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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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Rueters: U.S. states and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal aid for natural disaster preparedness

The requirement applies to at least $1.9 billion that states rely on to cover search-and-rescue equipment, emergency manager salaries and backup power systems among other expenses, according to 11 agency grant notices reviewed by Reuters.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency stated in grant notices posted on Friday that states must follow its "terms and conditions." Those conditions require they certify they will not sever “commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies” to qualify for funding.

The requirement is the Trump administration's latest effort to use federal funding to promote its views on Israel.

The Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees FEMA, in April, said that boycotting Israel is prohibited for states and cities receiving its grant funds.

I've followed the politicization of FEMA grants through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program which overwhelmingly goes to Jewish organizations. The recent Israel supplemental bill included a $390M increase to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program with $230M available through Sept 30, 2026. Schumer is pushing for an additional $500M bringing potential 2026 funding to $730M.

The timing of this is interesting also because it's in the middle of a significant back-and-forth between Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. Tucker Carlson had Candace Owens on his show, where Tucker accused Fuentes of being a fed. To justify that claim, Tucker said that Fuentes accused Carlson's father of being in the CIA which was a fact that Carlson claimed to not know until his father's death in March.

Tucker also gave a line of criticism of Fuentes that Tucker himself gave in nearly exact words to Pat Buchanan in 1999.

How does this tie in together? Where is the pushback against the clear Israeli influence in the US government supposed to come from in the Right Wing? It's only coming from Fuentes and DR Twitter. Stuff like this gives Fuentes credibility regarding his criticisms of Israeli influence- it seems Tucker Carlson is trying to ride the fine line between providing an outlet for criticism of Israeli influence among the Right Wing but still gatekeeping Nick Fuentes from going further mainstream.

Discrimination towards Israel is a convenient legal hammer for Trump to pound on adversaries.

Under 42 U.S.C. § 5151, the President’s regulatory authority is limited to ensuring that all disaster assistance is distributed “in an equitable and impartial manner”

Trump is using Israel because he needs to find a credible example of 'partial' behavior by local govts. The American system has special carve-outs for provable hate crimes. There is decades of precedent on methods for associating anti-Israel-movements with antisemitism and therefore provable hate crimes.

Trump's govt (and the project 2025 playbook[1]) are strategic about finding loopholes for executive overreach. For universities, it was provable affirmative action. For local funding, it's Israel.

[1] I have not read project Esther in detail. But at face value, it seems to be the guiding document on how to use antisemitism as a cudgel to beat opposing institutions into submission.

Israel is effectively a forward deployed state of the USA. They do the dirty work on the vanguard, and shield America from criticism. For ex: I don't believe the Israelis could have developed Pegasus without a soft go ahead from the Americans.

If our relationship with Israel is characterized by Israel doing America’s dirty work, then: (1) why are our politicians handing synagogues hundreds of millions in free funds, yearly, as SS notes? What does this have to do with our geopolitical interest? This is more readily explained by a group of people having sophisticated lobbying capabilities. (2) Why did Trump specifically go after students who criticized Israel on social media, rather than students who criticize America or the West broadly? (3) Why do we, in effect, subsidize the entirety of Israeli society, from their subsidized colleges and subsidized healthcare to their subsidized religious institutions? We are Israel’s security in the region for free; they gave nothing, not money or troops, for our wars in the region, and they will not be repaying the $1,000,000,000 we spent on their defense vs Iran. If Israel were the client state of our Empire, you would expect them to pay Caesar’s tax, right? Instead, we hand them our resources for no obvious gain. It should be the other way around. As Mearsheimer spoke to Tucker Carlson the other day,

And the lobby is so effective, it is so powerful, that we basically end up supporting Israel unconditionally. What that means, Tucker, is in those cases where Israel’s interests are not the same as America’s interests, we support Israel. We support Israel’s interests, not America’s interests.

[…] anytime the Egyptians or the Jordanians get uppity about Israel, the United States reminds them, “You better behave yourself because we have huge economic leverage over you. You have to be friendly to Israel.” So Jordan and Egypt never cause the Israelis any problem […] as I said to you before, we have a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in recorded history. Just very important to understand it. There is no single case in recorded history that comes even close to looking like the relationship that we have with Israel. Because again, as I said, states sometimes have similar interests, and this includes the United States and Israel, but they also have conflicting interests. And when a great power like the United States has conflicting interests with another country, it almost always, except in the case of Israel, acts in terms of its own interests, America first. But when it comes to Israel, it’s Israel first. And if you go to the Middle East and look at our policy there, there’s just abundant evidence to support that.

I believe there’s one simple answer [as to why this is the case]. The Israel lobby. I think the lobby is an incredibly powerful interest group, and I’m choosing my words carefully. It has awesome power, and it basically is in a position where it can profoundly influence US foreign policy in the Middle East. And indeed, it affects foreign policy outside of the Middle East. But when it comes to the Middle East, and again, the Palestinian issue in particular, it has awesome power. And there’s no president who is willing to buck the lobby.

If Israel were our forward operating base, then it would be easy to support them: Israelis would be working day and night to secure a better future for Americans. Their tax dollars would go to our institutions and their blood would be spilled in Syria / Iraq / Afghanistan for us. Alas, this does not appear to be the case.

A couple asides on Pegasus: its ancestor PROMIS was indeed developed by the CIA and sold to Israel, and then from Israel it was disseminated to other countries. The person doing this dissemination was no other than Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell. But Israel, rather than acting purely as a FOB to America, has its own interests in mind:

"L'Oeil De Washington" contends that a bugged version of PROMIS was sold in the mid-1980s for Soviet government use, with the media mogul Robert Maxwell as a conduit. According to the book, Israel's knowledge of this operation became a bargaining chip in trying to curb U.S. arms shipments to Iraq before the Gulf War; the Israelis threatened to tell the Russians their computers were open to American surveillance. Apparently, the U.S. called Israel's bluff and lost. One of the book's major sources, the Israeli arms merchant Ari Ben-Menashe, told the authors that in 1989 the Soviet spy agency, the GRU, shut down all of its computers for a week after learning that they were bugged by PROMIS.

why are our politicians handing synagogues hundreds of millions

I'm ignorant here. Can you shed light on this ? What were the numbers like pre-Trump ?

Why did Trump specifically go after students who criticized Israel on social media, rather than students who criticize America or the West broadly?

That was the meat of my earlier post. Because Trump can frame criticism of Israel as hate speech in courts. Criticism of America & the West is free game.

Why do we, in effect, subsidize the entirety of Israeli society, from their subsidized colleges and subsidized healthcare to their subsidized religious institutions?

The US has given similar amount in aid to Egypt. Both use the money to immediately buy American weapons. At least Israel operates in tight lockstep with the American military. What does the US get by sending money to Egypt ?

Military funding is very difficult to decode. There's a reason the Pentagon fails every audit. I won't be attempting to itemize it, and neither should you.

no other than Ghislaine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell

Woah. I didn't know that the Maxwells has such deep ties to the CIA. Strong signal that Epstein was on CIA's payroll.

The US has given similar amount in aid to Egypt. Both use the money to immediately buy American weapons. At least Israel operates in tight lockstep with the American military. What does the US get by sending money to Egypt ?

An end to semi-regular wars along the Suez Canal and degrading the arms-supplier influence nexus to Egypt from major American geopolitical rivals?

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