> “These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons, simultaneously exploding across marketplaces, on street corners, and in homes as daily life unfolds,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk told the Security Council last Friday. “Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals.”
Calling it just "warfare" greatly detracts from the terrorist nature of this scandal.
This was no different than any other terror attack. The person pushing the button had no visibility into who was holding the device and who would be injured in the blast radius. These sorts of attacks have always been possible, and most counties have not chosen to go this route due to the trickledown effect on society at large if they lose confidence in the safety of things they use every day,
I'm not at all worried that any of my electronics are about to explode. Same reason I'm not worried my wedding will be blown up by a drone strike - I don't let terrorist infiltrate my society. If my family gets blown up because my neighbor was storing a cruise missile in his living room - he's my enemy. Not the person that blew them up.
This didn't happen only in living rooms... this was among the civilian and non-involved populace. It happened outside their homes, inside restaurants, inside malls.
So, if someone sets off a bomb in a mall...to kill a terrorist... it's not a terrorist act?
And do these people really have the POWER to not let terrorist infiltrate their society?
That's exactly it, it could have been sitting on a coffee table with kids playing around it. Terrorists bad, governments stooping down to the same level is also bad.
If the person blowing them up takes out the entire city block that happens to include my family, then the person blowing them up is also my enemy. Your family dies as collateral damage and your reaction is "enh, they did what was necessary"? What if your wedding is blown up by drone strike because of some analyst's mistake, or choice to err on the side of "probably terrorist"?
I'm sure there's more checks and verifications and signoffs than just "Bob says go!" I'm also sure that such processes are still very fallible [0], as demonstrated by any number of friendly fire incidents over the last few decades [1], or the London Metro Police shooting a Brazilian electrician on the train [2], or the IDF shooting three Israeli hostages trying to surrender [3]. Some mistakes, some bad decisions, some practices allowed that hadn't gone wrong until now... if my innocent family is dead because of that, I'm definitely not going to excuse them because someone else started the fight. And my willingness to allow for accidents in the fog of war is going to shrink every time such accidents are repeated, or revealed to be policy rather than mistake, or just an unwillingness to do anything to avoid them.
From the Zionist playbook to term any opposition to their occupation terrorism, and excuse collateral damage. Consistency further demands you support Trump who wanted to penalize families for the actions of individuals. Sorry, collective punishment is a war crime even if your bloodlust supports that.
I don't who is responsible for this amazing surgical attack.
If someone thinks he can fight terrorist hiding missile under people homes without any coletral damage he probably never suffer terrorist attacks
What visibility do you have when you drop a bomb on a building?
When you fire a gun in combat at a target?
People who have no idea how warfare actually works have unrealistic expectations about this.
The trickle-down effect is intentional and important. Terrorists are using off the shelf technology to kill civilians and communicate. They should know that they can be hit anywhere. This is an organization that killed hundreds of Americans and fires at civilians ±25 rockets per day.
3. Value of military objective compared to expected collateral damage
In other words, everything. This attack is one of the most targeted and surgical attacks of this caliber in the history of warfare. Seeing comments like this on HN really kills my faith in humanity.
That's not what terrorism is. People seem to have forgotten in war you're allowed to kill anyone on the other side that is engaging in war against you. There aren't any times outs or safe spaces.
The method of delivery is too imprecise to guarantee only (or even mostly) the combatants are targeted. A targeting system that was "blind" by design (intention) was almost guaranteed to harm civilians inside civilian buildings, and it did. Terror is a big component of terrorism and the goal of terrorizing civilian population with random explosions and death around them was definitely achieved. In effect this was a slightly more targeted version of bombing a hospital because some military targets are there. Also from the quote above:
> “Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals.”
> Don't associate with terrorists. Do not shelter terrorists. Do not eat dinner with terrorists. Don't get car rides from terrorists.
That's impossible to achieve in practice as you probably knew before spending time to write this. And it's also not a valid defense for any attacker since being next to the wrong person on the street isn't proof or even suspicion of association.
Make sure your kid checks everyone's terrorist credentials when playing in the park. And the Uber driver. And the pizza delivery guy. And the supermarket clerk. And the rando just walking past you.
> That's impossible to achieve in practice as you probably knew before spending time to write this ...
True. Well, not impossible, but no guarantees. But the stipulation is that civilians lose their protection if they are close or inside military targets ...
> And it's also not a valid defense for any attacker since being next to the wrong person on the street ...
True. But civilians lose protection if they are close to or inside military targets.
The onus is on the militaries ... and terrorists ... to distance themselves and their infrastructure from civilians. Western militaries do this, and not doing it, even when there are no victims, is a warcrime. Terrorists, as a matter of policy, don't do this. That's one of the things that makes them so problematic.
The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
(this matters because a lot of stuff, like humanitarian flights/convoys/red cross personnel/... are given "the same protection as hospitals")
Article 28
The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
Article 29
The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred.
...
In other words: human shields may be attacked if they are near a valid military target. If anything happens to them, the responsibility for this rests solely with the government they live under. (and thus NOT the attacking party)
Pretty much every legal expert I've seen thinks the targeting of the attack is perfectly legal. The primary legal issues will be whether or not it legally constitutes a "booby trap", which may be illegal.
IMO, it's a categorical error to say that putting an explosive in a secure pager purchased in bulk order by an internationally recognized terrorist militia is equivalent to rigging a door to explode when anyone (no matter who) opens it. Yes, the actual wording of the law doesn't do a great job of delineating the two situations, but let's not pretend there's not a difference.
When the law was written, the distinction between "civilian use" and "military use" was far far more clear than it is today. Militaries around the world use off the shelf commercial equipment today. A "commercial radio issued to military personnel" doesn't feel like it should be given a pass as being "civilian" because the type of object it is can be purchased by anyone. In practice it was specifically handed out as a military-use item to members of a military organization.
I don't know if people are picking up the context shift here.
It's true the UN is unanimously anti Israel for most of its existence. This isn't a change.
And of course Israel ignores the UN, also not a change.
The Lebanese/Hezbollah better wise up. The Israelis outgun them by inconceivable degrees, and like the Palestinians, were only saved from the usual historical result of annihilation by the politics of oil for the last 75 years.
However:
1) the USA is oil independent with shale oil, and has no functional interest in the region anymore
2) the Saudis, who no longer have the us military as de facto mercenaries on demand and longtime funder of anti Israel groups, need a military power against their biggest threats (Iran and turkey), and are now allies with Israel.
3) yes saudi oil is still important to China,Japan, and Europe, but EVs and alternative energy are poised to make oil a strategically insignificant product in the coming decades, one that can be easily sourced by major militaries without caring about the muddle east.
Anyway, so people arguing about who is the terrorist and who is the valid nation state are arguing from the context of an international trade system that gives a damn about the region being stable.
Israel knows the new rules: nobody cares, just like nobody cares about the Tigers war and nobody cares about Armenia Azerbaijan and whatever other hotspots around the world. Hezbollah and Palestinians need to wake up to this reality, even though the sad fact is that they won't as long as Iranian funds are the only thing that keeps the lights on for them.
Most of the world cares. Like they did when South Africa was merrily apartheid-ing. Only the American establishment doesn’t care, but hopefully that will change with progressives hitting a critical mass.
The targets included non-combatants intentionally. Was trying to hijack a plane and hit the Pentagon not a terrorist attack then since the Pentagon is full of military members?
The attack on the Pentagon was illegal because it happened without an act of war and was unprovoked. This is an organization that fires 25 missiles on civilians every day. It's enabled by all of its people, also the desk clerks who enable this. If you're working for a terrorist organization that fires on civilians and killed hundreds of Americans then you should expect some payback.
Your last sentence could literally be pulled from some terrorist "Why we attacked you" screed if you just swapped out "Americans" for some other group.
That's how the terrorists phrase it so yes. But that's taking them at their words rather than taking them at their actions.
The biggest difference is: in this case the terrorists get the payback. The people who are actually guilty/related to that. Organizations like Hezbollah target civilians and fire blindly at entire regions.
There are quite a lot of other differences, I suggest avoiding false equivalencies of this sort.
It's not a false equivalence. Both Hezbollah and Israel have been firing blindly at entire regions and knowingly hitting civilians behind the claim that there is a military target intended somewhere in there. The difference may be ideological, geopolitical, etc. but it is not that one side follows the rules and the other breaks them.
Again, repeating terrorist claims on face value. You choose to believe people who tried to deny killing 12 children in a soccer stadium. People who helped Assad stay in power. People who killed countless Lebanese people, their own fing people... Over Israel. Why?
If there was a shred of actual *real* evidence of Israel intentionally targeting civilians it would be in US courts right now trying to enforce that law. The fact is this is all online propaganda where facts don't actually matter and proof isn't necessary... Speaks volumes...
> The difference may be ideological, geopolitical, etc. but it is not that one side follows the rules and the other breaks them.
If your ideology is global Sharia law then sure... If you hate the West then sure. It's just ideology. Their ideology is that Israel should be wiped out. The ideology of Israel is that it's already there and should remain there. I don't think calling this "different ideologies" is a legitimate stance.
Setting off bombs frequently results in non-combatant casualties no matter where it happens. Hezbollah has no "military bases" so I don't know what you expect.
The existence of non-combatant casualties doesn't make the strike illegal.
This attack has nothing to do with terrorism. I've grown tired of seeing this claim again and again, and wrote everything up here if you're interested.
This would be a lot easier if Israel really was a vassal. Then we could decree that they halt the offensive and settle with the Palestinians. As it is, this ally has their own goals which don’t always align with the goals of the US.
That and the inherent risk of fucking with a supply chain. I saw a lot of people covering for Mossad saying they were sure it was going to Hezbollah so it's all fine.
I guess people trust and simp for intelligence agencies now or maybe there was a lot of operatives in that thread... who knows.
To be fair, the supply chain angle was probably the main point of the attack- it’s a psychological flex in the highest order, you can’t even trust your equipment anymore.
That's generally what sets terrorism apart from "regular" crime. Of course, if you're a civilian anywhere near one of these pager-bombs when were triggered it's going to have the same effect.
The blast radius of trust is much larger though. If we don't have a reliable way of stopping similar attacks in the future then it's pretty bad for everyone, not only for Hezbollah.
If the explosives are inside the battery how were they actually triggered?
Some reports suggest they were triggered by a message sent to the pagers over the pager network. But batteries generally are only connected to the power and ground lines of the device they are powering. If the pager firmware was modified to watch for receiving a special trigger how would the firmware communicate that to the explosives inside the battery?
It would seem there would have to be some extra connection from the mainboard to the battery.
I suppose there could be wireless communication between the mainboard and something inside the battery. I doubt a pager would feature Bluetooth, since you generally don't need headphones with a pager, but often devices use chipsets that include capabilities the device doesn't use. E.g., you might use an ESP32 module to give your device WiFi capabilities and completely ignore that ESP32 also can do Bluetooth. If the chipset has Bluetooth or some other radio communication support not used by the pager firmware, the bomb maker could have put a receiver for that in the battery with the explosive and hacked the firmware to use that.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe a firmware hack could communicate to something inside the battery over the power connection. There are probably things the firmware can do that affects power use, like changing the display brightness. It could do something like rapidly switch between maximum and minimum brightness in a particular pattern. A trigger inside the battery could watch power use and look for fluctuations that match that pattern.
For safety, rapid charging, or other reasons, some batteries include a thermal probe and a contact for that.
So it wouldn't be hard for the replacement batteries to have yet another contact and this one wired to a part of the circuit board perhaps intended to be used only for testing during manufacturing but going hot thanks to modded firmware that matches a certain phone number or something. It only takes a few bytes of extra instructions to match a string and set a pin high/low on a micro-controller.
Alternatively using a microcontroller inside that battery that is signaled through existing contacts would take even less wiring. The signaling code to activate the microcontroller would be a bit more complex, but since you don't care what happens afterwards you can still keep it small.
Also see bunnie's recent blog post about how such an attack is not only not particularly sophisticated, but surprisingly affordable to do [1], which is scary considering how hard it is to detect (discussion here [2])
If it's impossible to detect you could use these to bomb planes, or anything else. An undetectable explosive capable of killing and wounding a crowd of people with no reagent, just a trigger? Doesn't pass the smell test.
To further my knowledge - did Hamas coordinate with Hezbollah for Oct 7? Or did they start launching rockets out of solidarity and general support? How many rockets = 1 pager? Is Israels response proportional? Maybe half the number of pagers should have exploded?
Hezbollah has fired 20,000 rockets since 2000. They started firing rockets in the 1980s. Hezbollah's stated aim in their 1985 charter is the Destruction of Israel and to help the Ayatollah of Iran create a Muslim Caliphate and kill the non-Muslims.
So yes, killing them seems appropriate. If you don't want your electronics exploding, don't attack the Jews.
The population there has been the victims of genocides for the sake of freeing area for Israel since more than half a century before Israel was even created.
At some point somebody will have to deescalate, but Israel has had the upper hand for half a century by now, and never did anything but attack. It's really hard to complain about the underdogs attacking too.
> The population there has been the victims of genocides for the sake of freeing area for Israel since more than half a century before Israel was even created.
Were the massacres of native jewish populations also done for the sake of freeing area for Israel?
UPDATE: Since I cannot post new comments, I'll reply here.
> But as a point in fact group you are referring to, being by and large composed of descendants of recent migrations from other regions (with no direct ancestry in Palestine for 1000+ years) -- is better described as "long-term resident" rather than "native".
This is false. I'm talking about Jewish communities which have continuously lived in the region for 2 thousand years, like community in Hebron. They were much more numerous just a few hundred years before. For example, back in 17th century, about half of the population of Gaza was Jewish. You can take a guess about what happened to that half.
Statements like "Jews didn't live in Palestine for 2 thousand years", just as "Jews came from Europe" are false narratives distributed for propaganda purposes.
This makes no sense. Nobody told Israel they had to be in the desert, their barbaric and outdated religion told them to go there. Britain gave them the opportunity to establish Israel anywhere they wanted and it had to be "the holy land".
Ok, can we just accept that yes, they were told to go there?
Because they were clearly offered the exact place, in no ambiguous terms, and got a clear message to go somewhere else, not very different from the one they are sending people right now.
The situation is completely fucked-up from the beginning. They are to blame for doubling down on fucking it up more, but not for creating it.
> Nobody told Israel they had to be in the desert, their barbaric and outdated religion told them to go there.
First of all, most of the new jewish settlements in the beginning of 20th centuries were in the coastal swamps, not in the desert. Second — how about a cultural and practical connection to a region which had a significant Jewish community continuously for the last few thousand years with close ties to the diaspora.
And finally — most of Israeli Jews come from the Middle East. Why would they go into a completely different region instead of their homeland?
> Britain gave them the opportunity to establish Israel anywhere they wanted
This is false. Britan gave false promises and then actively worked against attempts to establish the country. They turn the blind eye to massacres of the jews, and actually turned back jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Founders of Israel had to go to literal war with British authorities to achieve their gains.
Why would they go into a completely different region instead of their homeland?
Because they weren't invited by the folks living in the place they wished to settle (who in fact had been living there continuously, by and large, and in every metric were much more "native").
More specifically: the new migrants were more or less welcomed by the locals, from the Mamluk period onwards -- but once they started arriving in highly disproportionate numbers, post-1880, and signaling an intention not to assimilate, and pretending that they had a supremacist "right" to settle there based on what the region's temporary colonial occupier (the British) and the scribblings of some weird Austro-Hungarian ideologue told them -- that's when things started to get "complicated", and they began to find themselves not so welcome in their desired place of residence. As any group should naturally expect if they tried to settle somewhere where they could not trace reasonably close ancestry, and in very large numbers.
Also "homeland" is nonsense of course as applies to post-1880 migrants. We need to have some kind of a reasonable definition for what constitutes an "ancestral right" to live somewhere. The simple fact the component of ancestry that this group does have with historic Palestine lies with groups that were expelled or otherwise left in successive waves, ending the Crusades (but for most of them, back to the Roman/Byzantine eras), and which mixed significantly with other groups (far removed from the region in their origins) along the way.
I'm not saying this completely precludes any claim of "ancestral right"; it's a thorny question -- one which applies to countless groups all over the world, each equally deserving of consideration. We need to be human and forgiving and all, and in principle there should be a safe place for all of us in this world.
But not a supremacist right. And it is precisely this claim of a supremacist right to settle in their desired place of residence (fully trouncing the rights of people who in fact been living their continuously for millenia -- give or take migrations within successive empires); along with the successive wavs of violence employed to enforce this "claim" -- which lay the grounds for the post-1917 conflict that we are now stuck with.
> they weren't invited by the folks living in the place they wished to settle
This is false for several reasons. Places that jewish settlers have chosen have mostly been uninhabited and the land bought by willing absentee landlords. There's plenty of arabic towns across Judea and Samaria, and in general farther from the coast. Can you find a single one on the coast from Jaffo to Haifa? May be you think that there's no way that plentiful rainfall on flat plains would cause malaria swamps to appear? And that all documentation about said malaria swamps, and numerous deaths from malaria is false, too?
> the new migrants were more or less welcomed by the locals, from the Mamluk period onwards
That's false. Native Jewish population across the whole Middle East have always been a second-class citizen persecuted minority in the Muslim Arab countries, as all other conquered people — if they had the fortune to survive and save their identity at all.
Jews have been slaughtered and persecuted across the whole of Arab world, just as in Palestine, for centuries. So were other ethnical and religious groups. Can you find a single one which was not?
Why, do you think, in modern Israel it's exactly the mizrahim, jews from Muslim Arab countries, are one of the mast hawkish, anti-Arab groups in Israel? If you take a look at the peace activists who wave Palestinian flags in Tel Aviv, they're almost universally ashkenazi. It's because their families remember. Now, it's important to notice that I'm not making a value judgement here. The fact that mizrahim have a grudge to hold doesn't mean that it's necessarily right; all I'm saying that they do have a huge grudge.
Also, please don't think that my description of Arab Muslim world shows prejudice. Almost all other nations have always worked the same way. Arab Muslims, especially at the time, were not dissimilar from Chinese or
English. Humans become more tolerant and humane as their level of living increases, but for most of history, humans across the whole world were equally horrible to one another.
> once they started arriving in highly disproportionate numbers, post-1880, and signaling an intention not to assimilate
I'm confused here. Is it supposed to be something bad? Are you implying that conserving a national and religious identity is something that immigrants should not be doing?
> pretending that they had a supremacist "right" to settle there based on what the region's temporary colonial occupier (the British)
No, I'm pretty sure the only reason they had the right to settle is because they followed the legal procedures to move to another country, buy property or land and develop it. Religion has nothing to do with it. Religion was why the _wanted_ do it.
You see, _right_ to do something and _desire_ to do something are different things. First, you get a _desire_. Then, you go about fulfilling it. If you break laws or human morality, then you don't have a right to it. Otherwise, you have.
Nobody of local Arab population was forcefully expelled in late 1880 onwards. How do you even imagine this could have happened? Do you think that a small group of a persecuted ethnic minority can actually conquer some part of a small village, kill and expel a few local families, all in the middle of a hostile ethno-religious majority, and just... Survive? You make a point elsewhere that immigrants which are viewed as "others" are rarely tolerated. Do you think that immigrants who behave like that are more tolerated? Or, may be, you think that in 1880, around the time of Dreifus case in France an similar persecution across Europe, somehow landed with superior European arms and battleships, guns blazing?
There were no armed Jews there until Jews started to get killed.
What happened in 1880 onwards is, Jews started buying land from absentee Ottoman landlords, and, more importantly, local Arab leaders. Big part of local population was convicted not to register their property rights as to avoid Ottoman taxation by said Arab leaders — who then cheated their people and sold that land.
Some people reply that there's no way that these Arab leaders were corrupt like that. But personally, I fail to see why these people think that said Arab leaders would be less corrupt than modern politicians.
> the scribblings of some weird Austro-Hungarian ideologue told them
All other points in your comment at least have arguments behind then. Good, bad, but it's a legitimate discussion. However, this right here is use of diminishing language and a personal attack without any justification.
Why "scribblings"? Why "weird"? Why the accent on citizenship? Would his figure be more acceptable if he didn't have a huge beard? If he did speeches instead of publications? If he was an Ottoman citizen? Why?
> that's when things started to get "complicated", and they began to find themselves not so welcome in their desired place of residence
No. As I already said, almost any other ethnical and religious groups have found themselves just as "not so welcome" in Muslim Arab world. The only reason Jews got special attention is because they were actually successful in their resistance to this world.
Let's recall what was happening in latter half of 19th and first half of 20th century. Muslims were fighting with Hindus in India/Pakistan. Muslim Turks were fighting with Greek Christians. Muslims were fighting with Christians in Lebanon. Christians were fighting against Muslim persecution in Serbia. Arabs were fighting with Ottomans in Egypt. Turk Muslims have been slaughtering Christian Armenians. Turks, Arabs, Alawites and Armenians were fighting in Syria. Assyrian Muslims were fighting with Kurds. Ottoman Muslims were fighting against Kurds. Druze Muslims were fighting against Ottoman Turks. There's probably even more conflicts that I don't know about.
Just to be clear, all of these conflicts are abhorrent. I think that there were horrible atrocities on all sides. But do you honestly think that in this horrible world, where different people have constantly been massacring one another Jews were "welcomed" by Arab Muslims living around?
> As any group should naturally expect if they tried to settle somewhere where they could not trace reasonably close ancestry, and in very large numbers.
That's a fair description of reality. However, this argument is not about "what is", but also about "what ought to be" (yes, I like Hume). Are you implying that this, resistance to outsiders, is a good thing? Something that we should see in a bright light?
> Also "homeland" is nonsense of course as applies to post-1880 migrants. We need to have some kind of a reasonable definition for what constitutes an "ancestral right" to live somewhere. The simple fact the component of ancestry that this group does have with historic Palestine lies with groups that were expelled or otherwise left in successive waves, ending the Crusades (but for most of them, back to the Roman/Byzantine eras), and which mixed significantly with other groups (far removed from the region in their origins) along the way.
I'm afraid that once again, this paragraph confuses "desire" with "right". Why Jews wanted to settle there doesn't matter. I have good arguments on this point as well, but this can't make Jews right or wrong. The only thing that matters if they had the right to do this or not. There's nothing in this, or following text that touches on the matter, so it's irrelevant.
>That's false. Native Jewish population across the whole Middle East have always been a second-class citizen persecuted minority in the Muslim Arab countries, as all other conquered people — if they had the fortune to survive and save their identity at all.
>Jews have been slaughtered and persecuted across the whole of Arab world, just as in Palestine, for centuries. So were other ethnical and religious groups. Can you find a single one which was not?
I think this needs to be viewed in context. At various points in time in Antiquity, Jews were enslaved, subjected to poll taxes, massacred, and denied the right to full citizenship even after emancipation. After Theodosius enacted the Edict of Thessalonica, Jews lost the right to build synagogues and were barred from holding many professions. Pogroms became common and Jews were segregated; this was the story well into the 9th century in Byzantine territories. Meanwhile, in western Europe, this is the period where the blood libel originates. Quite a lot of Jews actually migrated into Muslim territories as paying the jizya was considered a sight better than what they got in Christian ones.
The jizya itself is not some unique artifact of Islamic polity anyway, poll taxes, temple taxes in India, and tithes have all variously been levied by rulers of specific sects against constituents who adhered to other ones. The same is true for sectarian hierarchy, which continued well into the age of exploration, when, for example, the Portuguese levied the Xenddi against Muslims and Hindus alike in its territories in India.
Not to suggest that there isn't widespread antisemitism in the Muslim world, but I do think characterizing it as unique and unprecedented when it emerges in the medieval Levant is at least anachronistic if not orientalist.
This is weird — I agree with you completely. I'm sorry if my characterisation came off as something unique and unprecedented, this is really not my intent here. On the contrary, my point is that this is exactly what different ethnical and religious groups have been doing to each other for centuries, and treatment that Jews got in the Muslim Arab world was nothing out of the ordinary.
That's exactly why I wrote that
> Also, please don't think that my description of Arab Muslim world shows prejudice. Almost all other nations have always worked the same way. Arab Muslims, especially at the time, were not dissimilar from Chinese or English. Humans become more tolerant and humane as their level of living increases, but for most of history, humans across the whole world were equally horrible to one another.
I do too, thus far. But you've opened up a lot of doors, and I don't think we'll have time to go through all of them. For now I'll just pick the one that seems most important: Herzl.
First, how'd you land on the beard angle? That's quite a supposition you're making there. I have no problem at all with the Assyrian beard! I think it's kind of cool, actually, and we can hardly imagine him without it, now can we.
Nor do I have any negative feelings about the guy as a person -- and more broadly, I don't see my characterization as ad-hominem. The reference to his nationality was simply to showcase the obvious fact that whatever one may make of his ideas, they were in both substance and origin utterly alien to the actual people living in the place he wanted to set up his utopian colony in. (We'll get to that later).
As for his "scribblings" -- his prose was known to be manic at times, and even in highly sympathetic sources one encounters that description.
As for "weird"? He definitely had some peculiar ideas. His various epithets (Jiden, Mäuschel) for Jews who didn't buy into his program seem to stand out quite prominently. More significant were the strains in his thinking seemed to be manifestations of internalized antisemitism: such as his salient view that Jews needed to overcome the traits that triggered the antisemites' negative perceptions of them -- ironically by adopting idealized Germanic traits. As revealed in random passages such as these:
As early as 1885, Herzl wrote in a telegram to his parents: “Yesterday at grand soirée at Treitel’s. Some thirty or forty ugly little Jews and Jewesses. No consoling sight.” (Bein et al. 1983–1996 I: 212; Beller 1991: 12, n. 22) A little later, when he was staying in Paris as a correspondent of the Vienna journal Die Neue Freie Presse, Herzl visited a local synagogue and noted in his diary: “I had a look at the Parisian Jews and indeed I noticed similarities in names; audacious and unfortunate faces, furtive and cunning eyes.” (See, e.g. Kornberg 1999: 16–17.) Moreover, after Herzl’s visit to the Roman ghetto, he wrote: “They do not realize that they are creatures of the ghetto and most of our people are just like them.” (See, e.g. Wistrich 1995: 15.)
But these are side tangents. What was really weird about the guy was his central thesis.
First and foremost -- independent of whether he had genuinely racist, paternalistic otherwise disdainful attitudes about the Arab population (there are indications that he did, but they are also comparatively muted and ancillary in his writings); or whether he intended or essentially knew his grand project would entail a significant degree of violence and coercion against them (for which there's also good evidence, but also conflicting indications) -- it is beyond question that he was deeply indifferent to and profoundly disinterested in this community as a people. At the end of the day, they were a problem to be managed and assuaged - objects and a matter of circumstance in his utopia, but certainly not partners, or even central characters or protagonists.
It is equally clear, in my view, that the forceful expropriation and disenfranchisement that did ultimately occur were not a matter of historical happenstance, but inherently "baked into" his ideology. And that, as acknowledged by the early Zionists themselves, his project would never be realized without a major component of such coercion, and the corresponding negation of their collective rights of self-determination in their homeland.
So that I find weird. Also, and even more deeply: the idea the Jewish people people of Europe could attain a form of liberation for themselves, not just by abrogating the rights of the vast majority of the indigenous population in Palestine -- but by in effect denying their very identity and legitimacy as a people. And not just liberation, but a form of "moral and spiritual perfection", thus forming a society that would become "a light unto the nations".
The lands that zionists have bought have mostly been uninhabited and barely inhabitable at the time. And most of arabs living there migrated from Egypt and Jordan in 18th and 19th century themselves, just like zionists did not a long time later. Arabs who call themselves "palestinians" now didn't have any identity linked to the land. In fact, to this day, the third most popular arab last name in the region is "Al Masri", which literally means "The Egyptian". The word "palestinian" used to mean "the jew" up until 1960s, when Soviets engineered first palestinian terror groups. When zionists declared Israel's independence in 1948, they were actually on the fence about country's name, because both "Israel" and "Palestine" were synonymous with Jewish homeland in everybody's minds. "Israel" was the ancient name and "Palestine" the modern, zionist one.
The only arab group which was really indeginous to the land were bedouins, and they thrive in Israel. The only terrorists linked to bedouin communities (like the one who recently killed people in Jaffa) have been incorporated in the palestinian communities (the one in Jaffa by marriage, if I'm not mistaken).
So no, the whole zionist project didn't have any conflicts with any indigenous people already living on the land. They did, however, have conflicts with people who have settled the land not that long before, and had adopted a totalitarian ideology of subjugating all other ethnic and religious groups.
And most of arabs living there migrated from Egypt and Jordan in 18th and 19th century themselves, just like zionists did not a long time later. Arabs who call themselves "palestinians" now didn't have any identity linked to the land.
The first statement is simply false. As a result, the second is equally vacuous.
While migrations in the late Ottoman period were significant, they were not nearly large enough to offset the "core" (pre-1781) population, which had been continually resident for over a thousand years. Going by all the known data we have (for example the tables in the page below) the influx due to migrations could not have amounted to a net increase of more than about 20 percent. The vast bulk of the net population increase during the 19th century was due to improvements in living conditions and infant morality rates, not migration.
The fact that Palestinian national identity is largely a 20th-century creation (as with modern Israeli nationalism) is irrelevant to the core issue, "connection to the land". The central fact here is that all nationalisms are modern inventions, and up until the late 19th century, most people self-identified in terms different from the names of the nation states their descendants live in today.
What's sad here is that instead of trying to say something positive about Herzl's ideas, or the Jewish diaspora's claim of a connection to the land -- all you can think to do is attempt to water-down and delegitimize the largely (by all the data we have) indigenous population's history, and their connection to that land.
Amazing how quickly history was rewritten. Israel didn't have to go to "literal war" with Britain, because if they would have, they'd have lost immediately. They just went to war against their new neighbors and handily genocided them. Israel started as a terrorist state and remains one to this day.
> They just went to war against their new neighbors
Arabs have been massacring Jews living in the region for hundreds of years. Arabs started widespread pogroms in 20s and 30s. Arabs have rejected partition plans. Arab states invaded Israel after it declared independence.
Saying that Israel "went to war against their new neighbours" is a statement I have very hard time responding to without breaking the rules of Hacker News. I feel sorry for amount of misinformation someone must have been fed to sincerely believe something like this.
The massacres were deplorable, full stop, regardless of the ancestry or geographic origin of the victims (or the motives of the perpetrators).
But as a point in fact the group you are referring to, being by and large composed of descendants of recent migrations from other regions (with no direct ancestry in Palestine for 1000+ years, and with significant admixture with other groups) -- is better described as "long-term resident" rather than "native".
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Per the commenter's update:
Sorry, but what you're saying is false. It's true that there've always been some Jews living continuously in Palestine, but for centuries they were essentially a bottleneck community, and over time (especially after the Alhambra Decree in 1492, but starting well before then) their numbers began to be supplanted by migrants largely from Spain and from other parts of the Ottoman Empire, as well as from other countries in Europe.
It's just a demographic and historical fact. The statements
"Jews didn't live in Palestine for 2 thousand years" and "Jews came from Europe" (which no one said here) are both straw men in that regard. I won't assign motives to you for what you're saying, but it's ahistorical in any case. Most likely you are simply mistaken, as a result of the "Jews have lived continuously in Palestine" line being repeated over, and over, and over again. It's partially true of course, but only part of a much bigger story.
> It's true that there've always been some Jews living continuously in Palestine, but for centuries they were essentially a bottleneck community, and over time (especially after the Alhambra Decree in 1492, but starting well before then) their numbers began to be supplanted by migrants largely from Spain and from other parts of the Ottoman Empire, as well as from other countries in Europe.
Sounds like it was community of Theseus then? My own family have left Spain after Alhambra Decree, and some members have chosen to move to Palestine then. AFAIK, they become part of the local Jewish community, they didn't supplant anyone. Anyway, I fail to see how the fact that Jews have migrated between different communities, including to and from Palestine, invalidates my point.
In terms of massacres and "freeing the land" for anyone -- it of course has no relevance. Nothing ever explains or contextualizes a massacre, in my view.
The point was simply a demographic observation -- that the Old Yishuv were composed largely of descendants of waves of post 13th-century migrants from Jewish communities in other regions (such as your own family from what you say). Meaning in turn their lineage is from communities that had been dispersed from the region for easily 1000+ years. So "native" is not quite the right term for them. Meanwhile the truly "native" contingent among them (meaning descendant from continually resident communities) was comparatively small.
"Supplanted" was poor word choice -- it wasn't meant in the sense of 'replacing' or pushing out. I meant simply, numerically superseded by. Should have said simply that.
It's very cool that you can trace your history back that far, BTW.
I'll try to get to your longer post still, if I can.
Calling it just "warfare" greatly detracts from the terrorist nature of this scandal.