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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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That said, on the specific issue, I think you're correct - any criticism of Iran for being aggressive needs to have the context that Israel is also a very aggressive nation.

Same question for you then:

Please identify identify two hospitals which (1) Israel blew up; and (2) were NOT being used for offensive purposes against Israel. Please provide cites and links for your claims.

Once you've done that, please provide similar backup for each of the other claims. In other words, kindly put up or shut up.

I haven't been following a blow-by-blow of Gaza, so I'm going to decline to research that specifically. As far as I'm aware the IDF have blown up hospitals (and you added in the 'not being used against Israel' condition yourself), but if you want to litigate that one, I'll concede.

I do think that FirmWeird is correct in his larger claim. What I said myself was that he's correct on the issue, and that Israel is a very aggressive nation. I will thus refrain from quibbling details and defend that claim specifically. FirmWeird said that Israel "is currently invading Lebanon" and "launched the first strike on Iran".

Do you want citations for the fact that Israel is currently invading Lebanon, or that it launched the first strike on Iran? Do I even need to go any further than Wikipedia for those?

Please note that I have not made any claim about moral justification here. You can believe that Israel invading Lebanon and bombing Iran were good and necessary moves in order to ensure Israel's security in the face of unjustified aggression. I'm not making a value judgement. What I'm saying is that Israel is behaving in a militarily aggressive way, and that this aggression is necessary context for evaluating Iran's behaviour as well. You can think Israel are the good guys, you can think Iran are the good guys, I don't care. What I think is that any reasonable assessment of the conflict between Iran and Israel needs to bear in mind aggressive activity by each party.

I haven't been following a blow-by-blow of Gaza, so I'm going to decline to research that specifically. As far as I'm aware the IDF have blown up hospitals (and you added in the 'not being used against Israel' condition yourself), but if you want to litigate that one, I'll concede.

Thanks. In my view, it's rather dishonest to use Israel destroying hospitals as evidence of Israeli aggression without mentioning the critical fact that Israel's enemies use hospitals as military bases.

Do you want citations for the fact that Israel is currently invading Lebanon, or that it launched the first strike on Iran?

It depends.

(1) Are you denying that before the current invasion of Lebanon, Lebanese territory was used as a staging ground for attacks against Israel?

(2) By "first strike on Iran," are you denying that for years, Iran has been attacking Israel by means of proxies such as Hezbollah?

The facts you are stating here are evocative of the lie @FirmWeird told about hospitals and such by omitting very important context.

I'm not making a value judgement. What I'm saying is that Israel is behaving in a militarily aggressive way, and that this aggression is necessary context for evaluating Iran's behaviour as well. You can think Israel are the good guys, you can think Iran are the good guys, I don't care. What I think is that any reasonable assessment of the conflict between Iran and Israel needs to bear in mind aggressive activity by each party.

Well, if "aggressive" includes "aggressive defense in the fact of hostile attacks," an argument can certainly be made that Israel is aggressive. Although it's worth noting that Israel's self-defense has been far far less aggressive than what most other countries would do given the provocation involved.

But for purposes of your point, there's an important difference between justifiable, defensive aggression such as that of Israel and non-justifiable offensive aggression such as that of Iran. Because you said this:

any criticism of Iran for being aggressive needs to have the context that Israel is also a very aggressive nation.

At any time between 1979 and today, Iran could have easily avoided the Israeli aggression you point to simply by asking for basically the same deal that Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE have: An uneasy peace. I mean, you say that Israel is an aggressive nation but somehow Israel has been able to restrain itself from blowing stuff up in Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE.

Any criticism of Iran for being aggressive needs to take this into account.