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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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Nothing you said here is incorrect, but all of it is explainable by 2 things:

  • Israel is acting like a self-interested country, as any other country would.
  • Jews are overrepresented in the US decision making class, and while some of them are so staunchly pro-Israel nearly to the point of treason, most aren't.

So yes, Netanyahu "convinced" Trump to do this war. But it's clearly in their interest since Iran is a long-term threat to them. The person at fault here is Trump for being convinced to do something obviously risky and against US interests. Other nations leaders' are trying to convince America to do stuff all the time -- that part isn't unusual.

And yes, Jared Kushner is Jewish, but I don't think he had some master plan to lure America into a senseless war.

At least based on OP's article, this seems less like Israeli/Jewish manipulation and more like a straightforward pitch from Netanyahu that Trump bit on despite warnings from most of his foreign policy advisors. It might be another matter if pro-Israeli people in USG were whispering in his ear that this was a great idea, but the Secretary of State, CIA director, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs all told him the Israelis were full of shit.

Is comment ironic? I have a poor sarcasm tell and would like you to speak more plainly here if so. I am uninformed on the object level here I apologize.

You said "It might be another matter if [..] the Secretary of State, CIA director, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs all told him the Israelis were full of shit"

Skimming parent posts you are replying to right here it seems like other people think that is exactly the case. Do these comments meet your bar for manpliation then? Or do you think they are misrepresenting this information?

Post 1:

(Chairman Join Chief) General Caine replied: “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”

The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.”

Post 2:

Everyone seems to be against this war now, or is leaking that they were against it. Vance was against it. General Caine was against it. The CIA was against it. The blame is getting shoved off onto Trump and Netanyahu

Correct, this is basically what I'm saying. Israel made a pitch. Plenty of countries make pitches. It's up to the President to accept or reject them if they are/aren't in US interests. Trump chose incorrectly, but the buck should stop with him. We don't need to blame Jews or even Israel more broadly, though that's what's probably going to happen, which is why I used the term "scapegoat".

But it's clearly in their interest since Iran is a long-term threat to them.

I find it interesting the way that Americans (and those LARPing as us on the internet) can recognize that Trump/Biden/Obama doesn't necessarily act in the national interest in the United States, either through wickedness or through stupidity; while we assume that the governments of Iran and Israel are identical with the national interest of those places.

It certainly seems that never-ending war is very much in Netanyahu's personal interest, in that it keeps him out of court for as long as it lasts. I'm less sure that it is in the interest of Israel or the Jewish people that we're hearing things like this thrown around. Yair Lapid on Twitter:

There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security. The military carried out everything that was asked of it, the public demonstrated amazing resilience, but Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and didn't meet a single one of the goals that he himself set. It will take us years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu wrought due to arrogance, negligence, and a lack of strategic planning.

I sort of moshed it together to save time in the explanation, but you're correct -- Netanyahu proposing this plan may end up having very bad long-term implications for Israel by alienating the US, even though it might be better for Netanyahu personally.

America can also act as a self-interested nation. This means preventing Israel from ever having so much influence again. America can do a number of things to protect her sovereignty: banning Israeli visits on American soil, pruning all areas of government and journalism from pro-Israel subversives, and so forth. Surely it is not the case that only Israel can act in a self-interested manner, but America is obliged to act without any consideration of their interests. The chief interest of any nation is securing absolute sovereignty, and punishing those with traitorous foreign loyalties outside the borders.

The person at fault here is Trump

for being manipulated by Israel, yes, and if Americans recognize this then they can cut off the possibility of this ever happening against. Which is in their national interest.

Other nations leaders' are trying to convince America to do stuff all the time

And none of them have the influence machine of Israel, or the unheard of ethnoreligious dimension of loyalty. Our chief negotiator with Iran believes, as a religious dogma codified in his sacred scripture, that the lives of his fellow Israelites are more important than those of Americans. It is not in America’s interest to allow these people to have any influence, whatsoever.

banning Israeli visits on American soil, pruning all areas of government and journalism from pro-Israel subversives, and so forth

I'm in favor of US withdrawal from the Middle East broadly, and for ending the US special relationship with Israel and treating them like any other democracy -- friendly, willing to sell weapons to them, but not willing to fight their wars if it's not tangibly in US interests.

But the things you're asking for go beyond what we do for practically any other country. "Banning Israeli visits on American soil"? We don't even do that to China. Do you mean something less extreme by this? And "pruning all areas of government and journalism from pro-Israel subversives" sounds practically like McCarthyism.

The better answer is to just not elect Presidents that make blatantly foolish decisions, and/or those who put Israeli interests above American ones. I don't think Trump was pro Israeli, I think he was just a fool who got overconfident from his Venezuelan adventure and thought it would all be easy this time too. Trump is the problem.

Our chief negotiator with Iran believes, as a religious dogma codified in his sacred scripture, that the lives of his fellow Israelites are more important than those of Americans

Hi, token American Jew(ish) mottizen here. I don't know Witkoff personally, but for the record neither I nor any other American Jew I've ever met, including ones fanatically supportive of Israel, has ever expressed this sentiment that I'm aware of.

Kushner is Modern Orthodox, attended a yeshiva school growing up, and financially supports Orthodox Jewish institutions. He has studied the Tanya and visited the grave of Schneerson, and so it is reasonable to assume that he agrees with their view that —

the souls of the gentile nations come from the three impure kelipos and “they contain no good at all.”

[With regard to] the Tanya’s statements that the three impure kelipos do not possess any good at all, the intent is not that they do not possess a spark [of G‑dliness] at all. For without a spark of good, it is impossible for any entity to exist. (Although their existence comes from an encompassing light; nevertheless, we are forced to say they possess some type of spark.) This spark, however, has become so separated and darkened, that it is as if it is evil, i.e., it has no feeling at all for G‑dliness.

The particular denomination which Kushner attends and financially supports also teaches that compassion in gentiles is forbidden, and that consequently you are not allowed to have concern for them dying and are in fact obliged to not aid them when they are dying, which you can find in Chapter 10 of Avodah Kochavim of the Sefer Hamada section of the Mishneh Torah, a work read annually among the members of his congregation (and when they finish reading the work there is an enormous celebration).

All well and good to believe these things in private, but IMO we can’t afford to have someone like this possess an iota of influence in middle eastern foreign policy decision making. They are under no obligation to care about the lives of American which are lost, in fact they are under an obligation to not care about them.

(1) Oh come on; if we're going to be mind-reading based on fisked exerpts, any practicing Christian is an anti-family communist, for Jesus came to set fathers against sons, and mothers against daughters, will reward those who foresook their families, businesses, and children in order to perform religious obeisance to him a hundred fold more than ordinary schmucks, categorically bars the wealthy from heaven, and whose chief follower demands complete subsumption of national loyalty into religious brotherhood.

But of course, you and I both know that this isn't at all how it works (unless you're Kulak's alt, in which case nevermind, at least you're consistent about this). Also, I strongly doubt that Kushner's all that committed an Ortho-Jew, primarily because he married Ivanka. Outmarriage is a big no-no in those circles.

(2) Also, even assuming arguendo that you're right with your mindreading, Orthodox of any description are like 10-15% of American Jews.

The mysterious and parabolic sayings of Jesus are not orthopraxic jurisprudential rulings. But the Mishneh Torah is all about orthopraxic jurisprudential rulings. These are two different religions. The Mishneh Torah is the authoritative redaction of the Talmud and read worldwide by the Orthodox like Jared, as binding rules for life. The mysterious sayings of Jesus have never been distilled down to concrete actionable prescriptions (unlike His specified commandments) but are elaborated upon according to the spirit of the reader. You can see here how Aquinas has collected different readings on the "fathers against sons" saying. Or see how a Pope interprets it. You can't draw a comparison between this and Maimonides, because they are handled differently according to the different conventions of the religion. Or in other words, when Jesus says something mysterious it is meditated upon; when the Mishneh Torah says something, it is both meditated upon and implemented within one’s daily life.

Note that we are now, in a sense, staking the possibility of starting WWIII on the presumption that a particular Orthodox Jew does not follow the most important work in his religion, a work read and studied annually by the observant adherents of his denomination. Why would we we even risk these odds, when we can just say “actually, the ~0.8% of the US population who believes this can’t exercise any foreign policy influence”. We can even append “unless they make some kind of vow or public display of condemnation for these specific verses” to the end of that stipulation, if we want to be abundantly tolerant. But as is, having this guy decide the safety of Israel in a conflict against their mythical enemy Persia does not seem rational to me, as his values do not represent the values of 99% of Americans.

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