>What's going to happen next? Is it all kicking off?
Yeah, WW3 is going to happen over a fairly common occurrence in the Middle East. You might as well start stockpiling beans and water if you don't want to be murdered for a pack of frankfurters in the anarchy that will be coming in a fortnight's time.

I'm going to piss you off but I quite like Condoleezza Rice's recent summary in Foreign Policy interviewed given her experiance with the last time:

(21:19)

Israel does have the position that it feels an existential threat from it's neighbours and Iran has spent decades building up proxy forces around the country that it only loosely controls and who have a clear desire and means to deliver hurt. Hezbollah in particular is probably the most well-armed non-state actor in the world but its position in Lebanon has become somewhat precarious following recent elections and the peace it has with Israel has always been tenuous at best.

The problem is that it's difficult to see what victory looks like even after the leadership of the organisation has been decapitated. I think everyone agrees that Hezbollah should have been made to disarm as a condition on participating in Lebanese politics but it's 2024 and Lebanon is teetering on collapse anyway which means the obvious risk is that Israel ends up being sucked into the country as an occupation force. An occupation force already fighting on 1-2 fronts but this time the terrain is harder and the enemy is better armed and coming with experiance from Syria.

>Is it all kicking off?

No, Iran will raise a load of different angry flags as usual. The question will be how far the Israeli population will be willing to go.

>>41741
I'm hoping other hip fashion trends return from 2006 like economic stability. This time it'll be like Quantum Leap though where we'll agree not to demote Pluto and give Battlestar Galactica a decent finale.

It's doing my Lockheed stock no harm at all.

>>41743

I'm not trying to be a prick, but I've been at pains to identify "ethical" investments for many years, now. I've avoided anything to do with weapons. What's your reasoning behind investing in it, or is it just a case of making money and nothing more?

>>41744

Not him, but:

The world is full of bad bastards who would conquer the world if they could. That sounds paranoid to someone in the west, because we stand behind the safety of a massive wall of state-of-the-art weapons. To most of the rest of the world, it's just a very obvious statement of fact.

Companies like Lockheed and RTX are the fundamental reason why you and I can't really imagine getting blown to bits by some mad cunt. A lot of people believe that the term "defence industry" is a euphemism, but they only have the luxury of believing that because it does in fact defend us very effectively.

The people who make Javelin are fundamentally amoral capitalists, but that isn't particularly pertinent to the lads who are using them to stop Russian tanks. They're just very grateful to have such an effective weapons system.

If you choose not to invest in a particular defence company because of the products they make or the customers they serve, that's perfectly reasonable. If you think that it's fundamentally unethical to invest in any defence company, I think you're being naive.

>>41745

I think you have the situation flipped on its head. When you say "bad bastards who would conquer the world if they could", you're directly referring to the people who already use such weapons to dominate the world militarily. If you want to address naivety, I'd start with the belief that high tech weapons are tools of liberation.

You're using a similar logic to that of the "second amendment" crowd in the US use to justify their ownership of ludicrously powerful weapons, or of the former CEO of the NRA Wayne LaPierre when he said "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a good is a good guy with a gun".

>>41744
I've always struggled to buy into the idea that the small actions of the little guy - that do add up to become consequential at the population level - carry moral significance by themselves. It reminds me of voting where one person's input changes precisely nothing unless the result was basically a tie.

Anyway I'm not too concerned with being a good person and consider myself generally a neutral non-actor. I like to think I value honesty more than the average person but I suppose beyond that I have no internally consistent moral framework.

My portfolio is 40% S&P500, 10% FTSE100 and the other 50% is individual stocks and funds chosen with very little thought. I don't fully understand what some of the funds even are - they just had a good rating. With there being multiple conflicts in the news I felt like defence stocks could make money. Over the last six months I'm barely in the black and Lockheed is by far my best bet, with PayPal #2.

I might just be an idiot.

>>41745
I think it's very generous to act as if the defence of Ukraine is anything like a fair repsresentation of the military-industrial complex's real world consequences. Flattened and poisoned Middle Eastern cities, the internal "security" of Gulf dictatorships and the militarisation of every copper in the USA is the prevalent outcome. In fairness, the politics of each scenario are a bigger factor than a defence industry simply existing. However, even if we, naively, assume the defence industry is passively acquiescing to these circumstances, I would still regard that as immoral.

For the record, this would still apply if we were considering Norinco, Sukhoi or the like.

>>41748

Fair enough. I don't think you're an idiot, in fact it sounds like you're good at making money. I didn't write the post to morally attack anyone, I just felt like a discussion because it's something I've thought about a lot.

Most of my investments are in pharma, which are hardly the picture of ethical purity. What you're getting at, though, does seem to me to reveal some of the risks of investment on a purely functional level. I don't invest in index funds for this reason, because I want to know quite a lot about a company before investing in it.

>I've always struggled to buy into the idea that the small actions of the little guy - that do add up to become consequential at the population level - carry moral significance by themselves.

Me too. I went through a period where I wouldn't buy certain products because I loathed the companies behind them, until I realised that logic would probably mean I'd struggle to clothe myself or finish my weekly shop.

I suppose I could make life utterly untenable for myself by enforcing a high standard, but the line I've drawn is that clothes and food are essentials to survival, but investments are not.

I accept it's an arbitrary line, and I've no clear answers.

>>41745

I think this is a very comforting fairytale you tell yourself to sleep better at night knowing you are directly profiting from bloodshed.

I don't have an ethical problem with you doing that, because we live in a fundamentally amoral dog eat dog world, and we do what we have to do to look after our own self interest. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

What I don't respect at all, in fact I find it contemptible, is your spineless inability to look yourself in the eye. You are deceiving yourself because you are too weak to just own the fact you are profiting from war.

>>41753
Profit is in the nature of war, tree of libery watered by blood, fight for your right to party, etc.

>>41744
This isn't the first time I've seen pearl-clutching on here about investing in defence stocks. Can't you make a thread?

Personally I avoid investing in tech companies that piss me off and dictatorships. The latter should be common sense and has also made me profit while the former keeps me away from Alphabet. Compared to investing in China I think it's small potatoes to have your money in the weapons that ensure that the good guys win and the international order is preserved.

>>41753
He's not profiting from war, he's profiting from the expectation of governments expecting war. But at any rate it's like whinging because someone is profiting from cancer or 'owt else, ultimately he's locking away his money in x and gets a little treat when he uses his access capital productively.

>>41755

>'owt

What letter were you dropping there lad? Hm?

>>41758
?

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/nowt

>>41760

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/owt

I like how Biden just walked out and crashed the oil market along with putting the entire world on edge. He had no need to do that and going to by the video I think even he realised he shouldn't have said it.

>>41763

Care to elaborate or post a link to what you're talking about? I don't feel like visiting a news site because they induce existential panic on their own.

>>41764
He's had a couple of hours to reply and he hasn't, so...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx250ygn9ddo

Someone asked Joe Biden if he would support Israel bombing Iran's oil fields and massively driving up the price of oil, and Joe Biden said maybe instead of FUCK NO.

>>41766

Cheers lad.

So on top of the gas and leccy bills that never went down after Ukraine, we'll be paying a fortune for petrol because of Israel and that senile cunt in the White House. Triffic.

I wish everyone would just give it a bloody rest.

The prevailing attitudes here being "It's okay for me to profit from war" and "It's okay for me to profit from war so long as I'm honest with myself about it", maybe that Westernised version of karma has something going for it that you're all miserable and broken human beings. Can't say I sympathise.

>>41768
My own investments are entirely, 100% in UK tracker funds. I’m backing Britain. If you want me to feel like less of a mug, perhaps you should give more money to FTSE100 companies and preferably without pointing out that most of them are crooks too.

>>41769

Is it too obvious to point out that BAE Systems, Rolls Royce Holdings and Melrose Industries are in the FTSE 100?

>>41768

So hows your portfolio in e-scooter rental start ups going granola lad? Can't feed your kids on good karma. You can barely feed them on granola.

What's the deal with the UK/US response to this conflict?
There's something fundamentally strange about the recognised tendency for headlines to break the English language instead of just saying that Israel has done something nasty, or how it seems (not just to me, but to the families!) that the Israeli government couldn't give a fuck about whether the hostages live or die but only Haaretz will say it in a headline, or how our government and the US government endorsed or plead ignorance to almost everything in Gaza (save Hamas, who we must remember started it...) until that became untenable. We rejected a ceasefire and then due to popular demand flipped to calling for a ceasefire everyone knows won't happen. Rafah was a red line until it wasn't, and today we're still right behind Israel as it goes ahead and invades Lebanon. ("Israel has a right to defend itself" which apparently extends to violating the territory of Lebanon — whether Lebanon has a right to defend itself — its military, not Hezbollah — is a question that will go conveniently unasked.)

I don't think it's a big conspiracy, and I'm not inclined to think Israel has a huge blackmail file on every world leader, so what's happening? Do journalists just not want the grief of getting a thousand angry letters from Israel's minister of communications, so pre-censor their headlines? Is there a general understanding, as with Iraq, that you should generally hew to the government's foreign-policy line? Does anyone, anywhere even pretend to care about reconciling things with international law (at least to save face) anymore? Is it something silly — like Biden setting a very pro-Israel policy based on his own beliefs, and everyone else just following America's lead? Or does "the west" just approve everything Israel are up to, including invading Lebanon, but find it more useful to look like complicit bystanders than active enablers? Or is it just that while some parts look like a bad idea — such as invading Lebanon to chase out the unabummer group formed to fight against Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon — Israel's a useful ally while everyone else in the region is either irrelevant or with us, so we'll give them a blank cheque? Is there something else I'm missing?

>>41772

>Israel's a useful ally while everyone else in the region is either irrelevant or with us, so we'll give them a blank cheque? Is there something else I'm missing?

Pretty much, but the exact working of it are a bit of a tangle, and regardless how much they will deny it, that nasty Z word is responsible for stirring the pot up a great deal. It's not a primary cause, but it's responsible for a lot of the confusion and distortion around the whole mess.

In the bigger picture, Israel is the only country in the region we can consider a "proper" country, insofar as their government is made up of white-ish judeo-christian people, not eskimos, and their military is advanced and operates on a peer level with western militaries, not AKs and RPGs. Honestly I bet you could write a pretty decent thesis on how good and evil really revolves around whether you use an AR-15 knock off in 5.56 or an AK-74 derivative in 5.45. But I digress.

The petrodollar is what it all really comes down to. That's why it sometimes appears that we (the US.UK etc) allow Israel to do things that appear to be counter even to our own interests- Our interests are not really our interests. We merely serve the petrodollar's dominance. The Saudis and the Iranians and all those lot would be able to put the West over a barrel get it if we weren't constantly playing them off against one another, destabilising a regime here, arming some rebels there, that sort of thing. The press aren't in the pocket of the government, but they are in the pocket of big business, and their interests align with the government's strongly enough on some things that they go unquestioned.

If we're of a similar age it's easy to have forgotten all the stuff about the 9th of November, Afghanistan and Iraq 20-odd years ago, when we were growing up. But refreshing your memory on it will likely elucidate a lot about the present day middle east.

>>41771

If you were happy with your choices you wouldn't have brought them up to defend them. You'll be a lot better off when you act in ways you don't subconsciously find immoral.

>>41772
>What's the deal with the UK/US response to this conflict?
I think it probably has something to do with 'the west' deep state alliances between Israel, the US and England. Apparently each has a specific role in western power but what they are I couldn't say.
There's an old book called something like 'The Anglo American Connection' which I believe lays out the basis of this, though I can't find it anywhere online using that title. If anyone happens to know it's author, I'd appreciate your naming them.

Sources - my arse.

>>41772

The truth that Israel's neighbours won't admit publicly is that they're allied to Israel. Jordan and Egypt will loudly condemn Israel, but they've got productive and stable diplomatic relations with Israel and bitter enmity with Fatah and Hamas. The Lebanese government can't come out and say that they're quite happy for Israel to rid them of Hezbollah, but they are. Yemen are more than happy for Israel to knock lumps out of the Houthis. The Saudis know which side they're on in a conflict between Israel and Iran.

The Arab man on the street might be enraged about the plight of the Palestinians, but his government just regards them as a persistent nuisance. Those governments aren't trying to stop Israel because they don't want to stop Israel. Netanyahu is doing geopolitical dirty work for NATO, but also for the Arab League.

>>41769
The fun thing about investing in a basic FTSE tracker is that a fraction of your investment always goes to Israeli companies. Not as a 'oh they base in the UK' but in similar to Ireland they can just list here.

>>41772
>Israel's a useful ally while everyone else in the region is either irrelevant or with us, so we'll give them a blank cheque? Is there something else I'm missing?

People overestimate how much influence the UK or even the US have over Israel. The west advises Israel not to kill everyone in the region and to try to minimise civilian casualties but historically Israel has no qualms over, say, hijacking French ships and usually they kill unabummers which a lot of people think is just super. They're also extremely good at playing western politics but I don't want to lose my job.

>>41773
The Middle East already 'has us over a barrel', that's what OPEC+ is about. You don't need to give people in the region an excuse to kill each other, Pan-Arab/Pan-Islamic nationalism is a total meme and the US exports so many weapons to the region that it can deliberately gimp states to maintain a balance of power e.g. Egyptian F-16s can't use BVR missiles.

Fortunately the US likes the UK so we're in the privileged position that we don't need to input a code into our F-35s every 24 hours to avoid them bricking themselves like a printer when it detects knock-off ink.

>>41777

>Fortunately the US likes the UK so we're in the privileged position that we don't need to input a code into our F-35s every 24 hours to avoid them bricking themselves like a printer when it detects knock-off ink.

I bet China's already got a virus that would ground the entire USAF in the event of open conflict.

>>41778
The Chinese own Boeing?

>>41780

I bet that's where a lot of the components come from. I'm even fairly sure I remember reading there was some sort of scandal about that when it was discovered, which made me laugh because really, try building anything without at least some parts from China nowadays.

But nah my point is more that no matter how robust they try to make the cyber-security on their gear, they are still having these things built by the lowest bidder, in true American fashion; the mere presence of a system like that means there will be an avenue to exploit. The Chinese military's entire strategic planning is to find methods of specifically and deliberately countering anything the US has and uses.

>>41781
I'm not saying your starting point is wrong, but the conclusions you're reaching feel a bit like the urban legend about the Americans spending loads of time and money building a pen that worked in outer space, while the Soviets used pencils. Even if we assume there is some kind of superbug the Chinese could release at will, their experiences with COVID-19 would likely make them shy away from open biological warfare. So in my opinion, with the stakes so high, they'd be unlikely to want to play bio apocolypse chicken with the Yanks. Don't forget, the Western Allies spent the whole of WW2 with stocks of mustard gas loaded weapons ready to go just in case Germany decided to pull the trigger first.

>>41782

... A computer virus, lad.

>>41783
This is what happens when I spend more time checking my spelling than reading what I'm replying to. Sorry.

Also, I like how we've finally got a thread about Israel v Everyone and we've barely talked about that at all maybe they won't notice how stupid I am if I change the topic immediately.

>>41784
>Also, I like how we've finally got a thread about Israel v Everyone and we've barely talked about that at all
Fine, I'll start. Israel v France next Thursday night. Everybody knows that France are favourites, but if you say that openly someone will call you an antisemite.

I was being glib when I said it's "Israel vs Everyone" last week, but no, it seems that really is the current strategy:
>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/10/un-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-say-israel-has-fired-on-their-bases-deliberately
>Unifil says two peacekeepers were injured after Israeli tank fired on one observation point and soldiers fired on another
>A UN report published on Thursday accused Israel of pursuing a concerted policy of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system in the war in the strip, saying this constituted war crimes and extermination as a crime against humanity.
>An Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed 27 people on Thursday, including a child and seven women, according to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where the bodies were brought.

>>41799

Really is madness that we're actively supporting this, it's black and white at this stage, what they're doing is no more excusable than the Russians.

>>41800
Some Israeli official, when asked why the hell they were shooting at UN peacekeeping forces, responded that the peacekeepers should just move further away. I think they had been there since 2006 if I remember correctly. Obviously lots of otherwise good countries do bad things sometimes, but I’m with you that we should, at the very least, stop helping.

>>41801
if us and the yanks suddenly pulled all support and promises to defend, they'd be fucked.

How is firing on UN troops not considered an attack on the UN?

>>41803

They aren't UN troops. They're troops from various countries who are participating in a United Nations mission. Personnel on that mission have been killed fairly regularly since 1978 - some by Israeli airstrikes or artillery fire, but most by Hezbollah and other militant groups.

>>41804
>They aren't UN troops. They're troops from various countries who are participating in a United Nations mission.
Oh, that's alright then.

>>41803
They've done it before in 2006 and got away with it then too.

It is really terribly simple. Take every single rule we use to categories an organisation as immortal and evil in the world and assume that that rule doesn't apply to Israel and Israel has probably at some point flagrantly broken that rule.

Israel has a right to defend it self - by which they mean it lives in constant fear someone might do to them what they have done to others in return.

>>41805

I'm not saying it is alright, but the pedantic difference is hugely significant in legal and political terms.

UNIFIL is supposedly in southern Lebanon to oversee the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701, but that's a farce because it doesn't actually have any powers to enforce that resolution and all of the relevant parties are totally ignoring it. 1701 says that Israel shouldn't cross the Blue Line, but we can all see how well that went. It says that there should be no military assets between the Blue Line and the Litani river, but that's where Hezbollah keep all their rockets.

In practical terms, it's irrelevant as to whether Israel "attacked the UN" or not. The UN can issue condemnatory statements from now until forever, but it can't actually do anything because it doesn't have an army. The Irish government could decide "you fired on our peacekeeping troops at the Naqoura base, that's causus belli, so we're going to war with you", but obviously that isn't going to happen.

The Security Council could subject Israel to sanctions, but the US and UK is going to veto those sanctions, because - like it or not - NATO needs Israel far more than Israel needs NATO. Even if NATO had no strategic interests in the Middle East, then Elbit and Rafael are of absolutely vital strategic importance in the emerging NATO-China cold war. The General Assembly could pass some resolution or other, but it's going to be ignored by everyone who matters.

If none of the NATO allies are going to do anything to meaningfully twist Netanyahu's arm - and they aren't - then who?

>>41810

It's just getting weird that the US/UK intelligence agencies who are so willing to organise and stage coups and suchlike in so many countries when they're getting to be a pain in the arse and more trouble than they're worth, won't touch Netyanahanu. That implies that either all this fuckery serves NATO's strategic interests somehow, or that those powers that pulled the strings on the middle east for so long have lost their touch.

Really I think there will come a point (i.e if oil gets expensive because of their actions) where even the US turn around and say "look cut that shit out or you'll be grounded for a MONTH, mister. No more ballistic missile allowance."

>>41812

For the last 1000 years every country in Europe has at some point considered the Jews to be a problem. Maybe the ultimate act of Racism has been to actively encourage them being somewhere else.

They certainly seem to be making a complete pigs breakfast of the middle east in a way no one else could. So seems like a win win for the old divide and rule policy of the foreign office.

>>41817

No subtitles of geopolitics just "da Jews!!". Well done.

>>41817
I wish I could set you on fire in front of your parents.

>>41812
>Really I think there will come a point (i.e if oil gets expensive because of their actions)
I'm wondering if higher oil prices will make untapped deposits economically viable, thus lessening dependance on trade, outside influence etc etc
I hear there're numerous fields in Canada and various other places, only they're currently unviable to tap.

>>41818
If there has been a radicalising influence on me I assure you it is the atrocities of Israel that have continued undaunted my entire lifetime. I cannot just passively observe their crimes and not feel emotionally affected.

I've made no false statement. It is fairly well documented that that has happened. It is clear that they couldn't get on with the other children. Once would be a tragedy, twice is a coincidence but repeatly in independent circumstances for thousands of years is a pattern
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism
The behaviour of Israel is self evidently evil. Numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity. When left to their own devices they run a apartheid ethno state. There is evidently something deeply wrong with their culture.

And you only need to flick through the old testament to work out why. It's nothing but righteous propaganda about how they are the chosen people. And all behaviour is justified against outsiders. Imagine the worst kind of Christian or eskimo righteous zealot. Now imagine there were a million of them in one place actively encouraging each other teaching all their children that is the way you should think, now imagine that for a few generations and to deviate from that belief would mean facing the realisation you are an invader who genocided the previous occupants, that's Israel. A lot of Christians deliberately make the declaration that the old testament doesn't count anymore and the reason is because it is filled with the exact same batshit behaviour that Israel is doing right now being congratulated.

The current conflict isn't a singular event. It is a sustained campaign that has been going on before any of us were born. Israel considers it standard policy to treat Palestinians as sub human and cull the herd occasionally. This is just another chapter in their holy war for ethnic cleansing they just hadn't had an excuse for a while so they are making up for lost time.

>>41819

Then you could have a lucrative carrier in the IDF.

>>41812

The "weirder" bit is that Iran is the only other Middle Eastern country that wants any involvement in this conflict. Egypt used to control Gaza, but they've washed their hands of it; likewise with Jordan and the West Bank. Israel have invaded Lebanon, but the Lebanese army seem completely uninterested. That's much less weird if you were paying any attention to the Middle East before the 7th of October.

The western media keeps talking about "fears that this will escalate into a wider regional conflict", but that's absolutely ridiculous, because that wider regional conflict has been brutally fought for more than a decade. 600,000 people have died so far in the Syrian civil war. 400,000 so far in Yemen. Gaza and Southern Lebanon are fairly small fronts in a massive Arab-Iranian conflict. Israel isn't on the side of the Arabs in that conflict, but it's not not on the side of the Arabs either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_proxy_conflict

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_alliance

>>41822

You're still conflating Jews and Zionists - of the latter, many of whom are Christians or simply working on behalf of the Western Military Industrial Complex.

>>41824
>conflating Jews and Zionists

No it is Israel does that. It is literally written into their constitution. Do you go urm Ackchyually to the state of Israel when it says that? Of course don’t. Would you do that with German’s? A country that technically only existed since 1991 and never existed before 1815 and has never included all the people or areas who are culturally German? Pull your head out of your arse.

The country is culturally Jewish

Not every Jewish person is an Israeli but Israel is Jewish, It is the 'homeland of the Jewish people' their words not mine.

I know the difference but Israel is an extension and expression of Jewish culture it is it's core ideal.

>the latter, many of whom are Christians

There really aren't that many.
And they aren't the ones in Israel actively killing the native population, I'm not sure they really exist in a meaningful sense they largely only exist as a concept because American politics. You show me a non Jewish zionist and I'll either show you a nutjob in bumtown, USA that everyone ignores anyway, or someone who relies heavily on millions of dollars from 'zionists who happen to be Jewish and not the Christian ones' to run their political campaign otherwise they will lose.

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>41825

>You show me a non Jewish zionist and I'll either show you a nutjob in bumtown, USA that everyone ignores anyway, or someone who relies heavily on millions of dollars from 'zionists who happen to be Jewish and not the Christian ones' to run their political campaign otherwise they will lose.

Or a Druze.

I have to buy a belt and some socks today, so I can't be typing out an essay length reply to all this shit. However, the idea that Israeli fascism is uniquely demented or serves as any kind of post scriptum justification for historical anti-Jewish persecutions in Europe is egregiously stupid. Israeli fascism relies on the exact same kind of black nostalgia and self-pity as any other kind of fascism. It looks to the Old Testament the same way Franco's Spain looked to the Reconquista, Mussolini's Italy looked to Imperial Rome and Hitler's Germany looked to a bunch of Wagner operas, because for most of their history Germans lived in bogs and only became involved in proper civilisation when the late Roman Empire used German refugees to boster it's tax base and legions.

Israeli fascism is somewhat unique in that because Israel serves US interests, sort of, it is given a big thumbs up and a fat cheque by the Americans no matter what it does domestically. Post-Cold War it skirted by genuine criticism because politicians everywhere stopped trying to change anything, then the neo-cons and the Global War on Terror happened, and right now we have one of the lamest of lame duck presidents in history, who's also a full on Zionist headbanger. There are perfectly rational explanations for why Israel is the way it is, and by suggesting it's actually Old Testament magic you're intellectually aligning yourself with the Israeli ultra-right, while simultaneously ignoring just how much of Europe and the UK is sympathetic, if not openly supportive, of the exact same brand of rightism. Vox have been menacing Spain for years, Italy's PM is "former" fascist Giorgia Meloni and Germany's AfD are polling second, behind the CDU. The UK's third largest party by vote share is Reform, who, fortunately, have a leader more concerned with lining his own pockets than actually doing politics, and we capped off our summer with a cheeky bit of race rioting. Besides anything else, deluding yourself into thinking that the Israeli and/or Jewish mind is especially susceptible to a philosphy of hate is supremely arrogant...

... and he got banned. What a waste of time that was.

>>41824
On this subject, all I can add is that in a UK domestic context, I've had the odd experience of attending Labour antisemitism training where we were told that Zionism was fundamental to Jewish identity and that, while it's not antisemitic to criticise Israel in the abstract, pretty much any specific criticism is a bit dodgy.

Now I'd say the people running the event had a clear factional agenda , but it's interesting that's the position we wound up at. Personally I didn't care for foreign policy much until recently - I can ignore foreign attrocities but not the domestic press or our politicians incompetently talking around the bleeding obvious.

>>41828
>we were told that Zionism was fundamental to Jewish identity
It is really not. I think there's a mirroring of how batshit some Americans are due to them being descended from all the religious zealots who were too far gone to stay in Europe. Israel has a higher majority of religious zealots of its own. Opinions vary of course, the idea that any ethnic group has the same thoughts on anything universally as they're suggesting is just racist nonsense, but for the most part diaspora Jews became or stayed diaspora at least in part because they disagree with Zionism for one reason or another. Hundreds of thousands of not millions of people turning down all the incentives the Israeli government offers for them to go there even now.

>>41829

The majority of diaspora Jews are pro-Israel. Not wanting to move to the Middle East doesn't mean you're opposed to Zionism as a social or political project, it usually just means that you're happy with your life where you are. A very large proportion of diaspora Jews have personal connections to Israel and many of them sleep better at night knowing that aliyah is at least an option if the shit hits the fan.

>>41830

No mate, we're not.

>>41827

For Israel to exist in the first place it has to be fascist. It's Founding principles are that it is an Ethno state. If you tried making it a real democracy it would have been controlled by the preexisting Palestinian population.

You cannot apply the same principles that you do to counties that happened to be fascist for a while or dip in and out of nationalism. It has more in common with Rhodesia than Italy or Germany. If you remove the fascism the country would cease to exist.

I don't want to keep shilling Foreign Affairs on here but they do provide a pretty good look at the logic going on in Foggy Bottom when you read between the lines. The recent interview with Ari Shavit gave the Israeli left-wing opinion of the conflict, justifying collateral damage and accusing western commentators of naivety when we're well acquainted with civilians getting killed in our own operations.

He does make a good point that Gaza is the one place where Israel did revert to Palestinian authority, withdrew its forces and destroyed settlements only to then suffer a medieval pogrom on pacifist farming communities and a festival. It's hard to square the circle that Israel can as a frontier state not seek to now change the security calculus - by the looks of things bringing the area back under the watch of the Israeli military with a series of border walls to break up any chance of resistance. There's obviously the smarter option of actually toppling Hamas and Hezbollah to establish functional states at the border with input from the more secular Arab states but Bibi seems to have his hands tied even if he wanted to go that route.

It's a given though that the US foreign policy establishment still doesn't quite agree on the connection between policy on Iran, Russia, China and Palestine beyond there being a vague autocratic group that is opposed to western interests. This is probably the bigger point at the moment for the US where both sides of the House are virulently anti-China and you saw at the time the US broke its deadlock on support for Ukraine that it was the China connection with Russia and Iran that tipped the scales.

>>41820
At this point it's not necessary with the biggest bottleneck being physical infrastructure and the kinds of oil and gas you want. The US fracking and Canadian tar sands already periodically boom-and-bust with the oil price fluctuation for the reason you point you.

Plus the sheer level of Chinese overproduction on renewables can't be understated at this point. Then entirety of Asia is being reshaped.
https://www.noemamag.com/china-builds-a-new-eurasia/

>>41827
>Israeli fascism is somewhat unique in that because Israel serves US interest

This is an extremely simplistic take on the US-Israel relationship and your post then devolves into irrelevant grunting about the far-right as you run out of script and revert to left-rightism to understand the world.

The US and UK (both governments) have repeatedly tried to restrain Israel and the pressure is slowly ramping - the big story over the past year is actually how little influence the US has on Israel and how weak the Iranian-led 'axis of resistance' actually is to itself counter Israel, which is why Bibi has seen it possible to escalate things. Israel as a state is unique owing to its position that pushes a calculus in how it behaves that brings together left and right Israelis, when you've got genuinely evil people crossing a border to butcher civilians then the response from the society under attack will always be extreme. You had the same in the 00s with suicide attacks but to pretend there's not ebbs and flows is ridiculous and to make out like there's a simple solution like Biden only has to pick up the phone and say 'no' for Israel to morph into a new Lebanon (before it went wrong) is equally ridiculous.

>>41834
I'd dispute that Israel truly withdrew from Gaza - they might not have loaded the place with troops, but it was still effectively an impoverished Bantustan rather than a meaningfully independent and viable entity.
Anyway, at the risk of being glib: if the US is so desperate to control Israel, why have they not at least tried going "cut it out or no more F-35 parts or Iron Dome rearmament for you"?
Sure, Israel has a domestic arms industry, but it can't put together an F-35 and the full costs of domestically producing all the materiel they need would be pretty substantial.
The best argument I can think of is that the effects would be too damaging and might push them towards using their nuclear stash if Iran get an attack in during the production run-up.

I dunno though, what kind of evidence would satisfy the proof of a causal link between thousand year old desert tribe religio-bollocks and homicide? Because it seems to me that there really is a link, not just with judaism but islam and christianity, quite clearly. All those religions are responsible for unimaginable bloodshed.

If we were talking about the link between taking heroin and stabbing people for money to get a fix nobody would leap to the defence of smackheads to say "but but but they're not all like that, some smackheads are completely peaceful!", we are capable of understanding that the heroin nevertheless contributes to people stabbing each other. Which, I posit, is the same case with religion.

>>41835

>if the US is so desperate to control Israel, why have they not at least tried going "cut it out or no more F-35 parts or Iron Dome rearmament for you"?

Israel exports far more arms than it imports. Most of their exports are very high-tech stuff that's difficult to substitute - radar, night vision, electronic warfare etc. Israeli companies have tons of joint ventures with EU and US manufacturers, so you can't cut them off without buggering up a lot of complicated and important supply chains. If you google the phrase "Elbit UK contract", you'll start to see why NATO really doesn't want to lose Israel as a partner.

There's also the basic point that the US are much less pissed off at Israel than they claim to be in public. They don't like escalation, they don't like being associated with a very ugly conflict, but they're also quite pleased to see a lot of threats taken out.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/30/us-israel-military-hezbollah-00181797

>>41836
I'd say religion is mostly window dressing / a way of covering up the grubby materialism of the actual conflicts - like how you'll see pro-LGBT NATO messaging and anti-LGBT Russian messaging, but the war in Ukraine is about land and geopolitics rather than gay marriage. It's just better to give billions to defend liberalism or give your life to defend Christianity and the family than to accept what you're really fighting over is ownership of a sunflower field.

If you like, the religious and culture stuff is just a set of gang signs. You feel better taking a bullet for your gang than you do taking a bullet so that someone else will rake it in selling heroin. Certain turf has sentimental value and the signs change over time, but the heroin is the most powerful thing.

Not that anyone involved sees it that way - it's an evolutionary kind of process, not usually a cynical one.

>>41834
>This is an extremely simplistic take on the US-Israel relationship and your post then devolves into irrelevant grunting about the far-right as you run out of script and revert to left-rightism to understand the world.
Why don't you fucking kill yourself, you podcast ponce. I started my post off with "I don't have time to write a whole essay", so why were you expecting one? I was talking about fascism because some other slab-brain was making out like Israel is uniquely susceptible to winding up being governed by a bunch of hard-right cunts with a bone on for past glories. Oh, sorry, apparently we're not allowed to "grunt" about the right and left of politics, because Mr Underachiever here has been on YouTube this morning and had fuck all else to do today.

I never made any claim about "Biden just needing to pick up the phone", but again you appear to have extrapolated a much longer version of my post that I never wrote. This is why you've wound up rambling about the strategic level revalations we've had since the October 7th attacks, while I was making a brief point about how foolish it is to think that this last year proves Richard the Lionheart was on to something the whole time RE: the Jews, which was what the other twat I replied to today was making out. This has nothing to do with how stupid Hezbollah are for repeatedly deciding to have the lads round while Israeli intelligence are actively trying to blow them up, or how the Houthi's attacks on Israel are about as impactful as throwing paper areoplanes at a brick wall, so I didn't feel the need to mention any of it, you pompous cunt.

>>41835
I'd question how far you could go on that route. It's not like the Gaza Strip is big enough to not have a strong economic connection to Israel and the place ended up effectively embargoed after it was taken over by Hamas that was left to fester. Israeli civilians are seeing that they left an area to its own devices and it all went to pot in short order.

We also don't actually know what the US has done by way of leverage. Implicitly the subsidies should give the US some influence but then Biden has repeatedly been made to look a clown and the US has also had to create humanitarian piers.

>>41839
You're the one buying a belt m80.

>>41840
>You're the one buying a belt m80.
Yeah, so I have one for each colour of shoe I own. Stop being so morbid.

>>41841

... Were you or were you not the poster who told him to kill himself, though? Glass houses and that.

Anyway yeah I don't think ForeignAffairslad's takes are of much value considering all his information is coming from outlets and people that are pretty much explicitly sources of propaganda and have skin in the game.

>>41840
Israel didn't leave the area to its own devices, they continued to control it - of course they did, like you say the Gaza strip is not actually a viable independent economic unit, and it's one that Israel "left to its own devices" in such a non-viable state.
Only it didn't really do that, it kept policing from afar, which is why Gaza had an airport thrown up in 1998 and blown up in 2001 - years before Hamas took over. Gaza was never left alone in some state where it could've ignored Israel and "got on with it". It's hard to see that as being anything but intentional - Gaza as an "out of sight, out of mind" occupation with public order left to a vestigial and impoverished devolved Palestinian authority too occupied with running their 3rd world Scottish parliament to cause trouble for the rest of Israel, not a little Palestinian Monaco.

>>41838

That's a fair point; although in response to that I would say that it doesn't exactly let religion off the hook to say that religion isn't the direct material cause of the conflict, but is merely another way of propagandising and radicalising people to the cause.

I think in the case of Israel there are most definitely bad faith actors using the religious element as a cover and a shield, and even the charge of anti-semitism is pretty directly tied into that as a method of silencing critics. It couldn't be any more transparently hypocritical and self serving; those people in the Israeli government and lobbying groups responsible for it are most definitely cynical.

Otherlad was definitely wrong to start going off about the historical persecution of Jews as though they brought it on themselves, but at the core of it all I think there really has to be something said for this weird kind of jewish exceptionalism, for want of a better term. We have terms like "radical islamist" to refer to the baddie eskimos, the proper wahabists and all that, but we don't call these extremist jewish nationalists "radical jewists" or something.

>>41844
>but we don't call these extremist jewish nationalists "radical jewists" or something.
Zionists. We call them Zionists.

>>41845

That's not quite the same though is it, there are (supposedly, so I am told) benign, peaceful zionists who we wouldn't want to lump in the same pot, because that's already one of their standard textbook counter-plays against their detractors.

>>41845
So what would you call a moderate Jewish nationalist? I reckon you're going to say that they don't exist.

>>41845
Didn't France, some years years ago, legally equate anti-zionism with anti-semitism?

>>41847
How does one support what's happening in Gaza in a "moderate" way?

>>41849
You don’t have to support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to be a Zionist.

>>41850
Workshopping the next tour not going well eh Frankie?

>>41849
It's like being a Labour loyalist because you've got warm feelings towards the NHS, British Rail, and a gang of dead Keynesians: put today's crimes out of mind and think back to 1946-77 back when it all seemed so pure and optimistic. Ben Gurion and Meir would never have put up with this, and they were long enough ago we can imagine that all they did put up were nice little Kibbutzes. They never took anyone's land, or endorsed any acts of outright terrorism, did they? Not any that I can remember...

So condemn Netenyahu and feel morally secure backing the now irrelevant Israeli Labor party, never having to question if perhaps ol' Ben Gurion's project was always doomed to end up like this by merit of its starting position. No, no, he'd be shaking his head - if reality fails the ideal Israel, or the ideal Labour party, that's reality's problem. In my heart the project remains pure.

>>41852

Pretty apt metaphor considering how Labour could have been on a completely different path under Corbyn, and enjoyed considerable backing of party members and the voting public, but it was DA JOOZ what took him out and engineered a return to the neoliberal skinwalker norm. In that sense your analogy has backfired and made me less skeptical of the idea of moderate zionists.

Who's Israeli Corbyn then? Who's the leader to the good people of Israel, who don't want an endless war with every single country around them and genocide in Gaza but merely want to live their lives in peace and conduct their religious beliefs with no ill will to their arabic cousins and neighbours, but whom the zionist warmongers and media propagandists won't allow a sniff of power no matter how popular their support?

>>41853

There are plenty of moderate Jewish people who want peace. The Likud-led coalition are likely to lose the next election to a Yesh Atid led coalition; Yesh Atid are committed to peace negotiations with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution and the halting of settlements in the West Bank. That YA coalition would also include Hadash-Ta'al and Labor who are significantly to their left, and might plausibly include Ra'am, which is an Islamist party.

The problem is that there is no equivalent constituency in the Palestinian Territories. Of the 132 seats in the Legislative Council, only four are held by parties who support a peace process - Third Way and the Palestinian National Initiative. Hamas hold an absolute majority of 74 seats and they are committed to the total destruction of Israel. Fatah are the dominant minority party with 45 seats; while they are at least in theory open to the possibility of a two-state solution, they are notoriously corrupt, they have a long history of political violence against Israel, Lebanon and Jordan and they have consistently refused to implement the Oslo Accords.

According to polling by the most credible research organisation operating in the Palestinian Territories, a large majority of Palestinians think that the October 7th attacks were a good idea and believe that Hamas will ultimately defeat Israel through armed struggle. That's the political reality we have to deal with before any plausible peace process can begin - most Palestinians think that the current nightmare is a path to victory.

https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/980

>>41853
>Who's the leader to the good people of Israel, who don't want an endless war with every single country around them and genocide in Gaza but merely want to live their lives in peace and conduct their religious beliefs with no ill will to their arabic cousins and neighbours, but whom the zionist warmongers and media propagandists won't allow a sniff of power no matter how popular their support?
It's hard to say because Israeli political parties get founded and then dissolved quite quickly, it seems like the Likud party is pretty much the only one that doesn't represent some sort of political "tribe" (Arab-Israelis, the Russian diaspora, the Haredi community, etc) and has been around for more than a few elections, but left-leaning Israelis do exist. It's just that they're becoming increasingly just another "tribe" in Israeli politics, that is, city-dwellers. That's my understanding based some YouTube videos I watched a while ago though.
I can think of one notable Israeli that just wanted peace, but he's dead now. His name was Amos Oz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Oz

>>41854
The leader of Yesh Atid was finance minister in a coalition with Likud in 2013-14 and is generally supportive of the government's prosecution of the war in Gaza and Lebanon, they just don't like that Netanyahu is a crook.

How many liberal Israelis are comfortable with a two state solution in which Palestine get to have an army and an independent immigration policy? Everyone's got warm words for it in the abstract, but a real Palestinian state - not a protectorate or a Bantustan - is realistically never on the table. Palestinians backing Hamas is a bad look, but the last time an Israeli PM sat down in anything like good faith (Rabin, the "bone-crusher" who personally signed the order to expel the Arabs from Lydda, going for peace out of security concerns rather than bleeding heart liberalism) he was assassinated for his trouble. Itamar Ben Gvir, the current minister of national security, was threatening Rabin on TV shortly before he was assassinated. He also kept a portrait of mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein on his wall. It's obvious the Palestinians have been radicalised, but because the Israelis aren't scary Arabs we overlook that they've gone down the same route: Kach (a Kahanist party) was once banned and proscribed as a unabummer organisation - today the Kahanists are in the government. The liberals might win the next election, but that does little to avoid the fact that Israeli society has also been radicalised - and from a starting point where even the nice Labor Zionists of the 40s-70s were already doing things well beyond what would be acceptable in an ordinary country.

>>41856

If I were a Palestinian, I'd want a peace treaty under any reasonable terms, even if that meant making the kind of concessions that most countries have to make after suffering a substantial military defeat. I'm not a Palestinian though, and most Palestinians don't want a peace treaty under any terms. They want to win the war and believe that they can.

The Western narrative on the Israel-Palestine conflict tends to regard Palestinians as entirely passive and completely ignores their goals and aspirations. The people demanding a ceasefire haven't bothered to ask the Palestinians whether they actually want one.

We can - and should - criticise the behaviour of Israel, but they can't just unilaterally make peace happen. No normal country would glibly accept being continually attacked. In any normal war, the defeated side eventually recognises that they've lost and sues for peace in the hopes of avoiding unconditional surrender. If the Palestinians don't accept that they've lost the war, then the outcome is utterly predictable and looks very much like the last 75 years - the Palestinians continuing to lose an unwinnable war in increasingly painful ways.

>>41857q
I've yet to see Israel offer even unreasonable terms of the kind a war-loser usually gets nowadays: a rump Palestinian state capable of economic development? Unacceptable - they might get rich enough to start a war, and any land worth developing would be better held in Israeli hands. There's a reason Oslo collapsed. Conquer Palestine and make the Palestinians full citizenship, the kind of deal Ukraine might expect if it just gave up? A non-starter because Israel isn't for them, it would lose its character as a Jewish state and just become a normal country.

What are the Palestinians to do if they were to offer unconditional surrender? Accept third-rate residence without citizenship in an apartheid (and that is what it would be) Israel? Accept permanent poverty in a Bantustan pretending to be a two state solution where one state has less authority over its foreign policy than Holyrood? Emigrate and become the contemporary people without a homeland?

>>41858
A lot of more zealous Zionists say that a Palestinian state already exists, that state being Jordan, since it's 70% Palestinian. What they fail to mention though is that it's only 70% Palestinian because so many of them were forced out of their homes over the last 80 years.

I think the only solution really is the destruction of both states and their governments.

The international community would have to come in and say look, both of you sit down and shut the fuck up. This country is neither the homeland of jews nor palestinians, but both; you will have to share, like every fucker else on Earth. Here's a new government, here's your new republic constitution that says explicitly you're not allowed to have pro-jewish, pro-palestinian, or discriminatory policy either way. Now get on with it.

Zionists wouldn't be happy but if they are indeed moderates who want peace, they should be able to accept a country that still fulfils the role of a safe home for the jewish diaspora (not that most of them even give a shit because why return to the desert tribe shithole when you have a comfortable life in America, for instance) but doesn't have the supremacist, nationalist, fascist overtones of the current one.

It's reasonable to point out that the Palestinians are unwilling to accept peace and they're in favour of continuing the war etc etc, but equally you have to acknowledge that in the context that Israel is, absolutely and unequivocally, the occupier and aggressor there. Maybe they are fighting a war that they've no chance of winning and it's stupid, but so are the Ukranians. We're not expecting them to surrender to Russia and for the same reason I wouldn't expect Palestinians to either; but ultimately peace has to come about one way or another.

>>41859

The Emirate of Transjordan was established as a British protectorate out of land that was originally part of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

>>41860

Mandatory Palestine was supposed to be just that, but then the British left and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war immediately broke out. A majority Arab state that is also a safe home for the Jews is practically an oxymoron.

>>41863

There needs to be some kind of failsafe. We set up two states with two governments, but each of the presidents has to wear a buttplug with a live hand grenade in it, and his counterpart on the other side has the remote to detonate it. That'll keep em honest won't it.

Israel has launched air strikes against Iran now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr0yvrx4qpo

And I'm glad that the BBC news website has taken the two contradictory positions of our government and very helpfully combined them into one handy sentence:
>UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Israel had the right to defend itself, but urged all sides to “show restraint” and called for Iran not to respond.

On a pure PR level I wish they'd shut the fuck up about Israel's right to defend itself when it comes to actions that are defensive only if you love tedious sophistry and which invite the question: does anyone else have that right?
I'd prefer western institutions and leaders giving an open endorsement to everything Israel has done over these constant rote-memorised insults to our intelligence.

>>41867
>>41868
>does anyone else have that right?

It's borderline consent for both parties. Iran/proxies send rockets to Israel but notify the US ahead of time and do the 'we're very, very cross' flag business. Israel responds with a 'oh that falling debris might've hurt an Israeli!' and tell the world that they're going to strike back well in advance. The escalation with the last Iranian missile barrage was they gave less time.

It's the international relations equivalent of two lads pushing each other but neither side really wants to throw a punch because they don't want to get barred. Iran always has to back down first because they're not as 'ard and Israel has a cop friend.

>>41868

>does anyone else have that right?

Yes. It's there in black-and-white in Article 51 of the UN Charter. If you attack another country, you have absolutely no recourse under international law if that country decides to strike back. If you don't cease hostilities and sue for peace, that country has a lawful right to continue fighting until you surrender.

Ukraine has the legal right to invade Russia or attack any legitimate military target on Russian soil, unless and until a peace treaty is signed or the Security Council intervene. DRC has that right against Rwanda. Syria has that right against Turkey. Armenia has that right against Azerbaijan.

>>41870
No that's not right. It has to be 'proportionate' to the right to self-defence but nobody has defined what that level is or how it works in practice so it's an international opinion affair where Israel tends to favour a disproportionate response and we have the Nicaragua Case try to establish rough criteria via the ICJ.

>>41870
International law is so passé, it's all about the rules based international order these days.

>>41870
>Yes. It's there in black-and-white in Article 51 of the UN Charter. If you attack another country, you have absolutely no recourse under international law if that country decides to strike back. If you don't cease hostilities and sue for peace, that country has a lawful right to continue fighting until you surrender.

I don't see the part in Article 51 that says any of this. It says states have the right to self-defence. Retaliation is not, in and of itself, self-defence.

>>41873

Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel. In a senseless act of retaliation, Israel blew up the factories where Iran makes ballistic missiles.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/israeli-retaliatory-strikes-iran