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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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Ronde van Spanje: Tumult, Unrest, and Vingegaard Wins

There is one road cycling event which exceeds all others in general notability, Tour de France. This post is not about it, but about its Spanish counterpart, alike in the rules, mechanics, participants.

The 2025 edition of the Tour of Spain has just ended on Sunday, and boy was it memorable. Not for the cycling, but for what spilled over the side of the road, onto the course. Namely: Pro-Palestine protests. The stated cause of these protestors was the participation of the team "Israel - Premier Tech" (IPT), which despite its name, is not owned by Israel, but by a Jewish Canadian. (Israel has not exactly disassociated itself from the team, its PM expressing support to the team for not buckling).

Stage 5 was a Team Time Trial, where instead of all cyclists starting together, each team starts separately at regular intervals. Perfect situation for those targeting some team. Protestors were aware of this, and attacked IPT, whose finishing time would later be reduced by 15 seconds.

In Stage 11, when cyclists were about half an hour from the finish, shortened by 3km, it also was declared it would have no winner.

IPT would change jerseys, replacing "Israel" on them with the Star of David.

Stage 16 was altered, when the race was already on, by reducing its length by 8km.

Stage 18 was an Individual Time Trial, where each cyclist starts separately at set intervals, again perfect if one targets a particular cyclist. Race organizers sensed the danger, and shortened the course from 27.2 km to 12.2 km, the day before the stage.

Stage 21, the final one, was set to end in several circuits around Madrid, but that part was cancelled. The stage would have no winner, nor would it count for the Spanish Yellow aka Red Jersey.

Safety concerns also prevented podium ceremony from taking place. An IPT rider, American Matthew Riccitello becoming the leader in the Youth (or White Jersey) classification in stage 20, thus entitled to participate in the ceremony, probably exacerbated the perceived security situation. (The teams would go on to conduct their own ceremony in some parking lot, with the production value of an amateur race.)

Currently the position of PM of Spain belongs to the Socialist Party, and in the conflict between making his country look competent and his support for Palestine, chose the latter. Explicitly supporting the disruptors, (following the Spanish FM's calls for IPT to abandon the race a bit over a week earlier). The opposition opposed, as did Israel's FM and PM of Denmark.

Incidentally, the team at the center of this controversy on Sunday participated in a Canadian one-day-race, "Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal" under "IPT", instead of the full name. The race went smoothly, and was won by an American Brandon McNulty riding for the state-owned team "UAE Team Emirates - XRG".

Protestors having veto rights over sports participants, is something I oppose. It would be anti-pluralist. It would be like some manifestations cancel culture in being a variant of tortious interference. The audience wants to see the best riders, the best riders want to participate, but a politicized minority wants to come between them.

It reminds of some democrat-tinged critiques of the US political system, in that it has too many veto points, thus changes are hard to enact. It is, however, out of of all institutions the government, for which it makes the most moral sense to be veto-full as it is unique in wielding force against everyone. But such a veto-full system applied to all of society would be undesirable, as another person watching a cyclist riding for a team you do not like, does not make one coerced. This is why one should have less say in it.

EDIT: Cycling's governing body, UCI, has issued a statement. Most damning for Spain is the following paragraph:

We also regret the fact that the Spanish Prime Minister and his government have supported actions that could hinder the smooth running of a sporting competition and, in some cases, expressed their admiration for the demonstrators. This position is contradictory to the Olympic values of unity, mutual respect, and peace. It also calls into question Spain's ability to host major international sporting events, ensuring that they take place in safe conditions and in accordance with the principles of the Olympic Charter.

Interesting how your comment is about a cycling team with no actual ties to Israel and the inability/unwillingness of the Spanish gov’t to protect and sanctify the Olympic spirit, in the face of dissent. yet the cavalcade below doesn’t seem to be related to the Vuelta at all.

I am glad you mentioned this. I watched he entire race live, and it was surreal to just watch this fall apart.

I was actually a bit surprised at the lack of disruption during the TdF - there were Palestine flags here and there but nothing like what we saw in Spain.

I was actually a bit surprised at the lack of disruption during the TdF - there were Palestine flags here and there but nothing like what we saw in Spain.

Perhaps too many gendarmes willing to engage in a little rompa cabezas.. err, casse las têtes

Aren’t Spanish cops known for being more skull cracking and thuggish, not less?

In general I thought so, but I think the French are really serious about the TdF, in a way the Spanish aren't about the Vuelta.

That’s possible. Also possible- policia armada is being handicapped for Spanish political reasons(AIUI it’s actually a thorny political issue in Spain and their government is propped up by a coalition that includes some of their equivalent of far left wackadoodles) or Spain just wants to give Palestinians a platform in a way France doesn’t.

Gotta love Gallic bloody mindedness

If you look at the wars that became horrendous PR failures such as Vietnam, the French in Algeria, South Africa etc they have all been wars against a population that fundamentally has no reason to accept that order. The South Vietnamese government had no real claim of authority or legitimacy. The palestinian population has no reason to accept large number Eastern Europeans who moved there in the 90s having more rights than they do. They have no reason to accept having a country that is chopped in two parts of which the largest part isn't connected to the sea.

Israel is dropping like a rock in the polls and especially among young people. Palestine's best weapon is IDF soldiers with tiktok showing the world their true nature. Israel is not going to be viable as a state when the state is deeply unpopular in the rest of the world.

and in the conflict between making his country look competent and his support for Palestine,

The completely incompetent looking one was the one who dragged Spain into the Iraq war. Competency is ensuring we don't have a Mediterranean state that creates a massive refugee crisis near Europe. A country that bombs six MENA countries in a week is an enemy of Europe.

Israel destroyed Gaza's catholic church and expects to be treated like a normal country. Does Israel treat countries that destroy synagogues the same way?

Israel is not going to be viable as a state when the state is deeply unpopular in the rest of the world.

It actually only matters in America. Lots of countries are deeply unpopular and yet somehow manage.

I suspect even without America they could scrape by. Their neighbours are pretty pathetic and weak by comparison

Israel is dropping like a rock in the polls and especially among young people.

On one side, young people with cute frog hats are not fond of Israel. How sad.

On other side, Israel just demolished city of two million, reduced neighboring countries to wrecks, terminates anyone it wants , whether by bombing or targeted killings, and no one in the region can do anything about it. You do not have to love Israel to admit that it is on the roll and it is not going to stop.

Things could change when American boomers raised on Hollywood biblical epics and Scofield bible start dying off in earnest, but this is at least decade away.

and no one in the region can do anything about it

When Iran fires missiles at Israel, there's a frantic military effort by the US and UK to defend Israel. US warships in the Persian Gulf and Med firing interceptors, US aircraft providing air defence, US bombers targeting Iran, US satellites and enablers helping Israel.

Israel is not fighting and could not fight this war alone. They've been heavily dependent on US munitions the whole time even for their 'blowing up Gaza' operation, let alone more advanced missile defence. Where are the 2000 pound bombs coming from? American arsenals. They got $20 billion in military aid/assistance in just the first year after October 7th.

Israel is dropping in popularity among young people left and right.

Israel is deeply unpopular in much of the world and increasingly becoming less popular.

If winning a war was measured in dropped bombs, Vietnam would be American and Northern Ireland would be Irish.

Is support for Israel actually reliant on dispensationalists? Hell, is it even tied to Boomers?

  • Knee-jerk reaction to Oct 7
  • Knee-jerk reaction to one’s domestic opponents expressing a position
  • General distaste for Islam
  • Vague sense that Israel is more aligned with western interests

On the rare occasion that I encounter such a discussion at work, it’s more likely to be the last one. It’s not like there’s any shortage of Christians here in Texas. But we also fought enough wars in the Middle East to give a ton of non-Boomers an excuse to support Israel. Pro-Palestine protests only confirm that bias.

To be fair, I don’t think there’s a single army in history who’s reputation would be improved by the soldiers having the ability to broadcast all their activities on tiktok.

ISIS? Depends on the target audience of course.

I mean reputation for humanity and morals, not of fearsomeness. What I mean is that if you gave mass communication to soldiers in any war you would see some pretty ugly behavior and pretty ugly attitudes.

The average Gazan's life would improve immensely if they just complied and stopped fucking with Israel. The main thing motivating them is pure zealotry for a system of belief and governance that only somewhat succeeds if coupled with a gigantic Oil windfall.

The best case scenario for independent Palestine is likely Libya or Lebanon. The main humanist crisis here is not achieving the standards of living currently available to peaceful Israeli Arabs

The average Gazan's life would improve immensely if they just complied and stopped fucking with Israel.

Too late for this. Israel moved on and lost any interest in improving Palestinian quality of life. The plan for Gazans is to leave or die. And since Gazans have nowhere to go...

Decades of wild child-like lashing sponsored by the greater Islamosphere and the global culture no longer having any real answer to 'what if a guerilla warfare participant simply doesn't care about their own population'

If Palestinians didn't defend themselves they would have been ethnically cleansed. Not being genocided by being forced to leave is a main Palestinian goal. Why would they want to be sent to live in Libya? Why would Libya accept ethnic cleansing of millions of people so that millions of refugees end up in their country? Why would Spain which this thread is about want millions of refugees dumped in Libya where they easily can get to Europe.

Had the Irish all thought the same way there would be no Irish left.

The Irish are capable of administering a competent first world state. The current status quo is since on the 10000th chance the scorpion wouldn't stop stinging the frog.

They have higher IQ than the gulf states which do fine.

Also if they are inherently civilizationally incompetent it is important that they stay in Palestine so that we don't end up with Palestinian refugees.

The gulf states do okay since they are literally lottery winners. Islam is not a productive way of running a modern society in the absence of massive material wealth

30% of Palestine was Christian before Israel started to destroy the Christian population of Palestine. Non of the war mongering has helped the countries in the middle east.

Also if they are so civilizationally incompetent, the last thing we would want would be a Palestinian refugee crisis. Therefore they need to stay put.

The Christians saw a quarter of opportunity to advance themselves via either joining Israel or heading overseas and took it for the most part on account of not being insanely irrational.

Palestinian refugee crisis would come even if they were totally peaceful under their own administration right now. Glancing at the plethora of other nearby states shedding large refugee numbers to the West despite nothing to actually take refuge from apart from their own lack of welfare

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Had the Irish all thought the same way there would be no Irish left.

What do you mean? The mass Emigration seems to have worked out very well for them in the long run.

Funny how zionists always end up advocating for mass immigration.

Ireland is today a successful nation. Palestine could very well be as well. The British military wasn't defeated in a major battle against the irish. All the Irish had to do was make it infeasible to continue occupying Ireland.

All the Irish had to do was make it infeasible to continue occupying Ireland.

It looks pretty feasible as far as I can tell.

Palestine gets 17 out of 23 counties and Palestinians get full citizenship in the remaining six would be a substantial win for Palestinians.

I'm not sure where they're getting the petrochemicals to be a functional nation from. The best case scenario for independent Palestine is joining the other non-functional local states in the choir

All the Irish had to do was make it infeasible to continue occupying Ireland.

What exactly do you think the stable equilibrium in Palestine that is analogous to this looks like? Please make sure it's one the Palestinian people themselves would accept.

This is a misuse of the word "they". The average Gazan's life would improve immensely if Hamas and their non-Gazan enablers stopped using Gaza to fuck with Israel.

The Palestinian tragedy is that the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza are interested in improving their own lives in ways which Palestinian emigrés who are allowed to speak for "the Palestinian cause" (aka the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state) by the non-Palestinian Muslims and Leftists who fund it and support it internationally are not. When the First Intifada produced Palestinian leadership which was indigenous to the West Bank and Gaza, we got Oslo. When the Palestinian leadership is emigrés funded by foreigners, we get insane unwinnable wars.

If Israel got poofed out of existence tomorrow the Palestinian state that emerges is most likely another Syria or Libya wracked by internal schisms and poverty.

I watched an interesting interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast not too long ago that offered an alternative perspective of what it’s like for an ordinary person to live under Israeli occupation and also has to live with Palestinians and Hamas.

Israel isn’t helping itself using this conflict to support its ulterior designs for expansion to create a Greater Israel in the region. You can argue who started the fire and draw your lines in the sand wherever you want but to me there’s no doubt Israel is pouring more gasoline on it at the moment than Palestinians are.

After the tidal wave of gasoline that was Oct 7th, I'm not ready to point fingers at Israel for not deescalating.

If you think that qualifies as a tidal wave of gasoline what do you think about the vast numbers of Palestinian hostages? Sure, some of the small children they arrest get charged with crimes, but some of the Oct 7 hostages were "kidnapped from their tank" etc - actively serving in the military. October 7th is a rounding error when compared to what the Israelis were doing to the Palestinians beforehand, and if you want to claim that it justifies what happened next then you unfortunately also have to justify everything the Palestinians have done in revenge.

some of the Oct 7 hostages were "kidnapped from their tank etc - actively serving in the military.

Which is why they're being treated as POWs, with all the rights involved, right? As opposed to being treated as... well, hostages?

The International Convention against the Taking of Hostages defines the offence as the seizure or detention of a person (the hostage), combined with threatening to kill, to injure or to continue to detain the hostage, in order to compel a third party to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage.[17] The Elements of Crimes for the International Criminal Court uses the same definition but adds that the required behaviour of the third party could be a condition not only for the release of the hostage but also for the safety of the hostage.[18] It is the specific intent that characterizes hostage-taking and distinguishes it from the deprivation of someone’s liberty as an administrative or judicial measure.

Although the prohibition of hostage-taking is specified in the Fourth Geneva Convention and is typically associated with the holding of civilians as hostages, there is no indication that the offence is limited to taking civilians hostage. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages do not limit the offence to the taking of civilians, but apply it to the taking of any person. Indeed, in the Elements of Crimes for the International Criminal Court, the definition applies to the taking of any person protected by the Geneva Conventions

Which is why they're being treated as POWs, with all the rights involved, right? As opposed to being treated as... well, hostages?

If you feel so strongly about people being taken as hostages, I assume you're aware of the vast numbers of Palestinians that have been kept hostage by Israel as prisoners? If that's your actual objection and you're concerned about violations of international law there's actually a lot of ground to go over with regards to Israeli violations of it. If that's your actual point, I'm more than happy to go over it with you.

But if your point is just who/whom (taking hostages is fine and legal when the Israelis do it but a warcrime when the Palestinians take a tenth of that number) then I'm not really interested in a discussion, or what passes for one when your criteria is just "if it is my side it is good, if it is the other side it is bad".

to me there’s no doubt Israel is pouring more gasoline on it at the moment than Palestinians are.

What are you basing that opinion on?

Its reaction to October 7th?

Right, so Hamas fires literally thousands of rockets at Israel for no discernible end for decades, stages October 7th as a last-ditch effort to get the world to pay attention to them (fully cognizant of the fact that the Arab world is growing increasingly tired of the Palestinian cause), Israel responds by waging war on Hamas to reclaim the Israeli hostages, Hamas fights back, using various repugnant strategies designed to maximise Palestinian civilian casualties, and persists in firing rockets at Israel throughout (along with the occasional indiscriminate terror attack inside Israel's borders while they're at it)-

And your gloss of this is that Israel bears more responsibility for escalation of hostilities than Hamas?

The obvious next question is - if the fashion Israel responded to October 7th was excessive or inappropriate or whatever, what, in your estimation, ought they to have done instead?

Hamas didn’t fire off thousands of rockets against their peaceful neighbors. They fired off thousands of rockets at people they’re being occupied by.

The entire debate being had is the one Israel gets to play by imposing the framework of discussion to make Hamas take blame for things they aren’t primarily at fault for.

And your gloss of this is that Israel bears more responsibility for escalation of hostilities than Hamas?

Yes because Israel is the military occupier. You can’t be fair to an occupier. How can you?

The obvious next question is - if the fashion Israel responded to October 7th was excessive or inappropriate or whatever, what, in your estimation, ought they to have done instead?

As far as a comprehensive program at this point, I really don’t know. But I can tell you where Israel should start. Halt any further military incursion tomorrow and rethink its plans for the region. There would be a good place to start. Hamas should end its violent campaign as well and the easiest way for both sides to do that is to stop participating in it.

They fired off thousands of rockets at people they’re being occupied by.

Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Hamas persisted in firing rockets at them for the next two decades. And far from these rockets being aimed at military targets, there's no real guidance system to speak of, and the goal is solely to sow terror among Israeli civilians who themselves bear no more responsibility for this state of affairs than the civilians in Gaza do.

Israel gets to play by imposing the framework of discussion to make Hamas take blame for things they aren’t primarily at fault for.

Hamas isn't to blame for the thousands of rockets they fired at Israel over the last few decades? Hamas isn't to blame for the suicide bombers they sent into Israel, or the water pipes they dug out of the ground in Gaza to use to manufacture rockets?

Yes because Israel is the military occupier. You can’t be fair to an occupier. How can you?

To reiterate: Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

Halt any further military incursion tomorrow and rethink its plans for the region. There would be a good place to start.

How many military incursions did Israel make into Gaza between 2014 and October 7th, 2023? Your brilliant suggestion was Israeli policy for the better part of a decade. Hamas responded to this cessation of hostilities by committing the worst pogrom since the Holocaust. At this point "complete and total destruction of Hamas, root and branch" strikes me as an entirely reasonable goal for Israel to pursue.

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Si vis pacem, para bellum.

There is no inherent moral right to sovereignty. I'm sorry, you were lied to: the liberal international order is a spook. The breadth of your dominion is limited to the force of your arms - no matter how righteous or unrighteous you may be.

Did the last prophet, PBUH, not conquer peoples who had fundamentally no reasons to accept his order? Was not God on his side?

Similarly, the Israelites have made a conquest of Israel and Judea. Is God not on their side, now?

Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If the Palestinians want a change to the status quo, they should have cultivated an army to beat the IDF. Now they're beggars in the land of their forefathers with no hope of recovery. No, you're not getting your land back: the people with guns who took it aren't in any mood to just hand it over. It is for them to accept the reality of impotence and exile, as every people who lost wars before them have.

I assume you are jewish.

If you missed it there are strict rules of warfare that have been a part of western civilization for a long time. Catholicism has a view of war that is completely incompatible with the jewish view of war. Might is right with ethnic cleansing has not been applied in Europe.

The French on Haiti didn't want their land back. The Boer didn't want to live in a Bantu state. The occupation isn't long term sustainable and will fall apart. Palestinians have effectively ensured Israel is in a permanent state of crisis with an unsolvable public relations crisis.

I assume you are jewish.

This is the definition of an ad hominem. Even if he were Jewish, "Your opinion is invalid because Jew" isn't acceptable.

You've been warned and banned repeatedly because of your antagonistic obsession with Jews. As we are obligated to repeat over and over, you can hate whomever you want, but your posting needs to follow the rules.

Banned for two days, but next time you are looking at a longer term ban.

Catholicism has a view of war that is completely incompatible with the jewish view of war. Might is right with ethnic cleansing has not been applied in Europe.

Citation very much needed.

I am not Jewish, and my argument would remain the same whether or not I was or wasn't.

I am Chinese.

The Chinese pushed out the Westerners and the Japanese not through impassioned appeals to international law or anti-colonial agitation, but through the barrel of a gun.

Similarly, the Chinese have taken the territories of Tibet and Turkestan for her own against the wishes of the people who live there, with the barrels of guns. If you have enough of them, any occupation is tenable.

I see no reason why the Israelis can't do the same.

There are 250 Chinese for each Tibetan, there are more Palestinians than jews. Also there aren't large Tibetan nations surrounding China.

China didn't defeat its occupants in a big battle, they made occupying China unfeasible in the long run. That is what the Palestinians are doing.

And the Palestinians are, for the most part, impoverished uneducated lumpenproles who live off foreign aid and jihadist payments. Arab armies are jokes and failures. Hamas, Hezbollah, even Iran have been bombed to oblivion. Who is going to come to the Palestinian's aid now? Turkey?

The Israelis don't want to leave Israel. They don't want to leave it so much that they basically stole themselves nukes so that they'd never be coerced to do so. If the Palestinians are competing on who can make the other's situation shittier faster, then they'll lose that competition. If Israel has to choose between becoming an illiberal pariah state like North Korea or its nonexistence it will go for the former every time.

If it gets so desperate as to reach that point, why wouldn't they just murder every Palestinian and dare the international community to do anything about it?

Why are you so certain that their willpower to remain will give up before the Palestinians will?

Just chiming in to say that I have a very similar opinion as you and it disturbs me a little how similar our opinions are.

Israel is always contentious topic, but repeatedly whenever antisemitism-du-jour or unpopularity of how Israel-US relations are among the western world is brought up my reaction is always "obviously?"

What Israel is, is an ethnostate with religious and political mandate to entrench itself in a land surrounded by their religious enemies, full of people that have been historically persecuted on an industrial scale (the exact scale is apparently a hot topic of debate in some circles), and have managed to secure themselves power, a modern military, and alliance with a hyperpower.

What did people think was going to happen if their civilians got shot up and kidnapped?

You look at the countries surrounding Israel and they're generally not very well run. How much of this is down to Mossad/US efforts is up for debate, also, but Arab governance today just generally isn't great. The Chinese attitude is pragmatic; it comes into the mind of the Chinese that if they were in a modal Arab nation that wanted to wipe out Israel for realsies, they would conduct themselves in a very different way after one or two costly failures.

What Israel has done is demonstrate power and capability and networks. They've burned a lot of political credibility to do it, and I'm not sure how popular Bibi is within Israel these days.

The greater problem with the conflict is that everyone looks bad; Arab leaders are caught in a weird catch-22 as always where they need to placate the more card-carrying Muslim extremists within their tribes to maintain political power but are also aware that the further down that path they tread the less likelihood of them being able to function as a country. I believe American hate for Israel is just an ingrained pathology of supporting the underdog, and anger at the use of American resources to support a country they don't really care that much about and personally see no benefit from supporting. The American argument for strong allies in the ME has deteriorated with the tidal wave of oil fracking, and even enforcement of the petrodollar has imploded with oil being now traded in other currencies.

And there's also no way of extricating Israel from this conflict or de-escalating relatively peacefully in a way that either side can accept. Maybe Bibi is aware that America's sufferance for Israeli dalliances will end; America will be happy to keep selling them weapons and infosharing with Mossad, but politically the younger generation getting into politics and the increased irrelevance of traditional American media structures may spell a lapse in Jewish influence on American populism. They'll be fighting over the ME forever, even if America ends up having nothing to do with it.

Hollywood was one of the key structures of Jewish soft power and one of America's most widely exported methods of cultural agitprop; I don't know if anyone's noticed but they're not doing too hot recently. Silicon Valley is American, yes, but a larger and larger share of corporate tech CEOs are looking quite non-Jewish recently.

If the Chinese were in the position of the Arabs they'd form an Arab United Front in 1948 (which, to the credit, the Arabs did try, but the coalition was nowhere near as large as it could have been) and prevented the creation of an Israeli state from the outset. When presented with the horrible atrocities and butcher's bill, they'd say 'send in the next wave'. They wouldn't stop until the Americans and Soviets threatened to intervene and they'd draw up on the armistice lines and actually make peace.

The Japanese did way, way, way worse to the Chinese than the Arabs did to the Israelis, and yet in the modern day they do business with them.

If Israel has to choose between becoming an illiberal pariah state like North Korea or its nonexistence it will go for the former every time.

This isn't actually a choice. Becoming an "illiberal pariah state" is not a long-term stable situation - you can't run a first world economy with Israel's geography while completely cut off from all international trade and support. Take away all the direct and indirect support provided by America, as well as the support provided by diaspora jews (part of becoming a pariah state means that remittances and other sources of funding/support will go away too), and you're looking at a country with a very limited lifespan.

One of the targets of Iran's strikes against Israel was the diamond exchange - the diamond exchange is one of Israel's most profitable trades, despite the fact that they don't actually have any diamond mines in the country. How long is that going to last when Israel is cut off from international trade flows? How long is their tech sector going to last when all foreign investment is pulled? Israel does not have the population demographics or material resources required to sustain themselves when completely cut off from the rest of the world (to say nothing of what their internal politics will look like when the orthodox are forced to work and join the army). Don't forget that the majority of Israelis have the ability to simply fuck off back to their actual home country - and when faced with a choice between grinding poverty in a pariah state and living a first world lifestyle back in the west I think a portion of them will simply leave.

Pariah Israel would simply be a last, desperate grasp before the entire project is swept away into the dustbin of history, and if there's any hope for survival for Israel it means not ending up as a universally despised and hated ethnostate.

Your assumptions are simply incorrect.

Sure, many would leave. But there is a sincere core of Zionists who believe that Israel was promised to them by their God and they will stay there to the bitter end. They will eat rocks and dust and do what they must before they let the Palestinians win. A impoverished state with nuclear weapons and arms - not that it would ever get that desperate - will never fall. The Arab leadership very well know where those warheads are aimed at.

The fantasy of the Israeli state dissolving itself after sufficient isolation is simply that. The onus is on YOU to convince me that it is the case. Just stating it as a matter of fact does not make it so. It is the Palestinian project that looks like it is on the verge of collapse, at this very moment. With no geopolitical sponsor, how could it hope to continue on in any relevant form?

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Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If the Palestinians want a change to the status quo, they should have cultivated an army to beat the IDF. Now they're beggars in the land of their forefathers with no hope of recovery. No, you're not getting your land back: the people with guns who took it aren't in any mood to just hand it over. It is for them to accept the reality of impotence and exile, as every people who lost wars before them have.

Actually the funny part about this is Israel may not even be around in its current form in a couple generations and it won’t be due to military conflict. The Satmar Jewish sect is the largest congregation of Jews in the world and they are fervently anti-Zionist as well as many (though not all) Orthodox. Guess who fertility rates are favoring over the long run? And it’s not even close.

All Palestinians may have to do is continue to hold out. Jews are on their side in the long run.

Most Satmars don't live in Israel (as you'd expect) and those that do don't participate in elections. I wasn't able to find any figures online but ChatGPT estimates that the Satmar only make up about 2% of Haredi Jews in Israel, and so an even smaller percentage of the total population.

Haredi non-Zionism is mainly focused on the fact that the Israeli state is too secular, they're not wishing to dismantle the state and let the Arabs take back the land.

My expectation is that as the Haredi welfare teat gets closed off and they are forced to serve in the military, a significant chunk of them will end up joining the religious zionists.

The Satmars don’t live in Israel because they’re opposed to its existence and it’s sacrilegious for them to do so. And they put in work to support groups who desire to see Israel dismantled.

Among those that are religious who support Israel, most of that comes ordinarily as you’d expect from the Orthodox, but even then there’s no overriding consensus on the matter. Israel is extremely worried when it comes to mobilizing the very religious sectors of their society because they haven’t been able to move the needle in any substantial way without risking a huge rift in fabric of Israeli society. I think if worst comes to worst things will run the other direction. I don’t share your prediction on this.

Edit: Phone keeps autocorrecting/making typos.

There is Motte-and-Baileying going on here. Motte: Palestinians screwed up, vae victis; Bailey: we owe Israel continued support, gifts and hospitality.

Why do we have to identify one side as The Good Guys in any conflict and throw everything behind them? Why can't we dismiss this as two groups of barbarians butchering each other and just uninvite them both from our society until they show signs of improvement?

(Also: would you have accepted the same argument regarding the Nazis and their victims?)

Because America loves Star Wars.

They want a clear bad guy and a clear good guy and it'd be best if the bad guy's sword was red so they could tell he was bad.

Most of the disastrous ME foreign policy of the US has boiled down to a popular misunderstanding of trying to map the Evil Autocrat vs the Oppressed Rebels that unfortunately tracks all the way to the very top. Realpolitik has its own weaknesses and failings, but Americans have the political memories of goldfish and the nostalgic memories of geriatrics.

Because America loves Star Wars.

They want a clear bad guy and a clear good guy and it'd be best if the bad guy's sword was red so they could tell he was bad.

You might like this Substack piece by Librarian of Celaeno (assuming you haven't read it already): "Jedi Brain":

Jedi Brain is a term (I’ve also heard Disney Brain, Marvel Brain, and the like) for a mental state wherein people’s main frame of reference for understanding politics, war, and the interrelationship between them is mass media entertainment products. There are good guys and bad guys, each occupying a respective political identity, and it is the job of the former to seek a more just order by destroying the latter. Narrative coherence tends toward the personification of each side in small groups of heroes on the one hand and one big villain on the other. This latter figure is the wellspring of Team Evil’s grand scheme; if he is destroyed, so goes with him all the bad stuff he represents.

…

This final point is key; Jedi Brain is a form of groupthink that flourishes largely (but not exclusively) among people who expect neither to suffer nor inflict violence themselves. They are secure from it. For them, killing people is an abstract question decided on the basis on whether the good guys will be helped by it, which will in any case occur far away. Negative forces in the world are under the direction of supervillains, who must be destroyed for good to flourish, and upon their destruction peace, harmony, and the sort of personal safety and well-being the Jedi-Brained individual has will simply arise as a kind of emergent property of his noble efforts, or rather the noble efforts of the heroes who will engage in the actual violence, far from the clatter of keyboards. It’s not only neocons who think that every third-world dictator is Adolf Hitler; it’s arguably the default way most of the population now imagines the world, even if only implicitly.

…

Politics- sublimated violence- follows the same trajectory. One can see Jedi Brain on full display deployed against Donald Trump and his MAGA storm troopers, right down to the “Resistance” imagery from the terrible new Disney trilogy being circulated among those terrified at his election in 2016. In addition to being Darth Vader, he’s also Hitler, and also Voldemort, because to the people who deploy those allusions, they’re all the same thing. The boundaries between fiction and reality collapse into a media machine that undifferentiates them, blending them into a narrative where the evil on a page or a screen is the same whether it’s a dark wizard, a wrestling heel, a murderous dictator, or a random internet istophobe. The proper response to any evil, which is all evil, is to demonstrate emotion comprehensible and acceptable to others with whom you wish to identify, in much the same way the public expression of consumer choices validates one as a member of a fandom. Zelensky and the latest Dr. Who trailer- liked and reposted, of course- it’s just the right thing to do.

I think the final point is what gets me, the one about the rebuilding after Shock and Awe receiving no more thought as if Good People naturally get Good Outcomes, medals and a parade. The idea that good is an emergent property of killing all the bad people is something I don't understand except as a seductive lizard-brain problem of having some people to blame. Solzhenitsyn's line about good and evil has stuck with me all my life.

(Also: would you have accepted the same argument regarding the Nazis and their victims?)

President Truman did...

"If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.. . ”

I'm not a fan of Western support for Israel, but the Arabs have done very little in recent times but the occasional pointless terrorism and whining in every international venue that they can. If they want to reclaim the lands of their forefathers, they should strengthen their countries.

And no. Nazism is not the same. Back when countries actually could wage war, people put their chocks down and stopped them. The status quo is the equilibrium of the violence states are willing to achieve their political ends. If the Arabs can't summon the collective will to forge a state to defeat Israel on the battlefield, bluntly, they don't deserve the lands they claim.

The question I meant to ask is whether, before Israel happened, an argument like "if the Jews can't summon the collective will (...) to defeat Germany on the battlefield" would have been acceptable by the same principle.

And either way, Israel gets a lot of support - Arab states trying to defeat Israel alone on the battlefield hasn't really been tried, and if the argument is that the US should help Israel against the Arabs because the Arabs can't defeat the Israel-US coalition, then as long as the US remains militarily dominant this argument is basically circular. If the US decided to back José Santos Almeida of Rua Cleide, 123 in São Paulo with the determination that it displays in supporting Israel, all of South America probably couldn't summon the "collective will" to forge a state to defeat him on the battlefield either; but this doesn't lead us to conclude that the US ought to help this fictional person I placed on a random street from Google Maps become the overlord of his continent.

I can tell you never have ever read any sort of far-right or Neo-nazi argumentation because that is absolutely what they say about America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union - that it was flush through with Jews. (Heck, WW2 being a Jewish victory over Nazism is probably a position you could argue in good faith, with the proper caveats).

Arabs couldn't beat Israel alone, even as a coalition, even before Western support and indigenous nuclear weapons. It is arguable that they have lost military capacity since 1948 with the complete failure of Arab socialism. The Jews are perfectly capable of defending themselves: American diplomatic and military aid is backstopping security, not sovereignty. Israel would not hesitate to expel the rest of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza if Americans withdrew their support: in fact, they would do it immediately.

Realpolitk has nothing to do with morals. There is no 'oughts' or 'shoulds'. Azerbaijan just did it. Who's sanctioning them?

(Also: would you have accepted the same argument regarding the Nazis and their victims?)

Poland was legitimately way too uppity, as per usual. They can never be opposed to both Germany and Russia. It just doesn’t work geopolitically.

The vibe I get is that people here seem to mistakenly think that “Israel” is this one big, indivisible thing. They’re supporting the Zionist regime under the mistaken premise of thinking it’s in support of Jews. Most religious Jews hate the State of Israel because its secular and want to see it dismantled just like Hamas does, and they work to protest and support groups directed at that end of things.

Because we are conjoined at the Geopolitical hip with Israel. I'm with you on everything else though.

The palestinian population has no reason to accept large number Eastern Europeans who moved there in the 90s having more rights than they do. They have no reason to accept having a country that is chopped in two parts of which the largest part isn't connected to the sea.

Not dying is one reason. Not being permanently impoverished and second class citizens is another. At some point, those negative things become certainty and they are negotiating something else. A short guy has no reason to accept that he can't play in the NBA, but not accepting it doesn't get him onto the team. The Israeli line goes peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Jews. That seems clever, but the problem becomes explaining to the Arabs what loving their children means.

If the Palestinians had simply given up they would have been genocided by Israel. They have fought back and kept a decent size of land because of it. If they love their children they should do what the Irish did and get their country back.

I admire the gumption of reversing the usual argument against the one state solution, but I must again remind you that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and only levied the blockade when the Gazans continued to fire rockets at Israel.

It would have been very weird for Israel to withdraw unilaterally if the only thing that was keeping them from genociding the Palestinians was Palestinian resistance.

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza because armed resistance made the cost of maintaining settlements too high, same with Lebanon. If the Gazans were entirely pacifistic they would have had no reason to leave in the first place.

No, they would have been ordinary arab citizens of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and/or Lebanon.

Again zionists end up advocating for mass immigration. We do not want a massive wave of refugees to any country.

Who's advocating for anything? I responded to your historical counterfactual with my belief that events would not have been nearly as bloody as you described them.

Your comment is not in good faith, and unworthy of the legacy of this place.

Israel is dropping like a rock in the polls and especially among young people.

Israel is not going to hold a world democratic referendum on its own existence.

Palestine's best weapon is IDF soldiers with tiktok showing the world their true nature. Israel is not going to be viable as a state when the state is deeply unpopular in the rest of the world.

Israel's best weapon is IDF soldiers, full stop. And if North Korea can be viable as a state, so can Israel.

if North Korea can be viable as a state, so can Israel

North Korea is a fully centralized totalitarian party-state, heir to centuries of cultural isolationism. Israel is incredibly unstable politically, there are routinely massive protests and huge factional divides. You could not have picked two countries any more different.

And if North Korea can be viable as a state, so can Israel.

I'd imagine even most Israelis who don't give a damn about Palestinians would start having second thoughts if they were promised North Korean living standards. Is Israel going to force Jews to stay in the country at the threat of torturing their families to death?

Is Israel going to force Jews to stay in the country at the threat of torturing their families to death?

If it gets to the point where the United States is willing to make Israel a pariah state, the Israeli Jews won't have any place to go.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. All of this fantasizing about how the entire international community (including the US) is going to look at Israeli atrocities and the angelic behavior of Hamas and cut Israel off once and for all is just mental masturbation.

If it gets to the point where the United States is willing to make Israel a pariah state, the Israeli Jews won't have any place to go.

The Boers didn't have any place to go either but they gave up instead of choosing to become North Korea despite facing infinitely worse demographic prospects.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. All of this fantasizing about how the entire international community (including the US) is going to look at Israeli atrocities and the angelic behavior of Hamas and cut Israel off once and for all is just mental masturbation.

Thinking it's going to happen because the "international community" miraculously decides to start caring about morality would be mental masturbation, but it's actually going to happen because Israel is a gigantic liability whose subsidy is indefensible from an America First realpolitik perspective.

The total American expenditure on behalf of Israel over the past two years is measured somewhere between tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, including nearly a quarter of the THAAD interceptor supply in just under two weeks. This enormous investment towards a country that appears to operate parasitically vis-a-vis the US and which has no issue taking actions that directly harm American interests seems unlikely to survive the next election cycle.

The Boers didn't have any place to go either but they gave up instead of choosing to become North Korea despite facing infinitely worse demographic prospects.

Even the black South Africans aren't, as a whole, as genocidal as Palestinian Arabs. And the whites may yet find they made a mistake.

Even the black South Africans aren't, as a whole, as genocidal as Palestinian Arabs.

Based on what, exactly? Jews lived alongside Palestinian Arabs for the past thousand years and the number of major anti-semitic incidents prior to the arrival of the Zionists can be measured on one hand. It's only after people arrived who hid explosives inside Synagogues and engaged in "assassination, terror attacks and even castration that the Palestinians became bloodthirsty.

Anyone forced to live under the domination of such people would eventually become pretty genocidal. Would they maintain this attitude in the event said domination ceased, forever? I've yet to see any evidence that they'd be any worse than Zulus or Xhosas.

You're not arguing that the Palestinians aren't genocidal, you're arguing that it's justified that they are. That's an entirely different argument.

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Israel is not going to hold a world democratic referendum on its own existence

Taken to the extreme, at some point Israel gets so unpopular that Western countries start arming the Arab states specifically to wage war against Israel.

Shortage of weapons, was, to put it mildly, never a problem for the Arab countries. Israel faced this situation before.

Israel is not going to hold a world democratic referendum on its own existence.

Zionists aren’t. The Ultra Orthodox Jews are as anti-Israel as Hamas is.

They are not. They are critical of the state of Israël’s policies. There is a difference.

Have you actually read their statements at all? They are entirely opposed to establishing a State in Israel because they believe their Exile by God is still in effect.

Most ultra-orthodox Jews, especially in Israel, are not satmar.

And most of them don’t support the State of Israel either.

Which is an important factor that no-one really takes into account when doing the demographic projections.

Israel is a welfare queen that wouldn't last many days if it got the south Africa during the 80s or current Russia sanctions.

If Israel's military is so great why have they failed to take an area the size of a suburb in almost two years despite massive brutality and having to beg for boundless supplies of weapons? Israel's main military asset is propaganda and giving low IQ west bank settlers the capacity to do things that are seen and heard globally effectively turned that on its head.

If Israel's military is so great why have they failed to take an area the size of a suburb in almost two years despite massive brutality and having to beg for boundless supplies of weapons?

Because they aren't actually being all that brutal. Depopulating and securing an area is quick and easy if you're willing to adopt the ROE of Ghengis Khan or the Greco/Turkish war.

Israel's main military asset is propaganda

This seems wildly inaccurate.

giving low IQ west bank settlers the capacity to do things that are seen and heard globally effectively turned that on its head.

I think you've got that backwards.

Because they aren't actually being all that brutal. Depopulating and securing an area is quick and easy if you're willing to adopt the ROE of Ghengis Khan or the Greco/Turkish war.

The Israelis shot their own hostages while they were shouting in Hebrew and waving white flags, they aren't operating according to strict ROE. Just being brutal doesn't always translate to being more militarily effective: the perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide were so focused on the genocide that they actually wound up losing to the much smaller Tutsi militias that prioritized actual military objectives over pointless slaughter.

The Israelis shot their own hostages while they were shouting in Hebrew and waving white flags, they aren't operating according to strict ROE.

It's almost like war is confusing, and friendly fire is, has been, and always will be.

the perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide...

...Were largely civilians, waving machetes and operating under no military discipline whatsoever. Those Tutsi militias were veterans of several other brush wars in Tanzania and Uganda, and were led by a quite effective and battle-hardened leader (Kagame)

Just being brutal doesn't always translate to being more militarily effective...

It does if your objective is, as many allege, to simply depopulate an area through violence. The Rwandan genocide took a little over 3 months, during which mobs of civilians armed with blades and a few small arms killed a million people. It defies credulity that the IDF, armed with modern weapons, somehow is so incompetent at genocide as to only kill less than 10% as many over a period of time six times longer, especially when all the would-be victims are penned up in a tiny area like Gaza.

No, if the Israelis were actually the Nazis that so many here portray them as being, they could have just treated Gaza like the Warsaw ghetto and it would have been over inside a month.

It does if your objective is, as many allege, to simply depopulate an area through violence. The Rwandan genocide took a little over 3 months, during which mobs of civilians armed with blades and a few small arms killed a million people. It defies credulity that the IDF, armed with modern weapons, somehow is so incompetent at genocide as to only kill less than 10% as many over a period of time six times longer, especially when all the would-be victims are penned up in a tiny area like Gaza.

  1. Israel's modern weaponry is dependent on a complex international supply chain that could be interrupted at any moment by patrons dropping their support whereas Germany was, by design, autarchic and self sufficient.

  2. The IDF has nearly no tolerance for casualties, unlike the Hutus or Waffen SS. You can drop bombs or snipe people from a distance but to commit Rwanda-tier genocide you have to close in and closing in would expose Israeli fighters to a level of risk they aren't willing to take.

No, if the Israelis were actually the Nazis that so many here portray them as being, they could have just treated Gaza like the Warsaw ghetto and it would have been over inside a month.

Ironically, Nazis used this exact argument:

We executed orders very well, so I assure you if there had been an order to kill all Jews, there would be none left in Europe. Instead, there are millions of survivors. We would not have used an insecticide to do it either; Zyklon B was a fumigant that all nations used to kill lice, which cause typhus, which killed millions after the first war. The Americans called it DDT, so the Jews expect us to believe DDT was used to gas them. The Allies destroyed rail lines, bridges, roads, and airports so that no supplies could get to German cities or the camps. The prisoners got sick, withered away, and died, many times right when the Allies entered the camps. Many died even while under allied care, it took weeks to stop the outbreaks, and thousands of prisoners died. The Allies caused these deaths, although not intentionally. It was just easy to blame a policy of extermination instead of telling the truth.

General Ernst Remer 1987.

EDIT: Also they didn't "deal with the Warsaw Ghetto" by bombing it to rubble and then shooting everyone (except at the very end when people starting fighting back, and ironically those people had the best odds of survival) they transported people to concentration camps. If killing millions of people is as simple as you think then why did Hitler bother with the logistical hassle instead of just killing them on the spot like Genghis Khan?

Israel's modern weaponry is dependent on a complex international supply chain that could be interrupted at any moment by patrons dropping their support whereas Germany was, by design, autarchic and self sufficient.

Germany literally ran out of fuel, as well as several major metals necessary to build tanks, airplanes, and shells. And as for Israel, they produce quite a lot of their own gear; the Merkava tank, their own small arms, quite a lot of their drones, etc.

The IDF has nearly no tolerance for casualties, unlike the Hutus or Waffen SS. You can drop bombs or snipe people from a distance but to commit Rwanda-tier genocide you have to close in and closing in would expose Israeli fighters to a level of risk they aren't willing to take.

Neither the hutu militias nor the einsatzgruppen (of whom there were only a few thousand at any given time) were zerglings or mindless hordes; this is not a serious analysis.

We executed orders very well, so I assure you if there had been an order to kill all Jews, there would be none left in Europe. Instead, there are millions of survivors.

Extreme apples and oranges. Attempting to exterminate an ethno-religious group across an entire continent is a much different thing than attempting to destroy a single large city and kill the inhabitants - something the Nazis did do several times during WWII, most notably in Warsaw which went from a city of over a million to having only a couple thousand people left when the Soviets entered. Here, actually, the Japanese were significantly worse - they simply demolished dozens - potentially hundreds - of towns and villages, and killed all the inhabitants.

If killing millions of people is as simple as you think then why did Hitler bother with the logistical hassle instead of just killing them on the spot like Genghis Khan?

They did quite a lot of killing-on-the-spot - far more than the Israelis have done, with far fewer soldiers involved. Also, the Nazis extensively used prisoners - including jews in concentration camps - as slave labor in service of that autarkic fantasy you mentioned above.

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If Israel's military is so great why have they failed to take an area the size of a suburb in almost two years despite massive brutality and having to beg for boundless supplies of weapons?

Your premises are incorrect.

Israel's main military asset is propaganda and giving low IQ west bank settlers the capacity to do things that are seen and heard globally effectively turned that on its head.

The West Bank is over ----> thataway. West Bank settlers aren't doing anything in Gaza.

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