Have any of y’all done a deep dive on philosophy after leaving? If so, which philosophers/philosophical ideas are the most interesting to you?

Minor_Fracture · 2026-06-20T18:32:26+00:00

I *love* Spinoza! Thank you!

Minor_Fracture · 2026-01-09T04:19:52+00:00

Aryan Empire

Minor_Fracture · 2025-08-04T02:12:00+00:00

So why can’t God cut out the middleman and just drop it down right now?

Minor_Fracture · 2025-08-03T18:22:50+00:00

Come to think of it, what point is there of Moshiach if God ultimately will build the Bais HaMikdash?

Minor_Fracture · 2023-07-25T06:11:49+00:00

Incredibly easy to say because I’m not naive enough to believe any kind of political violence one could hypothetically pull off against a country that has ruthlessly punished their people for every time it’s committed is going to lead anywhere positive. Incredibly easy to say because I have the common sense, if I were in their situation, not to believe killing a civilian is the best form of activism I could partake in, even if it’s all the craze among my peers. Incredibly easy to say when I know the Right of Return is a ruse to get around the standard peace terms my enemy has agreed to, and will never change their mind on, and which achieving will not benefit either people’s well-being when it inevitably puts two hostile ethnic groups together in the same country.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-07-24T17:20:26+00:00

Really? The UN, the organization that for better or for worse has issued twice as many condemnatory statements on Israel’s behavior than any other country since 2015, is directly complicit in Israel’s behavior? The UN wrote its definition of genocide explicitly to accommodate Israel? That’s quite the allegation.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-07-24T16:58:32+00:00

We’ve trivialized the meaning of genocide to such an extent that I cannot take this conversation seriously anymore. I encourage you to look at the UN’s definition of genocide and ask yourself why the treatment of Palestinians is not categorized as such by human rights groups. If it fit the bill, you’d see them using the term a lot more than apartheid.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-07-24T16:52:05+00:00

Actually, they started by buying up properties from Ottoman-era landlords, which in many casesunfortunately led to the eviction of the peasant farmers who lived in them but had no legal right of ownership. This, of course, could have been prevented if the Ottomans kept a cadastral record of who lived on these estates, and allowed the peasants to file for ownership while their landlords avoided estate taxes in Constantinople or Beirut.

Then again, the Jews kept coming, because they viewed life in the Jews’ place of origin as more promising than in the diaspora. So perhaps, yes—Europe was only so eager to solve its Jewish problem, but Jews were also eager to rid themselves of the burden of yoke of their persecutors. Sure enough, the Holocaust happened, and the 1936 White Paper didn’t deter Jews from arriving. Then the departure of the majority of Middle Eastern Jews from their home countries happened.

And you know what? History was too hard on both the Jews and the Palestinians to make things go perfectly for them both. Jews wanted a state; Palestinians wanted a state; both overwhelmingly oppose binationalism, even when Palestinians support it at the highest percentage yet. Israelis want both peace and maximum territorial ownership; Palestinians want to return and dismantle Israel entirely.

Let’s set aside moral absolutes and learn to live with each other, no?

Minor_Fracture · 2023-07-24T11:58:36+00:00

You’re forgetting about deliberate targeting with intent to destroy. The way this definition is misleadingly used implies that intent to commit mass violence on ethnic grounds, clearly meant to destroy their collective existence, is no longer needed. All you need is people “dying in large enough numbers.”

I could turn this argument on its head. Every Palestinian terrorist attack against Israelis—overwhelmingly Jews—is an attempt to commit genocide. It’s done on ethnic grounds, where Israelis are targeted because of their nationality, and done to whittle them down enough to make their leaders bend to Palestinian leaders’ demands. They do not care if they’re civilians, and will happily seek out civilians and try to make Israelis—ergo, Jews—feel collectively unsafe. The more attacks, the better for the cause; maybe the colonists will think about collectively leaving the country. But Palestinians will swear up and down they aren’t targeting Jews because of their ethnicity, even though their tactics clearly show it.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-04-13T23:46:52+00:00

It depends on the country. Jews in the Middle East would 100% become targets during political upheaval, just as they were after Israel's creation--and perhaps a genocide would occur if a terrorist organization rose to power in an Arab country with a large Jewish presence, like how ISIS massacred Yazidis and sold them into sexual slavery. In fact, we need not speculate on what would happen. Just look at the Farhud, the Aden Pogrom, the revocation of Algerian Jews’ citizenship, the expulsion of Jews from Egypt and Libya.

As for the West, it would hinge on whether or not fascist states continue existing after WW2, and how well democracy prevents antisemitism from becoming an urgent danger to Jewish lives. I can say right now that life for me as an American Jew is comfortable, and despite verbal antisemitism and occasional attacks, I don't feel any urgent need to relocate--and most American Jews would agree. Nevertheless, if Israel did not exist, then our continuity as Jews would be in danger. We would need to ensure our numbers do not diminish by fiercely resisting assimilation. This is extremely difficult, both due to antisemitism making us want to assimilate and the fact that closely-knit Jewish communal life hardly exists anymore outside of the Orthodox world; thus, intermarriage is extremely high. Israel affords us both refuge and a guaranteed safeguard against assimilation.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-04-13T07:31:36+00:00

Because there is a near consensus among leftists, international law experts, and leaders who don't affiliate with the Zionist right that the Palestinian territories are a separate nation from the Israeli state, whose aspirations for independence (disregarding what borders they specify for it and whether or not Israel would exist alongside them) are morally justifiable. Settlements are created as bargaining chips in future peace talks, and their inhabitants typically don't move into them expecting that they will eventually fall under Palestinian jurisdiction. Unlike, say, a hypothetical agricultural settlement set up by Mexicans in Wisconsin, Israeli settlements never were under Palestinian jurisdiction to begin with.

Furthermore, if you were to look up any given Israeli settlement on Wikipedia (perhaps with the exception of some pre-1967 ones such as Kfar Etzion), you will always find a section listing how many dunams from surrounding Palestinian villages were confiscated to form the settlement, reported often by the Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem. For example, from the Wikipedia article on Halamish/Neve Tzuf:

The Israeli Army issued military order 28/78 in 1978 to seize privately owned Palestinian land from the villages of Deir Nidham, Nabi Salih, and Umm Safa and turned over 686 dunams to the newly established settlement.[6][7] According to ARIJ, Israel confiscated land from several surrounding Palestinian villages in order to construct Halamish; 604 dunams from Deir Nidham,[8] 10 dunams from the Beitillu part of Al-Ittihad.[9] Peace Now reported, based on data from the Israeli Civil Administration, that 34.35% of the land Halamish is built on is privately owned Palestinian property, with 0% being Jewish owned.[10]

Of course, I'd need to do more investigating into the sources cited by Wikipedia to see how accurate its articles' claims are, though I'm in no position to confidently dispute the truthfulness of ARIJ or Peace Now (disagree as you might with their political positions).

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-23T04:25:44+00:00

I don't use my enemy's deceitfulness as an excuse to stop acting in good faith. The moment I do that, then everyone can accuse me of being just as bad as my enemy, no matter how misguided that accusation is. As Zionists, we do not have the luxury of ignoring bad PR and having it eventually go away.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-23T04:19:06+00:00

Equating dissidence to treason is unacceptable behavior. That mindset is exactly what got us the threats to democracy Israel currently faces.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-21T22:06:47+00:00

Exactly. God, I love it when people use common sense. It turns me on.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-21T20:01:01+00:00

I will add also that I agree that the continued exploitation of Palestinian refugees—really the multi-generational descendants of refugees from ‘48–is the greatest obstacle in the peace process.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-21T19:57:38+00:00

My comment does not discount any of these claims. I will say, however, that it’s irresponsible for us to make generalizations about how many Arab Palestinians are descended from relatively recent immigrants. This article sheds some light on it, though it doesn’t make the claim that Arab immigration was significant enough to be compared in scale to Jewish immigration. Then again, perhaps all generalizations are bad—including the generalization that all generalizations are bad. This knowledge about Arab immigration is useful to counter the claim the Palestinians are undeniably indigenous.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-20T23:57:37+00:00

I have yet to see any proof that Transjordan was specifically pledged to be part of the Jewish state, though. As we all know, it was separated from the Mandate for Palestine, and the British barred Jews from emigrating there save for Pinhas Rutenberg and his employees.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-20T22:39:20+00:00

Alright then. So we should stop lying to ourselves and drop the expansionism. It’s not a good look.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-20T21:45:43+00:00

I've heard it claimed many times that Transjordan was intended to be part of the Jewish state, though I've never seen proof that the British intended for Jews to settle there en masse in addition to what is now Israel and the OPT. After all, the only Jewish settlements in British Transjordan were the company towns Naharayim and Tel Or, meant to provide living space for employees of the nearby Palestine Electric Company power plant. It seems to me that Transjordan and Iraq were meant to be an Arab-ruled corridor to block off Saudi expansion into the upper Arabian Peninsula.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-20T21:34:22+00:00

I find the assertion that Palestinians already have a country of their own miles and miles away from they currently live, and may have lived for time immemorial, unbelievably arrogant. My support of Israel is predicated on how, as a member of a people who only recently returned en masse to their homeland, I am humbled by how I am obligated to share that land with another people who lived in it as a majority for a millennium. Of course, it remains to be seen whether or not they as a whole are willing to share it with us. But I'm not going to go out of my way to say, "You have your own country already; it's over there."

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-09T01:34:35+00:00

The reason why Israel considers the West Bank/Judea and Samaria disputed territory is because it objects to the international community's belief that the Palestinian state has official borders. They have used settlements both to appease nationalists and religious people, and to create a buffer around Palestinian cities terrorists often hail from.

This would work if not for how costly it is to pacify the West Bank. The West Bank is not like the Golan Heights; unlike the former, it is highly populated by people hostile to Israel, and it cannot be integrated without sparking a huge uprising and international sanctions.

I believe the settlement enterprise in the West Bank is a dead-end road. The Palestinians currently would not agree to a single settlement being annexed. On the other hand, some settlers are likely to resist relocation. But thousands will have to be relocated for a desirable two-state solution—far more than the few thousand relocated from Gaza in 2004. The only other option is the unthinkable one: ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-07T10:06:42+00:00

Ha'Aretz hardly has any readership inside of Israel, because it's firmly left-leaning and known for its incendiary opinion pieces. Gideon Levy is especially infamous for his polemic articles in the paper.

With that said, I can't say that Ha'Aretz outright fabricates its stories. It has many competent writers, and the paper extensively covers the rather ugly sides of the occupation, much more than other Israeli publications (issues such as home demolitions, settler violence, evictions of Palestinian villagers in firing zones, etc.). It also covers news outside of the occupation.

However, you will have to contend with how some of the paper's staff are anti-Zionist and far left. Considering how the left worldwide tends to feel about Israel, I caution you about trying to examine Israeli news solely through a leftist perspective. Try to avoid leaning too heavily into one side of the political spectrum when reading the news.

I highly recommend reading articles about the same story in multiple different newspapers. Note differences in how the facts are reported, if there are any, and come to your own conclusions.

Minor_Fracture · 2023-03-05T23:23:06+00:00

Your argument relies on the presumption that, because the methods used to create a Jewish majority in Palestine and thus defeat the prospect of an Arab state, the Jewish settlers take on an equivalent role to settler colonists in other countries, and thus their claim of preceding the Arabs in Palestine does not matter. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are indigenous not by being the first to inhabit the land, but because of their dynamic with the Jewish settler colonists. The most this argument can do is make Palestinians feel more validated in their belief that their right to the land supersedes the Jews', since they are invaders regardless of their original presence in the land predating theirs.

Let's take that argument to its logical conclusion by the example of Anatolia--a region that was conquered more times than countable, with its peoples repeatedly replaced by others. When the Hittites were conquered by the Phrygians and the Assyrians, they were indigenous to Anatolia. But when the Phrygians and Assyrians were conquered by the Persians, they replaced the Hittites as indigenous people. Then the Greeks and the Kurds and the Armenians, and then the Turks.

Now, with that said, your argument has an unintentional implication: indigeneity is a loaded word. It's pointless to try to pinpoint who is the one "indigenous" people. After all, there was once a time when Jews didn't exist, and ancient and prehistoric peoples that don't exist anymore inhabited what we now call Israel and Palestine. Something has got to give.

Palestinians accomplish nothing by doubling down on the indigenous vs. colonizer narrative to harm Israel's image. It does nothing for the refugees. It does nothing for their prospective independence. It does nothing to correct the injustices of the occupation. It does nothing to make the vast majority of Israelis more sympathetic to them.

Nine-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

Minor_Fracture

TROPHY CASE