4/21/2026 at 5:40:40 AM
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.by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 5:45:46 AM
(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))
by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 8:33:40 PM
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.
by suburban_strike
4/21/2026 at 5:49:38 AM
[flagged]by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 5:58:31 AM
Why?by tristanb
4/21/2026 at 6:24:31 AM
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 itby Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 6:33:50 AM
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.by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 7:20:51 AM
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.
by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 7:37:14 AM
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.
by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 8:07:04 AM
> 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.
by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 1:53:37 PM
> Arab citizens can voteCall me when the citizens in Gaza and the West Bank get a vote.
Oh, they're citizens of another country you say? What country would that be?
Like, it's great that Israeli Arabs are treated (somewhat) well, but it doesn't excuse what's happening in Gaza and (particularly) in the West Bank.
Regardless of how progressive or democratic a state is, if they keep bombing other states and killing people, they will most likely be judged for it.
It's profoundly depressing that the Jewish people, fresh off of 2k years of oppression, have decided to speedrun the same behaviours against someone else.
by disgruntledphd2
4/22/2026 at 10:42:49 AM
> Call me when the citizens in Gaza and the West Bank get a vote.They can. They voted in Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank. They are not Israeli citizens, which is why they don't vote in Israeli elections. You wouldn't expect the US to give voting rights to Mexicans or Canadians who aren't dual citizens, would you?
> Like, it's great that Israeli Arabs are treated (somewhat) well
"Somewhat"? They get subsidized education, skip mandatory military service, and in some cases receive more benefits than the Jewish population through affirmative action. Gaza and the West Bank aren't part of Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and handed civil control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords.
> if they keep bombing other states and killing people
Nice summary for wars that were NEVER started by Israel. And before you mention Iran, it has been at war with Israel since 1979, the moment it declared it would erase Israel off the face of the Earth, and has been actively attacking Israel through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) for decades.
by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 8:36:32 PM
> It's profoundly depressing that the Jewish people, fresh off of 2k years of oppression, have decided to speedrun the same behaviours against someone else.I know it can seem like this but it's important to make the distinction that Jewish people are not the same set as zionists and israelis, and that conflation is something the latter two parties DESPERATELY want you to make.
by thot_experiment
4/22/2026 at 9:43:47 AM
That's totally fair and a distinction I definitely support. I really, really really like almost all of the Israeli people and Jewish people I've met and worked with, and hence why I care about this a lot.by disgruntledphd2
4/21/2026 at 12:09:51 PM
> They're condemning the only democratic countryAn apartheid ethno-supremacist state is, by definition, not democratic.
In the last month, the Israeli Jews passed a law to allow the death penalty, but only for non-Jews*. The Israeli lawmakers celebrated their lynching law by wearing noose shaped lapel pins. There are several 10s of laws that favor Jews over non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Palestinian citizens are, at best, second-class citizens.
Non-Israeli Palestinians who were violently driven from their homes in previous Israeli Jewish genocides of the indigenous population, do not even have a right to civilian courts. In most cases, the Israeli Jews imprison these Palestinians without charge, trial, or fixed sentence-- including young children. Rape and torture by Israeli Jews is systemic in these detention centers.
Their "democratic" process includes mobs of Jewish Knesset (parliment) members threatening, on the floor of the Knesset, the rape of Palestian Israeli members of the Knesset including, Haneen Zoabi and Sa'id Naffaa.
* The law doesn't really change anything in reality, as Jews have always been able to rape, torture and murder Palestinians with impunity-- e.g., for the year prior to 7 Oct., Israeli Jews murdered, on average, one Palestinian per day, in the West Bank. That rate is much worse now.
by sillystuff
4/21/2026 at 1:03:47 PM
[flagged]by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 1:54:05 PM
> And before you mention the West Bank, it is not part of Israel. The Palestinian Authority rules there.What country is it, then?
And if it's not part of Israel, then why are the Israeli government protecting settlers there?
by disgruntledphd2
4/21/2026 at 3:13:26 PM
Genocide committed by a democratic country that is cool with lgbtq people that have tech jobs and hang out at cafes doesn't make it OK. You're concerned with aesthetics over everything else.by rozap
4/21/2026 at 11:46:25 AM
> the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean somethingWhat was the article about, again? Was it about respecting the rights of women?
by mcphage
4/21/2026 at 1:04:58 PM
We must make a distinction between the actions of the government (and the military) and the actions of some lunatic individuals, though.by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 1:09:49 PM
I don’t think we do in this case. This is the very first line of the article:> Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.
So here we’re talking about both the military and some lunatic individuals.
by mcphage
4/21/2026 at 11:27:03 AM
A norse mythology username extolling the evils of non-western countries while full throating a genocidal apartheid state. name a more iconic duoby sheikhnbake
4/21/2026 at 11:55:40 AM
Read up on "Operation Clean Break" / "The Clean Break Doctrine". Israeli Jews came up with a plan to overthrow Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran... Seven states in all that the Israeli Jews wanted to destroy so they could engage in genocide of the Palestinians without opposition, and steal the land of their neighboring states for their "Greater Israel Project" (Israel refuses to declare their borders as they plan to steal more land from their neighbors and the remaining surviving Palestinians).The fun part was that their plan was that the US would do their fighting for them. And, it worked. US wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran. Millions dead in illegal wars of aggression, all to benefit genocidal messianic religious crazies who call themselves Israeli Jews / Zionists. Many trillions of the US debt is due to these wars for Israel. The US has gained nothing from any of these wars.
Professor Jeffrey Sacks is a good source for material about this.
by sillystuff
4/21/2026 at 1:12:56 PM
The "Clean Break" conspiracy theory is way overblown. The 1996 paper was a policy memo written by American neoconservatives (Perle, Feith, Wurmser) for Netanyahu, advising Israel to ditch land-for-peace, focus on its own security, and pressure Syria and Hezbollah. It also suggested removing Saddam to weaken regional opposition to Israel.It was not a secret blueprint for the US to destroy seven countries so Jews could seize land and build Greater Israel. The paper said nothing about Libya, Somalia, or Sudan and had nothing to do with territorial expansion.
The Iraq War came from flawed WMD intelligence, Saddam's history of invading neighbors, and defying UN resolutions. Libya was Obama-era regime change over Gaddafi's brutality. Syria was a civil war plus ISIS. Iran has never been invaded. None of this traces back to a 1996 memo.
The death tolls? Saddam, Assad, Gaddafi, and Iranian-backed militias own enormous chunks of those numbers through chemical weapons, terrorism, and repression. Blaming it all on Zionist wars erases that entirely.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, has offered land-for-peace repeatedly, and spends most of its time defending borders against neighbors who call for its destruction. The Greater Israel narrative ignores Arab rejectionism, radical Islamism, and Iranian expansion entirely.
Pinning US foreign policy on a single Israeli advisory paper is scapegoating, not analysis.
by Allfodr
4/21/2026 at 5:59:59 PM
>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.The only reason Israel is able to win wars like they do is because they're much better soldiers than Arabs are. Even against all odds when the surrounding Arab states teamed up against Israel, they still beat them.
by throwawaypath
4/22/2026 at 3:43:51 AM
America intentionally bombed schoolchildrenby hackable_sand
4/21/2026 at 3:36:05 PM
[dead]by _DeadFred_
4/21/2026 at 1:44:42 PM
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.by bryanlarsen
4/21/2026 at 5:31:01 PM
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-israe...
by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 7:27:10 PM
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.
by TitaRusell
4/21/2026 at 6:35:57 PM
Claiming that Israel is entirely a Netanyahu problem is ridiculous. No Netanyahu and what do you have left? An apartheid state, probably run by any number of awful replacements, like ben gvir or smotrich. Israel was founded in the shadow of the Nakba - they displaced million people and killed something like 15,000. That was only right when it was founded too. Post 1967, Israel ceased to have any left wing politics, and dove head first into their genocidal project, they’ve been doing it ever since. This is not antisemitic. I don’t care about religion and I’m not a baboon - I don’t care what you believe, I care what you do. And Israel has done, since the beginning, very bad stuff.by antinomicus
4/21/2026 at 8:54:30 PM
I deliberately used the phrase "Netanyahu's Israel". The problem is much more than Netanyahu, it's the Israel Netanyahu epitomizes whether or not it got there via Netanyahu or other similar routes. Given that Netanyahu was legitimately elected, there are lots of similar routes.by bryanlarsen
4/21/2026 at 6:25:41 AM
[flagged]by anal_reactor
4/21/2026 at 7:06:37 AM
> even good guysI assume in your fantasy said "good guys" are the US?
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/09/20-years-us-torture-and-...
https://www.numberanalytics.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-us-wa...
https://theconversation.com/operation-condor-the-secret-syst...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
by cassianoleal
4/21/2026 at 7:34:33 AM
[flagged]by anal_reactor
4/21/2026 at 7:50:44 AM
Why? I'm not the one separating nations between "good guys" and "bad guys".by cassianoleal
4/21/2026 at 8:24:21 AM
You don't understand. The good guys are just giving preventive rocket medicine. The Palestinians and Iranians need it so they won't cause any atrocities. They should be grateful because if they got to live they could do something bad and then feel real bad about themselves.by omnimus
4/21/2026 at 6:40:49 AM
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.by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 7:34:50 AM
When in doubt, blame the British. The British theorem: all life's problems can eventually be traced back to the British.by anal_reactor
4/21/2026 at 7:41:26 AM
They're almost certainly #1 global problem causers so it's usually the safest bet. Though I wouldn't be as expansive as you, the USA, Portugal, Spain and the USSR are no slouches. Can't be forgetting the Dutch either.by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 7:45:09 AM
So basically all powerful countries cause problems for other countries. Not exactly a resolutionary thing. Don't forget China, Japan, Mongolia, Romans, all sorts of infighting between native American groups before Columbus. And I assume that Africa wasn't exactly a paradise even before colonialism.by anal_reactor
4/21/2026 at 5:55:16 PM
Yes, history happened and people should be held to account for it, not ad infinitum, but you know, if my dad killed your dad and took all his shit, and then left it to me, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't get to keep it and all the benefits that come from it just because I had nothing to do with it.by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 10:09:51 PM
Dad? Sure. Grandfather? Maybe. Great-grandfather? Let it go.by anal_reactor
4/22/2026 at 6:49:24 AM
And how do you map that onto the timescales of states? Because even on the human scale, my grandparents were around for the British Mandate in Palestine. The British government had to win my own lifetime apologise for atrocities carried out in Northern Ireland.by AlecSchueler
4/22/2026 at 7:36:03 AM
The day my grandma went to school for the first day of her fourth grade, Germans launched an invasion on our country, starting WW2. During the process they set up death camps on industrial scale, and bombed our capital city to oblivion just to set an example.My grandma died peacefully last winter. I think it's time to move on.
by anal_reactor
4/22/2026 at 11:08:17 AM
An example of what? You're not making any clear point or engaging with what I asked you.by AlecSchueler
4/21/2026 at 10:38:14 AM
The largest empire in global history had influence on contemporary geopolitics. Why should we pretend otherwise?by AlecSchueler
4/21/2026 at 8:58:25 PM
Well, God is British. It is customary to blame Himby chewz
4/21/2026 at 7:03:21 AM
[flagged]by spwa4
4/21/2026 at 7:15:17 AM
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.by thot_experiment
4/21/2026 at 11:10:21 AM
> 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.
by spwa4
4/21/2026 at 11:17:41 AM
> 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".Utter nonsense - the majority of the world is well aware the Strait was open and free to navigate all the way up to the point the US stepped in.
The country directly responsible for the current lack of freedom to navigate is the US.
by defrost
4/21/2026 at 1:13:08 PM
Of course not.https://www.reuters.com/article/world/timeline-irans-recent-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/britain-says-iran-seiz...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-navy-says-iran-seized-marsh...
https://www.reuters.com/world/second-oil-tanker-week-seized-...
By the way, I'm not going to provide references, but the same goes for the Bab El-Mandeb strait and the "East Coast of Africa" (in other words Iran is trying to tax ALL shipping between Asia/India and Europe, even if it goes around the Cape of Good Hope)
> The country directly responsible for the current lack of freedom to navigate is the US.
Did you really believe that when you wrote it? I mean you must realize that no matter the motivation or other circumstances, when push comes to shove the person pulling the trigger is responsible ...
(and obviously that's Iran)
by spwa4
4/21/2026 at 9:31:18 PM
What might the reason be? Oh it's the first sentence.>Tensions between Iran and the West have escalated since U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports took full effect in May and British naval forces seized an Iranian supertanker.
by Hikikomori
4/22/2026 at 7:27:02 AM
Yeah what that doesn't say is of course that those tensions have escalated from "critical" to "critical-and-also-FUCK-you". But as I pointed out in the post you're replying, seizing vessels by either party is not something new. That's been happening for decades. What's new is that China used to get a free pass, and this was a ship going between Iran and China (the US has even hinted it was delivering weapons to Iran, which China explicitly agreed not to do, of course they've also been caught providing targeting information to Iran)And I get their position: realistically Iran has much less weapons now than they had 3 weeks ago. The US has more weapons now than in the 12 days of war, and the Hormuz blocking ... doesn't matter at all for US combat power. Same for Israel. So Iran must be desperate. They're, let's call it "mostly, but not yet totally out of options". And the US + Israel should be at close to double their previous strength. The Iranian population hates both the Iranian government and their fighting force, so you can bet your firstborn Israel is receiving targeting information from inside Iran without even trying, with the exact location of every IRGC commander, every government official, half of it from their own mothers. The previous exchange was a disaster for the IRGC. They fired at least 10000 rockets plus drones. They actually hit 3 targets. Anyone the least bit higher up in the IRGC is terrified.
The previous kinetic exchange wasn't even using 2% of US combat power, now it looks like they're ready to double that. The US has been delivering weapons non-stop to middle eastern bases since before the ceasefire started, if you calculate it out it would have been about 800 tons per day, 13 days now, so let's round it to 10000 tons by the time the ceasefire ends.
But in general Iran has never been at peace since it's current rulers came to power, frankly, with anyone. Until their war with Israel they got away with literally everything by using proxy forces. Literally before the first month was over they were at war with Iraq, because they were doing back then what they are doing now: organizing militias in Iraq.
by spwa4
4/21/2026 at 10:48:23 AM
So Russia invades Ukraine, and somehow you blame leftists for that? You must be buried deep in Russian propaganda.> when will you sign up for Ukraine's army
There is only room in your brain for extreme thoughts? There is a lot of space between not supporting Ukraine and going to the front lines. For example donating money (I sure do as a center-right wing):
by koonsolo
4/21/2026 at 1:20:25 PM
[flagged]by spwa4
4/21/2026 at 1:45:35 PM
> Of course leftists are responsible for the current state of Russia. I hear there was this thing called "Soviet Union", involved in getting this country to it's current state. I guess you must not now. Look it up?Very strange that you claim the great state of affairs in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is thanks to the the leftist Social Union. But hey, if you want to make that claim, that's all up to you.
by koonsolo
4/21/2026 at 1:49:19 PM
Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons.
...
Before Trump it was kind of taboo that US would just go to Iran and shoot them, hence the necessary existence of Israel that gives zero fucks and will shoot everyone who even thinks of threatening them.
Trump blew up that deal in his first term, proving Iran can't trust any non-proliferation deals, the recent attacks proved they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves, and the BS with the strait of Hormuz gave them a giant pile of cash to streamline things.
Congratulations, a country that once may not have built nuclear weapons in our lifetimes is virtually guaranteed to have them inside the next decade.
by atmavatar
4/21/2026 at 8:17:30 PM
Don't forget the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader - the man who issued a fatwa against Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.It makes you think that ultimately, this is not simply about nuclear weapons. It is really about ensuring there is no possibility of a strong non-vassal state in the region (with the obvious exception).
by tmnvix
4/21/2026 at 5:26:57 PM
Fascinating theory. Are there any statistics on how many Israeli soldiers have died for the U.S.? How many have been deployed to fight for the U.S.?by ekam
4/21/2026 at 6:40:03 PM
This is a pretty naive post. First, Russia has nukes. You say Iran can’t have a nuke because dictatorships “tend toward escalation” yet in the same breath mention Russia who has nukes and does not use them against Ukraine. How about North Korea? They have nukes have they “escalated”?You say Iran is “dangerously close” to a nuke. Do you know this has been said for decades at this point? Do you remember Netanyahu’s ridiculous bomb picture from like 2009?
Did you know Iran specifically had a religious policy AGAINST nukes, a fatwah? So most of your premises are wrong and most importantly, paradoxically:
In fact if Iran had the weapon, the whole region would be MORE secure.
by antinomicus
4/21/2026 at 9:24:00 PM
I've heard Israel is close to a nuclear bomb since 1972. How is it different today?by malfist
