Israel/Palestine thread

Dunno what you're talking about unless you're saying Iran is an Arab country, which it isn't.

Despite the way people talk about the hundreds of years of Muslim fundamentalism and think Mohammed's invasions are the reason for religious extremism in that part of the world, Iran and most of the region were far more Western and secular in the 1970s. It's not something new. The rise of fundamentalism was the result of recent foreign domination and war.

Iran is a very different thing. Pretty much everywhere else in the MENA, the people the armies of Muhammad conquered completely subsumed their own identity, and took on the identity of Muslim Arabs.

Iranians kept their language and identity. Despite the actions and rhetoric of the IRGC I definitely think there is a future where a secular Iranian govt and Israel could make peace, because they dont have the same zero sum tribal baggage. This seems counter-intuitive as Iran is the nation that in the short term is most belligerent with Israel (apart form Palestinians). But IMO true none the less.

Other than not being given a choice or a cultural reformation (which I dont see happening), I really dont see how Arab Muslims can really just accept the loss of a territory that is so integral to their religious identity. And I dont think they have. The Palestinians are there to soften Israel for as long as it takes, until the time is ripe to reconquer.

The only way I think Israel could actually gain true security would be to remove not only the Palestinians, but the 5 million or so Arabs living in Israel. It is just too much of a 5th column security vulnerability. If it is accepted this is too immoral, then that is fine. Israel will just have to accept they are existing on borrowed time.

1970s Egypt

1950s Egypt

Beruit...goes without saying

Goes to show how things can go backwards. Trump isn't a religious fanatic, but he's tight with the Christian Identitarians like his SecDef and also the Evangelical Fundies love him. American women might be wearing the Christian equivalent of Burkas in 30 years.

The elites of the pan Arab nationalist movements of the 20th century were largely secular and/or Christian. They basically made a deal with the Ummah, follow our lead and we will kick out the Jews and westerners.

They couldn’t deliver and the Islamists took over.

I don’t know why you are pushing back against what I am saying. You don’t think Israel should exist anyways. You think everyone should just be made equal citizens and it becomes a sectarian zero sum tribal free for all like Iraq or Lebanon. Where non Muslim minorities eventually become persecuted and many leave.

The future I envision is more or less the natural conclusion of what you want anyways.

Lol, they didn't make a deal to follow their lead and they'll kick out the Jews and Westerners. I push back on what you say because you're so wrong. I think you know that even. It's like you're addicted to saying "zero sum" and "tribal".

Iraq is doing pretty well in a lot of ways right now fwiw - in ways like far less religious strife.

The US did not give Israel trillions, poker is always fair, and human history is not riddled with atrocity

By any metric you could use to measure how good a country is doing, Iraq is near the bottom. Didn’t then just pass a law lowering the age of consent for girls to 9 years old? I also vaguely remember some story of an Israeli woman doing some research there and getting abducted by a local hezbollah cell and being held for years (still ongoing).

Sorry Iraq is a 3rd world sectarian **** hole.

I agree with you some outcome like Iraq is what Israel could turn into if the Palestinian Territories were absorbed and everyone made equal citizens (at least until Palestinian Muslims became a majority and changed the laws making themselves privileged).

I guess we just disagree whether this is a desirable outcome or not.

FWIW I am actually not the emotionally invested in the future of Israel. If Israel turned into Lebanon, there would be a lot is sectarian strife and a lot of people would die, and most of the Jews would leave (as they did in Lebanon) and the world would move on.

But I also understand why the people that are invested in Israel are acting as they are given the current environment and incentive structures.

And I have little doubt what absorbing 7 million Palestinians, with their extremist culture, into Israel would do.

Iraq GDP/capita is higher than Iran's now and is like 7x what it was in 2003.

This is the forum where people think San Francisco is a hell hole and they **** their pants if they take a wrong turn in San Diego, so what else could it possibly think about Iraq.

And non state foreign aligned militant groups fire rockets at other countries.

And the country could devolve into sectarian civil war any day, and probably will as soon as the US leaves.

No thank you. Hard pass.

I'm not asking you to travel there. You live in SoCal and I wouldn't ask you to walk down Ventura Blvd after dark. And it's not like Iraq is Switzerland, but it's doing a lot better than one might think if one hadn't been paying attention.

fundamentalist Muslim extremists are objectively bad and ruin everything they control. If that’s the point Microbet is trying to make, then he’s going to find the pro-Israel crowd agrees. Maybe he’s trying to blame the Muslim world’s plunge into self destructive fundamentalism on Israel. It doesn’t really matter.

My guess is the pro-Israel crowd is much less emotional than the pro-Hamas crowd and the tone of the posts itt reflect that. If you support western values in any capacity, support for Israel is logical while supporting Hamas is illogical and relies completely on emotional investment.

Supporting Hamas means completely abandoning logic and reason to support a path which is objectively worse for all parties involved. If that’s not driven by emotion, then it must be stupidity.

There is only one side asking the other to kill themselves in here lol.

Supporting neither is logical. The biggest cause of extremism (on both sides) is war.

And by "support" I don't mean who anyone roots for like it's a sport. I mean sending weapons.

If your enemies support one side though it is logical to support the other

Unfortunately, that’s not how successful geopolitics work in a globalized world. We get a lot out of our relationship with Israel, and supporting them is logical. Israel just incapacitated Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Israel helps us keep nukes out of Iran’s hands. The Palestinians, on the other hand have nothing to offer in terms of an alliance. The culmination of Palestinian society over the past century has been to develop mediocre, yet very cheap methods of killing Jews. America has no use for that.

Does your "enemies" here mean something like Iran or does it mean liberals?

That's something I've been saying. The West supports Israel because, for them, it's a military outpost protecting oil interests. I'm not saying that's good. It's not. That's just the way it is. The stuff about democracy is wrong and the stuff about clashes of cultures is delusional.

Iran and other "axis of evil" members depending on the circumstances (presently i'd say Iran & Qatar)

*groan*

Do any of the proxies look un-Arab to you? The money comes from all over the region. But the guys pulling the triggers are very much Arab.

These days the money is Qatari, Iranian, Turkish in a big way, it's spread out. They use the Arab neighbors as the trigger men.

I'm not indifferent to it. The US government is. That's not how the USA chooses allies. Look at Saudi Arabia itself!

The "oil" is reductionist yes, because there are other economic interests. There is a lot of non-oil business with Israel.

Now you're talking about Palestine, Yemen, and parts of Lebanon and Syria, which is what I said.

Groan yourself.