tags: Scott Aaronson
since Oct. 7
This is an invasion that has been happening for around 58 years. If you've only been paying attention to what leftists have been saying since Oct. 7, I doubt you have authority to give your analysis of our position.
For all that, by Israeli standards I’m firmly in the anti-Netanyahu, left-wing peace camp
So you think the decades of genocide are fine as long as it's not Netanyahu doing it. You are not left-wing. No one who supports the genocide of Palestinians is left-wing.
This is exactly the bullshit I smelt as soon as the narrative switched to finger waggling at Netanyahu.
Peace is impossible as long as these religious fanatics want to spill all Jewish blood. That's why it's okay for us, God's Chosen People, to inflict hundreds of times the casualties on Palestinians as collective punishment. Because Hamas.
Also, when we make people permanent refugees in zones as densely populated as a concentration camp, and then they break out of the zone to shoot at us, that's a pogrom."
If Netanyahu is removed from power, everything will be alright and we'll have a path to peace.
"Left-wing Zionist" greatest hits
At risk of stating the obvious: my first-order model is that Hamas, with the diabolical brilliance of a Marvel villain, successfully contrived a situation where Israel could prevent the further massacring of its own population only by fighting a gruesome urban war, of a kind that always, anywhere in the world, kills tens of thousands of civilians
MARVEL
The evil masterminds diabolically tricked the good guys into genociding them.
I understand the charges against me. Namely: that if I don’t call for Israel to lay down its arms right now in its war against Hamas (and ideally: to dissolve itself entirely), then I’m a genocidal monster on the wrong side of history. That I value Jewish lives more than Palestinian lives. That I’m a hasbara apologist for the IDF’s mass-murder and apartheid and stealing of land. That if images of children in Gaza with their limbs blown off, or dead in their parents arms, or clawing for bread, don’t cause to admit that Israel is evil, then I’m just as evil as the Israelis are.
That if images of children in Gaza with their limbs blown off, or dead in their parents arms, or clawing for bread, don’t cause to admit that Israel is evil, then I’m just as evil as the Israelis are.
You just said "Israel" isn't evil you fucker.
So why then, do you care so much about being as evil as the "Israelis" dipshit?
B buh but Hamas
At risk of stating the obvious: my first-order model is that Hamas, with the diabolical brilliance of a Marvel villain, successfully contrived a situation where Israel could prevent the further massacring of its own population only by fighting a gruesome urban war, of a kind that always, anywhere in the world, kills tens of thousands of civilians. Hamas, of course, was helped in this plan by an ideology that considers martyrdom the highest possible calling for the innocents who it rules ruthlessly and hides underneath. But Hamas also understood that the images of civilian carnage would (rightly!) shock the consciences of Israel’s Western allies and many Israelis themselves, thereby forcing a ceasefire before the war was over, thereby giving Hamas the opportunity to regroup and, with God’s and of course Iran’s help, finally finish the job of killing all Jews another day.
And this is key: once you remember why Hamas launched this war and what its long-term goals are, every detail of Twitter’s case against Israel has to be reexamined in a new light. Take starvation, for example. Clearly the only explanation for why Israelis would let Gazan children starve is the malice in their hearts? Well, until you think through the logistical challenges of feeding 2.3 million starving people whose sole governing authority is interested only in painting the streets red with Jewish blood. Should we let that authority commandeer the flour and water for its fighters, while innocents continue to starve? No? Then how about UNRWA? Alas, we learned that UNRWA, packed with employees who cheered the Oct. 7 massacre in their Telegram channels and in some cases took part in the murders themselves, capitulates to Hamas so quickly that it effectively is Hamas. So then Israel should distribute the food itself! But as we’ve dramatically witnessed, Israel can’t distribute food without imposing order, which would seem to mean reoccupying Gaza and earning the world’s condemnation for it. Do you start to appreciate the difficulty of the problem—and why the Biden administration was pushed to absurd-sounding extremes like air-dropping food and then building a floating port?
At risk of stating the obvious: my first-order model is that Hamas, with the diabolical brilliance of a Marvel villain, successfully contrived a situation where
What is wrong with you
I have the simplest solution to the Isn'trael-Palestine 'conflict' (decades long oppression and genocide); while I would prefer Palestinians get their country back and the Euros and Americans go back to the Western countries they idolize so much (the ones ACTUALLY responsible for the holocaust), the only acceptable compromise here (that frankly still robs Palestinians of their rights) is to give all Palestinians Isn'traeli citizenship including Palestinians abroad. At least then they can take the people living in their original homes or on their lands to court to get their homes back.
Seriously, Isn'trael is like when after WW2 was over and the Jewish people tried to return to their homes in Poland (and Hungary and a few others I think?), the Polish people who'd taken over their businesses, properties and wealth conducted violent pogroms against them to maintain what they'd stolen from them; supporting Isn'trael is like hearing about this event and siding with the Polish.
This person is ridiculous and has no grasp on reality, much like the average Isn'traeli and their supporters.
I love bringing up this "solution" given how often liberal zionists still like to pretend Israel is a multiethnic democracy. Then they try to deflect and make excuses (Oh it's the Palestinians who don't want to co-exist), appeal to some sacred law of national sovereignty (It's on Israel's people to decide who they let into the country) or drop the act and start sounding indistinguishable from the ethnonationalist blood-and-soilers.
Seriously, Isn'trael is like when after WW2 was over and the Jewish people tried to return to their homes in Poland (and Hungary and a few others I think?), the Polish people who'd taken over their businesses, properties and wealth conducted violent pogroms against them to maintain what they'd stolen from them; supporting Isn'trael is like hearing about this event and siding with the Polish.
Major L on the Soviets' part. Then again, hard to keep things under control if you're the USSR at the tail end of the war.
(1) I, personally, deserved to die celibate and unloved, as a gross white male semi-autistic STEM nerd and stunted emotional and aesthetic cripple, or else
This guy dedicates so much of the essay to sniffing his own farts that I could only make it about a third of the way in.
You know you've hit a rock bottom when you srart writing open letters to random twitter users
But it’s less surprising when you recall that, outside theoretical computer science, I’m (alas) mostly known to the world for having once confessed, in a discussion deep in the comment section of this blog, that I spent much of my youth obsessively studying radical feminist literature. I explained that I did that because my wish, for a decade, was to confront progressivism’s highest moral authorities on sex and relationships, and make them tell me either that
(1) I, personally, deserved to die celibate and unloved, as a gross white male semi-autistic STEM nerd and stunted emotional and aesthetic cripple, or else (2) no, I was a decent human being who didn’t deserve that.
One way or the other, I sought a truthful answer, one that emerged organically from the reigning morality of our time and that wasn’t just an unprincipled exception to it. And I felt ready to pursue progressive journalists and activists and bloggers and humanities professors to the ends of the earth before I’d let them leave this one question hanging menacingly over everything they’d ever written, with (I thought) my only shot at happiness in life hinging on their answer to it.
god damn I can't believe I used to admire this guy. I even have his fucking book on my bookshelf and have read it several times. Oh well into the bin with it
admiring somebody good at computer science
Not sure what else you expected tbh
It was always going to be this, being a pedophile, being an incel, or hating minorities/immigrants
unironically. dudes not touching enough grass in their childhood has severe consequences
I was shocked the other day when I was like, "I wonder what Joe Damato's been doing" and discovered he's only been posting about Palestinian liberation for the last year. Like a
moment
Take starvation, for example. Clearly the only explanation for why Israelis would let Gazan children starve is the malice in their hearts? Well, until you think through the logistical challenges of feeding 2.3 million starving people whose sole governing authority is interested only in painting the streets red with Jewish blood. Should we let that authority commandeer the flour and water for its fighters, while innocents continue to starve? No? Then how about UNRWA? Alas, we learned that UNRWA, packed with employees who cheered the Oct. 7 massacre in their Telegram channels and in some cases took part in the murders themselves, capitulates to Hamas so quickly that it effectively is Hamas.
the logistical challenges of feeding 2.3 million starving people
nobody's asking you to feed them they're asking you to not shoot missiles at the aid trucks and to end the blockade, Scott, you fucking melt!
CW: suicide
Likewise with the anti-Zionists. When the Twitter-warriors share their memes of hook-nosed Jews strangling the planet, innocent Palestinian blood dripping from their knives, when the global protests shut down schools and universities and bridges and parliament buildings, there’s a part of me that feels eager to commit suicide if only it would appease the mob, if only it would expiate all the cosmic guilt they’ve loaded onto my shoulders.
Dude's so settlerpilled that he can't imagine being a better person without dying first
of his self-esteem issues
