In what sense Israel is not a theocracy.

Theocracy is a form of government in which religious leaders rule in the name of a deity, and religious law is the basis for all legal and political decisions.

However, Israel does have highly theocratic tendencies. Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute. They have even more religious influence on public life than the USA does (which is already somewhat high by European standards), with businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays (not selling risen bread during Passover, making elevators stop automatically on every floor during days of rest, observing kosher restrictions on food etc). Many of their foreign policy decisions are explicitly influenced by religious tenets, such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god (which includes modern day Israel, the Occupied Territories, and several parts of modern day Syria, Lebanon, and others).

They're nowhere near the level of religous rule and/or fanaticism as Saudi Arabia, but they have much more religious influence and control of public life then a modern European/US-style democracy.

Hence I brought it up, yes.

> Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute.

Many reputable democracies[1], including Germany, Australia, Norway or Switzerland, have a reference to god in their constitution; that doesn't make them theocracies. Even in the USA, presidents swear their oath on the bible!

> businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays

Try purchasing something on a Christian holiday in Germany. Did you know it's prohibited by law to play Life of Brian in public on Easter Sunday there?

> such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god

That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several. Now I'm very much in opposition to a lot of what the Israeli government does, but they're really not what the term Theocracy means. That claim is just ridiculous.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_references_to_G...

None of these say that their states are Christian and Democratic, nor do they have government decisions finding that this means anything at all. In Israel, by contrast, their highest court has found that, for example, a right to return for Palestinians would be unconstitutional - as it would undermine the Jewish character of the state of Israel. A reference to some god in their constitution would be a completely different thing.

> That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several.

This is an extreme downplaying of what I said. Several of the people in charge of the Israeli government have explicitly and exclusively, religious motivations in their decision making - that is a very clear sign of a form of theocracy.

/s

They will tell you that the theocracy folks were a small minority of the entire resistance and first built a government of unity.

Once in charge they started annihilating all other opposition factions one by one.

OP referred to democratic votes, whereas you talk about "popular uprising". Can you explain in your own words why you believe these are even comparable?

You should seriously learn about Yanukovych before making any sort of claim regarding him. He was elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU and pro-western programme, only to turn out to be a Russian puppet that not only enforced policies completely contrary to his programme but also pushed Ukraine into a dictatorship.

The "popular uprising" you glance over was actually months of demonstrations protesting Yanukovych unilateral rejection of the EU–Ukraine association agreement as ordered by Russia, which he campaigned and was elected for and contrary to Ukraine's parliament overwhelming approval.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan

You're talking about the same Yanukovych who felt compelled to exile in Russia.

> That should show that depending on who is being ousted (...)

Those who favour freedom under democracies are indeed partial against dictators who try to destroy democratic states and deny people's rights, specially if it to serve the interests of other totalitarian regimes.

But the US was far too eager to carry out regime change and so we have the dreadful situation today.

Yes, he was. What you are leaving out is the fact that in spite of being elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU platform, it turned out he was a Russian agent and betrayed his mandate to enforce Kremlin's anti-west agenda and force himself upon Ukraine as another kremlin-controlled dictatorship.

Except the people of Ukraine wanted none of that and protested against this betrayal, which culminated in the wannabe dictator seeking exile in Russia.

Somehow you leave this out when you talk about basic democratic principles. Why is that? Is it out of sheer ignorance?

What's also very odd is the way that you somehow try to portray anti-government protests as revolutions and regime changes, when this is a Hallmark of any democratic system: when a government doesn't follow through with their compromise and go directly against their mandate and people's will, they express their discontent and demand elections. How odd that when democracies reject Russia's interference, this is deemed as an anti-democratic coup.

No. The ones that try to push agendas that go against their programme and are deeply unpopular will often see public protests and even general strikes demanding policy reversals or governments stepping down. Do you call those regime changes as well?

after this protests "for eu integration" moved to protests against brutality and when police escalate more it became "ant-regime" protest

Hell, several people even made a giant catapult on-site (props given for engineering knowledge though). What surprised me at that time watching is that the Ukrainian police were so tolerant of rocks falling on them. American police would have immediately opened fire. Of-course, that tolerance didn't last long once policemen started taking casualties.

initially it was just students who protested. peacefully. police beat them down. after this to maidan came adults (because it's not appropriate to brutalize children ) and started camping there. and later it escalated to what you wrote about when police (based on government orders based on russian suggestions) tried to disperse maidan camp.

you probably didn't watch it from the very beginning. I did. in ukrainian.

The right to protest, assemble, and even impeach representatives is just as paramount to democracy as voting. There's no rule anywhere that you just have to endure a poor leader - especially a leader who is leaning towards harming or removing democracy.

You mean like "peacemaker"/"America First" Donald Trump?

> why is the solution to that problem "just endure four years of destruction until he leaves"?

If Americans can wait out for the second Trump term to be over, Ukrainians could do it too for Yanukovych.

Who's going to impeach them?

Only if one is utterly blind and put fingers in their ears, can one truly believe that. Nuland's call was leaked where she was proudly deciding who would form the next government in Ukraine and who should be kept on the outside. And her personal choice of puppet: "Yats" did in-fact become the prime minister. Nuland was even handing out cookies to anti-Yanukovych protests for Christ's sake. Mc Cain actually flew in and congratulated the protesters.

Imagine if that was happening in the US against a US President - members of foreign nation's government cheering on a coup and deciding who would be the next President. There would be Absolute War.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

Yes, the USA is attempting to facilitate talks here. No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda.

Listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUCCR4jAS3Y

> No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda

Anyone with a rational brain who separates themselves from biases and emotions and carefully listens to the call would realize there is no propaganda involved here. Also, for better clarity of judgement, please perform a thought exercise and consider what would happen if a foreign government's members were discussing the personal choices , makeup and "talks" for members of the next American government.

We can discuss potential successors to Xi right here on HN, and an outsider might say that "a forum frequented by some Silicon Valley billionaires is picking the next leader of China." But that would be a huge misrepresentation of our influence.

The fixation of Russian trolls on that single phone call reeks of desperation.

Let me see if Erdogan can be overthrown in the next elections in Turkey. No US involvement either.

If you live in a stable Western country, your trust in the next elections being fair and free is understandable, but in that case, refrain from any authoritative talk ("your arguments don't matter") about other places. In recent democracies that transitioned from totalitarian rule just a decade or two ago, elections are far easier to hijack than in the UK or Denmark.

"no-one would have batted an eye"

You cannot really make such a strong prediction about places like Ukraine, the Balkans, the Middle East etc. These are places where empires collide, and several crises in a century are almost a given.

Anyway I am fairly glad that Ukraine didn't end up like Belarus did, a satellite state of Moscow. Anything is better than becoming a satellite state of Moscow. Most of us from behind the Iron Curtain would rather fight a war than submit to Moscow again.

Interestingly, the Western leftists, who otherwise preach anti-colonialism from breakfast to sunset and then some, don't understand the same dynamic among white-majority nations. But it is still there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_el...

"Over 700 observers from EU member states participated, in addition to OSCE/ODIHR, the EU Parliament, PACE, and other international delegations"

The Guardian reported EU-led observers praised the vote as "fair and truly competitive" noting only "minor irregularities” that did not affect overall results".

"After the second round of the election international observers and the OSCE called the election transparent and honest."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/08/viktor-yanukov...

Could you tone down your arrogance, please?

I was talking about the next election. You expressed your conviction that Yanukovich could be removed in the next election, remember?

I expressed my doubt about iron-cladness of such future election. Strongmen-like leaders in fresh democracies have a lot of methods how to win next elections without actually winning them.

Yanukovych had over 100 people killed in a violent crackdown on protests, then fled to Russia as he was about to be imprisoned. On 21 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 to hold snap elections to replace Yanukovych before the end of his term. Not a single member of his own party supported him or voted against the decision. He was replaced through general elections held a few months later. This is exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_election

The vote did not follow formal impeachment procedure under Article 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution (which requires a Constitutional Court review and more formal steps).

I am sure you then have no objections to the 53–0 vote in Crimea to remove the then-Ukrainian-appointed prime minister Anatoly Mogilev and install Sergei Aksyonov and the subsequent referendum on autonomy. After all, this is "exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work".

Regarding the Crimean referendum, I do have objections: international law considers referendums held under foreign military occupation illegitimate, and rightfully so. Had Hitler staged a referendum in occupied Paris after the invasion, would that have meant that the French willingly joined the Third Reich?

The Crimean referendum is nothing new. In the 1940s, the USSR also staged a series of votes to legitimize their invasions of European nations. At this point, I would consider anyone expecting me to take these referendums seriously as either severely underinformed or simply maliciously trolling.

No, not really. Having a radical group remove another totalitarian ruler doesn't automatically grant them legitimacy or any arguments involving "self determination of people".

- whose Basic Law 2018 declared it a Jewish supremacist state

- where 50% of the population doesn't have the right to vote, land ownership, or travel on the same roads

- and faces 99% conviction rates in military, not civil, courts

- where parties can be banned directly by government decision if it arbitrarily deems them to be anti-Jewish

The fundamental issue is the population of the West Bank, who, outside of Palestinian Authority areas (aka "Area A"), are largely controlled by Israel but cannot vote. Note that 1-2 million West Bank Palestinians live in Area A under the Palestinian Authority.

- Within Israel, there is a Communist Party (which rejects religion and ethnicity) and other parties (including two Arab parties).

- A key problem in Israeli democracy, which it would be helpful if you noted, is that although there are two Arab parties (and majority Jewish parties who welcome Arabs), the Arab population of Israel votes at a low rate. This results in their being under-represented in the Knesset.

- The Basic Law you refer to made zero change to who can have political power.

- The 50% you refer to is neither the right percentage, nor does it take into account areas of great Palestinian autonomy.

- Function of the legal system has never been relevant to who can vote or hold office.

If you want to reflect what is on the ground, I suggest you take in the whole picture.

The Basic Law which passed with 62 for and 55 against, just states what the constitution of pretty much any European country does. Most European countries are nation states. It's countries like Switzerland, Russia and Belgium which are outliers. (Hopefully, one day, they will be broken up too.)

I think the "Jewish state" refers to how the country serves as the homeland for the jewish people, not how they force a religion upon others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state

Israel's legal definition is "Jewish and Democratic state", which explicitly ensures "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_and_democratic_state

  The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People, in which the State of Israel was established.
  (b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
  (c) The realization of the right to national self- determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.

Hamas/Gaza:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O’ Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him,”

And the west bank's government pays pensions according to how many Jews you hurt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...

(No worries the "parliamentary democracy" that the WB is - hah! - promises to stop that now. Well, except for the payments)

But this is a general problem with all muslim-majority nations. Take an extremely moderate one - Morocco - defines itself as:

"A sovereign Muslim State, attached to its national unity and to its territorial integrity, the Kingdom of Morocco intends to preserve,"

Israel isn't any more apartheid than any of those places. Given that Israeli Arabs can and do vote (and become Medical Doctors), Israel is a heck of a lot _less_ apartheid than those places.

Consider travel... it can help you get outside the "american" box.

Of course this government is FAR worse, including on racism, than the worst Israel has ever been accused of. It's not going to change their minds ...

The current Iranian government started blaming Israel for everything long before they were even in power. Socialists supported them back then ... and largely now.

Clearly, one is forced to conclude, they see no problem with such actions.

They are all ethno states.

The very concept "nation-state" is an alignment of "ethnic tribe" with "political borders"

You might want to hit a history book or two.

In this regard, Israel is more normal and places like the U.S. are abnormal. (Once you get outside the U.S....)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee

I find this very disingenuous because the person you replied to was talking only about Iran, and stating that Iran is a theocracy in their opinion. They never mentioned anything about Iran, let alone stating that Israel isn't a theocracy.

So asking this question, this way, is quite strange in my opinion.

Interesting that 20% of Israelis do not believe in a deity. 18% are Muslim. In Iran, Jews are 0.03% of the population.

I feel very conflicted about what's happening.

On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.

> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.

That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.

This is the key. People talk some crazy stories about Iran being a theocratic state whose life mission is destroying Israel but the fact is they don't want to end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat.

And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.

why would not iran gov sacrifice few million of its people to kill whole israel?

Hell, in the next 30 or so years oil will disappear from the middle east, and Iran is just about the only country that has a realistic shot at still having an economy after that.

Be neutral and objective, but America, Ukraine and Israel are currently the most agresively operating forces salivating over WW3. Yes, Russia is also quite brutal, but it's not going to profit from WW3 on the stock market!

Who are the PROFITEERS of this?

How can WE fight this war mongering?

Do we need to get active on the Battlefield? Do we need to sabotage Sattelite Networks, disarm financial incentives etc. etc. to combat those who want a WW3?

Only billionaires are going to become richer from a war. Everyone else will eat radioactive food and their DNA will be wiped out forever from the human gene pool. Seem like an Eugenic goal

All while Russia is threatning with nuclear destruction of Ukraine and Western countries.

So, how the hell is Ukraine salivating over WW3 and Russia isn't LMAO

Actions provoking WW3 are as I commented. You've not made a valid counter argument and have only chose PARTISANSHIP. Which I have not.

I suggest etiquette and neutral speech before spitting hate in internet forums.

I disagree, but in light of your previous comment, it doesn't shock me.

> Actions provoking WW3 are as I commented.

You're wrong, they're not. You have pretty clearly chosen PARTISANSHIP by stating a country being invaded and fighting for their lives and sovereignty as the ones salivating for WW3.

It's a remarkable backward-thinking exercise. Russia is clearly:

- violating International Law, the UN Charter, and many other agreements and memoranda;

- all while threatening nuclear annihilation of Ukraine, UK, USA and other European countries;

- Attacking and destroying third countries' civilian infrastructures;

Among other atrocities and crimes.

But somehow, through magical thinking, you deem them as the victims here who have nothing to gain from this.

You are not OK with stock market gains, but you're OK with Russia stealing Ukrainian natural resources, their population, including kidnapped children?

Let me ask you this: according to your logic, were Hitler and Stalin the victims, and was Poland salivating for starting WW2?

Iran is not tribal, it is a fairly ancient empire with strong continuity over 2500 years. Approximately as old as Rome, but with no collapse.

Iran will almost certainly hold together if the current batch of rulers disappears. It survived even the Mongols.

They took back their government and they “gave” it to the clerics back in C20

The Iranians by and large have the state they want. Strong parallel with Irish history where independence brought about a theocratic Junta. That only went away with deeper integration into the European economy.

Because what does get forgotten is that socialists worldwide strongly supported the revolution, from Moscow to Brazil, Berlin to New York, including supporting khomeini. With the UK's campaign "khomeini doesn't seek power, just wants to free Iran" message (spread by the BBC), and France's asylum and help. Protest marches in support of what turned out to be murderous islamists in every capital.

As for tactics: Khomeini (let's be honest here: it was Khomeini) organized snipers to shoot into the security services during a protest, provoking a battle where 89 people died ... at which point Khomeini declared that "4,000 innocent protesters were massacred by Zionists".

The protestors, whipped up by leftists did not take khomeini at his word, organized a general country-wide strike ... Khomeini organized further attacks on both his allies and the government, each time blaming zionists, never losing socialist support ... and 2 years later, now in power, Khomeini organized a massacre to "purify" Iranian society of his socialist allies, at least 3800 brutally executed, including high school students, one at most 7 years old. He has kept killing, and khamenei has continued the killings, some years 300, in the last decade more like 1000 every year.

Famously khamenei declared that "executing minors is illegal, if they're virgins". By which he meant that female prisoners are to be raped multiple times before execution. [1]

But I guess that's better than vague oil corruption and evil western influence, isn't it? Never mind that of course the revolution has totally failed Iran. They did not bring jobs, did not bring housing, did not ... in the 50 years they have in power.

Needless to say, more people died in Khomeini's purification than in every other part of the revolution combined. Hell, more people died in the last 5 years of "islamic" peace, than died in the 5 years of the revolution.

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...

They're talking about the current regime, from which it isn't clear the population will ever successfully take back their country.

some religious lunatics would deem that worthy

That would be primarily Evangelical Zionists, seeking to hasten the end of days.

Film, Til Kingdom Come -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Til_Kingdom_Come_(film)

so it even no need to be lunatic to act some nukes.

is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real.

A pretty popular opinion these days

That place would be leveled and you wouldn't hear a peep of opposition.

You wouldn't hear any opposition from inside the USA.

At the same time, the USA levelling the place would create a lot of opposition basically everywhere else.

The UK government trying to toe the line with the USA about invading Iraq in the name of the GWOT was met with 10-16% of the UK population marching in protest against UK involvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...

This is something I bring up whenever anyone can't understand why Israel's response to Hamas' attack nearly two years ago now is likely even stronger than the USA's to 9/11 — even at best it would take a decade for the rage to dissipate, and the Israeli people are unlikely to care about the opinions of people like me for the same reason the Americans didn't.

I think you're incorrect about the opposition. You get the loud mouth left that for some reason have aligned themselves to a terrorist organisation. But if you go down the pub and speak to real people here in the UK, it's the complete opposite. It's reflected in the most recent polling where the vast majority of the country voted for what could be described as the most right-wing party seriously operating in the UK today.

People are really getting fed up of Islamic nonsense leaking into our completely incompatible society.

I dunno about that. Iraq suffered between a quarter million and a million dead (depending on how you count). The % of those who touched a gun is low, under %10. The vast majority are civilians.

There wasn't a focused effort to bring in food, water or electricity to Iraq. A key difference is that Iraqis could leave, and hundreds of thousands did (to Syria, Jordan and other countries).

Israel's war in Gaza, messy and horrible as it is, is far (very far) more focused on Hamas than America's wars were in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Anything different would face massive opposition and carry a political death sentence for whoever gave the order."

That's your personal opinion.

You've said that like it's of no significance.

1) Israeli government willingly favored Hamas governing the Gaza strip and completely cut off the Palestinian authority

2) Israeli government ignored their own intelligence and even allowed money and weapons transfer from Qatar to Hamas

3) Israeli intelligence knew October 7 was gonna happen and did little to prevent it

4) While October 7 is one of the most despicable acts of crime and terror ever happened, it has not happened in a vacuum. It has happened by people who are literally living in the hell and open prison the Israelis have created for them

This is not considered valid in Israel.

In Israel October 7 is considered a massive failure of intelligence. No one in the top 30 of any Israeli intelligence agency that Oct 7 was going to happen.

hamas came to power in 2006 after usa forced election (against will of PA that was afraid that hamas will win). after this usa was horrified by outcome and trained/sponsored PA to take over gaza and depose hamas. PA failed and it forces were shot/thrown from roofs/dragged behind bikes and supporters tortured into obedience.

as outcome PA ceased paying salaries to it employees in gaza and foot the bill for infrastructure/etc.

there was massive outrage in media that "hundreds of thousands of people in gaza will starve now because they have no money to buy food" that forced Israel to allow money transfers from Qatar

"Well, obviously they are blinded by rage" is not exactly my favorite argument.

You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not.

Syria was embroiled and toppled by Islamic Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham backed by Turkey. Libya was due to civil war. Several of these conflicts were funded by Iran as well.

You can go down the list. Please study at least some basics on the region.

> So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.

One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Theocracies can be unpredictable. Also they could provide dirty bombs to their proxies in the region.

- Libya was bombed primarily by France and then other NATO countries for no good reason. And from a functioning dictatorship it is a failed state.

- Syria was invaded by Turkey/US right after the civil war started.

In the world we all live in you need to have powerful deterrents so that the US/France/UK/NATO will not dare to bomb you for whatever reason they feel "justified" to do.

In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business.

The problem is that countries tend to assume that the neighbors are also their business.

Right. Because nothing says "I can mind my own business." like nuclear weapons being at most one coup from being launched at someone, possibly you.

People thought nuclear weapons are a defensive deterrent but what war in Ukraine showed us they are actually offensive weapons that deter anyone from defending to strongly when you attack them with your conventional forces.

Both russia and USA used their nuclear weapons in that manner for the last few decades. It's time to call the thing that quacks what it is, a duck.

You're saying not all countries should be able to have powerful weapons just because there might be a coup. Who decides that? You? Me? A random guy on the street? A random bureaucrat from a random country?

There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange. And somehow I don't think a random guy in Africa or the Middle East is so sure about it that it risks launching nukes at its neighbor(s).

Of course. How is that controversial?

> Who decides that? You?

Of course. I decide what I believe to be right. And in practice the countries that get to have nuclear weapons are the countries that got nuclear weapons. Not because they deserve it or should have it. Just because they got it. Which makes France, USA and Israel some of the countries that get to have nukes and Iran one of the countries that don't get to have nukes.

> There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange.

You mistake humans for rational actors. Have you heard what the stance of russia is for example? "What's the use for the world if there's no russia in it." Basically if they can't do what they want, they think world deserves to get nuked into oblivion.

Take the US for example: if the president, secretary of defense and probably the head of the joint chiefs decide it is OK to nuke half the planet because "reasons" - how is that different from a traditional coup?

> Which makes France, USA and Israel some of the countries that get to have nukes and Iran one of the countries that don't get to have nukes.

Power is always taken, never given. Following your rationale, Iran should do whatever to get its hands on some nukes real fast.

> Have you heard what the stance of Russia is for example?

Have you heard of peacocking? If it were actually true, they would have nuked the world way before probably me and you were born.

Democracies tend to be more resilient against rule by aggressive idiots. So being a democracy should be lowest common denominator.

> Power is always taken, never given. Following your rationale, Iran should do whatever to get its hands on some nukes real fast.

I have no idea why are you talking about it like it's hypothetical. Iran did whatever it could to get its hands on nukes as fast as it could since Trump destroyed the agreement that Obama signed with Iran.

And it resulted with their top leaders getting assassinated and their nuclear attempts destroyed. So was that really something they should have been doing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Libyan_financing_in_th...

The comment didn't suggest that exactly.

> One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation?

Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership. They've probably figured out retaliation is a possibility here - if this is Israel's defence when they aren't even being threatened, imagine what they will do in their defence when the Iranians actually do something directly! Even if the Iranians are legitimately stupid at some level the campaign of missile strikes must have registered that they are vulnerable to missiles.

Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2). They are making trauma informed decisions, and can never be trusted to do so alone because it’s actual trauma.

The biggest myth is that Israel is a first world country but there’s no evidence of it. Buildings and infrastructure do not make you a first world country (behold China). Any country that is that brutal will never meet the criteria, it’s a third world country that is new and learning just like every other third world country.

Blood-thirst (blood-rage? They see red.) is an understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025. We need things to change over the next 20 years. They do not know how to manage life due to just how intense their historical trauma was. There’s no one over there with a cool head and clinically there wouldn’t be (how do you just act normal after the holocaust? You can’t.)

The failure of the Trump admin is unique and unlike any other administration. It is was once accepted that Israel is not level headed (again, not an insult, one cannot be balanced if one emerges through hellfire) and cannot dictate foreign policy. Trump just said “fuck it, go ahead traumatized child, do as you please” - this was pure insanity.

Love is protecting your brothers and sisters from themselves (my brothers keeper). The world did not get safer, where are the cooler heads in the room?

Past experiences surely must colour peoples' and nations' attitudes, but will they go all the way to completely dictate them? I find this an over-reach. There are simpler explanations. Nations want to dominate their immediate geographical neighborhoods so that they can ensure their own citizens' prosperity and security. Israel and Iran are not different in that at all. Israel is in a position to pursue this regional hegemony by overwhelmingly violent means thanks to the unconditional support of the US, while Iran that does not enjoy the same level of support from its own super-power allies, China and Russia, is not capable of dominating with aggression, so it has to try other means: diplomacy, alliances with regional militias, and so on.

I think, that suffices to explain the differences in behaviour between the two nations. Other than that, you'll see the same behaviour from both: they'll attack whomever they consider to be their regional rival, they'll retaliate when attacked, and so on.

I'm all for attacking Trump when justified, but given how Biden managed Gaza it is spectacularly unclear that we would expect a different outcome from Dems.

I don’t think Biden would have done it. Take the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, which happened in Trump’s first term. What stable President agitates a situation like that? He was uniquely allied with Netanyahu for awhile, and Netanyahu has exclaimed that Trump is the best friend Israel ever had:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-calls...

Because I lived there for 6 months during a study abroad I randomly ended up doing. I'd never had a Jewish or Muslim friend before going. Living there I had Palestinian and Jewish neighbors. I had to read lots of books on both sides of the topic and write papers on them. Along with deep conversations with both Israelis and Palestinians. Admittedly more with Israelis than Palestinians. Though I do have some fond memories of Palestinians.

The experience forced me out of my previously much more sheltered technology and American centric world view which is what I'd say was your somewhat average 16 year old American's viewpoint, if on the more liberal atheistic side at the time. I likely would've been convinced of the same things as yourself when I was younger and more naive and saw the headlines I do now.

That said, I'm not pro-Netanyahu or many of the things he does. He's a hardliner.

> Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2).

You're not wrong. They're also a resilient people. Remember it's not just WWII, but most Israeli's, their parents and grand parents have also grown up with constant war or thread of war.

It does affect psychology when many neighboring groups like Iran and Hamas not only want to destroy your state but also want to kill all Jews. That's their public official positions. It's not just rhetoric either as they routinely attack. Ultimately Palestinian leaders and political groups have never wanted peace with Israel from everything I've studied, and neither does Iran.

Finally Israel was making progress towards peace with the Abraham accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords) which Trump helped negotiate. Some scholars I've read believe this is part of what led to Hamas's October 7th attacks as they would loose influence if Arab nations started making peace with Israel.

> Bloodthirst is understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025.

It's easy to throw such statements around. However, look at the state of most of the region. What Israel is doing is tame compared to some of the atrocities occurring but which don't make regular news.

this.

even though some Israel's actions are spooky (targeted-exploding walkytalkies?), they're at least designed to minimize civilian deaths (or at least they're trying)

But... Iran and their ilks (eg. Hamas)? they not only don't give a shit, but actively seek to kill civilians with maximum brutality (baby beheadings, killing & parading even with non-israeli bodies)

“Tame”

Either you have no respect for my eyes or brain or I am truly an idiot. Write blog articles explaining how what we see and hear is bullshit and post it here please, we’ll assess.

1200 != 50,000

But here is the true mind fuck, 1200 != even one innocent.

Barbaric != Tame

So we march people down from the North to the South, level the area, and then logistically starve them? Tame. Do you know how the Americans marched the Native Americans to death? We’re all fucking idiots to you right?

HN is just subset of society. You’ve got everyone here, including Israeli apologists. Plenty of Jewish developers too. You don’t have to live or die by your “team” when they are literally fucking wrong about this.

Your typical educated American does not even attempt to defend most American policy since the end of WW2 (there’s literally not a single right thing America did). Maybe we’re lucky that we get to have such clear heads about it finally, and I hope the same for those on the wrong side of history on this one, however long it takes.

When one realizes they were barbarically wrong is a true moment of personal and spiritual growth.

The definition of modern national pragmatism appears to be the following based on what so many apologists say:

2 wrongs == 1 right

(The only way this can be correct in anyone’s heart is if emotions have fully overtaken the person)

Let me fix that for you:

2 wrongs != 1 right

A population caught up in a horrible conflict. In part due to the choices of the leaders they've supported for decades now.

> I need a thorough explanation of the images I see out of there. What the hell is 50k dead and ghetto camp conditions?

They're the same tragedies as those from most of the other war torn areas in the region. I hate to say it, but Gaza is at the "risk of famine" while the Sudan and Yemen are in full on famine. There's also two orders of magnitude more civilians suffering in Sudan currently as well. Similarly in Yemen, which is being bombed routinely by Saudis and Americans which include innocent civilian deaths. I've not heard of one anti-Saudi protest by Muslims in the west in recent years.

Where's the constant Wester or Muslim outrage for the 100,000s or millions of civilian deaths directly caused by Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah or more throughout the region by extremist Islamists?

You can also find the recent videos of interviews with Palestinians where they praise and thank Trump for giving the food (GHF) while they curse Hamas for hoarding the food and using their children as war fodder.

Did the media also show you the videos of the Palestinians in Northern Gaza protesting Hamas for being terrorists and killing their children in March? Many of them understand who started and wanted the war. They call it war and blame Hamas.

Does that justify all the actions of Israel? No, but I also believe Israel also acts to prevent the worse from coming around. They supply water, food, and aid while the other military forces like Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc do not do that for their enemies civilians. They regularly provide bombing warnings and evacuation notices to civilians, unlike pretty much any other force in the region.

Does the IDF also have bad actors and commit war crimes as well? Yes, but most Israeli's don't want or support that.

> But here is the true mind fuck, 1200 != even one innocent.

Tell that to almost any nations at war. There's always civilian casualties. For the Israelis it's 1200 today, and in their experience it'll be another 1200 tomorrow, and 1200 the day after and so on if they did not attack back and remove Hamas. 50,000+ dead is terrible but the statistics of civilians to combatant casualties are similar to other conflicts in the region, despite Hamas being internationally known for using civilians as shields.

Where's the constant outrage for the 150,000 dead in Yemen due to the fighting there and the 227,000 dying of famine and the ghetto conditions there? The conflict in Palestine isn't that unique in the region except that the media covers Palestine far more. The double standards on display in the west are absurd and masterfully exploited by the Islamist extremists spearheaded by Iran.

And Iran retaliated and actually some of it's missiles inflicted damage. We can only imagine what the damage would be if Isreal patiently waited for the Iran to feel read to attack Israel which it's always advertised as its goal. Also it already happened once. Nations of the region decided they are strong enough to attack Isreal and they did. It was bound to happen again and as the death toll in Isreal in the current conflict shows, despite pre-emptive strike damaging Iran's missile potential significantly, there's only so much you can do with defensive weapons.

In this specific context pre-emptive strike on leaders and long range attack capabilities is not perfidious, it's just about the only thing you can do that's not stupid.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-13/israel-strikes-on-ira... - "Why is this happening?"

Are you even arguing in good faith? Over the years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op9EFTPQhw8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulXulltxXZg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V21yoWN_U3w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hLDjGdJC0Q

Bluster isn't a threat that the military are going to respond to. Imagine I used the word "credible" above if you want.

In my mind there is no doubt who the good guys are in that particular conflict. Iran started it decades ago for no reason other than religious hate, has kept it up until now and Iran is the one escalating.

An ongoing war that includes all of Iran proxies.

[1] https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/activities-of-saeed-iza...

Qatar has probably funded Hamas more than Iran and now the future Air Force One is a Qatari plane...

“Qatar has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level”

   - Donald J. Trump - June 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_support_for_Hamas

What's wrong with this picture? (And I don't mean in the sense of a Futurama meme of Farnsworth saying "I don't want to live on this planet any more").

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...

Reality is Israel is run by psychopaths who would be in jail if it weren't for their their cynical use of constant war as a misdirection.

Much like the US. And Russia. And numerous other countries, some of which are still pretending to be democratic.

The entire world order is built on greed, lies, narcissistic grandiosity, and violent murder at industrial scales.

Israeli police began investigating Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for fraud in 2016. Israeli courts indicted him for multiple cases of fraud in 2019.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu

That's not what this article says. To quote:

> Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

> Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

> Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

You are not understanding what the article is saying, because you're mixing up different Palestinians. Palestine has a left wing party, the Palestine Authority, and a right wing party, Hamas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, recognizes the state of Israel and wants a two-state solution that also establishes a Palestinian state. Hamas does not recognize the state of Israel and wants to destroy it. Netanyahu is against the Palestinian Authority because he's more against giving legitimacy to Palestinian statehood than he's against war. He funded Hamas to delegitimize Abbas/Palestinian statehood/two-state solution/peace.

President Abbas has a PhD in holocaust denial.

Calling the PA left wing isn't accurate. It's also bent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica:

"The PA was founded following years of hostility. Secret meetings held in Norway in 1993 between the PLO and Israel led to the signing of the historic Declaration of Principles (the Oslo Accords), in which the two sides agreed to mutual recognition and terms whereby governing functions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967—would be progressively handed over to a Palestinian council."

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestinian-Authority

PA is controlled by Fatah, which is "centre-left" to "left-wing" per Wikipedia. If you disagree, edit Wikipedia and cite your sources.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah

Iran’s Shah, prior to Khomeni was a brutal dictator propped up by the west. Of course he got on with Israel.

The truth stings.

The difference isn't in brutality. It is in the word "Islamic". That is the core of the ideological hostility of the current Iranian government towards Israel.

Or any people, for that matter.

Regardless of the above, the Islamic Republic of Iran calls itself Islamic and takes the velayat-e-faqih system, developed by Khomeini, as divinely inspired.

You just admitted that the specific system of ayatollah rule has 'no core doctrine' supporting it. You acknowledged that this particular form of clerical authority is an innovation that doesn't exist in foundational Islamic teachings. Then you say Khomeini 'developed' velayat-e-faqih as a new system.

So by your own admission: core Islamic doctrine doesn't support this specific form of clerical rule by ayatollahs; and that Khomeini had to 'develop' (i.e., invent) the velayat-e-faqih framework. So, Iran's system is based on this modern Shia innovation, not established Islamic governance models.

But your original claim was that Iran's hostility toward Israel stems from 'Islamic' ideological doctrine. You can't have it both ways, either Iran's policies flow from broadly accepted Islamic teachings, or they flow from Khomeini's specific 20th-century innovation that most Muslims reject.

You've just proven that Iran's system represents one minority sect's modern political invention, not mainstream Islamic doctrine.

You don't need to be an Islamic scholar to know there are two major branches: Sunni and Shia. If you don't know this basic distinction, you shouldn't be making claims about 'Islam' generally. If you do know it, then you're being disingenuous trying to pass off one minority Shia innovation as representative of all Islam.

a) considers itself Islamic, b) it is indeed ruled by scholars of Islam, c) bases its policy and politics on Islam.

You say that they are basically heretics and that the majority of Muslims don't agree with them. So what. I haven't said that all Muslims want to destroy Israel for religious reasons.

If I want to be extra precise, the Islamic Republic of Iran is compelled by Islam as of its own understanding to destroy Israel.

And given that there is no central authority in Islam that would issue binding declarations on what is Islam and what is Heresy, this is basically the norm in the Islamic world. Every nation and community practices Islam as it understands it, which means quite a lot of internal diversity.

Your new claim: Iran follows 'Islam as of its own understanding' and there's no central authority to define what's Islamic.

So you've just admitted that Iran's version isn't representative of Islam generally and that there's no authoritative way to call their interpretation 'Islamic'. That every community 'practices Islam as it understands it'.

This demolishes your original point even further. If anyone can interpret Islam however they want with no central authority, then Iran's actions tell us nothing about 'Islamic' doctrine, they only tell us about Iran's political choices wrapped in religious language.

By your own logic, I could point to: Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, which is democratic and has peaceful relations with Israel. Or the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, who've normalized relations with Israel. Jordan, Egypt: these have peace treaties with Israel.

I could point to these and say they represent 'Islam as of their own understanding' just as validly as Iran does.

You've essentially argued that Iran's interpretation is just one of many possible interpretations with no special claim to authenticity. That's the opposite of your original claim that Iran's hostility flows from Islamic doctrine.

You started by claiming Iran represents Islamic teaching. Now you're saying every Muslim community makes up their own version. Pick one: you can't have both.

And you still haven't provided a single citation of actual Islamic doctrine supporting violence against Jews, which was the original challenge.

You are engaging in an elaborate No True Scotsman fallacy.

For me, if if walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, and I will consider the Islamic Republic of Iran to be Islamic. I don't particularly care about sectarian squabbles what is geniunely Islamic or not.

You've retreated to "if it calls itself Islamic, it's Islamic," like claiming North Korea represents democracy because "Democratic" is in its name.

When you stated "There is no version of Islam that would be representative of Islam generally," you contradict Islamic tradition itself. The Prophet Muhammad, the FOUNDER of the religion said: "My community will never agree upon error" and "Allah's hand is with the congregation" (Source: Tirmidhi). This hadith establishes that consensus (ijma) of the Muslim community is authoritative in Islam.

Look, these facts remain: you admitted Iran's system is Khomeini's modern innovation. Most Muslim nations have peaceful relations with Israel. And you've cited zero Islamic doctrines supporting your claim.

This isn't about religion: it's politics in religious clothing. If Iran's position were truly Islamic, 1.8 billion Muslims would share it. They don't.

Stop conflating one country's politics with an entire faith.

No true Scotsman.

> Third, you preemptively accuse me of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but you're the one committing it. You claim "perpetrators of Islamic violence" cite these doctrines, but when pressed for specifics, you can't name them. That's you implying that a Muslim who doesn't commit violence isn't following the "real" Islam, which is literally the No True Scotsman fallacy you're projecting onto me.

I didn’t need to do that. You say you’re an Islamic scholar so you should already be aware of this. I shouldn’t be needing to do research for you.

And you still haven’t defended my original accusation that you repeatedly stated that followers of Islamic violence are somehow un-Islamic - this is a textbook no true Scotsman.

> That's you implying that a Muslim who doesn't commit violence isn't following the "real" Islam

No it isn’t. Many Muslims do not commit violence although Islam itself states it is a violent belief system. Most Christians eat shellfish.

You have not demonstrated how you have brought any evidence that Islam calls for unrestricted violence against Jews or any people.

Here is a link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44351856

You specifically asked me to put up or shut up and I put up and then you got very angry about it. Surely you must remember?

Are you aware of what the term "unrestricted violence" means?

Do you think that Jews are able to behave without impunity, and if the Muslims have cause to retaliate against them, that means that Islam sanctions unrestricted violence against Jews?

I believe anyone is allowed to behave as they reasonably want, including pointing out all the illness Islam has borne onto the world, for Muslims, for Jews, for Christians, for women, for journalists, for intellectuals and for everyone else.

And you still haven’t responded to the original accusation of no true Scotsman.

> And you still haven’t responded to the original accusation of no true Scotsman.

I've already rebutted that, you only returned with an ipse dixit to say "no but actually Islam is really violent." What we're discussing here is towards deconstructing that point, so also rendering the claim of no true scotsman a moot point (doubly so).

Because you will never be able to make the leap from "Islam allows for violence in limited cases, such as cases of persecution and self defense" to "Islam is violent," without bastardizing disengenuity.

Also, you are quite the hypocrite aren't you? You repeatedly press me to respond to points (even after I responded to them), yet there is a multitude of points of mine that you left unaddressed, even stating that you're going to ignore them, giving me triple (clearly emotionally charged ragequitting) goodbyes, and then coming back to spew more garbage.

Is that why you slid away from the other thread to this one, so people who do not catch that thread do not see your manifest impotencies?

finally, you’ve responded to the point. This isn’t in the text and is your own personal reading. But at least you’ve acknowledged it exists unlike previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44350839

> I've already rebutted that

No you haven’t rebutted either example of me pointing out your 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44350839 you just wrote 'no u' - that's 'tu quoque', another logical fallacy.

If it’s unclear, I am not stating Islam is only violent because the text is violent. I think you might be trying to refute a point I’m not making. There were many reasons why Islam is violent. What do you think causes Islamic violence?

> Is that why you slid away from the other thread to this one

You insult people like a medieval wizard.

Did I forget to read one of your posts on the other thread? I’m sorry, I clearly missed out.

I’m on this thread reminding you of a second instance of you using the no true Scotsman fallacy. Here is a link to remind you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44372664

Since you claim my interpretation about a 'minority of Jews' is "personal reading not found in the text," let me provide you with the actual scholarship you're apparently incapable of conducting yourself:

The Prophet (ṣ) said: "The Dajjal (false Messiah) would be followed by seventy thousand Jews of Isfahan wearing Persian shawls" (Sahih Muslim 2944): this is the exact hadith text, not my "personal reading." Seventy thousand Jews from one city constitutes what exactly, if not a minority of world Jewry?

You think you can analyze Islamic eschatology based on one isolated hadith while remaining completely ignorant of the broader literature. The Prophet (ṣ) said: 'The Dajjal will appear at the end of time when religion is taken lightly' (Sunan Ibn Majah 4067); meaning everything about about the Dajjal and his followers is explicitly END-TIMES prophecy, not prescriptive commands for daily Muslim behavior. Not my 'personal reading', this is only basic Islamic eschatology.

The same Prophet (ṣ) said: "Nothing between the creation of Adam until the establishment of the Hour is a greater tribulation than the affair of the False Messiah" (Sahih Muslim 2946); meaning his followers, including these Jews, are portrayed as bringing the ultimate tribulation and persecution to humanity, not being victims themselves.

The hadith literature is explicit about the Dajjal's persecution. The Prophet (ṣ) said: "Verily, preceding the False Messiah will be years of deception, in which the truthful are belied, the liars are believed, the trustworthy are discredited, the treacherous are trusted, and the disgraceful speak" (Musnad Ahmad 13298). He also said: "The people will flee from the False Messiah into the mountains" (Sahih Muslim 2945), describing Muslims fleeing persecution, not initiating it.

You desperately claim victory because I acknowledged a hadith exists: something I never denied. You think that the acknowledgement of a hadith is akin to acknowledgement of your faulty interpretation. How stupid, Mr. Non Sequitor!

Your sophisticated theological analysis amounts to: 'I found one hadith mentioning future conflict, therefore Islam is violent'; while remaining completely ignorant of the context, the broader literature, and the specific circumstances described. This is like reading one sentence from Revelation about Armageddon and declaring Christianity inherently violent.

Now you are moving your goalposts with your retreat to 'there are many reasons Islam is violent' without specifying any. When challenged on logical fallacies, you ignore the rebuttals. When asked about contradictory historical evidence (link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44350839), you promise a flailing disengagement which you are unable to adhere because of how thoroughly emotionally rattled you are by having your ignorant bigotry challenged.

Is this really the intellectual standard you want to defend? Because at this point, watching you flail around these basic logical contradictions is starting to feel less like a debate and more like intellectual charity work.

Better to insult like a medieval wizard than think like a modern idiot. Keep it up, I am truly enjoying this and want to see how inexhaustible is your faulty thinking and how much contradictory emotional fuel is behind your promise to stop speaking to me.

Seems like it's not just Islam that lives rent free in your head, but now this Muslim is too.

No. You asked for a hadith which was calling for violence as if you didn’t know that one existed and then were provided with one.

> one isolated hadith

Yes. You asked for one. I didn’t have to provide you with one but I gave you one anyway. You haven’t even thanked me yet.

> something I never denied

You called it a string of gobbledygook, even though it has since been realised that you know exactly what it was referring to.

> Now you are moving your goalposts with your retreat to 'there are many reasons Islam is violent' without specifying any.

There were no goal posts - I never limited the reasons that Islam is violent. In fact, I asked you to come up with your reasons why Islam is violent, and you have not provided any.

> Umar ibn al-Khattab

You really think this is contradictory historical evidence? If you’re wondering why I think he made Jewish people second class citizens rather than slaughtering them I’m presuming it’s because he liked money from overtaxation. Why do you think he made Jewish people second-class citizens, rather than slaughtering them?

> Better to insult like a medieval wizard than think like a modern idiot.

Really? Because you stopped communicating that way, which makes me feel that you’re a little bit self-conscious about it.

And yes: two no true Scotsmans still undefended.

You aren't responding to the fact that you're committing the composition fallacy: taking one eschatological reference about future conflict and claiming it makes all of Islam "violent." You never addressed this fundamental logical flaw in your argument because you know you can't defend it.

You keep claiming I'm committing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but you're misapplying it. When I said Iran's actions are "politics in religious clothing" rather than true Islamic doctrine, I wasn't redefining Islam to exclude counterexamples: I was making an evidential argument. I challenged OP to provide Islamic doctrinal support for Iran's positions and he didn't. I pointed to empirical evidence: the fact that 1.8 billion Muslims don't share Iran's position. I was distinguishing between political claims and religious doctrine based on evidence, not making arbitrary exclusions.

The key difference is: No True Scotsman would be "Iran isn't really Islamic" (circular reasoning), but my argument was "Iran's actions aren't supported by Islamic doctrine" (evidential claim requiring proof). OP failed to provide the doctrinal evidence I requested, making this a substantive claim requiring evidence, not an arbitrary exclusion.

Now, let's address your contradictory positions. In our previous thread, when I demanded citations, you wrote:

"I understand you want me to cite specific hadiths, as I said earlier I think any Islamic scholar would already know which ones" and "You have no right to demand anything from me." Now you're acting wounded that I haven't "thanked" you for providing a hadith reference. If I "already know" these hadiths as you claimed, why would I thank you for telling me something I supposedly already knew? And why are you demanding gratitude for amateur citation while completely ignoring the multiple hadiths I provided with proper scholarly context? Quite clownish.

Second, you're conflating citation with interpretation. You pointed to a hadith: congratulations, you can use Google! But when I provided you with proper context, multiple supporting hadiths, and explained the distinction between eschatological prophecy and prescriptive religious practice, you called it "gobbledygook" and fled the discussion. Citing a text isn't the same as defending an interpretation of it, which you've never done.

Third, your claim that I "never denied" the hadith exists is another deflection. The question was always about your interpretation of what it means. You think pointing to end-times prophecy about a minority of Jews following the false Messiah somehow proves "Islam calls for unrestricted violence against Jews." I systematically dismantled that interpretation with proper textual context, which you aren't addressing, because you simply can't.

Fourth, you accuse me of "moving goalposts" when you're the one who abandoned your original argument. You affirmed that Islamic doctrine calls for unrestricted violence against Jews, I challenged you to explain why Muhammad's direct companion Umar ibn al-Khattab invited Jews back to Jerusalem after 500 years of Christian expulsion, and you've never answered. Instead, you're now retreating to vague claims about "many reasons Islam is violent" without specifying any.

In fact your Umar ibn al-Khattab deflection proves you don't understand the example. You mention him as if it supports your position, but Umar's protection of Jews directly contradicts your claim that Islam mandates violence against them. You're citing evidence against your own argument. If what you say is true, he would not have invited them back to Jerusalem, and he would slaughter them in any case.

It's very clear that when pressed for basic rigor, you flee to different threads hoping people won't notice your contradictions. You promised to stop communicating with me multiple times but keep returning because you are lathered in the discomfort from being so absolutely deconstructed.

What we have here is your inability to defend the interpretations you're making from the citations you provide.

That's the difference between scholarship and propaganda.

Yes, I am. To make it simpler, I’ll use your analogy: you asked me for a car with a red door and I provided one. Even though you say you are a scholar of cars and are aware that there are many instances of cars have red doors. Furthermore, you did not thank me.

The disingenuous deception will never cease with you, I see.

I never asked you to prove Islam has violent elements. I challenged your affirmation that Islam mandates unrestricted violence against Jews. You showed one end-times hadith about a minority and declared victory.

Your logic: "I found one violent reference, therefore Islam is violent." By this reasoning: humanity commits violence, therefore you, nailer, are violent; because you're human (which is doubtful, since you're behaving more like a broken bot at this point). One red door doesn't make the entire car red.

You're still avoiding the actual questions: Why did Umar invite Jews back to Jerusalem? Why did he not slaughter them?

Why haven't 1.8 billion Muslims enacted this "unrestricted violence" you claim is a part of the religion?

Citation without interpretation isn't scholarship: it's Google, but in your case it's more like Altavista.

As opposed to the classic sincere deception.

> Your logic: "I found one violent reference, therefore Islam is violent." By this reasoning: humanity commits violence, therefore you, nailer, are violent; because you're human

No - as discussed earlier, not every follower of Islam is individually violent, like not every human is violent.

> You're still avoiding the actual questions: Why did Umar invite Jews back to Jerusalem? Why did he not slaughter them?

I answered this earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44381029

> Why haven't 1.8 billion Muslims enacted this "unrestricted violence" you claim is a part of the religion?

I answered that earlier too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44373946

I previously asked you what your own thoughts are regarding why Islam is violent, you didn’t answer. Your most recent post seems to indicate that you don’t think Islam is violent at all. What is your own explanation for the widespread worldwide occurrence of Islamic violence, if Islam itself is not violent?

1. "As opposed to the classic sincere deception."

Cute wordplay, but you're still avoiding the substance. Your disingenuous behavior includes but is not limited to: misrepresenting my arguments, claiming you "answered" questions you dodged, and shifting burden of proof when cornered.

2. "No as discussed earlier, not every follower of Islam is individually violent, like not every human is violent."

This actually destroys your argument. You've been claiming Islam mandates unrestricted violence against Jews, but now admit not every Muslim enacts this supposed mandate. Your own logic proves that either:

A) The doctrine doesn't actually mandate what you claim, OR

B) 1.8 billion Muslims are failing to follow their own religion

If you choose option B, you're committing the exact No True Scotsman fallacy you've been accusing me of: redefining 'true Islam' to exclude the vast majority of Muslims who don't commit this supposed mandated violence.

3. Your "I already answered" evasions

You claim you answered the Umar ibn al-Khattab question by saying he "liked money from overtaxation."

If Islamic doctrine truly mandated unrestricted violence against Jews, then Umar, a direct companion of the Prophet and one of the most revered figures in Islamic history, would be religiously obligated to follow it. Instead, he went OUT OF HIS WAY to invite Jews back to Jerusalem after 500 years of Christian expulsion.

Your 'tax money' explanation is incorrect on multiple levels:

First, Jerusalem already contained Christians who vastly outnumbered Jews across the Middle East. Umar had no economic need to invite back a tiny Jewish minority when he already had a much larger Christian tax base.

Second, your "overtaxation" claim is historically false. The dhimmi system wasn't exploitation, it was a social contract. The actual jizya rates under Umar demonstrate this clearly:

The jizya was structured as a modest, graduated tax based on ability to pay:

The wealthy paid 4 dirhams annually

The middle class paid 2 dirhams annually

The working poor paid only 1 dirham annually

In regions using gold currency, it was 4 dinars per year

In silver currency regions, it was 40 dirhams per year

These amounts represented reasonable, graduated taxation rather than exploitation. This wasn't "overtaxation" by any historical standard.

Medieval European serfs typically paid far higher proportions of their income in various taxes and obligations to feudal lords.

Non-Muslims paid jizya in exchange for:

A. Military protection by Islamic forces

B. Exemption from military service (only Muslims were required to enlist)

C. Legal protection and religious autonomy

D. Integration into the economic system

The rates were deliberately affordable and often collected in goods rather than currency when cash wasn't available. This was a protection arrangement, not exploitation.

If Islam truly mandated violence against Jews, why would Umar create a system specifically designed to protect them from violence while exempting them from military obligations at such reasonable rates?

He showed deliberate favor to Jews when he had zero obligation to do so, implementing a tax system that was proportional, fair, and designed for long-term coexistence rather than exploitation.

This demonstrates what Islamic governance actually looks like according to someone who learned directly from Muhammad. Your interpretation would make one of Islam's most celebrated figures a religious failure.

Similarly, your claim that you "answered" why 1.8 billion Muslims haven't enacted this violence is circular reasoning that assumes your conclusion.

4. Your massive burden shifting attempt: "What is your own explanation for the widespread worldwide occurrence of Islamic violence, if Islam itself is not violent?"

More examples of textbook circular reasoning. You're asking me to explain "Islamic violence" as if its existence as a distinct category is proven fact. I could equally demand you explain "Christian violence" (Crusades, Inquisition, Northern Ireland), "Buddhist violence" (Myanmar), "Hindu violence" (Kashmir), or "atheist violence" (Stalin, Mao).

The question isn't why violence exists. Humans commit violence for political, economic, territorial, and tribal reasons regardless of religion. The question is whether Islam uniquely mandates it.

5. "Your most recent post seems to indicate that you don't think Islam is violent at all."

False, and a strawman. I never said Islam contains zero provisions for violence. I said you cannot prove it mandates UNRESTRICTED violence against Jews specifically. There's a massive difference between acknowledging that Islam allows for violence in limited circumstances such as persecution and self-defense (true of most legal and religious systems) and your specific claim about doctrinal mandates for unrestricted violence.

6. The core issues you keep avoiding:

After all these posts, you still have:

ONE end-times hadith about a minority of Jews in eschatological prophecy

ZERO prescriptive commands for present-day Muslims

ZERO explanation beyond unfounded speculation which I have rebutted for why Muhammad's companions protected Jews

ZERO response to the contextual hadiths I provided showing Muslims fleeing persecution

ZERO engagement with the distinction between prophecy and religious law

7. Your fundamental logical fallacy which is still unaddressed

You found ONE eschatological hadith about end-times and declared it proves Islam mandates present day violence.

By your exact logic:

Christianity mandates violence because Revelation describes end-times warfare

America mandates violence because our military exists

Humans mandate violence because we have the capacity for it

Defend this composition fallacy or abandon your argument. You cannot keep dodging this fundamental flaw. Well you can keep dodging it, which you will because you have no response, but we all see what you're doing.

Here's your choice, no more deflections:

Either:

A) Admit you cannot distinguish between eschatological prophecy and prescriptive religious law, making your entire argument invalid,

OR

B) Provide actual prescriptive Islamic doctrine commanding present-day unrestricted violence against Jews (which doesn't exist).

Name ONE verse or hadith that commands present day Muslims to commit unrestricted violence against Jews.

You claim to be citing Islamic doctrine, prove it, or concede the point.

Your inability to do this after so many bankrupt posts while making increasingly desperate deflections speaks volumes about the strength of your position.

The inability to properly respond is your concession.

Stop imagining. Cite them.

What specific verses or doctrines are you referring to? Give us the exact citations.

Because once you do, I have a very simple question for you: If those verses mean what you think they mean, why didn't Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam and Muhammad's direct companion, know about them?

When Umar took Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 638 CE, instead of slaughtering Jews, he invited them back to a city they'd been banned from for 500 years under Christian rule. He protected their religious practices and established legal frameworks for their protection.

So either:

These verses don't exist or don't mean what you think, OR the second Caliph, who learned Islam directly from Muhammad, somehow didn't understand basic Islamic doctrine.

Which is it?

Put up or shut up. Cite the specific verses you're claiming exist, then explain why Muhammad's direct successor acted in the exact opposite way.

I have lived the last 44 years in Australia, the United Kingdom and now the United States, each of which have been victims of Islamic violence in different ways.

I understand you want me to cite specific hadiths, as I said earlier I think any Islamic scholar would already know which ones, so you’re not arguing in good faith. I want you to know I am familiar with the ‘no true scotsman’ fallacy and feel you will employ it. You have no right to demand anything from me.

As an Islamic scholar you are also familiar with the concept of dhimmis. I think the reason you didn’t mention them here is because you know Islam creating laws to treat others as second class citizens is shameful, and you did now acknowledge these because you are not arguing in good faith.

I won’t stop talking about Islamic violence because you demand I do so, you have no right to demand this of anyone and your personal beliefs deserve no special respect.

First, you affirmed there are Islamic doctrines calling for violence against Jews. When I asked for citations, you suddenly can't provide any because "any Islamic scholar would already know." This is the intellectual equivalent of "my girlfriend goes to another school." If these doctrines are so obvious and pervasive, citing them should take you thirty seconds, not paragraphs of deflection.

Second, you accuse me of limiting the discussion when the exact opposite happened. You affirmed a specific claim about anti-Jewish doctrines, I challenged it, and when you couldn't defend it, YOU tried to escape by broadening it to "Islamic violence globally." I actually expanded my challenge by saying I haven't found doctrines calling for unrestricted violence against Jewish people "or any people, for that matter." You're now misrepresenting the exchange because you can't handle either version of the challenge.

Third, you preemptively accuse me of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but you're the one committing it. You claim "perpetrators of Islamic violence" cite these doctrines, but when pressed for specifics, you can't name them. That's you implying that a Muslim who doesn't commit violence isn't following the "real" Islam, which is literally the No True Scotsman fallacy you're projecting onto me.

Fourth, you brought up dhimmis thinking it was devastating, but you just wrecked your own position. The dhimmi system was a legal framework for protection and coexistence, revolutionary for its time when other civilizations were practicing actual genocide. If Islam mandated killing Jews, why would it simultaneously create detailed legal protections for them? You literally cited evidence that contradicts your entire premise.

Fifth, your appeal to personal geography is irrelevant. Living in three countries doesn't make you knowledgable in Islam any more than living near hospitals makes you qualified to comment on surgery. You're using personal experience to avoid rigor, the exact opposite of truthful discourse.

Sixth, you claim I have "no right to demand" citations from you. In discussions in pursuit of truth, when you make factual claims, providing evidence isn't a courtesy, it's basic intellectual honesty. You don't get to make assertions about Islamic doctrine then hide behind wounded feelings when asked to support them.

Finally, you still haven't addressed Umar ibn al-Khattab. This isn't some minor historical figure, he's the second Caliph, Muhammad's direct companion, who conquered Jerusalem and immediately invited Jews back after 500 years of Christian expulsion. If Islamic doctrine mandates violence against Jews, then either:

a) these doctrines don't exist or don't mean what you claim, OR b) Muhammad's own companion fundamentally misunderstood basic Islamic teaching (which you seem to be more privvy to, despite your lack of citation)

You cannot escape this logical knot you've tied around yourself. Every byte of text you write avoiding this question proves you know your position is indefensible.

This isn't about silencing you, it's about holding you accountable for claims you cannot substantiate.

Edit: actually wait, I’m gonna come back for five seconds to voice dictate that I previously discussed calls for violence from Islam against everyone, rather than specifically Jews, in the first sentence of the reply that you didn’t seem to have read, but there’s your example for Jews, and your moment of shame on either being not an Islamic scholar or having been exposed to have lied. Which again we both know is permissible under Islam for the purposes of furthering Islam. Goodbye to you and your terrible beliefs.

Edit 2: I made no reference to my own personal geography rather than lived experience of Islamic violence. That you would miss characterise one for the other reveals the same thing about you and your terrible beliefs as your mischaracterisation of a system that treated Jews second class citizens. Now begone with your nonsense.

I wouldn't even dare to say this is the writing level of a kindergartner, because that would be an insult to kindergartners. So flee you fool, Adieu.

P.S.: The multiple desperate edits after saying 'goodbye' twice really sell the whole 'I've demolished your argument' claim. Classic.

P.P.S.: Funny how someone who 'stopped reading at the first sentence' managed to respond to points from my fifth paragraph. Even your lies are lazy.

It’s enough for our audience to Google and expose you either about being an Islamic scholar or lying about Islam not calling for violence, yet again.

But I can and I did. You read it, remember?

Bravo! How do the mirrors you look into withstand such a face?

One can’t be bigoted towards ideas. You claimed to be an Islamic scholar, now you don’t seem to know what Islam is.

This is what is called a wolf in sheep's clothing.

For example, these ayatollahs, who have forgotten more about islam than any muslim I've ever discussed with has ever known, claim that women who refuse to cover up (it was really more burning hijabs and demonstrating) can't be executed according to islamic doctrine for that, if they were young and virgins. Sounds great.

Except what they decided what this "islamic doctrine" meant was to have them raped repeatedly by soldiers ... and THEN execute them. Virgin problem solved.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...

Oh here is the list of credentials of khamenei, the person in charge of that. But let me guess, you "know better" and "know" this somehow isn't islam. Of course, you aren't willing to do anything about it either ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei

Some highlights:

"Khamenei's education began at the age of four, by learning the Quran at Maktab;[7] he spent his basic and advanced levels of seminary studies at the hawza of Mashhad, under mentors such as Sheikh Hashem Qazvini and Ayatollah Milani. Then, he went to Najaf in 1957,[26] but soon returned to Mashhad due to his father's unwillingness to let him stay there. In 1958, he settled in Qom where he attended the classes of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini.[7]"

You say that Muhammad 'used peace treaties as weapons of war, against Jews', but the historical record shows the complete opposite, and the full story makes your accusation look absurd.

The Banu Qurayza violated the Treaty of Medina during wartime, which was considered an act of treason in violation of the constitution agreed by all citizens of Medina, including the Banu Qurayza Jews.¹

They broke their treaty obligations by conspiring with attacking forces during the siege of Medina.

But here's the part that completely destroys your narrative: *The Banu Qurayza themselves appointed Sa'd ibn Mu'adh as their judge, and declared they would agree with whatever was his verdict.*²

They chose their own judge: Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, who was from the Aws tribe and had been their ally.

And the judgment? *The verdict for the Banu Qurayza was consistent with the Old Testament, specifically based on Deuteronomy 20:12-14.*³ Sa'd judged them to execution according to Jewish law, not Islamic law.

So let me get this straight: The Jews broke the treaty, they requested to be judged by their own ally, that ally judged them according to their own Torah, and somehow this becomes Muhammad "using peace treaties as weapons against Jews"?

This is the exact opposite of what you claimed. The Jews broke the treaty, chose their own judge, and were judged by their own law.

If someone gets such a well-documented historical event completely backwards while making inflammatory accusations, that tells you everything you need to know about the reliability of their other claims.

1. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford University Press, 1956). Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)

2. William Muir, The Life of Mahomet (Smith, Elder & Co., 1861), Vol. 3, Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).

3. Deuteronomy 20:12-14 (Hebrew Bible); Barakat Ahmad, Muhammad and the Jews (Vikas Publishing, 1979).

I am pretty sure Iran's current regime wins the brutal dictatorship game

The Federation of American Scientists reported their torture methods included:

"electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails".

It’s very clear to me Israel has had some of the most retarded foreign policy experts for decades now. The truth is the same truth we have in the U.S, 70+ million that voted for Trump harbor a higher degree of racism that is near impossible to stop (will take generations). Israelis HATE Palestinians, and therefore they cannot make even the most obvious game theory choices on building better safety environments (finance and launch a multi decade campaign to uplift Gaza from poverty of mind, heart, and material - unless you are fucking racist and would rather live in conflict than EVER give an inch.)

Well, it's outcome of how they were treated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War

If everybody hates you anyways you eventually morph into the thing that deserves that hatred.

Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference. Both countries are some kind of theocracies, that see infidels as inferior. If Israel has nukes, so should Iran. At least Iran is Shia, so different from the most Muslims, which are Sunni.

...there is no difference. Islam and Judaism trace to Abrahamic monotheism. One through the son Isaac, the other through Ishmael.

By what means are the israeli nukes (I assume thats whats meant by WMDs?) illegal? They didn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't think spying and stealing is illegal between countries under international law.

In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding.

100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. The "existential threat" bs being peddled by a certain government is simply to give cover to illegal attacks on a sovereign nation. This is "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.

Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it.

Khomeini isn’t on Kim jong un’s level

I'm not sure how can you say that, now that they are dead, completely due to how they positioned themselves on the regional and global landscape.

That's just being deluded, being a in open air prison is different from being a sovereign nation.

Who has "legal" WMDs - the P5? Israel is a non-signatory to NPT, meaning their WMDs are as legal as anyone else's.

https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2015/04/Khalaji-Apocalyptic...

Mutual destruction makes sense when you're a death cult and the enemy is evil. Iran nuking Israel knowing full well they will get nuked back IS rational if your belief is that Allah will reward you for it in the afterlife and they do sincerly believe that.

You should read books published by reformed Islamists. Radical by Maajid Nawaz is a good one.

They profess to believe (and they are sincere) that they will be rewarded for dying killing Israelis. There's a reason that if I tell you a story about a suicide bomber blowing up a public square in political protest you do not have to wonder what religion they are. It's not because all Muslims are insane, they aren't, it's because some of them have beliefs that make that action rational.

(For example, see how Hamas will not surrender even when offered free passage out of Gaza. They'd rather Israel grind their way through the Palestinian population bomb by bomb because they think every Palestinian killed goes to heaven. If they were rational as we understand the world, they'd realize their plight is hopeless and the only thing they ensure by staying is civillian deaths.)

Yup.

Hamas will fight to the last Palestinian. They could have ended the Gaza war a year ago (or more). All they have to say is: "Here are the hostages. Here are our weapons. We are now shoemakers."

Why don't they do this?

Because they would rather fight to the last Palestinian child.

Hamas has agency. They could end war any time since October 8, 2023.

Then Israeli forces colluded with Christian militias to massacre Palestinians in their camps.

Hamas was never going to disarm and hand back the hostages based on "Trust me, bro".

Hamas is a death cult. They will fight to the last Gazan child.

They have agency. They could end the war tomorrow, or a year ago.

This is just... utterly absurd. The entity killing children (literally on a daily basis!), bombing hopsitals, schools, water treatment facilities etc, and carrying out campaigns of terrorism across the Middle East, is the rogue nuclear state of Israel.

'Propaganda' doesn't quite cover it; I think we need a new word for propaganda that is so delusional and verifyiably false, that it has no basis in any reality.

From their perspective it’s all wins. Every bomb Israel drops sends their people to heaven and makes Israel look bad to the world.

The hardest part of conversing with a lot of people about this situation is getting them to understand the idea of a death cult. Once you accept that some people not only don’t fear death but actively seek it for themselves and their tribe, the Middle East makes a lot more sense. There’s so much evidence both in what they say (they do not hide it) and what they do but so much of the west refuses to accept it.

What I try to emphasize is that Hamas has agency. They make the decision to keep fighting, or stop fighting.

To deny Hamas agency is to dehumanize them. They have as much agency as Israel or any other actor.

And they are a death cult.

With two million Gazans between their tunnels and the IDF.

There is no way to make that nice or neat or pleasant.

1. They kill you (because God will give them the eternal hookup)

2. You kill them (same as #1)

3. Nobody kills anyone

Suicide bombing seems crazy and far from rational to those of us who aren’t in the death cult. But if you look at the actions of radical Islamists from that perspective, it is entirely rational and in line with both their stated beliefs and their actions.

why do they not do this? israel has had the ability to end the war since before its inception.

the answer to why is no surprise, the same as hamas' reason to not surrender. the israeli goal is the disappearance of all palestinians, and hamas so happens to be made up of palestinians.

What?

You understand what would happen next, right?

Is there a single time in history when that has occurred? And if so, what happened next?

What a fantastically violent thing to say or propose.

>the israeli goal is the disappearance of all palestinians

If that is true, why are so many Palestinians alive?

If that is true, how do Palestinians have a population growth rate higher than any European country?

Palestine: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-pale...

Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

1) They could not operate them. It isn't just about authorization sequence, it's about having all of the required electronics. You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. All of those were in Moscow hands. Even if Ukraine could ignite them, it could not launch them or set their paths, etc.

2) They did not have the budget to guard them, let alone maintain them, even less reverse engineer. The biggest risk was that rough states with deep pockets would buy those rockets on the black market (and Ukraine notably sold out most of their soviet arsenal).

3) Thus, the only real asset was the nuclear material itself. An asset that was more likely going to end up on the black market than do anything useful for Ukraine's defense.

The value of nuclear weapons is in the warheads not delivery vehicles. Even then Ukraine absolutely could maintain a trimmed down nuclear arsenal with the missiles/engines serviced by Yuzhmash. After all bare ass Russia did it in the 1990s somehow. All the American financing of nuclear security to Russia would have been proportionally redirected to Ukraine.

Then, Ukraine possessed a stockpile of highly enriched uranium all way until 2011. It was indeed sold off under Yanukovich to a rogue state though: Russia.

There is one huge drawback to not signing the memorandum: Lukashenka's Belarus (another signatory) would have also kept the nukes. This is however never brought up by the memorandum fans and non-proliferation enjoyers on the Internet precisely because it's not something they would have minded.

There's nothing wrong, what I wrote literally comes from official declassified documents and reports, you can read what insiders had to say.

Ukrainians didn't want them, feared their meltdown and their inability to even just maintain them. The rest of the world knew they were bound to end up in a rogue's actor hands very soon.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/slate....

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/ukraine-illuminated...

Either way you seem to contradict yourself. On one hand Ukraine, then a major owner of former Soviet military industrial complex could not maintain or use the weapons. On the other you insist unspecified rogue actors would be skilled enough to maintain and use them. Make up your mind.

So the rest of the world did not know anything, as the perfect safety record of enriched nuclear fuel in Ukraine illustrates. They did want for the nukes to end up in Russia for the proliferation fears and convenience of negotiating with one power. The decision turned out ultimately misguided, contributing to the unraveling of the postwar world order we see today (ironically including the proliferation of nuclear technology to the rogue states). Bill Clinton, about as insider as it gets have expressed his regrets about it last year.

No you don't. Cold war ICBMs all used intertial guidance. The most advanced in the form of the MX had a max CEP of 90 m.

1) Nukes were built mostly by Ukrainian engineers. They would do just fine. They could also build and launch satellites if needed.

2) So Ukraine couldn't launch them because they needed electronics and satellites, but some rogue state with deep pocket could? Okay.

3) Of course!

Comrade, that is Russian propaganda you are disseminating here.

This sounds ridiculous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project#Log...

You can see the link in GP comment by yourself.

Even basic logic - Ukraine had the technical know-how to do whatever they wanted with the nukes. Moscow didn't have control, at best on paper - if they had control, there was no need for the Budapest Memorandum.

I keep debunking this propaganda point over and over again lol

You have to process massive piles of mass into a very small fraction. And you have to collect all those rocks. And that’s just for fission.

As long as any country with preemptive strike capability exists, and satellites exist… I just don’t see how anyone could do it.

If that was viable, why would Biden not have done so during the years he had?

And you know this how? Accordingly to all those initial predictions Russia should be already disintegrated and fallen under heavy sanctions, Putin's regime replaced etc. etc. I suspect all these analytics and think tanks should be cleaning toilets instead.

Also there is a line in that backing crossing which may lead to an all out nuclear war. Rational countries that matter understandably do not want to test it unless their existence is really threatened.

Please, take a 15 minutes to educate yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Armed_Forces#Structure_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Rocket_Forces

Once you've obtained some nukes, complete with decent rockets to liv them, nobody is going to mess with you too badly, or try to take the nukes back; you're now a member if the club.

Japan or South Korea would likely be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months if they needed to. I bet even Ukraine could, with its remaining nuclear plants and relatively advanced industry, and are on friendly terms with the US.

But if you made enemies with the big members of the nuclear club, and with the US in particular, they will do everything to stop you, and your situation would become much harder; that's the case with Iran.

I never understood the logic.. (or maybe it's the theatric element?) There are other WMD that seem much simpler. If they hypothetically release some horrible biological agent in Israel - it could incapacitate the country overnight

Or set off a dirty bomb to make huge regions unlivable (just the perception of radiation risk would preclude many from living there.. see Fukushima)

Or had them, and then gave them up because they were under the impression that they would be protected if they did so; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...

It's not that simple. Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines, in power vacuums succeeding an unpopular dictator. None of those autocracies were stable in the long-term. (But a nuclear weapon is quite stable; it succeeds the falls of governments and passes on to whoever replaces them).

Deplore US' strategic stupidities all you want; but it's not the only actor with agency in the world.

Would anyone have been better off with Assad fighting a version of the 2010's civil war with nuclear weapons in his arsenal? Or Hussein, that sectarian war? Those are two men who gassed thousands of innocents with nerve agents; they wouldn't surely wouldn't hesitate long about dropping nukes.

(Can you deter a civil war with nuclear weapons?)

We could also ask who would have inherited a hypothetical Qaddafi nuke, after his fall: which Libya? There were at least three Libyas one point. ISIL governed one!

(One semantic nitpick: I don't think it's fair to say those dictators "gave up" their WMD's. With all three, their WMD programs were forcibly taken from them. In Iraq, 1981, the bombing of the Osirak reactor; and again in the 1991 Gulf War the bombing of Tuwaitha (which permanently ended Iraq's uranium enrichment). Qaddafi turned over all his nuclear materials to the USA, after being directly threatened, in the months following US' 2003 invasion of Iraq. And Assad lost his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in 2007, to an airstrike. Did anyone of these dictators have agency in those "give up WMD" choices? I think not).

For Libya and Syria, sure, but what are you talking about for Iraq? Saddam was unambiguously ousted from an internally secure position of power by a foreign invasion that followed in the wake of over a decade of heavy sanctions and no-fly zone imposure. By many accounts, Saddam had a strong base of support within his population and his rule was stable (backed by a blend of patronage and severe terror obviously) right up until the day he was ousted by vastly superior military might from outside.

While it's extremely hard to know what would have happened to his regime had he still been in power by the time of the Arab Spring and the events that caused the ouster of Gaddafi and eventually Assad, Saddam would surely have been able to stay in power at least up to then. I certainly don't imagine him having more difficulty handling an internal strife of the kind that ruined Assad's dictatorship. Except for his catastrophic miscalculation of making a long-term enemy of the US during the first, utterly pointless Gulf War, he at least showed himself to be the far more experienced and careful dictator during his rule.

That sounds insane. I don't think world would be more peaceful if every country under every government had WMDs. We'd be in the middle of nuclear winter now if that was the case. You could draw analogies to everyone owning a gun. We know it just ends up with many more dead and nothing being more peaceful.

> Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.

He's wrong. What protects North Korea is that it's poor, has no natural resources and devastated human capital and neither attacks anyone with terrorist attacks nor credibly prophesies their intent to kill any nation or ethnicity.

If they did that, they'd be steamrolled already. WMDs or not.

By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then.

So, I have an honest (non rhetorical) question: Was NK saved more by having their own nukes, or by sharing a land border with China who has nukes and doesn't want the US getting involved in the area?

Nuclear weapons can target, the US based on the region, sure. But NK does not need nukes to reduce the south Korean capital to rubble.

No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave).

The point is that you don‘t get attacked by anyone else unless you‘re a dictatorship.

I think the point of this bombing is to change the calculus you just mentioned. Now there’s an actual reason to not try for nukes, you may get bombed.

NK’s conventional weapons (and SK’s pointed right back at them) saved them from conflict, that’s how they got to nukes without us doing something like this. They already had mutually assured destruction from conventional weapons and proximity to an ally.

Iran’s problem is we don’t care much about anyone around them except Israel, and they already would destroy Israel if they could, so they had nobody’s head at which to aim their bullet.

NK’s government is an evil one but the Kims really like being alive and that keeps them somewhat rational. They are quite obviously not religious since they claim to be God (and surely are aware they are not), so they don’t believe in benefits to martyrdom.

Islamism is a death cult (and I mean that literally) so their actions aren’t rational as we would define the word. We can’t rely on their self-preservation instinct the way we can with the Kims.

Germany in that case will then briefly technically have nukes, but no ability to knowledge of how to launch or control them. Had Ukraine tried to hold onto those nukes and/or figure out how to launch them they would likely have been invaded by just about every country in the world, including the US, so they gave them up for a few bucks and some kind words.

And I strongly disagree about Iran. Pakistan is also an Islamic country (with its proper name being the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) and a nuclear power, and they haven't just decided to go nuke India who they have abysmal relations with. Religion does provide a different level of comfort with death (and Iran has a longgggggg history of enduring pain to expel invaders on top), but it does not just turn people into death cult members.

There's some irony in that if Iran had nuclear weapons their relations with Israel would likely have been much better. Because Israel wouldn't have been constantly attacking, assassinating, and otherwise doing everything they could to undermine the country. It's similar to how if North Korea didn't have nukes then South Korea, largely as a proxy of the US, would likely have been actively attacking them.

South Korea was never going to attack North Korea because, as I mentioned, they had plenty of conventional weapons they could easily deliver to South Korea. They had mutually assured destruction before they even tried to get nukes, that's why they succeeded. Iran does not have that yet, and must be stopped before they do.

I do now know whether this was the right way to do it by any means, and I think it's a shame that the Obama-era deal was abandoned. I think we could possibly have gotten here through peaceful measures. But we did need to get to here.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_state-sponsored_t...

I don’t think there’s any evidence at all that fighting terrorism creates more terrorists than it kills, that’s just a thing people say and reality seems to show the opposite. We haven’t had waves of terror since gutting Al Queda, ISIS, etc. There’s neither research nor data to support it, people just like the way it sounds so they repeat it.

And on top of this terror groups are now growing powerful enough to fully control their own countries. The Taliban now has rock solid control of Afghanistan (before the war on terror they had majority control, but were struggling against a powerful insurgency), Abu Mohammad al-Julani controls Syria and US propaganda is framing him as a moderate or reformer, but he's not. He had a $10 million bounty on his head as one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, even as we started running propaganda for him, exactly as we did for [de facto] Al Qaeda(from which he came) before they came back to bite us later, exactly as he will. Then there's the Houthis who went from a political movement to an insurgency to now having near complete control of Yemen in spite of ongoing conflicts with Saudi Arabia and the US.

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism

How has the situation been better in the twenty years NK has had nuclear weapons than the fifty years after the Korean war and before NK got nukes?

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/north-koreas-artill...

Iran’s deterrent was/is through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) along with its sizable missile inventory, anti-air capabilities and strategic threats to oil and gas exports.

Israel’s investment in missile defense and the outcome of the Oct 7th attacks severely weakened Iran’s deterrence to a conventional attack.

I think the lesson should be that any nation that has enough conventional leverage to deter an attack could choose to build nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may complement, but can’t displace other capabilities.

The US has nuclear weapons but that didn’t deter Iran from launching direct attacks on US troops in the Middle East or sponsoring insurgents in Iraq. Nuclear weapons are also essential worthless against non nation-state actors such as Al-Qaeda.

If South Korea’s coalition could establish air superiority over the DMZ and artillery range in the first moves, I think it takes you from “Seoul destroyed” to a “pretty average modern conflict.”

Hot take for sure, but war has changed.

That's ahistorical in the case of Syria and Iraq. Israel destroyed the nascent nuclear weapons programmes of Syria and Iraq, just as it has done to Iran's. Syria and Iraq did not give up those programmes willingly.

Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice.

And yet Iranian proxies have repeatedly challenged these powers across the Middle East, in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Sinai, etc. And a lot of Iran's actions have broad support in many other Middle Eastern countries, including strong US allies, those where there are no natural ethnic, religious or linguistic ties to Iran, and where there is prosperity based on peace and the American world order.

Whatever else the Iranian govt are, they are not foreign policy under-hitters or flawed tacticians blinded by dogmatism.

Imagine if they'd spent the money on education, or developing their economy. They could easily have reconciled with the U.S. if they stopped chanting "Death to America" and done something productive with their time and money. This was the inevitable result of their plans, and easily predictable.

They did spend a lot of the oil revenue on both education and developing their economy.

Compare them perhaps to Saudi Arabia, a similar sized country with much more oil and much fewer people. Saudi does not have any industry, does not export anything except hydrocarbons. All the extraction is done by foreign engineers.

Iran educates engineers, including many foreign students, has industry outside of oil, and largely works its own drilling and refinery. The Iranian economy is not dependent on migrant labor.

Saudi pays billions to Europe and America for high tech weaponry, yet can't defeat the Houthis. A considerable proportion of the money goes to baksheesh both for the Saudis themselves and their western suppliers. If Saudi decided tomorrow to challenge its Western backers in any real way, the umbrella would be withdrawn and the guys in the solid gold cars would last about a week.

Iran has wreaked havoc throughout the region for 40 years by putting $30 rifles, $200 RPGs, $100 IEDs and now, $2000 drones in the right (wrong) hands at the right time. They haven't lost a regular soldier in battle since the 1980s.

Even if you're calling the end of Iranian influence in the region right now, it's still an incredible run of hitting above one's weight. The only country in the Middle East this can be compared with is Israel, who are themselves legendary for hyper-insightful tactical leverage.

You can try a lot of mental contortions to justify it, but I think the simplest explanation is the cleanest: this forever war against Israel and America — the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" as they referred to them — was a catastrophic miscalculation. They should have spent the time and money elsewhere, and reconciled with America at least, and life would be better for Iranians if they had.

1: https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-and-national-se...

Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393

Why not? Smart people can make decisions that look weird from the outside.

The foreign policy of the US been looking weird for decades to most outside parties, yet I'm sure there are smart people involved in it on a daily basis. But even with smart people involved, the US been invading countries based on false premises more than once, not sure why it would need to be different for Iran or any other country.

America also has lots of brilliant people. Then we have Hegseth, Noem and the other fuck.

2. There are plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are religious fanatics or just power hungry or want to advance in the IRGC ranks/carrier ladder. Khamene.ai is a Living God and there are many engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who worship this deity

3. There are also lots of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are threatened and forced to work for the IRGC. Just like it was in the Soviet Union under the Communism

We will just forget that von Neumann advocated for nuclear first strike based on game theory.

Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.

And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work

This is why US war-mongering is bad and we need to stop doing it. The US is absolutely ruthless. After all, we're the only country that has actually used nukes - and we did it on civilians.

There are cleaning people and canteen workers in uranium enrichment facilities.

And so on. Once bombs start falling, it’s a silly idea that there’s no innocent casualty and that people won’t fear for their life regardless of their status when they hear bombs falling in the neighbourhood.

[1] and sure, that’s Israel (for now), but I don’t think that you’ll bother with this distinctions once you see bombs falling down

Internet used to joke about US "freedom bombs", but it's taken quite seriously and positively there.

regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.

where is DOGE when you actually need them?

Regime change and nation building worked so well in Afghanistan and Iraq. Onward to more death and suffering, I guess.

This also accounts for the bias in people you meet as the ones who like Iran tend to continue living there.

People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country. Not even the biggest dissidents rotting in regime jails would welcome this. Not even a little bit.

[1] https://www.threads.com/@djmelodie/post/DLNlE38PTNk?xmt=AQF0...

Depends on the effectiveness of the bombing.

It is one thing to not like the political leadership, but another thing if the government oppresses the population.

Those of us in America are privileged that we can’t fathom what that means.

And then twenty years from now everyone will say they were always against it.

During Iraq the US military deployed some insanely creative strategies with the deployment of concrete- yet nothing meaningful was actually built for the people of Iraq...

But can you define what "this moment" is that they have been waiting for?

I don't think "this moment" helps them along the way. It is rather a reason for more internal repression.

Couple that with a population of at least 80 million people who hate the regime and only didn’t fight back because the regime had physical power over them.

Getting bombed by a 3rd party who's allied with the terrorist state that just started a war by bombing you, is so liberating.

No, 80 million people don't want to end the regime. Westerners can't fathom the fact that not everyone wants to live in a democratic free-for-all.... so clearly anyone who doesn't deserves bombing.

Pathetic. Imperialism is encoded in the DNA of Americans at this point.

they do have a massive popular support issue over there

I didn't say there are no supporters, but there is an asymmetry between supporters and protestors. Supporters are being brought by buses, are often members of the Basij or other government functions and generally have incentives to do so. Protestors however risk extremely painful death and torture.

There is support for the regime, usually outside of large cities, but there's a reason there were large protests in almost every single year since 2016

for some reading you can take a look at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/reader/read-online/234eb6fd-85...

There's over 40% of responders that do not claim their religion is Shia, but rather Atheist, Humanist, etc. That's more than the people that define themselves as Shia, in a Shia theocracy. This also correlates with skepticism of government media and rejection of Hijab

Religiosity surveys in the middle east are largely bunk. Actual boots on the ground reality is very different. In the 2000s much was made about the rapid secularization of the Arab world. ... in reality, the exact opposite has happened with the youth.

There were numerous groups of Iranians protesting against Israel's actions and in support of the Palestinians. These are Iranians living abroad so can be expected statistically to be less supportive of the current government than the average Iranian resident.

The counter-protest, mainly of pro-Israel demonstrators, this time also had Iranians, demonstrating against the current regime (and broadly in support of Israel). All the Iranian flags in this very small group were the Shah-era design with the lion.

The visibly Iranian groups in the pro-Palestinian demo vastly outnumbered the counter protest. They seemed quite ideologically diverse. There were some people holding pictures of the ayatollah with the words 'No Surrender'. But there were also groups with the sign "don't bomb us and claim it's for women's rights" (can't remember exact wording). Groups including women with headscarves, other groups with only bare headed women. As well as the current official flag with the swords, I saw people holding the lion flag, and others with the neutral tricolour without emblem. So at least some of the people present were anti the current regime, but supported the Palestinians in the current conflict.

Obviously a very selective sampling for many reasons, but far from what you might expect if almost all Iranians were united against their current government.

On the reddit NewIran sub, they were mocking a picture of somebody at one of those rally’s holding a giant IRGC flag… upside-down.

I wouldn’t use numbers of “useful idiots” showing up at rallies as a way of demonstrating internal support for the Iranian regime.

Surveys suggest around 70-80% are anti-regime, which makes sense considering the regime’s history of hangings and imprisonment for minor offenses. The people of Iran want the regime to end.

Oh, enough to look at Libya, Syria, Iraq, to see what happens next:

1. Lots of infrastructure would be destroyed. It's the first thing NATO does in any invasion: bomb powerplants, water treatment plants, airports, hospitals, business centers (remember, that Iraq invasion started with destroying Baghdad business center, it was shown in all Western media). Infrastructure is super-expensive to rebuild, many countries in the world have no resources to build decent infrastructure.

2. At least several millions of Iranians would die. It's obvious. Somebody's moms and dads, somebody's children. The bombs do not choose. And we all know that West is indifferent to the deaths of non-Western non-white population (remember, e.g. killings and war crimes in Afghanistan).

3. In the end the country will end up in half-feudal anarchistic ruins (like Libya) or with "democratic" puppet government. Any outcome will allow selling Iran oil and gas to the West for the price of water, further lowering living standards of Iran.

I fail to see a single benefit for anyone living in Iran.

People lack common sense, but not their appetite to ingurgitate the daily three meals that the propaganda machines prepared for them.

Your premise of Israel not targeting civilians is not serious. Just turn a TV channel on that isn't US mainstream media (which is actively manipulating to you).

Was enriched uranium destroyed? I doubt it.

Have they even "obliterated" Fordow site buried 90 m deep inside the mountain? I have serious doubts.

Iran's nuclear program was set back some months if anything.

Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks.

Either they dug further down or they just transported things away.

Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do.

This implies a tunnel system, or was this transport done in plain sight?

hopefully I am wrong

https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-has-attacked-irans-nuc...

> "Prior to tonight’s airstrikes on the three Iranian nuclear-associated facilities, Maxar collected high-resolution satellite imagery on June 19th and June 20th of the Fordow fuel enrichment facility that revealed unusual truck and vehicular activity near the entrance to the underground military complex. On June 19th, a group of 16 cargo trucks were positioned along the access road that leads to the tunnel entrance of the facility. Subsequent imagery on June 20th revealed that most of the trucks had repositioned approximately one kilometer northwest along the access road; however, additional trucks and several bulldozers were seen near the entrance to the main facility and one truck was positioned immediately next to the main tunnel entrance."

I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks.

In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim.

Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes?

This isn't really relevant but I'm only making one comment in this post so I'll say it here: young folks don't remember decades of Iranian state sponsored terrorism and do not understand the context of conflict in the middle east.

Conflict in the Middle East is entirely rooted in Israeli ethnic cleansing campaigns and western adventurism and protections of Israeli interests. If Iran went away tomorrow, the region would still have massive support for violent movements targeting Israel.

This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show.

After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that.

I guess means no. However I have no idea what they would say if they did. "Yes we poisoned the whole area for generations to come, success!"

Keep in mind, Israel has full aerial control over Iran and has taken out hundreds of their missile launchers.

We can keep pounding the various nuclear facilities and hinder ant chances of rebuilding, making any effort futile.

Arguably the same could happen given widespread use of non petroleum sources of energy. Prices will go up to reflect the marginal cost of hydrocarbon based energy, even if that use is minimal, until the point where the energy network is completely decoupled from those markets.

This happened in the United Kingdom after the invasion of Ukraine. More wind was used as gas became more expensive. But the price of electricity from wind also went up.

Such advanced people, the Chinese are.

CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP.

GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP.

With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine.

A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night).

The distance between Israel and Iran is huge - it must be extremely expensive to operate the air bridge allowing their air force to operate as it did last week.

But I would be really surprised if they can go on like that for a month.

Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.

How well would you sleep at night?

And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.

It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>.

> There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium

Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives.

How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?

Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed?

Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest.

The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago.

If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes.

Forced separation only deepens the hatred.

Trump and his people are children in the back of a car that found mummy’s gun in her purse. They have no idea what they are doing. I understand what Israel is doing but the US administration are clueless and rudderless.

It is the only country that has constitutional preference for an ethnic group instead of equality of all subjects/citizens.

It is also the only country with automatic citizenship based on religion.

It is also the only country with nuclear weapons but not part of NPT. Even North Korea is a member of NPT.

The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore.

Looks theocratic to me

Some well meaning citizens said “I want to check Israeli rather than Jew, Druze, Arab, etc.” Except Israeli is not a nationality in this sense. Nor is Jewish, on this form, a religious identification. It is a way of tracking, for census reasons, something closer to ethnicity. Not for nefarious purposes, but just to track demographics.

from the article:

> the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications” on the State of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people.

That is a very strong claim that needs very strong evidence.

Is there discrimination, in all directions? Yup. The world is a tribal place.

But you should move on from that "tiered" thing. I live here. I have been doing a project with Arabs for the last two weeks. We have lunch together most days. Move on.

- Constitution -- You clearly have not read the constitutions of Syria, Saudi Arabia, or many other countries. Ethnic groups are all over the identities of most of the world's countries.

- Automatic citizenship - How narrow do you define this? African Americans can go to Liberia and other countries of Africa. Until just twenty years ago or so anyone with a German grandparent could automatically get German citizenship. If you are Cuban you can get American citizenship. Are you thinking this through?

- NPT, I am not sure anyone cares, but this is very different than your other topics.

As convincing as your lunch anecdote is, I'm not sure you're can hand waive away the problem so easily.

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel

A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv University found that 49.5% of Israeli Jewish high school students believe Israeli Arabs should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel

An October 2010 poll by the Dahaf polling agency found that 36% of Israeli Jews favor eliminating voting rights for non-Jews

A 2012 poll revealed widespread support among Israeli Jews for discrimination against Israeli Arabs, including 33% of respondents believing Israeli Arabs should be denied the right to vote, 42% objecting to their children going to the same schools as Arabs, and 49% "[wanting] the state to treat Jews better than Arabs"

And on and on and on...

I live here. In places like Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs are together all day, every day. 40% of the police officers in Jerusalem are Arabs.

What is your problem?

Why do you selectively omit the polls of Arabs and Palestinians... about lots of things.... (attitudes to Jews, support of violent Jihadist groups, etc etc)

If you want peace, push for peace.

If you want violence and blood, keep doing what you are doing.

My problem is that Isreal is killing innocent people every day and I want them to stop it. Their horrible record of human rights violations is undeniable.

So I'm sorry if this colors my view of Israelis treat non-Jewish people within Israel and makes polls like the one's I cited easy to believe. But you're right I don't live there so I don't know the ground truth.

> If you want peace, push for peace.

That's exactly what I want. How do you suggest I push for it then? Because from where I sit, a good start is to be critical of (or at to least stop supporting) the biggest perpetrator of civilian death on the planet.

Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions.

About democracy, it is not.

Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0].

Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent.

[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/afric...

Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things

Hamas has started in on the 7th of october 2023, effectively rolling back years of negotiations done by Yasser Arafat. Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Netanyahu is no better, but they offered him the perfect motive for a response.

Ultimately, from the United States taxpayer. Who supply the Egyptian military government, who turn a small proportion over to the Islamists to keep them from too much rabble-rousing. Who smuggle them to Hamas.

Both Qatar and Iran supply money and other forms of support to Hamas. But no RPG makes it into Gaza (across a shorter than 10 mile border) without the Egyptian military sort of knowing about it.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/19/hamas-used-iranian-p...

1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not?

2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon.

3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt.

What do those folks want for themselves? Be part of the Palestinian Authority? (Not the ones I have been doing a remodel with.) Make them part of Jordan?

Jerusalem is disputed territory. That makes it an uncomfortable mess, for more or less everyone.

The region needs more efforts toward peace, and less black and white, good/bad labeling.

East Jerusalemites are in limbo waiting for peace.

It's Jerusalem. It's a strange place.

Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing.

What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy...

> Do they?

The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse"

> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.

How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.

> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?

Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?

They clearly and openly state that they want to force Palestinians off of their land and are using violence towards that end.

If there were a button to get rid of Palestinians, Israelis would “hit it twice”.

https://youtu.be/BkP78hyLl4w

You know better than to listen to rants on line... I hope!

Here’s a survey conducted by Israeli researchers showing that vast majority (82%) of Israelis surveyed support forcibly expelling Palestinians.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.p...

Hamas could have ended the war in Gaza a year ago. Or on October 8 2023.

Do they? No. They will fight to the last Gazan child.

Is it nice that Israelis see no alternative to Gazans being resettled elsewhere? No.

Do you have a path for Gazans to go back to the mid 1990's when 100+ Gazans came to Kibbutz Nir Oz for a peace festival?

No matter how many times I see it, the constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me.

Do you live in a place that has a death cult committing daily acts of violence and killing (against people on both sides of the fence, of both "ethnicities")?

Do you live in a place where billions are spent on offensive weapons (tunnels, rockets) and stolen from donated food aid (as Hamas has been hijacking aid for many years and selling it at profit)?

If you do not, do you have any idea how a group of people (e.g. a society) responds to ongoing violence and threats of violence?

Your dismissive "constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me" is the mark of someone who sits in an armchair and experiences no threat.

Beware of being dismissive. This region needs people who push for the hard work of peace and avoid labels and dismisiveness.

There was a peace movement in the 1990s. It accomplished a lot (a million+ Palestinians live under a Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza was left to its own devices in 2005).

A death cult (probably two) killed that process. By killing people (including the Israeli Prime Minister). Years earlier, that death cult killed Sadat for his peace making work.

Support those who push for peace.

Call out those who don't.

Uh? So can you explain the genocide?

(If you correct for the 100K+ who left Gaza before Egypt closed its border in 2024)

The population growth rate in the West Bank and Gaza is higher than that of Europe.

I ain't the one having the babies... The residents of those places are.

That is not a well thought out question. The answer is different in PA controlled areas, non PA areas, and Gaza.

And Gaza's life expectancy is different for members of Hamas vs. non members. And was one thing on October 6, 2023 and October 8, 2023.

Hamas has agency.

They could end the war a year ago or tomorrow.

Why don't they?

Do you know what Hamas is?

Do you know their charter?

Do you know that they diverted billions of $, meant to build housing for Gazans to their own pockets and to a huge underground fortress under a civilian population?

Do you know that most Gazans support Hamas, and that Hamas has made many offensive wars against the civilians and armies of both Israel and Egypt? (Hamas killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers running wild in Egyptian Rafah in 2014... Know what Egypt did? Leveled hundreds of housing structures)

Hamas has been in a state of war since the day they took power in Gaza.

Hamas has murdered hundreds of Palestinians, including many who worked for peace.

What do you want to see?

More violence and blood?

Or more peace?

Promote what you want to see.

(Digging out the 100's of miles of offensive tunnels in Gaza is slow slow work. Hamas could end the war any time, but they will never surrender. They will fight to the last Gazan child. Do you want that?)

Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.

Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.

Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.

(Edit: typo)

Why do you think there was a revolution?

Iranians keep protesting; last few years have seen several large protests, involving hundreds of thousands, and continuing for months. The popularity just isn't there.

Regarding revolutions, it's quite often that a relatively small group of like-minded people capture the control, and the majority is weakly supporting them, or is even weakly opposed but complies. The French revolution was mostly about some nobility wanting to remove the monarchy that oppressed them, along with the rest; most of the population wasn't overtly anti-monarchy, and not even covertly so, but it did not like the monarchy's pressure either. The Russian revolution was "communist" and "proletarian", but even by their own Marxist accounting, proletarians were less than 10% of Russian population, and communists, much fewer still. Nevertheless, they subdued most of the Russian empire.

The Iranian revolution was also done by a group of highly religious people who were fed up with the shah's secularization reforms. The shah, AFAICT, was a guy a bit like Putin, or Saudi kings: efficient and geared towards prosperity of the country, but quite authoritarian. The fact that e.g. the educated urban population in Iran wasn't happy about authoritarianism does not imply that the same people were (or are) huge fans of theocracy. Actually, the theocracy ended up even more oppressive.

It was a blind alley anyway. Zero countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism were able to reach prosperity on that ideology. Meanwhile, a lot of desperately poor countries of the 1950s are nowadays reasonably well of, on the basis of a normal, regulated market economy.

A revolution is something in which a significant part of a nation actively participates, not something that almost the entire population sits out passively.

Of course we can debate what is the necessary fraction, but 3000 militants isn't a big deal in a country of several million. Every Iraqi cleric in 2010 was able to put together a bigger militia than that.

Sort of? The US played a role in that shit show and it wasn’t all happy days under the Shah.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution

(Similarly, China under Deng Xiaoping was not a paragon of political freedom at all, but it was quite a bit more sober than under Mao Zedong. The US administration had tons of shortcomings under president Biden, but it was in quite a bit less of disarray than under president Trump.)

Israel is currently engaged in genocide, how would it be good for it to benefit enormously?

Yeah, I mean we can still use it (or it's slowness and uselessness) to hide behind it but the facts are on the table. Gaza looks like post-war Germany at this point. People ARE starving. Meanwhile Israel expands to the east. Also illegally.

Is this some reality distortion field? This never happened. Instead the ICJ issued multiple explicit orders to Israel that Israel has violated and the genocide case is still ongoing.

People should just say what they actually mean instead of ambiguous words like genocide. Is the genocide limiting food aid with the aim of demoralizing the population into losing support for Hamas? Or is it directly killing people in the fighting? He could have just said that so his words mean something. Those actions might or might not be genocide but they might still be something worth criticizing.

If you actually care about international law, you might be interested to know that the ICC has issued (standing) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Minister for Defense for various crimes against humanity and the use of starvation in warfare.

Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.

Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom.

they could show research that theyre doing for how to make nuclear power using 60% enriched uranium. nothing says they have to use an existing design

www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/un-nuclear-watchdog-censures-iran-a-move-that-could-lead-to-restore-sanctions

Israel couldn't care less about Iran until 1979. It's the Islamists who are obsessed with Israel.

If Iran stopped chanting "Death to Israel" and stopped arming anti-Israeli groups then Israel would have no issue with Iran.

It's a stupid slogan because it gives politicians ammunition, but it can be interpreted various ways. For example:

Ali Al Bukhaiti, the former spokesman and the official media face of the Houthis, said: "We really do not want anyone's death. This slogan is only against the intervention of those governments [i.e. the United States and Israel]."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Israel

Meanwhile, if you judge a country by it's actions rather than it's slogans tell me how Israel is looking right now on the "death to ..." scale.

I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA.

To continue the analogy that's like going back to 1900 and saying Britain could pull out of Ireland except for Ulster and there'd still be people calling for further decolonisation.

Even Iran’s leaders would laugh in your face at such a naive statement, you should reconsider your media diet

So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.

Land it didn't own. Most people can be very generous with what they don't have.

Try to read a non fantasy sionist history book…

Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you?

https://jcpa.org/the-parallels-between-yahya-sinwar-and-yass...

No. Jews migrated to Ottoman controlled land legally and paid for it. Palestinians were offered their own country but rejected that offer in favor of trying to expel the Jews and taking their land. Then they spend the next 70 years trying and failing to destroy Israel and rejecting every offer of their own country.

This is getting old, do you have any fresh hasbara for me?

Palestinians need to take responsibility for reacting to the formation of Israel in the most self-destructive way possible.

Do you dispute that Jews legally purchased land during the Ottoman period?

Do you dispute that the 1947 UN partition was rejected by Arab leadership?

Do you dispute that five Arab armies invaded in 1948?

Which specific historical claim do you think is incorrect?

Using "hasbara" as a dismissal tactic is essentially admitting you can't refute my factual claims on their merits.

For example, you recognize the fledgling UN's decision to partition the land but don't recognize any decision they've taken since, not like you're following those borders anyway.

I can all it Israeli state propaganda talking points if you want, hasbara is less of a mouthful though.

Do you find the Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 people relevant?

"you recognize the fledgling UN's decision to partition the land but don't recognize any decision they've taken since"

I know that the Palestinians have rejected at least two excellent offers from Israel for their own country. If they had accepted them they would be VASTLY better off then they are now.

You cannot absolve the Palestinians of their responsibility for their shitty lives due to their terrible decisions.

Relevant as far as its the latest and greatest excuse Israel can use to take more land and genocide the locals. US had a long history of doing the same when it came to Indians.

I wouldn't fault jews and other minorities in the holocaust for fighting back against their oppressors either.

" US had a long history of doing the same when it came to Indians."

Yes, and you don't see Native Americans trying to take back their land using military force and mass murder because they aren't evil and aren't stupid.

"I wouldn't fault Jews and other minorities in the holocaust for fighting back against their oppressors either."

The only people oppressing Palestinians in Gaza are Hamas.

Gaza immediately became a mafia state run by the Muslim brotherhood and subsisting off handouts and extortion. Consider it a failed experiment in self rule.

Please explain your reading if you're going to make such personal attacks.

All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.

You do not believe the above.

> All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.

And I'm not sure why you feel I don't recognise the agency of Muslims?

As I said previously please make an argument or explain your position and I'll respond to it, but it feels absurd to entertain these seemingly baseless ad hominems.

I grew up in a conflict zone and feel that I have some understanding of the group dynamics. That's totally reasonable and I encourage you to ask yourself if your apparent anger and incredulity here is misplaced.

“Violent Zionism” was inconsequential in comparison to the violence the Muslim population visited upon their Jewish (Zionist) neighbors/subjects/citizens from 700CE when Islam was formed through 1947 when the partition plan was proposed, and all the way to the present day.

So again, I say, you’re dehumanizing Muslims by refusing to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own actions. Because even if everything you claim was true (it isn’t), you are still claiming they are not capable of bearing responsibility for their own actions and instead any violence they commit is the responsibility of nebulous “western colonialism” and inchoate “violent zionism”. The bigotry requires to totally remove an entire religion’s agency is, as I said before: breathtaking.

You just have no idea of what you're talking about.

I have no idea what “legally affirmed” means in the context of sovereign states. The UN, or even the UNSC passing something doesn’t actually mean anything as it applies to sovereign nations. Paraphrasing Andrew Jackson: a law is only as good as the ability to enforce it. A bunch of random people agreeing to something even if they call themselves “The United Nations” doesn’t mean anything if that group of friends doesn’t have the will or ability to enforce whatever they’ve agreed to. They’re akin to you and your drinking buddies passing out edicts after one to many dry martinis.

If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of guerilla warfare you are not a terrorist. (Many palestinian fighters when there is an active conflict with Israel)

If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of relative peace, and your reignition of violence has no goal of achieving anything for your people, you are probably not a terrorist, but probably doing something wrong and stupid and horrible that hurts your own civilians, driven by nationalism or ideology or whatever. (Palestinian fighters on October 7 that struck military bases for example).

If you strike civilian targets or tage hostages, you are a terrorist. And worse if you do it at a time of relative peace to ignite violence against your own people. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi's have engaged in plenty of the latter since a long time.

By the way, if you level a building with 8 militants and 20 civilians that is brutal urban warcare but not terrorism. If you go to a festival and kill predominantly hundreds of civilians, that's terrorism.

I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.

Islam, ie the Koran, recognises the banu Israel (forgive my spelling/transliteration) from c.2500 years ago. Apparent muslims say "Israel has only existed for 50 years" (or words to that effect). The inference made is that they then have no rights to the land.

It seems the basis for the 'lack of rights of Israel to exist' is fundamentally opposed to the origin story of Islam itself.

Personally I find the concept of nationhood a bit ridiculous; but I'm not sure how practical it would be to organise a World without statehood.

People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse.

back to the point.

Journalist traveled to refugee camps in lebanon/gaza and then to israel to see how arabs that decided to remain are doing.

(following are more or less exact quotes from memory)

He describes how somebody were telling him in great details about giant house that he had had, with veranda surrounding it. how he will sit there in shadow of the orchard and the fertile soil that he had.

when journalists was visiting israel he decided to stop by this location. all what he found is shack barely suitable for cattle, 2 fruit trees and rocky soil that will be really hard to work.

also, while been in refugee camp in lebanon he had a meeting with somebody who managed camp. this person told him that most of those who tell him that they had untold riches actually had nothing: they were workforce for hire and were renting from landlords both housing and in some cases soil to work. he adds that most of them in a heart beat will give up on "right of return" in exchange to $10k and place to settle "anywhere".

additional nice touch in article it's description of UNRWA school (it's 1961) where they teach children that one day as soldiers they will come back kill jews/liberate their country

I have to say though, it's pretty unconvincing. It reads very similarly to saying: their right to stay where they are, or even not be killed by someone else that wants their land, is less because they're poor and renters (yuck!). I know that's an ungenerous characterisation of what you've said but it really has that undertone.

It does seem a bit low for some refugees to exaggerate their past wealth or to accept (essentially) a bribe to forget about atrocities committed against them and their families. But it's a totally incomparable to what was done to them in the first place, and certainly doesn't justify it.

I've never been in anything like that situation, and I imagine you haven't either. If I was totally destitute, forced to live in some camp (and still not safe), could I honestly say I do something similar (lie or take cash to run away)? It's hard to say but I don't think I could rule it out. But I like to think that I can rule out ever forcing people out of their homes, from land that I have no living ancestral claim to, and murdering the ones that don't run quickly enough, on religious (i.e., invented) grounds.

Maybe you've more to add, some sources to convince me?

And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries.

The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does.

Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities.

Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish.

And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.

Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference.

Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...

The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia.

After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews.

And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them?

  > Ashkenazis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...

(Links a page that shows the exact opposite)

> If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?

Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?

  > Links to a page that shows the exact opposite

  > Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleans 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?

Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century.

> The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish)

The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan:

"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..."

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/res181.asp

Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you?

It wasn't "their" land, it was Ottoman land and they let Jews migrate there because Jews paid for the land.

  > The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 ... An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated.

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/8/12/israel-sau...

What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this.

So what area are arabs from? You know there are arab jews and christians right?

This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this.

Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years.

>The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula

Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?

  > Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?

Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do.

That's like saying there is a european culture, it's nonsense.

Literally the second sentence in that wiki

Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:

And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items.

- A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4]

- A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5]

- A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5]

- A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5]

- Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe.

And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values.

And all swedish people are steppe barbarians who committed genocide against the local sami people.

False. The population in 1800 was ~90% Muslim, ~8% Christian.

> let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN

The UN had no authority to partition other people's land.

Land belongs to whoever controls it. That's it. That is all it will ever be.

If there is not some higher power (e.g. the UN, who you say does not have authority), you have no recourse.

No matter what land it is or who they are: nobody currently living was there first. The only claim is always "I was the last to control it". But none of us are the first.

> "Most of Palestine's population, estimated to be around 200,000 in the early years of Ottoman rule, lived in villages. The largest cities were Gaza, Safad and Jerusalem, each with a population of around 5,000–6,000."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine

OP's point was "Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities."

What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then?

> Almost no Jews at that time either.

What a wild claim: almost no Jews in places like Jerusalem? Please cite whatever source you have to make such an extraordinary claim.

Exactly the part that you left out: that the Jewish presence (before zionist immigration began) was of any relevance in the demography of the region.

  Source for census data:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem

Presumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states.

"Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime."

It only became the name for the land after the Bar Kockba revolt, the Romans named it such specifically to spite the Jews. And then it stuck when various powers controlled the land over time (Romans/East Romans aka. Byzantines, Caliphate, Ottomans, British).

Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior?

The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t...

so what exact goverment your arr referring?

Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.

Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others.

First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.

Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.

The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.

It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.

Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.

Maybe, but obviously the other side thinks exactly the same.

Religious wars were lots of fun five centuries ago. They will be funnier still in the nuclear age.

Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

Framing it as a religious opposition paints Iran as an irrational actor which can't be reasoned with, when it appears to me that it's behaving the way it's been pushed to behave by encroaching colonial forces.

I don't believe in Islam or in Judaism but I do believe in radical discourse and trying to understand the position of the other. Saying "it's their religion to be bloody violent and destructive, what can we do?" throws any space for understanding out of the window.

Their religious leaders like literally come out and say, "This is based on our religious beliefs."

Henry VIII used religious justification for breaking off from the pope as well but surely we're grown up enough to recognise those movements came about from a desire for political autonomy more than disagreements over bible interpretations?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

>In 2024, Ali Khamenei told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea."

In particular check out the "clerics" section of that article for the statements of multiple leading religious authorities in the regime on the religious justifications.

But just for argument's sake and to respect your position I always want to point out that your quote subtly talks about "the Zionist entity" and not about Israel or Jews. So I can assume that you're equating Israel with Zionism, which is arguably fair. Now the question I would have is do we recognise the inherent violence of Zionism and, if so, why do we decentre that in our conversation and instead focus on the reaction to it?

It is important to understand how we got here, to understand what might be plausibly achievable.

In the 1920s after Britain kicked out Turkey there was a partition proposal. The Jewish leadership at the time agreed saying they would accept a land "the size of a tablecloth". The Palestinian leaders refused absolutely and demanded the expulsion of all Jews. Their leader declared "It is impossible to live alongside the Jews" and threatened "A river of blood".

In 1937 there was another proposal in which 'Israel' would have been the small region from Tel Aviv north to the Lebanese border. The Palestinians rejected it out of hand.

In 1948 the Palestinians were granted considerably more land than they have now for their own independent state, but refused partition as unacceptable. Five Arab nations attacked Israel with the intention to destroy it completely. The General Secretary of the Arab League at the time Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, who personally orchestrated the attack declared the intention of the war was "An extermination and a momentous massacre".

Jordan and Egypt annexed the West bank and Gaza for the next 2 decades during which the Palestinians had no political rights or freedoms. The Palestinian leaders never pushed for the formation of an independent state during this time, and Israel took both regions during the Six Day War.

So if we include the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have been offered an independent state of their own four times, and every time they have rejected it completely as unacceptable. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" literally means free of Jews. Over and over, the Palestinian leadership have made that crystal clear. An independent state of their own alongside Israel in any shape or form, in their own statements and openly declared intentions has persistently been rejected.

Meanwhile Egypt and Jordan have realised that Israel is no threat to them, in fact both states have suffered coup attempts by Palestinians. They are now functionally Israeli allies against the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has now pretty solidly moved in the same direction.

if you include the oslo accords, the narrative that palestinians are the one and only problem breaks down. the only time there was agreeable terms being set, and israelis assasinated their leader for proposing them.

i wouldnt expect america to ever be favourable to carving out a new independent state of Venesuela from colorado because theres a lot of non-citizen refugees. you can see americans today pushing back against having more immigrants, too and removing the people that are here

In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.

Secular discussion about conflict in the Middle East frequently discounts the possibility that self-professed religious fundamentalists are in fact religious fundamentalists. A lot of Israeli settlers really do believe that they are fulfilling a sacred duty. A lot of Palestinians really do believe that becoming a martyr for al-Aqsa guarantees them an eternity in paradise. A lot of American Evangelicals really do believe that conflict in the Middle East will bring about the day of judgement.

I might believe that we live in a godless and meaningless universe in which death is final, but that puts me in a very small minority. Most people -throughout history and across the world - frequently act in ways that are totally irrational from a secular perspective, but are perfectly logical within a framework of faith.

Why? What do Hezbollah or the Houthis care about the world? They fight Israel, which is a genocidal regime.

This even ignoring the ludicrous idea that if they got a nuclear weapon they could deliver it anywhere.

You said israel regime as genocidal? What was the cause of all this issues? How many was killed in october attacks in israel? Why did they held hostages from different countries? So, yes i strongly believe that those terrorist doesnt need a reason to attack. Their goal is global islamisation. Khamenei had openly said that their number 1 enemy is America.

  > To suggest Iran would do it anyway is equivalent to saying that they're completely, crazy, fanatical, genocidal and stupid

There is nothing racist or dehumanising about acknowledging cultures different from your own. In fact, I would say that assuming everybody adheres to your cultural values is the racist position.

The Basic Laws, which sort of comprise the makeshift constitution of Israel, don't seem to make any religious references, but rather refer to the founding UN principles like human rights.

Even civil courts are allowed to refer to holy texts if the law is not clear.

could you please show me any law in israel, that gives blanket approval to civil courts to refer to holy texts if the law is not clear ?

Besides, the fanatical leader of that country has said in clear terms that they consider nuclear weapons forbidden by their religion. They have also said in clear terms that oppose the "Israeli regime" and the existence of Israel as a political entity- that's what they mean by "destruction of Israel", not nuking it.

Sadly, I highly doubt that the regime of the ayatollahs is going to act like that, instead of fighting fanatically to the bitter end and the last drop of Iranian blood if need be. (A bitter end is very far from the current situation though.)