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The problem here is that you've ignored the other side of the equation - failing to prosecute Israel would cause just as much, if not more damage to the ICC's credibility. Why, exactly, would any nation sign up to the ICC when they can see Israel doing what it has done without any kind of censure? Failing to prosecute Israel while at the same time prosecuting Russia for conduct that is less egregious than what people can see Israel proudly proclaiming would destroy the court's legitimacy in the eyes of the global south. Sure, the real principle at play is and always has been that "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must", but that's not actually a principle that will convince the weak to sign up for your criminal court.
If you are talking about the actual reality of what Israel is doing, I would have to disagree. Everything Israel has done has been well within the bounds of legitimate warfare. Not only that, but Israel has a perfectly good system in place to investigate and prosecute its own soldiers and military leaders for misbehaving.
If you are talking about the fantasy that Israel is engaged in a psychopathic genocide campaign, well, countries should learn to get beyond Jew-hatred and start distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
Edit: By the way, if the ICC believed in good faith that Israel was engaged in wrongdoing but wanted to avoid blowback and the loss of legitimacy that would inevitably result from issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, there was an easy workaround: The ICC could have declined to recognize "Palestine" as a state which has standing to enter into the ICC treaty.
But instead, the ICC did some mental and legal gymnastics to recognize a phony State of Palestine. Which was hardly a surprise, given the large number of progressives (as well as members of the "Global South") who thirst to undermine and destroy Israel.
lmao at the idea you expect anyone to believe this at all. Can you actually explain the legitimate military purpose behind what happened to Hind Rajab? Look, this is the motte - you don't have to pretend that you're some social justice activist and that the IDF are the most moral army in the world. You can just admit that this is ethnic cleansing for more lebensraum, like many members of the Israeli government have already done. Hell, Sarah Hurwitz, an incredibly pro-zionist speechwriter, recently came out and said that one of the problems advocating for the state of Israel is that she has to argue through a wall of dead children (how do you get walls of dead children in legitimate warfare?). She explicitly compared what they were doing to the holocaust and said that holocaust education was working against them because it made people think that strong militaries wiping out poor and weak minorities is bad. Your own advocates explicitly compare themselves to the Nazi genocide! Not to mention that we live in a world where I can just have a computer translate hebrew messages and news articles or look up what it means when they say that the Palestinians or people like me are Amalek.
Russia has claimed that they don't deserve any sanctions for what is happening in Ukraine with direct comparison to Israel. China has come out and said that what Israel is doing is bad. All over the world, countless nations have come together and outright stated that what Israel is doing is monstrous. Official IDF photos now show them with their faces censored and hidden, because there are credible threats to prosecute them for warcrimes whenever they leave their ethnostate. In the US, support for Israel's genocide is splitting the conservative movement into not-quite equal halves because even they are unable to justify what they are seeing on their screens every day.
Have you ever heard the saying "If it stinks everywhere you go, check your shoes"? The idea that the entire world is just possessed by irrational jew hatred for no reason (lol at the idea China or Russia would be jealous of Israel) is so much less likely than people objecting to Israel's conduct that I can't understand how you could believe in it beyond thoughtless support for your ingroup. Why, exactly, did this irrational hatred of jews suddenly appear at the same time as Israel's genocide of the Palestinians? Coincidence? I'm honestly curious here.
Yes, I actually am one of those progressives. I thought that Nazi germany needed to be destroyed because what they were doing was unconscionable, not because I have an irrational hatred of bratwurst and oktoberfest. My feelings towards Israel are similar(have been ever since Rachel Corrie), and I proudly link arms with Torah jews and other jewish antizionists at the protests - while also considering christian zionists (who actually outnumber jewish zionists) to be just as bad.
Sure, of course. Civilians regularly get killed in the fog of war. It's not totally clear what happened, but I do know that if it were official Israeli policy to target non-combatants, there would be no Arabs left alive in or around Gaza.
Anyway, let me make sure I understand your argument.
(1) Sarah Hurwitz is a very pro-Israel writer.
(2) this individual has equated Israeli activities with Nazi genocide
(3) moreover, Israeli forces have killed Palestinian Arab non-combatants
(4) moreover, there are members of the Israeli government who have advocated for clearing Palestinian Arabs out of Gaza.
(5) therefore, it is clear that Israel is engaged in a Nazi-style genocide with the goal of securing more space for Jews.
Do I understand your argument correctly?
I certainly concede that many people and groups have bought into the fantasy that Israel is engaged in serious wrongdoing. So what?
Sadly, there are very good reasons: To virtue signal; to deflect attention from actual wrongdoing; to find a scapegoat.
Let me ask you this: Of all the countries in the world, do you believe that Israel is the very worst behaved in terms of war crimes?
Serious question: Were you an adult in the 1940s? If so, where were you living at the time?
This was not a case of the fog of war - the IDF waited for the ambulances to arrive before they killed the 5 year old girl who had been crying while surrounded by her dead family and murdered the medical workers.
The official Israeli policy is, to the best of my knowledge, to make sure that they don't simply wipe them out and exterminate them directly because the international pressure that would bring down on them would be too severe. Wiping out the Palestinian christian communities would also cause some problems with the Christian Zionists currently paying for their lifestyles and military defence to boot.
No, not at all. Sarah Hurwitz' responses are given as an illustrative example of how zionists discuss these issues due to her prominent position in US politics. When somebody who is actively supporting the IDF and Israel's actions makes statements like these it isn't really possible to claim that they're some jew hater with an irrational hatred of Israel. She's just one example, but there are countless statements by people like Smotrich, Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and other members of the Israeli government on the same topic. As I said, official statements and interviews with members of the Israeli government make it clear that they, internally, believe that what they are doing is on the same level as what Hitler did to the jews in Germany. While this wouldn't be compelling by itself (maybe they're all just larpers), when you combine that with the incredibly well documented evidence of their actions in Gaza it actually does form a viable argument - they are producing mountains of corpses, reducing cities to a moonscape, torturing lambs, tearing down olive trees, starving people, etc. One example I've brought up on this site before is the growing number of IDF soldiers who are killing themselves because they can't live with what they've done - that they can't bear to look at meat anymore because it reminds them of all the Palestinian corpses they crushed under a bulldozer. When giving speeches at the funerals of IDF soldiers, their compatriots frequently mention how much they enjoyed killing civilians and blowing up houses. IDF soldiers post on social media about how they're wearing the lingerie of female Palestinians after driving them from their homes - the mountain of evidence is so voluminous that it beggars belief.
Leaving aside the non-fantastical nature of Israel's wrongdoing, this is actually a serious problem. If everyone in your community suddenly started accusing you of being a pedophile and posting pictures of you behaving inappropriately with children, along with you giving speeches about how the age of consent is just a polite fiction, even if you weren't actually a pedophile you would have some explaining to do. Why, exactly, do all these people believe what they do?
Why the fuck would China need to virtue signal? Why the fuck would Thailand need to virtue signal? Why would Malaysia need to virtue signal? I can already tell you from my direct personal experience that my distaste for Israel stems from the videos of their actions and speeches that I've seen, and not because I need to virtue signal or find a scapegoat (as I have previously attested I'm an extremely cool and good-looking sex-haver with no need to deflect attention). I just can't take this claim seriously when it applies to so many people all over the world. Are you aware of how widely loathed and detested Israel and their actions are across the globe?
Historically? No, I think there were definitely worse regimes in the past. The Athenians were pretty nasty to the Melians, Alexander was nasty to the Thebans, etc. In the modern day, right now? I think it depends on how you attribute blame - the only other contender I can see in the present moment is the USA, but that is in part because they're also culpable for what Israel is doing. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has produced far fewer civilian casualties and far fewer warcrimes (which is one of the reasons I find it so laughable that they would need a scapegoat).
No, I'm basing this on the education I received during history class.
Can you summarize the best evidence for this please?
Can you summarize the best evidence for this conclusion as well?
Can you please provide 3 specific examples of this?
What is the evidence that the IDF is "torturing lambs" and "tearing down olive trees" in Gaza?
As far as the other things go (producing corpses, demolishing buildings, and starving people) would you agree that this is also consistent with a Hamas that is hiding behind civilians and deliberately intercepting food aid?
To deflect attention from their own wrongdoing. Duh.
No, I'm asking about the last 10 years. Is it your position, that in terms of war crimes, human rights abuses, and the like, Israel is the very worst country in the world over the last 10 years. Very simple question.
We have the audio of the call, a crime-scene investigation, etc. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good article on the topic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Hind_Rajab
https://www.ft.com/content/8885c13c-eada-4bf8-b896-f7a242ade641
“We bring in aid because there is no choice,” he said on Monday, according to reports in Israeli media. “Nobody will let us cause 2mn civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
“What can we do?” he added. “We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-idf-general-likens-military-control-of-west-bank-to-nazi-germany/ Pressed on whether he saw specific similarities with Nazi Germany, Levin said: “Of course. It hurts, it’s not nice, but that’s the reality. It’s better to deal with it, even if it is hard, than to ignore it.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/deputy-idf-chief-israeli-societal-trends-akin-to-pre-holocaust-europe/ “If there is something that frightens me in the memory of the Holocaust, it is identifying horrifying processes that occurred in Europe…70, 80 and 90 years ago and finding evidence of their existence here in our midst, today, in 2016,” Golan said.
https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/ide-fixe “As Hitler, may his name be erased, once said: ‘I cannot live in this world if there is one Jew left in it,’ we could not live in this land if even one such Islamo-Nazi remains in Gaza, and not before we return to Gaza and turn it into Hebrew Gaza.”
Direct video evidence. You can quibble that it is the settlers rather than the IDF, but I feel like it is perfectly reasonable to associate the IDF and the settlers.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/settlers-torture-lambs-in-the-west-bank/
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/israel-wanted-to-punish-a-palestinian-village-so-it-destroyed-10000-of-its-olive-trees/
You're not going to convince anyone that this stuff is just coming from irrational hatred of jews when we can watch them doing this shit in HD.
Not to the scale that Israel has done, and not when viewed in combination with the quotes I've provided above (and countless others I have not). You don't get to say "Oh we had to kill all the children because they were Hamas" when you have previously said that all of them need to be dead so Gaza can become Hebrew Gaza.
Please provide an example of the wrongdoing that China, Russia or Thailand has done which comes close to what Israel is currently doing in Gaza. Before you bring up the Uyghurs, please make sure to post an example of what Uyghur cities look like now and place it side by side with photos of the Gazan moonscape.
It isn't that simple at all - was Isis a country? Were the Israeli weapons they were caught with stolen or officially supplied? But if we leave them aside, I went and had a look at a list of war crimes over the past 10 years to refresh my memory and I can't see anything that compares to what Israel has done.
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