One minor, but important detail: The First Aliyah began in the 1880s, a decade before Herzl’s work. Land was purchased for settlements, and a few tens of thousands came, mostly from Eastern Europe. Within a couple decades the kibbutz system was established, small socialist communities where it was decided, unfortunately, to try to rely exclusively on Jewish labor and economy. This led to the first significant frictions between the settlers and the Palestinians, setting the stage for our situation today.

You seem to like your “truths”, but that just speaks to your deep and abiding faith. That’s religious talk. I prefer hard evidence, and I don’t trust internet anecdotes. The borders around Gaza have been set for decades, it isn’t the West Bank. These aren’t fresh settlements of right wing settlers that just moved in. There was no evidence of any sort of successful widescale resistance to the Oct 7th attack, which would not have been the case had the border kibbutz been camps of armed jailors, as you attempt to portray.

No more generalized than your sweeping assertion of material causes. Not everything is concrete, ultimately, humans do very stupid shit sometimes. Like I said, fundamentally illogical. Our decisions are based on the firing of neurons in our brains, which are not limited to solely material causes. If you weren’t faith-blinded, you could see this. It’s common sense, and very much an everyday occurrence.

The IDF is 400k strong by last estimate, who knows what it’s up to now. This is more of your faith speaking, a blind trust that without advanced weaponry, Israel somehow falls apart. It makes no sense in the cold light of day. 400k soldiers is a lot. You can man a border and enforce a famine with that many.

Wow. I think Israel’s early wars, where the entire Arab coalition was crushed without the aid of air power, speak to their history of infantry combat. Using advanced tools is a helpful, a convenience. Not a requirement.

Fine, allow me to clarify my question. Does Netanyahu’s government look like it is failing in its current objectives?

Huh, so you’re saying the destruction of Gaza was all part of the plan? An indication of weakness? That’s a pretty twisted path to victory, you’re just going to get them all killed. Unfortunately, far more genocides have succeeded through history than liberation battles. That’s the sad reality of the world we live in, it’s what we have to work with.

That’s cute, but again, your path to victory is a farce. Israel is not losing, except in your fantasies. It’s objectives move steadily closer and closer to success, hamas’ do not.

No, air power is not necessary to man a border or keep checkpoints closed, that’s silly. Okay, so what about the ground assaults the IDF has conducted into Gaza? Quite a large amount of footage came out from both hamas and IDF sources showing ground fighting. The IDF continued to advance. Israel has domestic manufacturing too, by the way, they produce their own tanks and small arms, drones are not difficult.

The ANC was driven underground, its leadership fled or arrested. That’s crushed. Yes, it persisted underground, and eventually entered peaceful negotiations, this is true, but alone it would have never accomplished these goals. Mandela’s imprisonment was a big deal in the west, despite governments labeling him as a terrorist, his story galvanized significant international support.

Cute that you accuse me of fairy tales while you’re the one spouting all the messaging about a clearly losing party that could only win if only the air planes went away. I’m afraid complexity is real, though. Humans are a mess, and do things for all manner of reasons, despite our faiths trying to oversimplify everything into some imaginary god or single philosophy of materialism.

You may have addressed it, but you’re simply nonsensical. All you have is “I’m offended, VC won, end story.” That’s cute, but a little simple.

Nitpicking pointless details. Fine, all fighters for the North Vietnamese were not the sole cause for victory. It takes two sides to end a war, a side has to accept its defeat. The US only accepted its defeat due to domestic factors, there were plenty of war hawks keen to keep going.

No, I am not the one looking at a sole cause. I acknowledged the efficacy of the guerilla campaign. The one looking at sole causes is you, pointing to that guerilla campaign. I am saying it alone is not enough, more factors were necessary.

Uh huh, shift all the blame to cover for yourself, very convenient. It’s pretty clear to see a political agenda instead of an honest intellectual conversation though. Your whole thrust is in defense of hamas. Mine is not in support of Israel’s genocide, though, just in an accurate understanding of what’s going on, no matter who it reflects poorly upon. The real propagandist here is pretty clearly you, you are attempting to positively participate in an ongoing military conflict, and help one of the two sides. I understand, but don’t throw stones when the real agent is yourself.

Kibbutzim near Gaza are armed occupation groups set up for the long term. Violence against those in kibbutzim are the only credible accusations of violence against “civilians” on Oct 7

That’s absurd. Many of the residents of these kibbutz were pro-Palestinian activists doing charity and solidarity work with pro-Palestinian organizations, especially around Gaza.

Calling my criticism of your materialism statement “an unjustified generalization” is amusing, but you’re the one that brought up material causes.

Does Israel look weak to you? Tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and settlers ready to move into Gaza is weak? Does Netanyahu look like he’s failing? This is just idiocy to defend your ideology, no matter how much it appears to fail. Gaza was still there, Apartheid certainly, but it was there. It’s not there anymore. That’s not a generalization, it’s a mammoth strategic blunder by hamas.

You think a blockade and targetting aid workers requires advanced munitions? This is ludicrous. It could be done with bullets, cheap drones. This is just wishful thinking.

You haven’t provided any sources, and its on the person making the claim to support their arguments. “Do your own research” is not a legitimate defense, which is basically what you’re trying to say.

Very conveniently omitting that the ANC was crushed and Mandela was imprisoned. Sure, there was some martyrdom there that inspired a broader global resistance, but it’s that global resistance that got the results. Sorry if this runs counter to your ideology, though, but it’s not “Absolutely incorrect.” Your faith in your ideology is not the sole arbiter of factuality in the world.

Sorry for disgusting you, but the world is a complicated place. Not to say that the VC does not deserve credit for an effective guerilla campaign, but without widespread American resistance to the war, it would have certainly continued. You may like to simplify things down to winners and losers when convenient for you, but its just messier than that. The whys are important, and effective fighting by the VC is not the sole “why”.

Yeeeaah, I’m not the one living in a fairy tale just because I look at all the causes for something, rather than simply focusing in on the ones that make me feel the best. If I am so incorrect, you are more than welcome to source your arguments, though I think we both know your sources are probably all political in nature instead of rigorously historic examinations of all the available evidence.

A concentration camp guard is a combatant. They are armed and keeping you there with violence, right? Responding with violence to violence is pretty widely regarded as acceptable, outside of pacifist movements. Your more controversial question is what we’re really talking about. I think your focus on the “material basis” for their actions is where this goes wrong, as it ignores their ideology, their psychology. This is why such resistance movements fail, humans are not fundamentally logical. Even a total undermining of their peace and security simply draws that overwhelming response you mentioned, as we are seeing evidence of right now. While the nonviolent methods were not working very well, they were working better than this. What works is what’s most important, that’s why I’m dictating right and wrong to others quest for freedom. Even a full cutoff of all foreign weapons to Israel would not resolve the famine.

Any actual sourcing for this primacy of violence in peaceful protest movements or King’s assassination being to preserve capitalism? It seems to me you are simply trying to give all the credit to the few, while ignoring the contributions of the many, because it suits you.

“Every revolution” sure is convenient, when 99% fail. The ANC did not “defeat” South Africa, it was international pressure that ended Apartheid.

On the note of government surveillance and oppression of the civil rights movement, I agree.

Regarding Vietnam, the US could have kept fighting far longer if there was will for it. The reason there was not will for it was domestic opposition.

Again, you’re simply giving all the credit to the violent while ignoring the hard work of the masses in these movements. This is disingenuous.

Well, yes, killing a noncombatant is bad, no question about it. There are other ways to accomplish the goal, from peaceful ways to simply killing actual combatants instead. I know you’re more of a revolutionary, so that kinda undermines your whole thing, but oh well.

Sure, but things like the riots, particularly around race, contributed to a great deal of backlash, and were not exactly the cause of things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, I’d challenge you to provide historical cases of a leader caving to that sort of violence while they still had their military and police forces to protect them.

Yes, martyrdom is common, assassination is unquestionably a thing that happens in history. If you’re saying his assassination was some conspiracy to preserve capitalism I’d like to see some actual evidence of that, though, from a respected historian.

Almost always fails, though? It’s relatively rarely attempted in any seriousness, but let’s see… Vietnam War, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights Act, Prohibition, and that’s just examples from my country. And yes, I know, they were not all exclusively perfectly peaceful. Majority peaceful, though, I don’t think you can logically just unilaterally declare all the positive results were due to the violent aspects, that makes no sense unless you can provide some evidence.

Not necessarily. If that were the case, then peaceful civil rights movements wouldn’t be effective. We can point to things like women’s right to vote to indicate that isn’t the case though. While they’re not as dramatic, peaceful reform movements have a reasonably high success rate, contrasted against all the uprisings and revolts which have been mercilessly crushed throughout history.

Protip: That oversharing is a misuse of a legitimate conversational tactic where you’re sort of trying to “prime the pump” and get a both-people-sharing thing going. The problem arises when people generally don’t want to get particularly deep, early into most sorts of interpersonal relationships. Trying to do this anyway can leave people with a negative impression.

To get around this, there are other conversational tools. A useful one is the innocuous question, something like “oh, what was that like?” or “huh, how’d that go?” after a simple “what you been up to?”, “how’s your day going?” or somesuch. Even if you don’t really care, manufacturing the curiosity to dig a little deeper into surface-level things keeps the conversation flowing while avoiding getting into any actually uncomfortable topics. It can often open up into an opportunity for humorous observations or interjections, maintaining that lighter tone and keeping people comfortable with surface-level banter.

Conversation is a bit of an art, though, so its useful to develop a wide range of tools in your conversational toolbox for deployment in a wide variety of individual circumstances. Banter-heavy tv shows like Firefly can provide helpful templates if your real life situation does not give you much practice opportunity, though getting out into the world and practicing on random people is always necessary.

Identify good and bad based on what people do. Not why they are doing it. Otherwise you’re simply agreeing that the ends justify the means.

Someone kills a noncombatant? Bad. Doesn’t matter why.

There’s a lot of technological possibilities. Also just things like food imports.

I don’t actually know what they got in exchange, but I’m guessing the N Koreans got the better end of the deal.

That is attention you paid to those tanks, resources consumed to deal with them.

(resources that could’ve otherwise hit an IFV full of guys)

You can’t electronically jam a tank. It also forces your opponents to pay a lot of attention to it, taking resources away from focusing on your squishy light infantry.

Musk has posted around 1,300 times on X this year about immigration and voter fraud.

Yeesh. And that’s just a couple topics. He knows he has other companies too, right?

I think this is less “sports fans destroy own city” and more “existing criminals take advantage of chaos to get away with crimes”.

Personally I believe there is some responsibility on the massed, drunk sports fans to beat up and deter looters from taking advantage of their celebrations.

I actually sort of like this idea. People would still figure it out, of course, but it’d shift people’s default attention from the person to the platform.

That’s a pretty slow “slicing through defenses” if you ask me…

“We are the last bit of a republic, of the free world,”

Worlds a big place, lady.

That was my experience as well. Though we would also refer to a banned customer as “86’d.”

Didn’t realize so much of France was so rural.

If someone is only active in rabble rousing and not in supporting any affirmative ideas or actions around solutions to problems, then I tend to have a bit of suspicion that we’re simply dealing with a rabble rouser, and not someone interested in any actual improvements. It doesn’t really matter, to a rabble rouser, what the rousing is towards, since chaos is the goal. Any nebulous direction works, so long as the push is towards chaos.

If your goal is to watch the world burn, you do need an excuse for that. You can’t just be like “well, I like the idea of collapse, suffering and death. don’t you? c’mon, it’ll be fun.”

Most leftists have actual policy discussions, proposals, specifics that they’d like to see implemented. They’ll actually applaud movement in a positive direction. Not all, though.