Cripple. History Major. Irritable and in constant pain. Vaguely Left-Wing.
My point isn’t that they’d glass the Middle East, my point is that the threat of even small-scale nuclear warfare is enough to ensure that Israel might be pushed back from imperialist projects, but never existentially threatened without massive internal disorder.
I would argue that the Levant is the least likely region of the Middle East to change with the coming decline in oil.
Uh, many occupations have done so, simply by genociding everyone of the ‘wrong’ ethnicity in the area.
‘Good’ doesn’t always win. The world is not inherently just.
We might not fully invade enemies often, but the Arabs definitely have.
The days of massive Pan-Arab socialist coalitions are over, and even back when they were still a threat, Israel beat them off pretty handily without significant US support.
Threats to Israel at this point are largely not existential, and if they were changed to existential threats, further radicalization seems more likely than redress and reconciliation. Especially considering Israel’s nuclear program.
What is your threshold for often?
When was the last time a country with a functioning military was overthrown by outside intervention?
I guess we can count Iraq, though that requires connecting the First Gulf War and the Second, since the First Gulf War is when the Iraqi military was last seriously functioning.
The best way to punish them is to give Isreali left wingers and “out” which allows them a path back to normalcy so they can take political power and condition that with punishment of high ranking war criminals and a two state solution. But this cant really happen due to the current US admin.
I think you overestimate the appetite of the Israeli left-wing for normalcy, a serious two-state solution, or punishing war criminals. Like I said, at best, you’ll get a handful of offenders from internal politiking. But the chance of there being some punishment for any significant percentage of the very large number of very active and intentional orchestrators of this genocide is… small. Zionism is unlikely to be meaningfully repulsed by anything but time, and that’s assuming a best-case-scenario that the problem doesn’t intensify.
People will fight to the death if they’re backed into a corner but they will throw a few people under the bus if given a path out.
Again, I consider that covered under my “Slobodan Milošević” scenario. Don’t get me wrong, seeing Bibi die in a prison cell would be based and hilarious. But even that would only be a drop of water in the ocean of blood.
But if by Zionists you mean anyone who wants isreal to exists then you are backing isrealis in to corner and guaranteeing the conflict continue to be played out.
By Zionists, I presumed it was meant those who see Israel’s existence as an explicitly Jewish apartheid state as core to its continuation. And as long as Israel remains Zionist in that sense, this shit will keep happening. Ethnostates are notoriously amiable to the whole lebensraum idea, regardless of whether it’s currently-occupied territory they’re looking at, or potentially occupied territory - or both.
Israel is one of the worlds most powerful militaries, if they wanted to get things over as quickly as possible they could have polished Gaza off on October the 8th.
Considering that the brutality of this war has only been matched by its incompetence, not so sure that’s correct.
Without that, they wouldn’t constantly be attacking other countries.
I don’t know that I agree. At this point, I think between the instability of their neighbors and the built-up siege-state of Israel itself, it would continue acting like a rogue state even if the US cut off funding.
Which is not to say that we shouldn’t cut off funding - we absolutely should. And extend that ‘umbrella’ of protection to Israel’s neighbors, not Israel, which might at least reduce blatant incursions.
But I suspect that the response of Israel to reduced or eliminated US support would be to become even more militarized, not less.
We can’t. At least while the USA is a thing.
Even if the US wasn’t a thing, punishing Zionists wouldn’t be possible without subduing Israel through a literal war. Something which is not often attempted.
At best, we’d have the half-ass ‘punishment’ levied on states like Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Djibouti, and North Korea, wherein the primary punishment is “It’s slightly harder and more expensive for the elite to get their precious foreign luxuries.”
Don’t get me wrong, that’s better than nothing. It’s just…
Prevention is generally a more fruitful avenue than punishment, when it comes to international polities and ideologies even with just regional majorities.
The chance of seeing genocidal cunts swing, or even acknowledge their wrongdoing, are generally small. Even the worst genocide of modernity, the Holocaust, had only a relatively small number of Nazis punished, despite literally every major extant power agreeing on how horrific their behavior was, and quite literally destroying all military capacity for the Nazis to resist and occupying every inch of their territory.
At most, you might get a handful of them in international courts by internal politiking, like Slobodan Milošević, but even then we’re unlikely to see the fully ‘cathartic’ end we want. “My dad is a war criminal” will still be sung proudly.
I don’t even disagree, it’s just not productive to constantly harp on this when we’ve all heard it a million times
Man, there are people who still believe that helping fascism win was a good idea. Look in this very comment thread, where people are openly extolling the virtues of having Trump win from a ‘leftist’ standpoint, and teaching those damn dirty SHITLIBS a lesson.
As long as those opinions remain widespread on here, it remains necessary to highlight just how morally repugnant they are.
A movement tried to make Palestine a relevant political issue for the electorate. It got stomped out.
No, it succeeded in its goal - making sure the fascist won.
Now see this is my pet peeve, how can you roll high before the DM can object?
With fast hands.
If DM’ing, I wouldn’t have even called for one. I’d just have said you successfully punt the cat and everyone hears it scream in agony. Good luck talking your way out and staying at the party. 🤷
If a cat screams in the hedge maze and no one is around to see my foot connect with its little furry torso… who’s to say I was the culprit? Perhaps it was harassed by some vengeful hawk or raven. Look at my beady little rat eyes. Would they lie???
I mean I wouldn’t call it a beacon of democracy, but all things are relative. I picked one of the more reasonable polities in MENA with a mostly-functioning multiparty system. The alternative would’ve been saying I hoped for Turkiye, but, uh, considering Erdogan’s behavior, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that comparison as a positive.
My point is simply that there is still hope for Syria to improve into something better than it was - and certainly better than some immensely calcified repressive regime like Iran or the Saudis, and that this… immensely distasteful conservative dreck does not necessarily sink that hope.
We look for Syria to take a step forward, not to become Sweden in a decade (though that would, obviously, also be immensely welcome; just less likely). Institutions are built a year at a time, a battle at a time, not all once.
It was never going to be a liberal government. The rule is conservative dreck, make no mistake, but the norm was already for burkinis and other such swimsuits to be worn. It’s not a radical departure from extant behavior.
My concern, going forward, is more towards whether the government will resolve itself in a reasonably democratic way.
I’m not holding out hopes for a Tunisia, but a Jordan or Lebanon might be reasonable to cross one’s fingers for.
NANI!?
A bit, you might say. Since rats and cats don’t get along, I had it in mind that I was going to have a little fun being afraid and/or malicious towards any cats or cat-like creatures during the dinner party, especially since we were just doing a one-shot and I wasn’t going to get another chance. About halfway through the adventure, I realized that there probably wasn’t going to be an organic opportunity, so while we were out in the gardens, plotting our next move to steal the expensive painting, with few NPC party guests around, I decided I would… prod the DM a little to give me an opportunity.
For the most part I was a good player during the adventure! I had my mannerisms down, obsessively ‘preening’ my ‘whiskers’ (read: facial hair), twitchy-but-social and generally non-malicious, generally inclined towards subterfuge and flattery over violence. Everyone agreed, DM included, that I made a great ratman.
But I CRAVED an opportunity to be a little ratty towards a little catty!
You should have seen how defeated and confounded my DM was when it happened. Especially since I rolled before he could object, and I rolled high (I think it was an 18 or something, where he would’ve had trouble saying I failed something simple like rolling to punt a cat).
The whole table was in an uproar too, so he had no choice but to acquiesce. I swear I see that thousand-yard stare in his eyes every time the story comes up. XD
Almost all true believers, I would say. People have an incredible capacity for consuming and regurgitating bullshit, as anyone who’s been a part of a conservative community and escaped can tell you.
Who needs handlers when the useful idiots eat from your trough willingly?
They’re not much different than the pseudointellectuals on the American right, the kind of college kids who publicly idolized William F. Buckley Jr and read serious theology, but in private and anonymously were as 4channed as any open “Replacement Theory” twat.
ZombiFrancis is a perennial tankie defender that pops up to Just Ask Questions and the like whenever an issue like murdering Ukrainians or CCP authoritarianism comes up.
Because I was a ratman!
No clue what that is, this is a story that happened at my table (it was me, I punted the cat over a noble’s hedge maze)
I think disagreements in Israeli society are relatively weak insofar as they all adhere to a common vision of Israel as a Jewish apartheid state. As long as there’s that to unite them - and make no mistake, at BEST 37/120 Knesset seats are held by non-Zionist parties, and more realistically, 14/120 - any crisis will bring together Israeli society in defense of that core existential concern.
Political disputes will continue, to very strong degrees. But there isn’t going to be some mass defection from the core existential idea of Israel or Israeli sovereignty, including over its hypermilitarized state.