It took me a while to understand what's going on in these comments before I was reminded of the 30 Rock episode where a Canadian character has trouble understanding sarcasm because there aren't many Jews there.

But still, did you all miss the winking emoji right there following the text?

My point really wasn't that these folks got what's coming to them for their arrogance. My point is that this isn't a mission of international we're-all-in-this-together cooperation. It is very much viewed by the Israeli's running the mission as a part of the nation-state space race.

It's true. As an Israeli it's a very secreterian narrative was built around this endeavor. We have in Israel a very deep rooted siege mentality, which considering our history is not surprising. Our current powers at be foster this feeling of pride and fear because it is a great way to keep political power. It is rather sad that every Israeli endeavour is tainted by these sentiments. I am trying to ignore it but I kind of hoped for failure, I thought I couldn't handle the nationalistic euphoria orgy we would have in the media if we did land.