Israel under Siege

Quote: kenarman

Quote: Gandler

Quote: rxwine

Quote: Gandler

I never thought I would be saying this, but I just watched a 40 minute Ben Shapiro video.

It was a walkthrough of the history of Israel from the ancient to the modern and it was excellent (minus some random slurs against the UN and Biden, but I guess he has to throw something to his base). But, it was a surprisingly good video on the history leading to the current affairs. It shows how many people make Israel a villain, when they have been the hero since its inception. Its basically a history of the aggressor playing the victim every time they lose a war of aggression.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEoVzKyD_IM&t=502s

I don’t really buy arguments for nation states to exist by right, so I consider it pretty much nonsense.

They exist by power. The rest is fancy window dressing.

Sometimes it’s through someone else’s power, but it’s still power.

Well its not really an argument to exist by right, but just a historical reality. But, all States exist by power, that has always been reality. Some are more progressive than others.

It may be power that allows a physical state to exist but it is much more important that a state exists in the mind of it's citizens for long term viability. As an example look at Czechoslovakia. It existed as a physical state through the power of Russia. It's citizens though always thought of it as 2 countries and once they were able to peacefully separate they went back to what had always existed in their minds. Yugoslavia another artificial Russian creation also ended up as the divided countries that existed in peoples minds. Unfortunately it took a very brutal civil war for them get there. It takes a very exceptional country to get long term buy-in from a diverse population. Countries held by power alone have always waxed and waned through history.

Israel has always existed in the minds of the Jews. Countless thousands of them kept staying or returning to Israel over history to keep the dream alive. Many of the people who returned over the years knew their live would be very hard if they even survived. The strength of their belief in their country still brought them home.

As far as historical context, we can compare the USA founding to what is going on over there.

One can believe the USA was founded on a set of ideals only and has every right to be tough on the Palestinians for acting unreasonable over operating a founding of a country, or one can wonder why the Native Americans don't own at least half the geography here and whether 100 years of slavery was foundational in our formation.

So it seems that Hamas is back at it again, this time with balloons (incendiary balloons which cause fires).

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-gaza-balloons-intl/index.html

Israel is of course responding. And, of course que the people who want to label Israel the aggressor.

I don't know anything about this Finance Minister, but I like his statement in the article, "For every attack in Israel, targeted assassinations and widespread attacks on Hamas targets will be carried out,". It is a great way to summarize the circumstance.

Let's cut to the chase.

Israel, nuke Iran.

Time's a wasting, better get to it.

Apparently its a big controversy that Coca Cola banned "Palestine" from their options for ordering a personalized bottle from, to custom order "Share a Coke With X" Where X is the word(s) you choose. I never even knew this was a thing until this news story, but I gave in and tried some different words.

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/coca-cola-faces-backlash-for-banning-palestine-on-customized-label-tool/

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210630-coca-cola-faces-backlash-for-banning-palestine-on-customised-bottles/




Palestine is indeed banned:

https://us.coca-cola.com/store/personalized-bottle

"Oops! Looks like the name you requested is not an approved one. Names may not be approved if they're potentially offensive to other people, trademarked, or celebrity names. We've worked hard to get this list right, but sometimes we mess up. If you think this is an error, please contact our Customer Care team. Otherwise, please try again, keep it fun and in the spirit of sharing! " (The response when you enter a banned set of words).

Black lives matter is also banned. (Ironically "Black Lies Matter" is allowed). Even "Coke" is banned. It is worth noting that in my brief experimentation, many countries are banned (even "Canada" and "Israel"). So the articles that say Palestine is banned while Israel is allowed are just wrong.... Also, who really cares? Its a custom soda bottle generator thing, I don't even see how this is a controversy, other than people seeking out a conspiracy....

"Ireland" is also banned, is this some English conspiracy to take over the island?

Some people are acting like this is the conspiracy of the century, I just do not see it... They seem relatively consistent on the approved words (and some of the controversial phrases that are allowed are likely due to obscurity, meaning they are not well known phrases that are easy to shield against and probably require manual review....)

("Trump", "Obama", "Clinton", and "Biden" are also banned, "Reagan" seems to be the most recent President that is allowed from trying Presidential names, as far as I can tell everything Reagan and earlier is approved, I did not try all only a few after hitting Reagan, so that is an assumption on my part, actually "Lincoln" is banned but that may be a trademark issue from the car company).

The point is people who tend to side with Palestine try to find "Zionist" conspiracies with everything.... Even pointless soda bottle customizer things.... (Even when the point does not even make sense in that context to begin with if you do care about soda labels.....)

"Israel's Olympic gold victory raises Jewish identity debate" https://apnews.com/article/2020-tokyo-olympics-gymnastics-sports-middle-east-religion-7e8669c65db038f3d4f906f9e90895f2

Fascinating
He's Jewish enough to compete for gold
But
Not Jewish enough to be able to get married

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seQx_5MckGI




This is how a solid leader supports Israel. I am not huge on the new PM though, very conservative (even socially), in some ways a step down from Netanyahu.

Quote: Gandler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seQx_5MckGI
This is how a solid leader supports Israel.

LOL! I love it when people inadvertently use oxymorons without even knowing it.

Quote: Evenbob

LOL! I love it when people inadvertently use oxymorons without even knowing it.

Not an oxymoron, solid leaders support Israel, and this is emblematic of sound policy.

Its good leadership. I praise and critique individuals in both parties equally on this issue when individuals are right or wrong, not a partisan issue.

I even said that I am not a fan at of the current Israel PM (he is basically the Israeli Tea Party), but supporting Israel is still the right move.

Anyone who thinks that American leaders should be against Israel (which is what being an oxymoron would be in that context), is empirically wrong. Israel needs to remain a close ally.

Quote: Gandler

Anyone who thinks that American leaders should be against Israel (which is what being an oxymoron would be in that context), is empirically wrong. Israel needs to remain a close ally.

Please tell this to the current Democrat Party who lets The Squad speak for them. The Squad is as anti-Israel as David Duke.

Quote: AZDuffman

Please tell this to the current Democrat Party who lets The Squad speak for them. The Squad is as anti-Israel as David Duke.

The Squad is a joke and certainly do not speak for the Democratic Party. A quick Google search of "David Duke" brought this up as the top result:

https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-david-duke-a97b8b2d48c163c5965c2574ccbbe3d3

' “By defiance to Z.O.G. Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!” Mr. Duke wrote on his site, using the acronym for “Zionist Occupation Government,” a term anti-Semites use to refer to the U.S. government as secretly controlled by Jews. '

Anytime you are praised by David Duke you need to re-evaluate your life.

In any case the squad is bonkers, defund the police, defund ICE, cut support to Israel. I have very few values in alignment with them.

I would say the most innocent member of the four (I think or is it 5 now?, whatever) is AOC, she strikes me as more of a useful idiot, that is popular on social media, whereas the others strike me as more malicious even if they are less well known in the mainstream.