Comment by spwa4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spwa4 | Hacker News Reader

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Really? Because there's extensive counterexamples in both directions ...

Europe attacked and even persecuted the Germans (with reason) for WW2. Tens of millions of victims. Neither side wants the other dead. US and Japan? Same. Most of these countries are allies.

Israel has never even had much business with Indonesia, and only little with India. Yet a large number of Indonesians want to kill all Jews (not just Israeli) and Indians largely support Israel, even in war. Or take Lebanese. Despite Israel attacking them many times and giving them plenty of "reasons to want them dead", if you talk to actual Lebanese, most population groups (in fact the ones that suffered the most) want normal relations with Israel. It seems they blame some other party, even for the deaths directly at the hands of Israel ...

So, none of these situations fit your theory. It's very obvious that the issues Israel has with a great many countries have nothing to do with "giving them reasons to want you dead". By contrast, there are countries who've given each other far better reasons to hate ... and yet don't want each other dead.

In fact, I have trouble finding an example of nations that want to attack each other because of such a historical situation. Hell, the history of China and Japan for the last millenium is one of each nation taking turns conquering and terrorizing the other and yet ... the only fear Japanese and Chinese have is the communist party suddenly deciding to conquer some country and attack, which every Japanese and Chinese person is secretly 100% certain will be a total disaster, for China as a whole AND for them personally.

And that gives the real reason behind conflicts: one party thinks they can just take what they want, and attacks, usually for ideological reasons. Sometimes they're right, mostly they're wrong.

Not OP, but: peace between Germany and the rest of the West required a) millions slaughtered in war, b) an obvious big bad who got killed, c) relatively lenient and merciful occupation for years, and ultimately d) waiting for the Nazi generation to die out. I'm sure sharing a common cultural background helped a lot, too. And maybe a collective sense of optimism about the post-war world.

I don't see many common elements with the situation in Gaza (and now Iran). A policy of "mowing the grass" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass) will never lead to stability or warm and fuzzy feelings towards Israel.

My point was that Germans were killed by the millions too, by just about everyone ... and no attacks. Nobody is predicting any attacks by Germans either. And there's 100s of examples of such conflicts with every variable you could possibly want. We have the problem that nobody wants to face: terror attacks are a choice by the group that uses them, and the vast majority of groups just don't, including under far worse circumstances than this particular group.

EVEN where you do see terror attacks, there are large differences. The IRA, for example, went out of it's way to avoid hitting children and hospitals. By contrast, Palestinians really, really try to go after children and the sick. In fact the IRA made big efforts, sometimes outright stupid, to go after military bases or politicians involved in the situation they wanted to change, and to avoid everyone else. They have apologized, without being asked, to unintended victims. They have even given up some of their own members who "went too far". And, of course, given a way out, they choose to take it. The IRA was a lot closer to someone like Luigi Mangione than they are to the PLO. The explanation? We all know it but it's forbidden to say: ideology.

Even restricting to Israel itself. Israel has had to defend itself a lot, and the situation is not at all what the GP predicts. It's not the case that every group that got attacked wants to commit terror acts against Israel, in fact it's really just 1 group (or 2 if you consider them separately). And it's not even Palestinians! The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are in Jordan, and not attacking Israel at all. It's Palestinians living under state sponsored terror groups, it's very large amounts of Palestinians, a bunch of supposedly Lebanese but really Syrians, and Yemenites. The Palestinians paid originally by the Soviets, now the UN, the rest as well as Palestinians now paid by Iran. And paid A LOT, on a large scale. The terror attacks are a mercenary army, bought and paid for, and the only God they believe in is not allah but the true, undeniable almighty: Thomas Jefferson on a green background.

I am told it goes this far: a foot soldier for Hamas in Gaza makes more than a hospital director makes in Egypt. The unemployment benefits in Gaza are 3 times a normal wage in Egypt. And this in a part of the world that has >90% unemployment. THAT explains some things, doesn't it?

Hence the explanation that countries/groups/... attack because they want to steal something and think they can get it through brute force, not because of actual grievances, is the only explanation that I find even remotely fits.

Germany also lost about 25% of its land after WW2 to neighbors and yet they haven't built their entire society around getting it back the way Palestinians have

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