River. From Palestine. Palestine in not Jordan and Jordan is not a Palestinian state. There has yet to be a single Palestinian state (since ancient times). Also “small Jewish state”? Small?! Let’s see…
So a very recently arrived third of the population got more than half the land. Gee, I wonder why the indigenous people weren’t chuffed?
Back to
Hasbaraoperabuff…“Pulled out”, lol. They were driven out by terrorism. By Jewish settlers. You know, terrorism, that thing people do when they are facing a far more powerful foe they can’t possibly defeat head on? (Google “Irgun” is you don’t believe me.) As for this claim “the Arab Legion launched a war” – funny, that’s not the way the UN remembers it…
@ 1 operabuff
Weird, I wonder why the British didn’t arm the side that were trying to blow them up?
You seem to have left out of your totally unbiased account that the proto-Israelis were armed by the USSR via Czechoslovakia. Yes, Stalin’s USSR. They saw proto-Israel as anti-British and therefore a possible new ally. With Soviet arms, the proto-Israelis were by far the dominant military power, and utterly crushed the Arabs. They then embarked on a program of ethnic cleansing that saw three quarters of a million people driven for their homes. To this day, Israel has never agreed to any right of return of the refugees, or any reparations for their loss of their homes an livelihoods. When the smoke cleared…
Israel held four fifths of Palestine. Hmm… seems to have worked out well for them, eh?
Back to
Hasbaraoperabuff…First, citation needed but second – can you knock off this racist idea that all Arabs are the same? The Hashemites are a completely different people to the Palestinians. Why the fuck should they put up with being kicked off their land they’ve lived on for centuries by invaders and just go and live in a foreign country instead? They want to live in their own country, not fucking Jordan! And you’re downplaying the sheer scale and horror of what Arabs call the Nakba:
@ 1 operabuff
Well of course not, Israel never starts anything. They just inexplicably end up with vastly more land than they started with, right?
This second massive land grab is known to Arabs as the Naksa and guess what, they don’t think of it fondly…
Lucky Israel, eh? Never starts anything, but keeps owning or controlling all of other people’s land.
Back to
Hasbaraoperabuff…Jordan is not a fucking Palestinian state!!!
Meanwhile, Israel continues to illegally occupy Palestinian territory, grabbing more and more with illegal settlements, thoroughly blockading Gaza, controlling all the food and water, regularly starving the population to keep them under control, routinely bombing Gaza while Israelis sit on hilltops sipping cocktails and cheering like it’s an enjoyable spectacle (like fireworks!) – and you think it’s the Palestinians who are untrustworthy?
@ 5 whheydt
Because Israel has shown no sign of wanting to destroy Palestinians. Seriously, what do you expect a powerless occupied people to do when they are facing an utterly brutal, totally dominating invading power who for decades have signalled a clear intention to annex all of Palestine? Of course they want them to fuck off. Of course they use rhetoric like, “drive the Jews into the sea”. Do you think Israelis don’t use the exact same rhetoric?
The difference is one side in the invader, dominator, oppressor; the other is the invaded, downtrodden, oppressed. Oh, that and the latter has about ten times the death toll of the former on their best days.
It shouldn’t be too difficult for someone living in the territories of decimated Native American peoples to understand what is going on. The US is simply supporting a process overseas that it underwent itself – Settler Colonialism.
Also it disrupts the Middle East to the extent the oil can be grabbed.
(In case people think I’m telling antisemitic porkies…)
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html
…or
https://archive.is/89m5p
I lost all care for Palestine after Hamas attacked and killed the people at a rave party on the weekend. They even raped the women next to the the dead bodies, then executed them. Sorry, but I’m out. Israel can take the whole lot. The innocents there can become part of Israel or leave to another muslim state. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/10/08/260-bodies-found-at-israeli-music-festival-after-hamas-attack-attendees-describe-horror-movie/
Fuck you, Alt-X, for spreading more lies.
@30 and of course the nonsense is from “Forbes”, an ultra-capitalist “magazine” with its namesake from a hard-right anti-choice “ancap” idiot
As I wrote above in #8 in reaction to the Israeli ethnic cleansing/genocide of the Palestinians, “The Palestinian’s strategy and tactics of sporadic violence are idiotic, counterproductive, and morally reprehensible too.”
Targeting random Israeli civilians is not going to help their cause.
What it will do is end with the inevitable Israeli retaliation.
You can count on the inevitable Israeli retaliatory violence.
The number of dead Palestinians to dead Israelis at the end of these cycles usually runs around 5:1 to 10:1.
Expect around 7,000 or so dead Palestinians in the next few weeks.
There isn’t going to be a quick end to this round of violence.
PZ Myers asked rhetorically for someone to explain this.
One atrocity is followed by…another atrocity.
Repeat every once in a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
Israel of the last many decades now has moved, by democratic choice complicated by factional politics that greatly impowers the worst of Jewish fanatics (truly people who are so much a Chosen People they can celebrate ANY atrocity and arrogance and oppression of others), towards becoming a fascist state.
And Hamas, corrupt and weak, now has lost any sympathy I had with them. The attack aimed at civilians first, and with the goal to murder, kidnap, everything evidently short of cannibalism, is like an inept version of the inept and corrupt Russian invasion.
The people in the Gaza Strip are paying the price for being ruled by such stupid, violent men. And will for years and years.
When anyone still willing to claim the name or mantle of Hamas, consciously stupid, useless murderers without any goal. is dead – DEAD – the people there will again have the smallest chances of making a life.
Israel’s horrible. HORRIBLE! American protection of Likud Israel is disgusting and evil and inexcusable (except as the kind of politics that supported genocide elsewhere as well).
That said, I believe you are wrong in writing what you’ve written here, P.G.
This is the first time I’ve ever thought you were morally wrong.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, what did you expect? Still doesn’t change the fact that Israel is an apartheid state which will predictably land-invade the tiny strip for another war, as it tries to make the “war on terrorism” work. I’m sure this time around bombing will be convincing though, surely, this time is the charm, surely.
The main problem is that the Israeli government is a collection of right-wing shitfaces who have no problem with literally an endless war. And endless war is what their policies will produce.
This war is just getting started here.
It looks like Israel is going to invade Gaza and take control of it. Whatever that means.
There is no easy way to “take control” of 2 million people who hate you and who you hate back.
If they do take control then Israel is responsible for providing food, water, electricity, internet, and medical care for 2 million people. Gaza is a prison. It’s not like they have an economy or anything any more.
It’s not really a great idea.
This is going to take weeks at least.
Is the AP lying as well?
What source will be accepted, because it reads like the facts, however disgusting and inhuman places like the WSJ or Forbes are.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-music-festival-6a55aae2375944f10ecc4c52d05f2ffe
Also, the Hamas militants don’t care about dying which makes the “war on terror” concept sound even more stupid. In fact dying is probably what they want. Brain-washed by their scumbag leaders, they believe in martyrdom and given their miserable material condition, it’s probably the best fantasy they have got. Yeah, oppressed people in miserable condition being drawn to suicidal fantasies of bigoted religious leaders promising salvation is a problem that surely can be solved by bullets.
Oh noes!!! Are you telling me Israelis are missing out on music festivals! My heart goes out to them!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-20415675
Perhaps we should send a billion dollar aid package?
I’m as baffled as you are. Did people in Israel (or anywhere) think the situation could continue, what, forever?
Instead…:
To what realistic end? These policies and actions can’t reasonably be expected – even by people with callous or genocidal attitudes toward Palestinians – to make the lives of Israelis better or safer going forward.
— Hamas militants don’t care about dying … Brain-washed by their scumbag leaders
— The people in the Gaza Strip are paying the price for being ruled by such stupid, violent men.
— The Palestinians strategy and tactics of sporadic violence are idiotic, counterproductive, and morally reprehensible too.
Incredible how unaware people are of the fact that every time a competent leader emerges for Hamas, the Israelis assassinate him.
https://imeu.org/article/israels-history-of-assassinating-palestinian-leaders:
Of course it’s probable that Russia is ultimately behind the attacks and their timing, and Palestinians will end up regretting being pawns in someone else’s war. But America at least, and the West in general, would have had a much stronger case against Russian annexation of neighbouring territories had they shown some effective opposition to Israel’s long- term occupation, colonisation, and (recognised by USA) annexation. And the discreet silence about Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Bullets and rockets aren’t an answer- for either side- but when the Palestinians weren’t attacking, what was being done to create peace?
I don’t believe that Franklin Roosevelt knew about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor before it happened. But does it make me a conspiracy theorist to think that Benjamin Netanyahu wanted this to happen and ignored the intelligence that the attack was coming? Could Israel’s intelligence system have been so badly fooled? This solves a lot of problems for Netanyahu and he is not known as a moral man.
Comment 1 reads like it was written before this weekend, only edited after. The usual list of historical contextualizing fill with half truths and half omissions.
So let me respond with something that is simple and objectively true:
The militants in Hamas, which without doubt committed a terrible crime, are composed of young men who know nothing but living in a cage. They don’t really give a shit about 1948 or who got what weapons etc (though they will use it to rationalize their hatred). They want to be free, like all humans. But they are one group of a very few who live in a cage where their lives at fundamental levels are in the control of someone else who does not represent them.
So, in response to a list of empty historical ‘facts’, which seems to me to only serve the function of shifting the topic away from the fundamental fact of ‘occupation’, let me offer my reflexive response:
LOCK UP PEOPLE IN CAGES AND THEY WILL ACT LIKE ANIMALS.
To expect otherwise and then blame the captives for their lack of responsibility is criminal and a human rights atrocity.
More from the AJ liveblog:
Half true.
Every time a leader for Hamas is identified by Israel, they are killed.
It doesn’t matter whether they are competent or not.
It’s also irrelevant.
The important fact here, repeated over and over again is…
Gaza is the largest prison/concentration camp in the world.
The fighters of Hamas probably don’t care if they get killed and fully expect it.
They have no future and nothing to look forward to in Gaza.
They can’t even easily leave the place and if they do, they can’t come back.
Jerusalem Post: “In the Gaza Strip, the unemployment rate decreased from 47% in 2021 to 45% in 2022”. An unemployment rate of 45% is not a good way to create a stable society.
Oh, FFS. I don’t have time for this. I agree with the larger point, best I can tell. But we all act like animals all the time, because we are animals. We’re not part animal, or acting like animals when we’re violent, or acting like animals when we’re not using reason. We’re animals. Our reason is animal, our nonviolence is animal, our violence is animal. Everything human is animal. Nor are Hamas acting like “savages” or “barbarians” or whatever meaningless and harmful term anyone wants to start lazily throwing around. We need to find more honest and productive ways to think and talk about violence.
@41 mooskaya
Israel had tons of people assassinated throughout its bloody history, from shooting a random waiter in Norway to sending parcel bombs through European postal services and maiming a secretary in Germany.
This is an example of what living in Gaza is like for 2 million people.
Israel limits the amount of electricity, building materials, equipment, and water that can enter Gaza.
This means they don’t treat most of their sewage which is just pumped into the Mediterranean sea.
The people of Gaza also have very limited access to fresh water.
This is Israel deliberately restricting the fresh water supply to 2 million people, most of whom are women and children.
This happened and is happening many for many years before the current war.
It was part of the Babylonian empire, and a splinter religious sect took over a chunk and declared it theirs by divine decree. From there on were thousands of years of people proclaiming this divine decree and other people saying “what the fuck? this is part of our empire!” But make no mistake, it was Babylonian land and I’m pretty sure that the Babylonian kings at some point or another announced that it was theirs by grace of some god. If I recall correctly, Hammurabi’s code predates the invention of Yahwism by a few hundred years. It includes divine land decree:
OK, so god gave the land to the Babylonian empire – thank goodness those guys were wiped out so their descendants aren’t coming and making territorial claims.
There is also, often, a claim that Palestine was not a country, which is a lawyerly absurdity. Or that nobody lived there, which is a high level absurdity, given that parts of the Levant have been occupied by one imperial power or another, since before recorded history. The lawyerly absurdity is that the Ottoman Empire was on the losing side of World War I, and the victorious British and French went about stripping the losers of colonies. The Levant, and its population had just been “Ottomans” but were now “in between, at the whim of the latest imperial conqueror” – which was a familiar state of being since before history. The mythology is that the Jews were driven away from “their land” as they had driven away its occupants back in ~1800BC. The reality is that some or even many Jews were driven away, but there was still a population that remained – maybe that population identified themselves as “Romans” or whatever but most likely they were farmers who wanted to be left alone and not subjected to occasional sweeps of mass murder or levees. With various changes, additions and subtractions, the population of the Levant continued to do its thing, while empires rose and fell, and the empires kept drawing imaginary lines on their maps declaring the area territory of so-and-so, or else. For example, in the 1200-1400 BC timeframe, the Levant was part of the Egyptian empire, who would certainly not have treated it as a separate territory – it was just “that bunch of land Thutmoses I added to our empire the other day!” – I don’t expect the Egyptian empire bothered to have a governor over a specific territory in the Levant, like the Romans did when the Levant was theirs, but we should expect that the locals gave a fuck about all of this to the extent that when an empire believes you are part of it, there’s the sharp end of a spear waiting for you if you want to contest the land rights.
The Levant has more or less always been occupied by someone, because it’s right next to “the cradle of civilization” which today has been divided (by the British after World War 1) into “Iraq” and “Iran” which one might also argue are not “real nations” but let’s not go there. It’s an utter absurdity to say “Palestine is not a nation” because, so what, the question is not a matter of lines on the map, it’s a matter of who was living where and who felt they owned what. Whether there was a nation with political branding, there were definitely plenty of people who saw various parts of the Levant as “my farm” and “our town” etc. They didn’t respect the Romans who came along and said, “you’re part of Rome now!” (uh-huh) they didn’t respect the Ottomans much, either. But the Ottomans unquestionably “owned” or at least controlled Palestine for a long time. They didn’t call it “Palestine” it was “part of our empire which was added, oh, I forget exactly when…maybe 1400 or so?” The Ottomans did a lot of conquering back around then – Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire, just like the Levant (which was part of Egypt when the Ottomans absorbed Egypt, if I recall correctly) – the point is: everyone at some point or another has thought, passionately, that the land was theirs and there were very few uninterrupted periods where someone would have seen the Levant as anything more than a bunch of land absorbed into their empire.
Fast forward to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War 1, and the victorious British and French dividing up the spoils. It was necessary to divide the spoils because, otherwise, the Ottoman Empire would have remained intact, right? So let’s draw some lines on a map. Independent Republic of Turkey, French Mandate of Syria, British Mandate of Palestine, British Mandate of Mesopotamia… Now, some people would say “the British Mandate of Palestine was not a nation” which is humbuggery – the British certainly thought of it as “the new part of our empire called ‘Palestine'” until it turned out that they couldn’t administer it very well because they were overextended and the locals were tired of being imperial pawns and thought maybe they could be a nation. There was plenty of nationalism in Palestine, it was just “not a nation” because the British had just destroyed the lines on the map that made it part of the Ottoman Empire. When the British began losing their grip on the area, they made the amazingly bad move of promising Palestine to European Jews as a homeland, and to local Arabs as “Palestine” – that’s where the whole “Palestine not a nation” thing comes from. Well, Israel was not a nation then, either. It declared itself to be after World War 2. But Palestine didn’t declare itself to be a nation because it never got a chance.
Saying Palestine was ripe for the conquering because it was not a nation is ridiculous – it has always been part of some empire or other. The name kept changing. Call it “Palestine” or “The Levant” or “Israel” it’s always been occupied, always had a local population, and had whatever degree of nationalist sentiment that a bunch of people who live someplace might have.
Now, I’ll put in a plug for the great book O Jerusalem by Collins and LaPierre [amazon] which goes through the founding of Israel around Jerusalem since the beginning of Zionism as declared by Theodore Hertzl in his 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State. It’s really detailed and eye-opening and will give you a good feeling for how much everyone in the Levant suffered between the 1800s and right now – it’s “everyone making everyone else suffer” which is pretty much the whole story. Most Americans get confused by the actions of the nazis in World War 2 and its impact on zionism, and don’t realize that the migrations to Palestine started when Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire. (Which definitely thought it was ‘a nation’) and were kicked into overdrive by insane European anti-semitism between World War 1 and World War 2, which are well documented in Tim Snyder’s great book Bloodlands
A cynic’s view of the founding of Israel is that the European powers, and the US, unable to confront their systemic anti-semitism, decided to export it. It was similar to how US racists tried to convince black people to “go back to Africa” in Liberia. It was disgusting political cowardice but the time seemed ripe for it, because the British were losing their grip on their middle eastern conquest, and decided to just toss the whole mess over to let it be sorted out with a bunch of war and genocide. After all, the European powers were completely comfortable with that sort of thing happening, they had just stood by and watched it happen all over the world, what is a bit more?
I wrote:
the British certainly thought of it as “the new part of our empire called ‘Palestine’” until it turned out that they couldn’t administer it very well because they were overextended and the locals were tired of being imperial pawns and thought maybe they could be a nation.
The point I was trying to make, which I fumbled in my volubility, is that when the zionist migrations began, after World War 1 and into the 1930s, they were not “occupying Palestine” they were “occupying part of the British Empire.” It was not “not a nation” it was a British imperial possession, like how the Philippines are not part of the US but you’d damn well better keep your troops off them. There was open warfare between the zionists and the British, and some really horrific terrorism all around. The British were just tired, after World War I, and they were getting sick of the whole middle east, and let go of it eventually.
@jimmyfromdelaware, #21: Yep, that pretty much sums it up for the entire world.
I don’t see how a hypothetical rave party massacre is different than the slaughter the Palestinians have faced from Israelis. Even if it’s true this doesn’t mean anything about Palestinians. Horrible people are horrible people. And I don’t see how that matters to Palestine either, that nation gets colonialist barbarity and the group isn’t responsible for those monsters. Palestine is children and civilians too.
I just see another barbaric act, I don’t see how that matters to Palestinian children and civilians or the besieged entity Palestine.
OK, so god gave the land to the Babylonian empire – thank goodness those guys were wiped out so their descendants aren’t coming and making territorial claims.
Are we sure about that? Maybe if we can get a few thousand distant kinda-sorta-maybe-traceable descendants of Babylonians together, it’ll throw a whole new wrinkle into all this mishmash of historical grievances and justifications. C’mon, I’m getting bored with all the old who-was-there-first arguments let’s get some non-Abrahamic players in here…
I said this on JoeMyGod, but I think it bears repeating here…
[Someone else said] Hamas has basically set back the Palestinian cause by decades. Now, a lot of people will automatically associate “Palestinian” with “terrorism”…
This has been a problem for Palestinians since the days of Yasser Arafat’s PLO. And the problem doesn’t really originate with whatever terrorist gang is killing people in the Palestinians’ name this week; a HUGE part of it is whatever foreign power(s) are supporting said terrorist gang(s): they’ve always been using and abusing the Palestinians as cannon-fodder for all manner of stupid objectives, and stupid strategies,* that were never meant to benefit Palestinians.
Today the Iranians are being blamed for supporting Hamas. Okay, assuming this is true, have the Iranians tried to do anything for their Palestinian “allies” other than helping them kill people? Gaza’s been short on water, electricity, infrastructure and other things for many years — have the Iranians tried to help with any of that? If so, have Israel allowed it?
*Every time I try to type “strategy,” it always comes out as “stragety.” Given all the tragedy we’ve been seeing as a result of such “strategies,” maybe I should just call this a new word.
I only have a problem with hamas’s targets. If they stayed with military targets (and maybe targets in occupied regions while actually trying to avoid children, I can’t call parent civilians when they are part of the violence at that level).
That part of this violence is justified due to barbaric colonialist behavior and a rave massacre doesn’t affect that.
Thanks for this post PZ. I agree with everything you said.
The US is kissing Israel’s ass because according to evangelicals, if America does, GAWD will spare our country during the end times. That’s it. That’s the reason.
Can’t explain it any better than anyone else here, but my two cents:
Nothing at all could justify the murderous savagery displayed by the Hamas killers of the last few days.
Nothing at all could justify the decades of oppression of the residents of Gaza and other occupied/disputed territories around Israel by the Israeli government.
And the suffering falls and will fall disproportionately on civilians, both in Israel due to the Hamas scum, and especially in Gaza due to the reprisals and likely invasion.
Autobot Silverwynde @ # 59: … according to evangelicals, if America does, GAWD will spare our country …
That helps to sell the policy to fundagelicals, but the cold-eyed (if improvisational) calculations of early Cold War superpower global politics made all the difference in the “Israel lobby”‘s influence in DC over the last 75 years.
Weird how “murderous savagery” is used to describe Palestinians fighting back against their oppression and their ongoing genocide but never against the Israelis who are forcefully oppressing slowly genociding them.
There are an awful lot of people living on stolen land aghast at the victims with nothing left to lose not going quietly into the night.
jacksprocket @ 42 did bring up a point. I do believe that we can all agree, there is no food supplement that will, once consumed, allow one to shit out missiles. Missiles aren’t cheap, they don’t grow in fields, they’re manufactured and shipped to a port, then have to get from the port to Hamas’ hands and Scotty still hasn’t fixed the transporter yet. The missiles are Fajr-5 missiles, made by Iran. Iran always has an interest in stirring the pot, but not knocking the pot off of the stove. Meanwhile, anything to destabilize and distract from the war in Ukraine is something Russia would go for.
I agree with Brony as well, in war, noncombatants are to be protected within the realm of military operational necessity. Military, always a target (well, save for hospitals), government agency buildings are a target, logistical bases are targets, transportation hubs for supply shipment are targets, military airfields are vast targets that well eat missiles for a light snack.
And frankly, I can’t tell the “good guy” from the “bad guy”, given IDF indiscriminate blowing up of houses, trees and people that’s just as unlawful targeting as what Hamas has been doing. Hell, neither side is bothering wearing a white hat. If the IDF returned fire on the missile launchers, that’d have been an entirely different matter and they’ve more than adequate capability to do so with modern tracking radar.
There ain’t any saints in that mess, but there sure are a hell of a lot of sinners.
And it’s decidedly interesting that the Iron Dome defense system took some much earned time off, even if it’s supposed to be largely automated.
Oh, FDR knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, just not from where or when. We had more than enough intercepts in already broken codes to figure out an attack was coming, just not enough to prevent the attack without revealing a very, very important weapon – those broken ciphers. Cryptic warnings were issued, which were misconstrued as to what the actual threat was, just to protect sources and means.
Like many events in history, it all can come down to a few bad calls by decision makers.
And yes, US support is largely due to the US fundies, who are hoping against hope of the armies surrounding Jerusalem and the Lord Bob Alsmity will then come down and smite all who are not them in his alsmity love.
And of course, “get rid of all those Jesus killing Jews”, an odd notion, as I can number on one hand the number of people alive from that event and still play a piano concerto.
The stupid shit that some people believe…
American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!
The things that Hamas has been doing are appalling, but honestly I think that terrorism and support for terrorism is almost inevitable when people are treated the way that the Palestinians have been treated. There are few groups of people in the world who would not turn to violence or at least sympathize with it if they were treated like the people in the Gaza Strip have been.
Also, it seems to me that the Palestinians don’t have any real friends among the world’s governments. Even the governments like Iran that are hostile to Israel and help arm groups like Hamas are just cynically using the Palestinians as pawns. If they really wanted to help them, they would provide humanitarian aid and investment, or at least welcome refugees to their countries.
springa73, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_aid_to_Palestinians
“In June 2016, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released a report, titled Squandered Aid: Israel’s repetitive destruction of EU-funded projects in Palestine, discussing Israel’s repeated destruction of EU-funded projects in the Palestinian territories. The report claimed that, since 2001, Israel had destroyed around 150 development projects, which incurs the EU a financial loss of approximately €58 million.”
—
In current news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/09/eu-freeze-of-palestinian-funds-sparks-diplomatic-row
Gosh! I’m sorry I made ANY comment, given I would simply walk out of any room where someone said anything like 90% of the comments here. I leave you disingenuous people to vomit self-righteous while chewing your own feet off.
I mean, yuck.
The hypocrisy is strong in two of your posts. First Biden expresses support for Indigenous peoples on their special day then he expresses support for Israel’s “right’ to exterminate the indigenous Palestinians and call it self defense.
There have been no “Palestinians fighting back” over the past day or two, only child-killers and rapists from Hamas massacring (and mass-raping) civilians, including children. Rape and child-murder aren’t fighting back, any more than it’s fighting back when right-wing settler mobs massacre and rape Palestinian civilians, including children. Hamas is hurting Palestinians and Gazans (as well as their Israeli victims), not fighting back to help them. Settlers and other fascist Israeli mobs aren’t helping Israelis when they kill Palestinian civilians, they’re hurting Israeli civilians. Hamas doesn’t represent Gaza; killers and rapists don’t represent Palestinians.
iiandyiiii:
Israel apparently believes otherwise; collective punishment and punishment by proxy is the name of the game.
Gaza ‘soon without fuel, medicine and food’ – Israel authorities
“The Gaza Strip could be on the brink of a new humanitarian crisis if supplies are not allowed in, authorities say, as Israel responds to the Hamas attacks.
On Monday, Israel declared a “complete siege” on the territory, saying electricity, food, fuel and water would be cut off.
According to residents, aid has not reached the enclave since Saturday.
BBC footage shows deserted streets covered with rubble from collapsed buildings following Israeli airstrikes.
Nearly 700 people have died in these attacks and thousands more are reported to have been injured.
The area is home to about 2.3 million people in total – 80% of whom rely on humanitarian aid mainly due to the ongoing hostilities with Israel.
[…]
According to Associated Press, 19 members of the same family were killed in a strike in Rafah, in the south of Gaza.
The UN said on Monday 123,538 people in Gaza have been internally displaced, mostly “due to fear, protection concerns and the destruction of their homes”.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) added that 73,000 people are sheltering in schools.”
John Morales @ 66
Thanks, it looks like the Palestinian Territories have gotten more aid than I realized. I should have looked it up before I commented.
I think it’s important to remember that the Gaza Strip is in even worse shape than the Palestinian Territories in the West Bank because it has been under blockade for over 15 years – not total blockade, but enough to greatly reduce outside aid and make travel in and out difficult. The blockade seems to have been a response to Hamas gaining political power in the Gaza Strip, and ironically the desperate conditions that resulted have probably allowed them to maintain that power.
Now I wonder if Israel may try to occupy the Gaza Strip again. That would prevent it being used as a base for a large scale terrorist attack again, but might become a running sore for Israel with an insurgency.
It’s simple, really. Hamas and Israel (at least the right wingers in charge right now) only want complete victory, and they’re willing to kill the other side to get it. (It’s actually a lot like Ukraine v Russia today.) There can only be peace when both sides want peace, and here neither side wants any peace except for their complete victory.
I’m struggling to sit this one out but seeing a certain someone on their blogging site said in the comments recently that Gaza was returned out of “goodwill”, the wikipedia hints at more a cynical sense of demographic threat for what that’s worth:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza#Rationale_and_development_of_the_policy
And one talking point in this weird as hell document:
“Reducing the demographic threat – By ending Israeli responsibility for 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Disengagement Plan will significantly extend the time until the Palestinian population under continuing Israeli control constitutes a majority, thereby undermining a key component of the One-State Threat.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep10523?seq=6
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reut_Group
“The Reut Group (formerly known as the Reut Institute) is a non-profit policy think tank and Israeli lobby organization[1] in Tel Aviv. It was founded by Gidi Grinstein in January 2004 to provide decision-support to Israeli policymakers.[2][3]”
So yeah, there’s that cynical demographic threat thing which may have been a rationale for quitting Gaza.
Lurk mode returned.
And that certain someone just recently keelhauled PZ and us yammering ignorant acolytes in a posting about worldwide celebrations of Hamas atrocities. I may be yammering but I sure ain’t celebrating.
@47 – Yes we are animals. You’re a fucking genius for pointing it out. eyeroll Make sure you completely miss my point by making a pedantic one. That will really further the conversation. I don’t have time for that. And I won’t be ‘corrected’, or whatever you tried to achieve, for pointing out that violence is wrong and beneath humanity. It’s not lazy at all to suggest it is. Perhaps you’d prefer if I had said ‘caged animals’? Happy?
Finally, just want to say I really appreciated the comment @54 for being apt and succinct.
Oh, FDR knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor, just not from where or when. We had more than enough intercepts in already broken codes to figure out an attack was coming, just not enough to prevent the attack without revealing a very, very important weapon – those broken ciphers.
Bullshit. Yes, US codebreakers did intercept a lot of German-Japanese messages discussing potential US targets in the Pacific. Along with about 200 other possible targets. Pearl Harbor was basically lost in all that noise.
And no, I’m pretty sure no one in any hierarchy, military or intelligence, would choose to endanger such a huge concentration of US power and personnel just to protect their codebreaking secrets.
Also, are you really sure FDR knew that Japan WAS GOING TO attack Pearl Harbor? As opposed to, say, thinking they might threaten to attack first, or attack if the US first did something it hadn’t yet done?
There is no explanation you will accept PZ.
My response is the same as it always is. If any of the 326 reservations in the United States did this, we’d squash them flat. The residents of these reservations get treated horribly by the United States all the time, it’s codified in our laws.
If you see darkness, light a candle. Perhaps consider also lighting some candles in the United States. Cane is dead.
Another factor re: FDR and Pearl Harbor, is that many planners at that time thought the Japanese would attack PH via spies and sabotage, not with an overt naval and air strike. Lots of people were paranoid about Japanese-Americans with possibly divided loyalties even before the attack. That’s why, for example, the planes were parked wingtip-to-wingtip: so guards could more easily spot anyone trying to mess with them.
seachange
The US laws today regarding native American tribal governments and lands are nowhere near as bad as Gaza. Completely incomparable. Please try again.
Yes, a just government like the USA government (for the sake of argument) would crush a grossly violent attack from a neighbor / internal member.
However, an unjust government, like Israel, would also crush such a neighbor / internal member. However however, Israel is about to do a whole lot worse than what the USA would do in your hypothetical.
Raging Bee, if one has no information on when and from what direction Pearl Harbor was to be attacked, how does one intercept the attack? It’s a big ocean now, it was a big ocean then, with far less visibility than we currently have.
Additionally, the diplomatic ciphers were fully compromised, while the military ciphers remained unbroken, giving only partial visibility into what was being planned and for when. Add in that there was no political will for hostilities, there was no funding available, save if attack was known precisely and could be intercepted.
And there were only two logical targets, the biggest fleet at Pearl or the smaller at the time one at Alameda, which would have full mainland support.
On Japan’s part, they screwed the pooch, as they entirely avoided striking the fuel storage facilities, which would’ve paralyzed our fleets more than simply sinking a bunch of vessels that were refloated and repaired. Fleets don’t move an inch without fuel.
As for Israel, it’s interesting that they’ve adopted collective punishment, one primary weapon that Germany used against them during the Holocaust. Ain’t a white hat in sight there, only black hats all around.
I suspect that this will expand, in ways Israel isn’t anticipating. Especially, given Syrian involvement, as one part of the causes of the Syrian civil war was Assad keeping Palestinians as enforcers and functionaries in favor over native Syrians, upsetting an ancient patronage system.
But, oddly late, given that the IDF allowed at least hundreds of those truck based missile systems into the Strip in the first place – a suspicious lapse in intelligence. I mean, missing hundreds of trucks and 14 meter long missile reloading systems, that’s decidedly bigger than a breadbox and somehow got overlooked?
That’s right up there with coming in from the store and not noticing a fucking howitzer parked on your sidewalk and aimed at your house.
And one talking point in this weird as hell document:
“Reducing the demographic threat – By ending Israeli responsibility for 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Disengagement Plan will significantly extend the time until the Palestinian population under continuing Israeli control constitutes a majority, thereby undermining a key component of the One-State Threat.”
If that’s what Israel’s leaders were worried about, then their response was about as batshit-stoopid as they could get — that dangerously-growing population is still under Israeli control, and Israel is paying the price for it. They should have just given Gaza back to Egypt along with the Sinai Peninsula. That would have made it THEIR demographic problem, if it was ever a problem at all.
The US laws today regarding native American tribal governments and lands are nowhere near as bad as Gaza.
Which is one reason we don’t have a Native-American-terrorism problem. I really hope Biden is asking Netenyahoo “Can’t you at treat the Palestinians as well as we treat our Native American tribes?” That’s not exactly a high bar to clear, and Israel’s “leaders” should be ashamed of themselves for not being able, or willing, to clear it.
Israel has been doing collective punishment for decades now. It was even one of their standard practices to destroy the parents’ house if a kid is accused of terrorism.
Raging Bee, “…thereby undermining a key component of the One-State Threat.”
I think you’re missing their point, they want to retain that threat to retain their power over their own populace via fear of The Other.
Raging Bee
Thank you.
Separately, I’m still very annoyed at Hamas and many Palestinians for having their official documents saying that nothing short of the destruction of Israel is an acceptable outcome. This makes me believe that they are not serious about peace. (Obviously, Israel isn’t serious about peace either – except for the “peace” of keeping the Palestinians in Apartheid.)
The solutions are obvious, but the political will is lacking on both sides. Either they go with a two-state solution with Israel giving up some / many settlements with a full independent sovereign government for the Palestinians, or they go with a one-state solution with a religiously-neutral government. Both are unacceptable to the harderliners in Israel, and these hardliners seemingly have controlled the Israeli government since the beginning of Israel, and that’s why there will not be peace (along with the seeming opposition from Palestinians to any reason solution for most or all of the history of this conflict).
As cruel as it seems, I think we should throw up our hands at the entire mess and just walk away and let them kill each other. As long as both sides are unwilling to endorse anything remotely resembling a reasonable compromise, aka as long as they just want to kill each other, there is no reason for any outsider to be involved – except to offer asylum and escape (emigration) to anyone involved, and boycott-divest-sanctions, and (maybe) military intervention to stop crimes against humanity.
@ 80 GerrardOfTitanServer
Off topic, I guess – but I do wonder if Americans realize how utterly insane this sounds to non Americans? Hamas could never hope, in a thousand years, to replicate the atrocities of the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Indisputably, the greatest terrorists in the history of the world.
I do not agree to your method of evaluation / measuring. I rebut your position simply with: I would rather live in the USA than live under Hamas. I would rather live in a neighboring country of the USA compared to a neighbor of Hamas. I would rather live in an enemy country of the USA compared to an enemy country of Hamas.
The USA has been around longer, and has more political and military power, in order to do misdeeds. If the leadership and culture of Hamas had that same opportunity, I’m sure they would have done worse.
Also, the USA of today is not the USA of 100 years ago. Things change.
I find your statement to be manifestly absurd, apparently driven by a overly simplistic and reductionist analysis that starts and ends with “USA bad”.
Also:
I still defend the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima as defensible. It was a war against one of the most evil, horrible, barbaric, and awful regimes in the world, and I speak of the Japanese leadership and culture of WW2 and not the USA. That regime needed to be ended, and I am glad that the USA ended it. I suspect that the Japanese should be happy too that the USA ended it instead of letting Japan be conquered by Russia / the USSR. Finally, I am satisfied with using the atomic bomb to kill Japanese persons compared to likely deaths of hundreds of thousands of USA soldier that would have been required to invade and control the Japanese mainland to force surrender.
PS:
The second bomb was probably unnecessary and probably amounts to a warcrime and crime against humanity, if only because they didn’t wait sufficient opportunity for the Japanese leadership to consider their situation and surrender. However, if the Japanese leadership refused to surrender for a long period of time after the first bomb, then I would be open to the use of a second bomb, and a third, and as many as would be necessary, to win the war.
PPS:
Maybe you doubt or underestimate the value that the USA brought with the atomic bombs by ensuring that the USA controlled Japan instead of Russia or the USSR. On that point, I invite you to speak with anyone from eastern Europe who grew up under the USSR to see how wrong you are.
And singling out the atomic bombs as the worst thing ever is just dishonest or ignorant. Many more people died in the firebombs of Dresden, for example. I don’t think the dead care if they died from regular fire or nuclear fire.
Ok, final post: Sheepish: I guess the earlier estimates of deaths from Dresden were overestimated. Still, I think my point stands. The nuclear bombs of the time didn’t represent a radically different scale to the conflict compared to what could be accomplished by spending a comparable amount of industry on a fleet of bombers with conventional bombs. War is awful.
Then you are clueless.
1. Atomic bombs were pointless. Japan would have surrendered after USSR declared war and US clarified that “unconditional surrender” means they can keep their emperor (and so many of the royals who committed mass genocide in china would not get prosecuted).
2. Atomic bombs were terrorism. US had discussed the idea of bombing an island or not populated target but they decided it might not be effective and that the Japanese can figure out that US has the ability to just produce very few of the bombs and so this would be a “waste”.
3. Atomic bombs were nuclear experiments on live human beings. Hiroshima was being deliberately spared from conventional bombings to keep the city as in tact as possible to measure the destruction caused by the bomb.
4. Atomic bombs was propaganda at the cost of human lives. The nuclear fall out and radiation poisonings were denied and kept as a secret for various propaganda reasons. Many got exposed to dangerous levels of radiation because US was unwilling to share that “minor” detail with anyone.
I haven’t read the whole thread, so excuse me if this has been noted: the situation in Gaza is considerably different from that in the West Bank, because (a) Israel withdrew its illegal settlers from the former but is continuing to increase their number and steal land in the latter, and (b) Gaza is ruled by the dictatorial Islamist group Hamas (under permanent Israeli blockade), while the West Bank is ruled by Israel, with the ineffective and corrupt Palestinian Authority (dominated politically by Al Fatah) having some local administrative responsibilities.
For the historical background, a corrective to operbuff’s propaganda@1 is James Barr’s A Line in the Sand, which covers the areas handed to Britain and France under notional League of Nations mandates after WW1 – current Israel, Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. No-one with signiicant political power or influnce comes out of this well – not the British, nor the French, nor the Zionist and Arab leaders. The Zionist leaders were predominantly if not exclusively European Ashkenazi Jews, and their intention from back in the 19th century was to create a Jewish-ruled and Jewish-majority state on land that was largely populated by Arabs, by any means necessary. As for operabuff’s clain that “the British created a Palestinian nation” in Jordan, this is misleading crap. Jordan remained under British rule, with a British-installed non-Palestinian puppet monarch. It became formally independent (but still closely tied to the UK) after 1948; the majority of the population under the Hashemite King (the Hashemites originated in what is now Saudi Arabia but lost out there to the Al-Sauds) were Palestinians but they had no political power. After the 6-Day War of 1967 (in which as has been noted, and contrary to operabuff, Israel started the shooting, although arguably it merely anticipated a looming attack by Egypt and Syria), Jordan and Egypt renounced their claims to the largely Palestinian-inhabited reas the 1948 war had left them with – the West Bank and Gaza respectively. In the current war, both sides have freely violated the Geneva Convention – Hamas by deliberately killing and kidnapping civilians, Israel by collective punishment of civilians by bombing, and by cutting off supplies of water, food, and power.
Raging Bee @82
It’s a bit more complicated than perceived demographic threat alone. This article delves in stuff like the intra-Likud conflict between Arik and Bibi and dismisses claims Arik did it to take eyes off looming corruption stuff he was dealing with. It does define the demographic threat thing a bit more clearly: “…fears that perpetual rule over the Palestinians threatened Israel’s Jewish character (Rynhold and Waxman 2008).”*
And this:
“Leaving Gaza was a prudent policy choice to alleviate this perceived demographic threat. Settlers represented 0.5 percent of the territory’s population; in the West Bank, in contrast, Jewish Israelis were 10–15 percent of the population. Sharon himself justified the disengagement as a strategy to preserve a “Jewish and democratic” Israel, which would not “withstand [ruling over] millions of Palestinians” (Agence France Presse 2004a). Gaza contains far less historical Jewish sites than the West Bank, ensuring that it is perceived as possessing less emotional or ideological value. Demographic concerns ensured that a majority of Israelis consistently supposed the disengagement plan, a key factor that permitted its implementation (Elran 2005)””
https://academic.oup.com/isp/article/24/1/67/6762979 Security, Terrorism, and Territorial Withdrawal: Critically Reassessing the Lessons of Israel’s “Unilateral Disengagement” from the Gaza Strip
Rob Geist Pinfold
International Studies Perspectives, Volume 24, Issue 1, February 2023, Pages 67–87
Is prudence of that sort easily reduced to ”goodwill”? We are talking about Sharon here.
Here’s an interesting nugget from the Pinfold article I just cited: “…the disengagement did fulfill an important foreign policy objective, in that it lessened global calls for Israel to adopt the Geneva and Arab Peace initiatives (Peters 2010; Ben Sasson-Gordis 2016).” Hmmm…
And was this the “goodwill” Coyne alluded to?: “…the disengagement drastically improved Israel’s relations with the wider international community, which the Second Intifada had strained. With American support, the United Nations and European Union backed and praised the disengagement plan, as did Egypt and Jordan.”*
One of the key inflection points was when the bucket of buffoons that make up Hamas won elections. Instead of letting them screw up monumentally, the US and Israel rejected the election results. Which led to Hamas just taking over militarily — they had the backing of the people, after all — but now they can blame any poor governance in Israel.
The US has learned its lesson and allowed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt fail before backing the coup against them to return to its preferred mode of governance for the untermenschen.
GerrardOfTitanServer @ 92, amazing how many want to discuss the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg, yet utterly ignore the firebombing of Tokyo and the casualty count that exceeded the atomic bombings from that campaign alone.
And utterly ignore a type of war none alive here has experienced, total war, where entire national economies are dedicated to the war effort. And the wonderful, poor innocent Japanese, who simply were vivisecting Chinese citizens, kidnapping Chinese and Korean women to Japan for incessant rapes as “comfort women” and their continued ignoring of many of the atrocities committed during the war, the poor victimized Japanese!
And “Once the USSR declared war” ignores that the Soviets were already moving troops toward Japan and well, that whole Soviet occupation that continued until the Soviet Union collapsed. I guess they’d have preferred an alternative history, where we invaded, Japan got cut in half and around 6 million men, women and children died instead.
And the fallout from either bomb wasn’t that large outside of ground zero, given residue from the blast never made it into the fireball to be irradiated and most of either bomb’s core never fully fissioned. Well, it’s either that or the continued existence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is fake news. Given I’ve read the still classified reports and viewed the still classified photographs, some of which still give me nightmares, let’s just say that that’s a false narrative. The majority of the cancers and birth defects were due to prompt radiation and a small area (relatively speaking compared to the size of the cities) of bomb residue, complete with fissile core remnants recovered from ground zero. Ground zero remaining lethally radioactive for around 12 hours, hazardously radioactive for around 12 days.
Infrequently mentioned is that the Hiroshima bank reopened that day, with occasional mentions of a clerk that survived the blast inside of the surviving bank vault – infrequently mentioned, the financial ministry workers on the third floor that were incinerated or that over half of the bank employees survived outside of the vault. A vault that ironically was machined by the same US company that machined uranium for the bombs.
BTW, if the emperor himself said that the atomic bombings were necessary to secure surrender, do you honestly believe that we tortured him into saying that for the remainder of his life?
I do recall speaking with Israeli citizens, as well as Palestinians over the years. One, a grade schooler said “what else can we do, we have to defend ourselves”, in response to a Palestinian peer child being shot in the face by an IDF soldier for throwing a rock. His programming being, rocks and bullets are literally the same and there is no force escalation spectrum. With atrocities committed by both sides and the incredibly thin veneer of civilization stripped away, revealing the tribalism inherent in humanity and every single character flaw present in the species.
The only thing that could separate them now is a large, present common enemy. Good luck finding volunteers for that.
numerobis @ 98, interesting choice of word, untermenschen. Externally, it’s now regarded as non-Arayan, but at the time, it was basically calling the specified group what the literal name implies, under-humans or subhumans.
A very interesting concept to express, to be certain!
Now, excuse me while I get my brain bleach.
I’m not following this thread very closely.
If you are talking about Israel abandoning their small settlements in Gaza in 2005, they did it because they couldn’t defend them and they cost way too much for the gain.
These settlements were small and surrounded by 2 million Palestinians who were becoming more violent with time and weren’t really defensible. That and the demographic problem with a rapidly growing Palestinian population that is now 2.3 million Palestinians.
It had absolutely nothing to do with “goodwill” and was a pragmatic decision.
Paraphrasing wzrd1:
“Mass murdering tens of thousands of civilians for no reason 2 minutes before a war is over is unobjectionable, as long as we have been murdering innocent people at a greater magnitude prior to that.”
Right, sure, we are not as sophisticated of an asshole like yourself who knows “a type of war none alive here has experienced, total war”, our bad, please forgive our ignorance! God bless America, the greatest nation on Earth and those atomic bombings were fucking justified, and covering up nuclear radiation was no big deal because the bombs didn’t turn the entire cities into inhabitable wastelands, sorry, our bad, will try to be smarter next time.
As cruel as it seems, I think we should throw up our hands at the entire mess and just walk away and let them kill each other.
As counterintuitive as it seems, I sort of suspect that if the US actually did that — walk away and wash our hands of Israel altogether — perhaps all the irresponsible tyrants and even-more-irresponsible extremist groups would have LESS incentive to bash Israel 24/7, less ability to lump Israel with America as an all-purpose scapegoat, and more immediate incentive to deal with local issues and injustices, instead of using them in endless cynical proxy-wars aimed at America.
Seriously, Palestinians and their so-called allies have been screaming about destroying Israel for longer than I’ve been alive — but if that suddenly looked like a real possibility, a lot of them would suddenly stop and start thinking “wait, what would that actually mean for us?” and “what would we do after that?” And people who’d been (pretending to be) united for an unobtainable ideal would start getting divided over spoils, costs, benefits and consequences. Meanwhile, an Israel without its biggest ally would have more incentive to make more meaningful concessions to further reduce others’ incentives to gang up on them militarily.
nomadiq @ #76:
Except you said that if humans are put in certain situations they will act like animals, which doesn’t make sense if you accept that we’re fully animal (and so always acting like animals). I know exactly the point you were trying to make with that sentence, which was the problem. It’s harmful and mistaken to suggest that human violence is anything other than human and to project it onto “animals” who, it’s implied, are below us. It’s harmful and mistaken to suggest that human violence is anything other than fully human and to project it onto “barbarians” or “savages” or “subhumans” or to regressive “barbaric” or “savage” drives. It’s harmful to other animals, to those classified as barbarians or savages, and to our understanding of ourselves and of the violence we commit.
I explicitly said “I agree with the larger point, best I can tell.” There was nothing pedantic about my point – it’s a crucial argument I’ve been making for a long time, as others here can attest.
It very obviously isn’t beneath humanity. It’s human violence, FFS. Projecting it onto other animals contributes to the human-supremacist thinking that allows humans to violently oppress and kill tens of billions of other animals every year while continuing to see ourselves as superior to them.
No, it’s the same argument. (Also, the category of animals is far too large and varied for this to be useful – caged bunnies? puppies? turtles? And that’s leaving aside the fact that other animals aren’t known to organized multi-pronged military assaults using hang gliders and rockets and so forth and attempting to justify them in religious and political terms.)
I would be happy if people (I wasn’t picking out your remark because it was particularly egregious in any way, but just because it was the first I saw in that vein and I didn’t want the thread to start going in that direction without commenting on it) would leave behind those terms and comparisons and start talking about individual and collective human violence in more grounded ways, less shaped by the history of oppression and imperialism and more attentive to people’s experiences, situations, and choices.
Ignorant. Leaving the emperor was not an option. The emperor was the single most important symbol of their genocidal militaristic regime. He needed to be removed from power. That is not negotiable.
Then that’s no different than the firebombings of Dresden, or Tokyo, etc. It was one act of many. I didn’t say it wasn’t terrorism per se. My major point was that it was no different in kind or scale to the conventional bombings that happened to many other cities.
Yea, and?
None of this rises to the ridiculous claim that the USA is a terrorist organization worse than Hamas, or that Hamas could never reach the same level of cruelty given a thousand years, or the implied statement that it’s better to live under Hamas or be a neighbor of Hamas compared to living under the USA vs living under the USA. Please stop already with your ridiculous tankie nonsense. The USA can be bad, and it is bad, without it being the worst thing ever.
Oh, take your conspiracy theorist bullshit and shove it straight up your ass. The widespread belief in this sort of ridiculous nonsense is why we can’t have nice things, e.g. nuclear power to solve climate change. Refer to wrzd1’s post for details.
Conspiracy theorist nonsense.
1. Atomic bombs were pointless. Japan would have surrendered after USSR declared war…
True, but US policymakers didn’t know that at the time.
Um, topic is the current Israel–Hamas war, not atomic booms on the other side of the world involving different participants many decades ago.
Before the state of Israel even existed, even.
Before the Palestinians were robbed of their lands and imprisoned in enclaves.
@GerrardOfTitanServer:
The emperer was left: Emperor Shōwa, Reign 25 December 1926 – 7 January 1989. None of the royal war criminals were prosecuted.
That’s just historically wrong. This is Truman’s speech after Hiroshima bombing:
That the emphasis is on this being a whole new level of destructive technology is very clear. The goal is to terrorize and the atomic bombs were tools of terrorism.
You are absolutely right on this. This, however, has everything to do with your silly claim that “nuclear bombings of cities is defensible”. You are moving the goalpost.
This is well-documented: https://oppenheimer2023.substack.com/p/general-groves-and-the-radiation
In other words, they believed that if the knowledge of radiation poisoning spreads it could create sympathies for the Japanese and they did not like it.
The emperor was not left in power. Please try again.
Not sure why you keep harping on the potential prosecution of persons. I haven’t mentioned a thing about it.
I don’t care what Truman said. The original atomic bombs are in the same scale of destruction that was possible with conventional bombers and conventional bombs when spending comparable amounts of money and industry. They were in the same ballpark. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not on a different scale in terms of civilian deaths when compared to what you could accomplish with similar funding as seen in the firebombings of Dresden, Tokyo, and others.
You’re misusing the word “terrorism”. The point of the atomic bombs were to terrorize. That’s the bloody point of war. The standard definition of terrorism is to use violence to persuade the opposition to adopt a different political position, which is also a perfectly good description of many aspects of war. War is simply politics by other, violent, means (paraphrasing Carl von Clausewitz). You are completely missing the point here. The question should not be “was it terrorism?”, because by a facile definition all war is terrorism. The question should be “was it justified?”, and I say that the answer is “yes”, because it saved more lives compared to alternatives (allowing the Japanese to keep their emperor in power was not an option), and independently because it saved the Japanese nation from USSR occupation.
This is a bait-and-switch. I called you a crank for claiming a cover-up of supposed widespread radiation that lingered for a long time with enough power to harm people, aka harm that was caused by the US withholding information about the supposed (longterm) radioactive contamination. That claim is the claim of a crank. No one is denying that being exposed to the direct radiation blast of the atomic bomb is bad for your health, nor the relatively temporary radioactive fallout that lingered for days or weeks afterwards, nor the radiation in the immediate vicinity of core fragments. You are claiming something stronger, that there was substantial longterm, e.g. years, of substantially harmful radiation that harmed many people, and this is pure fantasy.
In particular:
Many got exposed to dangerous levels of radiation because US was unwilling to share that “minor” detail with anyone.
That is a lie.
@ 110 GerrardOfTitanServer
Holy fuck, you’re talking about the massacre of ~200,000 civilians. I’ve come across some callous people in my time, but this is off the charts. At the very least you’ve forfeited any right to ever criticize Hamas for atrocities. I honestly just can’t conceive of having so little regard for human life. 200,000!
More Japanese civilians would have died in the campaign to invade and control the Japanese mainland. I said I defend it because it probably saved a lot of lives on both sides.
And yes, I guess I seem pretty callous. Have you actually read what the Japanese nation was doing in Nanjing? It’s not known for the “rape of Nanjing” for nothing. That government needed to be stopped. You seem to be saying “but we could leave their government in place in a peace treaty” is utterly preposterous and completely ignorant of the details of the situation. If hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians needed to die to stop the Japanese regime, and if there was no better option, then that is the best option, and my pity and condolences for the dead. Doing nothing and appeasing this violent, murderous, genocidal, absolutely monstrous regime, as you seem to prefer, is completely unacceptable.
To be fair, it seems like your preferred plan would be to hand Japan to USSR occupation, which would probably be actually worse than the atomic bombs from the perspective of the Japanese themselves IMAO.
PS:
It’s war. It’s total war. We did worse to Germany and to Japan with conventional weapons. The atomic bombs were just continuing the same trend without being radically different in who was targeted and how many died. All sides were doing the same thing, targeting civilians. It was total war. The Geneva conventions against targeting civilians were not yet adopted. It was necessary to achieve victory over the biggest evils that this world has ever known. I am talking about literal WW2 German Nazis and literal WW2 Japanese. You can’t get any more evil than that. If you have to kill a hundred thousand innocent people to stop the Nazis and the WW2 Japanese, aka if there is no other better alternative, then that’s what you do. You don’t just let the Nazis and WW2 Japanese regimes survive. Literally the most evil regimes that have ever existed, or at least very close to the top. There’s a reason we use these regimes today as cliche for irredeemable evil and danger to others.
@GerrardOfTitanServer:
So what do you think about Sam Harris argument? The one about a cold war scenario against a Islamic Fanatical regime? Do you think he nailed it by saying that nuclear first assault is justified?
You also seem to be hung up in the idea that “killing more people with conventional weapons is a justification for nuking cities”. You should realize that these kinds of atrocities in WW 2 are what led to the creation of Geneva conventions and the idea that innocent humans should be protected even during wars (of course, the idea is not new at all and probably hundreds of other small or big civilizations had figured this out in the past but this was the time the notion was discovered by the Western civilization which necessitated marking it as a milestone for “humanity”).
But anyways, you seem to have not received the memo. Indiscriminate targeting of civilians is a war crime, even if done via conventional methods and obviously, there is no way to not indiscriminately kill people when you nuke whole fucking cities.
lotharloo
I am extremely unhappy that you have not even pretended to engage with several of my arguments in this matter. I expect answers to the direct questions that I am posing.
More Japanese civilians would have died from starvation caused by a blockade compared to the atomic bombs. Agree or not?
More Japanese civilians would have died from collateral damage from an invasion of the Japanese mainland compared to the atomic bombs. Agree or not?
More Japanese civilians would have died from conscription and direct combat during an invasion of the Japanese mainland compared to the atomic bombs. Agree or not?
Large amounts of Japanese soldiers as well as foreign (USA or USSR) soldiers would have died during an invasion of the Japanese mainland compared to the atomic bombs. Agree or not?
More Japanese civilians would have died under USSR occupation compared to the atomic bombs. Agree or not?
The Japanese nation and its people were and are better off because we dropped the bombs and occupied them compared to allowing the USSR to invade and occupy them. Agree or not?
As for the claimed memo, I simply do not subscribe to your particular brand of Kantian ethics that says that it’s always wrong to do X. For the reasons that I just gave, I think it was clearly better that we indiscriminately killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians because all of the alternatives were clearly worse. Moreover, all alternatives were clearly worse even from the sole perspective of the Japanese civilians and the Japanese people. In any feasible alternative scenario (e.g. blockade or USA/USSR invasion of Japan), far more Japanese civilians would have died and suffered. Except maybe for the scenario where you leave the Japanese emperor in charge, but that’s just a non-starter for me.
PS:
I am unfamiliar with the Sam Harris scenario. It seems to be too unrelated to any real world scenario because it involves somehow having a (extremely) high degree of confidence that the other side is about to initiate a nuclear first strike, and I don’t see how I could have that in the real world. I mean, I would all be for a nuclear first strike if I was somehow magically assured that they were about to first strike for other reasons and our first strike could stop their first strike, but that’s not the same thing as what Sam Harris is probably talking about: a vague nebulous claim that certain Muslim leaders are maybe so fanatical as to be suicidal enough to launch a nuclear first strike.
Sorry but you don’t get to move goalposts and then complain when I call you on it. This discussion started because you wrote:
And then even doubled down on it by calling it justified. But sure, I’ll go ahead and quickly cover your points.
Highly and extremely unlikely. I don’t agree with any of those claim that you are making. US could have used the bombs as demonstration or/and could have simply declared that they have it before using it. Between that and USSR declaring war and Japan almost all of its capabilities to wage war, they would not have lasted any longer. So no, I don’t buy your stupid assertions.
The alternatives are worst only because you have eliminated those that are not.
Would you support nuking Tehran or Pyongyang if a war with Iran or N. Korea breaks out then? It’s obviously leads to fewer deaths and invading the entire country of Iran, and carpet bombing the whole country to the oblivion! Yes, No?
Finally, I never thought I would actually see someone who unironically thinks that General Turgidson nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNC0YwuGLqg
What? I’m still calling it justified. I just gave a whole post justifying it. How am I moving the goalposts? /confused
lol
Situations change. The USA was at a unique point in history where there was no developed ethics of nuclear bomb use, and no concern about how others might use nucelar bombs. It also involed a many year long global war with adversaries that are frankly far more evil than either Iran or North Korea – we’re talking literal Nazis and literal WW2 Japanese.
I wouldn’t support it today because today we have seemingly developed a new unwritten convention that says that first use of nuclear weapons is highly frowned upon. It’s kinda like the Geneva conventions against indiscriminate targeting of civilians. If everyone plays ball, then it’s a great idea, and I’m onboard. However, neither international convention existed when the USA nuked Japan.
So, maybe you’ll be sickened to know that my choice to not nuke Iran or North Korea has nothing to do with the immediate massive civilian deaths, but more to do with game theory and international relations, and setting precedent about future use of nuclear weapons by other nations.
Completely incomparable. They’re not fighting literal Nazis. The obvious thing to do in that case is call them up, explain the situation, and try to deescalate, and maybe suffer a corresponding commensurate retaliatory strike without opposing it.
PS:
And so you would prefer to leave Japan to USSR invasion and occupation. What a cruel, heartless thing to do for the Japanese people. You’re being absolutely ridiculous if you think that less Japanese people would have died this way.
lotharloo
Here. Let me put it like this. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough to illustrate my point. What if someone argued that we shouldn’t have firebombed Dresden because Germany was willing to surrender under the condition that Adolf Hitler remained the dictator of Germany? What do you think about that? What are the important moral differences between that proposal, and what you are proposing now? I’m not seeing it. Conveniently, we also have the USSR invasion looming on the horizon, and we all know what happened to the countries in Eastern Europe that the USSR conquered because it actually happened. You think it would have been better to let USSR have even more of eastern Europe? I think that would be horrible. Alternatively, you think it would have been better to preserve an independent Germany with Adolf Hitler still in charge? I think that’s obscene.
@GerrardOfTitanServer — Frankly, it seems a little silly to suggest that the bombs were necessary to end the war, when the bombs, in fact, very clearly did not end the war. The Japanese high command sat around dithering, wasting time, trying to pry extra concessions out of the US, both before and after the bombings. Yes, both. When they got told instead that the conditions of surrender included the emperor using his authority to pull back the Japanese war machine, though? A proposition which would necessarily require that he be left unharmed? Then, after that, they backed down. Because that demand implicitly included the concession they had been looking for all along. And even then, it required the emperor to personally intervene, because some members of the Japanese high command still thought they could force a more favorable outcome.
So the (heavily simplified) timeline looks like this: the Japanese high command realizes they’re losing the war, and start stalling for time, trying to get concessions from the US. They get hit with conventional bombs, air raids, the whole thing with the firebombing of Tokyo. Nothing. They keep stalling, looking for ways to get a conditional surrender. The first atomic bomb hits Hiroshima. Nothing. Discussions, debates, but ultimately more stalling for time. The second bomb hits Nagasaki. Nothing. More discussions, more debates, more stalling for time. Japan suggests (as it has been doing for a while now) that it could surrender if it can keep the emperor. The US counter-offers with what amounts to “no, actually, we’re not accepting those terms, you are!” Because it amounts to pretty much the same thing with different framing. Japan surrenders.
The most the bombs could be said to have done is to have given the Japanese high command a way to save face. Frankly, though, conventional bombing campaigns could have served that function just as well. However, after all this, it’s rather likely neither the US nor the remnants of Japanese high command could live with themselves if they allowed such an insane massacre unnecessarily — and make no mistake, this is also a severe indictment of Japanese high command during the war — so they both have much to gain from promoting the idea that the bombs were necessary. Most people, even monsters, like to think of themselves as heroes, after all.
The truth, as best I can discern, is that the bombs were irrelevant — no one in a position to actually surrender cared enough about the deaths of civilians for it to make any difference. Those deaths had not the slightest impact on the calculations; they were, to the high command, utterly disposable. If it were followed up with a (credible) threat to level the Forbidden City from the air, maybe that would have had the intended effect. Or maybe not. Japanese high command was absolutely delusional about what hope they had for concessions. Let’s also not forget that they kept telling their Soviet ambassador to find a way to convince Stalin to mediate the peace process, despite being told repeatedly that it wasn’t going to happen. Yes, you’d expect a reasonable opponent would have surrendered after the bombs. On the other hand, you’d also expect a reasonable opponent also would have surrendered before the bombs. And at the end of the day, contrary to your statements, they did in fact get what they wanted — the emperor was unharmed, the imperial position remained, and the higher ups in the Japanese military were not held to account for the atrocities committed under their watch, on their behalf, and even under their explicit orders.
Ultimately, the question I’d have you answer is this: why would you expect the Japanese leadership of the time to be moved by the deaths of those they openly considered cannon fodder? Lives which they already, openly, planned on throwing away for a chance at a better deal for themselves, no less?
Good questions. My immediate gut reaction is: because even they recognized that they can’t fight if everyone below them is dead. I was not basing my argument on the idea that the Japanese elites cared about their people. I was basing it on the argument that the elites can’t wage war without cities and a population of people in those cities. More seriously, I was basing it on an overwhelming display of force to show that they had no hopes to resist, and better to surrender now while some of Japan wasnt yet consumed in nuclear fire. They didn’t care about their people, but they cared about their image, about the abstract idea of their country, which wasn’t compatible with getting nuked to oblivion.
Also, I’m pretty sure that the emperor was not in fact in charge of Japan for the next few years (decades?). Rather, it was a USA military governor who was in charge. So, the USA got what we needed.
And as we have all learned from Putins recent ramblings, promised not written down on paper are worthless when there are actual promises written down on paper, which makes me immediately question your particular rendition of these events. There is a vast different between a formal treaty that they wanted initially, and some nonbinding verbal promises which the USA military governor could disregard whenever he wanted and deny that the promises were ever made by pointing to the signed written treaty.
The point is that Japan needed to be de-Nazified, and letting the Japanese Nazi-equivalent elites remain in power was completely unacceptable.
My understanding is not that we promised to leave the emperor unharmed, but that we would promise to leave the emperor in charge, and contrary to your claims and IMO dishonest description, the emperor did not stay in charge. The USA military governor was in charge.
If my understanding is incorrect, and all they wanted was to ensure that the emperor was alive somewhere in a jail cell or in disgraced permanent house arrest in some palace somewhere with the government fully under the control of a USA military governor who would set up a new civilian government with a huge and explicit repudiation of the prior regime and the god-emperor, then I was mistaken, and my apologies.
Your recounting makes it seem like I was correct in my understanding.
Correction: My understanding is not that the Japanese elites demanded that we leave the emperor unharmed, but that they demanded that we leave the emperor in charge, and contrary to your claims and IMO dishonest description, the emperor did not stay in charge. The USA military governor was in charge.
Abd again, can you imagine Germany making the same demand that Adolf Hitler be kept as the nominal head of state? That’s obscene. You accept the Japanese version IMHO only because you more detached and more ignorant of the comparable atrocities committed in the god-emperor’s name. You can’t de-Nazify Japan while leaving the head Nazi in charge. Far from a minor sticking point, this was the entire point IMAO.
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/02/did-the-japanese-offer-to-surrender-before-hiroshima-part-1/
.
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Man you are so fucking confused. You also completely ignored the main discussion. You were claiming that it was either killing around hundreds of thousands of people by nuking two cities or killing millions via a land invasion. This was your main main argument apparently. And you completely failed to back it up with anything when I just refused it.
Also, the movie is very relevant here. You are eliminating any option which does not involve killing millions of people and then you conclude that therefore nuking cities was the best option. You are basically the general Turgidson here who says there are only two choices, killing 15-20 million people tops (depending on the breaks), or 180 million. He does not consider diplomacy or any other solution that does not involve playing with big bombs. Arguments like that are stupid, immoral and short-sighted. Again, as the movie shows, diplomacy was an option and it even almost worked.
First off, firebombing of Dresden was unnecessary so you are creating an imaginary scenario where once again you are removing all the other possibilities and leaving only the two options of “kill 25000 people and flatten a city” or “Hitler stays in power forever!!” It is stupid as fuck but even then, the answer is clear, because we have already done it with another war hungry, mass-murdering genocidal dictator: When Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait, US did not do a land invasion of Iraq to remove the Saddam which was the correct choice.
Finally, I remind you that even after the two bombs, and even after the emperor himself ordered the surrender, there was an attempted mutiny to overthrow the emperor or at least overturn the order of surrender, and it was a close run thing that the emperors ordered was carried out. This was not a country that was close to acceptable terms of surrender before the bombs. Hell, the leadership barely accepted terms of surrender after the bombs, and that involved a failed coup attempt to keep the war going.
They were not willing until that point to give up the emperor, and even at that point that we’re only barely willing to give him up under supposed nonbinding unwritten promises of his safety. Whereas, all I can find suggests that we decided to let the emperor remain in a nominal figurehead capacity after occupation and that this was not promised to the Japanese before occupation, not in writing and not verbally either. If you have a source to the contrary, please let me know.
Before occupation, we didnt know at the time that we could de-Nazify the country and also leave the emperor in charge. That was only something we learned later. Thus it was the correct move to demand unconditional surrender, which is what we got, supposed (and probably fictional) verbal promises notwithstanding.
I believe I did back it up by writing “lol”.
That’s the level of response that your arguments merit. It’s ridiculous to think that less civilians would have died in a full invasion, and especially a full invasion and occupation by the USSR. You are not a serious person in this conversation.
The comparison to Sadam is not apt because of the overwhelming difference in military capability in that war vs the much closer military capabilities of the USA in a ground invasion of Japan vs the defending Japanese forces. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath for both sides, unlike the Iraq war where we destroyed their military in a few weeks with virtually no casualties on our side. Completely different situations.
So, again, everything I see you write amounts to either a defense that we should have let the USSR do the dirty work of killing even more civilians plus a brutal occupation (worse outcome), or we should have left the Japanese Nazi equivalents in charge of their government (worse outcome), or wrongheaded beliefs about the readiness of Japan to surrender with terms that included de-Nazification of Japan.
We’re the firebombings of Dresden not required? Technically no, but if you applied that standard universally to all of the allied actions, then I believe that we might have lost the war. Demanding such a strict rules of engagement in that particular war could have lead to an Allied forces loss. It was a relatively close run thing in the first place, and only with the benefit of hindsight can we say potentially otherwise. Those firebombings and other things like it impeded Germany’s ability to make war. The Allied forces didnt do it to get their jollies. They did it because of the real military benefits that came in that case with massive indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Or do you really think that the Allied forces spent so much time and effort to firebomb Dresden for no military reason, wasting fuel, bombs, planes, and lives which could have been spent in other productive ways to end the war earlier? Jesus Christ you’re sheltered.
You are too fucking stupid and callus.
Diplomacy is always an option. You are really a fucked up piece of shit for ruling out any diplomatic solution.
So no, unlike your stupid assertion, a full on invasion of Japan was not necessary. Nuking Japanese cities was not necessary. If your only options are “Killing millions of people” or “nuclear bombing cities” then you are not looking for alternative answers, you fucking piece of shit.
I got to say that I lost all my respect for you sanity. Imagine defending atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2023. Jesus fucking christ.
God damn you’re a tankie aren’t you? I bet you’re saying the same thing about the Ukrainians right now aren’t you? Saying that Ukraine should give up land for peace.
Diplomacy is not always a solution. It’s always an option that should always be pursued, but no amount of diplomacy with Adolf Hitler or Vladimer Putin is going to make them change their minds. The only thing that is going to make them change their minds about committing genocide is a massive and victorious military response.
Jesus Christ, I can’t imagine you actually suggesting that we should have done more diplomacy with the WW2 Japanese, or WW2 Nazi Germany. Then again, apparently you’re a tankie, or some idiotic naive hardcore pacifist.
@GerrardOfTitanServer — I would consider being imprisoned a harm, frankly. Actively working to strip someone of their social power could reasonably be argued to be likewise. I suppose I should have specified, though. Regardless. They definitely wanted the emperor left in charge. Leaving the emperor unharmed and free and allowing the position of emperor to remain (don’t forget that latter part; it’s also crucial) was at least a possible compromise. The suggestion had apparently been floated before of putting out terms of surrender that demanded the emperor abdicate and leave the position to his (actually sane and reasonable) son, but sadly I don’t think we ever got to find out whether that would work. From my understanding, what got some (not all, mind) of the Japanese high command to budge on their demands was the (accurate) perception that the US believed that they needed the emperor in order to get the fanatics in the Japanese army under control. This made their greater fears unlikely at best. And again, this was a compromise. Emperor Hirohito himself had to step in for enough of the rest of the high command to go along with the surrender to make it a reality. Even here, there were too many hardliners who still thought they could do better, but who would not defy the word of the emperor. The emperor decided it was close enough, and that was what made surrender an actual possibility.
To be clear here — the emperor was not in charge after, as they would have liked, obviously. But the old ideology was not wiped out. In fact, it still holds enormous sway to this day. Seriously. Way too much influence. Not to mention that the emperor had been reduced to a figurehead before. Returning from such a fate would not have been at all unthinkable, particularly so soon after the Meiji Restoration. The simple loss of power, while not desirable, was not the fear. The fear was that they, and perhaps more importantly the imperial institution itself, would no longer be allowed to exist in any form at all. And while it was supplanted, it wasn’t eradicated. Far from being actively dismantled, belief in the emperor was used to more expediently end the war and ensure US hegemony. Quite a bit less actually changed than you seem to think.
Like, you are literally defending negotiating settlements and appeasements with the literal original genocidal Nazi regime instead of shooting and bombing them. I don’t even. Are you a fucking Nazi? You don’t negotiate settlements with fucking Nazi governments that are in the process of committing genocide or that recently committed genocide. The one and only correct answer is that you shoot and bomb them until they surrender.
We don’t see Ukrainians killing hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians, do we? So your point is just pedantic and stupid. Go fuck yourself. I am not a tankie, you piece of shit.
BTW, you know that the Ukraine war is eventually going to come down to diplomacy right? Or are you envisioning a genocidal carpet nuclear bombing of Russian cities so that no Russians are left? Are you? I gotta probe your madness, you never know, because at some point Ukraine and Russia will have to engage in diplomacy and work out a plan.
Damn, you are really mad, holyshit. You do know that the context is atomic bombings and indiscriminate carpet bombings of civilians, right? Are you really advocating killing and bombing civilian populations of governments you don’t like?
Based on the sources that I found, this was floated by a small minority of peace party when the government was dominated by anti peace people, and it was never actually offered to the US, and instead it was haphazardly floated to the USSR, and these terms of surrender sometimes included Japan keeping some of their conquered territory. Saying that the Japanese were reaching out to offer remotely acceptable terms of surrender is simply not true AFAICT.
And again, based on the sources that I can find, at the time that they signed the treaty of complete unconditional surrender, no actual promise was made, written or verbal, that the position of emperor would be lowed to continue. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Sources please.
Sure. I don’t know. But the correct answer at the time was to demand everything that we needed to de-Nazify the country, and that included the power to abolish the position of emperor, and we got that in the surrender AFAICT, even if we decided later to let the emperor continue on.
I’m the one who raised the example of firebombing Dresden, and your response about trying more diplomacy was made in the context of replying to that. So, now you don’t think we needed to try more diplomacy with the Nazis, and that we should have kept shooting and bombing them until we got an unconditional surrender? I bring this up because I fail to see why we should have done any differently with the Japanese of WW2. We should have continued to shoot and bomb until we got an unconditional surrender, and that’s exactly what we did, and we got our unconditional surrender from the Japanese.
@GerrardOfTitanServer — I suppose I can get behind the idea of not negotiating with fascists, but the problem is that you have to actually target their leadership directly. Targeting civilians, as the nuclear bombs did, is an atrocity unto itself, and also won’t actually hit the people you care the most about impacting even indirectly. Terror bombing doesn’t actually strike fear into the people who you’d need to make afraid, and that’s what all this was. As the YouTuber Shaun put it in his video on the topic, “You can’t frighten them by killing poor people — that’s their day job.”
I think I’m taking a somewhat different approach to lotharloo here — I don’t think they should have been left in power at all. In fact, if anything, I think the argument that they were unmoved by the bombings is a far harsher condemnation of the Japanese government at the time than even the argument that they were necessary. Some form of violent force was almost certainly warranted. The actual bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, were not, in my view. Not because it was in some sense “too violent,” but because those should never have been the targets, and the sheer amount of power on display was thoroughly unnecessary and had too much collateral damage to possibly justify.
Jemolk
I can get in board with that.
I still do disagree here
It wasn’t unnecessary in the sense that it was a display of too much power. As a display of power, it was barely enough. Both bombs were barely enough. As noted above, even this display of power was barely enough to force a surrender, and there was still a failed military coup that tried to depose the emperor or something and keep the war going in spite of the two bombs.
But yeah, I’d probably prefer nuking the location of the military leadership. Then again, without th emperor to talk them down, it might have made surrender even more unlikely. Regardless, I am very sympathetic to your argument here.
Yeah the Japanese did not know how many A-bombs US had and they feared US will nuke every single city and in fact the plans were in order to nuke Tokyo so yeah you are right, you nuked them until they surrendered. I could forgive you if you argued that at the time seemed like the correct choice because people didn’t know better, but now we do and yada yada. But to argue now, in 2023, that this was the correct choice, I don’t know what to say, you are honestly mad, wait what was it that you said about trying to come with another option other than “millions dead” or “two cities nuked”? Yeah, “LOL”. Go seek help.
Just for reference lotharloo, do you support the continued giving of many weapons to Ukraine until victory, where victory is defined as pushing all Russian troops out of Ukrainian land, including Crimea, with no overt or secret pressure to obtain a compromise negotiated settlement, so long as this remains the desires of the Ukrainian people? Or are you a tankie?
@GerrardOfTitanServer — That’s just the thing, though — I don’t think those bombs did force the surrender. I’d say the apparent concession of needing the emperor — a concession I’m not entirely convinced should have been made, mind — was what resulted in the surrender. My contention is that any attempt to push the Japanese into surrender needed to threaten Japanese leadership directly. It didn’t need to be showy or big, just to threaten the lives of the emperor, the imperial family, and other high officials.
Here’s a video that explains the situation from the perspective I hold insanely well. https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go It’s almost 2 and a half hours long, but it’s utterly comprehensive, well-argued, and should thoroughly explain why I don’t think the bombs actually had any effect. (I also recommend basically the entire rest of that channel. Shaun is really good in general.)
And so you would prefer to leave Japan to USSR invasion and occupation…
Neither the US nor Japan wanted that; nor did either of them want Japan to be partitioned between the US and SU, as Germany had just been partitioned. This is why US and Japanese leaders quietly agreed to pretend the latter were surrendering only to the USA solely because of US nuclear bombing.
Re your video.
It’s got an impressive array of USA military leaders all giving quotes that Japan was ready to surrender and was trying to surrender. However, those claims seem to be contradicted by the actual available primary evidence and records. The records seem to indicate that the only peace “offers” that Japan was making were from a very small minority of Japanese leadership to the USSR to act as a mediator with the USA, and these peace “offers” were not sent to the USA, and these various proposals often in included terms that would be considered wildly unacceptable, such as keeping conquered land. These peace feelers were not serious and well thought out and didn’t represent the main Japanese leadership and had to be done in secret of the main Japanese leadership.
The other real primary source of evidence that the video claimed is some report that seems to be some flawed contemporary USA military report that concluded that Japan was about to surrender.
Consider me wholly unimpressed with this video thus far. I currently suspect that this video author Shawn has an agenda and is lying about the evidence to get to his preferred conclusion. I’ll have to watch more, and I’ll also verify my research claims above to be sure about my assessment that he’s lying. If my research claims above are correct, then at a minimum the presentation and framing of this video is probably dishonest.
(sigh)
Japan’s atomic travails decades ago are not the topic. Or its basis.
The current war is.
Uh huh. The march of current events leaves no time for introspection or empathy.
I’m not much given to quoting the bible, but
Again, I think you are grossly misinformed. That was not part of the surrender. The surrender was unconditional. It was only years later that the Americans decided to let the emperor stay on in a figurehead capacity.
Silentbob:
You mean thoughts and prayers, right?
(About as helpful)
—
I think I know what happened: the word ‘atomic’ appeared in #88, and therefore moth to the flame. Predictable.
And so, now it’s all about 1945 Japan, because historical atomic booms are more relevant than any silly crises happening right now.
No real prospect of an atomic boom in Gaza, though Israel has nukes.
Any re-think of the verging on Jew-hatred comments here now?
Not that the disgusting Old Testament “eye for an eye” murdering Israel is and will do is in any way justified, not American support for it.
Hamas was never an organization worthy of any respect or trust: terrorists only interested in murder and revenge. oppressor of their own people as well, Muslim extremists of the most intolerant type and motivated by hatred,
Except for ISIL, there the worst of the worst. That’s what they’ve been and what they are.
I really do want to hear what you have to say about this now, PZ. You have more facts and have had time to cool down and evaluate it. The Gurdian certainly isn’t pro-Likud, or even pro-Israel.
Certainly, I’ll never associate with anyone who excuses this ever again.
Fingers crossed in hope.
.
@imthegenieicandoanything:
Which comments are those? It’s a long thread so maybe people have missed them, can you point them out?
Yes, Hamas has always been one of the shittiest terrorist groups. I guess Isis took the trophy from them for a while but now they are back to prove their savagery.
I’ve heard some interesting interview about Hamas’s goal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQmBsbt9blg&pp=ygUKdGVkIGlzcmFlbA%3D%3D
It might be the case that they actually want a massive Israel response, for what reason it is not clear to me yet.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2023/oct/12/human-catastrophe-unfolds-in-israel-and-gaza-podcast
I am not at all charmed by attempts to justify violent Israeli responses by citing Dresden and Hiroshima. Stop it now or find yourself banned.
lotharloo #144
Are you sure about that? I’ve read that Tokyo had already been leveled by conventional bombing so there was no point in dropping a nuke.
Bombing cities doesn’t work, even if you don’t care about being a monster.
Not everyone dies, so the civilians get back out and do stuff, even as the bombs are still falling. They tend to develop a mild distaste for the people bombing them though, so with their limited means they focus more on supporting the war effort than before when they might have had more prosaic concerns.
So on top of being monstrous, it’s counterproductive to mass murder people.
Clearly both sides in WW2 thought otherwise. I don’t think they wasted untold amounts of fuel, ammunition, manpower, etc., needlessly. Sometimes it works. Denying that it ever works means we will not properly combat it today, and we should be working to stop the indiscriminate bombings of civilians. Do not mistake my arguments for “it works sometimes to achieve military ends” and “I defend its use in that one limited historical case to stop the literal WW2 Nazis” with a position that I would justify it today, or endorse it today, or desire it today. I do not. I think WW2 was a very special one-off which I hope is never repeated, and the Israel-Palestine situation does not compare.
@PZ
I assume that wasn’t directed at me. I have done no such thing, and I just repudiated that position.
Clearly both sides in WW2 thought otherwise.
And both sides were proven wrong, at least to a significant degree. The initial developers of the then-new doctrine of air-warfare (i.e., Douhet and Mitchell) believed, among other things, that indiscriminate bombing of populated areas would degrade the enemy’s will to keep fighting. This was part of a new doctrine and strategy, arising from new technology, and WW-II was the war where all that newfangled air-power stuff was first tried out. Experience proved some parts of that doctrine right (such as precision-bombing of relevant military targets); and proved other parts generally wrong (such as indiscriminate bombing to degrade morale).
GerrardOfTitanServer@159
It does not ‘work’, in the long-term, from all I’ve read and lived through, especially when the ones dropping the bombs do not follow up with massive land forces. We (the US) dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than all sides dropped in all of WWII (And, I recently read, WWI as well). How’d that go? You only turn people further against you. The reason it has been done so much, in my opinion, is pure vengeance and power flexing.
Of course, most of that can be said of war in general. It’s stupid. Yes, I get that people need to defend themselves from aggression. But too many wars are wars of choice.
And I join with others in wishing that this thread would get back to what it was started as. I don’t know what to do about the situation in Israel/Palestine, but some folks here, and in the other threads on the topic, have given me lots to ponder. Thanks for that. I wish I could do something, but I’m just an old guy in a tiny town in Wisconsin. Having a better understanding of the history, and of ideas outside of the usual, might help me find ways to at least be informed, and inform others around me. Maybe I won’t feel quite as helpless; as useless as I do right now, as people are killing and being killed for nothing more than the satisfaction and power of ruthless leaders.
Paul K
WW2 was not about winning hearts and minds. It was solely about destroying the enemy’s ability to fight. I don’t think it was counterproductive because it didn’t make the Nazis any less likely to unconditional surrender, and it didn’t motivated some people to fight harder – it was already total war with very wide acceptance and support among the German population. Destroying civilian infrastructure does degrade the enemy’s ability to fight. That doesn’t mean it’s morally justified IMO, and it doesn’t mean that its direct utility will always outweigh any blowback, but I think it’s absurd to say that it cannot degrade the enemy’s ability to fight.
Vietnam was different. We are trying to win hearts and minds. It was not a simple matter of a military occupation of a genocidal hostile foreign power that attacked us first. We were there nominally (lol) to protect the popular government against foreign interference. I am far too ignorant, but I my wild guess is that we should have never been in Vietnam at all because we were not wanted there, and they had not attacked us.
I am not getting into a debate about bombing ‘success’ in wars of the past. I won’t change your mind, and neither of us is an expert. And it’s not on topic.
I know it sure won’t happen now, but I hope wiser heads with actual power/influence can get the world beyond the knee-jerk reactions that typically follow these periodic flares of violence in that part of the world. There is absolutely not a military solution to this problem, and the alternatives are, as someone said recently, finding a way to live together, or genocide. Dirt is dirt. Land is something that can be claimed — legitimately — by different groups all over the world. But when two or more groups are convinced that only their people get to control a geographical area, what do we do? It is not tenable. Co-existence — sharing — or death to one group.
Hell, we are all human. Nation-states are arbitrary, subjective ideas, and land-‘ownership’ is, or should be, fiction. We don’t have an excuse to not see this anymore, with all the global issues affecting us all.
As usual, I know I’m stating the obvious…. It’s all I’ve got.
Including me.
Oh, I think there is, but there isn’t enough political appetite for it among the world’s major players, especially the USA. I’m not saying it would be a good idea, because nation-building has, at best, a mixed record of success, but one plausible solution is military invasion plus occupation plus UN peacekeepers of the whole of Israel and Palestine, and then force them under military occupation to choose between the religiously neutral-one solution or the two-state solution (such as via public referendum) with proposed borders that have been drawn up for them by the foreign military occupation force.
Again, my preferred USA policy position at the moment is to fuck off because I am highly suspicious of any possibility of success, even with a massive external invasion and occupation as I described in the preceding paragraph.
Understood. Thanks.
…one plausible solution is military invasion plus occupation plus UN peacekeepers of the whole of Israel and Palestine, and then force them under military occupation to choose between the religiously neutral-one solution or the two-state solution (such as via public referendum) with proposed borders that have been drawn up for them by the foreign military occupation force.
Um…no, that’s not at all plausible, except maybe to get the entire Israeli political establishment to shit themselves when they hear people talking about it (which, in fairness, I don’t consider a bad thing in itself). Let’s just say the devil is in the details…and I see a BIG HONKIN’ UGLY-ASS BALROG in the detail of which country(ies)’ army units, specifically, would be physically on the ground taking control of the territory; and which agenda said country(ies) have WRT the territory; and whether that agenda is even remotely in accord with the UN’s agenda. Because once those particular army units have taken control of the territory and people (assuming they’re even able to do so), they may not be all that controllable by UN overseers.
But there is one plus to that idea: “favoritism” won’t be an issue, because EVERYBODY will hate the idea and NOBODY will trust any election that follows such an occupation.
Raging Bee
Again, I said that it’s completely infeasible politically, as well as possibly causing very large casualties. I’m not defending it. I’ll float the idea as something that we could accomplish with military might, but again, I repeat myself, our track record of nation-building is, at best, crap, and so I prefer to fuck off and let them kill each other.
@GerrardOfTitanServer — The terms of surrender ultimately presented by the Americans and accepted by the Japanese included demands for what the emperor would do after the fact. He had to still be around for that to happen. The allies did not simply “decide later” to leave him and the imperial office around. Some of the things they demanded in the terms of surrender required him and the office to remain in order for them to be accomplished. The argument is that that was the critical part. It wasn’t explicit in the terms, no, but it was required by the nature of them all the same.
Your version of events also includes no actual mechanism for forcing surrender via bombings. Two cities were destroyed by nukes, yes. Do you have any idea how many other Japanese cities had already been destroyed prior? What makes you think that changed here? Why would it?
The point here is fairly simple — bombing civilian targets doesn’t “work.” It doesn’t break the morale of the people who are actually at the top giving the orders, it doesn’t adequately damage the potential for military production, and it doesn’t force them to surrender. All you get for your troubles are a lot of dead people who had no say in the high-level decisions you’re trying to influence. It’s not a meaningful threat, at least not to the people you actually want to cause problems for. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.
(Your comments about the video I linked by way of argument extension, by the way, make me wonder about your willingness to consider that point of view at all. Your description does not resemble the full thing in the slightest. I would not consider it to even remotely represent the tone. Did you not even make it past the introduction or something? I did warn you it was long — you don’t have to watch it if you don’t have time or something — I just thought it could explain better than I was apparently managing.)
Says who? You are using a weasel word, “adequate”. Who is to decide what is adequate and not? Adequate under what standard? Adequate in the sense of sufficiently impactful to overcome your principled moral objections?
Again, the brief history involved is that before and after the atomic bombs, the supreme war council of Japan, the big 6, were all united to refuse an unconditional surrender, arguing at a minimum that the god-emperor should be maintained. Of those 6, 3 of them went further, and argued that they should keep fighting to force the Americans to become war-weary enough to agree to a Versaille-style peace treaty which would specifically allow Japan to keep its overseas conquered territory, including Taiwan, Philippines, parts of China, etc., and that there should be no occupation, and any war criminals would be tried by Japanese courts, and any disarmament should be overseen solely by the Japanese. Again, this is after both atomic bombs.
It took the god-emperor himself to step in, which was a rare and highly unusual move, and express his support for unconditional surrender. Even then, there was a serious coup attempt to try to silence the god-emperor and keep the war going. The coup attempt was close to succeeding.
What convinced the god-emperor? Here, in his own words:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
Back to you:
It would help if the first 5 minutes of your video didn’t contain easily disprovable flagrant lies. I am engaging, but your grossly ignorant or dishonest conduct is doing absolutely nothing to change my mind – well, except for making me do even more independent research which is further strengthening my pre-existing beliefs in this matter.
If you want to change my mind, stop lying, and stop citing sources that lie. Japan offered zero peace deals and made zero direct communication to the USA about any peace deals before the two atomic bombs, contrary to your lying assertions upthread. And of the peace feelers that were put out by Japan to the Soviet Union, they were without any authority to promise on terms, and what terms were being floated for discussion again included the keeping of conquered overseas territory such as Taiwan, the Philippines, parts of China, etc. Describing this as “the Japanese were ready to surrender” or “the Japanese were trying to surrender” is just dishonest.
On top of all of that, with my further research, I would make the arguments that Truman had less of a choice than I thought. He needed to end the war now before the public become too disinterested in the war, which might have led to public acceptance of a conditional surrender that left the Japanese leadership in charge of Japan, gods forbid.
Additionally, I was reminded that thousands of non-Japanese people were dying every day from starvation, torture, rape, etc., under Japanese occupation. Ending the war sooner would save their lives.
Additionally, I was reminded that the Japanese were well known to kill any POWs when forced to retreat. Had we tried to invade the mainland Japanese, they would have killed all of the POWs. Our only chance to rescue them was the atomic bombs.
I’m sorry. You’re just wrong, and you can take your historical revisionism, and especially you can take your faux outrage at being called on your lies, and shove it up your ass. I hate dealing with lying historical revisionists.
I think I’ve said all I really usefully can on this topic, so I just want to say that I’m inclined to leave it here. Gerrard, if you want the last word, I think you can have it. I don’t think I’m going to convince you, and I also don’t expect to be wholly convinced by you. Then, to top it off, it’s kinda bringing out the worst in me — leaving me less inclined toward charitable interpretations of your words than I might otherwise be. And I think I see indications of the same from you. So for all those reasons, I think ending what remains of the debate here to be the wisest course of action. My apologies for any unwarranted vitriol I’ve sent your way over the course of this. It can be rather difficult to restrain frustration in such… contentious topics, shall we say.
PS:
Another lie. God read it. It’s not there.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/surrender-of-japan
There were some verbal statements made to this effect, which were not binding. Maybe that was the actual meaning of some additional verbal communication that accompanied the text, but it’s not in the text, and I am unable to find any reliable evidence to support this assertion beyond a vague statement saying “the emperor will do as we command to facilitate the process”, which is a far cry from “we promise to not kill the emperor after a time, e.g. after being found guilty and sentenced to hanging at trial”.
Did some Japanese people read way too far into that original meaning and come to the conclusion that it was the second meaning? No contest. Maybe. I don’t know. But that is not what was in the text documents, and it is not what the emperor “ordered” to the big 6 after the atomic bombs which almost got him deposed in a coup. The emperor argued for unconditional surrender, and that’s what triggered the attempted coup.
Gods you’re so dishonest.
I don’t give a godsdamned bit about any “vitriol” from you. I care about you brazenly lying to my face, or acting with such reckless disregard for the truth that it’s morally the same. You could say these lies with the nicest and kindest words, and I would still be just as mad at you.
You know what, Gerrard, while I’m still bowing out of the discussion, I revoke my extension of sympathy. You see only what you want to see; what confirms your existing beliefs. At least as far as this “discussion” is concerned. I mean FFS, your evidence to the contrary is that the emperor’s basically press release statement credited the bombs? (Of course it did! What else would you expect? “Oh we have reason to believe they’re not actually gonna kill me, so we’re fine now”?) You would take that at perfect face value, without further analysis? You might as well claim that the pixies told you what really happened. It would be as solid, and a lot more honest.
Here, more evidence that it is a lie.
It seems to be well known that MacArthur instigated a conspiracy to protect Hirohito from prosecution in the war crime trials. This was a rather large effort of persuading many prosecutors and coaching many witnesses to lie under oath at trial about the real level of knowledge and involvement of Hirohito. Would this large conspiracy be necessary if Hirohito was protected by the terms of surrender? No. Did the Japanese know that MacArthur was going to instigate this conspiracy when they signed the instruments of surrender? No. Even if it was communicated, it would fail to carry any authority. The USA president, congress, military command, and the general public would be unanimous that such a secret verbal promise was completely non-binding. Rather, this was the personal decision of MacArthur to protect Hirohito from responsibility because of Hirohito’s utility to MacArthur’s mission of controlling Japan, and seemingly maybe because MacArthur was fanboying over meeting (Japanese) royalty or something – I don’t know.
With even a modicum of research, this lie is apparent. This is how I’ve concluded that you have preconceived conclusions that you came to dogmatically. You started with the modern moral ideas that all indiscriminate civilian attacks are wrong and unproductive, and then you reasoned backward to the facts that would allow you to support such a conclusion.
Of course, it’s also hard to disentangle this from the decades of propaganda around nuclear bombs and nuclear power. Part of the reasons for your motivated reasoning in this case is very probably a strong dislike of nuclear weapons, which I share, but I didn’t let the propaganda get to me. You did. The truth will set you free, and dishonesty will only turn off people who don’t already share your view, and will also turn off people like me who might have been more sympathetic to your view until I realized that you brought nothing but easily disproven lies to this conversation.
The difference is that the emperor Hirohito was real, and his recording is real. By contrast, your sources are the pixies because they don’t exist.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japans-surrender-military-coup-1945
To his inner circle in Japan, Hirohito maintained that it was the atomic bombs that were the reason, and didn’t mention or barely mentioned the Soviet declaration of war.
What did happen was that many military commanders overseas refused to surrender, and the emperor sent out personal emissaries to persuade them to surrender, and those emissaries used arguments that were more personal and immediate to those commanders off the Japanese mainland, namely the Soviet entrance into the war and not the atomic bombs.
Also, the Soviet entrance to the war was clearly important, but its immediate impact is vastly overstated. The Soviet entrance into the war ensured that much of Japan’s overseas holdings would be lost to Japan, but the Soviets lacked sufficient sea power to perform anywhere near a sufficient assault on the mainland of Japan. This was an important element to decide to surrender, because up until a few days ago, 3 of the Big 6 were holding out hope of a negotiated peace that let Japan keep some of its overseas conquered territory. The loss of that possibility meant far fewer rewards to continuing to fight for a negotiated peace instead of an unconditional surrender.
However, even after the Soviet declaration of war, 3 of the Big 6 still held out hope of fighting the war until a negotiated settlement that did not include occupation of Japan. They were willing to surrender to the Americans with that condition. So, the Soviet declaration of war was important, but it was not enough to force them to surrender. They were willing to fight on even with all of their overseas territory lost. Rather, what caused the unconditional surrender was the intervention of the emperor because of the atomic bombs and his lack of confidence in his military’s capability, which again was still a close run thing because many powerful people did not want to surrender and tried to overthrow / silence the emperor in a failed coup.
Thus, I think it’s baloney to suggest that the Soviet declaration of war was the most important factor. It was clearly important, but not more important that the atomic bombs.
Enough, Gerrard. Your insistence that there could have been no understanding of what the Americans intended to do with the emperor in the absence of a formal contract stating as much is farcical, and that is what this argument of yours rests on. That is not just the only case you have made, but the only case that can exist, for the position that these are, in your words, “easily disproven lies.” As for the rest — Emperor Hirohito may have been real, but the part where he revealed to you the fundamental truths behind the end of the war by way of a fucking press release is as real as bigfoot tapdancing on the roof of the Empire State Building.
I added much more arguments why it was the bombs and not the Soviet declaration of war. Again, in short: 3 of the Big 6 accepted the loss of all overseas territories as inevitable, but they still wanted to fight on. The USSR was not an immediate threat to the mainland because they lacked a navy; the USSR could not have performed a serious invasion of the Japanese mainland anytime soon.
As for this verbal promise stuff. Yea, they made a verbal promise all right, in spite of the emperor himself asking the Big 6 to accept unconditional surrender, the written documents clearly saying unconditional surrender, and the giant conspiracy necessary after the war to prevent Hirohito from being tried and hanged in the war crimes courts. You’re such a tool.
You know what an honest person would do if they were actually informed? Post citations and clear direct quotes of primary material, documents or testimony, to make their case. I’ve looked, and as far as I can tell, there are no such primary evidence to support your case, just some mythologized story that some Japanese understood some portions of the written documents and/or some unspecified verbal statements to be promises of the emperor’s safety, in spite of the emperor himself asking for unconditional surrender, and the documents stating unconditional surrender.
PS:
I notice that you haven’t apologized for your bullshit claim that the surrender document included a specific statement about the specific things that he would be obliged to do under the document. Come on man. Pull your head out of your ass.and join the reality-based community.
Gerrard — Any of my understandings could easily be flawed, but I will not, now or ever, give you the point that they are completely baseless. Which specific document conveyed which specific understanding is not, and has never been, the crux of my point. I realize it matters in general for certain historical purposes, and to you specifically a great deal here for some reason, but it does not impact the larger point. That larger point is what you’ve been dodging around by reference to those specifics. That larger point, specifically, being what actually caused the Japanese leadership to give up and end the war. It’s not like this has ever been cleanly settled academically in favor of the bombs, either. There’s a reason I pointed you toward someone else who had a clearer grasp of what the specifics were — I was hoping he could help us get past my frankly notoriously shoddy memory for details and on to the larger point. Unfortunately, you responded with borderline libelous attacks on his character based on nothing more than an opening summary, so we’re back where we started, except now I don’t see a point to this anymore. I no longer believe it is possible to come to any sort of mutual understanding with you.
Stopped reading there. I’ve looked and I cannot find anything to support your claims. Several of your claims seem to be entirely mythology invented by anti-nuclear people. If you don’t come with primary sources to back up your claims, then I’m going to consider you pure crank.
Have a good day.
From Wikipedia (current figures just cut/pasted):
Casualties and losses
Israel:
1,300+ killed[i][24]
3,400 wounded[25]
200+ abducted[j][30]
[everyone else]
Gaza Strip:[c]
1,900 killed[d][14]
7,696 wounded[e][14]
423,000 displaced[f]
Inside Israel (Israeli claim):[dubious – discuss]
1,000 militants killed[17]
West Bank:[g]
51 killed[18]
600 wounded[19]
Lebanon:[h]
6 killed[20]
An interesting summation/opinion/analysis:
@ 182 Morales
Dude Israel’s just getting warmed up.
https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-news-hamas-war-10-13-23/h_805763aafe5be9c0e4c72bdbb2d45453