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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5976 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Outside of the right genuinely becoming stronger through X, there is a one word answer: Israel. The establishment can't compromise any more on Israel. They have to vote yes when Israel asks for arms. They have to stand up and clap for Netanyahu.

Why?

Because they have power and can't afford to be that stupid.

Israel may be unpopular, but Palestine is genuinely run by an evil regime that would behead every American if they had the power to do so. And it's not just a bad regime, its popular. If you have power you can smile nicely at the "queers for Palestine" people, but you still have to keep the reality in your head that not only would those people be beheaded in Palestine, you probably would too

So the establishment is widening a rift in their own party because... The evil Palestinian regime would otherwise behead every American if given the chance? Which would somehow be more likely to happen if the dems stopped bending the knee for Israel?

I can see the vague emotional outline for 'Palestinians are radical muslims and that flies on the face of lefty progressivism' but trying to connect that to any genuine geopolitical reality feels like a real stretch.

Granting for the sake of argument that this is true, there are lots of groups in the world that meet that criterion (the easiest example for reductio ad absurdum probably being any assorted Islamist militia in Africa), without the US subordinating every other national interest to supporting whoever happens to be fighting against them.

I’m not asking why these Dem leaders are not taking a clear stand with Hamas against Israel. I’m asking what perceived tangible political risk is there in them parting ways with the Israel Lobby and refusing to yield to them anymore.

I’m asking what perceived tangible political risk is there in them parting ways with the Israel Lobby and refusing to yield to them anymore.

All the people with money and brains seem to still like Israel. Or at least understand that it is a significantly lesser evil than the regional alternatives.

All the people with money and brains seem to still like Israel.

Paul Graham and Nassim Taleb would suggest otherwise.

Regardless, it seems more like the people with money who like Israel are willing to basically devote their entire fortunes towards supporting Israel whereas the people with money who don't like Israel have other priorities.

The voter base hates Israel, but the donor base still generally likes Israel (at least the theoretical concept of Israel, not necessarily the current government). Imagine the political blowback from pissing off

  • The Media,

  • Big Tech,

  • Big Finance, and

  • Lawyers

All at the same time.

They’re fine with letting Arab Muslim refugees into America. Why would they have objections to letting Arab Muslim refugees into Israel?

They probably have an Aversion to seeing lots of beheadings

If they had such a strong aversion to beheadings they wouldn't have enthusiastically supported Al Qaeda taking over Syria

I’m also curious. The establishment has chosen to do this but I haven’t seen any particular reason why they would have to do it. They just seem to really want to do it.

If you don't know why, it's probably old and complicated and involves real national interest, which is why you don't know about it.

So, for instance, as to why we "have" to sell Israel weapons, it's because that was part of the deal Carter brokered for peace between Egypt and Israel, a peace that has lasted nearly fifty years now. We also "have" to sell Egypt like 80% of what we sell Israel. That's the deal, from the Realpolitik '70s. Egypt leaves the Soviet Union as main sponsor, Israel leaves France as main military sponsor, and they buy American and agree not to use the US guns on each other.

So, we don't have to do shit. We can withold weapons from the Israelis, but that scotches the peace deal with Egypt which puts the Suez in play (and so on down the line of international consequences). Also, the weapons we provide tend to be the most targeted and high-tech. The Israelis make much of their own hardware, and are plenty rich enough to get reasonable options from elsewhere except for our best stuff. The idea that the US military hardware is the only thing between Israel and defeat is ridiculous and ahistorical. US military hardware is what stands between the Palestinians and an Israel that doesn't have Patriot missiles, but can build their own artillery. Not sure that's better for anyone.

Which is why we keep voting to do it.

We can withold weapons from the Israelis, but that scotches the peace deal with Egypt which puts the Suez in play (and so on down the line of international consequences)

Well, supplying Israel with weapons led to the Houthis blocking the Red Sea so...

US military hardware is what stands between the Palestinians and an Israel that doesn't have Patriot missiles, but can build their own artillery. Not sure that's better for anyone.

I think a lot of people don't realize (or don't want to acknowledge) that if Israel were to be unable to effectively defend its population from terrorist rockets and mortars and missles, their reponse wouldn't be capitulation or negotiation. It would be annihilation. As it would be for pretty much any polity in existence whose civilians are being relentlessly targeted and killed by a militarily inferior opponent.

As it stands, Israel has the breathing room to be more judicious in their attacks, even if it really doesn't look that way to the uninformed, who call use of more than one JDAM "indiscriminate and unproportional carpet bombing". But without the Iron Dome, I think we'd be reminded what carpet bombing really looks like, and I wouldn't blame them (or anyone else) in their operational situation.

Israel has a population equivalent to the population of Denmark if we subtract Palestinians and ultra orthodox. Israel's natural resources are meager. If Israel was subjected to the same sanctions as Russia they would fold like a house of cards. There is no way Israel can be sustained while having hostile relations to all its neighbours and while being sanctioned by the west.

They're fortunate that their neighbors are largely hysterically incompetent and the ones that aren't hysterically incompetent would rather perpetuate the status quo than actually remove Israel for the most part

Yes, if the west decided to sanction Israël then it would go under- and the Palestinians would behead everyone who didn’t manage to flee in time. But if the US merely decided it was no longer selling Israël weapons on relatively favorable terms, Israël would buy the arms needed from France or Russia and take over the suez.

So if they know they are going to fall apart when sanctioned why wouldn't they stop being judicious and cause as much table flipping as possible before they run out of juice?

Isn't this what they have done going full genocidal for the past 2.5 years and starting a war with Iran?

That was kind of the point of my post: that they have been keeping the gloves on thanks to having the Iron Dome to allow them to be moderate, rather than full "ignore civilian casualties & make it a parking lot" war, let alone actively targeting civilians and intending genocide.

A state in Israel's position of absolute supremacy can't even negate natural population increase in Gaza. That's hardly a genocide.

Israel hasn't allowed any international observers into Gaza to measure, how could you possibly know whether they've negated the natural population increase or not?

Israel absolutely takes steps to limit civilian casualties, it's clearly part of the deal for Western support.

Remove that support? They are likely to act like non-Western nations (ex: Russia) aka most institutions throughout the history of warfare.

Put another way, you assert they have gone "full genocidal." What does that mean exactly? What makes what Israel is doing "genocidal?"

'Full genocide' is hyperbole on your part, because apparently 'genocide' has lost its punch, mainly because of Third Worldists applying it liberally to anything and everything they don't like.

What would you classify the Armenia and Rwandan genocides, then? Hypergenocides? Are the Israelis genociding the Palestinians in the same way we're genociding the transgenders in the West? The Amerindians?

It wasn't "third worldists" who came up with the "Uyghur genocide".

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