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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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So, your argument is that they totally definitely for sure WANT to kill all the Palestinians. (I suppose that before Oct. 7 2023 they just had other things on their mind, like controlling global finance.) With that as a given, the fact that they HAVEN'T is only explained by being so darn incompetent. The Israeli tanks and missiles are being stopped from razing every city to the ground by ___ (please fill in the blank here, presumably with something other than "being a civilized Western nation").

They're obviously incompetent since they claimed their goal was to destroy the tiny militia located in a territory entirely encircled by their forces and in the end they wound up having to release thousands of ostensible deadly terrorists while leaving said militia still in control.

The only real dispute is whether they're incompetent cowardly losers who were too militarily inept to defeat Hamas or whether they're incompetent cowardly losers who were too politically inept to engineer circumstances sufficient to kill or displace the entire population of Gaza.

It's strange how we have to pretend that the fact that these clowns who haven't won a war since 1982 have failed at their objectives is an indication of anything other than their incompetence.

The Israeli government was seriously discussing shutting off all the water to Gaza. The only reason they didn’t do that was because if the massive international outcry.

I suppose I'll have to take your word for it that they were totally definitely for sure seriously discussing stopping giving a utility to the Palestinians, and then didn't stop giving the utility to the Palestinians. Those jerks. You did lead me to a fun Wikipedia page talking about water in the Palestinian territories. After the mandatory Israel-blaming, there's this buried gem:

In all 25 municipalities in the Gaza strip, water provision is the responsibility of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU). However, the utility is still in the process of being set up and exercise its legal tasks. The intended procedure is that the municipalities receive technical assistance by the CMWU and gradually transfer their staff and assets to it. According to the World Bank, this model led to some improvements like faster repair of leakage and economies of scale. However, the plan is far from being fully implemented. The model experienced serious problems which are mainly caused by the unstable political conditions in the Gaza strip since 2008, including differences between municipalities governed by Hamas and Fatah, so that some municipalities refused to transfer their assets and staff to CMWU.

So, the Palestinians have spent 18 years not handling basic services because of their dysfunctional government. But if the Israelis stop covering the slack, it's "genocide" I guess.

If I lock a hooker in my basement and then stop giving her water bottles, that’s murder. I can’t argue that the stupid bitch should have been responsible for her own utilities payments.