It is evil to demand an oppressed people pacify themselves in the face of oppressors who kill them with impunity on a daily basis.

I guess I can understand why people are horrified by the violence of Oct 7. Taking civilian hostages is considered a war crime. But Israel constantly takes Palestinian civilians and detains them without charges under their administrative detention policy. That's bureaucratic hostage taking. Hamas's actions were tit for tat. Also, they had no recourse for releasing said prisoners (one of their principle stated goals) other than taking their own hostages.

As an occupied people they have a right to resist. The blame for war crimes lies with Israel putting Hamas in a position where they had no other choice.

Last week, a FlyDubai flight hijacked the news cycle, though no Israeli was hurt and no Israeli was injured. The aircraft landed safely, and Saudi medics checked on the Israeli passengers to confirm they were unharmed. None of that mattered. The internationally indicted criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, was paraded on most American TV stations. It remains a top story across Western media, replayed on every network, dissected in endless segments about alleged threat to Israeli passengers. Serious questions about what happened in that flight remain unanswered. But the facts were never the point. Israelis felt unsafe, and feeling unsafe was enough to spin the news cycle for the better part of a week.

In that same week, 1st October, an Israeli Jewish mob with government issued guns, shot and murdered Mashour Yassin, a 51-year-old man, on the steps of his own home on the outskirts of Yasuf village near Ramallah. On the following day, another Jewish mob killed 19-year-old Bahaa Sami Amin al-Natsheh in Kobar village. Israeli bulldozers demolished Palestinian homes and uprooted olive trees, Israeli Jewish mobs and soldiers attacking farmers during the annual harvest season, an act of economic strangulation repeated every season it barely registers as news anymore.

explainer starts at 6:13

In Simon's final post to X, he complained about "devastating" retaliation following his whistleblowing activities:

https://x.com/SAndriesz/status/2086399942411559063

It is a much-read publication in DC and represents the views of the Israel lobby. It is important to also read articles published by the lobby to understand how they are thinking about current events.

Someone should tell that to Jewish Insider

let's see if they do it...

Thank you! yeah it took me a while to get settled here but back online now.

testing federation.

No federation for me 🤪

If de-stabilizing the middle is is not in the interest of Americans, then why has the American military spending so many resources in keeping the region in constant conflict?

Because it's in Israel's interest. Israel wants the region destabilized so that its enemies will be destroyed and it can expand. As I wrote in my previous post, the Israel lobby successfully influences the United States to prioritize Israel's interests over its own. It does this by eliminating anyone opposed to Israel in Congress by dumping money into their elections. In 2024 they spent $8.5 million to unseat Cori Bush in her Democrat primary election, spent $15 million to unseat Jamaal Bowman in his primary (one of the most expensive primary elections ever), and in 2026 a pro-Israel coalition spent over $18 million to unseat Thomas Massie in his primary. They've done this to many others in the past and will likely make a strong attempt to unseat Ro Khanna in the future. If they didn't have to do this to get the United States to support Israel they wouldn't spend the money. Once they control Congress, they can get the US to spend orders of magnitudes more than they put in.

Yes, for sure the US wants to maintain economic supremacy. But when you say they've "been trying to have control of the region's resources for decades" it's belied by the fact that the US already has control of the regions resources. US has (or had) huge bases all around the Persian gulf, where all the oil is, in Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and profound influence over the oligarchs of those countries. And those oligarchs would be happy to have the US there forever, because the US keeps them in power. The only friction with this situation is Israel, which increases security risks for the US bases and the Arab oligarchs. In other words, Israel is the only source of threat to the US's powerful position in the region. Edward Said was writing about this in the 70s in Question of Palestine - that was almost 50 years ago. You could say Iran threatened that position, but Iran was terrified of attacking the US until forced to by Trump's stupid decisions.

If you're then going to say that the US went to war with Iran to control its resources, I think you need to come up with the careful accounting to point to exactly what resources will be taken to make up for the trillions of dollars that would need to be spent to conquer Iran, even in the best case scenario. The Iraq war cost around $2 trillion, and eventually the US had to pull out. Iran has three times the population, a much more motivated population, and is much more dug in than Iraq was during the second Gulf War. In the best case scenario, you would have to come up with resources greater than probably $10 trillion that will need to be spent conquering Iran. For reference Saudi Aramco is worth about $2 trillion. The math doesn't work out.

Venezuela, Latin America, and the Donroe Doctrine are separate issues where the US is indeed acting imperialistically, trying to vassalize countries and extract resources. But even when operating in this maximally extractive manner the US usually uses a much softer touch that a full invasion or bombings. Because long term instabilities are actually bad for energy investment. Developing oil reserves requires years of infrastructure buildout, and operators avoid regions where geopolitical risks or insurgencies threaten to destroy their capital-intensive facilities, especially when it can take a decade or more to recover the initial investment...