Just answer one of the two sides. Yes of course it's imperfect, and neither "side" is monolithic. Hopefully and probably it's not a zero sum game. But channel your inner tribalism and pick one of the boxes. Just want to gague public opinion in a crude way.
Related questions
@BTE Yeah, and who is most responsible for the deaths of Palestinian civilians? Who was most responsible for the death of German and Japanese civilians in WWII?
@BTE Would you rather be in Arab in Israel, or in the West Bank or Gaza or in Jordan? Israeli Arabs have the GDP/capita of Greece and many political freedoms including the right to vote.
@nathanwei First of all, I think it is very wrong to compare Hamas to the Germans and Japanese. The power dynamics are not even remotely close to the same. Hamas is an organization that was created by people living under occupation, with no political rights or self-determination for 75 years. The Germans and Japanese were expansionist empires that had total control over the groups they persecuted and attempted to exterminate. In fact, the ghettos of Europe where the Jews were forced to live before being taken to concentration camps were not very different from Gaza.
Are you implying that a one state solution is the best choice the Palestinians have? You say they have the right to vote, but only ethnic Jews can become new citizens of Israel so do you mean those that already live in Israel can vote? Do they have proportional representation? There are 10 million Jews in Israel and 2.5 million Arabs, do the Arabs hold 20 percent of seats in the Knesset?
I would obviously rather live in Jordan.
@BTE I would much rather be an Arab in Israel than an Arab in Jordan. Arabs in Israel have Greek-level GDP/capita, whereas Jordanians have WB/Gaza-level.
It's not true that only ethnic Jews can become citizens of Israel; there is a naturalization process, and people married to Jews and so on can.
I think that the best choice Palestinians have is two things.
Gaza: there should either be an independent state in Gaza or Gaza should join Egypt. Or you can set up some kind of strange governed backed by some Persian Gulf states.
West Bank: again, a strange government, independence, joining Israel, joining Jordan, being split between Israel and Jordan. An independent state with the settlers having the option of becoming citizens or moving to Israel works. Partition between Israel and Jordan could work. Jordan or the Saudis just taking it over could work.
If Gaza and WB are both independent states for a couple decades, maybe they can merge, but I don't see the point of making a non-contiguous state. Pakistan and Bangladesh are an example of why it's not a good idea.
@BTE A one state solution would work fine if Israel had the capacity to assimilate millions of Palestinians. After two generations where Jewish TFR exceeds Arab TFR maybe. You would need a bunch of military rule and re-education first, as happened with Israeli Arabs. They were under military rule from 1948 to 1966.
@nathanwei The "choice" you said the Palestinians face is actually not there's to make. That is what I mean by self-determination. All they can do is hope the Israelis and Americans make a good choice for them and don't then go back on it later as they have previously. I think the US should offer all Palestinians guaranteed refugee protections and a path to US citizenship because that is what real opportunity looks like. Fuck Greek-level GDP. Who the fuck wants to live in Greece??
@BTE Well, who wants to live in Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, or Gaza? Or an independent Palestinian state? Or some kind of dysfunctional binational Israel-Palestine?
You know, if the US did offer the Palestinians US citizenship, many would take it, and you could have a one-state solution with one Jewish and democratic state called Israel. Still I don't think most Americans would like for there to be millions of Palestinians in the US.
Hanania and Caplan called for it, but not others.
@nathanwei Bingo, only the US has the capacity to assimilate a group of that size. They should be welcomed with open arms.
@BTE Interesting solution. Personally, I would like to see China and Russia try first. ;)
And I would like to see the US taking a small number of Palestinians first as a trial run. There are many things that could happen, and the American people would need to back it.
@nathanwei I don't really give a shit what racist American assholes think. Palestinians are not the barbarians Netanyahu claims them to be.
@nathanwei China definitely does not allow immigrants. Only temporary workers. Though they do have plenty of empty homes they could live in. I don't think the Palestinians are gonna dig the CCP though....
@BTE Hanania and Caplan have been saying things like that, and Bryan Caplan has an interesting piece on this. But, given the track record of large-scale non-selective migration from the Muslim Middle East to Europe (and from Somalia to the US), I'm not so optimistic. Arab Americans do fine but there is a lot of selection bias there (for instance, most of them are Christian).
To be fair, China is still much poorer than Greece and Israeli Arabs (like half as rich as those groups). How about having mass immigration from China before or at least jointly with mass immigration from Gaza (and the West Bank)? Would be nice if we got 100 million of China's best and brightest.
@nathanwei Lots of Chinese people wanted to immigrate to the US or other western countries a few decades ago (such as my parents), but nowadays, you don't see that much. Though what am I to say, I'm planning to go overseas for university.
@ShakedKoplewitz As someone who made the poll and voted Israel, I don't think that voting Palestine makes you a terrorist sympathizer. A lot of people are more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel but don't like Hamas.
@nathanwei I'm glad to hear that some people aren't on the rape/torture/murder side but only on the side of people who enable and support it.
@ShakedKoplewitz
I agree, Hamas are terrorists, Israel are not terrorists. This is simply because terrorism is defined cleverly to not include bad actions done by states that have power, As such the invasion of Iraq was not terrorism. Vietnam. Etc. Are Russia considered terrorists for invading Ukraine? Even Germany invading Poland.
So let's toss the word terrorism to one side. What Hamas did is appalling of course. Let's talk about appalling.
Israel's appalling record on human rights abuse, apartheid, lack of justice, occupation, expulsion etc is not included in the definition.
Israel is smart, powerful and media savvy. They slowly take over the land, imprison people, and kill them in the West bank and control the narrative. Notice how Israel had some hostages to release. They had banked some prior to 7/10 (and then some)! Taken many more since from the West Bank. What Hamas did is appalling. What Israel has been doing for 75 years is also appalling, but at a bigger scale.
The recent bombardment of Gaza, not allowing humanitarian aid is clearly genocide. A war of some kind is necessary, but this is salting the earth.
@ShakedKoplewitz I've been pleasantly surprised to see around two-thirds support for Israel 😆 Idk what the true norm is among westerners, but in my circles I've just been inundated on all sides by "from the river to the sea," usually from people who have something between a tweet-level and a headline-level understanding of the issue. Coming here and seeing this poll set my mind at ease a bit.
@Undox I mean that seems to be almost the entire point of contention, doesn't it. I'd simply disagree. I'm definitely sympathetic to loads of factors on the Palestinian side. I definitely have my share of criticism for Israel. As the question points out, it's not a monolith––it's a complex situation and certainly can't be boiled down to two 'sides'.
Many people might find it somewhat easier, at least more concrete, to form an opinion when confronted with each fact 'on the ground' so to speak. But I find the world's perception is, at large, cringingly ignorant. We have very active and powerful voices on the world stage who have almost zero knowledge of the situation. Their words are clumsy, ill-informed, and misleading. Their ideas cascade down into the public and boom, suddenly you have entire populations genuinely cheering rape and slaughter. You have entire populations who reject all spirit of truthful fact-checking and rely instead on conspiracy of hilarious proportions. You see true antisemites emerge. You see mainstream thinkers liking and retweeting things which they would never dream of saying directly, at least were it not for the landscape of our time (twitter, echo chambers, the anti-western fad).
Were westerners, certainly Americans, at some point inclined to support Israel through sheer blind ignorance/prejudice/propagandistic old world thinking? Sure. My opinion is that we've pendulumed much too far the other way now. Israel is much more closely aligned with the sort of future humanity should and must desire to build. Palestine (inasmuch as it's even a cohesive entity, which is admittedly a multifaceted part of the problem) is not.
It's certainly possible you have a deeper understanding of the matter than I do. Saying I don't have 'any understanding' is wild, though. It's something I actually do happen to know a fair bit about. I would say anyone engaged with these matters ought to have the mental flexibility to understand the valid reasons for identifying with the other side. If you delineate so absolutely, it seems more likely you're the one lacking understanding.
Or you just don't know what people mean when they say they sympathize with Israel, which is another potential problem. Everyday I'm surrounded by people who claim they sympathize with Palestine––but I know how their views align and I understand their reasons for doing so. I could ask them a series of questions about the matter and predict how they'd respond to every one. Most of them are completely clueless, some are focused on the Palestinian movement more broadly and don't think October 7th changes much, and some genuinely believe October 7th was a blessing.
@JesseTate Yes, it is a question that cannot be answered, but creates interesting conversation.
> Israel is much more closely aligned with the sort of future humanity should and must desire to build. Palestine (inasmuch as it's even a cohesive entity, which is admittedly a multifaceted part of the problem) is not.
I don't think this is true. It might be true for Jewish Israelis in Israel in general, who keep their head down and don't object to the occupation (if you do object you could get arrested, etc. some orthodox Jews have for example). But for the rest of people in Gaza, Occupied West Bank and Arab Israelis, they are well below second class. It is an Apartheid situation, it is pretty clear. Apartheid is not the sort of humanity you want.
This is a world where simply hitting this very URL on their phone can get a Palestinian arrested and jailed for an indeterminant amount of time. Kids get locked up (notice the hostage swaps - swap implies Israel keeps hostages, yes they do, it is brutal)
What about Hamas? They are terrible. Just as bad in intent. Nowhere near as bad in reality (Number of kills, # hostages, # rapes, # tortures) due to them having less money, resources, arms. If they did have more money they would be worse of course. I am against terrorism and war crimes - both sides use it though. Also Palestine is not Hamas, most of the population are kids. Kids who have gone through trauma they had no say in.
The question here is about which side to be more sympathetic to and doesn't mention Hamas specifically, so on the balance of power, David vs. Goliath, I am more sympathetic towards David here. Israel has been building settlements, kicking Palestinians off their land, arresting them if they try to defend and banning essential goods to Gaza for years. It is like we have an unfortunate live view of the colonial actions of countries in the past. The settlements are an example of Israel not defending itself, but just trying to win a slow war of attrition. If you kill 1000 people slowly enough, it ain't news. (Putting aside the mainstream reporting biases).
Being a facts-oriented site, just look at the number displaced and killed on each side of every battle/war, look at the default state of life for Palestinians during more peaceful times, and look at which side gets very large sums of money from the US, a country that struggles with enough problems that it could use that money for itself.
There are ignorant people, but you could have a room full of a billion ignorant people, that doesn't really affect this poll, unless you are saying the "more sympathy for Palestine" voters are from this group of ignorant people!?
> Saying I don't have 'any understanding' is wild, though.
Didn't mean to imply that. What I said wasn't meant as an ad-hominem statement, rather a general belief of mine.
@Undox many of these facts are false (people don't get arrested for having links on their phone; Israeli peace activists go on massive protests frequently and are fine. To the degree that protests sometimes cause collisions with police, it does happen but less than e.g. BLM protests in New York did, and is a fairly common thing worldwide for sufficiently rowdy protests). The blockade of Gaza was caused because they started launching rockets at Israelu cities and refused to stop, and Israel has a legitimate interest in preventing them getting arms (note that Egypt, which is much more sympathetic to the Palestinian than the Israeli side in general, also enforced the blockade).
You also pointed out the hostage swap. Note that the "kids" involved are typically seventeen years olds convicted of attempted murder of civilians, being exchanged for civilians who have never done anything wrong.
You also mentioned "bombarding of Gaza and not allowing aid in". The first part is false in the implications, in that Israel had targeted strikes against terrorist targets after going to great lengths to evacuate civilians, not the sort of carpet bombing you were implying (and definitely not any kind of "genocide"). The second part is flat-out false- Israel not only allows in large amounts of aid but still provides Gaza with water from its own supplies (which I've never heard of any other military force doing for an enemy city).
So I do think much of the Palestinian -sympathetic vote is ignorant or has false beliefs like the ones I pointed out above. It's true that the Palestinians have it bad. It's also true that they refuse to make peace or take steps to improve their own situation, which is the main (not quite the only, but the main) reason for their having it bad.
@Undox Hey I appreciate the thoughtful response. Much of what you say makes sense to me. We probably disagree on some overarching geopolitical and historical stuff, like:
- what colonialism exactly was
- what sort of circumstances surrounded the creation of Israel
- how relevant that might or might not be to the situation today
- what we mean by 'sympathetic'
- the idea that total body count or power imbalance somehow speaks to the ethical character of a combatant, and its right to exercise its power. I think we seriously need to dispel this idea and all its children. I don't understand it. We want to align with a better future, a common standard of humanism, a coherent set of international laws . . . . we need to pursue an objective and sustainable standard. One of these groups is building towards this future, one is not. Suppose we symnpathize Palestine because of total body count, or total human suffering, or any other such metric . . . . as soon as you flip the numbers (not the actions, intent, or ethics of war) your sympathies immediately flip as well. This is incoherent, isn't it? We should rather support an actual objective standard of ethics, adherence to international law, etc. This will reflect not only the moral standing of the individual actors but the sort of world they will build, if given power.
Which leads to this point: we also probably disagree on a large number of "facts on the ground" with regards to the sort of civilization Israelis (even Arabs, Druze, etc) would build, in contrast to that which Palestinians would build. You've probably heard this before, but I think we often strip Palestinians too much of their agency, and we attribute to Israel or the US a level of corrupting/divisive influence which ought to be attributed more evenly (and even predominantly) to other players like Iran, the Arab states, Islamism, bad leadership, corruption, indoctrination of the children, and so on.
Other facts on the ground we disagree on are probably the frequency and nature of incarceration of Palestinians (esp 'children') . . . . the rights and standard of living Arab Israelis enjoy, the staggering amount of aid given Palestine each year, and more.
The Palestinians have some serious issues with leadership. It irritates me how often conservatives or pro-Israel types crow about Oslo or Camp David as if they were the best possible option that could have been offered Palestine. Not so. And I do think the Israeli leadership has a habit of approaching with continuously insubstantial 'gestures' or 'signals' of goodwill while doing things behind the scenes that continue to preclude a resolution.
Still, I think the Palestinians have done that more, and with greater foolishness/delusion, and in pursuit of greater division. Arafat was hellbent on growing his own power and sacrificed what was by far the best chance at peace we've seen. I really don't understand the way people seem to love him. He may have caused the most harm to the most people a single individual could cause in the last several decades. No, that's an exaggeration; but he'd be on the list.
Taba in particular could have possibly gone somewhere.
Again just for emphasis: Palestinians REALLY need to focus on leadership. The fractious and violent political landscape over there is a sign, to me, of the underlying culture. It is a culture of disunity, shortsightedness, and dogmatic rage. Some of these things are understandable, but it's unsustainable and makes them to me the far more culpable party. Israel is fractious in its own way, and some far-right groups have an unfortunate degree of power, but it's still the preferrable of the two.
It's late and I'll respond more in the morning but just wanted to note briefly on the last point: I can see you didn't mean to imply someone individually would understand nothing, but meant it rather as a general belief. You think if someone saw the situation as you see it––or if I just generally had better info on it––that person would struggle to choose Israel. Makes sense. I guess I just disagree. I didn't mean to say a billion ignorant people change the facts; I meant it as an example of a case in which people can either understand truly nothing, or can simply have a different framing/focus due to whatever forces have shaped them. This latter group is capable of understanding quite a bit, but will simply come to a different conclusion. We should be able to put ourselves in this group's shoes if we want to bridge the gap.
EDIT: I ended up writing lots of stuff so no longer need to say I'll write more in the morning haha
@ShakedKoplewitz Israel doesn’t need to provide water, it needs to allow Gaza to be free to collect and process it’s own water. Putting themselves in control this way isn’t being nice. It is having the upper hand.
@Undox I also think Hamas are far far worse in reality. In this case once again intent feeds directly into reality. It's not the number of the kills or hostages that matters; it's the nature. Rape is by nature bad, slaughter is by nature bad, torture is probably by nature bad . . . . and yeah, Israel probably tortures more than it should. But once again Israel is being held to a standard which probably no other country has ever attained, and which Palestine (not to mention Hamas) isn't even expected to maintain. We already KNOW they don't want to maintain it. We already know they make no effort. They trumpet this proudly from their rooftops. Why would we consider that a more sympathetic cause simply because they happen to be losing in the power struggle?
@Undox Gaza is free to collect its own water. Israel goes above and beyond, because Gaza doesn't manage it on their own. Because they dug up their own water purification system for tubes to launch rockets at Israeli civilians.
I should clarify that I don't think Israel approaches these problems optimally, but it really is a hard problem with no good solutions for Israel, they're not doing any of this just for lol let's be evil.