Well this is a very myopic view of the whole conflict.Originally Posted by thethe
Here's a tiny bit more nuanced take
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinio...as-ncna1266890
Both sides have done wrong by the people of Jerusalem. There was no reason for the Israeli Police to incite violence by attacking people in Al Aqse. There's no reason for them to continue their aggressive settlement of East Jerusalem. Certainly Hamas shouldn't be attacking cities and hiding behind human shields.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
Recent funding was given to the Palestinians. Biden regime has soften ties with Iran.
And we wonder why this is happening all of a sudden?
Natural Immunity Croc
Didn't we give them like $250M last month?
we give Israel more money than anyone
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman
"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
Well, we shouldn't give money to anyone.
But if we are, giving it to the only country in the middle east that tolerates Muslims, jews, guys, and women's rights is probably the best place to start
i guess you can move that goalpost
have at it
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman
"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
Sounds like Portland
Ivermectin Man
Portland has better donuts and Jerusalem has better shawarma and hummus
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman
"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
Netanyahu's spokesperson to the Arab People shared a an almost certainly fake video. Why would he do that?
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
It's not that criticizing Israel's government is antisemitic. However, antisemitism is a very, very common reason why people criticize Israel.
To me, what I feel like gets lost in the argument of “who started it” about this particular conflagration is the persistent conditions that Palestinians are living in within illegally occupied territories, the ongoing precarity and daily humiliations, etc, that exist there, and the general level of comfort that a large subset of Americans have with the continuation of Israel’s settlement policy and the increasingly reactionary tilt of its government.
While there is definitely overlap between anti-semitism and and-Zionism on the left (especially internationally) there’s also plenty of anti-Semitic pro-Zionist sentiment on the right here at home.
I just think that anyone who looks at the reality of life in the occupied territories and is shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, at violent resistance is, at the very least, telling a fairy tale.
The Biden state dept announced that they were restoring something like $235M in aid that was cut under Trump. It goes mostly to UN and USAID development programs. So, yeah, sort of, but also no, not really.
goldfly (05-14-2021)
Yeah, nothing says “we love tolerance” like $3.8B of military aid.
goldfly (05-14-2021)
Jerry Hendrix makes a great argument for abandoning boots on the ground imperialism and returning the military to it's constitutional mandate of being a sea power. Even better, he ties it into infrastructure, job creation, blue collar workers, union jobs, free market capitalism, and opposition to China and Russia. Below is a piece of the much longer essay.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magaz...mpression=true
world we have created is not the world that China and Russia wish to live in. Its very openness and expansive freedoms threaten the domestic stability of these authoritarian powers, which recognize that the free sea can no longer be defended by the U.S. Navy. Having fallen from 6,000 ships in 1945 to a bare 296 deployable ships today through a series of ill-informed assumptions regarding an enduring ideological victory and the value of “peace dividends,” the American fleet is no longer large enough to persistently protect its interests across the globe. Through underinvestment in its Navy, the United States has created a vacuum and invited a competition in the large maritime global commons, one that it can ill afford to lose.
Because the United States has presented itself as a global leader, it must continue to lead globally so that the security structure it has created can sustain itself. Should China in the South China Sea or Russia in the Arctic successfully create and then sustain a carve-out to the concept of the free sea, should either create a local sphere of influence, it will make a lie of the entire American-led global system, introduce instability, and most assuredly lead to a disastrous and costly war. But there is an alternative to such a cascade of failure: a decision to return to the Founders’ intent of placing naval power first in our national strategy, reduce Ameri*can boots-on-the-ground continentalist commitments around the world, and focus on investing in maritime commercial trade and a naval offshore-balancing military strategy.
Recognition of the need to reduce boots-on-the-ground commitments should be quick. Our strategic situation is not at present aligned with a continentalist, land-power approach to the world. On our own continent, situated between two friendly, unthreatening, and much smaller states (in terms of their population and economic power), we have no need for a large standing army. Maintaining one over the past 70 years has, in some cases, served as an excuse for nation-building and foreign-policy adventurism. While some might also state that our alliance commitments force a requirement for a large land component upon us, we should recognize that the size of our army has served all too often as an excuse for allies to underinvest in their own security as well as to shift resources toward their own domestic social-welfare programs. Ultimately, a focus on a sea-power strategy will assist other nations by encouraging them to right-size their own national-security apparatus to meet the current generation of threats.
It is important, even critical, to understand that investment in commercial maritime trade is crucial to returning the United States to its historical position as a sea power. Before 1981 the United States government recognized its civilian merchant fleet as a core strategic reserve of maritime power. Commercial ships could carry merchant trade, but they could also carry logistical supplies for the military in wartime. Shipyards could build new ships for civilian fleets as well as the Navy, but they could also repair ships damaged in wartime operations. Shipyards also drove other portions of the economy. For every shipyard blue-collar job, five to seven well-paying positions were created in upstream parts and component suppliers.
It was a complicated industrial process that was subsidized as a longstanding policy by the federal government, which recognized that a robust and resilient shipbuilding sector was a critical component of a comprehensive national-security strategy. These subsidies, however, were ended in the 1980s, and U.S. shipbuilding subsequently withered even as other nations in Europe and Asia continued to subsidize their own shipbuilders. Today China, the world’s largest shipbuilding nation, has over 1,200 shipyards, one of which produces more tonnage per year than the entirety of U.S. shipbuilding. Today China, South Korea, Japan, and Europe control and profit from their participation in a growing and thriving global shipping market while the United States sits largely on the sidelines.
Critics may say that returning to a policy of providing subsidies to our shipbuilding industry would go against free-market principles. But we must recognize that every other shipbuilding nation provides such subsidies, to the great benefit of its industries, its economy, and its national security. Returning subsidies to American shipbuilders does nothing more than provide a level global-competitive playing field for them and increase the resilience of our overall national-security infrastructure. Additionally, any strategy to confront China on the high seas must include a detailed investment and management plan for the nation’s shipbuilding infrastructure so that we can quickly and efficiently rebuild this part of the nation’s economy while strengthening its security. The nation is perhaps fortunate that there is already an acknowledged need to reenergize the civilian shipbuilding base, because most of the nation’s strategic sealift fleet needs to be recapitalized.
An expanded civilian shipbuilding capacity will make it easier to take the next step to once again becoming a sea power: rebuilding the United States Navy. The modern fleet is highly complex. Phased-array radars, passive sensors that constantly scan the expanded electromagnetic spectrum, ballistic-missile-defense systems, and hypersonic cruise and boost-glide systems all include technologies that exceed the imaginations of most Americans. These systems and the ships that integrate them are expensive to build and are made more so by the lack of capacity and competition within the shipbuilding sector. Today there are just two American shipyards that build destroyers and two others that build submarines. While that may seem like competition, it’s not much, and there needs to be more.
The nation needs to expand its fleet if it is to maintain its position in the world and its notion of the free sea and free trade. We will need a Navy battle force of around 450 ships, up from the previously mentioned 296 ships. We can accomplish it along two paths: building new ships, and extending the lives of the ships we already have. To do this, we need more shipbuilding yards and more drydocks to perform complex overhauls and ship-modernization programs. During World War II the Navy operated ten industrial shipyards and could contract building and repairs to 50 additional commercial drydocks around the nation to service large combatants. Today the Navy operates just four shipyards and can call upon fewer than 20 commercial drydocks, and many of those are in the wrong locations. Aside from one yard in San Diego, there is not much shipbuilding or ship-repair capacity on the nation’s west coast, where most of the demand for these services would occur in a potential war with China.
Go get him!
Founding member of the Whiny Little Bitches and Pricks Club
I thought Jared fixed the ME with simple economic incentives for everyone.
FFF - BB, BB, 2B, HR, 2B, HR, 1B, BB, BB, 1B, BB, BB, HR
goldfly (05-14-2021)
The UAE has been pumping out amazing pro-Israeli propaganda since entering the Abraham Accords. It is a country that I have been to a few times and worked there for several weeks as recently as late 2019. The population there is one of the most de-politicized I've seen in any Arab country. In some ways, this propaganda has a positive objective. But it also is so over-the-top that it risks being counterproductive. In the midst of this latest crisis, the UAE's man in Jerusalem is out giving interviews about how wonderful everything is in Israel. As if nothing is happening. I'm thinking this has a risk of backfiring even with a sheep-like de-politicized citizenry. People everywhere will react to being lied to so blatantly by their government.
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
I thought the same. Two months ago to the day Jared was praising Biden for focusing on threats from China and calling bluffs from Iran. All while celebrating the 'last vestiges of the Arab-Israeli' conflict because the Abraham Accords apparently demonstrated that conflict was 'nothing more than a real estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.' Whoops.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/opportu...st-11615750526
Hope to see the US take some additional action here soon. It is complicated because- relative to their neighbors- Israel is a clear leader in the region on human rights and is a valuable ally. That said, they don't seem to always apply the same human rights to Palestinians. I won't pretend to be an expert on Middle Eastern policy, but it strikes me that both Israel and Hamas deserve their share of condemnation.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...-200-1.4566500
Yeah, this is looking like a bit of a Netanyahu attempt at a coup of sorts. His regime was at risk of being ousted and he drummed up a direct conflict with Palestinians knowing Hamas would react and it would charge the right wing base to rally around him.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/...his-gaza-house
Israel leveling media buildings and killing journalists. Not exactly a good look when you're trying to be the good guy.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
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