Israel is Coming Apart at the Seams, It Seems

You mean the fact that if Israel bulldozed the mosque it would get the entirety of the Muslim world to actively go to war with them, while if Saudi Arabia bulldozed a synagogue there'd be a whole lotta of embarrassed throat-clearing from the rest of the world. Nobody cares if the Saudis do shit because they've got money and oil. Just ask Jamal Khashoggi or Yemen.

We can argue all you want about who's right and wrong when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, but if the Israelis flattened one of the holiest places in all of Islam, I can't really see folks in the Muslim world remaining calm about it. You know, sorta like all kinds of Western folks would get pissed off if Muslim terrorists pulled a 9/11 on the Vatican. Remember, the original 9/11 targets were a number of important buildings around the world. All of them were either symbols of US/Western power or historic landmarks. None of them were religious buildings. Think about that for a moment. OBL supposedly wanted to reignite the Crusades (more or less) by attacking the US. But not the Vatican. I mean, if you really want to start a religious war, aren't religious sites the kind of place you want to attack? Unless, of course, you hope to curry favor amongst those who don't share your particular religious beliefs.

On the flip side, the Vatican has very little temporal power now, in contrast to during the crusades. How many Protestant or majority Protestant countries would have gone along with retribution for attacking the Vatican? Few, if any. Even nominally or majority Catholic countries would have been loath to get involved. Maybe Italy, maaaaybe Brazil. But attack the US, attack democracy, attack capitalism? Oh that’ll get a response.

But how many people have the attitude of, "It doesn't matter what religion a person has, so long as they believe something"? I mean, I'm as atheist as they come and I'm not a fan of the idea of the Vatican getting wiped out in a terrorist attack, simply because of all of the historical artifacts that would have been lost (even if some of them, like the foreskin of Jebus are fakes).

Religious people, of all stripes, tend to put secular things and religious things into different boxes, with wildly different responses to what's going on. I don't hear any religious leaders saying that the Catholic church needs to be broken up over the various kid-diddling stories that have hit the news. Atheists and agnostics, however, seem to be fully on the bandwagon of selling off the Vatican's assets to compensate victims.

An attack on the WTC or the Capitol, is an attack on "Earthly" institutions. An attack on a religious building, however, is often seen as an affront to god, regardless of what particular interpretation of god one might have. My right-wing, Trump-living father said after 9/11 that the US "kinda deserved it because of our meddling in other countries." He was a devout Lutheran, and I'm 100% certain that he'd have said that nothing the Vatican or the Catholic Church did would have justified them being hit with a plane on 9/11.

So long as one believes that Jews, Muslims, and Christians worship the same god, one can rationalize the actions of a few extremists as being a deviation from the norm, if they attack secular/civilian targets. You know, that whole "No True Scotsman fallacy" thing. When they attack a site that is 100% connected to a particular religion, things get dicey, even if they don't happen to belong to that religion.

Israel cancels permits for Gaza Christians ahead of Orthodox Easter

Israel's Netanyahu says he will resume judicial overhaul after talks collapse

good point... remember how a month or so before flunking flight school, the Taliban were blowing up 3000 year old Buddhas and got a nasty finger wagging accompanied by a tsk tsk?

We do need a backup plan for the right wing to start armageddon. Trump might lose the election, and we are not sure if Putin's nukes will get off the ground, so the Isreali middle east war plan is as good as any to bring the end of the world around so we can all see judeo christian sky god.

There was also considerable debate about what to do in response. In the end, it was decided that there wasn't really anything that could be done, without going to war. Can't really sanction an economy that has almost no contact with the outside world, and who wants to go to war over some obscure statues that most people have never heard of, in a place many people don't know exists?

And speaking of those statues...

Afghanistan’s Taliban Need Money So Badly They Are Selling Tickets to Monuments Their Own Fighters Smashed to Pieces

Netanyahu hands Smotrich full authority to expand existing settlements

https://twitter.com/reuters/status/1676856002870755329?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

So, Jenin. They wrecked the place but were essentially forced to retreat without achieving their objectives.

Netanyahu has been rushed to the hospital.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...els-netanyahu-rushed-to-hospital/70416923007/

https://twitter.com/cultexpert/status/1683177673743380481?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

Meanwhile, this kind of thing continues with no attention paid.

https://twitter.com/PetraSchur/status/1683108643267391488?t=GgasRdBB7M7l2bN3PNsE3A&s=19

Humans are trash.

Israeli army personnel have been filmed pouring cement into a water source which supplies Palestinians near the city of Hebron.

I just listened to him on CNN calling everyone who opposes him losers.

This is probably the biggest political crisis in Israel's short history as a state. One can only watch and hope that everything comes out all right. The best thing would probably be for Netanyahu to simply disappear into nirvana.

And no, I am definitely not one of those wankers desperately hoping for Israel to implode. You know who you are, you cunts. Israel has a strong civil society, there is resistance. Against internal enemies, but also against external enemies. The Israelis already know that many people want nothing more than for them to go down. That's not going to happen! And if it does happen, we build everything up again from scratch.

"Al Jazeera".

Idiotic propaganda channel for Israel haters and terrorist supporters. Many leftist idiots in Europe consider the channel credible for reasons unknown.

Why should it not be considered credible?

And care to address the activity it refers to - destroying civilian infrastructure? Is that not terrorism?

I'm not going to co-sign anything Netanyahu or his government has done, he's the Israeli Trump. However, Al Jazeera is a Qatari owned "news" outlet, and hardly unbiased. As far as the israeli- Palestinian conflict, everyone is in the wrong, but the Arabs are more wrong.

No news source anywhere is "unbiased". You'll need to demonstrate why Al Jazeera has a particular problem with credibility, or STFU.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

Do you have a real news source, or are you just trying to scam us into clicks for elon and his advertisers?

You hid the direct link so you could get elon some clicks and then you ask why the link is not credible?

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

The fact that these wells are illegal, and it's Palestinians stealing water from other Palestinians, seems to have escaped Herr Rick.

when you have to trick people into clicking on your link by obscuring the source you are a fucking asshole. At least most twittards will leave twitter in the link so we can avoid going to andrew tateland for news.

It would be nice if some twittards would respect some of us do not want to give a single click to their god elon now that every member of twitter is now in the sex trafficking business, and every link to twitter supports it.

Hey now, I have a Twitter account. I'm definitely not cool with sex trafficking, or right wing/left wing Edgelords.

Isn't that the problem with many supporters of the Palestinians? Especially on the part of the extremist BDS people: they think that anyone who is not unconditionally on their side is a fan of Netanyahu, the far-right settlers or even the ultra-Orthodox freaks.

As if we have the obligation to justify every shit that the IDF or other Israelis commit.

On the other hand, they uncritically believe any rubbish Pallywood presents to them. That's why I don't take the whole fanatical BDS baggage seriously anymore and refuse to even communicate with these people. They are not worth it.