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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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They are clearly not aligned with our geopolitical objectives.

This is not clear to me. You might disagree with our geopolitical objectives, but Israel and the US seem to be pretty much on the same page about them, even if we don't always agree on strategy and tactics.

If we were a serious country we would withhold aid, confiscate military weapons that have already been delivered, and demand Israel align with US objectives in the region. But our news media, University system, and government are all controlled by Zionists so there's nobody to stop them.

When you said:

Israel can follow that playbook if they want to go to war

I claimed that you would not, in fact, consider that to be more ethical than what they are doing now. So you have now admitted that that's correct. My original question was "What can Israel do in its own defense that you would consider ethically defensible?" So the answer from you is clearly "Nothing" and the answer from @functor is "They can cease to exist, or they can fuck off to a backwater of Russia (and cease to exist)."

So now that we've gotten that out of the way:

Israel escalating the conflict with IED tactics that not even the US has used in its wars/occupations is a level of insolence that is only accepted because we are an occupied government.

"Insolence" implies they owe us fealty, which is ironic when you then claim we are an "occupied government." How can ZOG both be insolent and secretly ruling us?

We did fight wars against asymmetrical adversaries who used terrorist tactics. We did not, nor would we ever, boobytrap civilian office supplies with explosives and send them among the civilian population. That is an IRA tactic or a tactic of the Iraqi insurgency.

That's not remotely close to what the IRA or the Iraqis insurgents did. I notice how very carefully you phrased this: "boobytrap civilian office supplies." It must have taken you some small amount of time to figure out the best way to describe "boobytrapped communications equipment used by the Hezballah" in a way that sounds like they were doing something like planting bombs in copy machines. Golf clap for the clever wording. But we've all seen the news and the videos. They targeted Hezballah pagers and walkie talkies, and almost nobody but Hezballah were injured. Yes, I'm sorry for that 10-year-old girl who was killed (I am certain, in fact, that I feel more genuine regret for this than you do), but no war in history has avoided civilian casualties.

Now let's be real here: you aren't morally offended by Israel's tactics. If they sent snipers to take out Hezballah leaders, you'd be accusing them of escalation. If they dropped bombs and rockets, you'd be accusing them of war crimes. If they sent troops, you'd be accusing them of unprovoked aggression and imperialism. If they used Jewish space lasers to target Hezballah leaders from orbit, you'd accuse them of space terrorism. If they had Harry Potter wands and could Avada Kedavra Hezballah soldiers with zero collateral damage, you'd accuse them of black magic. You don't actually care how Israel responds to its enemies. You object to the fact that they exist.

Which brings me to my other question which I'm sure it just slipped your mind to answer, as you so often forget to answer inconvenient points when pressed:

Israel should negotiate a settlement,

With who? What settlement? What is your brilliant plan for peace in the Middle East? @functor's idea is at least rather straightforward about acknowledging that he doesn't think Israel should exist. But you speak of a "settlement" as if you think there is some meaningful and workable deal the Israelis could actually make that allows them to continue to exist but isn't "insolent" or doesn't cause you to shed crocodile tears over dead Arab children. I remain fascinated to hear what it is.