Israel announced today that it is carrying out strikes against Iran in response to an Iranian attack last month in response to Israel's murder of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in response to Hezbollah border attacks in response to Israel's war in Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7 in response to Israel's increasingly brutal occupation of the West Bank in response to rising terrorism from Palestinians in response to Israel's wall in response to the Second Intifada in response to the failure of the Camp David talks in response to Yasser Arafat's rejection of a deal in response to Israel's refusal to cede control of East Jerusalem in response to fears of Palestinian revival during the First Intifada in response to Israel's "Iron Fist" policy of oppression in response to raids from southern Lebanon in response to the Lebanon War in response to an attempt to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Britain in response to the Yom Kippur War in response to Israel's occupation of the West Bank in response to the Six-Day War in response to Egypt's closure of the Strait of Tiran in response to Israel's attack on as-Samu in response to PLO terrorism in response to Israeli existence in response to the 1948 War in response to the UN creation of Israel in response to de facto Israeli settlement in Palestine in response to the Balfour Declaration in response to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Zionist movement.
More or less, anyway.
I don’t really care what the various factions in the Middle East wars do to each other. They all deserve what they are getting. Still, it’s deeply annoying that Joe Biden has gone to such lengths to support Netanyahu.
“Israeli officials insist they made their own decisions about what to strike, and did not give in to American pressure as they selected targets. But they did offer to give advance warning about their timing and plans — something they had failed to do in some previous strikes — and the United States agreed to quickly renew the stockpile of weapons drawn down for the strike. Mr. Biden acknowledged to reporters a week ago that he knew about both the timing and targets.”
“quickly renew the stockpile”. Biden is a jackass. Thank goodness he didn’t run. Fuck that guy.
James Joyce did it better (run-on sentences); to use one conjunctive adverb phrase (“in response”) is not stylistic but just a cop out. As to the topic in the comments, the history of Palestine, let just say that history does matter but it should not blind us of the current situation. Instead of Palestine, imagine some country, any country, anywhere in the world, where a (barely) majority population subjugated the minority by denying, not only equal rights, but positively destroying their way of life (home destructions, road restrictions, stolen aquafiers, torture, etc.). Obviously such a country would be a pariah state, yet here we are.
The implication is that Israel should be a pariah state and thus should be done away with in an orderly fashion. Okay, let's move forward with the one-state solution, and also support the return of Palestinian refugees and descendants displaced since the 1940s. So you get a Palestinian Muslim majority, and they have a history of voting to support Hamas. The new majority will surely vote to change the name of the country from "Israel" to "Palestine". Since every Muslim country in the region is corrupt and authoritarian, we should expect a corrupt and authoritarian Palestine.
Hamas ruled Gaza as very authoritarian, but also with surprisingly strict religious rules. As for Jews living in this new Palestine, it could get very ugly. There would be a huge exodus of Jews who self-deport or are simply run out of the country in a purge of Zionists.
No one knows for sure how the one-state solution would play out. The above description is most likely, but, who knows, maybe this state of Palestine could be a striking exception to the Muslim-majority countries in the region. Perhaps freedom and democracy hold up, and religious extremism is not a problem, and corruption is not a problem. But very few Israeli Jews are willing to gamble their futures on the high-risk one-state solution.
Israel is not a pariah state because few leaders in the free world believe the one-state solution is viable and that the Jewish minority would be safe.
I don't think Raoul implied the destruction of Israel.
You can’t just tinker a bit with a “pariah state” to fix it. You have to abolish the government. You can’t tinker with the North Korean government to fix it. You can’t tinker with the Afghan government to fix it. You have to gut these governments and start over.
I was just trying to lay out the logical fix for a Israeli pariah state. You take a "from the river to the sea” approach, meaning a one-state solution. You let everyone vote in the local territories you control and give everyone equal rights. A two-state solution to deal with the current Israeli pariah state just cedes the land that Zionists stole from the Palestinians. In fact, this is why Hamas says they will never recognize the statehood of Israel.
I’m not saying that many on the left, in their minds, support the destruction of Israel. I’m just saying that their characterizations of Israel as unworthy of any respect indicates a radical approach is needed to fix it. The one-state solution provides a path, however naïve.
Ah the old defense of apartheid South Africa. African countries tend to be basket cases so the white minority is justified in keeping the great majority of Black South Africans without basic human rights because otherwise white South Africans might be treated in the same indefensible way that whit South Africans treated black South Africans.
Of course South Africa hasn't actually gone that way despite the fact that the white South Africans were far less numerous than the Jewish population in Israel would be. The wealth differential that protects white South Africans would be similar though.
And what this all misses is that a minority cannot justify abusing a majority just because it believes that if the sides were reversed the majority would be as abusive. Because I certainly agree that if the Palestinians treated Israeli Jews the way that Israeli Jews treat Palestinians that would be a moral abomination.
But what makes your comment seem particularly awful is that there has long been a solution that prevents the problems you describe. The Israeli Jewish population which is either a slight majority or more likely a slight minority, could accept the 78% of the territory that both sides claim with refugees forced to move to the 22% or not come back. That was Abbas' offer in 2008. It was what Clinton was pushing in 2000. But Israel refused to agree to either, instead it pursued, under a variety of parties, a policy of moving Israeli citizens into the 22% that would go to the Palestinians and then pointing out that it would be very difficult to get them to move out after Israel moved them in.
So the alternative you point to is only the natural alternative because Israel worked very had to make it so. And now having killed their parents they are demanding mercy on the grounds that they are orphans.
China and the uighurs comes to mind. not quite a parish state, but not admired. We don't specifically help China oppress them.
A country that rules almost half its population without its consent is a country heading to disaster yet this is Israel’s current approach. The obvious solution is a two-state solution.
Change the period and your one sentence sums it up more meaningfully than KD.
Bronze Age thinking, Bronze Age solutions.