5 ms·

US support for Israel is one of the most horrible things imaginable, really makes me ashamed. It is only the US standing between the current horrendous status q

US support for Israel is one of the most horrible things imaginable, really makes me ashamed. It is only the US standing between the current horrendous status quo and Israel being an true international pariah state. Hopefully we cut off support and usher in a find out era.

thot_experiment 6mo ago
(Though to be honest my position is probably that we need to go past cutting off support and US tax dollars should go toward reparations for Palesine, Lebanon and probably Iran and others, we are complicit in a lot of fucked shit.) ((I don't think those places are lead by great individuals and everything is amazing to be clear, I also think the people there have suffered immensely from a century of american, british and israeli meddling and we should be held accountable))
- Allfodr 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tristanb 6mo ago
    Why?
    - Allfodr 6mo ago
      Because I don't think US tax money should go toward reparations for Palestine, Lebanon, Iran or anywhere else. We're not 'complicit' in the way you're framing it
      - thot_experiment 6mo ago
        The only reason Israel is able to commit the horrors they are is because they can fuck around without finding out due to US protection paid for by our tax dollars, we are absolutely complicit. Of course that's only in the immediate term, I urge you to look at the history of the region even a little critically, so much of the conflict there is rooted in British, American and Israeli meddling, it's an insane take to claim that we are not responsible and that we have not benefited immensely.
        Allfodr 6mo ago
        No, money has nothing to do with it. The US military aid package to Israel is only around 2-3% of Israel's annual state budget. That's a relatively small amount, and far less significant than people tend to make it out to be. The US provides this aid because it serves American interests. A large portion of the money is actually spent in the US, benefiting the American defense industry, not just financially but also through technological development and shared innovation. What Israel truly gains from the relationship with the US is diplomatic cover, mainly the UN Security Council veto. Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it, whether that's justified or not is a separate debate.
        thot_experiment 6mo ago
        I don't understand what the purpose of making a distinction between monetary support in terms of direct aid, and indirect aid. The entire apparatus of the US government is paid for by our taxes, we pay for it either way. We also pay for it in instability and negative sentiment. > Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
        Allfodr 6mo ago
        > It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me. It's crazy to me that you know the UN is literally run by states that actually commit war crimes, kill LGBTQ people, suppress women and minority rights, countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and you still think UN condemnation means anything. They're condemning the only democratic country in the entire Middle East, the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something. Arab citizens can vote, gay people can live openly, women sit in parliament and serve in the military. That's Israel. And that's who they keep putting on trial. Of course I fully support the aid for Israel.
  - _DeadFred_ 6mo ago
    [dead]
- suburban_strike 6mo ago
  This is "let's you and him fight" logic. We've already given Israel almost $400 billion. Subrogate them for Palestinian reparations instead of billing everything to us like a teenage girl let loose at the mall with Daddy's credit card.
anal_reactor 6mo ago
[flagged]
- thot_experiment 6mo ago
  I wonder if Iran being a dictatorship has a cause? Why does the Arab world hate Israel I wonder? Everything you're talking about is basically a direct result of UK, US and israeli bullshit in the area. It's people with exactly the same sort of colonial geopolitical ideas as you that CAUSED THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
  - spwa4 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - thot_experiment 6mo ago
      What are you on about lmao, what is "leftist thought". My ideology? I'm not my ideology, my ideology is an ever shifting set of ideals I explore to try to build an internally consistent model for decision making. How in the world does a belief in US/UK meddling being the proximal cause for many of the modern issues in the region have anything to do with the crimes of the Kremlin. Can you please engage with the substance of my claims in any way? I'm not here to defend whatever "leftism" means to you.
      - spwa4 6mo ago
        > How in the world does a belief in US/UK meddling ... Because you exclude all other meddling as an explanation. The Kremlin is the other big source of meddling (if you rate them by success in actually changing things, US is on top. Moscow is a distant second, and the third is so far behind it's barely worth mentioning, also it's unclear who that even is), so the assumption is you implicitly defend if you attack US meddling. Compare to when 2 people are fighting in the playground and you complain only about ONE of them hitting things, without making any remark about the other, or taking any kind of measure to get the other to stop. People like to describe that as neutrality, but of course, it is anything but. Which then gets confusing because people who are badly informed might start to genuinely believe only one of them was hitting, and might even blame the first for all damages. Of course, this is exactly the point of one-sided reporting, even if the reporting itself is 100% true. Even the BBC is doing it these days, little to no reporting on what happens (imho, not because it's going well) in the UK, and "news in support of UK foreign policy" everywhere else. Oh and separate views for UK people and international viewers. And yes, that's in some ways the same Iran does, but there's no bullets or executions involved if you try to get around it, a pretty big difference. In this conflict the US is defending, let's call it "international liberalism" (in the French revolution sense, ie. laissez-faire), or what the UN calls "freedom of navigation". Which is a euphemism for tax-free international trade over the seas. I get that there are name clashes with for example US politics, let's please not focus the discussion on whether those names are deserving, or who they (don't) match in US politics. And, yes, preventing Iran from getting a nuke falls under liberalism, as in Iran getting a nuke will definitely kill a freedom of navigation in that part of the world. The other side, ie. Russia/China, if we're only counting UN SC members, is about locking down international trade behind political agreements (which is also a euphemism: these agreements were historically never agreements, but rather the outcomes of wars), ie. letting Russia and China, since they have nuclear weapons, decide who gets oil from the middle east and who doesn't. Through threats. So you when you attack one side, getting criticized for supporting the other side, is fair. If you don't know the other side, that's called being badly informed, that's literally just dumb and then really you should shut up.
bryanlarsen 6mo ago
US support for Netanyahu is one of the most horrible things imaginable. US support for a non-Netanyahu Israel may not be so much. The distinction is important, at the very least so people don't call you an anti-Semite. But even without that, I think it's important. I'm anti-Trump, anti-Netanyahu, anti-Hamas, and anti-IRGC, but not anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-Palestine or anti-Iran. The citizens of those countries are the victims of their leaders.
- thot_experiment 6mo ago
  I said what I said; israel is the problem, I have no significant beef with Judaism (no more than any religion and less than some). https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extremes-of-israeli-public-opinion https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extremes-of-israe...
  - TitaRusell 6mo ago
    The first woman doctor in the Netherlands was Jewish. Ofcourse nowadays Dutch/European Jewish culture is utterly despised by Israelis because it was secular and liberal.
  - micik 6mo ago
    I recommend you read the book World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. The experience of the world Jewry in (pre-)WW2 continental Europe was so shockingly brutal, the establishment of the state of Israel was an inevitability. Jews were the scapegoat driven out from cities into the desert to amend for other's sins for millenia. Some would say they've gotten used to it. The bestial conduct of Nazis was such that even the people for whom the experience of persecution was a fact of life and indeed their toleration of the condition almost stoic in nature, came to realize they had to have a place where they are not the Other and won't be scapegoated again. And so it happened. To paint a picture with words...Stefan Zweig, model intellectual and model European, ended his life in 1942 at age 61 in Brazil, having lost his home of 20 years in Salzburg, his beloved Europe and, in his own words, a large part of himself. The worst exponents of Europe in Nazi uniforms and their collaborators, the "decent people" of Germany, Austria and other countries, killed the best exponents of Europe and Europeanism, over insane paranoiac deluded hate. Killed them slowly, then quickly. Indirectly, by stripping them of everything they considered theirs, then very directly in extermination facilities. The people who suffered this horror established a state and Europe lost intelligentsia and human capital it could not afford to lose. Fin. Just five years ago, saying that the state of Israel is the problem would have you branded an anti-semite and driven out of polite society and rightly so. As a non-Jew with no skin in the game, I find the reawakening of these sentiments horrifying.

thot_experiment 6mo ago

(Though to be honest my position is probably that we need to go past cutting off support and US tax dollars should go toward reparations for Palesine, Lebanon and probably Iran and others, we are complicit in a lot of fucked shit.) ((I don't think those places are lead by great individuals and everything is amazing to be clear, I also think the people there have suffered immensely from a century of american, british and israeli meddling and we should be held accountable))

Allfodr 6mo ago
[flagged]
- tristanb 6mo ago
  Why?
  - Allfodr 6mo ago
    Because I don't think US tax money should go toward reparations for Palestine, Lebanon, Iran or anywhere else. We're not 'complicit' in the way you're framing it
    - thot_experiment 6mo ago
      The only reason Israel is able to commit the horrors they are is because they can fuck around without finding out due to US protection paid for by our tax dollars, we are absolutely complicit. Of course that's only in the immediate term, I urge you to look at the history of the region even a little critically, so much of the conflict there is rooted in British, American and Israeli meddling, it's an insane take to claim that we are not responsible and that we have not benefited immensely.
      - Allfodr 6mo ago
        No, money has nothing to do with it. The US military aid package to Israel is only around 2-3% of Israel's annual state budget. That's a relatively small amount, and far less significant than people tend to make it out to be. The US provides this aid because it serves American interests. A large portion of the money is actually spent in the US, benefiting the American defense industry, not just financially but also through technological development and shared innovation. What Israel truly gains from the relationship with the US is diplomatic cover, mainly the UN Security Council veto. Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it, whether that's justified or not is a separate debate.
        thot_experiment 6mo ago
        I don't understand what the purpose of making a distinction between monetary support in terms of direct aid, and indirect aid. The entire apparatus of the US government is paid for by our taxes, we pay for it either way. We also pay for it in instability and negative sentiment. > Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
        Allfodr 6mo ago
        > It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me. It's crazy to me that you know the UN is literally run by states that actually commit war crimes, kill LGBTQ people, suppress women and minority rights, countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and you still think UN condemnation means anything. They're condemning the only democratic country in the entire Middle East, the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something. Arab citizens can vote, gay people can live openly, women sit in parliament and serve in the military. That's Israel. And that's who they keep putting on trial. Of course I fully support the aid for Israel.
- _DeadFred_ 6mo ago
  [dead]
suburban_strike 6mo ago
This is "let's you and him fight" logic. We've already given Israel almost $400 billion. Subrogate them for Palestinian reparations instead of billing everything to us like a teenage girl let loose at the mall with Daddy's credit card.

anal_reactor 6mo ago

[flagged]

thot_experiment 6mo ago
I wonder if Iran being a dictatorship has a cause? Why does the Arab world hate Israel I wonder? Everything you're talking about is basically a direct result of UK, US and israeli bullshit in the area. It's people with exactly the same sort of colonial geopolitical ideas as you that CAUSED THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
- spwa4 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - thot_experiment 6mo ago
    What are you on about lmao, what is "leftist thought". My ideology? I'm not my ideology, my ideology is an ever shifting set of ideals I explore to try to build an internally consistent model for decision making. How in the world does a belief in US/UK meddling being the proximal cause for many of the modern issues in the region have anything to do with the crimes of the Kremlin. Can you please engage with the substance of my claims in any way? I'm not here to defend whatever "leftism" means to you.
    - spwa4 6mo ago
      > How in the world does a belief in US/UK meddling ... Because you exclude all other meddling as an explanation. The Kremlin is the other big source of meddling (if you rate them by success in actually changing things, US is on top. Moscow is a distant second, and the third is so far behind it's barely worth mentioning, also it's unclear who that even is), so the assumption is you implicitly defend if you attack US meddling. Compare to when 2 people are fighting in the playground and you complain only about ONE of them hitting things, without making any remark about the other, or taking any kind of measure to get the other to stop. People like to describe that as neutrality, but of course, it is anything but. Which then gets confusing because people who are badly informed might start to genuinely believe only one of them was hitting, and might even blame the first for all damages. Of course, this is exactly the point of one-sided reporting, even if the reporting itself is 100% true. Even the BBC is doing it these days, little to no reporting on what happens (imho, not because it's going well) in the UK, and "news in support of UK foreign policy" everywhere else. Oh and separate views for UK people and international viewers. And yes, that's in some ways the same Iran does, but there's no bullets or executions involved if you try to get around it, a pretty big difference. In this conflict the US is defending, let's call it "international liberalism" (in the French revolution sense, ie. laissez-faire), or what the UN calls "freedom of navigation". Which is a euphemism for tax-free international trade over the seas. I get that there are name clashes with for example US politics, let's please not focus the discussion on whether those names are deserving, or who they (don't) match in US politics. And, yes, preventing Iran from getting a nuke falls under liberalism, as in Iran getting a nuke will definitely kill a freedom of navigation in that part of the world. The other side, ie. Russia/China, if we're only counting UN SC members, is about locking down international trade behind political agreements (which is also a euphemism: these agreements were historically never agreements, but rather the outcomes of wars), ie. letting Russia and China, since they have nuclear weapons, decide who gets oil from the middle east and who doesn't. Through threats. So you when you attack one side, getting criticized for supporting the other side, is fair. If you don't know the other side, that's called being badly informed, that's literally just dumb and then really you should shut up.

bryanlarsen 6mo ago

US support for Netanyahu is one of the most horrible things imaginable. US support for a non-Netanyahu Israel may not be so much. The distinction is important, at the very least so people don't call you an anti-Semite. But even without that, I think it's important. I'm anti-Trump, anti-Netanyahu, anti-Hamas, and anti-IRGC, but not anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-Palestine or anti-Iran. The citizens of those countries are the victims of their leaders.

thot_experiment 6mo ago
I said what I said; israel is the problem, I have no significant beef with Judaism (no more than any religion and less than some). https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extremes-of-israeli-public-opinion https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extremes-of-israe...
- TitaRusell 6mo ago
  The first woman doctor in the Netherlands was Jewish. Ofcourse nowadays Dutch/European Jewish culture is utterly despised by Israelis because it was secular and liberal.
- micik 6mo ago
  I recommend you read the book World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. The experience of the world Jewry in (pre-)WW2 continental Europe was so shockingly brutal, the establishment of the state of Israel was an inevitability. Jews were the scapegoat driven out from cities into the desert to amend for other's sins for millenia. Some would say they've gotten used to it. The bestial conduct of Nazis was such that even the people for whom the experience of persecution was a fact of life and indeed their toleration of the condition almost stoic in nature, came to realize they had to have a place where they are not the Other and won't be scapegoated again. And so it happened. To paint a picture with words...Stefan Zweig, model intellectual and model European, ended his life in 1942 at age 61 in Brazil, having lost his home of 20 years in Salzburg, his beloved Europe and, in his own words, a large part of himself. The worst exponents of Europe in Nazi uniforms and their collaborators, the "decent people" of Germany, Austria and other countries, killed the best exponents of Europe and Europeanism, over insane paranoiac deluded hate. Killed them slowly, then quickly. Indirectly, by stripping them of everything they considered theirs, then very directly in extermination facilities. The people who suffered this horror established a state and Europe lost intelligentsia and human capital it could not afford to lose. Fin. Just five years ago, saying that the state of Israel is the problem would have you branded an anti-semite and driven out of polite society and rightly so. As a non-Jew with no skin in the game, I find the reawakening of these sentiments horrifying.