this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we – in the United States but also internationally – had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 hours ago

Gaza is the latest in a long line of atrocities committed by countries ostensibly committed to a law of armed conflict.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria... hell the US interventions in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia were as horrifying as they were criminal. Sometimes we can find an exigent threat that gives us permission to use overwhelming force to brutalize the bad guys - as in Iraq '91 with the Kuwaiti invasion. Other times we just have to make some shit up, as with Grenada or Vietnam.

But this idea that we've had an international order for any of the last 77 years is more a reflection on the quantity of our propaganda than the quality of our international ethics. The total war Israel is conducting in Gaza, while the US hovers overhead threatening to flatten any Egyptian or Jordanian or Lebanese who attempts to intervene, has been historic in the degree to which far more cushy liberal rhetoric has been replaced with full-throated endorsement of ethnic cleansing.

But the policies themselves? We manufactured a famine in Afghanistan shortly after withdrawing the last US troops. We have repeatedly blocked countries with socialist governments from accessing international markets to obtain relief, such as Bangladesh in '74 and Ethiopia ten years later. Somalia has been under near constant assault by US Navy vessels "policing" the most lucrative fishing territories, driving up rates of piracy as a substitute for traditional subsistence farming. Then you've got the '91 famine in N. Korea and the '94 Cuban hunger crisis, both the consequence of US blockades.

Any one of these would be considered a modern-day Holodomor from the perspective of an objective outside observer. Unfortunately, Americans only get to hear about Gaza - and even then only in dribs and drabs on social media or alt-news publications - as they turn away from the traditional corporate-friendly press venues.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

It's hard to find a more Nazi way of doing it. Never forget, Zionists signed the Haavara Agreement with Hitler. You can look up Hitler's quotes on Zionists to find that his problem with them was that *"It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there" *- that they weren't being imperial colonialist enough and were just all talk. It's sad to see the meaning of genocide twisted so much to use the genocide of the past to protect the genocide of the present. Hitler's problem with Jews in Germany is that they were staying in Germany, it was not with the Zionists who were trying to take over the reigns of Mandate Palestine.

Sort of what we are seeing now, radical far right groups sticking up for each other even when at face value ideologically they should be opposed - because it's not about the lie they are peddling, it's about forcing people out and conquering occupied territory to take their wealth and resources. Not that these far right leaders will ever admit it, but the shifting stream of excuses, justifications, and contradictions create the outline of what they've even lied to themselves about. They are not people of character.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

that's a bit of hyperbole. Gaza is happening because the institutions were already rotten, and not the other way around

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Social rot causing systematic rot causing social rot?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Ukraine lowers its head as nobody sees it with its hand up...

While I truely weep for Palestinians this is a large issue that is worldwide. Nobody gives a crap because it's utter chaos everywhere

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

I would say the big distinction between Ukraine and Gaza is that in Ukraine there has been a meaningful (and enormously lucrative) project to arm locals in opposition to Russian invasion. It's been of dubious success, given how much territory they still lost. But its difficult to say that the Biden Era government (or even Trump Term 1) wasn't willing to shovel arms and mercenaries into Ukraine in an effort to cripple Russian advances.

In Gaza, the Israel blockade has gone virtually unchecked - outside of a few salvos from Yemen and some allegations of support from Iran and Hezbollah. Americans are supporting the genociders not the victims. There is no Gaza military left to repeal an invasion nor is there any appetite for a Hamas resistance to repeal IDF advances. At this point, it's little more than a shooting gallery.

There's a line of combat between Ukraine and Russia. There's nothing in Gaza. Just Israelis and their private security contractors kettling and massacring neighborhood after neighborhood, then flagging bulldozers to knock down the houses when they're done.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

This may be a stupid question, but why did we need to create Israel in the first place? If my memory from my shitty American education serves me, they had all these survivors of the Holocaust with nowhere to go, so they created Israel for them to live peacefully, fuck whoever was already living there.

But why couldn't they all just go back home? I know everyone was shipped off across Europe to the camps but like... surely they remembered where they lived before? Everything was bombed to hell but that's the same for whoever lived there, Jewish or not. Am I missing a piece that makes the need for their own country to make sense?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I'm no less ignorant than you are, but "returning home" isn't as easy as it sounds when your leaders and neighbors were at best complicit and at worst eager conspirators (excepting those who rebelled either openly or secretly) in your extermination. Jews have a rather long history of being...mistreated, for lack of a more appropriate term within reach, so the abstract idea of having a self-governed homeland where you can feel safe as a Jew seems to make some degree of sense in context.

But because Zionism is generally practiced by nationalists and religious zealots, and because colonialism was (and evidently is) still considered a-ok by the global power brokers when all this started, the tone of the occupation became "we're taking your space because we deserve it and you don't" rather than "may we please share your space in mutual benefit for our safe refuge."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago

Right... Like why TF wouldn't you want to leave

[–] [email protected] 14 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It’s actually a good question. We didn’t.

The desire to create a country Israel came about in the 1800s, when Theodor Herzl looked at anti-semitism in Europe and concluded that Jews would never be accepted by countries or have any political power so the only way to get ahead in such a nationalistic world would be to make their own country. It was built on an anachronistic set of ideas; religion was tied to your citizenship of a country. Turkey represented European Muslims and UK/France/Germany represented Christians, and he concluded there was no way Jews could be considered equal citizens in Europe.

Originally the plan was to buy land in Africa or South America and declare a new country there. It was a purely secular plan to build an ethnostate. The World Zionist Congress had a vote and they narrowly approved to build the country in British mandate Palestine, not for religious reasons but because the connection to Jerusalem would help motivate immigration and tourism. They almost had it in Uganda or Argentina or Madagascar.

The holocaust merely accelerated the plan and gave a justification after the fact to build the country. Initially Israeli society didn’t like having holocaust survivors and they weren’t treated well, only today are they out on a pedestal and used as justification for their colonialism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Jews would never be accepted by countries

Did he thought that they would be accepted by the local population?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

British Palestine (and other Mid-East / North Africa states) were notable in that they were far more accommodating to Jewish peoples than the European continent had been. They were colonial territories with large international trading hubs that were already pluralistic and accommodating to foreigners. And they weren't carrying the baggage of a few centuries of Inquisitions and Pogroms.

Until the Shah was installed in '53, Iran had one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. Ethiopia and Sudan had hundreds of thousands of Jewish people living contentedly in its borders until the '70s, when civil war and famine ripped the country apart. And prior to the Holocaust, there was an enormous flight of Jewish residents to the Americas.

Now, primarily white militant European settler colonialists might have trouble setting up an intentional community of Zionist radicals anywhere. But there's no reason to believe Argentina or Madagascar would have been materially worse for them than British Palestine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

As best as we can tell, he truly didn’t care what locals thought. He wanted to buy the land and make everyone else leave so an all Jewish state could be created.

Unfortunately this plan didn’t sit well with the locals who eventually stopped selling land to these newcomers, and the rising illegal immigration caused conflicts. Eventually an actual war erupted and new militias massacred and forcibly expelled the local Arab communities, creating the Israel we have today.

Herzl’s concept wasn’t as terrible on paper as it actually was in practice. (It just wouldn’t work in modern society where countries aren’t governed under ethnic supremacy) But likely if the World Zionist Congress had voted a different way, we’d be talking about how awful Israel was for mistreating Ugandans and forcing them off their land.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 16 hours ago

It was more “given up” rather than “freely given” to the Zionists. They were resolute invaders and ferocious terrorists. And once they tuned their sights from the local population to the British, the British fucked off real fast. Then did the paperwork.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 19 hours ago

Our imaginations have always fallen short with regard to World War III. The only thing anyone can visualize is total nuclear destruction, but this world definitely has another actual world war left in it where conventional forces fight it out across multiple fronts, largely through proxies but orchestrated by the major powers. The world economy will plunge into chaos for a decade or more. The political situation in every country around the world will turn to shit. Fascism will bloom and commit mass atrocities. Oh shit… that’s all already happening.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago

The next world war

Will have no rules

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