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Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 09 2025 at 09:38):In case you thought that France might be taking a positive stance in defence of Palestine on the international stage, the recent rollback of the president considering recognising the state of Palestine has surely dispelled that hope. Within the country, though, things are quietly becoming as oppressive as you have seen them getting elsewhere.
I found out today that last month, a former member of my lab, Pierre Nicodème, returned a CNRS medal of honour he was awarded in 2013 in protest against pressure from the French minister of higher education on the Institut d'études politiques de Strasbourg to maintain a partnership with Université Reichman de Herzliya in Israel after a commission at the former unanimously voted to end it. I share this not just because he did so as a member of a lab I belong to (though this fact does make me a little proud) but because this symbolic act follows several decades of activism on his part that his open letter (in French) describes.
Meanwhile, early this morning the Freedom Flotilla, carrying 12 peaceful international activists and aid to Gaza, was intercepted in international waters by the Israeli military. This itself is a war crime.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 09 2025 at 09:38):There has been little discussion of the genocide here on Zulip. It takes courage to publicly condemn what is happening, for fear that we will be punished, professionally or personally. I remember well that when I first started getting involved in activism, it felt like I was timidly shouting into a void.
At the community action meeting during ACT last week I opened with the statement that Science is political. The effects of the crimes that are being committed by Israel and by the governments complicit with Israel are affecting us directly, undermining our intellectual freedom and removing the funds that we need to do our work. We are not helpless! Besides the links in the action meeting minutes above to support students displaced in and outside of Gaza, you can directly act in support of the Freedom Flotilla; now is a critical time to do so. Wherever you are, your government could be doing more. If you've heard someone tell you to Contact Your Representatives and haven't acted on it, this video is a handy general guide.
Mike Shulman (Jun 09 2025 at 10:02):I would have hoped that the reason there has been little discussion of this sort of thing on Zulip is that we recognize that other people may have different political opinions that us, and that there are many appropriate forums for political activism, but that we would like to keep this forum a place for discussion of mathematics, where no one feels excluded because of their politics.
Mike Shulman (Jun 09 2025 at 10:05):I realize this is the "off topic" channel and there is a "mute" button, which I'm probably going to hit in a minute. But there is plenty of non-political stuff in "off topic" that it's reasonable to want to stay subscribed to, and it's uncomfortable to read messages that assume the reader must agree with the author politically, when you don't agree with them.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 09 2025 at 10:15):Mike Shulman said:
we would like to keep this forum a place for discussion of mathematics, where no one feels excluded because of their politics.
If "their politics" doesn't recognize someone else's right to exist, their feeling excluded or uncomfortable is the least of my concerns.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 09 2025 at 12:17):To respond more constructively: if I can't get you onboard with the Palestinian cause, too bad. But surely @Mike Shulman you too have colleagues and students that are being impacted by Trump's attack on higher education and research, who could stand to benefit from the use of this research community standing together in their defense? Why do you say this is not an appropriate forum for political activism?
Damiano Mazza (Jun 09 2025 at 13:12):I realize this is the "off topic" channel and there is a "mute" button
@Mike Shulman you don't have to mute the entire off-topic channel, you can just mute this particular topic.
@Morgan Rogers (he/him) perhaps you moderators can create a "meta: politics of science" channel, with everyone subscribed by default, and keep all political discussions in there? Personally, I am ok with political activism on this Zulip, but this gives a way of "opting out" for those who are not ok. Creating a specific channel also supports the idea that politics is not off-topic on this forum.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 09 2025 at 13:47):Thanks for the suggestion @Damiano Mazza, on reflection #community: discussion is a better place for this topic (even if it doesn't achieve the more active suggestion of displaying that politics can be discussed here!)
Notification Bot (Jun 09 2025 at 13:48):This topic was moved here from #meta: off-topic > Returning a medal, freeing a people by Morgan Rogers (he/him).
James Deikun (Jun 09 2025 at 14:07):I myself wouldn't say I'm on board with the "Palestinian cause" exactly. I'm on board with the "anti-genocide cause" but it seems the Palestinians as a bloc would be more than eager to return the favor if the shoe were on the other foot, so to speak. There's really no states or nations or peoples to root for in this conflict, only individuals. Nonetheless I agree with and support all the specific positions and actions described approvingly in the OP, and condemn all the positions and actions described negatively therein.
James Deikun (Jun 09 2025 at 14:23):I think it's important to make this clear because there has been a lot of muddying the waters on, paradoxically, both sides of this conflict, reinforcing the natural human impression that you have to join the conflict and pick a side and support that side of the conflict in order to even say anything about how it's conducted. Lots of people who would normally see through the smokescreens and be at least in token opposition to the ongoing genocide are persuaded to disbelieve it without examining the actual evidence by the idea that they would be placed in some sort of alliance of convenience with some people who seem obviously unsavory, while the Israelis are better at hiding behind what feels like a much more civilized veneer to Europeans and perhaps especially Anglophones, exploiting the blind spots created by a reluctance to fully acknowledge the more shameful parts of their own histories.
Mike Shulman (Jun 09 2025 at 14:44):Damiano Mazza said:
Mike Shulman you don't have to mute the entire off-topic channel, you can just mute this particular topic.
Yes, that's what I meant. Except, of course, that (as I expected) people @mentioned me and so I got notified even after I muted the topic. (-:O
Mike Shulman (Jun 09 2025 at 15:05):Morgan, what annoyed me was that you didn't even try to get me onboard with the "Palestinian cause". Instead you assumed that anyone reading your message was already onboard with your cause and exhorted us to take action.
At the very least, you could recognize that some people's moral compass may be unimpaired but they are simply uninformed about facts. And then there's a long spectrum stretching from there to being an actively terrible person.
Mike Shulman (Jun 09 2025 at 15:08):Let alone the possibility, minute as it might be, that it might be you who is wrong.
Mike Shulman (Jun 09 2025 at 15:08):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
If "their politics" doesn't recognize someone else's right to exist, their feeling excluded or uncomfortable is the least of my concerns.
I hope you'll forgive me saying so, but this comment is almost a caricature of what's wrong with academia today. Millions for DEI, but not one cent for viewpoint diversity. In my darker moments I wonder whether there is no real hope for reform and the only thing to do is burn us all down, as Trump seems intent on doing.
John Baez (Jun 09 2025 at 15:45):There are many large communities of people today who interact mainly with people who agree with themselves on certain issues. So, many people have not figured out a way how to communicate in a way that doesn't presume an agreement on these issues - and many of them don't even want to figure this out.
Here I'm not just talking about the "DEI crowd", but equally the "anti-DEI crowd", and many other crowds, polarized along many different axes.
Luckily I know which of these crowds are right, and which are wrong. But it's not always wise to assume others share my knowledge of the truth, or condemn the ignorant. :wink:
James Deikun (Jun 09 2025 at 15:55):The "their politics" comment may seem somewhat hypocritical, but it's at least equally hypocritical to complain about feeling excluded by someone speaking to those who are on the same page as them politically without recognizing your presence in the audience while also pooh-poohing the movement that promulgated the idea in the first place that making people feel excluded by assuming characteristics of your audience is bad.
Anyway, "DEI" does value viewpoint diversity, the existence of different viewpoints is an important way to learn, but on any particular issue it's only natural and wise to privilege the viewpoint that's more grounded in relevant experience and knowledge. Some people take this privileging of certain viewpoints a little too far as is human nature, but it's not fundamentally wrong.
James Deikun (Jun 09 2025 at 15:56):(However, this whole thread of discussion is sort of a tangent to the original subject, slipping into the meta.)
Nathan Corbyn (Jun 09 2025 at 15:59):Mike Shulman said:
I hope you'll forgive me saying so, but this comment is almost a caricature of what's wrong with academia today. Millions for DEI, but not one cent for viewpoint diversity.
And I hope you’ll forgive me for remarking that the caricature is surely senior academics wheeling out their personal grievances in place of condemning (or even acknowledging) an ongoing genocide with official death toll >60,000.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 10 2025 at 08:16):First of all, yes, I too think that what Israel is doing at the moment is very wrong. Having cleared this out, my 2cents: Why do you want to argue? This is a place for mathematics. There are many people with very different political opinions here and the kind of thing that makes a place like this work is _precisely_ acknowledging that, in the interest of everyone, it is better _not_ to engage in political discussion. I myself am guilty of having done this in the past and caused quite the shitstorm multiple times. I regretted that every single time this happened.
...Having considered all this, you decided to pick literally one of the most polarizing political issues of the last years. I see no way this can end well. This is not activism, is begging for a digital brawl to happen.
My golden rule about the current Israel-Palestine situation is to _never_ talk about the matter with either Israeli or Palestinian people. Every single time I did I've ben accused of either not backing the Palestinian cause enough, and hence of being a fascist, or of being sympathetic with a bunch of terrorists, hence being a terrorist myself. All this, pretty much always, happened with a lot of insults and shouting in the process. It really degenerates very quickly. So yes, call me a coward or whatever but I consciously decide not to engage in this type of conversations with the people I work with. I think it's much more productive to do it in my free time, with other people, and in a way that doesn't terribly backfire in my working activity.
So let me ask again: Why do you want to argue? People in the west are almost throwing Molotov cocktails at each other because of this issue. I really hoped we could shield this place from this sort of degeneration for once.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 10 2025 at 08:20):Sorry for not responding sooner, I was out protesting.
@Mike Shulman said:
Morgan, what annoyed me was that you didn't even try to get me onboard with the "Palestinian cause". Instead you assumed that anyone reading your message was already onboard with your cause and exhorted us to take action.
At the very least, you could recognize that some people's moral compass may be unimpaired but they are simply uninformed about facts.
Even if you pretended to be completely ignorant of current affairs, this is a blatant mischaracterisation of the OP. I included relevant information about recent events, most notably the detention of the activists on board the Freedom Flotilla both in the post and via links to material containing further information.
Let alone the possibility, minute as it might be, that it might be you who is wrong.
It's unclear what you're suggesting I might be wrong about here. Wrong to use the influence I have to try to convince people that doing something is better than doing nothing?
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 10 2025 at 08:26):Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
It is better _not_ to engage in political discussion. I myself am guilty of having done this in the past and caused quite the shitstorm multiple times. I regretted that every single time this happened.
A political discussion doesn't have to become a shitstorm. This is an asynchronous, text-based medium. In most cases, there is time to think things over before responding (although I was guilty of not taking that time in my first response). It's true that some discussions you've been involved in have become heated in the past @Fabrizio Romano Genovese, but I don't feel that the community as a whole has lost out because those discussions were allowed to happen.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 10 2025 at 08:27):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
It is better _not_ to engage in political discussion. I myself am guilty of having done this in the past and caused quite the shitstorm multiple times. I regretted that every single time this happened.
A political discussion doesn't have to become a shitstorm. This is an asynchronous, text-based medium. In most cases, there is time to think things over before responding (although I was guilty of not taking that time in my first response). It's true that some discussions you've been involved in have become heated in the past Fabrizio Romano Genovese, but I don't feel that the community as a whole has lost out because those discussions were allowed to happen.
I bet a beer and a dinner you'll deeply regret to have started this topic within a few days. I can venmo the payment or whatever if we don't happen to meet soon.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 10 2025 at 08:29):James Deikun said:
I myself wouldn't say I'm on board with the "Palestinian cause" exactly. I'm on board with the "anti-genocide cause" ... Nonetheless I agree with and support all the specific positions and actions described approvingly in the OP
While it is tempting to argue about the history or the semantics, the will to act to save people is more important. Thank you James.
fosco (Jun 10 2025 at 08:42):A political discussion doesn't have to become a shitstorm.
...How little time have you spent on the internet so far?
Any discussion whatsoever, irregardless of topic, eventually becomes a shitstorm.
fosco (Jun 10 2025 at 08:42):fosco said:
A political discussion doesn't have to become a shitstorm.
...How little time have you spent on the internet so far?
Any discussion whatsoever, irregardless of topic, eventually becomes a shitstorm.
(which is the only thing I'm going to say here, bye)
Patrick Nicodemus (Jun 10 2025 at 16:34):Pierre Nicodeme
Huh. Wonder if there's any relation.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 13 2025 at 15:09):In case you heard the news of military theatrics in the Middle East today, please do not be distracted from the continuing genocide happening in Gaza: distraction is the goal. There are still things you can do. For anyone in Paris, I will be at Place de la République tomorrow. Send me a message if you want to meet me there, especially if you have hesitated to join in with protests in the past.
Todd Trimble (Jun 14 2025 at 03:22):I hope the French police would be there to oversee that the protest remains peaceful, and not indiscriminately make use of rubber bullets, flash bang grenades, tear gas and pepper spray, etc.
Here in the US, Trump's administration is going over the head of California's governor and bringing in the National Guard and the Marines to the LA protests (against the mass scale sweep-up and spiriting away of undocumented immigrants), in a blatant show of intimidation. I expect this is a trial run, and they'll soon ratchet up the military presence to include other cities.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 14 2025 at 06:33):That's also something you can stand up against today in particular (June 14th). There are over 1800 actions planned across the US today. Good luck out there.
John Baez (Jun 14 2025 at 08:17):I would celebrate No Kings Day from here in Edinburgh, but it would mean something different here, and while I'm no royalist I'm not eager to get involved in that argument here. Instead I'm just doing my best to stoke No Kings Day on Mastodon.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 10:10):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
In case you heard the news of military theatrics in the Middle East today, please do not be distracted from the continuing genocide happening in Gaza: distraction is the goal.
I think that is a bit simplistic, and that if we care at all about academics in the Middle East, it seems to be quite a big deal that in Iran, being an academic who wants to work on peaceful nuclear energy is likely to get you murdered by Mossad terrorists.
Todd Trimble (Jun 14 2025 at 11:02):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
In case you heard the news of military theatrics in the Middle East today, please do not be distracted from the continuing genocide happening in Gaza: distraction is the goal.
I think that is a bit simplistic, and that if we care at all about academics in the Middle East, it seems to be quite a big deal that in Iran, being an academic who wants to work on peaceful nuclear energy is likely to get you murdered by Mossad terrorists.
I surely expect that distraction is part of the point here. The phrase used all the time here in the US to describe what Trump et al. are doing is "flooding the zone". It's a US football expression, but here it means waging attacks on so many different fronts that the opponent is overwhelmed and distracted and can't properly focus on which to address.
My impression is that Netanyahu may be appropriating this concept as well.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 11:25):Oh absolutely it is part of a distraction on Netanyahu's part, but the video linked by Morgan implied that the Iranian regime was a kind of “willing participant” because Israeli attacks rally people around the flag and allow them to keep repressing internal dissent.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 11:27):I think beyond the “distraction” there is a clear component of trying to derail the normalisation of US-Iran relations.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 11:31):(Ironically, because of the “unique” characteristics of Trump, I do genuinely believe that he could lead the subversion of some long-running staples of US foreign policy, and that Netanyahu is also acting on that suspicion...)
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 11:35):Anyway, this is probably not the place for this discussion. Just want to say that I believe “normalisation” is what most Iranians want, that they have used all the democratic space they have to get there---their latest presidental election was as much an “outsider” slipping through the cracks as it could be---and that this Israeli attack is ultimately an attack on normalisation and on the Iranian people, it's not just “theatre” and it has real consequences.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 14 2025 at 11:39):My only advice is "please do not listen to self-proclaimed geopolitics experts making videos from their kitchen." This person makes Peter Zeihan look competent, and that's a very difficult achievement. Notably, the idea that "we're already in WWIII since the end of WWII, and wars will never look like that again with two entities of equal power matching up" is ludicrous. It contradicts what happened from 1947-1991 pretty much directly, and it also ignores the huge naval military progress that China is making, which is something that's keeping all geopolitical analysts busy as of late.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 14 2025 at 11:40):In general the idea that "leaders of nations hating each other long before they were even born de facto agree and conspire with each other to consolidate power" is peak paranoid delirium.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 12:30):Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
In general the idea that "leaders of nations hating each other long before they were even born de facto agree and conspire with each other to consolidate power" is peak paranoid delirium.
Well, Netanyahu has provedly been propping up Hamas, so it's not total nonsense in the context of his character; but I think he's an exception in truly embodying the "Machiavellian" personality type
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 12:31):(With apologies to Machiavelli who doesn't deserve to be associated with the personality type)
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 14 2025 at 12:45):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
In general the idea that "leaders of nations hating each other long before they were even born de facto agree and conspire with each other to consolidate power" is peak paranoid delirium.
Well, Netanyahu has provedly been propping up Hamas, so it's not total nonsense in the context of his character; but I think he's an exception in truly embodying the "Machiavellian" personality type
The thing I reject is the paranoid projection that these people are in agreement. It is absolutely true that Netanyahu is using this Iran situation - and also the Gaza situation btw - to distract the public opinion from his own problems. Before all this stuff started in 2023 his political career was failing and he was to stand accusation of corruption and other crimes, so yes, all this has been a total political blessing for him and he's propping it up. This is something that even many people agreeing with Israel on the Gaza situation openly recognize. Yet, this doesn't mean that the hate between Iran and Israel isn't completely genuine, and the idea that the two countries - or their leaders thereof - could willingly 'do each other a favor' really means not understanding a thing about how geopolitics - and anthropology itself, actually - works
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 13:00):Agreed, I did not mean it in terms of "doing each other a favour", rather like "propping up an opponent that is more radical but perceived as less effective"
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 13:08):(Also from everything I've seen, including from travelling through Iran, I do think the idea of a widespread "sentiment" behind the Iran-Israel conflict is largely made up, at least on the Iranian side; don't know enough about Israelis)
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 14 2025 at 13:10):Certainly anti-Arab sentiment is way more common, lol
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 15 2025 at 10:54):Thanks for engaging with the video I linked, folks! To the point you were contesting @Amar Hadzihasanovic : it is clear that civilian casualties are no longer even a pretend concern of the parties involved. I don't think that the leaders of Iran somehow agreed to be attacked. I also don't think I believe that relations with the US had moved very far in a positive direction, but to the extent that they had I agree that it undermines those positive steps.
The feature of that video that I do agree with is the idea we should stop identifying states with the people living under them. I don't think the video was as conspiratorial as you make it out to be @Fabrizio Romano Genovese : the point made was that the leaders have a lot less to lose than the civilian victims of the wars they are waging.
The attack on Iran has been successful in drawing media attention away from Gaza, but more frustratingly it has given leaders in the EU an excuse to fall back to a supportive position that "Israel has a right to defend itself"-- in spite of there being no evidence presented on the international stage that there was anything to defend themselves from that these attacks could have been provoked by. That represents days, possibly longer, of further inaction, which when people are starving in Gaza means hundreds more deaths, in addition to the needless victims of the ongoing missile exchanges between Israel and Iran.
Yesterday in Paris, tens of thousands of people showed up to protest against the state's complicity in the genocide. Here's the statue in Place de la République. There are more protests today, in Paris and across the world. Join in if you can. Stay safe out there.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 15 2025 at 14:52):I'm sorry but "the leaders have a lot less to lose" seems like a thought-terminating cliché in this context, a bit like enemies being axiomatically "cowards". I think it certainly applies to Starmer and Macron and Trump and all other western leaders meddling while not really risking anything in their own countries, but it sounds simply ridiculous in reference to Iran where the open strategy pursued by Israel is murdering political, scientific, and military leaders.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 15 2025 at 14:53):Even Netanyahu probably ends up in jail if the wars stop, he has a lot to lose! To point is not whether he has or hasn't anything to lose, it's whether he should...
John Baez (Jun 15 2025 at 15:15):Indeed I suspect Netanyahu has a lot to lose if these wars stop, which is probably one reason he's pursuing them.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 15 2025 at 16:30):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
I'm sorry but "the leaders have a lot less to lose" seems like a thought-terminating cliché in this context, a bit like enemies being axiomatically "cowards"... it sounds simply ridiculous in reference to Iran where the open strategy pursued by Israel is murdering political, scientific, and military leaders.
I suspect your reaction is a result of me mistakenly using the preposition "of" rather than "in" later in the sentence you quoted? I agree that the leaders in question have a lot to lose generally speaking (by virtue of being in power, even before considering criminal charges); I was specifically talking with regard to going to war. In the words of my wife's Iranian colleague "In the end people of Iran are going to pay, not the government".
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 15 2025 at 16:37):I'm pretty sure a lot of Iranian government officials are going to be dead (either killed by the IdF or by their own regime) if they end up losing this war
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 17 2025 at 08:34):Yep I was definitely wrong to defend the position that there would be a benefit to the Iranian regime. Thanks for calling it out @Amar Hadzihasanovic . Please feel emboldened to call out propaganda defending Israel's actions wherever you get the opportunity to.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 08:35):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
Please feel emboldened to call out propaganda defending Israel's actions wherever you get the opportunity to.
This amounts to calling out 95% of the western mainstream media ATM
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 17 2025 at 08:36):No one said it would be easy :smiling_face_with_tear:
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 08:42):In any case, this thing will all turn very ugly very soon. The Gaza situation is an appalling humanitarian crisis, but this is on a whole different level, as it really goes as close to WWIII as we can possibly go atm.
The problem is not Iran per sé, but the fact that Iran has very strong ties with both Russia and China, and both these countries will be definitely very unhappy if they lose an strong ally in the middle east. There are many possible scenarios here but the most interesting ones to play with are the ones where Iran is badly defeated (e.g. total collapse of regime followed by western-friendly/puppet government). Should this happen, all cards are on the table. If there's even a speckle of a provable hint by the United States to Israel things will become exponentially worse, if there isn't it is likely someone will work hard to fabricate one. In any case, Russia is already very overstretched and it was actually counting on Iranian drones for the Ukrainian campaign, so I wouldn't expect too much from them in the immediate. On the other end, China is a completely different game. They already declared in the past that an USA attack on Iran would prompt them to declare war on the USA, for instance. In any case, the MENA map could get redrawn by pulling countries such as UAE much closer to Russia and China than they are now (I don't know how much this is likely tbh), but most importantly, this may be the kind of situation that emboldens China enough to try something on Taiwan.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 08:43):Basically the uncertainty cone just became 4 order of magnitudes wider and any reasonable geopolitical analyst will probably agree that "I don't know what the F is going to happen from now on but I bet a beer that it will be bad, probably very very bad."
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 08:47):I can't believe I'm saying this but this is the kind of situation where the USA - and a big part of the world - would benefit from having a huge piece of shit like Kissinger shaping strategy. What scares me the most is that almost the entire chain of command in the USA atm is made by incompetents or idiots. These people can be damaging in times of peace but they turn into an authentic calamity in times like this. With maybe the exception of China so far, there's an awful stench of short-sightedness in almost all the decisions being taken by world superpowers atm...
James Deikun (Jun 17 2025 at 11:36):The fact that the US is protecting Israel from retaliation via missiles has already got to look like a good excuse to anyone with a sufficiently itchy trigger finger...
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 17 2025 at 16:20):Re strategy @Fabrizio Romano Genovese it seems to me that convincing our representatives to definitively cut ties (and cut their losses) with Israel would be a way to de-escalate the situation?
Kevin Carlson (Jun 17 2025 at 17:06):Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
They already declared in the past that an USA attack on Iran would prompt them to declare war on the USA
Did they really? That sounds more explicit than I would have expected.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 17:25):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
Re strategy Fabrizio Romano Genovese it seems to me that convincing our representatives to definitively cut ties (and cut their losses) with Israel would be a way to de-escalate the situation?
I don't know. Up to now they are making a lot of enemies worldwide but they don't seem to be caring too much. I think we have to also be careful about what 'cutting ties' means.
Case 1: Cutting diplomatic ties
First a factoid no one will ever say out loud: the real, main reason why the US (and the west in general) have kept backing Israel for a long time is twofold. The most important one is that we need a strong ally in the MENA region. One may even argue that Israel, as a state, was created with this purpose in mind (in my opinion the story of giving this and that to the holocaust survivors etc is a nice front but really not something with any meaning if you are a geopolitical realist).
The second is that esp in the US there are many people in positions of power that are very supportive of the Zionist cause for ideological and/or ethnic reasons.
As we all know it happened many times already that Israel did something that was very hard to back up/not condemn for everyone in the west, yet support was never withdrawn precisely because of the reasons above. I don't know how much pressuring MPs to push for cutting ties would work. If they're ideologically aligned with Israel there is no hope. If they are realist enough they could put Raison d'Etat before the humanitarian crisis in any case.
In any case, if the cutting off is purely diplomatic I don't know how much Israel will care. They don't seem to be giving many Fs about how the world perceives them atm to be honest with you.
Case 2: Cutting military and diplomatic ties
This is interesting. Until recently, everyone used to believe that Israel without US support couldn't do anything militarily meaningful in the MENA region. But the current situation with Iran is prompting many people to rethink the situation. I do not really know how dependent on US help Israel is regarding their campaign in Gaza. I'm tempted to say 'probably not much' but I don't have any data in regard to this. If my gut feeling is right, US help wouldn't mean much militarily, and so wouldn't cutting ties. Also, not receiving US help does not mean not being able to buy weapons on the free market, which brings us to the last case:
Case 3: Cutting ties for real: embargo and the like
This is the nuclear option. An embargo or something like that of course would be a very very VERY different thing. Israel is a small state and if they can't even buy stuff from the US/the west they're basically done. This would for sure change the situation wrt Gaza, but it could also have the unintended consequence of wiping Israel off the map (it is surrounded by states that aren't much better and that wouldn't hesitate for long to invade it should an embargo like this be enforced). This is a price no one in their sane mind in the Western centers of power wants to pay, and I consider this happening pure sci-fi currently, just to be completely clear.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 17:29):Kevin Carlson said:
Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
They already declared in the past that an USA attack on Iran would prompt them to declare war on the USA
Did they really? That sounds more explicit than I would have expected.
I'll see if I can find a reference. I remember this quite clearly, and most importantly I remember being seriously surprised by their answer as you are now. China usually is much less direct than this in their diplomatic relations.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 17:30):Jesus is really hard to google this kind of stuff in the current situation, all results are very fresh :lol:
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 17:34):In 2011, the group Green Experts of Iran reported that Beijing and Tehran had signed a deal that would give China exclusive rights to several Iranian oil and natural gas fields through 2024, including rights to build necessary infrastructure there. In return, China promised to treat any foreign attack against these regions as attacks against its own sovereign territory, and will defend them as such. China would need no prior permission from Iran's government to maintain and increase its military presence in the country, and would control the movement of Iranians in and out of these territories.[66] This agreement was the basis for PLA General Zhang Zhaozhong stating, “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War.”[67]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Iran_relations
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 17:35):Probably not strong as I remembered, but still quite strong.
John Baez (Jun 17 2025 at 17:48):Now Trump has demanded "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!" from Iran (on Truth Social, which is a joke). There's no way Iran is going to unconditionally surrender at this point in time - and the US hasn't even declared war on Iran, so is he asking them to surrender to Israel?
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jun 17 2025 at 18:49):Maybe? I stopped trying to divine Trump's words long ago. I may stand better chances with augury at this point.
John Baez (Jun 17 2025 at 21:00):Sure, he devalues his own speech by being so erratic. By now "TACO" is a widely used acronym for "Trump Always Chickens Out".
Kevin Carlson (Jun 17 2025 at 22:52):Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
Jesus is really hard to google this kind of stuff in the current situation, all results are very fresh :lol:
I've often noticed it's basically impossible to Google news that's not brand new. Looks like they've only explicitly committed to war if their particular cut-outs are attacked, but yes, that's really exceptionally strong wording. Thanks for digging it up.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 21 2025 at 16:28):There was a great protest today in the outskirts of Paris (specifically from Bobigny), marching in the direction of a biennial air show at Le Bourget. The police didn't let us get within a kilometre of the venue, of course, but we still carried with us the message that the participation of arms merchants from Israel in that event was yet another piece of evidence of France's ongoing complicity in the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran. If anything similar was happening in your city this weekend, I would love to hear about it!
John Baez (Jun 27 2025 at 13:45):I hit the "resolved" button by mistake, not as a joke... though it would have been a good joke.
Notification Bot (Jun 27 2025 at 16:43):Morgan Rogers (he/him) has marked this topic as unresolved.
Ignat Insarov (Jun 28 2025 at 19:03):@Morgan Rogers (he/him) I understand what you are saying.
You are compelled to do what you are doing on the basis of mechanistic compassion — compassion not to specific people you have seen with your eyes and heard with your ears, but to abstract populations of distant lands. What I observe is that you, firstly, have no idea about what is going on in these distant lands, secondly, have no desire to find out. What I am saying then is that you should choose whether you wish to be informed and confident, or not. If you wish to be informed and confident, then pack your backpack and hit the road. If, however, you wish only to be confident without being informed, then I say in your face you are doing a disservice to humanity, because you are no different from any other primitive ideologue. I strongly suspect by now that you have no idea what war is about.
You have given several reasons why you will not pack your backpack and hit the road. All of them laughable. You do not wish to support Israel by your tourism? You seem to me young and energetic enough to travel in Israel without spending any money whatsoever. The climate is so warm you do not even need a tent. With a tiny bit of street wisdom, you can get out of Israel with net increase of subcutaneous fat without spending a single shekel. In the worst case, as anywhere else in the world, you will find refuge and sustenance in a mosque (pro tip).
I am not telling you anything unreasonable. All I am saying is — before being confident, become informed. Until then it befits you to stay humble.
Let me address two specific points directly.
France is the second biggest exporter of arms outside the US. Many weapons and components are sold to Israel by France. The government of France has the authority to prevent those exports.
By all means, as a citizen of France (that I assume you are) influence the decisions of the government of France whichever way you will. Just avoid speaking about wars in distant lands you know nothing about as if you have direct access to ultimate truth. You are not freeing any people.
One way I can be certain that they are like me is that they need access to food, shelter and medicine, which the government of Israel is currently denying them.
This is a typical inept generalized platitude of a well fed citizen of a long since developed country. You have no idea what «they» need. As I said in my first message — you find it unbelievable that somewhere, humans might be different from you in non-trivial ways. You should gain some appreciation for differences in human condition present in our time on this planet. Freedom Flotilla, he says. Medicine, he says. Do you even hear yourself? Drop this naïve act already.
As I said in my first message, two possibly productive ways to continue this conversation would be to try to understand the feelings of certain collective identities towards one another and to formulate precisely what legal adjustments we wish to make. You dodged both of these lines of thought. All you do is emit standard ideology and approved emotion. I challenge you to instead pack your backpack and go do some field work.
I know a man who is for his whole adult life trying to mediate between Israeli and Arabs. He spends more time in a car, hotel or plane than home. I am not even sure he has a home. For his extended family he is an outcast. He cannot live in his country of origin. He contends with overwhelming sadness every day. He has been to that border of Egypt you mentioned. You should meet some people like this man. But you will not find them in the suburbs of Paris waving various flags and shouting various slogans. They have better things to do. More lonely things. More painful things.
Pack your backpack.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 28 2025 at 20:55):On some level, I understand the sentiment that you are expressing, and it is the reason why I have been more loudly outspoken about the attack on Iran—having been to the country and being in touch with multiple Iranians—than I have on Palestine, a place of which I have no first-hand experience.
On the other hand, I feel like the understanding that I have gained from direct contact, in this case, is not fundamentally different from what I could gather by following a diverse enough array of strangers with first-hand experience. This does not deny that there could be cases where there is a fundamental gap between what you can understand from outside and from inside, but it's not clear to me that this is the "rule", it feels like the claim that "people in region X have just fundamentally different minds/needs/wishes" is the strong, unintuitive claim which needs evidence.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 28 2025 at 21:01):Also, in the little contact I have had with Levantine people—this is a handful of people, so treat it as purely anecdotal—I have had two people tell me, upon learning that I was from Sarajevo, something to the effect of: "our people always really felt close to your people because of the genocide of Bosniaks". None of them of course has been to Bosnia or probably knew much about it, and as someone who actually has mixed heritage and passionately anti-ethnonationalist family & personal convictions, I could have had a lot to question, but frankly at the moment (and still) I just really appreciated the empathy
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jun 28 2025 at 21:03):So to me it seems like just a basic humane thing to follow the empathy beyond whatever nuances preclude a full understanding...
Nathan Corbyn (Jun 29 2025 at 02:58):I wasn’t going to weigh in on this but I find @Ignat Insarov’s position patronising to an extreme extent and I would like to speak plainly in response. If they, or anyone else, can introduce me to a single human being who can subsist without food, clean water, medical care when sick and safe shelter, please, do so. In the absence of such an individual, any time a person is denied one of these basic objects, I can deduce a need of theirs. In particular, there is a vast—truly vast—collection of documentary evidence collected by Palestinian people revealing a systematic denial of all of these things, daily, for years. It is not a radical position to say this is not ok and it is certainly not a radical position to say the people of Palestine need these things. “Get a backpack” is a ludicrous response. Get a backpack, walk to the Gaza strip and discover a magical land where food is optional and being shot at is safe? Get a backpack and discover a world where amputation without anaesthetic is pleasurable and risk free? Get a backpack and uncover a reality where sea water is drinkable? Cartoonishly ridiculous. I’d encourage you to get a backpack, perhaps some rope, and climb down from your position.
John Baez (Jun 29 2025 at 09:37):I was going to say something similar but much more mild, as is my wont. I think discussions of politics tend to become less productive when we turn our energy toward analyzing the psychology of our discussion partners, instead of focusing directly on the issues.
Ignat Insarov (Jun 29 2025 at 19:39):@Nathan Corbyn I do not understand too well what «patronising position» means. (This is another example of how hard it is to exchange non-technical ideas remotely between representatives of different cultures.) What is clear to me is that the ideas being expressed by @Morgan Rogers (he/him) are detached from reality. To quote from the headline, no freeing of any people is happening and no returning of any medal has any bearing on any freedom of any people.
I find it cute that you both say «ludicrous» and «outrageous» when all I am saying is «go get yourself informed». Is it ludicrous and outrageous to say that one should become informed before becoming confident?
Speaking of anæsthetic. Your priorities are not clear to me. Is it freedom or is it anæsthetic? Is it Palestine from Jordan to Mediterranean, or is it shelter and not being shot? Do you understand what «war» means? What is your theory of change? I am waiting and waiting to hear the programme for turning war into peace, but all I have been presented with so far is confidence without foundation.
All I said is that anyone who is making any confident claims about Israel and Palestine should have lived in that land for some time and seen the situation from all sides. This is a matter of one plane ticket. What is the problem? Not wealthy enough for a plane ticket? Or maybe not willing to trade your comfort for knowledge? What exactly is the problem?
I do not really understand what in my messages has motivated such a negative, emotional response. You, Nathan, have chosen some particularly vitriolic figures of speech to throw at me. It is kind of… underwhelming. I expected to hear some reasoned arguments, not an emotional rehashing of standard ideology. I at least have provided some specific suggestions on what to visit in Israel. Can you do better?
Your words about anæsthetic and shelter keep reinforcing my intuition that I am talking with well fed citizens of long since developed countries who have no idea about war. Have you heard the term «epistemic privilege»? What I am saying is that there is certain epistemic privilege that is a pre-requisite for confidence on certain topics. I am not saying that I alone have all the privilege. But I am not making any confident statements about stuff I have not experienced. My request is simple: if you do not care to pack your backpack and travel to the location of interest, avoid making any confident statements about that location.
It is important to me that certain epistemic standard be maintained when talking about war. I am certain that emotional rehashing of standard ideology, if effective at all, will only harm the situation. I do not have a programme for turning war into peace but I am certain that confidence without foundation is not the right way to get there. Is this not agreeable?
Ignat Insarov (Jun 29 2025 at 20:56):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
On some level, I understand the sentiment that you are expressing, and it is the reason why I have been more loudly outspoken about the attack on Iran—having been to the country and being in touch with multiple Iranians—than I have on Palestine, a place of which I have no first-hand experience.
On the other hand, I feel like the understanding that I have gained from direct contact, in this case, is not fundamentally different from what I could gather by following a diverse enough array of strangers with first-hand experience. This does not deny that there could be cases where there is a fundamental gap between what you can understand from outside and from inside, but it's not clear to me that this is the "rule", it feels like the claim that "people in region X have just fundamentally different minds/needs/wishes" is the strong, unintuitive claim which needs evidence.
This is a very interesting question.
I think this is a kind of knowledge that can only be acquired by experience, and cannot be shared or tested. There is no explaining sunset to the blind. Which is why I keep saying that backpacks need to get packed.
That said, let us try. One example is hospitality. If you ever found yourself a poor wanderer in Iran, or Turkey, or Oman, or even Palestine, then you have surely experienced the traditional hospitality. In Bosnia, or France, or Russia, or Vietnam, you will have your visa run out and be deported sooner than you see an interior of a house. I keep saying that a visit to Israel will cost a daring and minimally streetwise traveller nothing, but Morgan apparently cannot believe it. In his mind, what I am suggesting is «tourism».
The distinction of Israel and Palestine is much subtler than that. There is really no way for me to say anything specific, but this area is very special. I can only promise. There is a sunset like no other.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 30 2025 at 13:54):Ignat Insarov said:
You are compelled to do what you are doing on the basis of mechanistic compassion — compassion not to specific people you have seen with your eyes and heard with your ears, but to abstract populations of distant lands. What I observe is that you, firstly, have no idea about what is going on in these distant lands, secondly, have no desire to find out.
Where exactly did you "observe" this? I do not have to go to a place to find out what is going on there or to be in contact with people there. Not only do I see footage of the genocide on social media every day, I see the suffering of specific individuals -- that's a link to the Instagram account of a girl who shares recipes of meals that people in Gaza have had to subsist on during the siege because so little food is available, visibly losing weight over time. I am in direct contact with a woman in a family of three who is seven months pregnant, fearful of the conditions under which she will have to give birth, who sent a video of a bomb landing within 50m of where she has been staying yesterday. And this person has thanked me personally for taking part in protests. So much for fundamental differences.
You complain that I ignored or dodged some of your points, but I notice that you have at no point either refuted the problems that I am advocating require action (I suppose by your epistemic standards you do not have the grounds to?), nor provided any evidence that the actions being taken are ineffective, nor proposed any alternative, more effective solutions: your tourism proposal seems intended to improve me rather than the situation of the people I would be visiting. In fact, all you have done is scoff at my proposals -- hence Nathan's characterising your position as patronising. It's ironic that your reply to Nathan contains the even more patronising question "Do you understand what «war» means?"
I find it cute that you both say «ludicrous» and «outrageous» when all I am saying is «go get yourself informed». Is it ludicrous and outrageous to say that one should become informed before becoming confident?
I am informed. I won't deny that personally meeting (more) Palestinian and Israeli people would be one way to get more informed, but this is by no means the only way. What we have called out as ludicrous and outrageous are your epistemic standards for what constitutes 'being informed'.
I find it interesting that you focus so much on emotive language, as if it is somehow inappropriate that denying the need for action against genocide or deflecting from that need is met with emotion.
Your priorities are not clear to me. Is it freedom or is it anæsthetic? Is it Palestine from Jordan to Mediterranean, or is it shelter and not being shot?
I think I was quite clear when I said: "While I hope we can secure their freedom, I act in the first instance for their survival."
What is your theory of change? I am waiting and waiting to hear the programme for turning war into peace, but all I have been presented with so far is confidence without foundation.
This is what one calls 'shifting the goalposts'. You had not, before this message, requested a "programme for turning war into peace", so it seems unreasonable to me to act as if I have been withholding one, especially since I did sketch what I am aiming for here: "As citizens of [states in the global north fulfilling their responsibility to enforce international law], it in turn falls to us to use all political and social tools at our disposal to pressure our leaders and representatives to fulfil their responsibilities," where the latter include the responsibility to intervene to prevent genocide.
Your words about anæsthetic and shelter keep reinforcing my intuition that I am talking with well fed citizens of long since developed countries who have no idea about war.
I didn't mention anaesthetic specifically, but besides that, you are right, at least if "have no idea about war" means "have no direct experience of war". The implied consequence being, I suppose, that this would disqualify me from having an opinion on any war, in spite of my government's involvement? I refute that claim. I do not have to be a victim of suffering to act against the suffering of others.
I am certain that emotional rehashing of standard ideology, if effective at all, will only harm the situation.
You have gone to some lengths to question the basis for my confidence in the need for action to end Israel's genocide in Gaza. On what basis, then, is the certainty of this statement founded?
I keep saying that a visit to Israel will cost a daring and minimally streetwise traveller nothing, but Morgan apparently cannot believe it.
I would appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth.
There is really no way for me to say anything specific, but this area is very special.
Palestine is indeed very special to the millions of people that have been displaced from it by the occupying forces of Israel. Spending hours debating with you about visiting the place before encouraging people to take part in any and all actions whose goal is to enable them to return to their homes and rebuild them in peace is not helping them. Nonetheless, I am grateful to you: your attempts to question the legitimacy of protests against government complicity in this genocide has given me more opportunities to talk more about the situation there, and I hope that others who found themselves reacting emotionally to your posts will be able to channel that emotion, too, into action.
I don't pretend to be able to free Palestine on my own. A collective effort is needed, and we can only create the will for that effort by talking about it and making whatever symbolic acts of resistance might communicate to our peers that we are prepared to take a stand with them.
Ignat Insarov (Jun 30 2025 at 18:42):You should hold me to the standard you think appropriate. I try to answer to your messages as a whole rather than taking them apart into separate quotes. But if there are points you think I should address in particular, then I urge you to chase me with them. You can send me a private message with specific points that need to be answered, it will speed things up.
I think it is dangerous to take any kind of moderated account of events, such as an Instagram profile, as the basis for ethical or emotional stance of any kind. Even second hand information is, in my experience, always, without exception, biased, not to mention official news and analytics. Even honest and truthful information is always biased by omission. You can only measure the true balance of emotion and conviction by visiting the location, while staying distant in your heart and hidden in plain sight, like the khaliph Harun al-Rashid. You insist that your ethical and emotional stance is well grounded in reality. All I can do is say again that, merely in my opinion, it is not. I want you to persuade me, but you will not be able to persuade me with Instagram profiles because I know a lot more — I know, to however limited extent, how the sausage is made, and what is going on around the sausage factory.
Think about it like so. You can easily select evidence that confirms that Palestinian people are poor victims of cruel apartheid, and it will be true. But someone else can easily select evidence that confirms that Palestinian people are monsters who rejoice in slaughter of men, women, children, elderly, without discrimination, and it will also be true. None of this makes the situation any clearer. Without first hand experience, it is very hard to know the true balance of emotion and conviction.
You ask why I am certain that emotional rehashing of standard ideology will, at best, have no effect. This is a very good, hard, and expected question. All I have is the observation that extreme positions like the one you are expressing always promote conflict and degrade the conversation. Big words like «fascism», «genocide» and «freedom» only serve to pressure detailed and careful thought out of the conversation. I have looked at these words many times over the course of years and I still have no idea what they mean. Standard ideology is unhelpful exactly because it is standard. I do not see how we can hope to find a solution unless we get informed and creative in search of a solution. All you have said so far is not new to me at all, I see this rhetoric every time I look at my social media subscriptions, not only in relation to the war in Israel, but also other wars I keep an eye on. It is the same stuff every time.
I am not asking you to drop your beliefs — what I am asking for is that you show humility and appreciate your own epistemic limits. You do not have to be a victim of suffering to act against the suffering of others. I never said that you have to be a victim. What I am saying is that you are not acting against the suffering of others in any meaningful way, because you do not even know those others and their suffering. They are other, but you do not even know that. The picture you are painting for me is not representative of the situation at the location. I know this, I cannot tell you how I know this, and it is your choice to either dismiss me or question your own confidence. You can easily gain an edge over me by going somewhere close to the location of interest and taking a look. Until then, I have a tiny little bit more epistemic privilege than you do.
Do not take me to be saying that there is no indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, children and elderly going on. I also watch some Instagram accounts. I am aware of indiscriminate slaughter. I am waiting for this conversation to proceed to the next stage, where we can talk specifics. But we cannot advance this conversation until you switch off your preacher mode and accept your epistemic limits, just as I accept mine.
War is bad enough by itself. There is no need to throw around big and meaningless words like «fascism», «genocide» and «freedom». In war, bombs will be landing and much more will be lost than body weight. We cannot advance this conversation until you take off your white jacket and roll up the sleeves of your white shirt. In war, nothing is white.
Think about it like so. Israeli and Arabs have been at war for what, 80 years, more. Not all this time was active conflict, but rifles and bombs were always somewhere in the picture. They were fighting when other states were supplying weapons, but they were also fighting when other states were not supplying weapons. Do you think they were fighting all this time for medicine and clean water? Do you think the political position of the government of France has any bearing on their emotions and convictions?
A specific point I really want you to dig into is that «freedom» thing you keep mentioning. How do you imagine the freedom of Palestinian people, in legal terms? What claim rights or liberty rights do you wish to grant and to whom? How would it work?
Kevin Carlson (Jun 30 2025 at 19:07):One point that keeps confusing me in your messages here, Ignat, is your apparently boundless faith in the possibility of understanding what’s “really going on” by physically visiting Israel. Your arguments seem to point much better to an epistemology overall skeptical of the chances of an individual coming to a reliable understanding of such a multifaceted situation as this war. More concretely, many people do visit Israel with the goal of understanding the situation better; I’m not aware of a single one who’s substantially updated their pre-existing position after talking to people “on the ground”.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 06:26):I do not have boundless faith in the possibility of understanding what is really going on by physically visiting Israel. I have boundless faith in the impossibility of understanding that otherwise.
What I am talking about is standard methodology of sociological or ethnographical research. You must first go to the location. But you then also need to blend in with the people and take careful and unbiased account of what is going on. In a situation as motivating as war, some of those people are sure to take an effort to bias your account in the favour of the cause they support. They can do so even without giving you any false information. They can as well gently lead you away from the true information that goes against the cause they support. This is very easy to do over social media, but also possible to do in person.
It does not elude me that people living in Israel for their whole lives often do hold opposite positions, even fanatically. Clearly physical presence is not enough.
Nathan Corbyn (Jul 01 2025 at 06:40):The logical conclusion of your position is that only those epistemically privileged few have the right to call upon their peers, local governments and representatives to act to curtail the destruction of Gaza. Your position serves to manufacture silence and therefore consent for the continuation of the horrors faced, daily, by millions. This is an untenable position. I will not reply further, but note that insisting on continuing a pseudo-intellectual discourse questioning the validity of an important call for support is neither becoming nor justifiable in the face of the ongoing atrocities. Intellectual rigour does not require moral detachment, and to elevate skepticism above solidarity is to abdicate responsibility. Nuance should not come at the expense of justice.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 07:23):I don't think that's his position. I think that his position is that pressuring your local government will do very little when it comes to solving the reasons why the war is there in the first place. I tend to agree with this stance.
I think the conflict at the moment feels so repugnant because of a wildly, deep fighting capability asymmetry, where essentially Israel has access to incredibly effective weapons and the population of Gaza is completely incapable of a response. This is obviously true. One thing tho that I noticed when talking to many Israelis and Palestinians alike is how deep the hate between them runs. I can safely say that, based on pretty much everyone I talked with, if parts were reversed things wouldn't be much better. People of Gaza are, for sure, the victims at the moment, as they have been for years. But if roles were reversed, we'd probably have to write the same of Israelis. By this I mean that, at least according to my personal experience, there is a deep will to completely destroy the counter part on both sides of the fence, with the big difference that one part has much more developed capabilities to actually succeed.
I think the reason why this is important is that it allows us to better understand what our governments can actually do wrt this situation. They can certainly make the conflict less asymmetric, by either politically pressuring Israel or by endowing groups like Hamas with weapons. Both things are being done atm by different countries, with mixed success. This political pressuring may also intensify to the point where a cease fire is agreed upon. This would certainly be good for everyone living there, and I understand why @Morgan Rogers (he/him) is so active in this respect. But when it comes to "brokering an everlasting peace", that's where I think that @Ignat Insarov has probably a point. Whatever solution we can provide and/or pressure Israel to adopt is going to be temporary at best, because it does absolutely nothing to defuse the _will to fight_ on both sides of the war.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 07:29):I think the dissonance comes from the fact that it is perfectly possible to have a deep desire to inflict someone pain and at the same time be a victim of that someone. Indeed this is often the case. In a nutshell: Even if you talk with you local MP, this won't stop Israelis hating Palestinians, nor stop Palestinians hating Israelis. So all the reasons to fight and strive for the destruction of the counterpart remain, and this conflict will certainly re-ignite in the future.
Now, when one thinks about how to prevent this last point, that's where I agree that it is necessary to have a deep understanding of the local circumstances and culture on both sides. Which I agree, it seems to be an afterthought for many.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 07:34):I think that his position is that pressuring your local government will do very little when it comes to solving the reasons why the war is there in the first place.
Thanks! I am rejoiced to see a confirmation that my messages can be understood the way I intended them to be understood.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 07:34):Yes, on this we agree. Still I think that by pressuring your local government you can do a lot to at least momentarily stop the killing. I do not think that's a worthless endeavour.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:35):I despise any argument based on "the other side would also do it", first because it has always been used by perpetrators of atrocities and that absolutely includes the Nazis re: the Jews; second because nobody is actually forced to do harm---you can simply decide to not do anything, and if that actually exposes you to harm, then you can fight back; third because I personally find the justification of preventative violence morally abhorrent; my heroes are people who choose to not participate in evil even in the face of death or grave personal harm. This is one of the reasons that I wish there was more genuine Christianity now in the West as opposed to whatever grotesque version has become mainstream in America, since I feel we are lacking a voice extolling sacrifice and martyrdom; it's all a muscular contest of "kill first or be killed".
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 07:36):Well, it's not an argument. Nowhere I have said that the fact that "the other side would do it" justifies what Israel is doing now. I also think that preventative violence is despicable.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:37):But advocates of what Israel is doing are definitely using the argument, so it is disingenuous to bring it into the discourse as "just something to take into consideration".
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 07:38):I think one needs to do an honest analysis of the situation. When an argument is used in an intentionally misleading way one should point it out. But "I won't mention this because it's not rethorically convenient" is a good strategy for politics, not for solving problems, imo
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:43):I'm not talking about rhetorical convenience. I think there is an ideology to your "realism" and it is an ideology which is actively used to support atrocities, because this sort of "chess-like" thinking where "if I don't make this move, my adversary will definitely make this other move" is ultimately used in the service of this sort of preventative measures ignoring all sorts of second-order effects, unexpected exogenous factors, or simply the flow of time, and which, in my opinion, have been a scourge on the world
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:45):I also believe that Israel's strategy and ideology is a particular outlier in this sense, it is quite unique in its military doctrine based entirely on attack and intervention. I think this is not actually shared by its adversaries.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:46):So I think it's not just an asymmetry in capabilities, it is also an asymmetry in ideology which makes Israel particularly nefarious.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:52):(Sorry if this came out too emotional/polemical; I am friends with Fabrizio and I think he is an open-minded person---I do not mean this as a personal attack!)
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 07:53):Allow me to interject to clarify a small point.
Still I think that by pressuring your local government you can do a lot to at least momentarily stop the killing. I do not think that's a worthless endeavour.
You are saying this as if I have a different opinion. However, I said previously:
By all means, as a citizen of France (that I assume you are) influence the decisions of the government of France whichever way you will.
I find that most governments in the world right now will not let a person on the street influence them in any meaningful way. How is that pension reform law protest doing? And that is France, famous for its revolutionary spirit.
But if you think you can influence your local government, I shall honour your trying to do so. (Warning to the reader: check your local situation, trying to influence your local government can get you jailed or killed.)
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 07:53):I should also say that I also have no problems with Ignat's positions, it seems to me like he just has a strict "existentialist" personal ethos and that he is encouraging others to embrace that same ethos, not trying to stifle protest or anything like that.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 07:54):Thanks!
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 08:22):I agree that realism is often used as you say and it's terrible btw. It's why I referred to Kissinger as a piece of shit multiple times. Point is that moral infeasibility is a constraint that you can definitely incorporate in rational/realist thinking. It's just that many don't. Game theory is a tool after all, it depends on the user.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 01 2025 at 08:23):The weird thing about Israel is that its ideology/strategy looks really old fashioned. It's literally a colonial state in the classical sense. If they were doing this in 1750 no one would have blinked. Today...
Damiano Mazza (Jul 01 2025 at 11:07):I've been following the recent conversation on this thread with a mixture of amusement, disbelief and frustration, kind of like a surrealist script. Let me make a summary of my understanding of it, in which I will resort to a simplifying metaphor:
Morgan: A friend of mine has X-itis, she needs Z-lex for treatment.
Ignat: How do you know?
Morgan: She told me her doctor told her.
Ignat: That is very indirect knowledge. The doctor may be wrong. Or she might have misunderstood the doctor. Or you might have misunderstood her.
Morgan: But she consulted another doctor and he says the same thing.
Ignat: Doesn't matter. Still indirect. The only way to know is to get your own MD, do a diagnosis yourself and prescribe the treatment.
Morgan: Are you saying that I should drop my current job and start studying medicine?
Ignat: You are young and energetic, you can do it! Get an MD.
Nathan: Your comments are quite patronizing.
Ignat: How patronizing of you to say that I am patronizing. You can't explain sunset to the blind. I am not a physician, but I can promise you that if you get an MD, you'll see a sunset like no other!
Morgan: Look, her symptoms clearly match X-itis. I don't know what else to tell you.
Ignat: The picture you are painting for me is not representative of someone in your friend's situation. I know this, I cannot tell you how I know this, and it is your choice to either dismiss me or question your own confidence. Get an MD. Until then, I have a tiny little bit more epistemic privilege than you do.
Nathan: WTF?
Fabrizio: I think that Ignat is saying that he believes Z-lex is not very effective for X-itis.
Ignat: Thank you. That is what I meant.
Amar: Yeah, Ignat is just very "existentialist".
Is this metaphorical summary correct? :wink:
(Disclaimer: this is just meant to be a joke. I do not mean to be rude to the people who participated in the conversation or to minimize the importance of the matters being discussed).
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 11:27):@Damiano Mazza What is Z-lex in this case, and has it passed any clinical trials?
Damiano Mazza (Jul 01 2025 at 11:28):Plenty. But it might not be effective in this specific case. If you want to know for sure, study medicine! :wink:
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 11:54):This is funny, but I think that one can vary the scenario very slightly and make it not absurd, for example:
Morgan: My friend has been prescribed Z-lex for her X-itis.
Ignat: Has she spoken to anyone who has been prescribed the same treatment?
Morgan: No, but she has a very good doctor and there is plenty of evidence that it is effective.
Ignat: Some people feel very strongly that Z-lex is extremely addictive, has bad side effects and that other treatments worked better for them. She should go and talk to some people with X-itis. Personally I prefer tinkering with different drugs I buy on the dark web and see which one works best for me.
Morgan: That seems like very risky behaviour. You can get arrested for buying unprescribed drugs.
Ignat: Actually it is quite easy. You just have to be a bit careful. It is better than being stuck with an ineffective, addictive drug like the ones you can get from the official health service.
Morgan: Our national health service is excellent and for most people the drugs work. It is ridiculous to expect that people should buy them from the dark web. If you insisted that everyone does that, then most people would just not end up getting any drugs.
Ignat: People can do whatever they want. I am just saying that you and your friend can get better, more effective treatment in this way.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 11:56):I think this is not an absurd/unreasonable conversation. Ignat's advice is not prescriptive.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 12:08):The part about tinkering with different drugs from dark web is still rather unflattering…
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 12:12):You can think of it as being safe drugs that are restricted from public access for ideological reasons, e.g. gender-affirming care.
Damiano Mazza (Jul 01 2025 at 12:18):The difference between your summary and mine, @Amar Hadzihasanovic, is that I cut-and-paste actual quotes from @Ignat Insarov, with only minor modifications. You had to substantially change his discourse to make it fit the dialogue.
The point is: I think that Ignat's position is perfectly legitimate and, to an extent, even reasonable. I have no evidence that protesting in France will help people in Palestine, I only believe it will, or, better, I hope that it will, based on how protest movements have helped for other causes. But he came at it from such a lopsided angle that some of us (me, at least) found it difficult to follow. That's what produced the effect of absurdity for me. Now that I know what he meant, I no longer find it absurd. (Although I still think that relying on professional journalists, reporters, historians, etc. or even just random people with local knowledge is a better way of learning about the war in Gaza than personally visiting Israel).
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 01 2025 at 12:28):Yes, fair enough—I think Ignat's style of writing is off-putting to some in a way that distracts from the actual statements. I do think that the feeling of being "patronising" is stylistic more than substantial.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:01):Metaphors may be entertaining, but is it not a little bit too self-assured to think that returning a medal, sailing on a yacht or even marching with a big crowd somewhere in France is exactly the right medicine for the illness of Israel or Palestine, when no one present has even examined the patient?
Nathaniel Virgo (Jul 01 2025 at 14:23):Too self-assured for what exactly? What's the alternative? Will doing nothing help more somehow?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:31):Asking a question like this is a good first step.
Nathaniel Virgo (Jul 01 2025 at 14:31):A first step towards what?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:32):I am personally affected by certain current events of the scale similar to the war in Israel, so I have spent a great deal of time pondering this question. What can I do? How can I change the situation, ideally without giving up my own life?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:36):Let us put this in perspective. We have a bunch of mathematicians here, many world class. But none of them would consider giving up their own life for any particular cause they might currently choose to stand for. What can I suggest an army like this do? Nothing. Realistically, people in this chat have no way to stop any war currently going on in the world. A reality check. Nothing.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:37):The best we can do is set up a conversation that increases understanding. Do research. This is what we are good at here. So I said, in my first or second message here: let us do research, get some kind of a model going, put together a legislative or judicial programme. This is something we can realistically accomplish. Something that has a chance to be effective.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:38):Barring that, for me the realistic second step is to volunteer, go to the front line and die.
Nathaniel Virgo (Jul 01 2025 at 14:49):I'm not sure I rate the ability of a bunch of mathematicians to put together a legislative or judicial programme any higher than I rate their ability to stop a war. But I don't rate either of them at exactly zero either, not when done collectively. There's no reason not to try both.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 14:56):How do we stop the war without first putting together some kind of a model or programme? By waving some particular flags? I asked Morgan for a theory of change — he answered that I am shifting the goalposts.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 15:02):To me, the thought that you can stop any current war by waving flags and sailing on a yacht is what is ludicrous and outrageous in this conversation. It is so detached form reality it is beyond words. By waving flags, you can only position yourself on one particular side. And without a clever strategy, taking any side will only fan the flames of war. If you wave a flag, you better be ready to take a rifle and go to the front line. Because, by waving that flag, you inspire others to do so.
Nathaniel Virgo (Jul 01 2025 at 15:14):I wouldn't dream of waving any flag, except for maybe pride ones, and that's partly for the reason you say. If I protest, I do it without a flag. But the people who wave that flag in my country (UK) are, to my understanding, mostly trying to stop their own government from engaging in arms sales that perpetuate the war. Protesting is unlikely to end arms sales but it absolutely could reduce them, and reducing arms sales is unlikely to stop the war but it absolutely could save lives. I don't think it's nothing.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 15:33):And this is why I urged Morgan, who seems to be inclined to wave a flag, to pack a backpack go to the location. I guess, when you lived a life of peace, it is hard to understand what waving a flag means for the people who kill and die for that flag. And how can I explain this?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 15:34):Put down that flag, @Morgan Rogers (he/him). You have no idea what it stands for. Put it down and protest all you want without any flag. Lest you be confused with a warmonger and a coward.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 15:36):Actually, I have no evidence to think you were waving any flags. It is only that the first message in this conversation has some flag picture attached. Not your fault.
James Deikun (Jul 01 2025 at 15:37):Going to the front line and killing or dying is the one thing that can by definition never stop a war, rather a war only stops when, for whatever reason, people stop doing that. It can eventually lead the ongoing war toward some kind of natural endpoint but, again by definition, only indirectly, by convincing people of the futility of further action in the same vein. In the extreme case this means running out of willing killers or prospective victims, but this is the worst end for a war. Even WWII was ended ultimately by changing minds--by one side surrendering and the other side accepting the surrender--rather than by proceeding to this ultimate and "natural" conclusion. I don't mean by this to disparage the contribution of soldiers to ending WWII or any other war, it may well have been impossible to bring WWII to any end without breaking the will of the Axis by putting a price on their actions, but fighting alone is never the best way to end any war, and fighting according to a strategy that hasn't led to an end of war for 80 years is just a pointless waste of life.
Furthermore, mathematicians are not much more ethnographers or sociologists or journalists than they are soldiers. Mathematicians are not the ones who should be confronting reality directly with their faces, they should leave this to experts who can convert this sense data into actual knowledge, which is harder in a war zone than almost anywhere else. Mathematicians should use whatever prestige they may have from their profession to do what otherwise any ordinary person in their position should do.
James Deikun (Jul 01 2025 at 15:41):I agree though, that waving Palestinian flags, or going further and shouting "death to the IDF", like some people have done, is needlessly inflammatory and in the long run only prolongs war even further. It may have a short term benefit, but there are better ways to get that benefit.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 15:44):Going to the front line and killing or dying is the one thing that can by definition never stop a war, rather a war only stops when, for whatever reason, people stop doing that.
Hard to object to this!
What if, in some situations, some people would rather kill or die than accept peace? In the conflict between Jews and Arabs, either side could have given up long ago, and the problem would have been solved. Why do you think this did not happen?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 16:05):Nathaniel Virgo said:
Protesting is unlikely to end arms sales but it absolutely could reduce them, and reducing arms sales is unlikely to stop the war but it absolutely could save lives. I don't think it's nothing.
Do you have any specific information about what arms sales lead to what outcomes? Can you give me any details?
If you have a good idea of how to direct the flow of arms, and have the means to influence it, this is great news. As for me, in some cases relevant to me I cannot say for sure that increasing arms sales would not lead to better outcomes.
For a historic example:
On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.
— Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
If you mean Israel, I do not see how you can starve the Israeli army of weapons to the point they retreat from Gaza and open the borders. They will sooner fight with their infantry shovels. And Israel is so technologically superiour they can make their own laser weapons. Surely they can make enough rifles.
James Deikun (Jul 01 2025 at 16:06):Part of it is certainly that the Palestinians lack a social framework for the process of giving up. They are held to a standard of collective responsibility for the killings of Israelis, yet there has never been an ability for them to stop these killings themselves, as the paramilitaries funded by other nations hold more power than any civil authority in the Palestinian territories. This is of course exacerbated by certain cultural features that make it easier for these paramilitaries to recruit soldiers than in many other places, but it is a common feature of occupied territories that are poorly administered by the occupier and also happened in places like Vichy France.
James Deikun (Jul 01 2025 at 16:08):(They are also not very willing to give up on killing Israelis, but that willingness will never develop if there is no visible path for that willingness to become an advantage.)
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 16:10):A curious theory, is it your own or maybe you have a reference to a more detailed source?
James Deikun said:
This is of course exacerbated by certain cultural features that make it easier for these paramilitaries to recruit soldiers than in many other places, but it is a common feature of occupied territories that are poorly administered by the occupier and also happened in places like Vichy France.
Can you tell me anything specific about these cultural features?
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 01 2025 at 16:11):I have a lot to respond to.
Ignat Insarov said:
I think it is dangerous to take any kind of moderated account of events, such as an Instagram profile, as the basis for ethical or emotional stance of any kind. Even second hand information is, in my experience, always, without exception, biased ... You can only measure the true balance of emotion and conviction by visiting the location, while staying distant in your heart and hidden in plain sight, like the khaliph Harun al-Rashid. You insist that your ethical and emotional stance is well grounded in reality. All I can do is say again that, merely in my opinion, it is not. I want you to persuade me, but you will not be able to persuade me with Instagram profiles because I know a lot more — I know, to however limited extent, how the sausage is made, and what is going on around the sausage factory.
By this rationale, even if I did visit the occupied Palestinian territories and documented all of my experiences on social media, I still could not persuade you, because it would merely be more second-hand information to you. You said early on that you had not visited Israel yourself, and yet you claim to know better than me "what is going on around the sausage factory" -- a grotesque choice of phrasing in a discussion about people being murdered en masse, by the way. So what is the basis of this claimed knowledge, "however limited"? And more importantly, what is its content?
Think about it like so. You can easily select evidence that confirms that Palestinian people are poor victims of cruel apartheid, and it will be true. But someone else can easily select evidence that confirms that Palestinian people are monsters who rejoice in slaughter of men, women, children, elderly, without discrimination, and it will also be true. None of this makes the situation any clearer.
You spoke of the evidence I provided as "dangerous", but this false equivalence is the actually dangerous claim. It supposes that there is equally compelling evidence on both sides while providing none. If there were compelling evidence of the latter narrative, that supported Israeli propaganda, Israel would be spreading it. That said: suppose that even one Palestinian were to fit the portrait you paint. Would they then deserve to die? Would that justify the starving of children? The destruction of their homes, schools and hospitals? The answer, to me, is a resounding no. It's true that imagined falsehoods do not make the situation clearer, but evidence does. Baselessly proposing that Israel's justifications of genocide have merit only serves their cause.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 01 2025 at 16:11):All I have is the observation that extreme positions like the one you are expressing always promote conflict and degrade the conversation. ... Standard ideology is unhelpful exactly because it is standard.
You claim here that my position is "extreme", and then say my ideology is "standard". This seems like a contradiction. Neither claim regarding my position holds any inherent weight as to its validity.
I am not asking you to drop your beliefs — what I am asking for is that you show humility and appreciate your own epistemic limits. ... What I am saying is that you are not acting against the suffering of others in any meaningful way, because you do not even know those others and their suffering. They are other, but you do not even know that.
Treating a group of people as an "other", as fundamentally different in some way, is the very basis of the violence that Palestinians are suffering. In broad strokes it is the basis for all forms of oppression, whether racial, national, gendered, sexuality-based... If you claim that there is such a difference, it is up to you to provide evidence for it, and to justify how the difference should affect a response to their plight. So far, the only example of difference you have offered, that of differences in cultures of hospitality, provides no such basis.
The picture you are painting for me is not representative of the situation at the location. I know this, I cannot tell you how I know this, and it is your choice to either dismiss me or question your own confidence.
Considering that much of this discussion has been spent with you questioning my epistemic standards, saying that you cannot provide the source of your own knowledge, let alone evidence of it, is blatantly hypocritical and (more importantly) carries no weight. So I will dismiss you.
I am aware of indiscriminate slaughter. I am waiting for this conversation to proceed to the next stage, where we can talk specifics. But we cannot advance this conversation until you switch off your preacher mode and accept your epistemic limits, just as I accept mine.
I take issue with being characterised as a "preacher". I have made an effort to reply to specific things you have said. If you acknowledge the problem against which I want to encourage people to act, I too would like to "proceed to the next stage"...
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 01 2025 at 16:12):War is bad enough by itself. There is no need to throw around big and meaningless words like «fascism», «genocide» and «freedom». In war, bombs will be landing and much more will be lost than body weight. We cannot advance this conversation until you take off your white jacket and roll up the sleeves of your white shirt. In war, nothing is white.
You are the first to mention fascism in this discussion. While a relevant descriptor of several of the actors in the conflict, I would rather focus on the other two words you highlighted, which are far from meaningless. I insist on using the term genocide because it is more descriptive and more precise than "war". We live in a world where certain circumstances can still be used to justify war (at least in a legal sense, to say nothing of a moral one). Israel's stated reason for attacking Iran last month was not one that stood up to those standards of justification, but those standards exist. Genocide, on the other hand, is much more definitively wrong in all cases. "War", unqualified, leaves open questions of responsibility and proportionality, and tends to suggest that both involved parties are voluntarily engaging in the conflict. "Genocide" makes clear that one side is a victim of the violence of the other, not because of their actions (although Israeli ministers still speak of the threat of Hamas when ordering their attacks) but because of their identity. As for "freedom", I agree that this word means many things but it certainly includes a solid foundation of having access to the basics of food, shelter, education and medical care that any person needs to have time and energy to invest in anything else.
Think about it like so. Israeli and Arabs have been at war for what, 80 years, more. Not all this time was active conflict, but rifles and bombs were always somewhere in the picture. They were fighting when other states were supplying weapons, but they were also fighting when other states were not supplying weapons.
The Palestine war, experienced by the residents as the nakba, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced, was in 1948-49. This is the war during which the state of Israel was created. That's 77 years ago. Before that, following WWI, Palestine was under British colonial rule. Since then, Israel has waged further war to claim more of what remained of Palestine, displacing hundreds of thousands again, notably in the Six Days War of 1967. There was violent resistance, of course, but then an invasion is one of the remaining justifications of way even today. There was also an increase in 'terrorism' after the war, once that resistance was defeated. If you're going to make an appeal to history, at least look up the timeline...
Do you think they were fighting all this time for medicine and clean water?
I do not think they were fighting for medicine and clean water, althoug once Israel was done confiscating land, they also went to the trouble of making sure there were few reliable clean water sources for Palestinians. This does not have much bearing on the fact that Israel is currently holding Gaza under siege, so that Palestinians do not have food or clean water beyond what Israel and the US are forcing them to essentially pass through shooting ranges to collect.
Do you think the political position of the government of France has any bearing on their emotions and convictions?
If France took a stance, beyond lip service, against Israel, I do believe this would create greater possibility of other countries doing so. I also think that people in Israel and Palestine are affected by the actions of those in other countries: social media isn't one-directional. If such influence were impossible, there would be no need for Israel to have spent so many decades funding propaganda organisations in western countries designed to maintain a positive public opinion of Israel. I can say with even greater confidence that if France and other countries do not substantively change their political positions then Israel will be allowed to continue their genocide with complete impunity.
A specific point I really want you to dig into is that «freedom» thing you keep mentioning. How do you imagine the freedom of Palestinian people, in legal terms? What claim rights or liberty rights do you wish to grant and to whom? How would it work?
A removal of the apartheid apparatus that enforces a class divide between Palestinians and Israelis, including unrestricted rights to own land and live on it without military interference throughout the (eventually formerly) occupied territory. Self-governance, including control over their judicial system. The release of Palestinian prisoners (many of whom are children!). Access to clean water, resources to rebuild the housing and infrastructure Israel has destroyed. Sufficiently robust international relations to enable them to travel internationally if they so wish, including unsupervised agency over their coastline. I won't go so far as to draw borders or talk about a "two-state solution", because I don't know what level of intervention will need to take place before any of these pieces of freedom are reached, but there is at least precedent that some level of peace can be achieved and that Israel can withdraw voluntarily from some of the territory it occupies.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 01 2025 at 16:12):Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
I don't think that's his position. I think that his position is that pressuring your local government will do very little when it comes to solving the reasons why the war is there in the first place. I tend to agree with this stance.
[...] I think the reason why this is important is that it allows us to better understand what our governments can actually do wrt this situation. They can certainly make the conflict less asymmetric, by either politically pressuring Israel or by endowing groups like Hamas with weapons. Both things are being done atm by different countries, with mixed success. This political pressuring may also intensify to the point where a cease fire is agreed upon. This would certainly be good for everyone living there, and I understand why Morgan Rogers (he/him) is so active in this respect.
That doesn't sound like "very little" to me..! I feel that Amar addressed the rest of what you said.
But when it comes to "brokering an everlasting peace" [...]
When you put quote marks around something it implies that someone said it, or at least something like it. Freedom is a constant struggle (to quote Angela Y. Davies quoting a US freedom song). Of course we should not expect any agreement to last forever. That doesn't make seeking an end to the genocide less worthwhile.
Even if you talk with you local MP, this won't stop Israelis hating Palestinians, nor stop Palestinians hating Israelis.
To the extent that this hatred exists (and given that a number of Israelis are speaking out against the genocide internationally, I do not think it is reasonable to treat hatred as intrinsic to their identity, however much colonialism is) surely the end of the oppression is a necessary pre-condition for it to be resolved?
Ignat Insarov said:
By all means, as a citizen of France (that I assume you are) influence the decisions of the government of France whichever way you will.
I find that most governments in the world right now will not let a person on the street influence them in any meaningful way. How is that pension reform law protest doing? And that is France, famous for its revolutionary spirit.
But if you think you can influence your local government, I shall honour your trying to do so.
Even if you merely pay taxes in a country, in my opinion it's reasonable that you should have a say in how those taxes are spent. Since the democratic process doesn't give mere taxpayers that right, protest is sometimes the only way to express yourself. It's true that doesn't mean you will be heard, but if you don't speak out you definitely won't be.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 01 2025 at 16:12):Thanks Damiano for your very funny metaphor. Re @Amar Hadzihasanovic 's response... what exactly is the "alternative treatment" that your version alludes to? Ignat had not proposed any alternatives up to that point, as far as I can see. Also,
Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
I think Ignat's style of writing is off-putting to some in a way that distracts from the actual statements. I do think that the feeling of being "patronising" is stylistic more than substantial.
I think it's fair to describe speech such as "You should gain some appreciation for differences in human condition present in our time on this planet. Freedom Flotilla, he says. Medicine, he says. Do you even hear yourself? Drop this naïve act already," as substantially patronizing.
Ignat Insarov said:
Let us put this in perspective. We have a bunch of mathematicians here, many world class. But none of them would consider giving up their own life for any particular cause they might currently choose to stand for. What can I suggest an army like this do? Nothing. Realistically, people in this chat have no way to stop any war currently going on in the world. A reality check. Nothing.
Are you now claiming that an action can only hope to have meaningful impact if it comes at the risk or the expense of one's life? That the scales of war can only tipped by corpses? How can you expect any war to end if you truly believe that? I do not wish to be part of an army. I want to be part of a movement.
To me, the thought that you can stop any current war by waving flags and sailing on a yacht is what is ludicrous and outrageous in this conversation. It is so detached form reality it is beyond words.
The crew of the Madleen did not set sail expecting to end the war. They hoped, in the best case, to bring a small amount of relief to Gaza. In the worst case, they were prepared to die to draw further attention to Gaza's war crimes, which was not unlikely: the boat for the original voyage was bombed by Israel. They would have met your epistemic standards but they were denied entry. I resent you belittling their bravery. They succeeded in drawing some media attention, but more significantly in growing the movement of support for Palestine internationally by highlighting the continued inaction of heads of state.
By waving flags, you can only position yourself on one particular side. And without a clever strategy, taking any side will only fan the flames of war. If you wave a flag, you better be ready to take a rifle and go to the front line. Because, by waving that flag, you inspire others to do so.
Waving a flag is an act of resistance. You are not the only one to be upset by it. Across the world we have seen violent reactions to the Palestinian flag, yet a flag is not inherently a weapon. "By waving that flag, you inspire others to do so." That sounds like a beautiful thing to me.
Put down that flag, @Morgan Rogers (he/him). You have no idea what it stands for. Put it down and protest all you want without any flag. Lest you be confused with a warmonger and a coward.
I do often feel like a coward. Participating in protests under consistent threat of police violence, signing petitions, contacting people, advocacy... These are things I am brave enough to do, and little more. Yet these small acts are still more than the majority of people make the time to do, and to the few I manage to reach they make a difference.
That admission aside, I have had quite enough of you accusing me of ignorance.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 01 2025 at 16:14):[Apologies for spamming, some of the early stuff was quite important to address, and much discussion happened while I was writing my messages..!]
Nathaniel Virgo (Jul 01 2025 at 17:28):Ignat Insarov said:
Nathaniel Virgo said:
Protesting is unlikely to end arms sales but it absolutely could reduce them, and reducing arms sales is unlikely to stop the war but it absolutely could save lives. I don't think it's nothing.
Do you have any specific information about what arms sales lead to what outcomes? Can you give me any details?
If you have a good idea of how to direct the flow of arms, and have the means to influence it, this is great news. As for me, in some cases relevant to me I cannot say for sure that increasing arms sales would not lead to better outcomes.
I most likely have no more information than you, although it might come from sources with different biases.
But the decision here is to act (for example by attending a protest) or not to act. Either choice has an effect, however small. Doing nothing is a choice not to act when one could have acted.
Is acting the right choice in this case? It's impossible to know, and we can play Achilles and the tortoise games all we like, questioning our ability to know anything at all. But this is no different from any decision we ever make in our lives. We just have to make the best decision we can, given the knowledge we have at the time.
And, given the knowledge available to me right now, I find it very compelling that stopping or reducing arms sales to Israel would at the very least reduce some of the immediate ongoing harm.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 17:58):Nathaniel Virgo said:
And, given the knowledge available to me right now, I find it very compelling that stopping or reducing arms sales to Israel would at the very least reduce some of the immediate ongoing harm.
What is this knowledge? Can you share it with me?
Nathaniel Virgo (Jul 01 2025 at 18:27):Nothing more than what Morgan already said.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 01 2025 at 20:42):@Morgan Rogers (he/him)
It warrants respect that you keep answering. I begin to worry about you. Maybe you should get some rest, a day or two off screen. I know from personal experience that talking to strangers on the Internet can be devastating to one's spiritual well-being.
Let me clarify some things.
I said that I have never been to Israel, and I also said that it is unwise to disclose your travel history. Draw your own conclusions.
You say that I have painted a portrait of a Palestinian. But I have painted two: a victim and a monster. Do not try to classify me like this. To me, a random Palestinian is a respected friend.
There have been revolts in Palestine in 1920, 1929 and 1936 that were, as far as I can tell, motivated by and targeted at Jewish immigrants. We can construe this as the beginning of the war lasting more than 100 years. Or we can agree that the war is only going on for 77 years. Whichever you prefer.
There is nothing contradictory about your position being extreme and your ideology being standard. If anything, extremes are easier to standardize than a careful, nuanced position. However, I was wrong to see you as a preacher. You are not a mere preacher, you are a fanatic.
You misunderstand me about the flag thing. I am not upset by your waving the flag of Palestine, specifically. Do not try to classify me like this. But wait, have you just said that you support armed struggle of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation? Does that sound like a beautiful thing to you?
You also misunderstand me about death. Death is not an outcome or a requirement for change. Death is the way of a warrior, the measure of the highest commitment. A bunch of highly committed mathematicians is a better army than a bunch of moderately committed mathematicians.
Now, back to the big picture.
The only thing I am trying to reach you with, all this time, is the idea that there are other people than you. You keep asking for evidence, but evidence is all before your eyes. On most sides of this planet, people realize this. Which itself makes them other than you. Another example: What you call «freedom» I call «wealth». You define freedom as consumption. It will be hard for you to understand me, or a random Palestinian, because we do not define freedom that way. Palestinians are other than you and even I am other than you.
There is nothing wrong about saying that some people are other than others. Rather, it is a necessary condition for successful cross-cultural communication. There is nothing about being other that precludes peaceful coexistence. If anything, wars tend to burn brighter between less other opponents.
It is good to see a stab at the question of a political programme. I am not sure how realistic it is but we can work on that.
What you call «apartheid apparatus» some would call «vital security measures». As far as I can tell, these security measures are not wholly unjustified. At the same time, there is some evidence that the divide you describe as conditional on the «apartheid apparatus» exists not at all because of any «apparatus». It seems to exist all by itself. If you pack your backpack and visit Nazareth, you will see what I mean. As a second best measure, read about it, and tell me what you think. It may turn out that Jews and Arabs are other than one another.
I have an idea. What if I state my agreement with you on something? Maybe it will help deescalate our conflict…
I think the best course of action for Israel right now would be to cover the whole of the Gaza Strip with a network of pipes carrying sweet (as opposed to salty), clean water, and open as many schools as can fit, all paid for by Tel Aviv's wealthy diamond cutters. They can afford it. I really do not understand why Israeli cannot think to show some good will.
See? I am not your enemy.
Chris Grossack (she/they) (Jul 02 2025 at 05:08):I think this conversation hasn't been particularly productive for the last few days. Let's leave it be.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 02 2025 at 08:11):This is not an idle topic for me. I am trying my best to make it productive.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 02 2025 at 08:14):I don’t really see why anything here calls for a moderator intervention. It’s quite plausible that the conversation hasn’t been productive but I don’t see it as the moderators’ job to ensure productivity, as opposed to civility, which has held up here much better than I was expecting.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 02 2025 at 08:33):@Ignat Insarov While I don't mind it, I think that your style may be a bit disconcerting to mathematicians since we are used, in our writing, to being quite explicit on what the "framework" of what we are saying is. I agree with you that some in this conversation are implicitly adopting a somewhat "standard" framework---which is how ideology works, it's what doesn't feel like it needs explanation---and so your questioning of it seems to them like it is besides the question, a bit like going to a numerical analysis talk and flooding the Q&A with questions about what fragment of ZFC is needed for the proofs.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 02 2025 at 08:34):Perhaps one way of mitigating this effect would be to be more explicit about your own "reference points" so that others at least can see what "framework" you are coming from and it doesn't feel like questioning about "things that need no explanation".
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 02 2025 at 08:35):Like your last message is obviously influenced by René Girard and mimetic theory, perhaps it would be useful for you to point others to your influences?
Damiano Mazza (Jul 02 2025 at 08:47):Kevin Carlson said:
I don’t really see why anything here calls for a moderator intervention.
I didn't know @Chris Grossack (she/they) was a moderator. I thought they were just expressing their opinion, which I share. Personally, I am not going to pay much attention to the discussion at the moment because it seems to have turned into an endless beating of a dead horse, but I do not see any reason for moderator intervention.
Damiano Mazza (Jul 02 2025 at 08:51):(Also, sorry for the off-topic and probably this is obvious to everyone but I can't locate this information: where can I find the list of current moderators?).
John Baez (Jul 02 2025 at 08:55):I don't know! Here you can find the information that there are 7 moderators, but that's not an answer to your question.
Damiano Mazza (Jul 02 2025 at 09:01):@Ignat Insarov I agree with @Amar Hadzihasanovic. Another example: at some point you made a reference to the "theory of change" through a link to a post by Aaron Swarz. That was interesting for me because I had never heard of it. However, it wasn't clear whether you were suggesting to apply the "theory of change" to the topic of this thread (are you?), because the reference was obscured by the way you worded it.
Ralph Sarkis (Jul 02 2025 at 09:10):Damiano Mazza said:
(Also, sorry for the off-topic and probably this is obvious to everyone but I can't locate this information: where can I find the list of current moderators?).
The moderators are all the people with a :star: in this topic and Morgan (who probably forgot to star himself).
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 02 2025 at 09:15):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
Re Amar Hadzihasanovic 's response... what exactly is the "alternative treatment" that your version alludes to? Ignat had not proposed any alternatives up to that point, as far as I can see.
The alternative is procedural, it's about the way to make a decision, not about the decision itself. Ignat's position is like: “The national health system only gives 'one-size-fits-all' options through prescription. But different treatments work better for some people and worse for others, so I always recommend tinkering with different options and see what works best for you first.” It may be that after all the tinkering, you figure out that the option offered through prescription is the best for you after all. Likewise it seems to me that Ignat's suggestions are perfectly compatible with you returning from your trip with the exact same position as you have now, just informed from lived experience.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 02 2025 at 09:23):I also believe that the sentence that you quoted is certainly mocking, but I think there is a difference between mocking and patronising. Patronising is treating someone as a child, as someone who simply cannot get it on their own. It seems to me Ignat's approaching you as someone who, from his point of view, can do better than what they are doing now. It is grating and it is perfectly within your right to say “screw you, I do not accept being lectured by you”. But I think you are being treated as an equal, if there is disrespect it is of a moral nature.
Joe Moeller (Jul 02 2025 at 16:12):You can always tag @/moderators without the slash if you need to summon one but aren’t sure who they are.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 03 2025 at 17:03):Damiano Mazza said:
(Also, sorry for the off-topic and probably this is obvious to everyone but I can't locate this information: where can I find the list of current moderators?).
I also don’t know about a live list but you can see the moderator status on an individual’s profile.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 04 2025 at 11:29):@Kevin Carlson moderators alors have a responsibility to keep discussions on topic, which in this case was intended to be actions that people have been taking, are taking or can take to oppose the genocide in Gaza.
@Ignat Insarov thanks for suggesting that I take some time away from this discussion. In spite of my absence it has been on my mind constantly.
My belief is that there is nothing that can justify starving children, targeting medics, killing journalists or destroying schools. These are things that the state if Israel has done and are continuing to do in Gaza. No one has contested this.
You may be right that my limited actions can have little impact on the fact that these things are happening. However, I can hope to participate in ending the complicity of the institutions within my sphere of influence. I can refuse to engage with institutions while they are complicit. I can, at a bare minimum, refuse to stay silent about it. In some cases one might think it better to dismantle the institutions that are failing their responsibilities, and there are current cases where I agree. Yet to effect such (more radical) change would require more people's involvement, and I have never met anyone who was brave enough to work towards dismantling institutions who didn't previously participate in protests.
I am sorry that even sanctions on a country may not be enough to end a war. I am sorry that you do not feel safe enough where you are to say whether you have travelled outside of your country in public. I understand that my privilege is protecting me from some aspects of reality as you experience it. I accept that, because I am limiting myself to actions I feel I can take without sacrificing my own freedom or privileges, I may seem naive to you. However, that same privilege is obstructing millions of people, including many people here, from even asking themselves the question "What could I be doing?" and that is an essential element of the tragedy.
You demand of me a detailed plan of how my actions will effect change in Palestine. I am not a leader, I am not an organiser of the protests I participate in. I look to those with greater experience in activism, who have a track record of successfully campaigning for change, for instruction as to what I can do. In other words, I follow expert advice. I encourage anyone who is still reading this to do the same.
Finally, you asked me what I meant by "freedom", seemingly with the sole intent of telling me that I couldn't possibly have given an answer that you would have accepted. Ultimately it doesn't matter whether I have a crisp definition that you can debate the parameters of or a vaguely defined ideal: the freedom of Palestine is an aspiration, a summary of the cause. Should it ever come to pass, I do not expect or even wish to be invited to adjudicate it, to impose my own notion of freedom.
Free Palestine. :flag_palestinian_territories:
Kevin Carlson (Jul 04 2025 at 17:37):I’m curious about these experts you’re deferring to. If I can say so, my immediate reaction was that you’re surrendering your own…perhaps not exactly agency, but roughly that…overeagerly. If the US is enough of a parallel, which is certainly may not be, then perhaps the single most fundamentally shared characteristic of left-wing protest through my adult life, so most notably Occupy Wall St, various environmental protests such as that against the Keystone Pipeline, the so-called “Resistance” against Trump’s first administration, the great racial reckoning of summer 2020, and now the Palestine movement, is its profound structurelessness. There is nobody leading the pro-Palestine protest movement here, and indeed this is explicitly celebrated by the protestors as consistent with an ideology that, while it seems to hardly have theorists, comes across to me as much more black than red (pace the DSA, kind of, which I think tries to maintain some sort of democratic centralism in the face of strong anti-hierarchical cultural currents.) in short while I certainly believe there are experts in any number of aspects of the conflict in Palestine, as far as I can tell they’re writing white papers, not leading the movement in the streets. Who are the experts in accomplishing change via protest you see leading the charge?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 05 2025 at 07:18):@Morgan Rogers (he/him) If you mean to say that we should try to mobilize more people to ask themselves the question «what could I be doing», then I agree with you on this. However, I insist that efforts at understanding the situation should come hand in hand with action, if not precede it. It is the understanding of the situation that I am trying to pursue in this conversation. Are you hinting that this is off topic? Be straight with me. Are you trying to trap me into repeated «off topic» violation and remove me from this conversation? I am not your enemy, but taking away my freedom of speech is a sure way to make me into one. In your own words, I can, at a bare minimum, refuse to stay silent about it.
I think «waving the flag of Palestine» is a bad answer to the question «what could I be doing». This flag does not have a connotation of peaceful freedom. The flag of Palestine is as thoroughly soaked in the blood of innocent bystanders as the flag of Israel. I am not sure if you, after reviewing available evidence, concluded that Palestinians are a thoroughly peaceful bunch. As far as I know, they have been harassing the Israeli since long before there was Israel.
Let us review the recent history. An organization called Hamas or, in full, Islamic Resistance Movement, has been elected to rule Palestine in 2006. Everyone agreed that the election was fair and represented the will of the people. In 2007, after a short civil war, Islamic Resistance Movement gained full control of the Gaza Strip. Since then, the rule of Islamic Resistance Movement in the Gaza Strip has been uncontested. All that was asked of them is to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past peace deals. But Islamic Resistance Movement declined. They chose the path of «resistance in all its forms». (Quote from Ismail Haniya.) I ask you again: do you support armed struggle of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation?
Here is the official manifest of Islamic Resistance Movement. If you read it, I expect you will agree with my conclusion that for them, «justice», «mercy» and «freedom» mean «Islam», their goal is to establish an Islamic state all over the historical Palestine, and their chosen way to do so is Jihad. What you understand as «justice», «mercy» and «freedom» has little to do with what they understand as «justice», «mercy» and «freedom». If they were to establish their «justice», «mercy» and «freedom» over France, there would be nothing left of France as we know it. In your own words, their politics does not recognize someone else's right to exist. This is whose flag you are waving.
I am not your enemy. I was not expecting of you a definition of «freedom» I should have accepted. It was surprising for me to hear your definition of freedom, and I was expecting to be surprised. But my definition of freedom and your definition of freedom are compatible. The definition of freedom of Islamic Resistance Movement is not compatible with my definition of freedom (although compatible with your stated definition, which does not include freedom of faith). To them, we are infidel. At best, we can hope our lives to be spared. But we shall not be allowed to teach our ways. In the schools of Islamic Resistance Movement, the study of Koran will be the first topic.
If you followed my suggestion and read about Nazareth, you have discovered that there is no Jew to be found there, even though everyone is Israeli, at least on paper. This shows that Israel allows any religion and any lifestyle to be followed, at any scale. Israel is the most diverse land in the world. Compare this with Jewish settlements in West Bank Palestine. There is no sight more chilling than these lifeless streets cordoned off from the Arabic Palestine by constantly vigilant military presence. Stones, rifles and the lingering smell of tear gas. The freedom of Palestine, even on the West Bank, even in Nazareth, is, as you can see with your own eyes if you travel there, freedom from Jews. Were Palestine to be «freed» by Islamic Resistance Movement, it is not only you who will not be invited to adjudicate the freedom of Palestine, it is also the millions of Israeli living there who will not be.
You say you want a movement, not an army. Well, Islamic Jihad is a movement that has several armies and whole states as components. Have you any awareness of the situation in Syria right now? We can dream that Islamic Resistance Movement, having defeated Israel, would turn it into a peaceful and prosperous Islamic country like Saudi Arabia. But I think Islamic Palestine is more likely to become another Syria, another Afghanistan or another Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Jews only want their tiny piece of land. The Islamic Jihad movement wants the whole world. Is this your kind of movement? This is whose flag you are waving.
I am not your enemy. I was not demanding a plan so detailed that you cannot be expected to put it forward. But I need from you a theory consistent with the sum of what we know so far. The theory you have offered so far is at once sparse and inconsistent. It appeared to me at first, and still appears to me now, that you have chosen the most fanatical of the available approaches to the situation. If this is what your leaders offer you, then you have been misled by your leaders into being an unwitting instrument of propaganda in the hand of Islamic Jihad.
What I suggest is that we try to select, at first, a small amount of propositions we can agree upon, that would form a core of our theory. In the ideal, I want to be able to recruit my Israeli friends, my Palestinian friends, my Turkish friends, my Omani friends, and so on, to support that small but strong core. Your theory is only suitable for you and your fanatical friends who have not been anywhere and know nothing of the world outside their immediate surroundings. This theory will not be effective.
Is it bad to starve children, target medics, kill journalists and destroy schools? Yes, it is bad to starve children, target medics, kill journalists and destroy schools. But perhaps these things are locally justified. It is hard to think of a collective undertaking that is not justified within that collective. Insofar as these things are done by Israeli army, they must be locally justified therein. We need to establish the events, reveal the justifications, and crush these justifications. This is where I suggest you direct your energy, instead of waving a flag soaked in blood. You can make a table of events and justifications, and put it online. It will be helpful.
Let me address one point in particular. You say:
I am sorry that you do not feel safe enough where you are to say whether you have travelled outside of your country in public.
I know this is a recent custom in some lands, but there is no need to qualify every sentence with «sorry» and «feel». You said yourself that you cannot visit Israel. For someone burning with desire to change Israel, this is a bad outcome. I have done some non-safe things, but throwing away my privilege of travel would simply be a stupid move. Although, to reiterate, I have not visited and do not plan to visit any questionable locations. All my information is strictly second hand. Maybe even third hand.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 05 2025 at 11:32):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
Like your last message is obviously influenced by René Girard and mimetic theory, perhaps it would be useful for you to point others to your influences?
As shameful as it may be, I have to admit I have not read a page written by René Girard. Which of his books would you suggest I read first?
Most of what I said so far is rooted in my own experience and understanding. (One thing I do not have experience with is Islamic Jihad.) Modern (and post-modern) philosophy, and especially its French sub-genre, pursues at once obscurity and scandal. This makes it rather hard to handle. That said, there are some reference points I can offer.
My most important reference point is Emmanuel Lévinas's theory of «other», «transcendence», «encounter», «immanence» and «totality». In short, Emmanuel offers that you can only understand an other transcendentally, once you have an encounter with them, an opposite of what we may call «mimetic recognition».
Although it could be that I have expropriated his ideas and use them in a way he did not intend them to be used. For Emmanuel Lévinas, as far as I can tell, every other is equally other. I think there is a measure of «otherness» that can be discretely approximated by classifying people under the labels of various collective identities that reflect overlaps of immanence arising from shared experience and understanding. Pragmatically:
It is curious to note that the religion of Jews asserts there being other (gentile), while Christianity and Islam assert totality. This explains the diversity of Israel and the ambitions of Islamic Jihad. The slogan «free Palestine» is also based on the assumption of totality — in this case, totality of «freedom».
The essay The Rights of the Other Man is a relatively accessible summary of why human rights require the appreciation of the transcendence of other. It follows that human rights are impossible without encounter. There is not enough immanence in the world for the theory of human rights to achieve totality.
My other reference point is Alain Badiou's theory of ethics. In short, Alain offers that you can only be ethical if you understand and follow the truth of the event in relation to which you wish to be ethical. An encounter with an other is one kind of event. The ethics of human rights and tolerance does not engage with any particular event, and this makes it essentially ineffective. This is confirmed empirically by the spectacular and repeated failure of the United Nations to keep any semblance of peace between its inner circle, the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and the «outer» world.
Does this summary help?
Modern (and post-modern) philosophy does not study «war». This is where traditional wisdom can help. The Book of Five Rings and The Art of War are two books that together explain the meaning of «war» well. In summary, the way of warrior is death, and war is deception. This is opposite to the times of peace, when we care about life and truth. These books are approachable and pragmatic. Everyone should read them.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 05 2025 at 18:11):Lévinas’s theory sounds reminiscent of Martin Buber’s in Ich und Du, where he studies the difference between encountering some element of the other as an It, as an instrumental thing, versus as a You, as something unconditioned. The phrasing may make this sound less subtle than I think it is; instrumentality of the It encompasses any way in which the other exists, for us, for any reason at all. I wonder whether there’s any line of influence between these two.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 06 2025 at 16:46):Emmanuel Lévinas mentioned Martin Buber at least a few times in his writing.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 07 2025 at 11:41):Kevin Carlson said:
I’m curious about these experts you’re deferring to. If I can say so, my immediate reaction was that you’re surrendering your own…perhaps not exactly agency, but roughly that…overeagerly.
Here's an article about the general principles, written in 2020. A few quotes:
"Protests work because they can undermine the most important pillar of power: legitimacy."
"Protests are a grab for attention: They are an attempt to force a conversation about the topic they’re highlighting." (hence my continuation of the conversation here)
In France specifically, labour unions are involved in a majority of protests, and encourage participation in them. They lobby the government and employers, and turnout at protests is an effective metric for support of a given cause, since protest is a physical manifestation of public opinion. Related actions include strikes, donations and petition signing. Organisations that campaign for change in other arenas, such as Greenpeace train volunteers in taking (peaceful) direct action, and are similarly dependent on public support of their actions through protest, whence their campaigns to protect the right to protest where it is under threat (which feels like most places at the moment, to be honest). Individual people involved in previous liberation movements (feminist, civil rights, anti-apartheid...) have attributed the successes of those movements to the collective actions, especially protesting.
In short, every group that I see advocating for the causes I am trying to support encourages protesting as a basic form of solidarity. These are my experts. What exactly is it that you think I'm giving up here?
If the US is enough of a parallel, which is certainly may not be, then perhaps the single most fundamentally shared characteristic of left-wing protest through my adult life [...] is its profound structurelessness. There is nobody leading the pro-Palestine protest movement here, and indeed this is explicitly celebrated by the protestors as consistent with an ideology that, while it seems to hardly have theorists, comes across to me as much more black than red (pace the DSA, kind of, which I think tries to maintain some sort of democratic centralism in the face of strong anti-hierarchical cultural currents.) in short while I certainly believe there are experts in any number of aspects of the conflict in Palestine, as far as I can tell they’re writing white papers, not leading the movement in the streets. Who are the experts in accomplishing change via protest you see leading the charge?
I don't know what "more black than red" means, or what "pace the DSA" means.
I suppose that you imagine that previous movements had key individuals "leading the charge" because that is how the history is often presented in the US. Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela spring to mind. I'll quote Angela Y. Davis again (simply because I have one of her books, Freedom is a constant struggle, to hand). On Dr. King:
"Dominant representations of the Black freedom movement are a discrete series of historical moments largely produced by the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. And somehow, although Martin Luther King Jr. himself began to emerge to prominence as a consequence of that boycott, he is seen as always already the orator and leader of the civil rights movement.
"Even though numbers of books, both scholarly and popular, have been written on the role of women in the 1955 boycott, Dr. King, who was actually invited to be a spokesperson for a movement when he was entirely unknown--the movement had already formed--Dr. King remains the dominant figure.
"And I wonder, will we ever truly recognize the collective subject of history that was itself produced by radical organizing? Early on during the 1930s/1940s, and I am referring, for example, to an organization which was known as the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which has largely been excised from the official historical record because some of its key leaders were communists."
On Nelson Mandela (bearing in mind that this was published in 2016 from a speech in December 2013, shortly after his death; emphasis mine):
"While it is moving to witness the unanimous and continued outpouring of praise for Nelson Mandela, it is important to question the meaning of his sanctification. I know that he himself would have insisted on not being elevated, as a single individual, to a secular sainthood, but rather would have always claimed space for his comrades in the struggle and in this way would have seriously challenged the process of sanctification. He was indeed extraordinary, but as an individual he was especially remarkable because he railed against the individualism that would single him out at the expense of others who were always at his side.
[...]
"This is the context in which I join you once more to intensify campaigns against another regime of apartheid and in solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian people. As Nelson Mandela said, 'We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.' "
When opposing governments that are prepared to use violence in all its forms to repress opposition, having a clearly declared leadership is a liability: they become the targets of smear campaigns that discredit their campaigns by association, or some pretext is created to arrest them and remove whatever momentum in the movement depended on their personality. Nonetheless, there are organisers and local leaders giving structure to the action that are taken, following the increasingly baroque protocols required for a protest to be considered 'legal', gathering the vehicles, banners, microphones and speakers, arranging for the safe participation of speakers (politicians, activists, scholars), communicating with the media... Having these responsibilities suitably diffuse is protection against repression. So yes, this absence of clear leaders is a deliberate choice.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 07 2025 at 11:57):Ignat Insarov said:
Is it bad to starve children, target medics, kill journalists and destroy schools? Yes, it is bad to starve children, target medics, kill journalists and destroy schools. But perhaps these things are locally justified.
I will no longer be engaging with Ignat Insarov in this discussion.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 13:57):Have I just been quoted out of context and «cancelled» based on that quote? Here is the complete paragraph:
Is it bad to starve children, target medics, kill journalists and destroy schools? Yes, it is bad to starve children, target medics, kill journalists and destroy schools. But perhaps these things are locally justified. It is hard to think of a collective undertaking that is not justified within that collective. Insofar as these things are done by Israeli army, they must be locally justified therein. We need to establish the events, reveal the justifications, and crush these justifications. This is where I suggest you direct your energy, instead of waving a flag soaked in blood. You can make a table of events and justifications, and put it online. It will be helpful.
I added some emphases for extra clarity. This hopefully makes it clear that I do not express any support for any starving, targeting, killing and destroying. Perhaps my manner of expression was too subtle, or perhaps Morgan did not read this paragraph to the end.
Any discord between us here is a bonus point for the sowers of discord. Even while I do not appreciate being singled out like this, I remain your friend @Morgan Rogers (he/him) (if there is such a thing as one way friendship). Hopefully you will come around some time later.
Nathan Corbyn (Jul 07 2025 at 14:16):(The problem is that 'locally justified' means the action is justified in the locality of the event, where most people would take 'justified' to mean there is a valid justification. In other words, the start of this paragraph reads as you suggesting these things could be fine in context. I think you meant 'rationalised by the perpetrators'.)
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 07 2025 at 14:31):I think I understand what you meant in that part, although I think your wording is prone to misinterpretation, but I have qualms about other parts of your message:
I am not sure if you, after reviewing available evidence, concluded that Palestinians are a thoroughly peaceful bunch. As far as I know, they have been harassing the Israeli since long before there was Israel.
I fundamentally disagree with the attribution of harassing behaviour to an entire population. I strive to criticise only particular individuals and institutions and you will never find me talking about “the Israeli”, only about the government of Israel and the IDF. Likewise, based on everything I know about Hamas, they seem like a scourge and an utterly despicable organisation; I absolutely do not extend this judgement to “the Palestinians”. I think the same holds for others in this conversation. I think your rhetoric here is the first step to the sort of de-humanisation which has been used to justify the ongoing massacres.
All that was asked of them is to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past peace deals.
There is a mountain of evidence that this is not true, that such “proposals” have not been made in good faith, and the fact that IDF-backed settlers have been harassing and terrorising the population of the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge or present in any significant form, is incontrovertible.
The freedom of Palestine, even on the West Bank, even in Nazareth, is, as you can see with your own eyes if you travel there, freedom from Jews.
The presence and peaceful cohabitation of Muslim and Christian communities in Israel and in the Palestinian territories both of which have been harassed by Jewish suprematists (not to mention bombed, in Gaza) disqualifies this black-and-white fantasy of Jewish tolerance vs Islamic intolerance. There are suprematists and nationalists, as well as friendly and tolerant people on all sides.
Peva Blanchard (Jul 07 2025 at 17:35):A minimal core to agree upon (hopefully) could be that international law is applied, and human rights guaranteed.
Reports from the "special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967" (currently Franscesca Albanese) are available on the UN document database. For instance, the last report (as of July 7th) investigates the responsibilities of corporate entities.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 17:37):This core is very big. What does it mean to guarantee human rights? Have human rights been successfully guaranteed anywhere on this planet so far?
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 07 2025 at 17:45):-- OT, and rant warning --
Using France as a gold standard of how and why protests work is idiotic at best. In this respect, France is a shithole. There's always some protest, some strike, some fuckery going on, basically 24/7, with the only tangible result that nothing ever works. It simply makes life terrible for everyone venturing in French territory. As a matter of personal experience, I got back from Nice to Naples two days ago, BY PLANE, and the trip took TWELVE hours. I mean, WTF? It would have been faster to jog my way back home, essentially. As a preacution I've been avoiding flight/train connections going through France, esp. Paris, for the last n years.
These protests, carried out in this form, are the most idiotic thing ever. They really drive the public opinion against you. Again, as a matter of personal experience, I literally came out to France _hoping_ for a totalitarian takeover that would jail _all_ strikers and protesters no matter what so that a bit of sanity in the country be re-established. If that's your gold-standard for "effective protesting" (everyone stops giving any fucks about what you are protesting about and starts passionately hating you) then I don't know what to say.
-- End of OT, and rant. Thank you for allowing me to vent, lol. --
Peva Blanchard (Jul 07 2025 at 18:20):Ignat Insarov said:
What does it mean to guarantee human rights?
I have no specific legal training, but I would say "guaranteeing human rights" consists in: agreeing to the universal declaration of human rights (UDHR), deriving a legal corpus from this declaration (e.g. in constitutions) and having the State members enforcing the derived laws (e.g. doing justice in courts).
Ignat Insarov said:
Have human rights been successfully guaranteed anywhere on this planet so far?
I think the fair answer is "some human rights have been guaranteed in some places for some period in time". The wikipedia section on the legal effect of the UDHR provides examples.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 19:16):I read that declaration a while ago, without relation to this conversation, and it struck me back then as mythological. Now, looking into it again, I do not see how Palestine would accept this declaration when other Arabic countries have gone as far as to write their own alternative declaration of human rights without freedom of faith and gender equality.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 19:56):@Amar Hadzihasanovic I think we can achieve agreement on all three points, but I still need some help before I can accept your corrections.
You say that we should not attribute harassment of Israeli to Palestinians, because such rhetoric is used to justify the ongoing massacres. I understand what you mean. Rhetorical convenience matters. I spent so much time trying to persuade Morgan that it is a bad idea to wave a Palestinian flag. How am I different, waving attribution of harassment of Israeli to Palestinians? This is a good and timely question. The difference is that I am waving something we can use to understand and eventually hopefully improve the situation.
Humans have a propensity for group behaviour. We are good at negotiating agreement with one another. I do not believe we can make any progress without recognizing that we are talking about groups of people, not individual humans. In particular, there is a group called «Palestinian people», and there are certain negotiated agreements holding this group together.
Let us try an example. Romans demolished Carthage. Did every particular Roman participate in the demolition of Carthage? No. Most Romans were not even living in the same time period. But there was a negotiated agreement among the Romans at the time to demolish Carthage. In the same way, Palestinians have been harassing the Israeli since long before there was Israel. Did every particular Palestinian participate in the harassment of the Israeli? No. So?
Are you saying that Palestinians have not been harassing the Israeli since long before there was Israel? No, you are not saying that. If you were to say that, I should remind you of the massacre in Hebron on 23 of August 1929, for instance. And already we read that some Jews were sheltered and survived. Sheltered — by Palestinians, from Palestinians. Is this surprising? No, this is not surprising. Big groups are made of smaller groups, there are intersections of groups, the assignment of humans to groups is a complex mathematical object. However: they sheltered them, but they did not rise to stop the bloodshed. An agreement was negotiated.
The talking points of the Palestinian resistance and the two state solution are built upon the concept of «Palestinian people». And there was no such concept as «Palestinian people» before the XX century. It has been constructed. It was fiercely contested during the XX century, and was eventually successfully established and codified. Palestinians wanted to be recognized as a group, and they succeeded.
Palestinians wanted to be recognized as a group. You do not get to be recognized as a group when it is favourable to you (we suffer genocide, we need our own state) and not be recognized as a group when it is not favourable to you (our elected government sets removal of all infidels from the whole extent of our historically claimed land as its first goal). No. Palestinians wanted to be recognized as a group, and they succeeded. Now, they are recognized as a group. Moreover, they wanted to be recognized as a historically rooted group, a people, a people that has a claim on the land of Palestine. They wanted their ancestors to also be recognized as Palestinian people, so as to reinforce their claim on the land of Palestine. And they succeeded.
Further, I insist that we recognize that throwing stones at Israeli soldiers under the watchful eye of international observers is the favourite pastime of Palestinian schoolchildren, for example, in Hebron. The situation is that bad. These are not isolated incidents. The harassment is systemic, the hate is widespread. It is a culture of hate, that large numbers of Palestinians are indoctrinated into since childhood, for generations. If you can show that what I am saying here is false, please do so at your earliest convenience, because the truth as I know it is terrifying. I am eager to draw better conclusions — I only lack better facts.
I am lost as to what we can do here. Is this rhetorically inconvenient? I am not an expert on rhetorical convenience, and I readily accept your judgement that this is rhetorically inconvenient. So what can we do? Bury the evidence and forget?
You say my rhetoric is used to justify the ongoing massacres. If you have a specific example of justification of the ongoing massacres, bring it in. What is being justified and how exactly is it being justified? We should establish the events, reveal the justifications, and crush these justifications. The only way I see to stop the war for good is to crush all of the justifications for it, on both sides.
You also say some black and white fantasy of Jewish tolerance versus Islamic intolerance should be disqualified. I allow that such a fantasy exists in many places, please go and disqualify it from there. But there is no such fantasy here.
What I said is that the freedom of Palestine is freedom from Jews. This is not a deep inference — the fairly elected government of Palestine spelled this out in their manifest that I linked in the message you quote. And their actions align with their manifest. We can see that this understanding of freedom is shared by Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip by looking at the examples of Hebron and Nazareth. You will not find a Jew in Nazareth, and the small Israeli population of Hebron is guarded around the clock by the Israeli army from a very real danger. Do you wish to challenge these facts?
Or do you wish to challenge the fact that many Arabs, who may otherwise be called Palestinians, have been accepted by the Israeli society, and some even serve in the Israeli army? Maybe you wish to challenge the fact that the newly installed government of Syria, a component of the Islamic Jihad movement, has allowed, if not approved of, if not participated in, large scale violence against any and every ethnoreligious minority in their land?
Please do not say something like «not all Islamic people are radical» or «not all Israeli people are tolerant» or «nothing is black and white». You do not need to say this to me, at least. I have been saying all along that nothing is black and white. It is Morgan who has been saying all along that Israel is black and Palestine is white. What I said is that all of their flags are soaked in blood, both Israeli and Palestinian. And their hands are covered in blood to the elbow. Do you understand what «war» means? I do. At war, nothing is white.
My question is «how do we bring peace». My answer is that we need to crush all justifications for war, on both sides. Are these justifications symmetric? I think they are not. What do you think?
Lastly:
All that was asked of them is to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past peace deals.
There is a mountain of evidence that this is not true, that such “proposals” have not been made in good faith, and the fact that IDF-backed settlers have been harassing and terrorising the population of the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge or present in any significant form, is incontrovertible.
Not sure if we are on the same page here. I am talking about the conditions imposed by Quartet on the Middle East on Islamic Resistance Movement after their success in the election of 2006. These conditions were refused, I linked a relevant news article in the message you quote. The only goal of Quartet on the Middle East, as far as I know, was to facilitate the two state solution. If you have evidence that they were not working in good faith, please bring it in.
I am not sure what this has to do with the West Bank Palestine and IDF-backed settlers. What I said is that Islamic Resistance Movement was asked and refused to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past peace deals. I do not understand what you are disagreeing with.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 20:16):I think it would be an improvement if we could reach a basic understanding and consensus of the main justifications for the war in Israel. Everyone is talking as if this is clear-cut. But it is far from clear for me what they are.
It seems there is consensus that the Israeli army is slaughtering the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip indiscriminately with the goal of turning it into an uninhabited desert. I am not sure if this is true, and if it is, I am not sure what the justification might be.
I do not personally know anyone in Israel who would agree that the Gaza Strip should be turned into an uninhabited desert. The supporters of the war I am aware of have a thorough justification for the starving of children (the food being delivered from outside is used by the government of the Gaza Strip to exercise power over the population), targeting medics (hospitals are used by the government of the Gaza Strip to store weapons, including rockets), killing journalists (either they are spreading propaganda for the government, or participate in firefights, or they are regrettable collateral damage) and destroying schools (same as with the medics). By the way, no one is calling for the destruction of West Bank Palestine, or Nazareth, or for any prosecution of Arabic or Muslim Israeli.
It seems there is consensus that Palestinians do not want and never wanted to harm any Jews or any Israeli citizens. This seems to me far from the truth. I feel that there is strong hate towards any Israeli or a foreigner Jew in any location densely populated by Palestinians. Inference from the distribution of Jews in Palestine confirms it. I am not sure what the justification might be.
Am I wrong? Convince me!
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 20:58):Here, for instance, is the case of Adnan Al-Bursh, who was arbitrarily jailed and murdered in prison. This is the kind of event I think can serve as part of the core of shared understanding. Anyone I know will agree this is wrong. Nothing abstract about it. Blowing up a hospital? Justifiable, maybe it was secretly a stronghold of insurgence. Murdering an old man in prison? Not justifiable. No need for any declaration of human rights here.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 07 2025 at 23:14):I read up a bit more and it turns out that many Israeli politicians, at some point after the 7th of October 2023, said something that amounts to «the Gaza Strip should be turned into an uninhabitable desert». I am not seeing this attitude among my acquaintances, and I am not sure how widespread it really is. This is scary.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 08 2025 at 08:27):Ignat Insarov said:
I read up a bit more and it turns out that many Israeli politicians, at some point after the 7th of October 2023, said something that amounts to «the Gaza Strip should be turned into an uninhabitable desert». I am not seeing this attitude among my acquaintances, and I am not sure how widespread it really is. This is scary.
Pretty sure it's quite widespread, tbh. There's also evidence of people picknicking on the hills to watch and cheer at the Gaza bombings, like people usually do with a football match. That ranks pretty high on my personal "list of absolutely fucked up things to do".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 08 2025 at 08:37):In any case I agree with your analysis that "pretty much everyone pretty much hates everyone else", which I agree makes the issue particularly complicated. Also it makes - at least for me - very difficult to align or support one or the other party. The only factual thing is the stark asymmetry of power between one belligerant and the other atm, which is why I definitely support an Israeli immediate cease fire. This does not mean I support Palestine. In fact, I do not support anyone in this conflict. Everything seems very wrong on multiple levels, and I do not think any side can really claim to be morally righteous.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 08 2025 at 08:40):I also think that - at the moment - a cease fire will only be a temporary solution. There's no real plan to end this conflict. I agree with you that this can only come from the belligerents' will. The only precedent I can think about is post WWII Europe, where after so so so much destruction people all across the Continent were overwhelmingly willing to forget the past, call it a day, and start anew. Btw this has been made possible only thanks to a series of other conditions, such as the huge, 20 year long post-war European boom. It's much easier to be willing to forget the past when the economy is booming. Compare this with what happened in Weimar around 1920-1930.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 09:29):I think that if the US & allies were not actively backing Israel, a Dayton-agreement-type solution freezing the conflict and imposing international oversight with limited sovereignty on both sides would have been possible, to at least stop the carnage.
This is absolutely not a very successful model and has led to a vacuum of democracy and stagnation in my home country, but at least it does stop the killing.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 09:34):Of course this would need e.g. NATO actively threatening Israel with consequences in case of non-cooperation which seems impossible in the current political climate!
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 08 2025 at 09:59):If only there were some known mechanism for changing the political climate...
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:23):Yes, in fact, I do think that the war in Bosnia has some parallels in that it seems that there was, for a while, some of the same attitude of “they are doing the dirty work for all of us” that Merz has displayed about Israel in Gaza:
“Clinton disclosed that during negotiations NATO allies felt an independent Bosnia would be 'unnatural ' as the only Muslim nation in Europe. The British, French and Russians favored the arms embargo on Bosnian Muslims precisely because it locked in Bosnia's disadvantage. France's President Mitterrand told Clinton that Bosnia did not belong among European nations, and the British official spoke of a "painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe."
So this was a case in which eventually the seriousness of the crimes became a public opinion problem in the West that needed a solution.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:27):In that case, it also actually helped that there was a change in the US administration when the conflict had already started, and Clinton had campaigned (a bit like Trump has) on the inability of Bush sr. to stop the war. If there was both the political will and the organisation, this is something that Trump could use, but I think the evidence is not great.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:42):@Ignat Insarov I do not think that anyone here is denying that anti-Jewish hatred among Palestinians exists, or that anti-Jewish violence has happened both before and after the foundation of the state of Israel.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:44):The situation in the West Bank is relevant to your statement that “all that was asked was to [accept some mild conditions”, implying that if they had accepted, that would have safeguarded Palestinian peace and autonomy. The colonisation of the entirety of the Palestinian territories is the openly stated goal of many in the Israeli administration and military, and what conditions are or are not accepted by Palestinians is irrelevant to that goal.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:52):You seem to be fond of citing data about the distribution of Jews and Arabs. There is plenty of data supporting the fact that the Israeli forces have consistently been bullying Palestinians in the West Bank; the fact that 234 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2023 before October 7 is just the tip of that iceberg. In fact, nothing that you said is inconsistent with a population that has been consistently harassed by an occupier for decades, including the hatred and the episodes of defiance under controlled circumstances (the watch of international observers).
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:56):I do not think any of this is saying that “Palestinians are all innocent” or any such statement. What I do think is that the state of occupation essentially removes the preconditions to form a clear moral judgement on the Palestinian population because of unreasonable constraints on their freedom of action.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 11:59):For example, I believe that there is ample evidence in the Western world that much smaller deficits in democracy lead people to vote and elect leaders that they would not otherwise elect, because they either offer a shake-up of that status quo, or just promise some short-term protection or advantages.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 12:00):So no, I do not attribute any particular significance to the fact that in 2006---before some people who would be now allowed to vote were even born---the population of Gaza voted for Hamas (never to be offered another chance to vote again).
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 12:03):So for me it does seem like a priority to remove those unreasonable constraints, and then we may judge what the Palestinian population does with its freedom, which may be as incompatible with what we conceive as freedom as you say.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 12:08):You insist on us proposing some kind of positive plan, but I am a strong believer in via negativa, that what is most essential and pressing is to remove what is currently wrong.
Which is also why I would be happy with just freezing the conflict even in a state that does not come with a long-term plan for a stable peace...
Madeleine Birchfield (Jul 08 2025 at 13:19):Honestly, such a plan may end up happening, but it will likely be imposed by a neutral power like China, instead of the United States, after the defeat and withdrawal of the United States in and from the Middle East.
Madeleine Birchfield (Jul 08 2025 at 13:26):I don't see any proposed peace deal working for Israel though.
Israel was teetering on the brink of civil war before Israel and Hamas started attacking each other, and those polarized tensions in Israeli society are still present and will intensify even further if Israel doesn't get the victory it seeks in the war; even the status quo ante will be viewed as a loss. Both pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu factions will blame the other side for Israel's perceived loss in the war and loss of status / reputation internationally.
IMO the Palestinians may finally get some peace and respite, but it is highly likely that Israel itself will implode if it doesn't achieve its goals in its wars.
Madeleine Birchfield (Jul 08 2025 at 13:42):Even a victory for Israel in the current war may not be enough to prevent an Israeli civil war.
Britain joined WWI partly to prevent a civil war in Ireland from breaking out in 1914, but the civil war (read: Irish war of independence) happened anyways after WWI even though Britain was on the winning side for WWI.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 08 2025 at 15:37):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
The situation in the West Bank is relevant to your statement that “all that was asked was to [accept some mild conditions”, implying that if they had accepted, that would have safeguarded Palestinian peace and autonomy.
I have a shallow mind, I am not capable of implying stuff like this. I said that Islamic Resistance Movement was asked by Quartet on the Middle East to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept past peace deals, and they refused. In this, we have a proof that they had no intention of peaceful co-existence with the Israeli. As far as I understand, it is this refusal that led to Egypt closing their side of the border and thus completing the blockade somewhere in 2007. They could have had both peace and prosperity, and they chose to have neither. I did not imply anything deeper or wider than this.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 15:38):Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
I also think that - at the moment - a cease fire will only be a temporary solution. There's no real plan to end this conflict. I agree with you that this can only come from the belligerents' will. The only precedent I can think about is post WWII Europe, where after so so so much destruction people all across the Continent were overwhelmingly willing to forget the past, call it a day, and start anew. Btw this has been made possible only thanks to a series of other conditions, such as the huge, 20 year long post-war European boom. It's much easier to be willing to forget the past when the economy is booming. Compare this with what happened in Weimar around 1920-1930.
It also helps to have an allied superpower forcing you to stop fighting and defending you from a threatening superpower…
Ignat Insarov (Jul 08 2025 at 15:43):Madeleine Birchfield said:
Israel was teetering on the brink of civil war before Israel and Hamas started attacking each other
I am not sure what blessed time you have in mind… Is «civil war» a figure of speech here? I know there are significant issues in the government of Israel, but I have not heard of any preparations for civil war between Israeli and Israeli. Can you share some of your evidence with me?
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 15:48):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
You insist on us proposing some kind of positive plan, but I am a strong believer in via negativa, that what is most essential and pressing is to remove what is currently wrong.
Which is also why I would be happy with just freezing the conflict even in a state that does not come with a long-term plan for a stable peace...
Even freezing the conflict a la Dayton is a positive plan which would require the consent of Hamas, likely the PA, as well as the Israel government. If Hamas broke such an agreement, as it would, then NATO would be in the position Israel is in now, which is one of many reasons it is a rather difficult state to establish.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 15:50):Madeleine Birchfield said:
Even a victory for Israel in the current war may not be enough to prevent an Israeli civil war.
Britain joined WWI partly to prevent a civil war in Ireland from breaking out in 1914, but the civil war (read: Irish war of independence) happened anyways after WWI even though Britain was on the winning side for WWI.
I agree this seems rather wildly speculative. There doesn’t even exist a coherent anti-Netanyahu faction, they have a different party every election. What would they even be fighting for? Just to dethrone Netanyahu? In favor of what, exactly?
Madeleine Birchfield (Jul 08 2025 at 16:00):Ignat Insarov said:
I am not sure what blessed time you have in mind… Is «civil war» a figure of speech here? I know there are significant issues in the government of Israel, but I have not heard of any preparations for civil war between Israeli and Israeli. Can you share some of your evidence with me?
Sure, here is Israel's president warning of a looming civil war in 2023:
Madeleine Birchfield (Jul 08 2025 at 16:10):Kevin Carlson said:
I agree this seems rather wildly speculative. There doesn’t even exist a coherent anti-Netanyahu faction, they have a different party every election. What would they even be fighting for? Just to dethrone Netanyahu? In favor of what, exactly?
Sure, just like how the Ulster Unionists and Irish Nationalists temporarily stopped their agitation against each other when WWI started to support the British and go fight against the Germans on the Western Front during WWI, giving an appearance of no anti-British faction during WWI.
But the bitterness from 2022 and 2023 of the liberal Israeli old guard in the judiciary and media and academia and Netanyahu's supporters who want to permanently cut down their power never went away and still remains in the background.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 16:19):@Ignat Insarov I do not believe that "they could have had both peace and prosperity", no, and that's why I keep talking about the West Bank.
The Christian inhabitants of Taybeh, just to mention something happening this very week, certainly had nothing to do with the Islamic Resistance in Gaza. Do they have peace and prosperity? No, they have IDF-backed settlers encroaching their land, setting fires and putting up threatening billboards. This is the "peace and prosperity" that Israel currently has to offer to peaceful Palestinians, as everyone can see.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 08 2025 at 16:22):They could have had significantly more peace and prosperity than they ended up having. Better this way? The refusal of Islamic Resistance Movement to accept those conditions at that time is the cause of a reduction in peace and prosperity in Gaza Strip. No?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 08 2025 at 16:26):I apologize if I inadvertently made an impression that I think Islamic Resistance Movement accepting those conditions would have resulted in maximal peace and prosperity for all Palestinians. I meant only that they made it worse, not that it would have been perfect otherwise. I am not speaking in subjunctive, of what could have happened. Nor am I speaking in absolutes. I am speaking only about what actually happened, and the link between the cause and the effect seems clear in this here case.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 08 2025 at 16:36):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
I do not think any of this is saying that “Palestinians are all innocent” or any such statement. What I do think is that the state of occupation essentially removes the preconditions to form a clear moral judgement on the Palestinian population because of unreasonable constraints on their freedom of action.
I find this philosophically a suspicious position. What constraints on someone's freedom of action do you deem unreasonable to such an extent that a clear moral judgement cannot be formed?
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 17:13):Madeleine Birchfield said:
Sure, here is Israel's president warning of a looming civil war in 2023:
One official warning one time that civil war can potentially be a risk of a legitimacy crisis is not quite what I’d call being “on the brink” of a civil war.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 08 2025 at 17:46):Just found this article from back in May: I supported Israel's actions in October 2023 — not anymore – The Forward — a good approach to the small core on which everyone can agree.
Now I wonder: Was this true all along? Were my anti-Zionist friends right from the start? Was I willfully deluding myself? I don’t know anymore, and maybe that’s a good thing. Because everyone who seems sure of themselves is wrong. Many morally certain pro-Palestine activists were and are wrong about Zionism, about Israel, and often about Jews. Many morally certain pro-Israel voices were and are wrong about Palestinians, about antisemitism, and often about Jewish values. My despairing un-knowledge may be a cop-out, or it may be wisdom. I don’t know about that either.
The summary, as I read it, is that all the «good» justifications for Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip have ended, and the only remaining justification is scary because it will curse Israel for generations. Even those Israeli fanatics who do not agree with the substance better agree to fear this consequence.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 18:48):Ignat Insarov said:
I find this philosophically a suspicious position. What constraints on someone's freedom of action do you deem unreasonable to such an extent that a clear moral judgement cannot be formed?
I believe that for a choice to be meaningful there has to be reason for the person making the choice to believe that it is meaningful. I do not believe that an election held under occupation meets this standard.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 18:50):This does not mean that the choice cannot have real consequences, but as long as it is “hopeless”, I do think it should be excluded from moral judgement.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 18:56):I think it is almost reasonable in a “hopeless” vote to support the most extreme candidates available simply as a way of recovering a semblance of freedom in the form of unpredictability.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 19:01):I think we see this over and over in Western countries: faced with a deficit of democracy where no matter who gets elected, it seems to make no meaningful difference, every vote is becoming a protest vote.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 19:09):I find that really a profoundly distasteful and almost dehumanizingly nihilistic attitude to people in the Gazans’ terrible situation and a whole range of more or less terrible situations.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 19:16):I have seen the exact sentiment that I am expressing expressed by activists from multiple countries with non-democratic (or not sufficiently democratic) regimes, I do not know what you find dehumanising about it?
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 19:17):I am not extending my suspension of judgement to every single action by Gazans, to be clear, I am talking about their vote in an election in 2006!
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 08 2025 at 19:26):I suppose my wording was unclear about this, as it could be interpreted as a more general statement. Let me clarify again that I think that Gazans should only not be judged for actions whose meaning is clearly prejudiced by the state of occupation, such as their vote in elections.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 20:37):Most moral choices are prejudiced by circumstance, from not doing my dishes because you’re very sleepy to committing a lot of petty crime because you’re socially disadvantaged to introducing the world to genocide because you’re very scared of losing World War I. I don’t consider it respectful of human dignity to choose any such cases and say “well, this particular unethical action doesn’t count because the circumstances were so hard.” For me, the difficult circumstances don’t directly soften the evil of empowering Hamas at all; rather the merciful and compassionate attitude toward the people in those circumstances is quite orthogonal, which I believe allows both attitudes their full expression.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 08 2025 at 20:39):But this is really an odd case to defend indifferentism in the face of hopelessness, because the most committed consequentialist can see that the 2006 vote really mattered directly and immensely!
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 05:22):I think you are debating a very different position than mine. I agree with all you are saying but it is not a critique of what I am saying. You give examples of clearly meaningful choices made under difficult circumstances; while I am speaking of cases where the circumstances render the choice meaningless or at least apparently meaningless. To build on your "doing the dishes" example, I am not talking about: “Should I do the dishes if I'm sleepy?”, but of: “Should I do the dishes if I think somebody is coming to take all my dishes away later?”.
I am not a consequentialist. In this example, it may be that whoever is coming to steal the dishes will be really displeased to find them dirty and decide to punish me for not washing them. Still I would not blame myself for the consequences!
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 05:26):I think that by comparing the situation of Gaza and the West Bank, there is a very strong argument that the choice was indeed made meaningless: different choices were made and for 17 years both have led to roughly the same outcome, continuing occupation, harassment, and humiliation.
Even for a committed consequentialist, it seems completely absurd to me to blame 2006 voters for the fact that 17 years later, with no other elections happening in-between, their choice may have eventually led to an even worse situation.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 06:28):OK, I think I see your point better now, and would agree if I agreed that the outcomes have been the same until the 2023 war. But that’s not true at all. Hamas had already been regularly attacking Israel from the West Bank for several years when the people of the West Bank gave them a democratic mandate (which, to be sure, they then violently overstepped by driving the PA out of the province). Naturally enough, Hamas continued shooting rockets into Israel, and Israel has responded to these attacks with a long series of bloody invasions starting as early as 2008. The West Bank is not subject to anything like the same level of violent repression, though of course all is not rosy and Israeli settlers continue taking more and more of the West Bank, in an obvious effort to eventually annex it by fait accompli. Bad as both situations are, I totally deny that the outcomes have been “roughly the same” for the first 17 years.
Anyway, since it seems that the straw consequentialist is not in the room with us on either side, this is largely neither here nor there. Hamas was not keeping their intent to make unrelenting war on Israel a secret until 2023, nor till 2006, and so certainly those who voted Hamas in bear moral responsibility for that choice (which is certainly not to say for the choices Israel made in response.)
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 07:06):That's fair enough.
I think compared to you and Ignat, apparently, I give more weight to the “asymmetric frame” given to the conflict by occupation+power differential, which seems to me a scaled-up version of the bullying dynamic. In this dynamic the fact that the bullied will periodically react ineffectively is an essential component of the bully's power as it acts as retroactive and future justification for the continued bullying. It seems dishonest to me to discuss Hamas's war on Israel outside of this context, especially considering that keeping Hamas in power was provably part of Netanyahu's doctrine.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 07:12):I would not blame a voter for treating the choice as being between someone who will meekly give their lunch money to the bully (and be asked for more and more), and someone who will scream and sometimes throw an ineffective punch. That looks meaningless to me.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 07:59):Yet there is a meaningful difference between meekly not murdering the bully’s civilian citizens and ineffectively doing so.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2025 at 08:08):@Kevin Carlson it should be noted that Hamas got less than half of votes in 2006. Holding an entire population or even those who voted for a given group to account for their government's actions seems hypocritical with Trump in the White House.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 08:09):I certainly think that those who voted for Trump bear moral responsibility for his actions, especially those actions he credibly pre-committed to taking. I don’t think I said that the entire population of Gaza is responsible for Hamas’s actions.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:11):Kevin Carlson said:
Yet there is a meaningful difference between meekly not murdering the bully’s civilian citizens and ineffectively doing so.
Lol come on, you can't take only half of a metaphor out of the metaphor. Outside the metaphor the bully is also consistently murdering civilians, and more effectively.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 08:12):Well, in that case, your claim is just that Hamas is justified in its attacks on Israel, which is very different than what I thought you were claiming.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:13):No, absolutely not, sorry, let me clarify.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:14):I think armed resistance targeted at the Israeli army is justified. I think murdering civilians is a horrible war crime.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 08:18):It seems like we’re on a very similar page, then. My mistake to have come across as unfair in only shifting Palestine’s side of the metaphor.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:18):The point I was trying to make is that in the “bullying dynamic” there is nothing that requires the bullied person to be good, or a purely innocent victim, or even their attempts at fighting to be in themselves justified.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 08:19):“Nothing that requires” in order that…?
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:19):In order for the bullying dynamic to exist.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 08:19):That seems hard to disagree with.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:22):It seemed that you were implying that by framing the attacks of Hamas as "fighting the bully" I was giving them a positive moral value. But I don't think that "fighting the bully" is in itself moral. In fact I was implying it is a structural part of the dynamic, so it can even contribute to its persistence.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 08:29):Also to clarify, I consider the choice of sacrifice and breaking the cycle of violence as the greatest heroism, so armed resistance is not my favourite path...
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2025 at 08:33):Kevin Carlson said:
I don’t think I said that the entire population of Gaza is responsible for Hamas’s actions.
Ah it's true, you didn't. Well in that case, now that we've gone through the ritual condemnation of Hamas and since a majority of those who are currently suffering in Gaza are under 37 and so can't possibly have been amongst the voters, can we get back to the "what can we do about it" part yet?
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 09 2025 at 10:20):Amar Hadzihasanovic said:
Also to clarify, I consider the choice of sacrifice and breaking the cycle of violence as the greatest heroism, so armed resistance is not my favourite path...
It's also quite demonstrably one of the few things that work, eventually. There's a great potential well to pass tho which is why many movement stop long before passing it.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 09 2025 at 10:22):Morgan Rogers (he/him) said:
Kevin Carlson said:
I don’t think I said that the entire population of Gaza is responsible for Hamas’s actions.
Ah it's true, you didn't. Well in that case, now that we've gone through the ritual condemnation of Hamas and since a majority of those who are currently suffering in Gaza are under 37 and so can't possibly have been amongst the voters, can we get back to the "what can we do about it" part yet?
Simply: Protest more effectively. For instance, instead of uselessly blocking roads, campaign to swing people's votes away from the MPs that support giving weapons to Israel or that are against a cease-fire.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 09 2025 at 10:23):What politics cares about is staying in power. Unless you really start throwing molotov cocktails around and cause a _huge_ disservice, I don't see why they should care at all about the protests as they are organized now. Actually not even molotov cocktails thrown around guarantee you anything, as they may further legitimize an iron fist policy from the politicians you want to fight in the first place, boosting their consensus.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 09 2025 at 10:24):Take the funding away from the politicians that oppose you. If you can't, take the voter consensus away.
This should be the basic postulate, at least if you want to stay within the rules of the country (pretty of other options otherwise, which personally I don't endorse, lol).
Fabrizio Romano Genovese (Jul 09 2025 at 10:26):A simple example: Bus drivers' strike.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2025 at 13:21):That last example seems like a good suggestion for public services in which the experience for the workers is closely correlated with the quality of the service for the customer and there is a direct revenue stream being disrupted. I don't think either of those factors is applicable here: while public opinion is shifting, core pro-Israel groups are still very loud and protected by the state (here in France, that is), and where money is involved they are being funded by Israel directly or indirectly. In particular, pro-Israel lobbyists in some countries have the resources to counter threats to electability, short of very systematic grass-roots organising against them.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 16:59):It seems like you have a model where people can essentially just buy votes? But I’ve never seen good evidence for that model and I’ve seen a number of papers arguing against it. In any case it proves too much; if pro-Israel lobbyists are powerful enough to buy public opinion in votes then they can surely buy it against protests.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 17:02):I think Fab’s plan is in principle the correct one but that it founders on the fact that Westerners (well, Americans at least) don’t vote on foreign policy. This is more or less an iron law. You might with great struggles win a few primary elections against particularly pro-Israel Democrats, which would be likelier to lead to more Republicans in Congress than to much change in the US policy toward Israel.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 09 2025 at 17:14):No, I think the only plausible route to changing that policy in the US is to shift elite consensus among Democrats around the propriety of supporting Israel to the hilt. That consensus is already shifting a bit. Arguably the protests help with that goal in that they’re establishing more pro-Palestinian ideological uniformity among young liberals who will eventually run the Democratic Party; that would be the only protest-based theory of change that seems plausible to me. But it’s a dangerous strategy, because it could encourage a thermostatic reaction even within the Democrats, to say nothing of the fact that while Americans will not vote on foreign policy, they will absolutely vote against annoying protestors.
I think the best strategy to actually change elite Western consensus around Israel is to write convincing white papers explaining how there is in fact any halfway serious plan among liberals for the region, which at the moment there is not. Few Western center-left politicians are likely to take the risk of divesting substantially from Israel if the upside is completely murky (it’s not at all obvious that refusing to sell arms to Israel actually shortens the war even in the short term, let alone that it leads toward peace, while the downside is at least the strategic loss of an ally in a region short of those.) If you keep selling arms to Israel, perhaps Israel finally destroys Hamas completely while remaining a Western ally, and then once the ongoing intifada is out of the picture there’s space to pressure Israel to stop expanding settlements and actually make an agreement. That’s a terrible plan, for sure, but without a better plan for what happens after divestiture, you’re demanding that politicians make a weighty policy change solely on grounds of the immorality of helping to arm Israel, which is a really tough sell. Most kinds of Western politician are not at all ideologically convinced that their foreign policy should be primarily driven by ethics at all, and of the kinds that are, there are more George Bushes than Bernies Sanders.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 19:18):I agree that foreign policy does not shift public opinion but I think that “vibes” do shift it, and I would not underestimate the destructive effect that the growing chasm between the traditional elite rhetoric about Israel and the images from Gaza have on said “vibes”...
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 09 2025 at 19:20):I think that “doublespeak” has the ability to elicit spite and hatred like few other things
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2025 at 20:45):Kevin Carlson said:
Few Western center-left politicians are likely to take the risk of divesting substantially from Israel if the upside is completely murky (it’s not at all obvious that refusing to sell arms to Israel actually shortens the war even in the short term, let alone that it leads toward peace, while the downside is at least the strategic loss of an ally in a region short of those.) If you keep selling arms to Israel, perhaps Israel finally destroys Hamas completely while remaining a Western ally, and then once the ongoing intifada is out of the picture there’s space to pressure Israel to stop expanding settlements and actually make an agreement. That’s a terrible plan, for sure, but without a better plan for what happens after divestiture, you’re demanding that politicians make a weighty policy change solely on grounds of the immorality of helping to arm Israel, which is a really tough sell.
Don't worry, my faith in currently elected politicians is non-existent (I don't know why you specified "centre-left"). I recognize that a positive strategy is needed here.
I would say that the problem is not that there has been a lack of clearly articulated proposals for the region, but rather that there has been almost none that Israel would accept or felt under pressure to accept. A cohesive BDS movement could credibly create a non-zero amount of pressure, and it's hard to see what the downsides might be?
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 09 2025 at 20:51):Also you said that "Western politicians are not convinced that their foreign policy should be primarily driven by ethics" but rhetorically many negative policies (sanctions on Russia, say) have been justified on pseudo-ethical grounds, and the consequent double-standard is exactly what is undermining the reputations of politicians wet Gaza right now.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 10 2025 at 00:29):I think if you have an idea that many people have heard of yet a considerable majority reject and you can't think of any downsides, that's a you problem.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 10 2025 at 00:32):But not to be too coy, the proximate concern is that divestment from Israel just means Israel buys weapons from other countries, the war goes on as before, and the West loses whatever influence it arguably currently has (which some have sincerely argued means the war gets worse); the distal concern is that a sufficiently successful divestment movement leads to Israel weakened to the point that it's destroyed.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 10 2025 at 00:38):The ethical part of the justification for opposition to Russia, that you shouldn't invade your neighbors just because you want their land, is widely and sincerely held by many in the West; the pragmatic justification, which is that the West doesn't like Russia and would like it to be weaker especially without having to fight a war directly, is also widely held. That's why there's a reasonably stable anti-Russian coalition in the West; I don't think the fact that ethical reasons are also deployed for rhetorical benefit affects the point much. The ethical justification for opposition to Israel, which is that you shouldn't use your neighbors' crimes against you as justification to execute an extremely unmerciful invasion against them, is probably held by a smaller proportion of both the population and the leadership of Western countries, while the pragmatic justification is basically nil, since as we seem to agree, there are no proposals for actually resolving the conflict that either Israel or any plausible representative of Palestine would accept under any plausible pattern of pressure in the foreseeable future. That's why (I claim) there's not a solid anti-Israel coalition thus far in Western countries.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 05:11):Here is a recent variant of a standard justification of destruction of cities in the Gaza Strip. This was written a few days ago by a popular Ukrainian-Israeli military analyst with IDF background, and has about 5 thousand :100: emojis attached. I translated it using Google Translate without any editing.
Rape, sexual violence and desecration of women's bodies were part of Hamas's deliberate tactics on and after October 7.
Details cites a new report by the Dina Lawyers Project.
The researchers have collected extensive evidence that Hamas systematically and massively used sexual violence as a weapon in its October 7 terrorist attack.
The report describes cases in which the bodies of young women, naked or semi-naked, were found tied to trees or poles.
Some of them had been shot in the genitals by terrorists.
In some cases, the victims were gang raped before being killed.
Eyewitnesses, including survivors hiding in the bushes, described cases of attempted rape even after death.
Some of the testimonies were received from 15 hostages, both male and female, freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
Some of them were sexually abused in captivity.
Only one of them, Amit Susana, has spoken publicly so far.
The lawyers said they were deeply disappointed by the reaction of the international community, in particular organizations like UN Women, which refrained from condemning the facts of sexual violence on October 7.
Much of the evidence was published in 2023-2024 in media investigations around the world.
The researchers note that the international standard of "believing the victims" was not met in this case.
"Women around the world chose to remain silent - this is a profound moral failure," said Professor Halperin-Kadari.
☝🏼Just another reminder of why what happened to Gaza happened, and cities like Rafah no longer exist.
Child killers, genocidaires, rapists and other scum have no right to life or a future.
As well as the people who supported this scum - whooping in the streets, screaming and bubbling in delight at the massacre, murder and kidnapping of children, and mass rape.
He who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind, he who sows the whirlwind at once will reap horror, nightmare and the fact that his cities will disappear from the face of the earth.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 05:27):This is some really crude manipulative stuff. Did you post it as evidence of "the sort of arguments people bring up" or as something that we should genuinely engage with?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 05:34):Does it matter if this stuff is crude or elegant? I do not have the luxury of exclusively dealing with humans as elegant as you. Plausibly I shall have to engage with stuff as crude as this many times in the foreseeable future.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 05:35):I do apologize for walking into your lounge in my dirty jackboots.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 10 2025 at 05:35):Yes, but it’s unclear what you want us to do with this. It’s not surprising that this kind of argumentation exists; are you asking for some kind of help with it?
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 05:46):This is all along the doctrine that the way to stop the war for good is to establish the events, reveal the justifications, and crush these justifications.
I have two possible angles of approach to this justification:
We can also maybe invert the argument.
Fabrizio Romano Genovese said:
Pretty sure it's quite widespread, tbh. There's also evidence of people picknicking on the hills to watch and cheer at the Gaza bombings, like people usually do with a football match. That ranks pretty high on my personal "list of absolutely fucked up things to do".
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
If the Israeli are bubbling in delight at a massacre, then they are no different from Palestinians, and the whole justification can be used to justify any future attacks on Israel. Maybe this is enough to have it retracted.
Overall, it would be great if we can find an argument capable to either either:
Kevin Carlson (Jul 10 2025 at 05:57):Well, I don’t think that people are convinced of things of this emotional intensity by arguments, let alone arguments from foreigners, so that strikes me as an entirely hopeless plan. I don’t either think the kind of jingoism you quoted is interacted with as at all as an argument. Certainly nobody was ever convinced by anything like that; it’s just meant to stir up pleasant vengeful emotions. I sincerely doubt that any war has ever been ended along the model you propose, of convincing its most passionate ideologues to change their minds. Convincing, much more narrowly, Binyamin Netanyahu that it is in his instrumental interest to stop destroying Gaza is of course much more plausible, and is the topic of ongoing conversations in Washington this week. I’m sure nobody here will add anything to the short term arguments on that front. It’s hard for me to see what you concretely and sincerely hope to accomplish, Ignat.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 06:05):I do not think this is a weak justification or no justification at all. Why is it certain to you that no one was ever convinced by anything like that? I think the opposite is true: most people (while plausibly not the most important people) are convinced by exactly something like that.
If you sit me at one side of a table, this writer at the other side of that table, and ask me to debate this justification with him before an audience of Israeli people, I shall have little to say. Three of the four kinds of motivation offered by Max Weber are on this writer's side!
Talking to crude people is one thing I do rather often, and persuading one or two of them is, maybe small, but concrete contribution I can make to lasting peace.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 06:32):You know I did not mean "crude" in opposition to "elegant", I meant it in the sense of "brazen". It is crude in its knowing dishonesty.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 06:37):It is meant to make responses "on the subject matter" impossible because one doesn't know whether to start from the falsehoods or from the arguments that have already been dispelled in the 5th century BC.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 06:39):It is usually better to just look in the author's timeline and invariably find them defending sex offenders or sharing women-hating content in the past.
Kevin Carlson (Jul 10 2025 at 07:15):Ignat Insarov said:
I do not think this is a weak justification or no justification at all. Why is it certain to you that no one was ever convinced by anything like that? I think the opposite is true: most people (while plausibly not the most important people) are convinced by exactly something like that.
If you sit me at one side of a table, this writer at the other side of that table, and ask me to debate this justification with him before an audience of Israeli people, I shall have little to say. Three of the four kinds of motivation offered by Max Weber are on this writer's side!
Talking to crude people is one thing I do rather often, and persuading one or two of them is, maybe small, but concrete contribution I can make to lasting peace.
Of course it’s no justification at all. On what possible principle do you kill a city full of civilians in retaliation for atrocities committed by their government? What civilization has ever seriously justified such crimes? Again, no, no one was ever convinced by brazen nonsense like this. People who cheer it on were already convinced long before. I agree, it would be hard to say anything to this man. Not nearly everyone is open to sincere conversation.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 07:33):(It is quite revealing how the first part of the post is framed as a criticism of the international organisations' response before it pivots to "...and that is why their cities will be destroyed". Rafah has been destroyed because UN Women did not condemn the crimes enough?)
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 07:35):I mean, Ignat, you are presenting this as something like "this is what real people on the street are talking about, you need to get out of the ivory tower" when details like this reveal that the author of the post is mainly concerned with the Western liberal elite response.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 07:43):Much like a lot of the “anti-woke” rhetoric I think this is a part of the elite trying to stir up hatred towards another part of the elite...
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 08:14):I have shown you two what I have to deal with. You think this is some kind of an exception, not worthy of attention. You may dismiss crude stuff like this if you find it to be beneath you. In my experience talking with crude people on the street, this is more or less in line with their way of thinking. Maybe we walk different streets.
@Amar Hadzihasanovic
You know I did not mean "crude" in opposition to "elegant", I meant it in the sense of "brazen". It is crude in its knowing dishonesty.
No, I thought you mean «crude» in opposition to «elegant». I think the writer believes what he says, if only because he has not examined his own thought patterns thoroughly enough to see them unravel.
It is meant to make responses "on the subject matter" impossible because one doesn't know whether to start from the falsehoods or from the arguments that have already been dispelled in the 5th century BC.
We can toss a coin and let it decide where to start.
It is usually better to just look in the author's timeline and invariably find them defending sex offenders or sharing women-hating content in the past.
I am not aware of this particular writer defending or sharing anything like what you suggest. Either way, my task is to crush the justification, not «cancel» the writer. On the street, you deal with folklore, not published references.
I mean, Ignat, you are presenting this as something like "this is what real people on the street are talking about, you need to get out of the ivory tower" when details like this reveal that the author of the post is mainly concerned with the Western liberal elite response.
This writer has an English language Twitter account for that. This is from a channel aimed at Ukrainian, Russian and Israeli audience.
Overall, your extrapolation of the personality of the author seems to me to go in the wrong direction. Is his writing not too crude to be of any use in swaying these elites you have in mind? I know little about any kind of elites, but in my imagination they generally require elegance in approach.
@Kevin Carlson
Of course it’s no justification at all.
Can we call it an attempt at justification and agree that it may be successfully used as justification by some people in some situations?
On what possible principle do you kill a city full of civilians in retaliation for atrocities committed by their government?
This is not how the writer presents the situation. He will easily counter this by quoting recent statistics of popular support of the events. Then he only needs to invoke the doctrine of aiding and abetting a crime, followed by an argument to justifiable collateral damage.
What civilization has ever seriously justified such crimes?
Many cities full of civilians were ruined. Seriously or not, these events were locally justified enough for significant effort to be invested. Tokyo on 9th of March 1945 comes to mind first because I recently read about it. On the traditional side, we always have Sodom and Gomorrah.
People who cheer it on were already convinced long before.
How do you know? Maybe you are right, but I have no reason to think this way. Plausibly, some were already convinced and some have become convinced only after reading.
I agree, it would be hard to say anything to this man. Not nearly everyone is open to sincere conversation.
We do not need to convince him (though would be good to). As I said, we can as well persuade the audience to ignore the writer. Of course, this is predicated on the belief that said audience is somewhat flexible.
Overall, your extrapolation of the personalities of the audience seems to me to go in the wrong direction. If we deem these people non-persuadable, then the writer can deem citizens of the Gaza Strip non-persuadable on much stronger evidence than some :100: emojis. I should rather not go this way.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 08:29):I do not actually think anyone of you should, or needs to, get out of the ivory tower. Someone should stay and hold that important strategic position. I do want for us to have an accurate map of the battlefield below, and I am trying to contribute the way I can.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 08:32):I disagree that that post belongs to "the battlefield below". I certainly can believe that many accept vengeance as a justification; what I do not believe at all is that anyone in "the battlefield below" cares about whether UN Women voiced a strong enough condemnation of sexual violence by Hamas, and that anyone who brings forward this sort of argument honestly cares about women's rights.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 08:34):I believe that the feigned concern for women's right and criticism of "liberal feminists" places this post firmly into an intra-elite struggle.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 08:37):Which is not to say that its audience is “elite”; I mean that this is the sort of thing that (perhaps in a slightly more refined version) you would find in columns of centre and right-wing newspapers in Western Europe and the US, trying to manipulate the readers' emotions towards hatred for intra-elite opponents.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 08:38):What this is telling the readers is, basically, “look at those liberal hypocrites who are supporting the Palestinians! They pretend to be all 'feminist' and 'pro-women's rights' but they cannot even shed a tear for Israeli victims of sexual violence!”
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 08:42):Anything that has actually to do with Israel and Gaza is an afterthought in this post: it is trying to control the narrative among foreigners.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 08:47):Of course, I will happily concede that I am wrong in my judgement if you find a post by the same author about the UN report on systematic sexual violence used by Israel.
In my anecdotal experience, actual serious women's rights orgs have taken extremely seriously both the reports on sexual violence used by Hamas on October 7, and this one, which is why I think the “lack of response” is a brazen lie and projections by those who actually cherry-pick reports of sexual violence.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 09:31):This writer's stated position is that he will never be saying anything bad about IDF while there is a war. He is not going to be fair — he has taken a side. We do not get to only deal with fair and impartial people. If I find myself in a debate, it will be my job to dig up this report you have linked and quote the relevant parts. (There are few if any parts that are relevant, my brief reading shows that mostly violence against men and destruction of property are covered.)
I do not think there is any intra-elite struggle of the kind you suggest happening in Ukraine or Russia (maybe in Israel). What I see is a jaded propagandist genuinely annoyed at people who are supposed to make his job easier but fail to do so. His characterization of the matter is true — until the Dinah report, there was only uncertainty and doubt, with Islamic Resistance Movement denying everything. Why go far, here is point 79 of the report you linked:
- Israeli officials have used sexual violence committed on Israeli women on 7 October to mobilize support for the ISF military operations in the Gaza Strip and continue the war, referring to Hamas as “a rapist regime” that has weaponized sexual violence as a means of terrorizing the Israeli population while “the international community remains silent”. This message has been amplified and circulated by the ISF in videos of detained Palestinian males allegedly confessing to acts of rape and other forms of sexual violence during the 7 October attacks (see section Sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence in detention, para. 123).
Turns out what Israeli officials used to mobilize support is true, who might have thought?
There is no way to tell for sure, but I feel the latter half of the writing is the more important for the writer. It is certainly more important for me because I care for persuading people right now at war to stop, and I have little awareness of any elites and any of their elite squabbles. Maybe it is good that we have two different readings. If I am biased one way and you are biased another way, together we can cover both sides of the issue!
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 10 2025 at 11:02):Since you insisted on dragging the discussion down to the level of engaging with bigotry again, @Ignat Insarov, to "crush" the justification requires only the observation that the people being starved, displaced, imprisoned, killed are not limited to the people responsible for the alleged crimes.
What do you think would be a proportionate response to Hamas' actions, Ignat? If you agree with this writer regarding the destruction of cities, I would kindly ask that you leave this Zulip and never return. If you do not, and you can muster some reason for your belief, then you are surely in a better position than any of us to argue as much with the person you quoted, at your leisure. In either case, Hamas' crimes are already widely condemned and the group sanctioned, and I would like to return attention to how the same level (at least) of condemnation can be applied to the government of Israel and the IDF.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 11:35):@Morgan Rogers (he/him) Your message has personal character, so allow me to answer privately.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 11:37):@Ignat Insarov I no longer believe at all that you are arguing in good faith. Suddenly bringing up confessions obtained from prisoners under coercion in torture camps as “matter of fact” is such a glaring contradiction with the “culture of doubt” you have been supposedly promoting that I cannot find a justification. So I think I'll also excuse myself from this particular conversation.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 11:41):@Amar Hadzihasanovic You misunderstand me. I am not bringing up confessions obtained from prisoners as «matter of fact». Please do not excuse yourself from this particular conversation. If I need to apologize to you about something, tell me what I am guilty of, and I shall apologize and never do that again. You are my friend and I am on my knees before you.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 11:49):I am under a lot of stress and nerve lately because of reading about the war in Israel for the better part of my days. Not to mention this conversation itself that may well end with my being «cancelled» by people I have only respect and devotion towards. I am barely keeping my sleep schedule afloat. I may have said something imprecise or confused. Please give me a second chance, Amar.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 11:52):I shall now go eat and watch a movie with my loved ones, and I pray when I return something will have changed to the better here.
Amar Hadzihasanovic (Jul 10 2025 at 12:02):I swear that I will not support or contribute to your "cancellation".
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jul 10 2025 at 12:18):Ignat Insarov said:
Even while I do not appreciate being singled out like this, I remain your friend @Morgan Rogers (he/him) (if there is such a thing as one way friendship). Hopefully you will come around some time later.
You are my friend and I am on my knees before you.
In this discussion you have presented yourself as someone who:
None of these are qualities or behaviours I look for in a friend.
If you would claim to have occasionally taken a "devil's advocate" position here, then you have been doing a bad job. In reporting rationalizations in favour of ongoing war crimes and demanded that everyone else refute them you make no effort to distance yourself from the position they represent, but get defensive ("Do not try to classify me like this.") when criticised for thus associating yourself with such a position. I could generously attribute this claimed misunderstanding of your character to a difference in conventions of rhetoric, but even granting that, your actions have consisted of dismissing my actions and proposed actions (primarily, protest) in favour of redirecting this discussion to engage with speech in support of Israel's crimes.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 15:08):@Morgan Rogers (he/him) I said that you are a fanatic, and I still find that you are a fanatic. Right now you are causing me fear, humiliation and moral suffering without holding back at all. This is a kind of a behaviour I call «fanatical», along with the waving of flags soaked in blood. You are making an enemy out of someone you could have simply asked to change their mind.
I do not find any of your points to be true or anywhere near true. The reader is, of course, free to make their own mind. I am not going to be doing the «virtue signalling» thing that I hear helps to prevent «cancellation», if that is what you expect.
Although, about one thing you are almost precisely right: I do believe that engaging with speech in support of Israel's actions is important. Every person persuaded that these actions are wrong (crimes or not, not important, so far as wrong) is a new ally on the side of peace. Your waving of flags I believe only hurts this issue.
As for protests as instruments of political influence, others said everything I could have said better than me.
I still think we should talk to people we disagree with as much as we can and try to understand them. I said that you are a fanatic, but I have never dismissed you. It was you who dismissed me (while quoting me out of context). I am glad you came around and started to talk to me again, although I wish it was not in such adversarial manner. I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish. Why are you attacking the person and not the argument?
I tried agreeing with you before, maybe that helped delay your aggression or maybe not. Let me try again. Many things are complicated in the war in Israel, but murdering Adnan Al-Bursh is simply not justifiable. Although I have said that before. I also think unhinged settlers of the sort Amir mentioned some time ago are opportunistic bandits and there is no justification for Israeli army and police covering them. These are simply cases of rot in the justice system of Israel.
Ignat Insarov (Jul 10 2025 at 15:46):I really do not think this conversation should be about me. I am not a political party of any importance. If anything, talking about me is off topic and a distraction.
Madeleine Birchfield (Jul 13 2025 at 17:55):The New York Times Magazine: How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power.
Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Jul 22 2025 at 08:32):Other medals are being returned, this time in protest for the (in)actions of the IMO board:
Why I Am Returning My IMO Medals
Ahmed AbbesComing from a Global South country, my participation in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) was instrumental in my development as a mathematician. It is therefore with a heavy heart that I have decided to return my two medals — a bronze (1988) and a silver (1989). I am doing so in response to the IMO leadership’s refusal to take any meaningful stance on the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and to its political maneuvers aimed at shielding Israel from accountability.
Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 58,500 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 17,900 children. It has destroyed all universities, targeted hospitals and schools, and imposed a famine. UN experts and international jurists have described the situation as genocidal.
In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the IMO Board reacted within weeks. It invoked the Force Majeure clause, proposed a resolution, and organized an electronic vote. The Jury voted to suspend Russia’s membership as a state, while allowing its students to compete as individuals.
In 2024, when similar demands were made regarding Israel, the same Board refused to act. Instead, it changed the regulations to prohibit any “political use” of the IMO. This change had a chilling effect. Delegation leaders reported an atmosphere of fear. Any mention of Gaza was discouraged.
In April 2025, over 700 mathematicians — including Fields medalists, IMO team leaders, and contestants — signed a petition calling for Israel’s suspension as a state, following the precedent of Russia. The petition also denounced the IMO Board’s efforts to prevent discussion.
In June 2025, a draft resolution was submitted to the Jury, supported by over 500 members of the mathematical community. It proposed to apply the same measure used in 2022: suspend Israel’s state membership while maintaining the participation rights of its students as individuals.
Faced with overwhelming support for the resolution, particularly from the global south, and no longer able to sustain its double standard, the IMO Board introduced a last-minute counter-resolution during the July 2025 Olympiad in Australia. It declared that “measures against IMO participating countries will only be taken for violations of IMO regulations,” and that “all current suspensions expire at the end of IMO 2025.” By doing so, the Board effectively asserted that internal IMO rules outweigh international law, including the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The counter-resolution was adopted.
In an effort to shield Israel from accountability for its crimes, the Board has thus resorted to lifting sanctions on Russia and effectively whitewashing Putin’s crimes in Ukraine.
IMO Board president Gregor Dolinar later confirmed that financial considerations played a role: “Sponsors do not want to deal with politically motivated organizations,” he told The Guardian. Dolinar claims to be apolitical, but there is no more political act than choosing to shield a state from accountability in the face of a genocide. By silencing debate, manipulating rules to block any response, and ensuring that Israel would be treated differently from Russia, he has engaged in the worst kind of politics — the politics of denial and complicity. In doing so, he has profoundly betrayed the principles the IMO claims to stand for.
This year, a student from Gaza who had qualified for the IMO was finally evacuated just days before the competition, under extremely difficult conditions, by the French consular services. We had hoped for an earlier evacuation that would have allowed him to participate in person, but that proved impossible. He reached Paris on a special pass, and I had the great honor of hosting him. He took part in the competition remotely from my house starting at 4:30 am — despite twenty months of war, and the immense emotional toll of having left his family in a war zone only days earlier. He earned an honorable mention, and would likely have done better had he been given the same conditions as the other students. Still, he was deeply happy to take part (after being excluded the year before), and is now looking forward to beginning his mathematical studies in one of the best schools in France.
Despite everything I’ve read about the horror in Gaza over the past twenty months, welcoming a child who had just escaped what is now effectively a concentration camp confronted me with a level of suffering that is almost impossible to bear. What keeps me going are his smiles in the morning, and his calm, persistent love of mathematics.
I do not wish to be associated with an institution that remains silent about his ordeal — and the ordeal of his people — simply because they are Palestinians. I return my medals accordingly.
Ahmed Abbes
CNRS & IHES
Eric Dolores (Aug 08 2025 at 03:18):So far Valerio Melani, Melih Ucer and Ahmed Abbes returned their IMO medals.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Aug 08 2025 at 13:36):I'm enjoying seeing all of the protests happening across Europe, even at a time when many governments are in recess (i.e. politicians are on holiday...) People in Gaza continue to be starved and the West Bank is being progressively invaded. While we may have to wait for concrete political reaction to these protests to arrive, it's not a bad time to contact your representatives (whether in government or in any institution you belong to): returning from holiday to an inbox full of emails demanding sanctions against Israel is bound to get them paying attention as soon as possible.