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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Iran has launched hypersonic missiles into the center of Tel Aviv.

This is shocking to me - I knew things were heating up in the Middle East, but now Iran is officially firing back at Israel. To be frank I was kind of not paying attention to the situation much until this happened, but seems like a major inflection point.

What are the implications of this for further war? For nuclear action in the area? Other countries getting invovled?

What are the implications for the U.S. election, and what do you think the U.S. will do in response?

How do we find a way towards peace now that Israel has been bombed in a civilian area?

EDIT: Almost goes without saying, but Iran has officially declared war on Israel.

Tehran does not have the capabilities to launch a serious war against Israel. They wouldn't get an army to Baghdad, and their airforce would be lucky to get 50% of any attempted strike further than that as well.

Like their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, their entire goal is to lose spectacularly and hope American and European leftists get extra mad at Israel for being competent at warfare.

Like their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, their entire goal is to lose spectacularly and hope American and European leftists get extra mad at Israel for being competent at warfare

Their strategy is simple. Israel has the non ultra orthodox population of Wisconsin and the area of El Salvador. It is a tiny country with abysmal natural resources that is deeply fractured. Israel needs to be kept in a permanent state of crisis as this will effectively make the country infeasible. Israel is going to be in a permanent state of chaos.

Europe has nothing to gain by Israel creating another refugee crisis. The support for Israel is low in Europe.

Isreal is a country of neurotic people with abysmal school results. They aren't competent at war, they are just exceptionally brutal while fighting people who barely have weapons.

  • -13

Isreal is a country of neurotic people with abysmal school results

Care to explain?

Jews are famously neurotic and their school math scores are just above Turkey's in the pisa ranking.

Jews dumb

Interesting argument. Let's see if it bears relation to reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_Nobel_laureates#Laureates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Turkish_Nobel_laureates

Keep in mind turkey has 10x the population.

Hmm, maybe there's more to the story.

Also, note how smoothly criticism of Israel has become criticism of Jews instead.

Also, note how smoothly criticism of Israel has become criticism of Jews instead.

In every other situation that'd be true, but saying "Israel is a country of Jews" is hardly antisemitism, more tautology.

Also, note how smoothly criticism of Israel has become criticism of Jews instead.

I always try and avoid doing this myself, and I think that the argument here is transparently bad from a HBD perspective (those are the IQ results I'd expect from a high IQ ashkenazim population coexisting with lower average IQ sephardim and mizrahim) but I don't think you're really making much of a point here. Israel very proudly advertises itself as The Jewish State, For Jews, By Jews and frequently claims that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews and their right to exist. It might be a very smooth transition from criticising Israel to criticising jews, but the lubrication here was actually supplied by the Israelis themselves.

Israeli Jews aren’t like American Jews.

You’re talking about a self selected group of people who were the most martial Jews in the world in the years before its founding and most of the Jews that joined them afterwards were mostly pulled from the middle east and North Africa.

And it keeps happening. Every year a small amount of even more self selected Jews leave the countries of their birth to go live in Israel. Making Aliyah is like all that homesteading LARP you see on the DR but even more hardcore.

They are largely middle eastern jews. In other words, lower IQ than eastern European jews. A nation of bazaar hagglers isn't really that martial. Israel performs abysmally in international sport for a reason. They aren't a physical people.

Napoleon: “Britain is a nation of shopkeepers, we needn’t fear them.”

Same energy.