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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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What's the alternative

I don't know, it is certainly difficult to see one. In general I am a firm believer that making your very populous neighbor(s) hate you and basing your security arrangements around a distant superpower always favoring you is not a great idea overall (Israel is not unique in this regard, Russia's little neighbors also make this mistake). America might lose its power or interest at some point, but Arabs will always be right across the border. We have seen how much it freaked out Zionists when the US foreign policy establishment got the idea that perhaps normal relations with Iran is more beneficial to American Empire.

In general I am a firm believer that making your very populous neighbor(s) hate you and basing your security arrangements around a distant superpower always favoring you is not a great idea overall (Israel is not unique in this regard, Russia's little neighbors also make this mistake).

Note that Russia's little neighbors in general were already hated by Russia and trying to get some help from anyone else is preferable to getting better with Russia (which goes nowhere as Russia will invade you anyway once it will be judged as possible by Russia)

The only alternative was to not found Israel in the first place, but the alternatives there were probably worse too. Once it existed, radicalization was inevitable, there’s no world in which coexistence with Arabs was possible, it’s not like the Baltics or Ukraine where they could conceivably decide to join the Russian sphere and accept the consequences. At best it would simply be a return to the pre-1920 status quo of being at the mercy of a hostile, lower IQ foreign authority with zero leverage.

Once it existed, radicalization was inevitable

Probably yes. Perhaps if the first generation of Palestinian refugees in camps did not grow up in such horrible conditions with constant reminders of their humiliation, then things could have been different. My understanding is that they drove almost all of the radicalization in the conflict. But that is not entirely on Israel either. The hosting Arab states almost deliberately didn't allow the refugees to have normal lives and kept trying to use them as geopolitical chips..