Wonder why this made the frontpage when other political articles die.
Has the rules around political non technical articles changed? Can we get an Epstein thread for the frontpage sometime this week?
replies(6):
Has the rules around political non technical articles changed? Can we get an Epstein thread for the frontpage sometime this week?
Previously, it’s been activists and claims that this might be genocide. I haven’t read the report yet. But I will, and I intend to leave my mind open as to whether this raises the profile of this war in my mind relative to domestic issues.
Wait, you know people who were killed by Hamas? You can’t even pretend to be impartial.
The point is that, as someone with limited stakes in this war and limited exposure to its history until recently, unbiased sources have been hard to come by. The entire definition of genocide has been politicised. That isn't a criticism of anyone doing it--language is a powerful tool, and it's fair game to try and bend definitions to one's advantage. But all that makes piercing the veil on whether this is the horribleness of war being selectively cited, or a selectively horrible war, tough.
This report cuts through that. The evidence is compelling, albeit less primary than I'd have hoped. The writing is clear and impartial. (Though again, a lot of secondary sourcing.) It doesn't seek to answer who is at fault for what is, essentially, an intractable multigenerational conflict (even before we involve proxies). It just seeks to simply answer a question, and in my opinion, having now skimmed (but not deeply contemplated) it, it does.
The balance of evidence suggests Israel is prosecuting a genocide against the people of Palestine. That creates legitimacy for escalating a regional conflict (one among money, I may add, and nowhere close to the deadliest) into an international peacekeeping operation.
Unfortunately, all of this rests on a system of international law that basically all the great powers of this generation (China, then Russia, and now America and India) have undermined.
> international peacekeeping operation
Or just like those international peacekeepers who filmed Hezbollah breach our border, kill soldiers, abduct others? And then when this was discovered, refused to share the unedited video with Israel?
We don't trust the UN. So which international peace keepers do you propose?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t know! But the point of peacekeepers is the belligerents lose their votes.