Does the "reign in the influence of Israel" movement need a Tucker Carlson to be credible?

ThatRobGuy · Jul 8, 2025

I've been mulling this over for the past few days...

The Gaza issue is still "hot & heavy" in public discourse.

I've long maintained that it's a strategic error to have the "reign in the influence of Israel" movement defined and dominated by a political faction that seems to think that glorifying/celebrating Islamic Fundamentalism is the proper anecdote to it. (the people out in the streets wearing keffiyehs and waiving Palestinian and Iranian flags around, while burning the American flag)

I noted in a previous thread that it's a mistake to cheerlead for either side in a conflict for which both are acting unethically (especially when the "who to cheer for" decision is being made for rather superficial reasons)

Should some on the left welcome the recent statements of Tucker Carlson on this issue? -- as he's reaching people that nobody from their own side could ever reach on this particular issue?

Just on that one interview he did with Ted Cruz, it seems to have had a measurable impact on the Republican base...

In an Economist/YouGov poll conducted not long after the interview, only 23% of Republicans think the U.S. should get involved in the conflict between Iran and Israel. (Down from 39% a few months prior to that interview)

I'd have to think that Tucker's grilling of Cruz played at least some part in that.

Are some progressives willing to accept the potential "help" on that issue, even if it comes from a source that may have contrasting viewpoints with them on other issues?

eclipsenow · Jul 8, 2025

I hear what you are saying - but I think it's even messier than that. It's not just religious - although the Christian right Zionist types would want to sell it that way.

PERSECUTION CREATES TERRORISM

It's what happens when you deny people Jus Post Bellum. Just as the harsh reparations on Germany after WW1 led to the rise of Hitler in WW2 - it is not only unethical but unwise from a geopolitical and safety view.

The sad reality is Jews fled Germany's persecution and concentration camps - and then created the world's largest concentration camps as Israel committed their own illegal annexation of ever more land in the Middle East. "International law" under the United Nations already gave Israel enormously generous land settlements in the 1950's. Since then - Israel has done whatever they want. They now run the world's largest open air jails - Gaza and the West Bank. These camps dwarf even Chinese work camps! Today's news on Israel considering forming 'camps' for Gazans has really alarmed me.

Indonesia is the most populous Moslem nation in the world. They're not in a concentration camp with Israel limiting their water and fuel and electricity for decades. They're not hearing stories from family living in those tiny last Palestinian pockets in the West Bank, and how just going to work can involved hours of check points each day - with humiliating strip searches sometimes required just to get to life's basic services! And look! The Indonesians are not at war with anyone or sponsoring terrorists.

With America pulling back from international engagement under misinformed Trumpism - and the EU not yet a fully integrated Federation - I don't know what the answer is. It would take an objective third party marching in and policing these places for a GENERATION to calm things down. It's not going to happen.

The situation in Gaza is not limited to the Middle East. Israel has become addicted to a very ugly niche in the international arms industry - and this has global ramifications that can taint us all.

PERSECUTION CREATES AN ECONOMIC INCENTIVE

Sure - as a modern nation-state, Israel have a right to defend themselves. But as a *supposedly* western democratic nation-state - they do NOT get to pretend that they are STILL ONLY responding to terrorism while:-

1. Inflicting 50 to 1 casualties! What happened to 'proportional response'? How on earth is a 50:1 casualty rate proportional? There is no way to justify this even under the most hawkish reading of Just War theory.

2. Killing parents while they queue for a day for a tiny handful of food! This for the crime of 'looking menacing' or 'crowding' when Israel have placed these aid points in confined spaces under the supervision of jumpy, trigger-prone, battle-fatigued soldiers. What could possibly go wrong? The excuses for these atrocities are pitiful.

3. Becoming ECONOMICALLY ADDICTED to experimenting with new weaponry in the Gazan battle arena. Australian Jewish reporter Antony Loewenstein calls it the "Palestine Laboratory." Israeli defence contractors made nearly $15 billion last year - a 13% increase - marketing their new bombs and drones as 'battlefield tested in Gaza!' Is asking Israel to turn off the war like asking Saudi Arabia to turn off their oil?

4. Advising other authoritarian regimes for DECADES on the PR of this! They've basically written a manual that should be titled "Persecution 101: how to run an apartheid-like system - and get away with it!"
Israel have been best buds with some of the worst. Back in the day it was the leaders of South African Apartheid, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, etc. Today the list involves Myanmar, and others. For more detail on all this - try this 4 part podcast series by Loewenstein.
The Palestine Laboratory Podcast

ThatRobGuy · Jul 8, 2025

eclipsenow said:
I hear what you are saying - but I think it's even messier than that. It's not just religious - although the Christian right Zionist types would want to sell it that way.

PERSECUTION CREATES TERRORISM

It's what happens when you deny people Jus Post Bellum. Just as the harsh reparations on Germany after WW1 led to the rise of Hitler in WW2 - it is not only unethical but unwise from a geopolitical and safety view.

The sad reality is Jews fled Germany's persecution and concentration camps - and then created the world's largest concentration camps as Israel committed their own illegal annexation of ever more land in the Middle East. "International law" under the United Nations already gave Israel enormously generous land settlements in the 1950's. Since then - Israel has done whatever they want. They now run the world's largest open air jails - Gaza and the West Bank. These camps dwarf even Chinese work camps! Today's news on Israel considering forming 'camps' for Gazans has really alarmed me.

Indonesia is the most populous Moslem nation in the world. They're not in a concentration camp with Israel limiting their water and fuel and electricity for decades. They're not hearing stories from family living in those tiny last Palestinian pockets in the West Bank, and how just going to work can involved hours of check points each day - with humiliating strip searches sometimes required just to get to life's basic services! And look! The Indonesians are not at war with anyone or sponsoring terrorists.

With America pulling back from international engagement under misinformed Trumpism - and the EU not yet a fully integrated Federation - I don't know what the answer is. It would take an objective third party marching in and policing these places for a GENERATION to calm things down. It's not going to happen.

The situation in Gaza is not limited to the Middle East. Israel has become addicted to a very ugly niche in the international arms industry - and this has global ramifications that can taint us all.

PERSECUTION CREATES AN ECONOMIC INCENTIVE

Sure - as a modern nation-state, Israel have a right to defend themselves. But as a *supposedly* western democratic nation-state - they do NOT get to pretend that they are STILL ONLY responding to terrorism while:-

1. Inflicting 50 to 1 casualties! What happened to 'proportional response'? How on earth is a 50:1 casualty rate proportional? There is no way to justify this even under the most hawkish reading of Just War theory.

2. Killing parents while they queue for a day for a tiny handful of food! This for the crime of 'looking menacing' or 'crowding' when Israel have placed these aid points in confined spaces under the supervision of jumpy, trigger-prone, battle-fatigued soldiers. What could possibly go wrong? The excuses for these atrocities are pitiful.

3. Becoming ECONOMICALLY ADDICTED to experimenting with new weaponry in the Gazan battle arena. Australian Jewish reporter Antony Loewenstein calls it the "Palestine Laboratory." Israeli defence contractors made nearly $15 billion last year - a 13% increase - marketing their new bombs and drones as 'battlefield tested in Gaza!' Is asking Israel to turn off the war like asking Saudi Arabia to turn off their oil?

4. Advising other authoritarian regimes for DECADES on the PR of this! They've basically written a manual that should be titled "Persecution 101: how to run an apartheid-like system - and get away with it!"
Israel have been best buds with some of the worst. Back in the day it was the leaders of South African Apartheid, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, etc. Today the list involves Myanmar, and others. For more detail on all this - try this 4 part podcast series by Loewenstein.
The Palestine Laboratory Podcast

Valid points... however, my underlying premise was that the "reign in the influence of Israel" efforts aren't being done any favors by having cheerleaders celebrating other problematic ideologies. People are left with the impression "So to critique Israel, I have to pretend that Palestinian & Iranian culture, left to its own devices, is some sort of beautiful thing worth embracing??"

I don't think it's a valid approach to try to critique Israeli governance by pretending that "everyone who's against Israel must be 'the good guy'"

I've used the cartel wars as an example before.

The Medellin Cartel was brutal, murderous, and lacked any and all empathy... their main rival was the Cali Cartel (who was not quite as bad, they tried to be a little less violent, but still pretty bad). I don't think someone's advocacy would be done any favors by wearing a pro-Pacho shirt to demonstrate how "anti-Escobar" they were.

As far as our involvement being the motivation for Islamic terrorism, I don't know that theory holds as much water as people think it does.

The history of conflicts with the Barbary pirates show that one doesn't need to be interventionist in order to draw Islamic ire towards those who are non-Muslim.

I still remember this infamous "Hitch-slap" in which Hitchens put Bill Maher in his place when Bill was trying to assert that the main reason Islamic fundamentalists hate us is because we intervene in middle eastern affairs.

I say all of that to basically say: It doesn't do anyone any favors to try to protest Israel's violations by giving lip service to ideologies that would be just as problematic even if Israel didn't exist.

That's why I think it's important that some mainstream critiques of Israel come from sources that aren't going to try coddle Islamism in the process.

Hans Blaster · Jul 8, 2025

How does having Tucker on your side make anything credible?

iluvatar5150 · Jul 8, 2025

Whether it’s Tucker or somebody else, the movement won’t go anywhere without a lot of support from the right.

GoldenBoy89 · Jul 8, 2025

I think seeing Ted Cruz get stuffed in a locker just cuts across the political divide. Nobody is going to be welcoming Tucker Carlson to their side though.

Fantine · Jul 8, 2025

It's "rein" in. When you put "reign" I was thinking of monarchial leadership and was a little confused.

99% of my friends and family are very sympathetic to the people of Gaza, and that has nothing to do with their political or religious persuasion. Judaism and Islam are both sacred faiths, sharing many of the same scriptures with Christianity.

It has to do with the monstrous injustice of killing, displacing, and systematically starving up to 3.2 million residents of Gaza---in order to apprehend/kill 30,000 members of Hamas. The leaders are believed to be in Qatar, anyway.

Are you trying to tell me that all 3.2 million are being used as human shields? Tell me another!

I get so angry at the excuses being made for Netanyahu's genocide. He is under indictment, prolonging this war (and escalating to other locations) in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. In the last election he had the support of less than half the Jews---because most Jewish people are champions of human rights, and recognize that Palestinian civilians--mostly women and children--are as human as they are.

Reluctant Theologian · Jul 9, 2025

eclipsenow said:
..

They now run the world's largest open air jails - Gaza and the West Bank. These camps dwarf even Chinese work camps! Today's news on Israel considering forming 'camps' for Gazans has really alarmed me.

Indonesia is the most populous Moslem nation in the world. They're not in a concentration camp with Israel limiting their water and fuel and electricity for decades. They're not hearing stories from family living in those tiny last Palestinian pockets in the West Bank, and how just going to work can involved hours of check points each day - with humiliating strip searches sometimes required just to get to life's basic services! And look! The Indonesians are not at war with anyone or sponsoring terrorists.

...

1. Inflicting 50 to 1 casualties! What happened to 'proportional response'? How on earth is a 50:1 casualty rate proportional? There is no way to justify this even under the most hawkish reading of Just War theory.

2. Killing parents while they queue for a day for a tiny handful of food! This for the crime of 'looking menacing' or 'crowding' when Israel have placed these aid points in confined spaces under the supervision of jumpy, trigger-prone, battle-fatigued soldiers. What could possibly go wrong? The excuses for these atrocities are pitiful.

3. Becoming ECONOMICALLY ADDICTED to experimenting with new weaponry in the Gazan battle arena. Australian Jewish reporter Antony Loewenstein calls it the "Palestine Laboratory." Israeli defence contractors made nearly $15 billion last year - a 13% increase - marketing their new bombs and drones as 'battlefield tested in Gaza!' Is asking Israel to turn off the war like asking Saudi Arabia to turn off their oil?

A few remarks to combat unfair or even untrue info:

Before 07-10-2023 the Gaza Strip was not an open air jail - tens of thousands of Gaza workers earned a daily salary in Israel in the construction and agricultural sector and Egypt controlled the border at the Philadelphia corridor (that was outside Israel's control). Arabs living on the West-Bank could and can still travel to Jordan. At the moment Arabs living in Gaza are encouraged to leave permanently (simply because rebuilding Gaza will take decades) - so that's not an open air prison at all.

The 50-to-1 casualty ratio is meaningless unless we first take out all combatant and natural deaths out of those numbers (which the Hamas Health Department does not do). Secondly any ratio remaining after that (let's assume 20-to-1) cannot be taken as evidence of being non-proportional. Israel's defence systems were able to neutralise more than 10,000 rockets intentionally fired from Gaza at the civilian population. Just because these rockets did not succeed in killing tens of thousands of Israeli civilians one can't argue the remaining civilian casualty ratio is evidence of Israel's supposedly non-proportional response.

If 10 terrorists are about to kill 100 civilians and law enforcement take out those 10 terrorists while civilian deaths are prevented one cannot argue non-proportional violence is applied.

IL's military systems are good and in demand simply because they had to be developed for IL's survival. It's true IL's arms export has exploded since the latest Gaza war - but remember IL has not asked for that war; it's Hamas that started it.

Hamas has killed 12 Gazan workers of the GHF organisation - they see UN/Hamas-free food distribution as a threat to their influence. Despite mishaps the GHF has distributed already 65 million meals in less than 2 months:

https://x.com/GHFUpdates

Of course war is terrible, ugly, dirty - but I do support Israel's right to exist as the home country for Jews (and Arabs/Druze willing to live under its protection).

Fantine · Jul 9, 2025

Is starvation and dehydration one of the natural deaths you say shouldn't be counted?

JosephZ · Jul 9, 2025

ThatRobGuy said:
As far as our involvement being the motivation for Islamic terrorism, I don't know that theory holds as much water as people think it does.

Between 1970 and 2000, just 3.5% of the terrorist attacks worldwide were carried out by Islamist terrorists. As of 2024, Islamist terrorists account for 84.4% of attacks. The large increase in Islamist terrorism we have seen since 2000 has no doubt been the direct result of Western intervention in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, as the charts below clearly show.

As for attacks on United States soil;

First world Trade Center Bombing:

"This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." -- Ramzi Yousef

Words of Osama bin Laden:

"For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." -- Osama bin Laden

"You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. ... We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines. ... We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins." -- Osama bin Laden

Failed 2010 Times Square car bombing:

“until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S.” -- Faisal Shahzad

Pulse night club attack

“You kill innocent women and children by doing US airstrikes [in Afghanistan and Iraq]... Now taste the Islamic state vengeance.” -- Omar Mateen

The motive behind the Boston Marathon bombing was also the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Jul 9, 2025

eclipsenow said:
I hear what you are saying - but I think it's even messier than that. It's not just religious - although the Christian right Zionist types would want to sell it that way.

PERSECUTION CREATES TERRORISM

It's what happens when you deny people Jus Post Bellum. Just as the harsh reparations on Germany after WW1 led to the rise of Hitler in WW2 - it is not only unethical but unwise from a geopolitical and safety view.

The sad reality is Jews fled Germany's persecution and concentration camps - and then created the world's largest concentration camps as Israel committed their own illegal annexation of ever more land in the Middle East. "International law" under the United Nations already gave Israel enormously generous land settlements in the 1950's. Since then - Israel has done whatever they want. They now run the world's largest open air jails - Gaza and the West Bank. These camps dwarf even Chinese work camps! Today's news on Israel considering forming 'camps' for Gazans has really alarmed me.

Indonesia is the most populous Moslem nation in the world. They're not in a concentration camp with Israel limiting their water and fuel and electricity for decades. They're not hearing stories from family living in those tiny last Palestinian pockets in the West Bank, and how just going to work can involved hours of check points each day - with humiliating strip searches sometimes required just to get to life's basic services! And look! The Indonesians are not at war with anyone or sponsoring terrorists.

With America pulling back from international engagement under misinformed Trumpism - and the EU not yet a fully integrated Federation - I don't know what the answer is. It would take an objective third party marching in and policing these places for a GENERATION to calm things down. It's not going to happen.

The situation in Gaza is not limited to the Middle East. Israel has become addicted to a very ugly niche in the international arms industry - and this has global ramifications that can taint us all.

PERSECUTION CREATES AN ECONOMIC INCENTIVE

Sure - as a modern nation-state, Israel have a right to defend themselves. But as a *supposedly* western democratic nation-state - they do NOT get to pretend that they are STILL ONLY responding to terrorism while:-

1. Inflicting 50 to 1 casualties! What happened to 'proportional response'? How on earth is a 50:1 casualty rate proportional? There is no way to justify this even under the most hawkish reading of Just War theory.

2. Killing parents while they queue for a day for a tiny handful of food! This for the crime of 'looking menacing' or 'crowding' when Israel have placed these aid points in confined spaces under the supervision of jumpy, trigger-prone, battle-fatigued soldiers. What could possibly go wrong? The excuses for these atrocities are pitiful.

3. Becoming ECONOMICALLY ADDICTED to experimenting with new weaponry in the Gazan battle arena. Australian Jewish reporter Antony Loewenstein calls it the "Palestine Laboratory." Israeli defence contractors made nearly $15 billion last year - a 13% increase - marketing their new bombs and drones as 'battlefield tested in Gaza!' Is asking Israel to turn off the war like asking Saudi Arabia to turn off their oil?

4. Advising other authoritarian regimes for DECADES on the PR of this! They've basically written a manual that should be titled "Persecution 101: how to run an apartheid-like system - and get away with it!"
Israel have been best buds with some of the worst. Back in the day it was the leaders of South African Apartheid, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, etc. Today the list involves Myanmar, and others. For more detail on all this - try this 4 part podcast series by Loewenstein.
The Palestine Laboratory Podcast

That's funny because Arabs living INSIDE Israel are not terrorists. Hamas is the persecutor. Hamas incentivizes terror. Would you be happier if casualties were 1:1? Would that make it "fair" for you. What is the proportional response to what happened on 10/7???? Hostages were taken...it was a slaughter at the NOVA festival and then in the towns. If something like that happened here (well we did have 9/11) there would be no talking about a proportional response... Hamas needs to be destroyed...period. Israel gave Gaza its chance...they blew it...now they know it and many hate Hamas and now understand it is Hamas that is the real enemy...

Yeshua HaDerekh · Jul 9, 2025

Fantine said:
Is starvation and dehydration one of the natural deaths you say shouldn't be counted?

Should we ask the hostages Hamas took? Oh, wait, most of them died...

Fantine · Jul 9, 2025

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
Should we ask the hostages Hamas took? Oh, wait, most of them died...

Oh, and they numbered 230--while the death toll from Netanyahu's attack number 45,000, about 195 times more.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Jul 9, 2025

Fantine said:
Oh, and they numbered 230--while the death toll from Netanyahu's attack number 45,000, about 195 times more.

230 PLUS all the men, woman and children murdered at the festival and in the kibutzim. Hamas must be destroyed...

Friedrich Rubinstein · Jul 9, 2025

Fantine said:
Oh, and they numbered 230--while the death toll from Netanyahu's attack number 45,000, about 195 times more.

In response to the ~3,000 deaths on 9/11, the US initiated a war that killed an estimated 200,000 people in Afghanistan (both civilians and militants, since you use the total number for Gaza as well). The concept of "proportionality" in warfare has nothing to do with equal numbers of casualties on both sides, it's about the reasonableness of the war goals. Both the disempowerment of the Taliban and the disempowerment of Hamas are reasonable war goals after 9/11 and 10/7, respectively.

Yet even if you didn't care about the actual meaning of "proportionality" and just want to argue about numbers, it doesn't look good for Americans:
9/11: 3,000 vs 200,000
10/7: 1,400 vs 45,000

JosephZ · Jul 9, 2025

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
That's funny because Arabs living INSIDE Israel are not terrorists.

While it's true that Arabs living in Israel are not terrorists, there have been several terrorist attacks carried out in Israel by Arab Israeli Citizens.

Below are a few examples:

Haifa stabbing attack leaves one Israeli dead

Off-duty soldier killed, another wounded in terror stabbing by Arab citizen at Karmiel mall

Beersheba bus station shooting

Israeli Arab man arrested over Tel Aviv bus bombing

Two Killed, Seven Wounded in Shooting at Tel Aviv Pub

Fantine · Jul 9, 2025

Every war that doesn't prioritize minimizing civilians is unjust and immoral. Catholic Popes have preached that for years. I imagine most theologians would agree.

eclipsenow · Jul 9, 2025

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
That's funny because Arabs living INSIDE Israel are not terrorists. Hamas is the persecutor. Hamas incentivizes terror. Would you be happier if casualties were 1:1? Would that make it "fair" for you. What is the proportional response to what happened on 10/7???? Hostages were taken...it was a slaughter at the NOVA festival and then in the towns. If something like that happened here (well we did have 9/11) there would be no talking about a proportional response... Hamas needs to be destroyed...period. Israel gave Gaza its chance...they blew it...now they know it and many hate Hamas and now understand it is Hamas that is the real enemy...

I'm speaking big picture. I get the rage - the instinct to strike back hard after an atrocity like that. I get the need for justice. I get the need to defend yourselves - I really do! Ever watch West Wing? If so - you know what this is.

Jed Bartlett HATES when his citizens suffer. Normally he's more philosophical - but this event's really got his goat!

I'm just glad his mate Leo was there to remind him of who they really are. I don't know that Trump has the same....

But when the killing becomes indiscriminate and sometimes kills more women and children in a week than were killed in the initial Hamas attack - something has gone very, very wrong.

Here is Undeceptions on Just War.

Just War

Undeceptions Episode 55: War is a horror - can there really be any place for it in a civilized society? Can there every truly be a just war?

undeceptions.com

The Arabs living inside Israel are second-class citizens, with enormous prejudice against them.

The Arabs living in Israel's concentration camps have been systematically treated like human garbage by an oppressive apartheid like regime for generations. Gee - I wonder what could go wrong?

Before all this, Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together peacefully for many generations. Then 1948 and in the very founding of the country, Israel became utterly weaponised, run by a defensive military culture that has exceeding influence on the government.

Did you know there was some discussion of a Jewish state in other sites? They were evaluating a spot in Australia at one point! World history would look very different if that had been the case. But it didn't - and the result is generations of Jewish consciences being forced to turn a blind eye to the atrocities their government policies deal out.

It's telling that:-

Israel's arms sales have increased 13% since this recent war with Hamas.
western liberal democracies like Canada and the UK and France have to speak up against their only 'democratic' ally in the Middle-East!
Israel's media constantly presents them as the victims - rather than the perpetrator. The propaganda at home blinds the population to the atrocities being dealt out on the ground.
any time someone like the UK Prime Minister raises these issues Bibi yells "Anti-Semitism!" because Israel is always, always the victim - despite a 50 to 1 kill ratio! Despite:-
1. using white phosphorous.
2. testing new thermal bombs that take out a building AND send an explosive thermal compression wave that crushes and burns lungs for about 300 meters around the building. Yeah - that's a targeted strike! (NOT!) Trying to limit collateral damage - or just wipe out the population?
3. the UN now accusing Israel of very similar crimes to what Israel's grandparents were fleeing in their own holocaust.
4. defying international law for generations, and keeping Hamas in the world's largest concentration camp - and nibbling away at the West Bank until it resembles a block of cheese - with the tiny little holes the Palestinian bits.
5. the local Arabs being more semitic! The great irony is that Israel has a quite high skin-cancer ratio because genetically there are so many European Jews that they are second only to Australia in skin-cancer rates. The local Arabs are more semitic than their persecutors whining about antisemitism! This is just a reflection on the weird language of political persuasion - not a go at the Jews themselves. For me this is all about the hypocrisy of the Israeli state.
Jews like Antony Loewenstein who grow up outside Israel - raised to believe Israel is a beacon of goodness surrounded by evil barbarians - who then study history and go home and see what's happening in the West Bank write books like "The Palestine Laboratory". (Here is the 4 part podcast summary of his findings.)

Valletta · Jul 10, 2025

Fantine said:
Every war that doesn't prioritize minimizing civilians is unjust and immoral. Catholic Popes have preached that for years. I imagine most theologians would agree.

In some cases the lines of who is a "civilian" become blurred. As examples, the Gazans and the Japanese civilians were very much in favor and supportive of war efforts. In Japan many worked in war factories, and many civilians were training to kill Americans. Japan kept brutally killing the civilian populations in the countries they occupied, as well as military prisoners under their control, so it was a matter of Japanese civilians dying or the civilians of occupied countries. War is hell, and should be avoided.

ThatRobGuy · Jul 10, 2025

JosephZ said:
Between 1970 and 2000, just 3.5% of the terrorist attacks worldwide were carried out by Islamist terrorists. As of 2024, Islamist terrorists account for 84.4% of attacks. The large increase in Islamist terrorism we have seen since 2000 has no doubt been the direct result of Western intervention in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, as the charts below clearly show.

View attachment 367274

As for attacks on United States soil;

First world Trade Center Bombing:

"This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." -- Ramzi Yousef

Words of Osama bin Laden:

"For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." -- Osama bin Laden

"You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. ... We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines. ... We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins." -- Osama bin Laden

Failed 2010 Times Square car bombing:

“until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S.” -- Faisal Shahzad

Pulse night club attack

“You kill innocent women and children by doing US airstrikes [in Afghanistan and Iraq]... Now taste the Islamic state vengeance.” -- Omar Mateen

The motive behind the Boston Marathon bombing was also the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the timeline doesn't line up with when the major interventions actually occurred, which was well before Bush's "War on Terror"

1948 through the end of the Shah's reign would've been time period in which which Western powers were doing the most string pulling, correct?

As far as the motivations behind the Pulse night club attack, making that one all about US interventionism would be some selective airbrushing

Gunman Omar Mateen Described as Belligerent, Racist, 'Toxic'

Investigators probing gunman Omar Mateen's massacre are trying to determine whether terrorism, homophobia or both pushed him over the edge.

www.nbcnews.com

A guy who was loud, excitable, had a history with steroids, and had a religiously driven bias against same sex, women, and interracial couples (his father even described it as he would get visibly physically angry at the sight of gay couples and assertive women), and we're supposed to believe the thing that set him off and specifically targeted a gay club was US foreign policy gripes?

I've heard people try to use that explanation before, but I typically chalk it up to an avoidance strategy so that people don't have to have the uncomfortable conversation about which religion is the most "anti" all of the other groups they claim to be the allies of.

Extremists will cling to anything they can to make it sound like there's a justification for pursuing their actual goals.
(it'd be like a person trying to use inner city crime rates as a justification for joining the KKK)

The reason for the sharp uptick post 2008 I think can be more adequately explained by a combination of
1) Increasing pervasiveness of the Salafi and Wahhabi ideologies (which both seek to confine Islam to the strictest interpretation of its earliest forms, and an emphasis on emulation of Muhammed)
2) Technological advances (IE: the internet) that made dissemination of messaging, recruitment, fundraising, planning, and communication 100X easier and faster

https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/973841639578206813/pdf/Transnational-Terrorism-and-the-Internet.pdf

Does the "reign in the influence of Israel" movement need a Tucker Carlson to be credible?

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Men dream of truth, find it then cant live with it

Dona Quixote

Men dream of truth, find it then cant live with it

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Well-Known Member

Dona Quixote

Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works

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Part of the IT crowd

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