Arguably being pro-Israel is anti-war. Israel's current conflict is the direct result of several entities starting a war with her last October. Suggesting that Israel should not fight back is promoting the idea of war as a means of getting what one wants.
Nah, Americans aren't that dumb. We send billions and billions to Israel every year, for what? Most Americans want to stop being a blank check for them to bomb whoever and then get mad, deplete their resources, and ask for more when they get attacked back
I'm glad that you feel that way. You'll be relieved that those pushing the "Israel bombs whoever and then get mad" agenda was lying to you. We've been (we as in my family) absorbing rocket fire for literately years - hardly been bombing every time we get mad. It took something egregious - literally beheadings and burning of babies (I personally know at least two families whose babies were burned to death) - to ignite this war. My daughter's classmate was murdered in his home along with both his sisters and both their parents. My son's summer camp counselor was kidnapped, his body was later retrieved. Shall I go on? What would you have your country do under these circumstances?
Your heart is in the right place. But you've been manipulated.
> You'll be relieved that those pushing the "Israel bombs whoever and then get mad" agenda was lying to you.
No they weren't. Absorbing bombs when you have a missile defense system that ensures zero to tens of casualties, then responding with the same bombs when you know they will cause hundreds to thousands of casualties is doing exactly what I said. No one lied to me. I saw the facts and saw my money being sent to people who think this is okay, and like every other sane American, I said it should stop, and soon it will.
All of this was a decade ago, back when Israelis used to set up lawn chairs on hills overlooking Gaza and cheer as bombs dropped. Tell me how this was a lie too:
Look, all this aside, you're probably a nice guy. You're probably worried for your family.i get that. I've been there. But 20 years and trillions of dollars spent on wars that did nothing to secure us, nothing to change the region, taught me that fighting back isn't always the path to success. You have to fight right, and you have to fight smart too. The US had a ton of goodwill from the world after 9/11 and squandered it so bad that Trump, who has now been elected resoundingly twice as a Republican, said on stage, in front of tons of Republicans that Republican President Bush was one of the worst presidents and his wars were disastrous mistakes and we should have never gone. Cheney, who architected those wars, and his family, are now global pariahs basically. Lashing out and wasting money and causing more problems and expecting a wallet refill? I saw that for 2 decades, and I'm done with it here, and I'm done with paying for it somewhere else too
There might be an argument that the morally optimal thing for Israel to do is just tolerate terrorism, including tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza, with no response other than trying to mitigate damage with air defense.
It's not realistic at all though. No country with the means to respond militarily would decline to do so. And no army in the world has ever disengaged from a conflict once casualties became asymmetric. If the allies did that in WW2, Europe would look very different today.
The most one can reasonably expect is general adherence to international laws, which includes the principle of proportionality. Even that occasionally becomes impractical, for example since Hezbollah disregarded UNSC 1701 and noone enforced it against them, it's not realistic to expect Israel to strictly comply with it.
> No country with the means to respond militarily would decline to do so. And no army in the world has ever disengaged from a conflict once casualties became asymmetric.
None of this is true. The UK did exactly this in Ireland during the IRA insurgency.
Interesting that you end your comment with flimsy justification for targeting and killing UN workers and peacekeepers, which Israel is now doing.
You basically ignored most of my comment. I never said anything about morally right, I argued from the realism of the past 20 years of counterterrorism. It leads me to think you're not responding in good faith. Like I said earlier, I have seen and am no longer willing to support wasting billions of dollars on ignoring the root of terrorism, ignoring the diplomatic means which worked with other terrorist groups (IRA, Taliban, ANC, Irgun, etc.) Maybe one day you will too
