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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Israel can't defend its own citizens on its own soil, they're hardly doing better than Iran. Rockets are constantly getting through their missile defences because missile defence (at least the missile defence Israel is trying to do) fundamentally is not cost-efficient. Northern Israel has basically been abandoned because of this. Every so often drones hit Tel Aviv, the Houthis snuck one through just a few days ago.

One year in, Israel has failed to destroy Hamas. They've blown up a lot of Gaza, yes, but they don't control the territory and they haven't beaten the weakest of their three primary enemies. As soon as the IDF gets sick of being ambushed and pull out of any one part of Gaza, Hamas moves right back in. I can tell you that Israel didn't recently decide to start bombing Hamas leaders, they've been doing this for years. That was their mowing the lawn strategy. They do this all the time and it clearly doesn't work because just after the last exchange of rockets and bombs we had October 7th:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/mow-lawn-israel%E2%80%99s-strategy-perpetual-war-palestinians-185775

So many people here are posting as if this is another crushing Israeli victory like the Six Day War. It's not!

Israel can't defend its own citizens on its own soil

That's true. I would call a new neighboring government in Gaza that only required minimal military action to maintain on a path to a formal state recognition would be a victory, but many Israelis would not. Politics has them in a perpetually compromised position. They punch above their weight imo.

As soon as the IDF gets sick of being ambushed and pull out of any one part of Gaza, Hamas moves right back in.

Yeah they've done the 'mowing the grass' strategy for a long time. It's management, not solution, which is probably the best they can ask for with the parameters set. It's one of a few options they can do when there's no desire to officially rule a territory or go all the way via violence.

Israel is not impervious to rockets landing in the country. I'm not too interested in talking about how important or effective Iron Dome is. All I said was that if Iran's great show of force doesn't deter actions such as this strike on a target supposedly nearby Iranian officials, then what great success is that show of force? Just because Israel has targeted Hamas and Hezbollah leaders before, and will again, does not make the strike insignificant.

I also don't see many people calling the current state this conflict a victory for Israel. Shills are very optimistic as ever. Resistance types still insist it is a fake and gay country filled with Jews. The current state of the conflict seems about right. Maybe better than they could hope for considering what they were prepared for when it came to entering Gaza. Having an actionable plan for governing the territory, or transitioning power there, seems like it would've been a pretty good idea to get going 9 months ago. Perhaps that's impossible too, but I suspect that's mostly political as well.

There's a lot of brain worms when it comes to Israel. Oh well that's cyber for ya.