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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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Probably because the US has a need for Israel in the Middle East as basically the best army in the region. Perhaps not 100% capable of paying for their own bombs but extremely capable at using those bombs to modern military standards.

This seems like a bit of circular reasoning. The US support Israel because it has the best army in the region. Why does US need to support Israel? Because the Arabs (generally) hate the US and the US need geopolitical support in the region. Why do the Arabs hate the US? Because the US supports Israel.

Additionally, the US actually gets very little from Israel. Israel fragrantly acts against US interests and ignores US calls all the time. Even the most milquetoast request from the US to Israel to maybe tone it down just a bit is just blatantly ignored. Israel demands the US intervene on its behalf all the time but rarely reciprocates. Prior to post-WW2, the Americans were actually seen very favorably by the Arabs.

The Arabs hate the US because the slogan "they hate our freedom", while laughed at by a lot of the left, is pretty much true. The Arabs don't like to have multi-ethnic, religiously tolerant states where the inhabitants get the freedoms that the West approves of. Even freedom of the press and separation of church and state would be alien to Arab countries, never mind something like gay rights.

Israel ashkenazi Jew had an average IQ of 115. That’s why we need them. They have better soldiers. Not circular at all.

Whose desires are Israel violating? I’m not asking them to tone it down.

The charges he’s making are too vague to be interpretable (as currently stated), but you’re also not giving a substantive answer. What’s are the concrete benefits we derive from their clientage that justifies the consumption of money and influence on their behalf? I don’t have any relevant background and don’t actually have an opinion on whether they’re worthwhile clients. If there are solid realpolitik reasons to support them, I’d respect that more than the moral arguments.

  1. The Saudis now view them as extremely important strategic partners in a post oil world. Their tech expertise seems to be important to a lot of our Arab allies who are now significantly thinking about what comes after oil.

  2. They’ve always provided an ability to do some dirty work for us.

  3. They have nukes. And it’s fairly clear they have a doctrine of just nuking everyone if their existence is questioned

  4. Science. Jews 35-40% of Nobel prizes atleast to me just means their lives matter more to civilization. They are a people who push humanity forward.

Thank you for 1-2, those are the sorts of reasons I’d be looking for. 3 seems like a reason for us to neuter them, dominate them, or nuke them ourselves before they can do it. As for 4, if they were somehow driven out of Israel, most of them would probably come here. Unless someone simultaneously nukes Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem, we should have plenty of time to evacuate the more useful Ashkenazim during any semi-realistic genocide scenario (obviously if it somehow came to that, I’d support evacuating all of them on moral rather than practical grounds).