israel determined to start war

[Vrede too]

It goes in reverse chronology, too. Zionists would argue that Iran's proxies had been attacking Israel since Oct 7, thus justifying the missile to the Iranian consulate in Syria. And so on and so on

Thus it has always been and thus it will always be until somebody pushes Israel into the sea or makes it look like Gaza.

That's pretty bleak. I guess I still have dreams of a safe Israel peacefully coexisting with free and prosperous Palestinians. Think of all the money spent on weapons and security that could have gone into development. Maybe I'm delusional.

[O Really]

Maybe I'm delusional.

Yeppers.
Conflict, hate, aggression, desire for dominance - all baked into the culture and into the DNA of everybody there.

Edit: Back when I was doing arbitrations/mediations, I learned a trick from a guy much more experienced than I. He'd start each case asking the claimant and the defendant a question. To the claimant, "if (defendant) agreed to give you $10 million dollars today, would you drop your claim?" (Yes). To the defendant, "if (claimant) agreed to drop her case today, would you give her $2,000 to offset her legal expenses?" (Yes). "Well, OK, then, we've agreed that we can settle this and only have to find the amount of money we need." Putting it in that perspective brought some focus, cleared out a lot of red herrings and set everybody off in the direction of finding a settlement amount.

That approach would not work with the Israeli issue. Neither side would be able to find one issue that could be the keystone to settlement, and each side would have one or more demands that the other side would not agree to no matter what. Many people have tried to broker an agreement over there; they've gotten enough agreement on some points to get their pic taken with the combatants, but other than the Israel-Jordan part, nothing has stuck. I don't think anybody will even get to a photo op as long as NuttyYahoo is there.

[Vrede too]

Jimmy Carter's Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords have also lasted.

Why doesn't anybody in the news media remind the public that regarding the current Iran mess that it was Israel that bombed the Iranian embassy and that the drone show was retaliation for that? Why does the story start with "Iran attacked Israel" and everybody talks about whether Israel should "respond"?

Bully steals kid's lunch money. Kid tosses rock in general direction of bully. Bully takes that as unacceptable aggression and knocks kid down and kicks him. And so on and so on and scooby doobie doo.

This article discusses the significance of the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria in detail:

Miscalculation Led to Escalation as Israel and Iran Clash



Israel was mere moments away from an airstrike on April 1 that killed several senior Iranian commanders at Iran’s embassy complex in Syria when it told the United States what was about to happen.

Israel’s closest ally had just been caught off guard.

Aides quickly alerted Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser; Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser; Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East coordinator; and others, who saw that the strike could have serious consequences, a U.S. official said. Publicly, U.S. officials voiced support for Israel, but privately, they expressed anger that it would take such aggressive action against Iran without consulting Washington....

Planning for the Israeli strike in Syria started two months earlier, two Israeli officials said. The target was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the commander for Syria and Lebanon of Iran’s elite Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guard....

The Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed seven Iranian officers, three of them generals, including Zahedi. In the past, Israel had repeatedly killed Iranian fighters, commanders and nuclear scientists, but no single strike had wiped out so much of Iran’s military leadership.

For better or worse Nuttyahoo's actions have been extreme since Oct 7.

... News of the first wave of the Iranian attack Saturday, consisting of 185 relatively slow drones, spread worldwide hours before any of them reached Israel. The three dozen cruise missiles Iran launched later were much faster, but the biggest challenge was Iran’s ballistic missiles, which traveled several times as fast as the speed of sound. Iran fired 110 of them, posing the first major test of Israel’s anti-ballistic missile defense system.

American, British, French, Israeli and Jordanian warplanes and air defense systems shot down most of the drones and missiles before they reached Israel. Only 75 entered Israeli airspace, where most of those were shot down, too, Israeli officials said. The attack did only minor damage to one air base, and only one serious injury was reported....

I think other Arab nations were also involved. That must have been a marvel of coordination to be effective while keeping defenders from shooting each other.

[Vrede too]

Maybe I'm delusional.

Yeppers.
Conflict, hate, aggression, desire for dominance - all baked into the culture and into the DNA of everybody there.

We've got our share of that here:

Tom Cotton Urges Americans To Confront Pro-Palestinian Protesters Blocking Traffic
"They should get out and move those people off the streets," the Republican senator said.

Vigilantism

... Cotton, however, claimed he wasn’t advocating for violence....

Awww, the product of the Arkansas school system needs remedial English.

In a separate interview on Fox News on Monday, Cotton commented on the protests that were underway at the time in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and Lower Manhattan in New York City calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

He said if similar demonstrations took place in his home state “there’d be a lot of very wet criminals that have been tossed overboard not by law enforcement but by the people whose road they’re blocking.”

Throwing people to their certain deaths off of high bridges is not violence?

“If they glued their hands to a car or a pavement, well it’d probably be pretty painful to have their skin ripped off but I think that’s the way we’d handle it in Arkansas,” Cotton added.

Nope, not violent at all

... Confrontations between everyday citizens and protesters have proven dangerous in the past, with some people driving through crowds of demonstrators.

Between Floyd’s death and September 2021, according to an analysis by The Boston Globe, “vehicles drove into protests at least 139 times,” resulting in three deaths and more than 100 people getting injured. However, in most cases the driver wasn’t penalized, the newspaper noted.

Of course not, that's how it goes when the victims are protesting murderous cops.

[O Really]

As an experienced protester, how long do you think protesters should be allowed to block a major roadway before they're removed by some means ranging from "move along now, folks" to being picked up and hauled away?

[GoCubsGo]

As an experienced protester, how long do you think protesters should be allowed to block a major roadway before they're removed by some means ranging from "move along now, folks" to being picked up and hauled away?

I vote for fire hoses.

[O Really]

As an experienced protester, how long do you think protesters should be allowed to block a major roadway before they're removed by some means ranging from "move along now, folks" to being picked up and hauled away?

I vote for fire hoses.

Yeah, optics might not be so good given Birmingham and other instances, but it's better than batons, tear gas and rubber bullets.

[GoCubsGo]

I'm honestly conflicted on this. Their right to protest doesn't trample anyone else's rights to free movement. Additionally, it probably backfires. The headlines aren't about human suffering.

There are no good optics, probably why law enforcement is hesitant to act decisively.

But honestly, this would be effective and do the least harm.

[Vrede too]

As an experienced protester, how long do you think protesters should be allowed to block a major roadway before they're removed by some means ranging from "move along now, folks" to being picked up and hauled away?

They expect to be arrested and moved by cops, not testosterone-fueled vigilantes . . . or to get run over.

I'm honestly conflicted on this. Their right to protest doesn't trample anyone else's rights to free movement. Additionally, it probably backfires. The headlines aren't about human suffering.

I agree that blocking unrelated motorists is a questionable tactic. My blockades have all been targeted at complicit traffic.

There are no good optics, probably why law enforcement is hesitant to act decisively.

Since when have LEOs been hesitant to clear major roads? I've never seen it.

But honestly, this would be effective and do the least harm.

"least harm" is picking up protestors and transferring them directly to cop cars/buses or placing them in wheelchairs or on gurneys. A fire hose can do a lot of damage, especially to children, the elderly or disabled.

It's worth noting that Cotton defends the violent J6 "protestors". He just wants violence applied to pro-Palestinian protestors.

[Vrede too]

Do murdered aid workers tip a balance?
Of course not

Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024

Republican: 193 Yeas, 21 Nays, 4 NV
Democratic: 173 Yeas, 37 Nays, 3 NV
Independent
TOTALS: 366 Yeas, 58 Nays, 7 NV

I see progressives among the Dem Nays, Idk if they all are.
Idk what's up with the RepuQ Nays.
My Rep Edwards voted Yea

[Vrede too]

Zionism is bad for workers.

Google Fires Dozens Of Employees Who Protested $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
Workers protested against Project Nimbus, a joint contract with Amazon to provide the Israeli government and military with AI and cloud services.

... NTFA (No Tech for Apartheid) confirmed what it described as retaliatory firings and arrests in a statement Wednesday, claiming that some of the workers who were fired did not even directly participate in the protest. The organization also vehemently denied Google’s allegations that protesters defaced property and impeded the work of their colleagues and pushed back against the company’s claim that the protesters were largely not company employees.

“This is not just untrue, it’s insulting. Thousands of our colleagues have joined our call for the company to drop Project Nimbus, supporting the dozens of brave workers who have spoken out publicly about how the contract is impacting their health and safety on the job,” the statement said.

“Most of all, it is insulting to those of us you just threw out of the company for voicing our concerns about Project Nimbus, as well as for the well-being of our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim colleagues facing Google-enabled racism, discrimination, harassment and censorship,” the statement continued, adding that the company’s leaders have long ignored concerns raised internally over the contract.


Hundreds of protestors, including Google workers, protest in front of Google's San Francisco offices on Dec. 14, 2023, to demand an end to its work with the Israeli government. Google fired 28 of its employees on April 17, 2024, for protesting inside two Google campuses against Project Nimbus, the company's $1.2 billion contract providing AI services to Israel.

...

Google be evil.

[Vrede too]

World Central Kitchen charity halts Gaza operations after Israeli strike kills 7 workers

Bastards. If this doesn't cause the US to pause delivery of lethal aid nothing ever will.

Nothing ever will

US holds off on sanctioning Israeli military units accused of human rights violations in West Bank before start of war with Hamas

The Biden administration has determined that three military battalions with the Israel Defense Forces committed "gross human rights violations" against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank but will remain eligible for U.S. military aid regardless because of steps Israel says it's taking to address the problem, ABC News has learned....

Nothing ever will.

[Vrede too]

Ocasio-Cortez Calls Fellow Democrat's Remarks On Sanders 'Shameful'
"He and many other Jewish leaders deserve better than to be treated this way," the New York Democrat said of Rep. Jared Moskowitz's remarks.



Fuck off, Moskowitz.

[Vrede too]

Interesting, it seems the perpetual victim Zionists have been lying, again.

Opinion: I’m a Jewish student at Yale. Here’s what everyone is getting wrong about the protests

... But when people see pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at the same time as President Joe Biden and others are warning about a surge of antisemitism on college campuses, they apply the same tired framework — supposedly antisemitic pro-Palestine activists pitted against Jewish pro-Israel activists — to Yale. As a fourth-year Yale student, I find this characterization to be deeply frustrating, as it could not be further from the truth. At every turn, I have encountered a community of activists and organizers that is eager to listen, ready to learn and committed to including Jewish voices and perspectives....

These experiences have been deeply meaningful for me, not just on a political level, but also on a fundamentally spiritual one. To see Yale protests once again swept up in accusations of antisemitism denies this experience and invalidates the Jewishness of those calling for an end to the violence in Gaza.

Indeed, Yale Jews for Ceasefire exists because of — not in spite of — our Jewish values. On the issue of divestment, for example, the Talmud teaches us that we may not sell weapons to those we suspect of using them criminally. Therefore, we have a duty to disrupt the manufacture and sale of military weapons that kill others, including those killing Palestinians....

Our present moment is a precarious one for the Jewish people, fraught with disagreement about what our Jewish values mean to us. But Nachshon teaches us that when we have the courage to lead, we can encourage others to move forward with us, toward a world free of oppression and violence. At Yale, organizers of all faiths continue to build a community that is dedicated to moving forward in collaboration with, not opposition to, Jewish students.

This is what I guessed from the start, but it's not the reality according to pols and the MSM

[GoCubsGo]

I don't think Israel's losing propaganda/genocide war was the Hamas endgame but it's working better than they could have hoped.

Concern rises over possible ICC arrest warrants for Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, military leaders