Israel launched a dozen attacks on UN troops in Lebanon, says leaked report

> Imagine if every political party had an army.

Well, the People's Liberation Army is not technically the army of the nation of China....it is actually the armed wing of the Communist Party of China. Just the PRC is a de-facto one-party state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army

So 54% of Americans (which includes a lot of Democrats) support deporting millions of Mexicans. These are law abiding non-citizens who are contributing to the economy, yet most Americans want them gone.

Is it surprising that a Trump like demagogue is successful when the people in question actually do commit mass murder and want to destroy the country?

The reaction to violence is never, OK I was wrong... Let's settle. It's always violence in response and the weaker side always suffers.

> The U.S. cannot just pretend Rabin is still in power and send money and weapons with the idea that Israel desires peace at the end of the day, because that faction is (as you say, for many reasons) no longer a majority in Israel.

The first part is 100% true. Things changed. The problem is that your base assumption is completely wrong. You need to understand why the US sends weapons to Israel and that has a complex and long history. First, it sends weapons because it gives jobs to Americans. Israel demonstrates the quality of the weapons and improves them.

Back in the day, Israel was completely embargoed. In the 60s it would buy French weapons and collect money to afford that. It developed its own industry but on the eve of war the French cut off Israel. Despite that Israel won, big time. It then started making the best weapons on earth. Guns like Uzi became the hot tool for everyone. Even its planes started selling everywhere and were pretty good. The US started selling weapons to Israel both to eliminate the competition and to improve its own. When Israel got its early shipments of US made planes it would rip out all the avionics and push in its own. US made avionics and weapons systems at the time were crap. They no longer are, guess who made that happen?

But Israel is also a powerful ally. E.g. Sadam Husain would have a Nuclear weapon were it not for Israel. So would Assad. Israel killed quite a few terrorists on the US most wanted lists and provided a lot of support in the middle east on things where the US would rather stay neutral. It enabled keeping countries like Egypt and Jordan on the western side of the fence and serves as a balancing tool/lightning rod in the region. That has value.

The more interesting thing is what would happen if the US would stop weapon shipments. This would be very bad for everyone. Most Israelis would see it as proof that they are alone again. This would mean Israel would need to show deterrence. It still has a massive security industry and still makes some of the best weapons around, it still has stocks of weapons but would now need to make them all count. It would mean a massive aggressive attack.

Why?

Without US support Israel would be concerned that this would serve as a signal for Iran or even Jordan that Israel is now "fair game". That can quickly deteriorate to nuclear war to keep deterrence clear.

Finally, look at countries like Turkey which just bombed many civilian Kurds. They are a member of Nato and no one is even talking about it... Obviously no one cares just like no one cares about Sudan, China etc. None of those causes have TikToks or advocates since they have no sponsors.

Both Turkey and Israel have similar problems. Authoritarian leaning leaders who are slowly dismantling democracy. The solution in both cases is difficult, most aggressive action can accelerate this process and make things worse for everyone. There aren't any good answers here.

> As for Hamas, yes they were elected, and that does have significance, but also that was 18 years ago, and most of what would be the current electorate wasn’t even old enough to vote back then.

As I said, I think it's a silly argument but don't expect a different result prior to the war. Hamas controlled UNRWA completely and was teaching pretty horrific stuff. If anything I'm afraid the situation is worse.

See Egypt, given democracy they instantly picked the Muslim Brotherhood which is a fanatic organization. The education in these countries is mostly comprised around religion and a pretty extreme perception of said religion.

> Ultimately as it stands though I believe both sides of the conflict wish to conquer the other, and the U.S. should just decline to support either side.

It isn't a "both sides" scenario.

Israel has a law that disallows settlements in Gaza, signed by Netanyahu. The IDF specifically stopped settlement attempts there. Yes, there are extremists in the government who want to revert that law. But they don't have the votes for that. Biden has drawn a red line related to that and to violations of Leahy. There is a status quo, it might seem more extreme than in the past and Bibi is indeed stretching the boundaries but there is a line.

Regarding your point of putting refugees inside of Israel - I don't know if there's any practical way to do this. It is impossible to tell apart Hamas militants and normal civilians. Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.

Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egyp in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective (and is the "usual" solution in urban war situations). Except Egypt absolutely refused to allow this, and almost no one pushed them on this, often claiming it was an attempt at more ethnic cleansing from Israel. (Apparently sacrificing Palestinian lives to prevent ethnic cleansing, without asking them, is somehow moral?)

I remember growing up in Europe during the Iraq war. Even though I was young, I got that USA was obviously on the wrong, and so did most people around me. I remember not just hating the American government for what they were doing, but Americans in general. When Bush was reelected in 2004 it was seen as a damning proof that it wasn’t just the American government that was bad, but every American. It took me personally a few years to erase this prejudges from my head.

I also remember being in Europe during the Syrian civil war. Syrian refugees had a huge sympathy from most people around me. This was compounded by how many European governments treated Syrian refugees horrible (and still do), such injustice only grew our sympathy for Syrian people.

I no longer live in Europe, but I see the same sentiment for Ukrainians who are obviously wronged by a heinous Russian invasion into their country.

Palestinians have had to suffer injustice for a long time, and awareness of this injustice has grown rapidly over, with the ongoing genocide, support for Palestinians among the people (not governments) has also grown massively. This is consistent with previous victims of war.

During the Iraq war Bush’s lies played a factor in anti-American sentiment, so did the Patriot act, the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Abu Ghraib torture revelations, and the number of massacres (particularly the Nisour Square massacre, and the “Collateral Murder” as leaked by Chelsea Manning).

During the Iraq war we heard of those atrocities on a weekly to a monthly basis, and they were all a big deal, and we all hated Americans for it. Compounded were with the emotion was the impunity in which these crimes were committed. Americans were very seldomly (and very selectively) punished for these crimes. Individual soldiers were arrested, tried, received minimal (if any) punishment, and later pardoned or acquitted. But we all knew the crimes were systemic and that generals, cabinet members, and presidents were equally, of not more guilty of those crimes. The problem was with American policy, and nobody was being arrested for that.

Now compare this to Gaza. Israel has been committing the crime of Apartheid for a very long time. They have been subjugating Palestinians with an illegal occupation, a border wall (in Europe we know all to well of the infamous Berlin wall), shooting at protestors with much more impunity than UK soldiers in Belfast. Gaza was illegally blockaded and systematically bombed every few years (something the reminded us all to well of Sarajevo).

And now during the Gaza genocide we see the same kinds of atrocities as during the Iraq wars (including torture and sexual abuses of prisoners) except now, instead of them being reviled every few weeks or months, we see every day another massacre, another neighborhood bombed, another hospital sieged, another torture camp exposed, etc. This is not normal, not acceptable, and people don’t accept it.

There was a time where Israel had it relatively good compared to other oppressors, that people made a fine distinction between the government and the people (unlike with America). But I don’t think this is true any more. The crimes of Israel are far to severe, and the impunity far too great. Hardly any of these soldiers committing the crimes are ever prosecuted, none of the war crimes are investigated, no general is questioned, and no politician is impeached. People see this and (IMO correctly) judge Israeli society along with their government for the impunity of how those crimes are committed.

If non-jewish citizens of Israel(that as you know DOES NOT include West Bank or Gaza) had different rights than jewish citizens, than you could argue Apartheid.

Again we are talking about Israel proper, not Westbank(controlled by Fatah) or Gaza(formerly controlled by Hamas).

Please tell me which rights do non-jewish citizens of Israel lack institutionally within Israel that Jewish citizens have?