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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Why do you think that the goals of either Netanyahu or the Republicans involve ending the war?

Netanyahu will almost certainly lose power, and quite possibly go to jail, as soon as the war is over. Republicans draw political advantage from supporting Israel, not from Israel being at peace. When Israel is at peace and doing well, there's not much public supporting of Israel to be done.

There's also a subset of Evangelicals who hold a prophetic belief that Israel's wars are a signal of the end times, and aren't really interested in "peace in the middle east" because that is against prophecy and therefore some mix of undesirable and categorically impossible anyway.

Republicans, and many Democrats, want to show allegiance and friendship to Israel. Part of the Wilsonian problem of American foreign policy has been that a liberal America has no friends, other than perhaps to some extent England and Australia. It can't have friends and have morality, friendship means nothing if it doesn't super-cede morality to at least some degree. If I treat you only according to ethics when you're right and when you're wrong, you're not my friend, you're just another node in the matrix. You're a friend when I'm by your side, right or wrong. If I'm there when you're wrong you can count on me. It's precisely because Netanyahu is unpopular, and the war has gone from punitive expedition to mowing the grass to genocidal farce, that supporting it has so much value for the Zionist congress critter. He can bend the knee so much farther when Israel is already in the gutter.

Israel's next elections are scheduled for October, 2026. Once the war is over, Netanyahu has no reason at all to hold them early and his coalition isn't in incredible danger of breaking up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu?wprov=sfti1

I'm not going to pretend I have a deep understanding of Israeli politics, but his coalition has already threatened to break up despite the war, and prior to October there was a consistent drumbeat in the newspapers of stories on his corruption trials closing in. Maybe it's foreign overreactions, but it seems convenient to suddenly be saying that you don't switch horses midstream.