DawgTalkers.net Forums Thread Like Summary - Iran/Israel

It doesn’t get a lot of play on the outside but Israel is very divided right now. I know quite a few Israelis and most of the ones I know personally pretty well despise Bibi. Not all of them of course. But he was Trump before Trump. Only, much more of a committed politician and frankly much smarter. But similarly willing to trash government institutions to further his own short term political gains (see: court limits that were huge news right before Oct 7) and burn the house down to save his own tail. So it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

But he’s also getting hounded by the ultra orthodox Zionist party and Likud and frankly he owes his political life to them. In many ways they’re steering the ship. Some of them match the Iranians in terms of being religiously hallucinattory and ability to completely justify just about any action in the name of country. Like the “orthodox” of any religion or ideology that applies to governing people, their fears and impluses… they’re completely nuts by design.

But then there’s this other half, just about 50% of the country that are eminently reasonable. The country is very split.

I will say as an important aside though… we also don’t recognize nearly enough how much Iran is engineering and stoking all of this. Oct 7 was about Iran, via their proxy Hamas, luring Israel into an inescapable trap. They just had to be willing to sacrifice the civilians of Gaza, which they were more than happy to do. The Abraham Accords were just about to be ratified. This would have normalized relations between Israel and most of the Arab world. Iran was desperate to stop this. And they succeeded.

So, very much like 9/11, they engineered a strike that would be extremely visible, soft targets in broad daylight, targeting young people and families and other civilians, taking hundreds of mostly young hostages back over the border and into the tunnels. They knew exactly what was coming next. Much like with Al-Qaeda and the US, their goal wasn’t to topple us but to provoke a very visible over reaction and over extension and to foment divisions within Israel. With that kind of strike, cooler heads never prevail, cooler heads are downright demonized. They know this, especially with Israel.

If you’re willing to eat the punch and take a few days/ weeks/ months of horrible press, what you get in return is a steady drum beat of the over reaction and over extension played out in hi def and full color on everyone in the world’s TV and phone for months or years to come. The trapped country spends all its moral and intellectual as well as financial and human capital trying to solve an incredibly complex human problem equipped with only a sledge hammer. Israel’s name becomes toxic to half the world who haven’t kept up and are too surface to understand what’s really going on. That the western left would leap to embrace what they perceived to be as an abjectly oppressed population, losing the plot that they are steered by a 100% Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization (see: comments about orthodox organizations above). This was also well understood by Iran. That’s a dynamic that’s understood by all terrorist groups. Its not about winning the flashy start, it’s about making you lose in the long exhausting muddy, embarrassing, morally bankrupt, political quicksand of the end. Watching you collapse under your own weight and internal discord as you swing wildly in the 10th round and slink back to your locker room, the world booing. Its a war of P.R. Hearts and minds, shaping and controlling the narrative. So ironic that the sophisticated western democracies lose this point while the caveman terrorists have it sharpened to a razors edge. Western countries operate from a perspective of winning and losing in the big dumb Hollywood sense. Terrorists know that there’s another option: everyone loses. Yes, to them ruling the ashes is a perfectly acceptable defacto win. I often wonder if the western world will ever be able to armor this Achilles heal. Watching Israel fight for its life while ripping itself in half and becoming the pariah of half the world informs me that not anytime soon.

You know how I feel about em. They could tarp it off and fumigate the entire region as far as I’m concerned. I’ve felt that deeply since watching Nick Berg murdered by those animals. If you can do that ish to another human being who done you no harm, you don’t deserve to live.

And I know there are more good people there than bad, unfortunately they all blend when you go to sort them. So, when they start holding these types of murderers responsible and bringing them to justice, i’ll reconsider my multi state genocide hate and give them a chance. But as long as they let this type of men lead them, or live and operate among them freely, kill em all, let nature do the rest.

Swish- I fear that there might never be something that resembles mutual civil tolerance, or an easing of tensions in this region.
Tribal affiliations and mutual animus have been baked into the regional culture for thousands of years.

These folk have been playing 'Hatfields/McCoys' since the time of Jesus- and before. They've been beefing it up since slings, arrows, clubs and thrown rocks were hi-tech armament. They can't seem to extricate themselves from this cultural/tribal mindset because it's too fundamental in how they see themselves/each other. And now, they are armed with ballistic missiles, Iron Dome defense technology, and (in the case of Israel) nukes... with Iran on the doorstep (we can talk about 45's intentional dismantling of 44's Iran agreement that saw the near-teardown of their nuclear weapons program, but that subject is for another discussion).


Nothing but beef- since the days of the Old Testament Book.

I hate this crap, too.
It's like tryna run an HOA in an otherwise manageable neighborhood (the world)... with 2 or 3 beefing asshat fams in a distant corner of the cul-du-sac.

I really don't think these folks are ever gonna change/evolve. They don't really want to, because both are convinced that they are right- and the rest of the neighborhood 'just doesn't understand'.
Expect more of the same, for as long as you live... and you're young enough to be My Grandson. I been watching this s# go down since I was in High School... with almost no change in the day-to-day/decade-to-decade dynamics.


.02,
clem.