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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16744 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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The MOU Homesick Blues

Over the last two days, Donald Trump and JD Vance have been selling their embryonic Iran Deal to the American public and to the world. Trump has said, among other things:

  • Hamas is behaving very well these days.
  • Iran should have missiles. Why not?
  • We're going to unfreeze Iran's money. It's their money. Why should we steal their money?
  • If the war kept going there would have been an economic catastrophe. So we had to end it.
  • Some of the guys in the Islamic regime are really nice.
  • If Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz our oil reserves would have run out in 4 weeks. We had to make a deal.
  • Netanyahu is crazy. They keep killing innocent civilians. He needs to be more responsible.
  • Without me and America, Israel wouldn't exist.

Directly he states:

“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people. The Strait of Hormuz would never have been opened."

Along with this banger

“I think [Israel] could do better … I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better…”

JD has said:

“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have left. 2/3 of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in”

"Do I think there are people within Israeli society who would like to turn Iran into Libya, basically a failed state with 90 million people? Probably."

"What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have."

Israeli ministers have been striking out against the deal

For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration. I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.

The entire first line of Lebanese villages has been destroyed. We are destroying all the houses. The residents will never see them standing before their eyes again.

Now reports are coming in that Israel does not consider itself bound by the MOU, and intends to keep bombing Lebanon without reference to it.

The IRGC has stated today:

“Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met. All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”

With the United States executive committed to the MOU, and Israel committed to the opposite policy, Yeshiva World News reports:

Israeli officials told Maariv that Trump’s demands are not merely theoretical and that issues concerning Lebanon, Syria, and the Syrian Hermon were raised in recent discussions with Netanyahu, adding that the prime minister made it clear that Israel will not agree to withdrawing from its security positions in the north. A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israel is carrying out “stubborn negotiations” with the US on maintaining its military presence in southern Lebanon and has no intention of backing down. The officials warned that the messages coming from Washington are no longer limited to difficult discussions. The US is signaling that if Israel continues to insist on its position, it will consider practical measures, ranging from delays in weapons shipments to restrictions on operational assistance, and even more severe steps that could potentially amount to a de facto arms embargo.

So, what now?

How does the USA navigate this problem with its erstwhile ally?

Part of me feels very strongly, the patriotic Toby Keith, regardless of your feelings about US policy or about this administration, that we can't have our president get cucked like that on the world stage. Trump has publicly signed, endorsed, justified, sold the MOU. He's stated clearly that it is necessary to the interests of the United States in maintaining the global economy. If Israel is our ally, our greatest ally, then they can't be allowed to do this to us. They can't insult and undermine the clear foreign policy of the POTUS and be allowed to do so. From the beginning I've said that Israeli forces, inasmuch as they are allied to the USA, should be under the command of an American general, Spartan style. They can't be allowed to go against us and continue to suck off the teat of the American taxpayer.

So plan trusters, antisemities, pro-Palestinians, shitlibs, anyone. Where do we go from here with Israel? What happens next? How can you, as the American President, allow your ally to undermine your own clearly stated foreign policy goals and, in your own opinion, wreck the world economy? At this point in the process what pressure can even be put on Iran?

This feels bad.

I’d like to see America exercise complete control over Israel. We have their billionaires, we have their Haredi baby factories, we are holding their militant neighbors at bay, and we should be justly rewarded for this. America should completely take their tech sector. We should not allow a single tech company in Israel; they should be coerced into coming to America to do business. This is something that it’s in the realm of possibility as America becomes increasingly anti-Israel, though not anytime soon. I don’t see a good reason why we shouldn’t treat the country as a kind of serf state, whose citizens only work to support the prosperity of America. What are they going to do, go to Han-supremacist China or FSB-controlled Russia? They are trapped with us. If we can manage to wrangle back control of the country we can really exploit them for everything they have.

Why wouldn't they go to Russia?

Impossible to penetrate Russian society today. FSB goes after oligarchs like Browder, they are heading further in the direction of Christian nationalism, etc. If they flee to Russia they are surrendering their influence.

Don’t imagine it would be much different than the 10,000 or so some odd Jews that live in Tehran or Shiraz, in Iran. People misunderstand just how delicate and fragile Israel is, especially when much of its economy is held up by its secular, high-tech development, driven forward by only a few thousand or so rugged and enterprising pioneers inside the country. It only takes a small amount of Jews to exit the country before things get really bad for them. The remaining ultra orthodox are mostly unproductive as far as their relevance to the modern economy goes.

I thought there were some changes to get the ultra orthodox men into jobs and even drafted military service. It should be axiomatic as they grow into a larger percentage of the Israeli population, otherwise Israel would be reliant on women to do all the fighting and other typical male work.

The story’s more complicated than most people let on. The values of secular Israelis aren’t really all that much different from those in the developed Mediterranean European world. The Haredim though, follow their spiritual leaders (who encourage the men to take up Torah study all day and women to embrace the life of a housewife). The divide means that the secular Israelis mostly align themselves with the basic democratic practices of the state whereas the Haredim are socialized by communal activities. Something like half the men don’t participate in the workforce, and the women not just being prevented from doing so by the community, couldn’t do so even if allowed due to their pregnancies. So they’re a community that lives off the expense of the rest of productive society. Funny to think as an anti-Semite would that these people live as a “parasite” on the “host” society. And as the growth of the Haredim keeps increasing, it increases the burden on the welfare system that enables their existence in the first place, leading to a breakdown in Israeli society that has bothered political parties and secular Israelis for a long time.

While that is a raw deal for the secular Israelis, I feel that if push came to shove and the core undisputed lands of Israel were under threat the men could be convinced to mobilize if their homes were literally being torn down and their women kidnapped, spiritual leaders be damned.

Are there not also some disaffected Haredim that self-convert to the secular Israeli way of life? If so, they serve as a bonus pool of population that can slowly add to Israel's workforce. I think only the subsidies need to be cut for the Haredim to stop being a net drain, and in an emergency it seems like they could be tapped to repay all the subsidies they have soaked up over the years.

Forcing the Haredim to secularize would probably ruin Israel's democracy though, they would obviously never vote for it. It would be a one time action of a dictator.

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