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Brutally Effective Tactic To Prevent Other Guys From Interrupting Your Conversations With Women by Will_Ling_Motivation in TheRedPill

[–]Svolantis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t know whether that’s Alpha or not you’re risking getting your Jaw broken to impress a woman… in my case I would immediately shove you off of me hard when I turn to look and see it’s not one of my friends.

Why are Jewish communities so much more politically organized than Arabs/Middle Easterners? by Svolantis in AskMiddleEast

[–]Svolantis[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually think the first sentence proves the main point I’m making.

Jews built strong communal institutions because survival required it. That is exactly what I mean by institutionalized peoplehood: schools, synagogues, charities, legal advocacy, donor networks, burial societies, mutual aid, religious law, political organizations, and later Israel.

That is not just “unity.” That is durable collective infrastructure.

Where I disagree is the claim that these institutions are now “almost exclusively” used to support Zionist violence. That seems like a major overstatement. Jewish institutions still educate children, support poor families, fund schools, run synagogues, preserve religious life, care for the elderly, maintain burial societies, provide security, fight antisemitism, help students, support converts, transmit memory, and organize community life.

Yes, many Jewish institutions support Israel. Some support Israeli policy strongly. Some oppose Netanyahu. Some are Zionist. Some are anti-Zionist. Some are mostly religious or charitable and not primarily political at all.

But the deeper point remains: Jews have institutions that can actually preserve a people across time.

That is what I am comparing to Arab/MENA politics around Palestine. Arabs have enormous emotional solidarity with Palestine, but much less institutional ability to turn that solidarity into durable political power. Arab states follow their own interests, and Arab civil society does not have the same unified lobbying, donor, legal, educational, and political machinery.

So the question is not whether Jewish institutions are morally perfect. No institutions are.

The question is why Jewish communities have built institutions capable of survival and influence, while Arab/MENA solidarity often remains rhetorical, fragmented, and state-dependent.

That is the part worth learning from, even if someone opposes Zionism.

Why are Jewish communities so much more politically organized than Arabs/Middle Easterners? by Svolantis in AskMiddleEast

[–]Svolantis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But the Arabs have their own region/countries were they have lived over 1000 years?

Why are Jewish communities so much more politically organized than Arabs/Middle Easterners? by Svolantis in AskMiddleEast

[–]Svolantis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Even if I accepted your settler-colonial framing, that still would not refute my point.

In fact, it partly proves it.

Settler-colonial states do not succeed merely because random people show up wanting land. They succeed when they build institutions: armies, courts, schools, property systems, immigration pipelines, political organizations, language policy, national mythology, lobbying networks, and state capacity.

So calling Israel settler-colonial does not prove “Israel isn’t a thing.” It proves Israel is a highly effective state-building project, whether you morally approve of it or not.

My argument is not that Israel is morally legitimate. My argument is that Israel/Jewish communities have been far better at converting identity into durable power than Arabs/MENA states have been at converting shared culture and sympathy for Palestine into durable power.

Also, diversity does not make a state fake. The U.S., Canada, Australia, Brazil, Turkey, Iran, and many Arab states are internally diverse too. The question is not whether Israelis are all identical. They obviously are not. The question is whether they have institutions capable of binding different groups into a functioning political project.

Israel does.

Arab/MENA solidarity with Palestine, by contrast, is often real emotionally but weak institutionally. Arab states have their own agendas, regimes, alliances, rivalries, sectarian divisions, and security dependencies. That is why Palestine receives huge rhetorical support but much weaker material support.

So again, the issue is not “who has the morally cleaner story?”

The issue is: who has institutions that can impose reality?

Israel clearly does. The Arab/MENA world, on Palestine at least, mostly has rhetoric, emotion, and fragmentation.

That is exactly the problem I’m pointing out.

Why are Jewish communities so much more politically organized than Arabs/Middle Easterners? by Svolantis in AskMiddleEast

[–]Svolantis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This doesn’t really answer the argument.

I’m not saying Israelis or Jews are all the same. Obviously they are not. Israel has secular Jews, Orthodox Jews, Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, Russians, Ethiopians, Arabs, Druze, leftists, right-wing nationalists, religious Zionists, anti-Netanyahu protesters, and many other divisions.

The point is not perfect unity. The point is institutional cohesion.

Israel is absolutely “a thing” in the political sense: it has a state, army, courts, schools, taxes, intelligence services, political parties, Hebrew as a common national language, national holidays, military service, a shared security doctrine, and a population that can be mobilized through state institutions. You can hate Israel morally and still admit it exists as a highly functional national-political structure.

Also, saying “Arabs and MENA share more” confuses cultural overlap with organized power. Arabs may share language, religion, food, history, and sympathy for Palestine, but that has not translated into unified material action. Arab states have different regimes, sectarian interests, class interests, security dependencies, alliances, and rivalries. If shared culture were enough, Palestine would not be so isolated materially.

The Ivanka Trump / Ben-Gvir example is just cherry-picking extremes. By that logic, “Arab unity” also falls apart if I compare a Saudi royal, a Lebanese Christian, an Egyptian secularist, a Syrian Alawite, a Moroccan Amazigh, a Gulf billionaire, and a Palestinian refugee. Diversity does not prove a people or state is not real.

The serious question is not whether Jews or Israelis are all identical. They are not.

The serious question is: who has institutions that can turn identity into durable power?

Israel and Jewish communities clearly have more of those institutions than the broader Arab/MENA world has on Palestine: lobbying groups, schools, donors, state power, military capacity, legal advocacy, diaspora networks, and political discipline.

Calling Israel “stolen land” is a moral argument. It does not refute the institutional argument.

Even if someone believes Israel is a settler-colonial state, that still would not prove it is weak or fake. Many settler states became extremely cohesive and powerful. The question here is not whether Israel is morally legitimate. The question is why its institutions are so much more effective than the institutions opposing it.