There’s no parallel my man. The Jews never declared war on or invaded Germany. The Palestinians attacked Israel and pose a mortal threat to it. The UN gave them a state. They rose up with the other Arab nations in 1948 and attacked Israel. Their state was lost in the process. They were left stateless and their Arab neighbors would not take them in, leaving them in limbo under control of Israel, who really doesn’t want to have to manage them.
Israel’s posture is purely defensive. They react to threats against them. The Arab states control the initiative. They determine if there is war or peace. The Israelis can’t do anything to make peace. The Arab states can have peace with Israel at any time. They could do so by abandoning their ambition of eliminating Israel. So long as that is their long term ambition there can be no peace. It’s fundamental.
Btw, when I say “Palestinian problem,” I am referencing the problem they pose for the Sunni Arab states in normalizing relations with Israel, not some existential problem they pose. Your attempts to compare me to Hitler (including all the German) are rather silly. You actually are speaking German and don’t seem to care for Israel, so ...
Nah, I think I have a pretty good understanding.
These days they are demoralized, in large part because Trump has cut the legs out of Obama’s stupid policies which gave the Arabs hope of a policy realignment in the US (where we favor the Palestinians), because Syria and Iraq have been in an extended period of disarray with foreign occupations and also the Arabs are distracted with the Sunni states focused on Iran, and even cozying up to Israel a bit to do their dirty work vis-a-vis Iran. I will say that the one bit of policy Obama did push which helped things (although I don’t know if Obama really appreciated what he was doing) was opening up trade with Iran, which scared the shit out of the Saudis. This latter dynamic has helped Israel improve its relations significantly with the Saudi block, at least for the time being. The desire to confront and contain Iran has made the Palestinians a problem for the Sunnis, because Iran is the most outspoken supporter of the Palestinians and the Palestinian problem makes it hard for them to work with Israel to contain Iran. But among the general population in the Middle East, Israel is reviled, and young people are taught that the goal is annihilation of Israel and mass murder or deportation of Jewish Israelis, and this makes it very hard for the Sunni nations to realign their policies to be friendly with Israel. Until formal peace between these nations can be established and young Arabs are not taught that Israel is the devil, it will be very easy for all Arab nations to flip back into an all out war footing with Israel if a good opportunity arises.
The likely end-state is a Palestinian state. But you can’t get there by offering the Palestinians a state. If you offer them a 2-state solution, they automatically position for an ultimate one (Arab) state solution following a bloody genocide. The way you get them to agree to a 2-state solution is to push for a 1 expanded Jewish state solution, where the Palestinian territories are split among Israel and their neighbors, and then make the Palestinians out of desperation offer the 2-state solution along the lines demanded by the West (including no military or heavy weaponry) and concede it to them begrudgingly and with many strings.
I don’t really know what you’re arguing. It sounds like you don’t care for Israel, which is fine. However, the only way for there to be lasting peace in the Middle East, that does not involve genocide against many millions of Israelis, is for their Arab neighbors to accept their permanent existence there, and not simply be playing a long game to the genocide. That risk of war and ultimate genocide is one of the things that keeps us invested the region. It’s the Arabs that control whether there is peace, not Israel. Peace will happen when the Arabs let it happen. Israel, on the other hand, cannot make peace happen. There is literally nothing they can do to make peace, short of committing mass suicide or the entire population leaving the region (neither of which is ever going to happen).
The only way to get the Arabs to accept Israel’s existence and give up on their aspiration of genocide is to convince them that they’ll never ever win. Consequently, while some care has to be taken not to give Israel a “blank check,” it is important that the Arab states always perceive that support for Israel from the West and from the US especially is strong and unwavering. If they see US support wavering, as happened under Obama and as will happen if any woke Democrat has control over foreign policy (because Democrats incorrectly look at the Israeli-Arab dispute as a racial “white-black” dispute and automatically side with the black side), then Arabs in the region start to think their long-game tactics are succeeding and they could get to the genocide they want. This reinforces their unwillingness to settle, causes them to make ever increasing demands and encourages them along in their strategy to strangle and eliminate Israel entirely. So the left’s approach, both here in the US and in Europe, of favoring the Palestiinians is totally self-defeating (that is, if peace without genocide is the goal).
Trump has made progress towards peace by being a very very strong supporter of Israel and by doing things which horrify the Arabs, like recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Note how Trump and Netanyahu used the threat of annexation (something that Obama would never ever allow Israel to threaten) to obtain this agreement, which included Israel’s concession not to annex. This is basic negotiation. You credibly threaten something bad in order to concede it later in return for something of value. Too many people get caught up in wanting the “good guys” (as they perceive it) to win.
The point is not to sway opinion of the left. It’s to preserve support among suburban women who in 2016 voted for Trump. This is the group where Trump has been struggling more and where Biden is trying to make inroads. Calling Kamala a “ho” or a “whore” will not help get anybody’s vote. Instead just say she launched her career by sleeping with her married boss. That will actually make suburban women distrust Kamala as they worry about their husbands and workplace romances.
You’re right, but TDW’s memes spread far and wide and reflect on Trump supporters. The NY Times would be happy to put some of these memes on the front page, or at least quote them, to show misogyny among Trump supporters.
Well, she’s going with the stereotype a bit. Here’s are some photos taken a little more contemporaneously with the Kroger incident.
https://heavy.com/news/2020/08/danielle-muscato-kroger-andy/
It’s funny because sometimes an interesting story will break on ZH so it’s worth a peek to see what’s being flogged that day. You just need to understand that every article that discusses Putin, Russia or foreign policy questions are straight up Russian propaganda designed to either demoralize Americans or wedge conservative Americans and make them sympathetic to Russia. Once you know what it is you’re pretty immune to it and can even have a good laugh.
Another example of what I suspect to be Russian propaganda that I saw on this site was a link to a video sensationalizing the “freikorps” which was celebrating German nationalists killing communists in the 20s/30s. There’s a lot of weird videos circulating that are trying to nudge conservatives towards embracing violent nationalist sentiment similar to what happened in Germany pre WW2 and it’s bizarre. These could be from white nationalists, but I don’t really believe there are many of those and the few that exist are barely literate. I suspect this is Russian crap.
They both try to rile conservatives by pushing posts and articles that focus our anger on progressive and globalist policies, which they don’t like, while also trying to offer up Russia and Putin as a defender of traditional values and nationalism. They also push stories designed to increase diplomatic isolationism in the US, trying to increase doubts about our European allies and undermine faith in our foreign policies. Putin also does not like guys like Soros and the aggressive Western diplomacy of recent years which has flipped his border countries out of his control. So he perceives the new populist conservatives that have arisen in the US as naturally sympathetic to him and an avenue through which to manipulate domestic events in the US.
I also think there are shills active elsewhere, including here, in some instances. I see it mainly in exhortations to other posters to “do something” in response to progressive overreaches. I don’t think there are a ton of those posters here but you’ll see sometimes emotional posts asking very generally “when is somebody going to do something,” by which they don’t say so explicitly but they clearly mean take up arms against authorities or progressives etc. I’m generally suspicious of those posts — that they’re very likely from Russian propaganda shills trying to encourage people to resort to violence by creating the impression that there are people ready to rise up and rebel so as to nudge Americans who are close to the line of taking action to cross it. Some could also just be domestic provocateurs but I think many of them are Russian.
This is similar to Blue Staters fleeing their high tax states and then voting for the same politicians in their new states. Like they can’t connect the dots between their voting and the lousy state policies they just fled.
Zero Hedge is not a conservative site. It is a pretty obvious Russian propaganda site which mixes in some market and conspiracy theorist fodder. Unfortunately the Russians see us conservatives as disgruntled and more open to Putin strong man nationalism so they try and wedge us. The site posts stuff that would be interesting to conservatives and then mixes in the pro Russia garbage.
Re the Russian stuff, just look at any article re Putin or US policy re Russia and you’ll see how obvious Zero Hedge is as a Russian prop site. They never say anything negative about Putin or Russia and the US is always flailing at Russian greatness. I read ZH because some of the articles are entertaining but I laugh at everything it posts relating to Russia.
The Russians are trying to promote a civil war in the US, not that they really need to get involved. Progressives are taking care of that.
Death to population would provide some indication of a country’s success controlling the spread of the disease and not simply treating people who come down with the disease. Low death to population means the country was able to control the spread, treat the disease or a combination of the two. Of course, there are factors that could make it harder or easier for a country to accomplish a low ratio. For example, rural areas will have far less spread, so may have a low death to population ratio, even if they haven’t done much to control spread or treat the disease.
Here’s another view.
Kasich is unbearably arrogant. In 2016 it was so hard to even listen to him. His attitude towards base Republican voters was grossly dismissive. He was offended that the would even consider voting for Trump and basically wrote them off.
To these guys — Kasich, Romney, McCain etc etc etc, and all of these Never Trumper swamp dweller lobbyists and political consultants, care more about controlling the GOP infrastructure, collecting their fees and pay-to-play contributions and being welcome at Washington cocktail parties than having majority power. It’s like the old Rockefeller Republicans from the 70s who just wanted to be part of the Washington club and were happy to let the Democrats set the agenda.
You can identify who these people are — they’re the Republicans who are always stumping for “common sense immigration reform to reform this broken system” on behalf of corporate donors. A lot of the GOP congressmen and senators are in this club.