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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.
The difference is that WWII land loss mostly affected belligerents, who had legitimate beefs going back centuries. Israel was built at the expense of Arab villagers who didn't really do anything to anybody. If you get injured in a mass brawl, you can't just go on to maul a random bystander and excuse yourself by saying that everyone in the mass brawl you just came out of suffered injuries.
I mean, they are clearly working on it. South Africa, generally recognised as pretty evil, always was minority-European.
Would it fix the problem on the Israeli side? They have already also grabbed parts of Lebanon (more, recently); how do we figure there would be a real limit to their quest for Lebensraum?
South Africa never was ethnonationalist project. Vast demographic stratum of not-coethnics is incompatible (with ethnonationalist ethnostate). Apartheid era South Africa was an attempt at ethnosupremacist caste society. Some similarities with multicultural empires (but without the position, resources and stature of empire) or American South. Agreed it was pretty evil, though, but accusations should be kept correct and precise. The post-apartheid "Kill the Boer" South Africa may be catching up on the relative evil.
It's also not super clear Israelis are "working on it", no matter is "it" ethnostate or South Africa. Israel seems content with 20% Israeli Arab population with civil rights. That attitude may change if the demographic balance ever tips the other way (not unlike how demographics became so contentious topic in Lebanon that no official demographic surveys are conducted), but orthodox Israelis seem to be working on keeping the favorable balance with the 6.6 fertility rate, so perhaps they can keep kicking that can forward until end of time.
Putting my realist glasses on: it's the same as for any other country: none, nobody can figure it out, there is no such limit other than established by tradition of peace. I don't think it as any special perfidiousness of Israel: no country in a habit of making war has had such limit, either, until perhaps they are clearly losing. If you are winning, there will be no shortage of warmongers who want to win some more. Britain never had any limit in enlarging the British empire. Success at defensive war may encourage starting offensive war: Revolutionary France wanted keep the Revolution, then they wanted natural borders at Rhein, and then Napoleon was at the gates of Moscow. In broad strokes, there are only two stable states: mission creep until eventual failure, or no war at all.
I like to bring up Denmark and Sweden: they had a tradition of trying to conquer/reconquer each other for centuries. Then, after Napoleon the military and political landscape changed, they stopped waging war due to circumstances, the circumstances became a habit, and after two centuries today nobody (up to lizardsman's constant) in either country seriously considers ownership of previously contested areas a just casus belli. Unfortunately it is never permanent, the mentality can changed with a concerted propaganda effort in one generation. So, nobody can guarantee limits to war aims, in general and not in this particular case.
Back to topic of Palestine. Until recently, the Palestinians and their supporters have had equal or upper hand at rejecting opportunities to begin the tradition of peace. Predictably, after few decades of that, cycle of war feeding itself and warmonger politicians with maximalist claims, they got what they wanted: there is few Israeli powers-that-be willing to entertain peaceful solutions like two-state. As long as neither side seriously considers peace, I view Israel equally just in waging the war as the opposing side.
Now do I like Israel and their policy of war? Less and less more brutal they become, but it is an untrue claim Israel has always been "unambiguously evil": at every window of opportunity for co-existence that doesn't feed the evil, Palestine and their backers have never took opportunity other than to make opportunity more remote; find more evil ways of fighting war and hurt "random bystanders", and never shown willingness to back away from plan to drive the Israel back to sea.
Not really related to main point, but I think this is bit selective. Israel has existed today longer (77 years since 1947) than "Germany" had existed as a country in 1939. If you count back to Confederation of the Rhine, you get a "beef" beyond 130 years, but you could count Israel starting from Zionist migration to Ottoman Palestine, and that started late 19th century. By standards of beefs going back to centuries, Israel/Palestine has been around long enough.
...yes, and Germany has basically only lost territory nonconsensually since its creation. In terms of lands it controls that were not German in even semi-recent history, at most you could make an argument about a narrow strip it took from Denmark in the very north, and there there was a corresponding longer history of mutual wronging between Denmark and various particular states that were later absorbed into the German fold.
Israel and Palestine are still around, and basically every piece of real estate Israel owns was stolen from ancestors of modern-day Palestinians. In this particular case, it is really hard to buy into the "it was out of their hand for so long, they should get over it already" argument - especially since Israel still continues expropriating and settling more Palestinian land, in brazen defiance of admonitions even from its "friends".
With some civil rights. I have actually been to Israel, and it's impossible to ignore how obviously the Palestinian population is being treated differently - there are villages fenced in by Berlin-style prefab concrete walls everywhere across the countryside, random checkpoints with separate, overflowing queues for them, parts of cities randomly locked off on the basis of some or another Jewish festivity with police filtration points that keep them out completely, etc.; I searched a bit and Amnesty has a much longer list including things that I would not have noticed during my fairly short stay.
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