FirmWeird
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User ID: 757
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
27d ago
As the 2024 election is mulled over by pundits to see what, exactly, went wrong, I wonder if we are missing similar “warning signs” in trends. The Bernie-Bro-turned-Trump-supporter pipeline a la Joe Rogan could be symptomatic of voters aligning more along an axis of “insiders vs. outsiders” instead of policy preferences, education, age, or race; while there are correlations with each of those things to an “insiders vs. outsiders” axis, none of them are definitive.
I'm on the record as saying that this has been coming for quite a while now. Google is broken and not finding my posts on the old subreddit, but I said this 10 months ago (https://www.themotte.org/post/842/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/181915?context=8#context)
That said I think I go a bit further - I think Left/right as a meaningful political divide is going to either go away or simply transform into pro/anti regime/establishment, because neither of them can offer anything which actually helps people deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives. Trump is just the early foreshadowing of that realignment.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
30d ago
I'm pretty sure the UN and the ICC did not say "the Israeli side is a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs." Though it is probably what a lot of people in those organizations think, given the hostility they have traditionally shown towards Israel.
Yes, I said that my view was based on those things, not that I was just directly quoting them, and I don't think any individual element of that description is inapplicable. Even pro-Israeli partisans admit they've killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including women and children - “There are no schools in Gaza, as there are no children left.” was proudly chanted by them in public. I think that more than justifies the charge of "blood-drenched", and it puts in some work when it comes to justifying "bronze-age" as well. Netanyahu himself has referenced Amalek and what their god tells them to do to Amalek with regards to the current conflict, and I believe the Amalek-Israel dispute does actually date back to the bronze age. As for ethnic purity, Israel proudly advertises itself as a state for Jewish people and has laws which back that up - I can't think of any other nation that allows for DNA testing to determine whether or not you can immigrate. And as for conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs... I've been watching that happen on the news and social media for months now. I've already provided quotes from Israeli settlers planning on settling in the now-cleansed north of Gaza.
My point here is not that I think Israelis are the good guys and how dare you criticize them, but that the history there is a lot more complicated than your simplistic, straight-from-the-mouths-of-Hamas version of Israeli history.
I've based my views on quotes straight from the mouths of Likud officials, not Hamas. As I said, I'm not condemning the Israelis as evil (I don't think calling a state evil really has much meaning) - I'm just taking them at their word. I think that they're motivated by ethnonationalist impulses, and multiple Israelis have simply told me this to my face in other discussions. Until you face the reality of what Israel has done and is doing, you're not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation about it - that's what I meant by preferring conversations where the Israeli partisans just admit that Israel is actually doing what it proudly advertises itself as doing.
The moral valence only comes into play because in the modern era most nations saw an attempt at wiping out an inconvenient population and collectively decided that it must never be allowed to happen again, and that efforts at genocide are a collective stain upon humanity. I'm very partial to that belief and I'm not going to deny that I'm opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, but at the same time...
I find conversations more productive when people are actually able to steelman their opponents as rational human beings acting out of motives other than pure malice or blind fanaticism
That's precisely what I'm doing. I can understand the logic behind their actions - I disagree with their reasoning, but I can understand why they believe the things they believe and do the things they do. An accurate depiction of what they're doing sounds like evil to the majority of humanity, but that's not a reason to mince words.
Edit: Just to clarify, I think that calling a state evil is indeed meaningless. But having a widespread and justified belief among the rest of humanity that what you're doing is evil is very different and much more consequential.
I'm basing my view of the Israeli side on direct quotes from high-ranking government officials and widely respected international legal bodies. The United Nations and the ICC are both making this claim, and so is the Israeli government. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-29/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-people-of-israel-will-settle-gaza-netanyahu-ministers-urge-palestinians-expulsion/0000018d-5495-d1b6-aded-5fdd570c0000
'The People of Israel Will Settle Gaza': Netanyahu's Ministers at Far-right Conference Endorse Expulsion of Palestinians
''Voluntary' [emigration] is at times a situation you impose until they give their consent,' declared Netanyahu's communications minister on-stage, exposing the true message of the 'Conference for the Victory of Israel': The transfer, or expulsion, of Palestinians from Gaza
One of the sources that I linked in my post was a report by the UN stating that what Israel is doing is genocide. This morning the ICC issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes/crimes against humanity. IDF soldiers are killing themselves because they're unable to live with the memories of what they've done. Blood-drenched may sound hyperbolic, but how else can you describe reports of somebody bulldozing hundreds of people alive to the point that they're unable to eat meat anymore because it reminds them too much of what's inside people?
It's so bizarre you would suggest the Israeli side should just admit that they are evil and monstrous and start the conversation from there that I am genuinely not sure whether I missed the subtle irony you're conveying.
Just to clarify, I didn't say they were evil. I'm not interested in moral discussions like that, which is why I posited those alternative questions in my post. None of them revolved around the morality of what's happening, but you can't even begin to talk reasonably about the topic without being honest and admitting that Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza (as their government has repeatedly admitted, and as the UN has repeatedly accused them of).
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
30d ago
It makes very little sense to accuse Israel of genocide/ethnic cleansing if you claim that you we don't have a reasonable sense of the numbers of civilians killed. What are you even basing the accusation on then?
Francesca Albanese's report to the UN. I know you said that she is "cartoonishly anti-Israeli" but if you can spot any lies in here that I missed feel free to point them out. There's actually no point relying on the number of civilians killed to identify genocide or ethnic cleansing, because by the time those figures tell you that a genocide is occurring it is already too late to do anything about it, and the point of identifying genocide/ethnic cleansing is to make sure it doesn't happen again.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, examines the unfolding horrors in the occupied Palestinian territory. While the wholesale destruction of Gaza continues unabated, other parts of the land have not been spared. The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians. This trajectory risks causing irreparable prejudice to the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine. Member States must intervene now to prevent new atrocities that will further scar human history.
I highly recommend giving it a read - there's a mountain of citations, and there are even a whole lot more photos of children with bullet wounds in those citations as well. That said the report is extremely long so I'll refrain from just posting the entire thing here, but it represents my position on the conflict very well. There are mountains of evidence with regards to the genocidal intent and actions of the Israeli government, even if you just go through the citations of that report. When I read a report about IDF soldiers killing themselves because they can't live with what they've done in Gaza, or how they can't eat meat anymore because they ran over so many people with a bulldozer and saw the "meat" come out I find it very hard to believe that nothing's happening. When Israelis chant "School's out in Gaza because all the children are dead" to try and intimidate people in Amsterdam, I find it very hard to feel sorry for them.
For what it's worth, I don't find the argument about whether or not Israel is actually a committing a genocide to be that interesting - the answer is just so clearly and blatantly yes. Attempting to make the claim that israeli protests against enforcement of rules against raping prisoners are just made up by evil terrorist prisoners when I've seen the video footage just makes me feel like you're trying to insult my intelligence. Even one of the debunking links you gave me is so nakedly partisan that is has two giant DONATE TO ISRAEL NOW buttons on it - I may as well link to the Daily Stormer as proof that Israel is bad.
I like these conversations a lot more when the Israeli side is willing to admit that they're a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs - when you're willing to admit that there are actual conversations that can be had. Will Israel's plans actually work? What are the long-term consequences going to be? Does ethnic cleansing actually work without any downsides? Does international law exist at all? Those are all much more interesting topics, and as an added bonus I don't have to look at gore of dead children or picture hundreds of people getting crushed with a bulldozer in such a gruesome way that it made one of the drivers kill themselves later.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
30d ago
I strongly suspect that for the majority of these "I'm Jewish and I don't like Israel" types their Judaism means nothing to them in any other context.
Who cares? That doesn't change the fact that they're Jewish, any more than I would become black for not supporting white nationalists. Again, unless you're willing to endorse Rachel Dolezal transracialism this doesn't stop them from being Jewish, in many cases loudly and proudly so. They qualify for Aaliyah to Israel, they would be granted citizenship if they went - even the Israeli government considers these people jews. Alternatively, if you've got some kind of proof that you are an official arbiter of Judaism who can tell people whether or not they're authentically Jewish, you get to make this argument. Otherwise it's just another plate of warmed up haggis.
Sure, but I don't know what relation that bears to non-orthodox Jews who are anti-Israel.
They're an example of jews for whom their Jewishness is a central element of their life and still oppose Israel. Some of them are left wing as well, some not.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
Your comment reminded me of an article that I read previously which explores one of the points you're making in great detail, specifically about the "bad guys always lose" kind of thinking that seems so prevalent in NATO. https://www.ecosophia.net/the-three-stigmata-of-j-r-r-tolkien/
The first of these habits of thought may as well be called the Orc Fallacy. Orcs? Those are the foot soldiers of the Dark Lord Sauron in Tolkien’s trilogy. They’re bad. They’re so bad they’re a caricature of badness. Not only that, they don’t even pretend to believe in the rightness of their own cause; they know they’re on the wrong side, and glory in it. In Tolkien’s world, no orc anywhere ever had a generous thought or did a kindly action. The closest they get to loyalty is a kind of malicious team spirit, coupled with stark terror of what their bosses will do to them if they don’t follow orders. The closest they get to courage is bloodlust coupled with a clear sense of what everyone else in Middle-earth will do to them given half a chance. When they’re winning, they swagger; when they’re losing, they panic and run. For all their apparent strength, in other words, they’re lousy soldiers, and their main function in the trilogy consists of showing up in vast numbers and then being slaughtered en masse by their outnumbered enemies.
As a literary device this sort of gimmick has its problems. As a basic assumption about reality, shaping the way that liberal politicians and bureacrats in the Western world think about the people they hate, it has much greater problems. There are plenty of examples, but the one that comes first to mind just at the moment is the fate of last summer’s Ukrainian counteroffensive.
According to recent news reports, the counteroffensive was planned out in detail by NATO generals. They’re the ones who insisted that the Ukrainian forces should drive south across Zaporhizhia province to the gates of Crimea, and their countries provided the Ukrainian army with the tanks and other equipment that would supposedly guarantee victory. They wargamed out the offensive in repeated exercises, always with the same results. At the heart of their plan, however, was the conviction that Sauron’s hosts would panic and run once the heroic defenders of the West came charging onto the scene. Since “orcs” is a standard slang term for Russians in Ukraine these days, it probably sounded like a slam-dunk.
Unfortunately for Ukraine, nobody seems to have made sure the Russian soldiers in Zaporhizhia agreed with this. As a result, those soldiers went on believing that they were the heroes of the piece, fighting to defend Mother Russia against neo-Nazis at their gates. Instead of milling around aimlessly while the Ukrainians got ready to attack, and then fleeing in terror and dying like flies once the assault began, the Russian forces dug themselves in, built three hardened defensive lines behind the line of contact, and then fought like tigers once the battle got going, mauling one elite Ukrainian armored brigade after another. By the time the counteroffensive ended this autumn, 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died uselessly, billions of dollars of NATO armored vehicles had been blown to smithereens, and the Russian Army still held firm.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
Can you link the x-ray pictures you considered credible, so the debunking would be more direct?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-doctor-interviews.html
I'm just going directly with the story posted by the NYT. I tried looking for a debunking of the story, but the only ones I could find were on websites with huge DONATE TO ISRAEL NOW buttons which made me a bit skeptical of their motivations. I believed the story because there's a huge number of people talking about what they saw treating casualties in Gaza, and it is consistent with all the other reporting I've seen come out of the region. There have been multiple reports of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children for several years, and I don't see why the current circumstances would make them stop doing that.
For what it's worth, if you've got video evidence of the attacks, I'd certainly be interested in seeing it.
I do not. I honestly have no desire to go looking for footage of children being gruesomely murdered, no matter how much it might strengthen my argument on an online forum. I'm aware that this is a dodge, but I'm sure you can appreciate that not only is graphic footage of child murder extremely hard to stomach, it is also banned by almost all major platforms and is frequently removed after it gets too "popular". I regret seeing the clips that I have seen and have no desire to repeat the experience.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
No one does, because the only sources are Hamas. We can be generous and take their figure, which seems to be about 40000 last time I checked
This is the number of dead that they're able to verify, which is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. There's another 10000 that are missing and can safely be presumed dead as well, and I believe about 90000 with severe injuries. I don't think we're going to get true or accurate casualty numbers until after the war ends, and even then I have my doubts.
I think the chances that story is true are almost nil.
I have seen too many photos of dead Palestinian children to give the story that little credibility. On top of that, Israeli murder of children is common enough even outside the conflict that there are a lot of reports of it from the west bank as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/west-bank-children-killed-unprecedented-rate
If you've got a comprehensive debunking of the x-ray claims I'd like to see it, but I've seen enough direct video footage of these kinds of attacks that I can't just brush the claim off wholesale, especially not on the basis of vibes rather than citations (admittedly a bit hypocritical of me given that I'm not posting the evidence I'm talking about either, but I'm sure you can understand why I don't save and archive all the videos of children being graphically murdered that I see).
I haven't heard this story, do you have a source?
https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1858304872963010840 Franceska Albanese makes the claim here.
A single example - that I'm fairly certain wasn't sanctioned by the government/military - seems insufficient to help build a case that Israel is acting with unprecedented levels of brutality towards Palestinian civilians.
There are countless claims from released Palestinian prisoners that rape and sexual abuse was endemic in Israeli prisons - and Israelis themselves (including high ranking government officials!) have protested any attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
I suspect the majority of these people are only Jewish by parentage and don't actually live their lives in any way that's discernably Jewish (happy to be proven wrong on this)
This is an old argument that we've seen a lot of times before. "I suspect the majority of these people are only Scottish by parentage, and don't actually live their lives in any way that's discernibly and truly Scottish". But either way there's a decently sized population of orthodox jews who reject Israel for scriptural reasons as well.
Your second point is being litigated in another post so I won't respond to it here.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
Actually, I'm making that as a good faith argument - because it matches up with the reporting and figures that I've seen. Your comment doesn't match up with the sources I've read, but given the modern context I'm not terribly surprised that two people on opposite sides of a contentious issue have different ideas about the facts on the ground. If you have some really rigorous and verifiable data on casualty numbers in Gaza, please share it.
As for Hamas putting the civilians in harms way, I disagree with your framing - there are just too many instances of the Israelis murdering people who aren't anywhere near Hamas. Take all those x-rays of children's brains with bullets in them - in what possible world was it necessary to snipe those toddlers to go after Hamas? That surgeon who got raped to death in an Israeli prison was already in a prison, and that didn't stop Israel from doing what it did to him.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
To the best of my knowledge the Palestinian Christians largely blame Israel for their dispossession - that's what all the members of their diaspora I've spoken to have said and it seems to be backed up by the statistics, but I might be being fooled. If you've got some strong evidence that the Palestinian muslims are responsible for the Palestinian christians being kicked out I'd love to see it.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
I was referring to Lebanon - if you've got evidence of something similar happening to Russia right now I'd love to see it.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
As one of the people you're ostensibly talking about (given that I both think Ukraine should surrender to Russia immediately and that Israel should stop the genocide and either adopt a one or two state solution) I feel like that's not actually how I'd present those arguments. I think that Ukraine and Israel are in extremely different circumstances that make the comparison fruitless. Russia is a much larger and much more powerful state than Israel, and Israel faces a lot of serious problems that Russia simply does not. There's no state on Russia's northern border peppering them with so many missile attacks that large numbers of civilians are forced to abandon their homes and jobs to stay in Moscow hotels, and there's no group of rebels disrupting shipping to Russia to the point that major ports go bankrupt.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
I have no idea what you are trying to say - are you joking about the fact that the Israelis have already murdered huge swathes of the population?
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
If you think that people opposing the transfer of weapons and advanced military technology to a nation currently engaged in what is widely agreed to be ethnic cleansing and genocide is "anti-Semitic" you're degrading the term and thoroughly stripping it of any ability to reach people or convince them that what you're criticising is in any way bad. The majority of people, especially on the left, will regard providing material support for a genocide to be infinitely worse than being told they're being racist against a population that they largely consider white - you are welcome to try and convince people on the left that Jerry Seinfeld and Sheldon Adelson are people of colour and victims of discrimination, but I don't think you're going to have much luck.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
The question is what you hope to gain from it.
I'm not one of them, but there are a lot of young jews with left wing political views, and those views have a very clear and definite position on what's taking place in Gaza right now. The left wing generally views ethnic cleansing in defence of a blood-and-soil ethnostate to be one of the greatest possible crimes you can commit, the sort that would stain the history of a people forever (just look at Germany). You don't actually need to "gain" anything material from opposing something you consider deeply immoral(though I suppose this means that what they 'gain' is satisfaction of emotional needs), and the footage being posted to the internet by both Palestinians and Israelis is really impossible to ignore if you're young and on social media. If I knew that my country was taken over by ethnonationalists and was about to start burning jewish people alive in their hospital beds, I'd protest against it even if I wasn't gaining anything from it (especially so if my only relation to "my" country was that they have the same ethnicity as me and I lived somewhere completely different) and I don't think that's a particularly extreme or hard to understand position.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
(impossible to determine which comments may be valuable on ACT, for instance)
I can't even read comments on ACT. Every time I try to scroll down the website shits itself, goes blank and then tries to recover. It still blows my mind that a website in the modern day like ACT/Substack provides a much worse experience than a php forum from several decades ago.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
I'm much more comfortable with no liability for the former.
Why? If the technology is proven and established with no problems, that is exactly the sort of situation where a liability shield provides the worst incentives. If we know that a given product is reliable and problem free, then shielding the manufacturer from liability gives them a direct incentive to reduce quality control and otherwise take risks/cut corners. If we know the technology works reliably, that's exactly when people SHOULD be liable for damages if they get nasty consequences from it.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
That was in no way a joke. He was already facing down a prosecution for not employing enough illegal immigrants for a job that has requirements which can only be met by legitimate citizens, his compensation payout being declared too high, etc. The lawfare was already happening, and I think there's a very good chance he would have been extradited abroad and prosecuted for misinformation/hate speech if Trump didn't win.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
At least some of the post-mortem analyses and interviews with swing voters I've seen make the case that Trump did this on trans issues specifically - there's a reason "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" was statistically and anecdotally their most effective advertisement.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
If you wanted to astroturf, going for a neutral to semi hostile media network might convince a Trump voter or two.
This is straightforwardly true, but the problem is the dem candidates. Kamala Harris had no real policies or positions, and could only really exist in a controlled and managed media environment that was willing to give her campaign editorial control over the finished product. She had so much negative baggage that she just wouldn't be able to answer without offending some part of her coalition, and she was a charisma void that meant she couldn't find ways around that. If she was forced to expose her personality and thinking for a solid three hours with no assistance, she would have tanked the campaign harder than she actually did.
When your candidate is so unappealing that they cause voters to peel off whenever they talk in an uncontrolled environment (Kamala even had trouble in extremely friendly environments too), you can only make appearances on friendly media, in friendly spaces. The correct answer is to run a real candidate who is speaking to people's issues and has an actual competent understanding of the world and social context - but when you have to advocate for policies which actively harm your constituents and provide a return on investment for all the lobbyists and donors who financed your campaign, you can't run a genuine candidate, so you're stuck with the kinds of disingenuous empty suits that ran the republican party before Trump showed up and still run the democrat party.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
It's weird because a lot of the manosphere is black. Especially in the post-Kevin Samuels era.
This is actually a surprise to me - I haven't been spending much time in the manosphere since Heartiste went down, so my knowledge might be a bit out of date. I recall even the black people in the manosphere generally accepted the premises of HBD back then, given that if what you're caring about is being able to have sex with lots of women being black doesn't really handicap you there.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1mo ago
My personal belief is that the election was "stolen" but I take a very limited perspective that I don't think really provides the information you're looking for - I think that the amount of actual electoral fraud wasn't that much greater or smaller than what is normal for American elections, but the "steal" largely happened when the intelligence community knowingly lied to the public about the provenance of the Hunter Biden laptop. There have been studies done which plausibly make the case that this actually tipped the election towards Biden, and it isn't really something that anyone on either side of politics tries to disagree with.
Apologies for the delayed response - I don't post on the motte on weekends.
Yes, I have, and I've read a lot about the history of the region due to the prominence of the issue. As for accurately summarizing both positions... the Palestinian side would be easy but as for the Israeli side I honestly don't think so - there are real divisions in Israeli society on these topics, and coming up with an answer that could satisfy all of them is hard. There are hardline settlers who believe that all the land God gave them in their scriptures belongs to them with no negotiation, and there are Israelis who want a two or one-state solution to the Palestinian issue. At the same time I have actually discussed the issue with people who were born Israeli citizens and they've agreed with my understanding... but given that I met them at a protest against the genocide, I am not actually sure that they'd qualify for your purposes here. I could definitely come up with an accurate summary of the Israeli position that the current government would agree with, but I would prefer not to lie.
"Israeli partisans". The Amsterdam crew count, but they're a subset of the larger category.
Disproportionate numbers of women and children are showing up in the casualty lists and this is being reported on by reputable media organisations - these figures are actually exceptional.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/nearly-70-gaza-war-dead-women-children-un-rights-office-says-2024-11-08/
I have never in my life heard a football chant that was as offensive and cruel as the ones from Maccabi Tel Aviv. Taking glee and exulting in the mass extermination of children is way beyond the bounds of football banter, at least in my experience. Do you have any examples of ones that were worse or even comparable? As for soldiers in the field, I'm going by reputable third-party numbers as linked above. There's a difference between soldiers in the field getting up to stupid and offensive grunt shit to amuse themselves and "systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality." Even if your argument holds, the idea that they're disproportionately murdering women and children to amuse themselves says worse things about the IDF than any of the claims I've made so far.
I have had conversations with hardline Israelis who would proudly adopt that label for themselves, but I understand those people are a minority in Israeli society. At the same time, I know several people who would object to entirely accurate and factual descriptions of themselves because they don't want to admit something that they actually did. If I murdered someone in cold blood and was convicted, you'd be entirely justified in calling me a murderer, even if I would disagree and describe myself as a patriot who did what I had to do to save my nation. The standard you're applying here prevents any kind of condemnation of the Nazis as well - they'd view themselves as brave heroes protecting their nation from evil parasites, so they'd disagree with any of the negative descriptions that they deserve to receive.
I believe they're ethnonationalists who want to reclaim the territory that their god supposedly promised them in their religious scriptures. That's the explanation! It sounds unflattering to modern, non-Bronze age ears, but that's because the actions the Israelis have actually undertaken are unflattering. You don't get to run an apartheid state and then complain that people are saying you run an apartheid state because you'd call it something else that's not as bad for your reputation.
Likud is currently in power and Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest serving PM the country has had. Unless you want to make the claim that Israel isn't a democracy and their elected leaders do not represent the will of the people, Likud and Netanyahu do speak for the Israeli state. You make the point about extreme republicans, but Zero HP Lovecraft isn't the POTUS right now - and when Trump takes office again, I have no problem saying that he speaks for Americans. Do I think that all Israelis act like this? Absolutely not, I've even mentioned the Israelis I marched and protested alongside. But when I look at the polls, a lot of those more noxious beliefs have incredibly broad support amongst Israeli citizens.
https://truthout.org/articles/polls-show-broad-support-in-israel-for-gazas-destruction-and-starvation/ (yes, the source for this is anti-zionist - I don't believe that means they are just publishing fiction.)
93 percent of Israeli jews support the claim that their god promised them all the territory between the river and the sea. If you put the claim that the Jews are god's chosen people and that he has given them all that territory (including Palestine) to the Israeli people on a referendum, polling data suggests that's what they'd vote for! I don't think you can really say that these ideas don't represent the will of the people when a majority of them say they do when asked.
Me! I can blame them! Not once have I ever in my life said that I would like another ethnicity to just 'go away' because I don't like the political consequences of their continued existence. If you want to defend that impulse, go ahead - but you're forever giving up the ability to criticize antisemites, racists and white nationalists. After all, they would just like the jews to go away - who can blame them, after all this time?
I said it because the polling data supports it. That's what it means when over half the population says that they are god's chosen people, and 93% of them of them believe that the territory promised to them in their scriptures belongs to them.
I'm not just aware, I've spoken to and argued with them. And you're totally right - very few of them would accept as uncharitable a description of their motives. But at the same time, I'm willing to bet if you assembled all the white nationalists here on the motte and asked them if they were willing to go to the lengths Israel has gone to in order to rid their country of jews and non-whites, many of them would actually say that they would prefer less overtly violent and bloodthirsty methods. I have no problems criticising white nationalists and other ethnic supremacists who would support the disproportionate murder of women and children in support of their ethnostate, and when I see white nationalist troops blowing up hospitals I'll be protesting against them too.
Most of them I read over fifteen years ago and can't recall, but the most recent one was Righteous Victims.
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