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And good old Uncle Sam sells 10 billion a year in weapons to these pricks - along with billions in aid for Israel to "mow the grass" (IDF phrase) in Gaza. Dis

And good old Uncle Sam sells 10 billion a year in weapons to these pricks - along with billions in aid for Israel to "mow the grass" (IDF phrase) in Gaza. Disgraceful. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/02/04/its-time-to-stop-us-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/02/04/i... https://besacenter.org/mowing-grass-gaza/ https://besacenter.org/mowing-grass-gaza/

lucasnortj 5y ago
Grow up. There is no moral equivalence between. Israel and Saudi Arabia. The genocidal rhetoric against Jews in the Muslim world is insane
mikevm 5y ago
Oh, please. Hamas would kill every man woman and child in Israel without batting an eye if it had the means to do so (heck, so would the PLO). And they actually say it explicitly in their media, something western media rarely covers. https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm > 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' And yet you bring up "mowing the lawn", which is an unfortunate reality in which Israel has to sacrifice soldiers every few years in order to keep fighting this genocidal organization which does not respect the lives of its own, uses them as human shields and is happy when the Arab death count is high because it just brings negative coverage on Israel. P.S. I can already see the downvotes coming, which I'm pretty sure are from people who don't live here and have no clue. I guess reading a Noam Chomsky book makes everyone an expert nowdays.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Whatever your cause, two wrongs will never make a right.
- irrational 5y ago
  That does tend to be what happens when your back is against a wall while another party tries to exterminate you.
  - mikevm 5y ago
    Sorry, who's trying to exterminate whom?
    - babesh 5y ago
      Frankly, effectively both sides. Just two chimp groups fighting over territory. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War My guess is that like in the above case, one side will wipe out the other. That is why both sides are playing for keeps. I don’t think you can carve out a tenable country out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel without the West Bank probably doesn’t work either.
      - iforgiveyou 5y ago
        Oh wow, does one extremist group in Palestine express their desire to kill their enemy? How shocking! Do you have any idea how the state of Israel was made possible? Through pure terrorism. Which continues to this day. When you oppress and terrorise a people for generations, do you expect them to just take it and accept their fate, as if they deserve it some how? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun "Every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state" It's pretty easy for you to sit infront of your computer calling them "chimps", while you have nothing to worry about. You should be ashamed of yourself.
        YouthfulMarxism 5y ago
        Were there any history of anti-semitism in muslim world before Israel rebuilding? What was position and role of mullahs during those occurences?
- mssundaram 5y ago
  I'm reading your reply in Ben Shapiro's voice
- gadders 5y ago
  You will never have piece in the Middle East when there are people who want to kill all the Jews, and Jews who don't want to be killed.
  - elevenoh 5y ago
    That seems a little one sided. It's seems to be a complex conflict.
  - ivanhoe 5y ago
    You lack historical context there, what about Israelis expelling people from their homes, people who lived there for centuries? There's no good and bad side there, it's 2+ sides fighting for limited space and resources (and colonial and neocolonial powers steering the whole thing to suit their geo-political interests of the day). It's ugly all over, no matter which way you look at it...
    - mikevm 5y ago
      You're also lacking historical context. What about Arabs conquering Palestine in the 7th century and expelling people from their homes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant#Conquest_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant#... Plus, many Arabs left their homes because they told them to do so. They expected them to be able to come back after they finish killing the Jews, which never happened, and hopefully never will.
      - g8oz 5y ago
        The Nakba happened in living memory though. We can't do anything about the 7th century but we can do something about the current occupation and circumscribing of Palestinian lives. Namely a) Boycotts b) Divestment c) Sanctions.
        mikevm 5y ago
        The "Nakba" is the result of their own leaders starting a war against the nascent Jewish state and telling the Arabs to leave their homes and come back once they're done getting rid of the Jews - something that never happened, and hopefully never will. They Arabs had multiple opportunities to settle this conflict, it's purely a result of their own making.
- Udik 5y ago
  > Hamas would kill every man woman and child in Israel without batting an eye if it had the means to do so Yours is a textbook example of de-humanisation of the enemy. Once you believe this, you can allow yourself any atrocity. And you do.
  - TheGuyWhoCodes 5y ago
    It's not dehumanization when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel). He didn't say Palestinians as a whole. When you show compassion for the cruel you'll end up being cruel to the merciful.
    - Udik 5y ago
      > when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel). This is literally bullshit.
      - TheGuyWhoCodes 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't calling to kill the Jews? Calling for Jihad against the Jews and quoting Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews isn't an incitement for genocide? This reads just like mein kampf, if this was written by a white person you would call him a nazi.
        Udik 5y ago
        I don't think there is any chance for me to convince you, but the Hamas covenant is an old document, written by religious fundamentalists who also were inflamed by decades of conflict on their homeland and holy land (and whatever you think of it, you can't deny that the people who are losing the war and the land must feel wronged). So I cut them some slack and don't take the religious raving seriously. As the Wikipedia page you linked explains, Hamas itself has moved on and is far from monolithic: various of its leaders have multiple times declared in the past 15 years that they've moved away from that original covenant. The second sentence of the Wikipedia entry literally states that Hamas has a new charter since 2017. So why would you fixate on a piece of text written 33 years ago by angered fundamentalists, that has also been multiple times rejected by the leaders of the same movement and that is now superseded by a more recent one? If you want to hate someone, it's easy to cling to a single piece of damning, black-and-white evidence, however outdated and contested. Don't you think you should consider more elements, at least to give your views some balance? You can check the new charter here: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
- hootbootscoot 5y ago
  So which solution are you in favor of? 1) a two state solution, in which, somehow, Gaza and the West-Bank must be free to pass goods and humans with zero Israeli involvement (how? a tunnel?) 2) a one-state solution (a greater Israel) with a Jewish minority Because I see cynicism in the actions of Likud (and others)_that have ramped up a lot since the assassination of Itzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right wing settler. I see cynicism in allowing right wing marches through the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. I see cynicism in settlements built upon annexed land. I see cynicism in deliberate provocative actions designed to goad Palestinians into predictable action. Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.) I don't recall anyone working with the Palestinian Authority to offer any "carrot" to complement the "stick" (incentivizing support for PA vs punishing Hamas) I see hard line nationalists in Israel with no actual path forward. Do they really think they can treat 4 million people (both territories combined) as inconsequential forever? Is genocide and "death to Arabs" an actual game plan for some extremists? The settler thing is blatantly copying the old American "how the west was won" plot line, ship in new immigrants and send them to the frontier to defend/expand it. and yes, I've spent significant time in Israel and I'm not trying to push some unrealistic story here, I'm trying to say that you don't even realize how right wing your bathwater has become... BUT... the topic was "Saudi Arabia cuts a youths head off for being rebellious"... and I am disgusted at how "The West" speaks of democracy and values and rails on China, but gives Saudi Arabia a break and prefers to sell them weapons. Egypt and support for Sisi (and Mubarak) is also disgusting... Do you know who was promising in Egypt? Anwar Sadat. Look what happened to him...
  - mikevm 5y ago
    Why do I have to pick from your two options? Who knows what possibilities lie ahead given enough time. > Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. Sorry, but what do you expect Israel to do here? Hamas shells Israel continuously, it's easy for outsiders to virtue signal and tell Israel not to attack back, but they would've done 10 times worse. > It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.) Why is it when people bring up the "blockade" of Gaza they always conveniently forget that Gaza is also bordered by Egypt, who are also cutting them off, yet no one ever blames their "brothers" and yet expects Israel to open up the border.
ddalex 5y ago
Well, they have to recoup somehow the dollars they given to SA for oil.... The europeans are doing it smarter by selling them cars and nice clothing with "high value" brand names on it....
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Do we? I remember nuclear submarines for Israel driving through Europe. And the Mossad got stuck in mud ^^ https://www.newstalk.com/news/german-mayor-issues-bill-to-israel-after-rescuing-armed-spies-stuck-in-the-mud-610177 https://www.newstalk.com/news/german-mayor-issues-bill-to-is... Also there's a lot of advertisements for homing missiles made in Germany ... "Aerospace and Defense" is a very nice company name for a weapons manufacturer.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  A manufacturer i know was forced by their client to help setup a division China. After a year and quality problems because of using inferior components ( and so reducing their BOM), the client reverted his decision. While your comment was being sarcastic. Quality is a thing and it's not just slapping brand names on it.

lucasnortj 5y ago

Grow up. There is no moral equivalence between. Israel and Saudi Arabia. The genocidal rhetoric against Jews in the Muslim world is insane

mikevm 5y ago

Oh, please. Hamas would kill every man woman and child in Israel without batting an eye if it had the means to do so (heck, so would the PLO). And they actually say it explicitly in their media, something western media rarely covers. https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm https://fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/880818a.htm > 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.' And yet you bring up "mowing the lawn", which is an unfortunate reality in which Israel has to sacrifice soldiers every few years in order to keep fighting this genocidal organization which does not respect the lives of its own, uses them as human shields and is happy when the Arab death count is high because it just brings negative coverage on Israel. P.S. I can already see the downvotes coming, which I'm pretty sure are from people who don't live here and have no clue. I guess reading a Noam Chomsky book makes everyone an expert nowdays.

tinus_hn 5y ago
Whatever your cause, two wrongs will never make a right.
irrational 5y ago
That does tend to be what happens when your back is against a wall while another party tries to exterminate you.
- mikevm 5y ago
  Sorry, who's trying to exterminate whom?
  - babesh 5y ago
    Frankly, effectively both sides. Just two chimp groups fighting over territory. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War My guess is that like in the above case, one side will wipe out the other. That is why both sides are playing for keeps. I don’t think you can carve out a tenable country out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel without the West Bank probably doesn’t work either.
    - iforgiveyou 5y ago
      Oh wow, does one extremist group in Palestine express their desire to kill their enemy? How shocking! Do you have any idea how the state of Israel was made possible? Through pure terrorism. Which continues to this day. When you oppress and terrorise a people for generations, do you expect them to just take it and accept their fate, as if they deserve it some how? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun "Every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state" It's pretty easy for you to sit infront of your computer calling them "chimps", while you have nothing to worry about. You should be ashamed of yourself.
      - YouthfulMarxism 5y ago
        Were there any history of anti-semitism in muslim world before Israel rebuilding? What was position and role of mullahs during those occurences?
mssundaram 5y ago
I'm reading your reply in Ben Shapiro's voice
gadders 5y ago
You will never have piece in the Middle East when there are people who want to kill all the Jews, and Jews who don't want to be killed.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  That seems a little one sided. It's seems to be a complex conflict.
- ivanhoe 5y ago
  You lack historical context there, what about Israelis expelling people from their homes, people who lived there for centuries? There's no good and bad side there, it's 2+ sides fighting for limited space and resources (and colonial and neocolonial powers steering the whole thing to suit their geo-political interests of the day). It's ugly all over, no matter which way you look at it...
  - mikevm 5y ago
    You're also lacking historical context. What about Arabs conquering Palestine in the 7th century and expelling people from their homes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant#Conquest_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_the_Levant#... Plus, many Arabs left their homes because they told them to do so. They expected them to be able to come back after they finish killing the Jews, which never happened, and hopefully never will.
    - g8oz 5y ago
      The Nakba happened in living memory though. We can't do anything about the 7th century but we can do something about the current occupation and circumscribing of Palestinian lives. Namely a) Boycotts b) Divestment c) Sanctions.
      - mikevm 5y ago
        The "Nakba" is the result of their own leaders starting a war against the nascent Jewish state and telling the Arabs to leave their homes and come back once they're done getting rid of the Jews - something that never happened, and hopefully never will. They Arabs had multiple opportunities to settle this conflict, it's purely a result of their own making.
Udik 5y ago
> Hamas would kill every man woman and child in Israel without batting an eye if it had the means to do so Yours is a textbook example of de-humanisation of the enemy. Once you believe this, you can allow yourself any atrocity. And you do.
- TheGuyWhoCodes 5y ago
  It's not dehumanization when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel). He didn't say Palestinians as a whole. When you show compassion for the cruel you'll end up being cruel to the merciful.
  - Udik 5y ago
    > when the group is based on literally killing of Jews (Not even just in Israel). This is literally bullshit.
    - TheGuyWhoCodes 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't calling to kill the Jews? Calling for Jihad against the Jews and quoting Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews isn't an incitement for genocide? This reads just like mein kampf, if this was written by a white person you would call him a nazi.
      - Udik 5y ago
        I don't think there is any chance for me to convince you, but the Hamas covenant is an old document, written by religious fundamentalists who also were inflamed by decades of conflict on their homeland and holy land (and whatever you think of it, you can't deny that the people who are losing the war and the land must feel wronged). So I cut them some slack and don't take the religious raving seriously. As the Wikipedia page you linked explains, Hamas itself has moved on and is far from monolithic: various of its leaders have multiple times declared in the past 15 years that they've moved away from that original covenant. The second sentence of the Wikipedia entry literally states that Hamas has a new charter since 2017. So why would you fixate on a piece of text written 33 years ago by angered fundamentalists, that has also been multiple times rejected by the leaders of the same movement and that is now superseded by a more recent one? If you want to hate someone, it's easy to cling to a single piece of damning, black-and-white evidence, however outdated and contested. Don't you think you should consider more elements, at least to give your views some balance? You can check the new charter here: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
hootbootscoot 5y ago
So which solution are you in favor of? 1) a two state solution, in which, somehow, Gaza and the West-Bank must be free to pass goods and humans with zero Israeli involvement (how? a tunnel?) 2) a one-state solution (a greater Israel) with a Jewish minority Because I see cynicism in the actions of Likud (and others)_that have ramped up a lot since the assassination of Itzhak Rabin in 1995 by a right wing settler. I see cynicism in allowing right wing marches through the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. I see cynicism in settlements built upon annexed land. I see cynicism in deliberate provocative actions designed to goad Palestinians into predictable action. Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.) I don't recall anyone working with the Palestinian Authority to offer any "carrot" to complement the "stick" (incentivizing support for PA vs punishing Hamas) I see hard line nationalists in Israel with no actual path forward. Do they really think they can treat 4 million people (both territories combined) as inconsequential forever? Is genocide and "death to Arabs" an actual game plan for some extremists? The settler thing is blatantly copying the old American "how the west was won" plot line, ship in new immigrants and send them to the frontier to defend/expand it. and yes, I've spent significant time in Israel and I'm not trying to push some unrealistic story here, I'm trying to say that you don't even realize how right wing your bathwater has become... BUT... the topic was "Saudi Arabia cuts a youths head off for being rebellious"... and I am disgusted at how "The West" speaks of democracy and values and rails on China, but gives Saudi Arabia a break and prefers to sell them weapons. Egypt and support for Sisi (and Mubarak) is also disgusting... Do you know who was promising in Egypt? Anwar Sadat. Look what happened to him...
- mikevm 5y ago
  Why do I have to pick from your two options? Who knows what possibilities lie ahead given enough time. > Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza, like it or not. (I don't, I see them as essentially right wing nationalists. I see them maintaining power even more the hard Israel strikes Gaza. Sorry, but what do you expect Israel to do here? Hamas shells Israel continuously, it's easy for outsiders to virtue signal and tell Israel not to attack back, but they would've done 10 times worse. > It's the unfortunate result of squashing 2 million people into a giant prison camp where the passage of products and people requires the approval of an outside entity.) Why is it when people bring up the "blockade" of Gaza they always conveniently forget that Gaza is also bordered by Egypt, who are also cutting them off, yet no one ever blames their "brothers" and yet expects Israel to open up the border.

ddalex 5y ago

Well, they have to recoup somehow the dollars they given to SA for oil.... The europeans are doing it smarter by selling them cars and nice clothing with "high value" brand names on it....

fxtentacle 5y ago
Do we? I remember nuclear submarines for Israel driving through Europe. And the Mossad got stuck in mud ^^ https://www.newstalk.com/news/german-mayor-issues-bill-to-israel-after-rescuing-armed-spies-stuck-in-the-mud-610177 https://www.newstalk.com/news/german-mayor-issues-bill-to-is... Also there's a lot of advertisements for homing missiles made in Germany ... "Aerospace and Defense" is a very nice company name for a weapons manufacturer.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
A manufacturer i know was forced by their client to help setup a division China. After a year and quality problems because of using inferior components ( and so reducing their BOM), the client reverted his decision. While your comment was being sarcastic. Quality is a thing and it's not just slapping brand names on it.