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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.
Israel can do all of those wonderful without encroaching on Palestinian territory, tearing down their homes to make space for Israeli settlers. You are presenting a false dichotomy in which Israel must relentlessly expand into the West Bank, or give up its modernity and first-world characteristics.
I admire Israel for its development, and the contributions of its people to science and human knowledge. I want Israel to survive and thrive, and so I support their efforts to defend themselves. But I need not give them a blank check to do whatever they like. Israel does not need to build settlements in the West Bank to keep their country safe - just the opposite; these settlements create enmity among the Palestinians, and prevent reconciliation.
We must make a distinction between how a nation fights a war, and why they are fighting in the first place. I don't endorse the Palestinians' conduct in war. They inflict barbaric torture on civilians and capture soldiers. The Israelis do not. Yet we cannot conclude from these facts alone that Israel is in the right. When we zoom out and look at the broader picture, it is the Israeli side that has, in the last few decades, committed more infringements, and Palestine is justified in resisting.
The Palestinians could also refrain from indiscriminate bombardment of civilian population centers. Or the gangrape.
Let's call it even?
My check isn't blank either, but it has room for quite a few zeroes on it.
While I am of the opinion that historical grievances beyond living memory, or at least the memory of octogenarians, should be buried, a few decades seems like a rather early cut-off. The fact that the Palestinians don't do worse is reflective of their incapacity to do so, not a lack of desire for the same, or else they wouldn't be cheering at the sight of a hot blonde Israeli woman dead with blood and shit on her genitals.
Israel, on the other hand, has both means and motive, so I can give them points for being quite polite about things, for the most part.
Actually, I don't think they do have the means. If they actually did just go and ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip they would lose substantial amounts of the international support they require to continue to exist. Israel is only sustainable at all due to massive flows of materiel from the West, and while their consent manufacturing/influence operations are incredibly powerful, they are still ultimately subject to a public opinion which would come down extremely hard if they just started a second holocaust and wiped out the muslims.
Israel gets about $3 billion in aid from the USA per year. Their defence budget is $23 billion.
It's an exaggeration to say they can't exist without western support.
This is such a strange take. The US set up client states in Jordan and Egypt to stop them from attacking Israel. It finances half the Lebanese political factions for this purpose (and even Hezbollah!). The entire Iraq war (2-3 TRILLION dollars depending on calculation methods) realistically had no other purpose than to eliminate a regime Israel wanted gone. It still stations around 30.000 soldiers around Middle East, with realistically no other purpose than to deter anyone who might want to mess with Israel. Almost any random deal US sponsors around the world will include some small ridiculous clauses to give Israel a bit more diplomatic legitimacy. US is unable to normalize relations with Iran, even though this would make a great amount of geopolitical sense, because Israel doesn't want it.
The list can go on and on. And I am not getting into items like the French giving Israel nuclear arms technology or massive sums of blood money West Germany paid for Israel's industrialization.
The 3 billion direct military aid is absolutely nothing compared to what America and Europe actually provides to Israel.
The Iraq War was because American intelligence thought there really were WMDs and because Saddam had previously lied about them and aroused America's displeasure.
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