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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Zohran Mamdani is threatening to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the UN in September

18 USC 878 makes it a federal crime to threaten to imprison any foreign head of state, which suggests that the DOJ has grounds to take action against Mamdani here. This would, of course, cause absolutely nuclear levels of insanity to erupt, especially since I have very little faith in the media not to frame it as "Fascist Trump arrests political rival". But also, it's also extremely unlikely that there will be an actual attempt to arrest Netanyahu, since that would require the NYPD to tangle with the United States Secret Service. All of this seems obvious to me, which means it must be obvious to Mamdani, which raises the question, what is his play here? Even the suggestion that the city that hosts the UN would seriously consider arresting guests of the UN should be insanely problematic.

The hysteria over this flies both ways.

The DOJ has no grounds to take any action against Mamdani as he has only said that he was in active conversation with the legal team over whether or not he could arrest Netanyahu. That can't be illegal, can it? Following that the law apparently says he can't arrest Netanyahu so this is just PR for the lefty base.

That being said, Israel is an apartheid state engaged in terrorism against civilians in large areas that it wants to ethnically cleanse and settle with the genetically correct people. The UN is by their own standards denigrating itself via inaction against such a regime. As is the rest of the world who holds on to the pretense that this is bad under any other circumstance.

To that extent the UN can not act as if their own inadequacies and failures are excusable when they fly in the face of the moral decency felt by free and democratic societies that are fast seeing their electorate turning into single issue voters due to the corruption and crimes committed by zionists and Israel.

Maybe the people of NYC don't want to host the UN if this is what the organization stands for.

That being said, Israel is an apartheid state engaged in terrorism against civilians in large areas that it wants to ethnically cleanse and settle with the genetically correct people.

Israel is not apartheid state. There doesn't seems to be segregation inside Israel. People in the west bank and gaza are not israeli citizens so how can Israel apply apartheid to them?

For the ethical cleansing - Israel seems to be pretty bad at it. We have more Palestinians than ever.

Israel is not apartheid state. There doesn't seems to be segregation inside Israel. People in the west bank and gaza are not israeli citizens so how can Israel apply apartheid to them?

The South Africans also claimed "Zulus in the Bantustans aren't South Africans so how can we apply apartheid to them" and yet that little trick didn't fool anyone. The essential element is that the West Bank and Gaza are under effectively under Israeli sovereignty yet their people have no citizenship, the textbook example of apartheid.

For the ethical cleansing - Israel seems to be pretty bad at it. We have more Palestinians than ever.

Yes, they are bad at it. The essential difference between them and the Germans is competence: the Israelis are more cowardly, less capable and less self reliant. First as a tragedy, now as a farce and all that. There have been plenty of incompetent genocidaires throughout history; the Rwandan genocide ended with the genocidaires actually losing the war to their would-be victims, for example.

Also we have no idea how many Palestinians there are since they refuse to allow any kind of unbiased outside monitors in to actually figure out how many Palestinians there are. Famously the 1948 World Almanac claimed that the Jewish population had actually increased during the war but that was because the Almanac was using old data.

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.