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HAPPENING NOW: ISRAEL LAUNCHES MASSIVE ATTACK AGAINST IRANESE NUCLEAR FACILITIES—AIR RAID SIRENS HEARD ALL ACROSS ISRAEL—MASSIVE AIR ACTIVITY OVER IRAQ-SYRIA BORDER—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS CONFIRMED IN TEHRAN INCLUDING COLLAPSED BUILDING—IRANIAN FIGHTER JETS SEEN TAKING OFF FROM AIRSTRIPS NEAR TEHRAN—BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES REPORTED IN IRAN—REPORTS OF EXPLOSIONS AT US BASES IN IRAQ—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR IRAN’S NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY—VIDEO FOOTAGE SHOWING NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY BURNING—UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE IRANIAN MILITARY HAS BEEN KILLED IN A TARGETED STRIKE
—Inb4 source
—Inb4 “low effort post ban” Additional facts and my thoughts will be added as the situation develops
Regarding culture war aspects of this: I predict more Israel Bad posts everywhere. I have already seen some on reddit saying they'd rather that Iran have nukes than Israel because Israel has been the main aggressor in the region since its existence and Iran having nukes would help reign them in. I doubt we'll get huge rallies of people shouting "Free Iran!", though.
Well, I'd peg Iran as a good case of "bad guys who are in the right". I don't have much love left for the Islamic theocracy they are running and think there are many ways in which they deny human flourishing for no good reason at all, but also it seems clear to me that they have more of a popular mandate to run the country than anyone else does, and in particular they came to power as a sort of last-resort response to all sorts of alternative attempts of running Iran were tried and turned out to be more unjust.
As for Israel Bad, let me present an abbreviated case that Israel is in fact Bad. Really, in my estimation and value system, it is hard to think of a state entity that is more unambiguously evil: they stole land to build a murderous ethnostate (the last part already being bad in itself, if you subscribe to a certain brand of humanism); take, take and take from even their so-called friends while repaying the friendship with perfidy and treason, and use their extensive influence network to gaslight the friends into not even being able to coherently respond to said perfidy; and, worst of all, they come to be among the worst purveyors of hypocrisy and double standards anywhere to cover up for their actions, which I see as an attack on the idea of standards and rules, and civilisation built upon it, itself. If an Arab kills one random Israeli, they tell us, this is an atrocity of the highest order, retroactively justifying every abuse that not only this Arab but the grandfather of his cousin thrice removed was subjected to; if an Israeli kills a hundred random Arabs, this is maybe a little excessive and you really wish they would exercise restraint but of course their right to defend themselves should not be questioned? Those hundred probably included a lot of people who felt vaguely positively about the Arab who killed one Israeli before? Even their very founding myth does this - their target demographic suffered the great injustice of being murdered and expelled for the sake of someone else's ethnostate, so they will gloriously murder and expel an entirely unrelated people to get their ethnostate. The median Israeli, furthermore, seems about as complicit in this as any citizen can be complicit in the actions of their country - few other countries are as affluent, polyglot and well-connected, and I figure any Israeli who wanted to leave would be welcomed with open arms in most of the Western world. Certainly, if I were Israeli, I hope I would have the integrity to either leave or else accept any retribution that comes my way with the serenity of a repentant murderer on death row.
I think having the worst version of their standards applied to themselves is the most appropriate punishment for purveyors of double standards. Israel contends that 55k dead Palestinians (80% civilians) is a just response to 1.2k dead Israelis (68% civilians) (Wikipedia figures). If against all odds Iran came through and successfully applied the same ratio to them, I would not think the world became a better* place, but it would be hard to shake the feeling that it became a more just one, in the ruat caelum way.
*I do not reject the argument that net suffering even for Arabs in Israel (let alone net disutility for its Imperial Citizens) is lower than net suffering for Arabs in self-governed countries, but find it irrelevant. I wish for people to have the right to be governed by their own choice and consent, including the right to be governed badly.
It's probably not something I should make a habit of, but I feel compelled to give some support to Israel here. Israel didn't steal any land any more than anyone else won or lost land before and after World War II, but the difference is the reaction to them has been way crazier because they planted themselves in the middle of a sea of extremists based around a nucleus of religious sites (geez, how many holy sites are Muslims entitled to? The Jews just have a few right there, right?). Much blood has been spilled because there was no postwar liberal consensus in the Middle East as there was in Europe. The postwar liberal consensus had to be created by Israel basically all by itself, with limited success, as the situation in Gaza shows. Israel was making some serious progress on a two-state thing, but that whole deal was killed by rampant terrorist attacks, and due to these sustained attacks, the Palestinians have never been farther from their own state. That's never what they wanted, anyway; they want everything, river to the sea.
Israelis are considered more valued by both sides. You can see this based on the prisoner exchanges between Hamas and Israel. Always, Israel releases hundreds or thousands of militants in exchange for a handful of their own soldiers or civilian hostages. Hamas is glad to accept these deals that bear the implication that one Israeli is worth thousands of Gazans, so I can't blame anyone for believing it's true. But disproportionate casualties have always been acceptable in war, which is what this is. Those civilian to militant casualty ratios are not even out of the ordinary for war. Massive assaults on civilians have also always been a decent cause for war, especially ones committed by the literal government of a territory.
If Israel is an ethnostate (it probably is), it's not a very good one. Do you think that Nazi Germany would accept having a populace composed of 20% Jews?
Normally, I find the idea of actual genocide to be pretty terrible. Ethnic groups and DNA and culture are fascinating to me, and to see something like that die entirely is a huge bummer. Gaza tests this value of mine. Never has a people been more problematic than them and never has a people been more determined to reject their lot in life. Basically their entire purpose nowadays is to take back every square inch of Israel, no matter how impossible that is, no matter how many people on their own side and on the enemy side are killed. Before the 20th century, they absolutely would never have been tolerated. They would have been, at the very least, brutally slapped around until a huge percentage of the population was dead and the rest was too weak and scared to retaliate. If this is not done, this conflict will likely never end. Even forcibly moving every Gazan out of the area probably would not fix the problem, because they are extremely intent on getting their territory back, and distance does not stop the likes of the Houthis and the Iranians either.
I am a little fascinated by the right wingers who do not like Israel. For them, it's generally a much more obvious case of antisemitism than it is for left wingers. My father introduced me to the fact that antisemitism is really, really old in Europe. For Christians, it makes a lot of sense; they were a very radically different group that lived in close proximity to them, considered sinners, forced into a universally disliked profession as bankers, and there is some basis for the idea that they killed Christ and called down a blood curse upon themselves. This, plus random grievances accumulated throughout the centuries just from tallying up every negative incident they could find. For the non-religious, I do not know why they would dislike Jews in particular. My best guess is conspiracy reasons related to Hollywood or perhaps certain Holocaust deniers. If anyone here is agnostic or atheist or otherwise not a Christian, and really doesn't like Jews, please let me know your reasons. I'm interested, scientifically. My father really liked Jews before his, uh, awakening, and he hated Muslims. Now he basically loves Gazans and hates Jews, while still mostly hating Muslims in Europe.
Jews are politically minorities in a way that does not exactly endear them to the far right.
Why so many secular far right wingers(and in middle eastern conflicts, when forced to have an opinion, I simply support whatever side is better for local Christians. Ethnoreligious prejudices are how the locals make their decisions, after all) hate Israel I can't say- it is after all Jews being somewhere else.
Are you Arab? If not, how is supporting your perceived interests of Arab Christians comparable to "ethnoreligious prejudices?"
Can you be more specific about which "secular far right wingers" you think want "Jews being somewhere else?" Does supporting the goals of the "Jewish Lobby" result in American Jews emigrating or reduce the number of foreign Jews immigrating?
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