Israel/Palestine thread

You say that as if it's rogue soldiers instead of policy.

Native Americans engaged in gruesome and creative tortures of the settlers. But "both sidesing" the violence buries the larger story of dispossession.

One party in Israel/Palestine is far more powerful than the other, and has more responsibility for finding solutions.

You have an extremely poor, and frankly antisemitic, understanding of history. Israel's relationship with the US is more due to US machinations than Israeli. During the height of the Cold War, Israel was at one point more aligned with the USSR. It was the US that basically bribed Israel, Egypt and Jordan to shift alliances to the US. This was done as part of a grander strategy to isolate the USSR, which was very successful. Which is why the US is kicking ass and we are all living a comfortable life while Russians are dying in Ukraine.

The current geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East are mostly an artifact of US Cold War strategy. It isn't even obvious that Israel has benefited from their relationship as much as the US has. Israel is currently being bombed from land it has given back by actors it has been ordered not to defeat due to deals with the US.

Even today, in exchange for US defensive missile batteries, Israel has agreed to limit bombing of Beirut. This could be the lifeline that Hezbollah needs to survive and continue its reign of terror on Lebanon, Syria and Israel; ensuring Israel will have to go through this all again some point down the road. Time will tell.

Israel doesn’t and has probably never had a better lifestyle than us. Mandatory conscription and constant threat of war is not the preferred state of affairs for most countries. Also kind of hard to compare the civics of a tiny country to that of a country with over 300 million residents too…

Well two issues here. By trying to compress all of America’s foreign policy into one continuous maxim wherein our only interest has been enriching war profiteers or some similar narrative, we’re missing the immense difference between Cold War era foreign policy and post-Cold War foreign policy. The ties between Israel and the US were forged during a time where we were trying to balance decolonization, which we supported, and opposing the Soviets. Israel and Saudi Arabia became our two closest partners in the Middle East emerging out of that tumultuous time.

We would never let them do that because of power projection and deterrence.

Remember that throughout all of the post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan foreign policy maneuvering, Russia really did move in and start forming military alliances with the Middle East. China really did stifle democracy protests in Hong Kong and is maneuvering towards Taiwan. I agree the foreign policy hawks were wrong, but they weren’t wrong about how important American hegemony is to world peace. The problem with the Iraq war is precisely that it did signal the end of US hegemony by expending precious IR capital on a needless war. Now no one believes us when we say we do need to go to war or help one side of an ongoing conflict, which is a disaster. That’s on top of of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost (and hawks will argue Saddam would have been worse but that’s a counterfactual).

citation needed jfc this is one of the most absurd phrases in the thread

‘Act of War’: Biden Issues Grave Warning To Iran

The United States has warned the Iranian government to stop all plotting against Republican Donald Trump and said that Washington would view any attempt on his life as an act of war, a U.S. official said on Monday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. President Joe Biden has been briefed regularly on the threats and directed his team to address Iranian plots against Americans.

At Biden's direction, top U.S. officials have sent messages to the highest levels of the Iranian government warning Tehran to cease all plotting against Trump and former U.S. officials, the official said.
The Iranians have been told that Washington would view it as an act of war if any attempt was carried out against Trump's life, the official said.

Summary
Biden briefed regularly on threats, directs team to address Iranian plotting
Iran denies plotting, cites U.S. interference in its affairs
White House warns of severe consequences for any attack on U.S. citizens

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-warns-i...

Dems starting ww3 and vacuuming up Iran for killing Trump would make a lot of sense.

imagine supporting this

It's weird how they irrationally hate the countries that masacre thier civilians, but don't irrationally hate Brazilians, Mexicans or Japanese.

Well, better keep listening to people who make billions when we spend our resources on war instead of improving our lives.

Thats funny. You can say the exact same thing about Israel. It has more or less peaceful, normalized relations with all the countries in the MENA that aren't constantly attacking them and promising to destroy them. Which is the vast majority of countries.

In fact, Israel only attacks the small number of countries that attack them first. Funny how that works.

It really is astounding the amount of pure antismetism and cognitive dissonance it takes to not notice that Israel is fighting the nations that constantly attack them first and promise to destroy them; and are more or less kosher with the ones that dont do this.

The day Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Yemen militants stop attacking Israel and stop promising to destroy it is the day there is peace with all these entities .

Imagine believing it.

Imagine if this was true.

I think people are getting bad information over and over from the same sites. It's a shame people can't be forced to investigate both sides before parroting whatever they have been brainwashed to believe. The idea that there is a genocide going on here is absurd.

More news taken out of context. The "children" you speak of are late teen enemy combatants. You make it sound like young children are being targeted.

They opened up the Lebanon front because they are tired of having missiles shot at them. They would like to get the 80k displaced citizens in the area back to their homes. They also knew that a massive OCT 7th style attack was being planned by Hezbollah. They have significantly neutralized the threat from the north. I disagree that they have bitten off more than they can chew.

This is the part that people quickly forget. When you have an enemy that has stated it wants to wipe you out and then corroborates this with it's acts of violence early in your statehood you should take it very seriously.

Prior to Nasrallah's assassination, I think Hezbollah would have been ok with a ceasefire just going back to the status quo; where Hezbollah stops attacking Israel, but they stay on the border with thousands of rockets pointed at Israel, waiting for the next opportunity to attack again. And I think this would have been the preferred outcome of the rest of the world too, who just want the fighting to stop in the short term for their own interests and dont really care about the future of Israel or Lebanon.

I think Israel made a conscious decision that things had gone too far, and there was no going back to the status quo. And they would do whatever it took to force a peace where there was no Hezbollah on the border threatening Israel.

Whether they can actually pull this off or not I really dont know; but I cant admonish them for trying. And I wish the rest of the world had more integrity to work with Israel and Lebanon to get rid of Hezbollah. I certainly would not find it acceptable if my government allowed a foreign funded militia to set up on the border for 20 years and threaten to fire rockets at me, and then do it for 11 months straight. So hard to blame Israel for this very normal reaction.

It looks like the van that had the child in it was with the vehicle that rammed the officers at the check point. The parents clearly put their child into harms way and that is tragic. The news outlet correctly described what happened as a tragic accident. I can see how a pro Palestinian propaganda network would want to make this sound like the Israelis intentionally killed the child.

"It's a shame..." 5:53 - 6:30

Many of the people in this forum and in the world have fallen for the terrorist propaganda. They watch the same videos on YouTube and get indoctrinated. Hamas and Hezbollah are doing a fantastic job of winning the misinformation war. It's terrifying how dumbed down most people are in this world. I'd invite people to take a deeper dive into what is going on. Try to understand both sides. Unfortunately most people have picked a side and only look for evidence that supports their narrative. The same people are on here every day saying the same things over and over. This world has gone insane.

The IRI and all its proxies make it pretty clear their goal is to destroy Israel and the US. I am not sure I would say these groups are winning the misinformation war. If anything, their sycophants in the West and Ummah ignore their words and actions, and just make up their own reality which confirms to their biases.

I think much of the Ummah and Western left is just antisemitic for various reasons, and kind of just believes anything that confirms to their biases. I dont think it is really the case of Hamas, Hezbollah, IRI tricking anyone. Most people are more than wiling to delude themselves with little help.

Yep! Shame on Henry Winkler.

I absolutely do think they are winning the misinformation war. The Russians did a great job of infiltrating the 2020 election. People quickly bought the made up stories. The same thing is happening now. "It's a genocide" It's apartheid" "They are targeting the civilians" "They are targeting the children". Sites like "Al Jazeera" know exactly what they are doing and who they are targeting. Guess who they get their information from. Who do you think tells them what their narrative should be?

I was trying to point out how emotionally detached people like Bill are.

I was pointing out how brainwashed Winkler is by the Hamas propaganda. It's a shame he isn't more like the Fonz. He has always been a Beta.

Bill made fantastic points. I think you are mistaking his understanding of the situation for detachment.

It's possible to have rationale that justifies going to war and, at the same time, not having a "that's just the way it goes" attitude about dead civilians.

TIL the NYT, Reuters, Foreign Policy, AP, etc are Hamas propaganda arms.