Israel is run by a despot. Israel used to be a reasonably well run democracy, but that's over. Netanyahu is frantic to stay out of jail and is trying to change Israel's judicial system to give himself total power. Israel is currently having protests and a constitutional crisis. Overview from Haaretz.[1]
I was under the assumption that Netanyahu, at least in part, is trying to keep Israel a Jewish-run apartheid state. Bibi needs to legalize discrimination in order to disenfranchise Muslims/Arabs.
Their options seem to be 1) continue to become like South Africa pre-Mandela or 2) become a minority in a country that was originally intended to be a Jewish homeland.
It’s more complicated than that. Jews are no where close to become a minority in the country excluding the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank is under Israeli control but not annexed and probably mostly won’t be part of Israel in the long term, while Gaza isn’t under Israeli control at all.
There are also great differences between what happened in South Africa and Israel such as:
1. Historical connection to the land
2. Completely different proportions of populations involved
3. Legal state of Arab minority in Israel
4. Legal state in occupied territories, namely their own self government and parliament (West Bank) or complete control (Gaza)
"For a more scientific take on the Jewish origin debate, recent DNA analysis of Ashkenazic Jews – a Jewish ethnic group – revealed that their maternal line is European. It has also been found that their DNA only has 3% ancient ancestry which links them with the Eastern Mediterranean (also known as the Middle East) – namely Israel, Lebanon, parts of Syria, and western Jordan. This is the part of the world Jewish people are said to have originally come from – according to the Old Testament. But 3% is a minuscule amount, and similar to what modern Europeans as a whole share with Neanderthals. So given that the genetic ancestry link is so low, Ashkenazic Jews’ most recent ancestors must be from elsewhere."
"The tolerance of the Persians encouraged the Jews to adopt Persian names, words, traditions, and religious practices, and climb up the social ladder gaining a monopoly on trade. They also converted other people who were living along the Black Sea, to their Jewish faith. This helped to expand their global network.
Among these converts were the Alans (Iranian nomadic pastoral people), Greeks, and Slavs who resided along the southern shores of the Black Sea. Upon conversion, they translated the Old Testament into Greek, built synagogues, and continued expanding the Jewish trade network."
"The Asian group of these DNA mutations, found in Ashkenazic Jews, likely originated from the Ashina elite and other Khazar clans, who converted from Shamanism to Judaism. This means that the Ashina and core Khazar clans were absorbed by the Ashkenazic Jews." - ["Ashkenazic Jews’ mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA" (2018)](https://theconversation.com/ashkenazic-jews-mysterious-origi...)
I can’t comment about the DNA evidence as I am hardly an expert, but they go both ways (cohen lines genes).
However, the entire ‘Ashkenazi Jews are Khazar’ theory has antisemite origins, and it is well known that Jews were already all over Europe at the times of the Roman Empire, way before any Khazar entity
Explicitly approved by Netanyahu himself, in his courtship of MBS of Saudi Arabia. Whether it is wise for Israel to cultivate treacherous backstabbers like the Saudis is another question, the US' experience with 9/11 should lead to caution.
I'm not sure I understand the point of this article as Israel isn't even a major arms exporter [1]. There are several major countries that profit off of wars -- America, France, the UK, etc., all are prominent weapons exporters. And all these countries export to "problematic" buyers.
Not everything has to have some black and white "point". Some stories are just facts that are part of a larger picture. You are pointing out that there are more details in this domain than are in the article, but the specific context you've added seems largely irrelevant. Drawing an arbitrary comparison like you've done here hardly alters the validity of the facts in the article. Israel's geopolitical standing is an entity worthy of study, I think that is clear. How can you say this article has "no point"? I think your displaying some kind of bias to arrive at such a strange reductive statement.
I'm not questioning the validity of the article and I'm not defending Israel. But it's basic knowledge that (i) several first-world countries make a nice profit off of wars in the third world and (ii) almost all of these countries are liberal Western (or West-aligned) democracies. This is the reason why I don't understand why the author has singled out Israel here. Put it another way, could you name an arms exporter, which could be a company, country, etc., that doesn't sell to despotic regimes?
You're implying the author and associated publisher have some kind of agenda against Israel, if that's the argument you're making, then you need to present a little bit more proof. I don't see anything in the article that says "unlike other western countries… Israel does X, Y, AND Z bad things"
>There are several major countries that profit off of wars -- America, France, the UK, etc., all are prominent weapons exporters. And all these countries export to "problematic" buyers.
Okay? And that somehow makes Israel exempt here, or something? Two wrongs make a right? We can't discuss Israel without making sure more "major" countries fix themselves first?
Help me out here, I'm not sure I see where you're going with this.
It's premature optimization. Why bother with Israel when the main English reading audience likely has much more direct influence over the biggest war profiteer - america.
Blaming Israel, is either anti-Semitism, that's it's only with criticism when people representing Jews do it, or colonialism, that it's only bad when it's not western powers doing it.
It's only a story because it's Israel, and Israel is seen as lesser than France or the USA
Israeli MICs primarily make money off IP licensing, not exports.
Companies like Rafael, IAI, Elbit, Elta, etc will generate the core IP and then sell the IP and co-manufacture with MICs in countries like South Korea, Taiwan, France, USA, Italy, and India.
This is the same business model that France used with Israel in the 70s, and also acts as a way for Israel to not piss off Western allies and generate revenue because a first world country with 9 million citizens can only manufacture so much.
Information warfare is both more affordable, more able to be used covertly, and often more effective.
The tools totalitarian & authoritarian systems - in particular - use to keep themselves in power are often information tools. Their challenge is to suppress the population. The first challenge there-in is identifying who your potential enemies are. No bomb will tell you that. Hacking your citizens phones will tell you that. Israel's special craft here is thus immensely alluring to thr worst of the worst.
They might not be "major" but they are likely the world's leader in making electronic surveillance of protestors and reporters possible by despotic regimes.
It’s morally acceptable, and correct, to criticize both. Does this make sense? Feels strange asking this, because it is so obviously apparent, but I feel the need to given your response.
I’m not sure where I said you shouldn’t criticize both.
What I’m saying is that international “morales” are extremely relative. One day Israel is criticized for bombing houses in Gaza by the US, another day the US bombs weddings in Afghanistan largely unnoticed.
Are they both bad? sure. Is it fair? irrelevant.
However, if you are making an argument for example that asymmetric warfare requires attacking targets in dense civilian population and sometimes mistakes happen, then it is absolutely essential to compare to other countries.
And people that shout “whataboutism” on knee jerk are not helping anyone
Happy to see this reach it's natural conclusion, in terms of subscribing to moral relativism. I think if this is one's worldview, it's hard to not use a "whataboutism" style of argument whenever questions of morals or ethics arise. Without a strong internal grounding, it's challenging not to resort to comparisons, I agree with you.
it seems that when you’re arguing with someone you assume a lot of things about your counterpart
i didn’t subscribe to moral relativism. I didn’t say that there is no moral truth, I said in international politics morality is often used cynically to project power.
However, let’s disengage from this argument as I can sense aggressiveness and insincerity in your style of discussion
Notice how I said "one", not "you"? Also at the end of the post, when I said:
> I agree with you
where that is "you", and not "one"?
I find it fascinating that you are doing exactly what you accuse me of, where you are assuming things that are not true. This generally happens (in my experience) where people are unable to disassociate their opinions from their "self", and here I am making a direct inference that this applies to you as well.
Happy to continue the discussion, although it seems you might be unable to split emotions from logic.
Israeli's have been at the forefront of security and despot hacking forever. A lot of major security orgs start from there like Checkpoint that sell enterprise kit, through orgs like NSO do nothing but pump out Apple spyware anymore, though Apple claims themselves "secure" and NSO as anything but "terrorists".
Can you really trust them, or Apple? It's like trusting Kapersky or any Chinese/Russian software anymore, but habitually and inexplicably they land on the side of right still.
In many countries Israel is hated as the aggressor by the people at large and when these countries are non democratic then they are supported by the Israel and west to keep those non democratic people in power. In many cases Israel will have approval under the table from US and other western countries so they can help despots in these countries without their own voters/population realising that they are involved in helping these despots.
> In many cases Israel will have approval under the table from US and other western countries
A lot of the weapons systems Israel sells are R&Ded and developed wholly by Israel, so they don't need the secondary approval from the US or France (though French MICs don't really care about approvals outside of IP transfers).
Israeli dependancy on American R&D has been waning since the 2000s and at least in the cybersecurity space has flipped the other way around where American companies are now dependant on Israeli technologies and innovations.
This decoupling from American Military R&D has happened in South Korea, Japan, Saudi, and Turkiye as well for over 20 years now due to tensions with North Korea (JP and SK) and Iran+Syria (IL, KSA, and TK).
Some tech being sold can get the country sanctioned or the at least the companies selling the tech sanctioned but as they have approval under the table nothing is done about it. But what I was alluding more to about was lets say a US 3 letter agency using Israel to sell tech to the despots.
The last major piece of Israeli military hardware that requires an export license from the US is THAAD and the Patriot missle system.
Israel largely decoupled from the US from a foreign policy and military hardware perspective by the middle of the Obama administration due to the Iran Nuclear program.
While what you are describing was kind of true in the 80s and 90s, that era is long gone.
Don’t take it personal, because you’re in ample company, but you are not understanding the real nature of the control of the so called USA by Israelis. There is effectively no light between Israel and the front/facade country called the USA.
Russia arming Iran in exchange for drones is likely changing Israeli reluctance to help Ukraine. There was already a recent announcement about tanks. It's only a matter of time before they'll completely stop caring about placating Putin who is losing his grip everywhere anyway.
The manufacturing capacity no longer exists in Russia c. 2023 so Russian MICs have begun working on IP Licensing deals with MICs in Iran, China, and India.
For a lot of weapon systems and technolgies (eg. Jet Engines, EWS, etc) Russian IP is comparable to that within NATO+.
That said, having cutting edge IP is useless when execution is badly managed (eg. A2AD, Joint Forces Operations, Logistics).
Btw, this is why you are seeing US strategymakers concentrate on the PRC now - if a mujahid with a rusty AK-47 left over in 1988 can still kill a Green Beret in Ghazni, now imagine if we are facing a nation with the technical capabilities of the US in the 1990s and 2000s.
It’s my understanding that the Russian air campaign in Ukraine was rather unsuccessful so they ended up pulling their jets back.
> By June 2022, Russia had not achieved air superiority, having lost around 165 of its combat aircraft over Ukraine which amounted to approximately 10% of its frontline combat strength. Western commentators noted the qualitative and quantitative advantages the Russian Air Force had over its Ukrainian counterpart, but attributed the poor performance of Russian aviation to the extensive ground-based anti-aircraft capabilities of the Ukrainians.
They're safekeeping their jets in case of a NATO attack, using them to launch missiles from the Caspian. They've also moved some strategic bombers to Olenya airbase in the Kola peninsula, near Finland and Norway. Russian doctrine is based on multiple layers of anti aerial defense.
What Russia has is lots of Cold War era equipment that they are sending into Ukraine. It'll do, as they don't put a price on human life. It's a war of attrition at this point. The moment we give up on Ukraine is the moment they start winning.
That's not infinite either. They are already starting to run low on tanks and artillery. But yeah, this war of attrition has to go for some time before they run out of it to the critical level. So they put a lot of effort into pushing "negotiations" since they know they'll lose if this will continue. Good thing is that most understand it well and no one is buying their "negotiations" whining.
They started deploying increasing number of attack helicopters as a substitute for artillery that has been decimated in bigger numbers than usual in the recent battles. So they are either running low on it, or at least can't restore it fast enough that they risk expensive helicopters that they now also started constantly losing.
They're using the attack helicopers against Ukrainian tanks that are probing their Southern front. They've already destroyed several tanks and quite a few Western vehicles. I doubt they're using choppers as a substitute for artillery, it doesn't make sense to do that.
They usually avoid using them because they have very limited supply and can't make new ones fast. Now they are losing one a day at least. That's a lot.
If not Israeli ones, wouldn’t it be Russian or Chinese made ones instead? There are no shortage of weapons manufacturers in the world. Doubly so for cyber weapons, where the cost of entry is so low.
I believe ComputerGuru was thinking of cyber weapons as discussed in the article. There's very little need to think too hard for examples of the US selling conventional weapons to despotic regimes; and you certainly don't need to go back to the Iran Contra to find the US doing so.
In any case ComputerGuru is rightly distinguishing between stolen leaked weapons versus deliberately selling them. He's not saying that that it hasn't happened, merely that he chosen example was trash.
These are being sold directly to these despots with the approval of the Israeli government.