And all we have to do to have them roll over on our command is to threaten the halt of the billions of weapons and aid we send annually. My main issue is that Israel/US relations feel like the tail is wagging the dog. Israel exists because of the West. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that we have immense leverage over them due to them being surrounded by enemies and dependent on US weapons systems like the Iron Dome... we can basically force them to do whatever it is we want. I blame the US and the bought politicians for the tragedy in Gaza as much as I do the Israeli's.
I have the feeling Israel simply will go the way of Rhodesia within a few generations due to the actions of this war resulting in widespread de-legitimization on both sides of the political spectrum and especially generationally. No one in the US actually wants to spend tax money on a patch of land in the Middle East the size of New Jersey, especially if they don't behave.
US military aid is around 1% of budget. The consensus in Israel is to stop accepting this aid from USA.
Iron Dome is Israeli weapon system. Out of all weapons that Israel gets from USA the only things that Israel doesn't produce domestically are planes (Usa killed Israeli fighter jet project 40 years ago) and helicopters. All other weapon systems are domestically produced. Israel is eighth largest arms exporter in world
I'm not so sure that is entirely accurate. Most of Israel's military superiority is based completely on air supremacy -- Dahiya doctrine. Even w/ F-35's this requires tons of US produced munitions (smart bombs etc). The Iron Dome system was jointly designed by US/Israel and most of the actual consumables are supplied by Raytheon.
I think it is accurate to say that if the US wanted to cripple Israel they pretty much could do so on a whim, using nothing more than sanctions. That also applies to any other non-superpower country of course. What I mean to say, we could sanction them like Russia etc. and it would probably have a much larger impact if we really wanted them to do what we want.
Dahiya doctrine is wikipedia fantasy. There is no actual facts that prove that Israel has one.
Smart bombs - Israel produces their own (for example used to take out nasrallah. iirc "spice"). In Iran (and stupidly in Qatar) were used Israeli air launched ballistic missiles (there are a bunch of models. classified. nobody knows what they are exactly. some code names were leaked last year via classified USA report that was leaked). F35 that Israel using has Israeli electronics package.
Iron Dome was designed by Rafael and IAI (check wikipedia). I held mainboard in my hands like 15 years ago. Raytheon manufactures it, because this way Israel can make use of aid money (can be only spend in USA)
No wonder our leaders have gotten along so well in modern history (U.S.)
What is happening in these modern democracies that has led to this sick embrace of cruelty, pessimism ,and apathy?
It really feels like pessimism is the rot or maybe anti-optimism; how can things ever get better if the culture rejects the idea that better things are possible?
Better things are possible, very difficult, and extremely necessary. Fight for it.
There is no mention of rape, let alone mass-rape, let alone mass-rape that was sanctioned and systematized by Palestinian authorities and venerated by the Palestinian public in the article you linked. That aside, no, the normalization of punitive rape as retribution for war/revenge rape is not the hallmark of a healthy society, particularly one that anoints itself a beacon of post-Enlightenment, secular, liberal democratic values in a region it purports is barren of them.
Looks like you missed the part where I rather clearly said "in the article you linked". As for the articles you just linked because of this, literally none of them evince the charge that Hamas directed its brigades to gangrape hostages, let alone that Palestinians cheered this on. And again, it's pretty wild that you would argue that a healthy society tacitly or explicitly (it's the latter in Israel's case) encourages revenge rape, especially when it quite literally had always called itself the vanguard of the west in the middle east, the most moral army in the world, etc.
> is Israeli society, by supporting this woman, perhaps expressing support for punishing rapists and mass murderers, even where such punishment does not entirely follow the rules?
It’s unclear what woman you refer to, but anyway I don’t think there is enough “support for punishing rapists” to cancel out the riots in support of the alleged rapists, or the government, military, and media campaign to demonize the whistleblower with incendiary lies like “blood libel.”
Honestly, cold-blooded shoving a stick into a prisoner’s rectum feels more evil than some other types of rape, but I’m not going to offer any moral calculus about it. It’s all evil. Killing after raping is more evil, I’ll agree. I condemn the evil actions on both sides. Rape is never justified, even against a mass-rapist or mass-murderer.
Also, the woman you invoked was likely dead by the time Hamas got her body, so she was not tortured as the Palestinian prisoner in the video was allegedly. Again I don’t really want to do moral calculus, but it does make a difference if you insist on comparing these crimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/world/middleeast/shani-lo...
