Israel/Palestine thread

I appreciate your points, but they are prolix and a bit diverse, so I can't respond to them all. Yes, you have good and bad in every society and religion, you get doves and hawks, with multiple variables. You also get sociopaths and psychopaths in any country.

Islam is different since the Quran is the literal word of God. Islam offers the sociopath and psychopath an opportunity to sanitise killing, mistreatment of women and genocide since those actions can be justified in verses of the Quran, Sunnah and Hadiths. As long as there are psychopathic people in power, they can use equally psychopathic jihadists to commit acts of unbelievable horror, such as those on October 7 and say it was the will of Allah, while pointing heavenwards. The psychopathic jihadist is promised paradise, slaves, and 72 virgins, while the innocent victims are tormented in hell for eternity. No other religion or society offers such a grossly distorted vision of good and evil while passing it off as divine.

You could argue that the PLO and people like Arafat were secular, but if they had dared to make peace with Israel, they might still have a fatwah on them for the rest of their lives unless they get shot, stabbed to death, poisoned or blown to smithereens for their good intentions. It's not restricted to prominent figures either; you have people like Salman Rushdie and Asia Bibi in Pakistan who have a fatwah foisted on them for actions that would have gone unnoticed in Western countries. The Asia Bibi case is perhaps the perfect paradigm of Islamic psychopathy. 3 prominent Pakistani officials who defended her and stood up to the jihadists were assassinated, and responsibility was cruelly foisted on her by her prison guards. Her short book was an invitation to the dark ages, with her heartbreaking pleas for help being pitiful and unforgettable, all for what? A cup of water from a Muslim well on a boiling hot day.

Yes, we still have serial killers, mass murderers, and random killings in the West, but the people responsible will face execution or life imprisonment if they are caught. If it happens to be a Muslim who stabbed your frail grandmother to death in the supermarket, then he only needs to say Allahu Akbar, and he's destined for paradise. You can't win, it's designed that way.

I think it was Ibn Warraq who wrote in his book that the Muslim world hasn't undergone any enlightenment like the West from the 17th to the 18th centuries, when we stopped burning each other at the stake and said, "Y'know what? This is silly; there are bigger fish to fry. You then had music, art, literature, medicine, physics, philosophy, etc., some of which might be considered Haram in the Muslim world.

The way I see it is that the Muslim world doesn't know if it's going to stick or twist. Maybe they are on the cusp of their own enlightenment from what you are saying, and the dark days of Jihadism are over. The Muslim World needs to grasp the nettle of change, so it might need the West as a friend in doing so, but it does look as though there will be significant changes in the area. Anyway, that's the best I've got to uphold my original point.

Another hypothetical situation could be that a man and a woman have an argument about the validity of Islam. The woman wins and the man is humiliated. Later, he sees the woman in a shopping mall with her bag. The man takes his Rolex watch off and drops it into her bag without her noticing. A little later, the man meets a friend and tells him that a woman stole his Rolex watch and wants him to be a witness in reclaiming it. Both then approach the woman with the man demanding his watch back. The woman denies all knowledge of the watch and tells him where to get off. The man insists that she put it in her bag. The woman empties her bag on the floor and, to her dismay, sees the watch. Both the man and his friend witness the fact that the woman has his watch in the bag. The police are called, and the woman is arrested.

Charges are pressed, and the case goes to court. Another brave female witness claims that she saw the man put the watch into the woman's bag. Now there is a male witness to testify for the man and a female witness to testify for the woman. It's deadlocked, but since a woman's testimony is only half that of a man in Shariah law, the woman loses the case, and she is held in prison. Being guilty of theft and further accused of blasphemy as a result of the argument she had with the man means that the woman has her hand amputated, and she is disgraced for life. She is constantly reminded every time she sees the man that she was lucky she wasn't executed.

An event like this could happen in the West, but it certainly wouldn't result in such an unfair court decision and at worst, a fine or a short jail term for the woman. So maybe not out of the Stone Age yet.

Oh no, the guy who has no idea what he’s talking about and spams AI written essays is putting me on ignore. Thank you.

You certainly have an interesting imagination, my friend. Here’s the thing let anyone say whatever they want about any religion. It is interesting though that the millions of people who follow the likes of Andrew Tate or Candace Owens for example have a positive viewpoint of a lot of things related to Muslims. They see them standing up to the radical far left and hanging onto their traditions.

And that’s another point let people say whatever they want about someone like Andrew Tate or Candice Owens. It’s just interesting that you have a large number of conservative Christians now who do not agree with supporting Israel no matter what. If you look at the various podcasts like fresh and fit is another example. These are clearly not left-wing people. They’re into masculinity. They are into being the alpha male, they are into traditional Values. …. They all oppose the policies of Israel. They blame Zionists for the JFK assassination and even for 911 for example. Again, let people say whatever they want they can of course make up the view that these people are “antisemitic”, but the reality on the ground is the game has changed.

Again, let people make lazy one liner insults to dismiss people who support Candace Owens. It doesn’t matter there’s millions and millions of people who are on the right wing who oppose supporting Israel no matter what.

Personally, I consider myself to be a traditional Democrat…. but I oppose radical leftism , wokeism that kind of stuff…. I agree with some of what Andrew Tate, Candace Owens and the fresh fit podcast have to say about a variety of things including Israel/Palestine. I don’t agree with them on everything though.

And pretty much it is the neoconservatives that are the strongest supporters of Israel now. Young Republicans, young conservatives in large part are opposing Israel for a variety of reasons.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education...

This is blatantly obvious to anyone who is following social media. It’s not so much obvious to the boomer generation or the neoconservatives.

You just made that up because you’re unable to formulate any kind of context or response to what I’m saying. You’re blowing AI out of proportion(Google AI cites its sources) and of course you haven’t responded to the many points I’ve made that have nothing to do with AI. But again you’re just blowing that way out of proportion. I’ll give you one more chance to act like a gentleman and respond with context and good manners

From the start you provoked a combative conversation with me. I didn’t even have any conversations with you and you indirectly responded to me in a rude manner. I wouldn’t have done that with you. See if I am a member of a conversation board and I see a new person come in with something I disagree with. I’m going to directly quote them and disagree with them. But to bring up their name indirectly and insult them is just dumb. Kind of counterproductive too.

I disagree with much but not all that Dunyain and Tgcomments have to say. But I have amicable conversations with them. I’m more than willing to do that with you. If you wanna continue down the road you’re continuing on doesn’t bother me one bit.

Israel had a total military budget of 23 billion in 2022. In April 2024, Congress passed an emergency aid package of 14 billion for Israel. Why the aid package if Israel is paying? Why not approve the arms sales and have Israel wire the money to defense contractors with no taxpayer funds involved at all? Wouldn't that shut up the critics and college protestors who are concerned about taxpayer funds going to what they view as genocide?

As for your other point, I'd argue that the US military industrial complex is itself a parasite on the American people, but I'm more interested in your thoughts on the conundrum I posed earlier: if the Protestant right, which, as I laid out, is uniquely suited to support Israel from a moral angle, gets overwhelmed by anti-Israel sentiment from younger generations and the increasingly less far right and far left, who steps up to take their place?

According to Google AI, Israel spent ~$47 billion on military in 2024, and an additional ~$17 billion in aid from the US. So US aid was ~26%. The emergency aid package you are referencing probably included some purchases to the US MIC made by Israel, and some made by the US taxpayer, that were all shipped to Israel. Obviously we can accept that wartime military spending is very different than peacetime. And cherrypicking one data point from peacetime and another from wartime to compare and make some point is a bad idea.

I really dont know what is going to happen if/when Israel loses US support. Maybe that is why Netanyahu feels such urgency to destroy his enemies now, because he sees the writing on the wall. I will say a lot of the cost is replacing defensive anti missile/rocket systems. So if Israel can destroy their enemies capabilities to fire missiles/rockets their dependence will be a lot lower. They also appear to be developing homegrown cheaper defensive systems, such as Iron Beam, that could help mitigate potential loss of US support.

Doctors Without Borders CEO Stunned By ABC's Bizarre Question On Gaza Starvation

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/doc...

So a load of bs.

You realize this is bullshit, and these so called aid agencies, that just act as PR fronts for Hamas, are a giant part of the problem, not the solution.

These sites are completely packed with people that all have cell phone cameras, and not one video of any of this happening. Completely impossible.

No, it's because he can only fend off his legal problems by keeping the country at war.

Does Israel have a mechanism to give him immunity in exchange for ending the war?

Israel doesnt want to end the war. 95% of their society wants to finish the genocide. killing natives and stealing land the main component of Zionism.

Not that I'm aware of, unless they invent one.

This is the point I'm trying to make. The current campaign requires daily arms shipments from the US, so under your proposed solution, Israel, who may very well be under sanctions, will have to come up with some deal to import raw materials and completely rework their society to have a vertically integrated military industrial complex.

As to your other point, you seem to delusionally believe that Israel can defeat its enemies once and for all, but I have to remind you that Hamas, by far their weakest enemy right next to their supply lines, is not even close to defeated right now. They have unlimited unexploded ordinance, the ability to turn that into RPGs/IEDs, hundreds of miles of tunnels that the Israelis have given up on penetrating in any meaningful way, and are willing to fight to the last man. Meanwhile, the Iranian military industrial complex is still churning and the Houthis are still hostile and are targeting any (non-US) ship from any company that has ever gone to an Israeli port.

Which begs the question: why not simply drop the terrorist/animal rhetoric, give the Palestinians props for being tough/determined, and make some major concessions? If the Palestinians don't accept the new state of equilibrium and get aggressive again, at the very least the Israelis will be fighting with full US support and with the moral high ground.

IDF is dog whistling with firing “warning shots” and reviewing “‘mistakes” too. “Crowd control” with live ammo (IDF admits they use live ammo). They aren’t even denying people are dying while trying to get aid and you don’t have to read too hard between the lines to realize that.

On the other claim about Hamas being responsible for lack of dispersement of aid. 1. Israel’s own truck roll numbers diminished well below what it said was sufficient to feed Gazans. 2. It’s absurd to simultaneously claim you’ve degraded Hamas’ ability to operate and blame Hamas for not dispersing the aid. Israel is responsible for distribution at least in areas it controls, which at this point is a arguably a majority of Gaza by population, if not by area.

I completely agree that a lot of international orgs are compromised but their lack of credibility is on lack of condemnation for Hamas’ actions, not on what the Palestinians are suffering.

That asymmetric treatment is more of an acknowledgment that they think Hamas is irredeemable and cannot be reasoned with.

One can’t shoot down all aid agencies or UN Members, Red Cross , whistle blowers in the IDF/US military etc as being the “mouthpiece for Hamas”. Makes no logical sense. There is tons of trustworthy people who are reporting on the heinous crimes of the IDF. Again, this is just a bad war in the history of Israel. They are not the only country to get involved in a unpopular war.

Sure, there are a few powerful Israeli lobbyists scattered all throughout America involved in numerous organizations …doesn’t mean there’s some far reaching conspiracy there …. and it doesn’t mean that anyone who speaks negatively of Hamas or the PLO is the mouthpiece of the IDF.

Gaza isn't very big. Israel can just bomb/bulldoze the remaining infrastructure, turn off the power and and water, and let the rest of the world deal with what to do with the 2 million refugees*. It can also take similar measures in Lebanon in Hezbollah strongholds. For example give enough warning for all civilians to flee, and then raze Daniyeh to the ground. If indiscriminate razing becomes the goal, as opposed to the precise, controlled strikes it has been doing the last 1.5 years, then much more can be accomplished with much less materials used.

Now I am not say Israel should do these things at this point. But if at some point in the future things got more desperate (say an embargo from the US while Hamas and Hezbollah starts to rearm with rockets from Iran) it is something Israel could do. It doesn't have to fight in so measured a manner, and give their enemies so much room to maneuver.

For your last point, every time Israel has given concessions to the Palestinains, no moral high ground has been afforded to them, and it has not ended well. Unlike you I am old enough to remember that Gaza and much of the West Banks was ethnically cleansed of Jews to appease the Palestinians, and you see what this got them. If Israel gives into the Palestinians and allows further genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews in the West Bank, why would it be any different this time?

Now I suspect Israel will ultimately make concessions to appease the manufactured worldwide outrage, but I am under no illusion they will be afforded any moral high ground, and will not be just taken advantage of again.

*A couple years ago Pakistan actually did this to about 2 million Afghanis living in the border region. Just bulldozed the cities they were living in and told them to start walking to Afghanistan. Of course zero worldwide outrage, because no Jews, no news.

You are getting most of your information from bad faith Western media and Hamas. You should actually read some Israel media (not far left like Haaretz), instead of just relying on bad faith actors like BBC. Even if you just dismiss they reporting as lies, you will at least read what Israel is saying is happening.

Israel said the first few days were chaotic, and live fire was used as crowd control. And there is some video evidence of this, as would be expected in areas with thousands of people all with video technology on their cell phones. Although there was no actual video evidence of Palestinians being hit by the crowd control (at least live ammunition, there was video of Palestinians being purposefully hit by non lethal crowd control munitions), the IDF and GHF did acknowledge it was possible.

After the first few days of working out the kinks, the IDF and GHF said things have been going more or less smoothly, and most of the "reports" coming out of Al Jazeera, BBC, Sky News, CNN, etc. are just blatant lies.

And the complete dearth of any video evidence to back up any of the "reports" would support this.

No there isn't. Leftist western media has been mostly completely captured ideologically at the journalist level. If you aren't a believer in extreme leftist causes and The Palestinian Resistance, to the point you would report blatant Hamas lies as truth, you would have been filtered out a long time ago. On top of this Hamas would never treat with anyone that was unwilling to present their propaganda as truth. If you aren't their mouthpiece, you are getting nothing from them. And on top of this, management of all these outlets has given explicit instructions to ignore inconvenient realities, and instead push an anti Israel narrative. Leaked documents from BBC confirm this.

Whether you want to say BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, CNN are the mouthpiece of Hamas or not; the truth is they have all shown themselves to be journalistically compromised for various reasons; and nothing they report should be treated as anything more than propaganda.

of course the game has changed completely. There is now a significant portion of Republicans and conservatives/Christians who oppose supporting Israel. With many saying most young Republicans oppose Israel. There’s millions of conservatives pro alpha male/pro masculine and pro traditional values type people who follow conservative leaning Andrew Tate, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, the fresh and fit podcast and many more who oppose supporting Israel no matter what to show this.

It’s mostly the neo conservative /boomer generation that provides the most ardent support for the IDF. That even includes some boomer lefties and lefty politicians like Chuck Schumer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Remembering this thread, at least one pro Netanyahu person attempted to pedal the radical IDF line that the Green Beret soldier “Anthony Aguilar is a liar and untrustworthy”. Well, now the Green Beret soldier is vindicated.

Aguilar blew the whistle on the evil conduct of the IDF by food distribution centers in Gaza,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s_3YazjESp...

And there are other military officials from the USA who have firsthand knowledge or direct contact with IDF soldiers to show that the IDF is committing heinous war crimes in Gaza. This doesn’t mean all IDF soldiers are bad, but this most recent Israeli intervention in Gaza is a bloodbath. It is quite different from previous ones for the reasons listed in this thread.

What’s different about Israel’s most recent war in Palestine from previous events years ago decades ago is that today you have social media you have the genocide being captured live on television in front of everyone’s eyes nobody can deny that. Because of the cell phone that’s one of the good things About the cell phone today.

Also what is different as shown by numerous sources in this thread and by anyone who follows modern day media is that clearly a huge number of conservative Christians now oppose Israel. That is blatantly obvious from anyone who watches the fresh and fit podcast, Candice Owens, Andrew, Tate, Tucker Carlson and so many more.

lol. One extreme far right outlet parroting another doesn’t vindicate anything. That is like arguing Hitler was vindicated because goebbels agreed with him.

All the far right anti Israel media rallying around this one person, while presenting no new information that wasn’t in the Tucker interview (which I saw) doesn’t make the accusations any more valid or vindicated.

US Green Beret Veteran Tony Aguilar Details the Shocking War Crimes He’s Witnessing in Gaza

Tucker Carlson

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRjEMbHXM4...