Conflict between Palestine and Israel escalates

[Satinavian]

Christian dictatorships off the top of my head include Russia, Uganda, Belarus and Eritrea.

Sorry, but no.

Russia and Belarus are certainly dictatorships but they are very worldly. After 70 years of suppression the people there are not particularly religious anymore. The portion of practising orthodox Christians in Russia is between 2 and 10% of the population. Even counting non practitioners, Christians are actually a minority in the country.
And Putin and his cronies that all made career dureing the end the cold war are certainly not devote followers of any religions. With the exception of Kadirov who is a pretty invested in Sufism.

No matter how much the current Russian orthodox church tries to align itself with the regime in the hope of recovering the influence it had during the tsardom, this is not actually happening.

 

[Silvanus]

That is true. I also talked about current events that warrant criticism of Hamas. That is not contradictory.

And moaned about people focusing more time on the force that has perpetrated the most war crimes.

 

[Worgen]

 

[Silvanus]

Sorry, but no.

Russia and Belarus are certainly dictatorships but they are very worldly. After 70 years of suppression the people there are not particularly religious anymore. The portion of practising orthodox Christians in Russia is between 2 and 10% of the population. Even counting non practitioners, Christians are actually a minority in the country.
And Putin and his cronies that all made career dureing the end the cold war are certainly not devote followers of any religions. With the exception of Kadirov who is a pretty invested in Sufism.

No matter how much the current Russian orthodox church tries to align itself with the regime in the hope of recovering the influence it had during the tsardom, this is not actually happening.

The nature of a religious dictatorship does not require a majority of its population to be heavily invested or often practising that religion. They often exist without that ingredient-- both Christian and Islamic dictatorships.

Putin's regime is Christian-nationalist. Russian Orthodox Christianity provides justifications it often uses for the repression of minorities within Russia and aggression towards outside states. The Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kirill provides a key pillar of Putin's authority and enthusiastically spreads his propaganda.

 

[SilentPony]

Not be too surprised if they would.

OTOH, it does seem that more and more people in the West oppose Israeli's actions, just not the governments representing those people.

Genocides in the past were a lot easier to overlook because no one had camera phones and the internet wasn't a thing. Once Israel starts firebombing Gaza and the footage starts coming out, you're gonna see international support dry up quickly.

 

[Silvanus]

Genocides in the past were a lot easier to overlook because no one had camera phones and the internet wasn't a thing. Once Israel starts firebombing Gaza and the footage starts coming out, you're gonna see international support dry up quickly.

Camera phones and Internet were widespread the last time, and international support-- particularly in the US, and among the political class at least-- remained solid.

 

[Satinavian]

Genocides in the past were a lot easier to overlook because no one had camera phones and the internet wasn't a thing. Once Israel starts firebombing Gaza and the footage starts coming out, you're gonna see international support dry up quickly.

Not sure about that. The world has managed to look away for decades and there is no power anywhere to challenge Israel. The Arab states don't want to anymore. In the West the boykott movement has died down.

 

[Absent]

"“This is what happens when we have leading voices like Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world. What happened in Ukraine was an unprovoked invasion by Russia, what happened this weekend was an unprovoked invasion by Hamas into Israel” - Mike Pence

Unprovoked invasion by Hamas ?

 

[SilentPony]

Camera phones and Internet were widespread the last time, and international support-- particularly in the US, and among the political class at least-- remained solid.

What last time are you referring to? I was thinking like the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide or the Trail of Tears. Like full scale, industrial, Government supported mass exterminations.

 

[Silvanus]

Death toll rises to more than 1,100 after surprise Hamas attack on Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu warns of ‘long and difficult war’ as security cabinet signs off on wide-ranging authorisation for military action

www.theguardian.com

Some of the border towns have been retaken, so casualty numbers have risen as more are discovered.

As it stands, 600 Israeli (including 44 soldiers) and 370 Gazan have died.

What last time are you referring to? I was thinking like the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide or the Trail of Tears. Like full scale, industrial, Government supported mass exterminations.

I wasn't referring to a past genocide, but to a past campaign of disproportionate and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, in 2021.

 

[SilentPony]

Death toll rises to more than 1,100 after surprise Hamas attack on Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu warns of ‘long and difficult war’ as security cabinet signs off on wide-ranging authorisation for military action

www.theguardian.com

Some of the border towns have been retaken, so casualty numbers have risen as more are discovered.

As it stands, 600 Israeli (including 44 soldiers) and 370 Gazan have died.



I wasn't referring to a past genocide, but to a past campaign of disproportionate and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, in 2021.

Well I'm referring to genocides. It'll be hard for the international community to just stand aside and let the IDF just obliterate the entirety of Gaza. Just spending the next two years on constant air raids and building camps to exterminate the 2 million people in Gaza.

 

[Silvanus]

Well I'm referring to genocides. It'll be hard for the international community to just stand aside and let the IDF just obliterate the entirety of Gaza. Just spending the next two years on constant air raids and building camps to exterminate the 2 million people in Gaza.

That is why people like Netanyahu play the long game-- a three-part blockade of food and medicine; slow and grinding theft of land; and periodic spates of murder and displacement, rather than a concerted extermination campaign.

The targeted end point is the same. The timescale is longer so that it flies under the radar of the International community.

 

[Gergar12]

Not sure about that. The world has managed to look away for decades and there is no power anywhere to challenge Israel. The Arab states don't want to anymore. In the West the boykott movement has died down.

It’s still everywhere on US college campuses. You know the future leaders of America.

 

[meiam]

Well I'm referring to genocides. It'll be hard for the international community to just stand aside and let the IDF just obliterate the entirety of Gaza. Just spending the next two years on constant air raids and building camps to exterminate the 2 million people in Gaza.

Not really, if tomorrow Thanos snapped his finger and everyone in Palestine vanished it would make most rich nation live a lot easier without really making any of them (ie us) worse off, so they might just look away for a few minutes and just let it happen, especially after what's happening now. Hamas burned a lot of Palestinian goodwill and most rich nation have other things to worry about (Ukraine, China, climate change), this conflict is old, has no good solution and no profitable outcome for anyone invovled. Even a lot of the arab league member are getting feed up with this unending conflict and have more pressing matter to deal with. I could maybe see some sort of outcome where Lebanon and Egypt (who are both suffering economic hardship at the moment) are persuaded//payed to take all the Palestinian off of Israel hands.

As far as "why are Muslim always the terrorist?", because area that are predominantly muslim are at the bottom of the economic ladder at the moment and human worse tendency don't really have any other outlet than terrorism.

 

[SilentPony]

That is why people like Netanyahu play the long game-- a three-part blockade of food and medicine; slow and grinding theft of land; and periodic spates of murder and displacement, rather than a concerted extermination campaign.

The targeted end point is the same. The timescale is longer so that it flies under the radar of the International community.

But there's a good chance Netanyahu, needing to distract from the massive intelligence failure on his Government's part, will ratchet up the right-wing militant Zionism rhetoric and start being more open with an accelerated timeline.

 

[Hawki]

You said we "don't need to worry" about the others. So yes, you sort of did say they aren't issues.

Semantics, thy name is Silvanus.

Not that you haven't pulled this stuff before, but to repeat myself (again), Christian and Jewish terrorism exist. They are absolutely dwarfed by Islamic terrorism on a global scale. This is a fact. You can engage in as much whatboutism as you want, you can shed crocodile tears over Koran burnings as much as you want, it doesn't change the facts on the ground.

You said we needn't worry about X because Y is worse. I applied the same reasoning to point out how silly it is.

Difference being that those examples were terrorism, climate change isn't. I can find something bigger than climate change to worry about (the sun will swallow Earth in 1 billion years, the heat death of the universe will be in 100 trillion years), and I can find something smaller than Islamic terrorism to worry about (scientology). In the specific context of religious terrorism (y'know, the actual subject), there's more to worry about from some religions than others.

Goalposts. You didn't say theocratic dictatorships. I said Christian dictatorships, and you said you were unaware of them. Those are four examples.

For what its worth, all four employ elements of Christian nationalism, particularly for domestic repression of minorities and justifying aggression outside. Remember Medvedev screaming about how Ukraine is run by "Satanists" and that the invasion is required to protect Christian values from Western liberalism? It's not a coincidence.

The difference being that no-one in the Russian government seriously believes that Ukranians are Nazis or Satanists, and are using religion as an excuse. Russia isn't a Christian dictatorship, it's a dictatorship that's using Christianity to justify its actions. The same cannot be said for places like Iran, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, which are explicitly Islamic states, no ifs, no buts.

 

[Silvanus]

Semantics, thy name is Silvanus.

Not that you haven't pulled this stuff before, but to repeat myself (again), Christian and Jewish terrorism exist. They are absolutely dwarfed by Islamic terrorism on a global scale. This is a fact. You can engage in as much whatboutism as you want, you can shed crocodile tears over Koran burnings as much as you want, it doesn't change the facts on the ground.

Not really semantics-- you essentially said they're not problems. It's pretty relevant and valid to point out that... they definitely are. Big ones. The fact that other, bigger problems exist is irrelevant to that.

The difference being that no-one in the Russian government seriously believes that Ukranians are Nazis or Satanists, and are using religion as an excuse. Russia isn't a Christian dictatorship, it's a dictatorship that's using Christianity to justify its actions. The same cannot be said for places like Iran, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, which are explicitly Islamic states, no ifs, no buts.

Now we're quibbling about how deeply the authorities buy their own excuses...? No, this is getting totally arbitrary.

 

[Hawki]

Not really semantics-- you essentially said they're not problems. It's pretty relevant and valid to point out that... they definitely are. Big ones. The fact that other, bigger problems exist is irrelevant to that.

On a global scale, Christian and Jewish terrorism are not problems. Islamic terrorism is. You're entitled to think otherwise, that doesn't make it true.

Now we're quibbling about how deeply the authorities buy their own excuses...? No, this is getting totally arbitrary.

If you can't tell the difference between a religious state and a state that uses religion as an excuse, if you see Iran and Russia as absolutely equivalent when it comes to religion and how it's involved in the state apparatus, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Absent]

On a global scale, Christian and Jewish terrorism are not problems. Islamic terrorism is. You're entitled to think otherwise, that doesn't make it true.



If you can't tell the difference between a religious state and a state that uses religion as an excuse, if you see Iran and Russia as absolutely equivalent when it comes to religion and how it's involved in the state apparatus, I don't know what to tell you.

The muslim world doesn't do the separation of "state" and "religion" that the western world has operated (or claims to) a few centuries ago. Which means that religious currents and political identities and often family lineages are intertwined. Which means that religions are less theological issues than political and clanic flags. They are expressions of identity. They encompass culture. In other words, you underestimate how much expressions of religiosity are the clothing of geopolitical and political issues, you read them through a western "either/or" that does not apply. Which is as naive as imagining that the Irish troubles are about whether that bread is truly jesus' flesh or not. Also you underestimate how fractured "islam" is on its own, that is how much religious identities are competing within Islam (as, again, lineage/family identities or political trends), which makes the "islam" category pointless and dangerous in a global context (the stigmatizing way it associates and merges Islamic currents, to fuel a convenient xenophobic islamophobia).

But also, "bwaah islam" is easier to parse. So I guess I'm wasting my time.

 

[Hawki]

The muslim world doesn't do the separation of "state" and "religion" that the western world has operated (or claims to) a few centuries ago. Which means that religious currents and political identities and often family lineages are intertwined. Which means that religions are less theological issues than political and clanic flags. They are expressions of identity. They encompass culture. In other words, you underestimate how much expressions of religiosity are the clothing of geopolitical and political issues, you read them through a western "either/or" that does not apply.

You realize that all of this is an inditement, right?

Which is as naive as imagining that the Irish troubles are about whether that bread is truly jesus' flesh or not.

Except no-one in Ireland really uses religion as an excuse, do they? Yes, there's the Catholic/Protestant divide, and like all strife religion makes things worse, but in the here and now, border troubles aren't of a religious nature. The same cannot be said for Islamic terrorism.

Also you underestimate how fractured "islam" is on its own, that is how much religious identities are competing within Islam (as, again, lineage/family identities or political trends), which makes the "islam" category pointless and dangerous in a global context (the stigmatizing way it associates and merges Islamic currents, to fuel a convenient xenophobic islamophobia).

Actually, Islam is one of the more unified religions. Certainly compared to Christianity. It's why you have references to an "Islamic world." It's why you can get people in one hemisphere burning flags in the street because of events in another hemisphere. There's the Sunni/Shia divide, but again, minor compared to some other sects.

But also, "bwaah islam" is easier to parse. So I guess I'm wasting my time.

Strawmen gonna strawmen.