Andy

Based on my understanding, there’s two considerations:

1. I don’t think most Israelis expect Arab neighbors to actually care about the Palestinians. They reason that many of the citizens in those countries are mad, but leaders are all corrupt and can be bought off or manipulated.

2. There’s a general mania for war, and a belief that they can just threaten or kill anyone who tries to stop them.

It’s all insane. The general Israeli public is heavily propagandized and traumatized. I think it’s possible that experts might eventually categorize this period as a mass hysteria event among Israeli Jews.

Just to add some additional context, it’s rarely discussed in America, but Israeli society is getting torn apart by all of this. Not over political disagreements (sadly genocide has become overwhelmingly popular) but this state of constant war is destroying their economy, their labor force, their international collaborations, and the general mental health of their society. It’s obviously nothing compared to what their victims in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank are going through, but the population within Israel is setting fire to their own society in their lust for blood.

I thick we should sit with what you’re doing here.

You’re not a fool. You know perfectly well that I despise Trump. But you’re accusing me of supporting him because you know it’s a vicious and disgusting thing to say. You’re resorting to vulgar insults because my words hurt you deeply, moreso because they’re coming from an ally. I’m violating the safety of the fiction you’re sheltering in, and if you can convince yourself that I’m actually some kind of manipulative fascist that is doing it to hurt you rather than help you confront painful truths, it makes it easier for you to dismiss my words.

I don’t think this is a conscious plan. But this is what a worldview trying to protect itself from painful truths does.

I’ll say no more. I will accept your anger. But I wish you progress on the journey we’re all on.

Once Trump won, Isreal ramped up the attacks on civilians; so whatever Biden was doing, it helped somewhat.

I’m sorry but what reality is this in? Netanyahu literally accepted the ceasefire Biden had been unsuccessfully pushing for seven months the day before Trump took office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2025_Gaza_war_ceasefire

The primary difference between the war before and after the transition was that the IDF transitioned from a brutal ground offensive to a three month ceasefire, followed by a ruthless starvation blockage. It’s not substantively better. But no, Israel did not “ramp up up attacks”; they literally did the opposite of that when Trump took office.

I’m sorry to say this so bluntly, but you’re living in denial. I get it. The truth was devastating to watch. But if you want anything to get better, you need to confront reality.

This is unintelligible.

I want to take a big step back and ask what the point of this conversation is.

Personally, I think we should study history to learn from it.

I think you should – as a mental exercise – imagine that although Biden objected to the optics, he fundamentally believed that the only way for Israeli Jews to be safe was to teach Palestinians the lesson that armed resistance will always elicit an unfathomable cost in their children’s blood. And that meant that an unrestrained total war on the civilian population was an unfortunate necessity.

If he believed this, but also found the glorification of racial hatred despicable, and recognized that politics and law required him to publicly disavow crimes against humanity…

… what do you think he would do?

Really try to answer this question. And then ask how his real world choices differed.

The cost of Biden’s mistakes has been unbearable. So we had better learn lessons and make sure these mistakes are never repeated. And that requires an honest accounting.

I like him. I listened to him on Marc Maron, which is always neat because you get to know a bit more of the real person instead of the character he plays. Obviously, those people aren’t totally divorced. But his real self is a lot more cerebral than the stage version.

I think this is 100% correct.

I have no illusions that Harris and her advisors would like to see Iran’s leadership attacked, and would look for ways to support Israel. But as you said, they’d be at least smart enough to explore ways to justify it, and would avoid direct involvement.

I could absolutely see them holding talks, then Israel attacking and them wringing their hands about how disappointed they are in the “breakdown of diplomacy” while also justifying Israel’s attacks, and then sending weapons and support and troops to “assist” while insisting that they’re not at war.

This war is so dumb that I remain actually surprised Trump fell for it. I have no illusions about how stupid he is, but this is jump-off-a-shed-onto-a-bike-rack-directly-on-your-nuts-dumb. I remain amazed that even he would fall for this.

I’m unclear what this means.

Do you think Biden and Trump are different with regard to Palestine?

I’m not one of those people who equivocates between Democrats and Republicans, but on this issue I’m genuinely unclear what someone would point to as a difference in policy between Biden and Trump.

This bodes well.

I see a lot of doomerism on the left, but I’m happy to hear that Thiel and I agree on this one thing: his project is not going as well as he had hoped.

Ulghhhh.

The ceasefire is dead. Stop describing it as “strained” or “shakey”.

They’re continuing to cleanse and depopulate it in preparation resettle it.

Disgusting.

Ulgh

The difference is between doing it secretly or in the open.

I assume I’m monitored on my work computer, but me and my company both know they aren’t supposed to.

When they admit it and make you look them in the eye and consent to it, that’s when the social contract unravels in a big way.

There’s a line from a great comedy in which an oligarch is berating his son for playing elaborate games to ruin the life of a schlub who once disrespected him, right after we see the oligarch at a party where people are shitting on glass coffee tables with prostitutes under them. The son says, “How is it any different from what you do?!?” And the dad says, in a posh Oxford accent, “The glass, son. The glass.”

I think figuring out how to find solidarity across the working class is a guidepost to revolution.

It’s more than okay to admit that it’s challenging. Anything else is just untrue.

I do think the effort is worth it. I think uniting for a better world is the prize we win when we figure out how to construct a society that accommodates as much diversity of thought and lifestyle as our civilization contains.