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It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.
For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?
Twitter is an insane place right now, but it will only get worse from here. Just now, I scrolled past two gruesome videos, then saw tweets from official Israel military accounts. and then a video supposedly of someone hang gliding from Gaza into Israel?? The Ukraine war was not like this, I feel like I will be scarred by this one.
Speaking of retribution, Netanyahu’s twitter says, emphasis mine:
https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1710631847879717236?s=20
Some of the footage from Ukraine was really grim, especially the videos of drones finishing off wounded soldiers.
yes, not denying that. But those are less shocking than naked dead women being paraded around and spat on
Not really? I watched redditors on /r/dronedOrc gloat about a surrendering man being torn apart by shrapnel bombs because he was still alive after the 4th one and they loved watching him writhe in pain.
Spitting on a dead body is nowhere near as grotesque as watching that from what you used to think were civilized humans that speak the same language as you.
The difference is that some angry Estonian who hates Russia trolling in an online comments section is a lot less visceral than literal video footage of the raped corpse of an Israel civilian paraded through Gaza to civilian cheers. Ukraine doesn’t parade desecrated corpses of Russian civilians through Kiev to cheers.
When I was a kid I watched some militants saw the head off a captured NGO worker with a blunt knife. I'm pretty inured to bronze-age savages doing terrible things while spasmodically yelling ALLAH AKBAR.
What still gets me a little is the university HR lady, who'd fire you for making the white supremacist thumbs-up gesture or mentioning the lynching word "picnic", suddenly become a maoist third-worlder screaming about how Stolen Land Will Be Cleansed With The Blood Of The Settlers, From Palestine To California!
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Also, there is difference between gloating about dead enemy soldiers and gloating about dead raped civilians.
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