Fucking for the Zionist takeover of the glorious Islamic Republic

I hope you aren’t saying what I think you’re saying here.

That Israel has established a death grip on American politics since the 1980s?

In any case, the main reason for western support of Israel is the same as the reason for western support of Turkey. Both have obnoxious leadership but both are in key geographic locations, and the value of having them on-side against their neighbours is greater than the value in cutting them loose.

Gonna press X to doubt. Turkiye controls one of the most vital straits in the world. Israel primarily specializes in antagonizing its neighbors, many of whom are also our close allies, damaging our international reputation, pouring money in to corrupt our domestic political processes (not that we really need help with that, but the corruption becomes more pro-Israel), while murdering American citizens and selling American secrets to our enemies.

It’s insane. Shows how much of international politics isn’t “Which country benefits from what”, but “What levers of decisionmaking are manipulated by whom”. A little lobbying and foreign PR goes a long way.

Red line: invasion of Ukraine

Response: F-22s over Ukrainian skies

I am well aware that Hamas, the faction supported by Israel to undercut Fatah so Israel wouldn’t have to take a two-state solution seriously, are a bunch of shitheads.

Not really sure what that has to do with my point.

I don’t know what the numbers are like for the Lebanon part of the war, obviously, but in almost all modern conflicts we see that between 25 and 80% of casualties are civilians.

Bruh, in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Coalition forces were (rightly) condemned for using insufficiently discriminate force, our civilian casualty rate ranged from 15%-30%, with the higher proportion present in Iraq during the initial stages of the ‘shock and awe’ invasion.

Gonna go ahead and say if Israel is getting significantly worse numbers than in Fallujah, with the US in Fallujah having 2004-era tech and intel in a region that we were not well-established in, and Israel having 20 years of development in computerization of the military and a long-standing intelligence presence in the area, something is seriously fucked.

I imagine we’re on the high end here as hezbollah like to fight and hide amongst civilians and use them as shields.

Firing from a populated residential area in order to use civilians as a shield is commonly accepted as a war crime.

Likewise, indiscriminately shelling the residential area in response is also commonly accepted as a war crime.

I struggle to see how you can combat such an organization without heavy civilian casualties, no matter how you go about it. I’m not saying the Israelis are not making mistakes or even being disproportionate at times, but I just can’t see how you’re going to fight hezbollah without heavy collateral damage.

Like I said - I’m not unsympathetic to the fact that collateral damage IS going to happen. But Israel’s actions have been anything but proportionate.

It’s a question of proportionality. I’m generally sympathetic to the impossibility of waging war without civilian collateral damage, but Israel is clearly taking very little care to minimize civilian casualties with indiscriminate artillery fire and air strikes, and on the heels of an already legally questionable attack on Hezbollah just previously.

Civilians die in war. It’s ugly. I get that. But there’s no excuse for any supposedly modern and civilized state to not attempt to minimize civilian casualties proportional to the military objectives targeted.

No, because I am done listening to BS appeals to stuff literally generations in the past.

I love that you began this by appealing to the history of the issue (that Israel, according to your claim, didn’t immediately rev up to genocide), and when the actual history of the issue is brought up, you balk.

No, this is straight up propaganda. Zionism is simply Israel existing peacefully.

Would you like to outline for me the development of the Zionist project in the 20s, 30s, and 40s?

It’s really quite miserable that Israel has chosen to fuck the people of Lebanon over in all of this when Hezbollah is a legitimately shitty terrorist org. But unfortunately, that seems par for the course for Israel.

You do realize Israel didn’t just ‘herpederp, time to genocide’ one day right?

I mean, ethnic cleansing has been part and parcel of the modern Zionist project since it started after WW1 (itself a far cry from the 19th century Zionist project, which was far less ethnonationalist). So, I mean, on one hand, yes. On the other hand, by genocide you probably mean the explicit state action of extermination or removal of a peoples for the crime of being the wrong ethnicity, in which case Israel has been committing genocide ‘only’ since its inception.

And no, “The Arabs did it first!” even if that was correct (it is not, in any meaningful sense; the escalation of tensions was largely mutual in the 20s, 30s, and 40s) is not an excuse to commit fucking genocide.

Anyone else still think it’s a good idea to resort to violence against Israel?

You do realize that wars are only prosecuted solely by violence when one side or the other is willing to go all the way through to genocide, right?

Israel can’t just violence its way into victory. In every war, every conflict, acceptable terms, whether implicit or explicit, must be offered to ensure peace emerges from violence; violence being the means of shifting the balance of power, not useful in and of itself.

Krushchev, and the idiom was a bit lost in translation. As I understand, the meaning was closer to “We will outlast you.”

Not that that worked out either, but it’s less aggressive and more defiant.

Because this was always the plan.

That’s a yes then

I am well-aware that Suffragists used this tactic as well, hence

Only the ones who tried to damage priceless historical artifacts for attention?

Or is your argument that the Suffragists were successful, therefore, every one of their tactics was wise?

I’m down with violence, man. But human history and culture isn’t the enemy here, it shouldn’t be the target, and simply ‘raising awareness’ is no longer the goal. Take a sledgehammer to an oil exec’s front door if you want to go the direct action route, not to the Magna Carta.

There are actually probably more effective uses of violence than the oil exec’s front door. But you get what I mean, I hope. Action alone is not enough, it must be action that causes something useful to the cause, like increasing fear in the politicos or ultra-wealthy (as the Suffragists did with arson and bombing campaigns targeting both), or reducing the effectiveness of society as a whole until negotiations are had (as with a general strike, though that’s not violent, generally).

When did An Inconvenient Truth come out again? Like, can I get a temperature check on the polite and respectful progress we’ve made since then?

An Inconvenient Truth raised awareness at a time when there wasn’t nearly as much awareness on the issue. Hell, in '04 Climate Change was still barely even mentioned by the Dem candidate. But that part is over - the comparatively easy part, the faces and names part. Now we’re at the part where we have to actually fight for fundamental changes to get anywhere, and ‘raising awareness’ as an excuse just isn’t going to cut it.

It’s also not about ‘polite and respectful’. It’s about making structural changes to an extremely complex and interconnected system, rather than getting some nice-sounding policy pass so backpats can be had.

Confirming that “We don’t want to do things the hard way that works, we want to do easy stuff” is the motivation is a hell of a take to present as a positive.

If some soup on plexiglass can convince you to let the planet burn, you were never on the side of progress.

I’m not the one that needs convincing. But I’m sure the majority that you actually need on your side are simply insufficiently pure, and a bunch of reactionary dogs anyway, so who cares about gaining their approval for the cause?