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Well... I've moved all the way into "Fuck Israel" territory.
Is the reason we are showering Israel with weapons so that we can maintain a justified military influence in the middle east? And is the need for such influence because of fucking oil? Are we helping commit genocide because of oil? Again?!
because of oil?
Drone bases and regional hegemony, essentially. The Saudis, and Israel are who we use to try and keep Iran from controlling the region. I honestly don't understand how Turkey stays out of the proxy war. They play a similarly delicate game with Russia and the black sea by doing both proxy conflicts and cooperation. The Kurds and Hamas are kind of in a gray area.
As we've recently learned it isn't just about oil. It's about maritime trade more broadly. One of the explicit purposes of the US Navy is to defend maritime trade. The Suez canal and the Persian Gulf are two of the most important maritime trade routes.
There's also a strong element of religious fundamentalism. Certain sects of American Christianity believe that the existence of Israel is key to the end of the world coming, and they want that. Those sects are bizarrely popular and influential, and are happy to nudge American foreign policy in whatever ways keeps Israel existing and embroiled in war.
We absolutely do not need Israel for strategic purposes. If anything our ME policy is built around protecting them as much as it's built around oil producing countries.
"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." -- John Sheehan, S.J.
It's an oversimplification but essentially true. The pissed off middle east we've known our whole lives is kind of because of this bullshit
I think it's mostly inertia
My theory is they want to nuke Iran right now and the west appeases them similar to China and North Korea
... Unsubstantiated of course
I don't understand how anyone can fire upon someone holding a white flag, they should be tried and sentenced.
Because Israelis are raised from birth to view everyone in Gaza as sub-human scum who would kill them at first opportunity if given one. The far right government propaganda has done a number on the population.
Yeah: extreme rabid violent racism.
It's why I started calling them Nazis: because of all the variants of Fascism, at the moment with all that we're seeing in Gaza it's Nazism that's the one closest what is being done by Israel.
If you think about it, systematic state-level extreme racism is only natural for an etnostate created during WWII and heavilly reliant on the way of thinking that lead to WWII - that of viewing people not as individual humans whose worth or unworth is defined by their actions and the actions they support but rather as born member of etnicities, with everybody of an etnicity judged as a group to be worthy or unworthy.
So reliant was Israel on etnic identitarianism for its identity and reason to be that when they reached the same level of power and confidence they behave just like all other such nations when they had such power, including the very one which is the Evil Opressor in Israel's Founding Story: Nazi Germany.
If you see that person as an insect, a pest, not a person, it would be like swatting a mosquito. We are witnessing genocide.
It's like how cops shoot people with their hands up. Guess where those cops get their training.
IDF Nazi's on live TV.
Moment of the civilian being shot in the video is at 2:40
Warning: The actual shooting isn't too graphic because they're kinda far when it happens but it's still tough to watch.
The imagery is palpable, poetic in a sad way. The white flag they were using to show surrender turns red as they use it to staunch his wound.
To avoid this, Gazan civilians who are out in public should wear black clothing and masks, and move tactically between points of cover.
I've been watching countless videos of unarmed civilians being shot and killed. Children running away and being shot. Mothers walking their children being sniped. Empty university buildings being filled with explosives and blown up. Hospitals being bombed and people being sniped through windows. There's basically no doubt left in my mind that the Israeli military and by extension the government are terrorist forces. In fact them killing more people than Hamas ever killed makes them the biggest terrorists in the region.
The only thing that can end this war is Americans flipping support and to stop obstructing the UN security resolutions. Unfortunately Genocide Joe is probably not watching the same news we all are.
Unfortunately Genocide Joe is probably not watching the same news we all are.
This is a weird comment as it implies that Joe Biden has less information about what is going on in Gaza than the average person who watches the news.
He undoubtedly has more information about what's going on than most people who aren't there but he also has different motives. Where you or I might view genocide as unacceptable under any circumstances, he's viewing it through a lens of constantly needing to maintain and grow American power and resources. He believes that the US relationship with Israel furthers that goal so Israel performing genocide gets a pass. He rationalizes it by believing that whatever is (capitalism's definition of) good for America is good for all Americans.
They might be saying that they don't give the same weight to the kinds of information on 'the same news' perhaps because there's other stuff he's paying attention to. Idk, that sounds pretty reasonable to me. I think it's easy to say people at the top of the political pyramid don't value human lives the same as those at the base.
An IDF statement read: "It is imperative to emphasise that the alarming, libelous and a gross mischaracterisation of the war with these despicable accusations can only be deemed as an extension of Hamas' propaganda effort to defame the IDF
Defamation? Libel? Who are you going to sue, and in what court? Fucking idiots.
I'm pretty sure the world court would be the ones with jurisdiction. Maybe Bibi could stop by The Hague and ask about how to get that case going...
Israel is a terrorist state perpetrating a genocide
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying but I think there is a real point to make about how Israel can't really be a terrorist state because it holds such an unequal power over its perceived enemies in Gaza both from the perspective of military might and also from the perspective of control over basic infrastructure like electricity and running water.
So long we see terrorism only through the lens of a morale choice to engage in warfare in a dishonorable way and not also as a form of armed resistance resorted to by actors who literally don't have the capacity to fight what we nebulously define as a war (which this current conflict is not, it is genocide), than we will always be unintentionally ceding the conversation to authoritarian rightwing hawks who can label anyone a terrorist for resisting a far superior military force.
Hamas are called terrorists primarily as a form of morale condemnation, and while in no way am I condoning terrorism it really has to be understood as first and foremost a military strategy undertaken by political actors without the capacity to fight a traditional war. The second Hamas amassed its troops (as required for any large military operation) Israel would carpet bomb the area. If Hamas rolled out a line of absurdly obsolete tanks with no optics, fire stabilization, night vision, or modern armor and with virtually no ammunition and tried to launch a ground war into Israel, rightwing/pro-Israel talking heads would supposedly find that more honorable than terrorism.... but obviously Israel would be able to utterly wipe that force off the face of the earth in minutes with the combined military industrial complex of the US and Israel.
Israel cannot be a terrorist state because its military can mount an armored offensive with some of the most advanced tanks in the world all the way through gaza and back while facing no serious resistance, with air superiority the whole time. When Israel commits violence, it is authoritarian state violence. It is genocide. I think calling it terrorism muddies the point. Terrorism is the attempt to create a political force when an actor does not possess control of a society, Israel possesses full physical control of Gaza.
I agree though, all the negative connotations you attribute to Israel by calling them a terrorist state I agree with!
I disagree that state actions can't be considered terrorism, even given the overwhelming power differential. Israel has and continues to conduct terrorist acts in this "war", which makes them a terrorist state in my thinking. Just because they give press conferences in the nightly news, or conduct air strikes, or poses advanced weapons my taxes paid for doesn't make it less terroristic.
They've wrapped a terrorist campaign in the trappings of a traditional war to convince us they're not terrorists, but I believe they are. If their actions are not terrorism, what do we call it? It's clearly not a war as you point out. It's also more than just state violence, the entire campaign is genocidal but at the same time their tactics are those of terrorists.
Incidents like killing civilians waving white flags in the street with impunity highlight this. It's not just in Gaza this is happening in the west bank as well. It's not about a specific political group, many Israelis just hate all Palestinians and kill them where they find them. That's how terrorists behave.
I'd argue that not distinguishing between regular forces and civilians is another classic tactic of terrorists. Israel is famous for this, their penchant for collective punushment bears that out. Blowing up apartment buildings to get one Hamas commander, knocking down your family home and annexing your land because your cousin launched a rocket or whatever other atrocious shit they've done this week.
Concocking false pretenses to commit war crimes is another terrorist tendency, although I'm sure the IDF will find that command bunker under a hospital any day now.
Another example stands out to me in this conflict, if you starve a single ethnic or religious group because they don't believe in the same imaginary sky god you do, that's terrorism. When you operate an apartheid state and your population subjugates a different ethnic group in every aspect of life due to their beliefs, that's terrorism. When you conduct a "war" that kills mostly civilians, women, and children, that's terrorism.
All of these terrorist tactics set the pretext for genocide, which is what we're witnessing I agree fully on that. My take on Israel is you gotta call a spade a spade, and Israel is a terrorist state.