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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?
My views on the whole affair can roughly be summed up with "Israel based, Palestine cringe", and since someone asked me if I was being ironic last time I said this, far from it.
Israel is an oasis in a hostile desert, about as glaring evidence of HBD as could be desired, not that there's a lack if you have eyes to see and a mind not blind to inconvenient truths. Arabs have and do much worse to each other than the Israelis ever have, and the average Palestinian is better off completely desisting from violent resistance, since I expect they would have a much better life as integrated citizens, even if they're of a tier below the Israelis, without voting rights and such. I can't see how they'd be accepted otherwise, since they outnumber them.
While I have no particular hatred of Palestinians, even if I view the whole Middle-Eastern memeplex with disdain, given how far it lies from my preferences, it's certainly obvious to me that their best bet for a peaceful existence would be to avoid poking at the lion that could swat them out of existence were it not for the optics.
Oh dear. You just gave them a reason to fuck optics, or at least the kind of optics that aren't thermal sights on F-16s and drones.
I guess massacring civilians and gangraping dual citizens who post on social media about supporting Palestine has that effect.
I like Israel, and the Jews as a whole when they aren't self-sabotaging by supporting ideologues who would end them. They're smarter than average, and the Ashkenazi (despite the Nazi in the name, which I always found mildly amusing) have more Nobels to them than most of the world put together.
What most civilizations would find unbearable and deserving of an outright war of eradication, such as regular bombardment of population centers by rockets, the Israelis make tolerable through technology, even if it involves sending missiles a hundred times the expense to blow them up.
They desalinate enough water to thrive in a desert that hasn't had far better days since the Bronze Age, when human-caused desertification ruined most of it.
They have chip fabs, and while I didn't bother to look it up, I doubt that even the Gulf States with their trillions have the technical capacity to build the same, at least not while having locals in charge. I emphasize it because they're close to the pinnacle of human technology, as complex as any supercollider, but profit and power generating in themselves. We build cathedrals these days, but to turn sand into thinking rock.
You don't forge a technocratic marvel like Israel in the midst of hostile territory without much in the way of natural resources without human stock that are several cuts above the average. I respect that enough to ignore the whole religious ethno-state deal, or even the occasional human rights violation.
And if there's a way to end this whole mess without human rights getting wedgied and worked over by Mossad, the Palestinians certainly burnt that bridge yesterday.
The horror cherry on top of this cake of horror is this won't change anyone's minds. Pretty much nobody is going to stop supporting the Palestinians over Israel because of this, not even most of the survivors of the Rave for Peace.
The Palestinians have every right to fight back when their land is being stolen. Do you not think Ukraine has killed people in its counter offensive?
Do Algonquin natives have a right to shoot up Americans and Canadians for colonialism?
That's what the French and Indian war was. If there had been continued resistance, terrorism, and guerrilla fighting by the Native Tribes after the 19th century. Which year would it have gone from righteous to not righteous? 1935? 1970? 2001?
It becomes terrorism after the treaty is signed ending the war. If descendants of the Natives want to call those treaties unfair and demand reparations, I think they have a right to peacefully protest for it, and situationally I might even support their cause. They don’t have a right to commit violence.
Similarly, Arabs don’t have a right to start armed conflicts, and they’re in the wrong when they do so.
"Arabs don't have a right to start armed conflicts" seems like quite the broad claim. Could you explain your reasoning? Did Saudi Arabia not have a right to provide aid and intelligence to fight against ISIS?
As for the treaties, that bypasses a perceived issue of state vs non-state status. Lots of the people in question aren't meaningfully bound by a treaty, because they're from a different tribe, because their tribe wasn't organized enough to sign one, etc. Is a miqmaq obligated by a treaty signed by cherokee and anishinaabe? Presumably not, based on our understanding of how these work.
To be clear, no one has the right to start armed conflicts. ISIS started the fight, Saudi Arabia is justified in fighting an aggressor.
That's a fair point, and I would have to do a fair amount more thinking to come to what I would consider a fair belief about when natives are allowed to use violence to fight back vs not. But in any case, I don't think there's any reasonable justification where Palestinians can shoot up music festivals. At the very least, Palestininian leadership should make some clear demands from Israel and only start shooting after Israel says no, instead of just rejecting every Israeli deal as not good enough without making counter offers.
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