It’s really quite miserable that Israel has chosen to fuck the people of Lebanon over in all of this when Hezbollah is a legitimately shitty terrorist org. But unfortunately, that seems par for the course for Israel.

You do realize Israel didn’t just ‘herpederp, time to genocide’ one day right?

I mean, ethnic cleansing has been part and parcel of the modern Zionist project since it started after WW1 (itself a far cry from the 19th century Zionist project, which was far less ethnonationalist). So, I mean, on one hand, yes. On the other hand, by genocide you probably mean the explicit state action of extermination or removal of a peoples for the crime of being the wrong ethnicity, in which case Israel has been committing genocide ‘only’ since its inception.

And no, “The Arabs did it first!” even if that was correct (it is not, in any meaningful sense; the escalation of tensions was largely mutual in the 20s, 30s, and 40s) is not an excuse to commit fucking genocide.

Anyone else still think it’s a good idea to resort to violence against Israel?

You do realize that wars are only prosecuted solely by violence when one side or the other is willing to go all the way through to genocide, right?

Israel can’t just violence its way into victory. In every war, every conflict, acceptable terms, whether implicit or explicit, must be offered to ensure peace emerges from violence; violence being the means of shifting the balance of power, not useful in and of itself.

If Israel was saving innocents by doing this, that might be a more compelling argument.

Man, we’re watching one side commit genocide in real time, and the other side wishing they could commit genocide.

If one’s primary interest in the region is “No genocide please”, both sides are, indeed, pretty fucking close.

Israeli intelligence is simultaneously precise enough to target high-security enemy individuals, and yet not precise enough to [checks notes] avoid murdering 1-out-of-every-50 Gazans.

Damn. Mossad is in a really tight spot, apparently. /s

Krushchev, and the idiom was a bit lost in translation. As I understand, the meaning was closer to “We will outlast you.”

Not that that worked out either, but it’s less aggressive and more defiant.

Internationally, yes.

By Israel, no.

Iron law of institutions. Institutions do not make decisions by the rational calculus of the institution. Institutions make decisions by the rational calculus of the decision-makers.

Israel has managed to quite thoroughly exploit that little detail in capturing our political system.

Because this was always the plan.

That’s a yes then

I am well-aware that Suffragists used this tactic as well, hence

Only the ones who tried to damage priceless historical artifacts for attention?

Or is your argument that the Suffragists were successful, therefore, every one of their tactics was wise?

Some people like the challenge. Not her first time on the trail, either.

I’m not condemning them for doing something small, only trying to emphasize that my issue here is not damaging things in general, but damaging, specifically, historical pieces. It’s just seems like throwing soup at paintings is the wrong approach on every level.

This chain literally started with you responding to someone daydreaming about physically assaulting the young protesters with:

The point of that, something that you seem to have still missed, was not “I want to hurt them for being idiots”, though that may have been secondary, but “If the act doesn’t matter, just the cause, by principle that leads to absurd things, like acts with no conceivable serious connection with the cause being touted as a great success for that cause simply for linking the name of the act and the cause.”

not say the regular stuff like blocking traffic or vandalizing (non-priceless) surfaces in places that are visible to a mass audience rather than comfortably protected behind fences and security checkpoints.

I literally cite arson, riots, and general strikes as valid, but go off I guess.

I’m down with violence, man. But human history and culture isn’t the enemy here, it shouldn’t be the target, and simply ‘raising awareness’ is no longer the goal. Take a sledgehammer to an oil exec’s front door if you want to go the direct action route, not to the Magna Carta.

There are actually probably more effective uses of violence than the oil exec’s front door. But you get what I mean, I hope. Action alone is not enough, it must be action that causes something useful to the cause, like increasing fear in the politicos or ultra-wealthy (as the Suffragists did with arson and bombing campaigns targeting both), or reducing the effectiveness of society as a whole until negotiations are had (as with a general strike, though that’s not violent, generally).

When did An Inconvenient Truth come out again? Like, can I get a temperature check on the polite and respectful progress we’ve made since then?

An Inconvenient Truth raised awareness at a time when there wasn’t nearly as much awareness on the issue. Hell, in '04 Climate Change was still barely even mentioned by the Dem candidate. But that part is over - the comparatively easy part, the faces and names part. Now we’re at the part where we have to actually fight for fundamental changes to get anywhere, and ‘raising awareness’ as an excuse just isn’t going to cut it.

It’s also not about ‘polite and respectful’. It’s about making structural changes to an extremely complex and interconnected system, rather than getting some nice-sounding policy pass so backpats can be had.

Confirming that “We don’t want to do things the hard way that works, we want to do easy stuff” is the motivation is a hell of a take to present as a positive.

If some soup on plexiglass can convince you to let the planet burn, you were never on the side of progress.

I’m not the one that needs convincing. But I’m sure the majority that you actually need on your side are simply insufficiently pure, and a bunch of reactionary dogs anyway, so who cares about gaining their approval for the cause?

I agree except that potential damage to historical pieces makes me extremely upset.

I would prefer they ACTUALLY riot to that.

… and, in fact, that would probably be much more effective.