Israel/Palestine thread

A ton of people born and raised there actually left though, which is easier for them than for most people in poor countries given the special "permanent and automatic refugee status" Palestinians have.

So we might conceive those who are still there are selected to be the worst among them, those who agree with a lot of what Hamas is and does, not a random sample of Palestinians.

This seems pretty spurious.

It usually isn't when you have heavy emigration from an area, there are selection effects. Same as when 20% of east Germany residents moved west from 1946 to 1960 (before they made it illegal to do so)

You don't think that those who leave are a combination of:

-the most educated
-with the most means
-the least radical (not up for the forever fight)
-who have family who already somehow left

Doesn't seem like the hottest of takes. There is definitely a type who are leaving Hong Kong and Taiwan, for example.

Not sure I care for this point one way or the other tbh. Doesn't seem like arguing it gets us anywhere at all. But I think at least some of the logic is sound.

Wait til you hear about the Yerida phenomenon. I’m sure you’ll apply all the same assumptions 😀

Actually he is more or less correct. To expound a little on what Rafiki already said, there has actually been a significant money/brain drain from Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories (and probably the rest of the Islamic world) over the last 80 years as these areas have increasingly become more radicalized and Islamic. This includes Jews (who are now all gone from these areas), most of the Christians and the more wealthy, educated, connected, cosmopolitan Muslim Arabs.

It is pretty much a universal truth that it is the uneducated, lower classes most attracted to right wing fascism, as exemplified by Hamas and to a lesser extent the PLO. This is true in the US* and also true in the Palestinian Territories.

*The US is a little weird in that things are so polarized around racial lines to the point that poor minorities consistently vote for the less fascist party. But polling consistently indicates them voting Democrat is actually all about racial polarization, and like poor whites these groups share more right wing fascist values.

The most educated and the ones with the most means, sure-- I'm aware of the brain drain concept. I don't think that's a reflection on those who remain or that they are the "worst" Palestinians any more than I think the Venezuelans still in Venezuela are the worst Venezuelans. People are going to choose to leave or not for a variety of different reasons and as has been pointed out, the majority of those in Gaza are youngsters as is.

This is called 'dehumanizing the enemy'. And you could say much the same about Israel, which is in the grip of the religious right.

It's worth noting that there is a contradiction between your position here and your position in the immigration thread. There you argue that we're not getting their best and brightest and here you're arguing the exact opposite.

No contradiction because as I explained there, when it's country far away and you give no free stuff you actually get the best and the brightest (I am on record saying indians in Canada are exceptionally good resources for example. Same as Nigerians in the USA).

You get low quality ones when you promise free stuff to people on your border

They actually are? Same as cubans.

On average ofc, many individuals are victims anyway, especially children and young adults that might not have a chance to flee yet.

Elders/infirms as well ofc.

And obviously it's not automatic to be able to flee Cuba/Venezuela (they torture your family if you do), unlike Gaza where you can leave at any moment and get recognized as a refugee anywhere.

But many adults to choose to stay under a horrible, monstrous regime and contribute to its success (if all decent people leave society automatically collapse so yoh arr responsible for the regime continuation if you are a decent person and dont leave), are responsible at least in part especially if leaving is allowed.

Uneducated lower classes tend to be attracted to violent redistributive statism, IE people who tell them their conditions aren't their own fault and they will violently take property of others to give to them. That's what fascism (as a variant of socialism) and all other *LEFTwing* (IE statist) regimes and ideologies tell them.

The USA is actually an outlier where a decent number of uneducated people (perhaps because absolute levels of well being are high enough or for other cultural reasons) prefer freedom to other people stuff, and this outlier is why they are the most powerful country in world history, as mass populist movements based upon state violence to steal from the best people in society to give to the worst, are what usually keep societies from being their best.

IE the MAGA people are objectively the best uneducated people to exist, at least they are actually right-wing to some degree.

Are you arguing anything I said is incorrect? Or just moralizing? Nothing I said is even factually controversial AFAIK.

Maybe Israel is starting to lose their best/brightest because of their right wing turn. I have no clue, but if they are they are, and no amount of moral outrage is going to make it not true.

I mean if you listen to country music, you might come to this conclusion. But in reality MAGA people are overwhelmingly on welfare, disability, social security and addicted to opioids; so I suspect they are less differentiated from uneducated, poor people everywhere else than you believe.

I dont know how much time you have actually spent in MAGA country. I admit I myself have spent very little, but enough to believe you are maybe romanticizing things.

It is also possible we have different perceptions of who MAGA people are. I make a distinction between someone who maybe voted for Trump for one reason or another, but is otherwise normal; from true believers to the MAGA cause.

(Social security isn't welfare unless you mean disability. It's forced saving but you broadly get back what you had put in, given rates of returns on assets historically in the country).

And Afaik MAGA people median income isn't lower than the population income.

They are less educated than democrat white voters but not necessarily less educated than people who don't vote.

For now enough opportunities to make normal incomes exist for uneducated people with right-wing attitudes

Probably defining who MAGA people are exactly is an important component as to whether this is accurate or not. A lot of wealthy people vote Republican simply because they want their taxes to be lower and the Republican Party is generally coded as more libertarian; but aren't really into all the conspiracy theory, abortion, xenophobia stuff that is part of the MAGA identity.

Ye i need to define them, you are right. I am thinking broadly of people who agree with at least one core tenent of "MAGA". It can be nativists, or white supremacists (not in the nazi sense but in the "white majority countries are better than other countries because of the whites", which is FAR more common than people realize), or radical abortionists, or non-interventionists (USA should spend 0 outside its borders if it doesnt materially and immediatly guarantee an advantage to americans to spend anything), or anti-global-trade people ("we need tariffs", whatever the reason), or anti climate/environmental regulations (chinese hoas or whatever other reason to fully oppose all those rules), and the "communists want to ruin western society dismantling the family" (which includes criticism to LGBT activism and so on).

It's a broad tent. The technocratic globalist elite who is republican only for taxations and the like isn't included. But the 200k/year very normal physician who simply thinks that if there were less blacks around society would be better is included. The 90k 50y old blue collar head of a team of repairers of industrial air conditioning who keeps reposting the photo of the trans admiral saying "this is not the america i want" is included. And so on.

EDIT: for example even if i strongly oppose many of those takes, given i agree with several and i could vote republican in various cases, i include myself in the definition

Wall and 2 miles deep buffer zone

Yep. When Israel builds their buffer zone people will criticize.

As much as ive said i have wanted Egypt to give temporary refuge to them, i respect their right to control their border.

"builds their buffer zone" is a breathtaking euphemism.

The buffer zone is on which side?

Israel’s buffer zone is on the Gazan side of the border, effectively shrinking the land size of Gaza and militarizing it. Egypt builds their buffer zones on the Egyptian side of the border on their own soil. Egypt doesn’t destroy Palestinian farmland and infrastructure. Just curious if that’s changed.

They’re not quite the same thing. Ducy?

(This should be an easy one, even for Mets.)

Crossnerd, weed is legal here so it's possible I just missed it. But I felt like we had an opportunity for dialogue around this post.

I'm just trying to arrive at an agreement on how little incentive Israel has to want this to keep going, and how much easier any other route would be. If we agree there, it opens up a lot more interesting dialogue down the line.

I’d be open to a dialogue but not one that starts with false narrow premises. I’m not sure where we’d find the common ground to begin.