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The United States withdraws from UNESCO

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Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason, the Palestine/Israel conflict causes people to just stop being rational. Like, the facts are there, both parties attack each other as part of the conflict throughout history, but for whatever reason, people really want to pick sides on this one, and Im not sure why. Its not the genocide aspect - there are other genocides that are happening (Myanmar for example) that don't cause this reaction. Don…

Nobody has been able to explain to me how the Israel/Palestine issue is fundamentally different from the Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo issue of the 1990s. Its weird the mental gymnastics people will go through to qualify any position in either of these events.

Its very fundamentally different.

Palestine is used as a proxy by Iran to essentially wage war on Israel, because or a lack of better term, they are still salty about a different religious group being on "their" land (and to be accurate, was technically taken from them, but it was because they were on the losing side of WW1)

But Iran cannot engage in war directly, as they would be seen as aggressors.

Israel on the other hand is forced into basically a lose/lose/lose situation. Its either suck it up and wait for Oct 7 part deux to happen, be genocided themselves if one state is implemented, or be seen as the bad guys in pushing further and further, hoping to take over enough land to make the former 2 not an issue.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Because he talks like them, and they know he's a scumbag, but he's their scumbag, which they sic on the people they hate most: the vermin liberals, the immigrants poisoning the blood of the country, the parasitic federal workers whose lives they want to make miserable, the trans people they deem as all predatory groomers, the academics and scientists they're defunding because it's all woke. It's about taking their lu…

And of course they flag my post because this entire site is an echo chamber of pompous, crybaby cunts. Run by pompous crybaby hypocrite cunts who think nothing of stealing from users... who serve as unpaid shills for their cunty behavior.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Operation Downfall, the Americans were planning literal genocide against the Japanese. If you're at war and your opponent has lost but is foreign to the idea of surrender and fights to the last man, and you oblige him, you are pursuing war not genocide.

Can we apply this to the current conflict in Gaza?

In my humble opinion, yes. Modern genocide law doesn't really account for a government engaging in suicidal sacred war.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It turns out when you invade a country and commit a genocide, you become less popular. Well, Israel's been committing a genocide for, conservatively, nearly 60 years, so, yeah, its probably a suprise to them that after that long of not having an adverse effect on US public support, that has changed.

Ah yes, the genocide where the people being genocided continue to outpace the population growth of the nation doing the genocide. The ethnic cleansing where the only time it happens is to remove Jews from an area. The apartheid where the “subjugated” sit on the Supreme Court, have 10+ seats in parliament (which matches voting demographics), were recently part of the majority, and share all the same rights as their su…

@grok what is the Nakba

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Israeli state was literally founded by terrorists. The leaders of those terrorist organizations were the first leaders of Israeli prime ministers and secretaries of war and so on.

US, Ireland and many others were founded by terrorists. History is written by the victors.

False. Americans taught for liberty from oppression. Same for Irish. Calling them terrorists is the slander of colonialists.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we haven’t. But he won’t admit that. He wants nothing other than the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Don’t you worry — once that is achieved they will ethnically cleanse West Bank.

They can take the west bank too if they want. Again, Palestine has no cards left. They are powerless and have no friends with power. They completely failed at diplomacy over the last 50 years and completely failed at building an economy (other than weapons manufacturing). They lost and lost badly. They can go regroup somewhere else and try to capture the land again in the future. But for now they should stop using th…

They do have a card to play: expose the savage, heart of darkness in Tel Aviv to the world. My guess is this will lead to a global revolt against Israel that will be impossible to overcome in today’s globalized world. Israel cannot be a pariah state and survive in the same way that North Korea can.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taqiyya is a new word to me. I can’t help but feel it’s being used as a bit of a slur here - not sure, but just in case i’ll point out that there are examples of basically every religious group hiding their faith when threatened. Jews during the holocaust and in inquisition spain, and catholics in elizabethan england, are historic examples i’m familiar with.

Taqiyya is a big part of right-wing conspiracy theories about how Muslims who integrate into Western societies are just faking it and cannot be trusted even if they are model citizens - supposedly they are just biding their time until they are the majority, and then they'll vote the extremists in.

[deleted]

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we haven’t. But he won’t admit that. He wants nothing other than the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Don’t you worry — once that is achieved they will ethnically cleanse West Bank.

They can take the west bank too if they want. Again, Palestine has no cards left. They are powerless and have no friends with power. They completely failed at diplomacy over the last 50 years and completely failed at building an economy (other than weapons manufacturing). They lost and lost badly. They can go regroup somewhere else and try to capture the land again in the future. But for now they should stop using th…

Crazy to see open support for ethnic cleansing on HN

Sign of the times, I suppose

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has been able to explain to me how the Israel/Palestine issue is fundamentally different from the Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo issue of the 1990s. Its weird the mental gymnastics people will go through to qualify any position in either of these events.

Its very fundamentally different. Palestine is used as a proxy by Iran to essentially wage war on Israel, because or a lack of better term, they are still salty about a different religious group being on "their" land (and to be accurate, was technically taken from them, but it was because they were on the losing side of WW1) But Iran cannot engage in war directly, as they would be seen as aggressors. Israel on the ot…

I call bullshit. If you use your imagination hard enough then just maybe you could explain the military action in Gaza as warfare… but how does that extend to the West Bank? There is no warfare in the West Bank, but there are Israeli settlers murdering Palestinians without consequences while stealing land in illegal settlements.

> Israel is forced

Again, that’s bullshit. Nobody is forcing Israel to be an asshole to their neighbors. Israel was the victim in 1967, nearly 60 years. It’s not 1967 anymore. A universal rule of life is if you don’t want people to think of you as an asshole then start by not being an asshole, not with a bunch of excuses and sad equivocations.

I suspect Israel would try much harder to be less of a belligerent asshole if they were placed on a weapons embargo. Israel is often seen as the bad guy, because their actions make them the bad guy.

If Israel really didn’t want Iran to use the Palestinian people as a puppet they could solve the problem by not giving the Palestinian people cause to be puppets. For example, Iran would lose all political influence around Israel if Israel annexed the Palestinian people with rights, protections, and citizenship.

I really don’t think Israel wants this issue solved. I really think it’s about tribalism and conquest. That’s why I cannot see any difference between Israel/Palestine and Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo. It’s all sociopathic tribalism with lots of military aggression against civilians while claiming to be victims.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think you should reflect a bit more. If they have to sacrifice a few settlements in Gaza today to be able to create 30 times more in the West Bank tomorrow, it makes perfect sense. And, it doesn't mean at all giving up Gaza for good: in fact, soon after that, they closed Gaza under a total siege that lasted 20 years, until they found a good excuse to retake that one too. In chess you sacrifice pieces. Only a re…

Israel’s disengagement plan was a huge topic of internal debate before being approved by the Knesset. Arguments for it were about demographics and security. I don’t recall any proponents of the plan saying that it was a temporary measure (though some argued Israel could easily regain control if required, as a backup), so that seems like a farfetched explanation.

Indeed, Wikipedia gives security challenges and demographics as the main drivers:

[WP] According to Sharon, the disengagement plan was aimed at addressing Israel's long-term security challenges by shifting the country's resources to focus on strengthening the areas that "will constitute an inseparable part of the State of Israel in any future agreement" with the Palestinians.

So this was the immediate motivation: to give up some small, expensive and challenging settlements to focus resources on occupying more land in a more important place. Notice: not an ethical argument, not a peace offer. No. "Let's use our resources to take from the same people more, better land somewhere else."

And of course Israel managed to spin this with the US in such a way that basically they got a green light to settle as much as they wanted of the West Bank.

There have always been people, in Israel, who had the long term goal of annexing the whole "Greater Israel". They might not be a majority, but that doesn't matter because they have no meaningful opposition, as most Israelis are indifferent to Palestinians and to the idea of equity and justice.

And what's happening now is clear. There's no military goal whatsoever to the ongoing flattening of the Gaza strip. The purpose is only to make the place unliveable and to kill time in wait for the final green light to the ethnic cleansing.

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