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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21872 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.

The problem is that Israel thinks they're a lot stronger and smarter than they actually are.

They think they can get away with 5D chess gambits like Netanyahu facilitating payments to Hamas so as to divide the Palestinians and so further pursue their divide and conquer/settle policy.

Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas

What a retard! Same with their overt and obnoxious propaganda campaign, how Israel has 'the most moral army'. It's been counterproductive.

They think they're a military superpower, yet they can't seem to handle Lebanon. The Lebanese army isn't even fighting them, just Hezbollah. They fought Hamas for a couple of years and didn't manage to destroy a small force, totally encircled, without air power or any heavy weapons. Somehow Hamas got the drop on them in October 7th, so much for all-knowing Mossad!

But they think they can take on Iran?

The Israeli military is not that capable, it can't perform the (challenging) offensive tasks their politicians have in mind. They can do standoff attacks and elaborate assassination stunts. They can shoot and shell and scorch the earth but can't seem to hold much ground. Unfortunately for them, ground wars are won by holding ground and destroying armies.

The solution is to puncture their delusions of strength. The US should cut off military support until Israel complies with commands. F-35s can't fly without spare parts. Israel relies heavily on US satellites and aerial refuelling and the actual munitions themselves. Israel's military-industrial base is weak and top heavy, just like the military itself. They design drones and high-tech weapons. But they can't produce the myriad precursors in steel and chemicals needed for those weapons. No country of 10 million can. It makes no sense to be selling or transferring (the US has these stocks of weapons 'pre-deployed' in Israel that Israel sometimes taps) munitions and parts to a country harming one's national interests, while America also faces a shortage of munitions.

Israel is a small country and needs to start acting like it. Less bombing, more peace treaties and a bit of sincerity in actually adhering to ceasefires and accepting limits on territorial aspirations. Israel has never even officially defined the permanent territory in its borders, they're incredibly opportunistic and aggressive.

All of this, but from my perspective Israel's current policy is Jewish neuroticism writ large.

I have Jewish friends and I love them for their intelligence and wit, but whenever politics or conversation comes to Zionism, they turn into different people. The Holocaust has burned a collective trauma across the Jewish community (reinforcing the historical trauma of the pogroms) that causes them to act out.

If they continue to try to manipulate other gentile communities to act in their interests, they will continue to generate bad will that is not in their collective interest.

I don’t know how many people here ever read the book Start-Up Nation about the story of Israel’s so-called “economic miracle.” Their view in that book essentially came down to the premise that its success was mostly internal and owed to “battlefield entrepreneurs,” that spurned a culture of innovation, via their military. What they downplayed in the book though was something that’s actually fairly well known in contemporary military doctrines called the “qualitative military edge.” That’s wholly independent of Israel and has existed since the days of the Cold War.

Because the nations of the Warsaw Pact had a numerical advantage over the US and its allied stations in Europe, America had to maintain its QME in defense systems, which are almost all based in technology. That’s why in US-Israeli arms deals, Israel gets first regional access to our defense technology. When America supplies both Israel and an Arab state the same tech, Israel gets a more advanced version of the platform and the ability to customize the US system. It’s why in Obama’s term (just to pick one example out of many), you can find stories in the news about how his administration just sold 20 F-35 aircraft to Israel, soon followed by a sale of F-15’s to Saudi Arabia.

To the OP’s point above you, Israel’s actually missed several economic opportunities because of its attention paid to their defense industry. If you look at Singapore for example, they chose a multicultural path to avoid the kind of race riots that threatened to divide them in the 1960’s. Israel didn’t ensure rights to Arab citizens or even Mizrahi Jews. Singapore chose economic development as a primary development target, Israel chose to prioritize defense at the expense of economic development; and so funds that could’ve went to fostering unity and regional development went into security and suppression of the occupied territories; and is more reliant on US military aid because of it.

In defense of Israel, Singapore has better land, and focusing on a multicultural, multireligious state was always more likely to succeed.

  1. Singapore's land isn't an important religious site to multiple monotheist religions.

  2. Singapore's land was sparsely populated by native Malays and mostly unused jungle. The settlement of Chinese workers may have started in the 14th century, predating modern ethnic nationalism. Israel's land was far more occupied and contested.

  3. The malaysian Sunni muslims are either more tolerant of non-muslims from either a cultural basis, or maybe a Shafi'i islamic school perspective. This is less true of Arabic muslims in general.

If you could have body-swapped Lee Kwan Yew into dictator of Israel during it's founding, I don't think he could have molded Israel's society to be similar to what he did for Singapore.

Honestly, if your comparison is that you did well but unperformed compared to Singapore I'm inclined to cut you some slack.

I would sacrifice a testicle to have a dozen more such disappointments.

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