Ive discussed this issue online with the following stance:
1) the United States should not “support” Israel with weapons or money. They have to defend themselves.
2) if they are truly defending themselves, the United States doesn’t need to have an opinion of how they do so. If they commit genocide is Gaza that is their own business.
People who support Israel hate this. They demand we give Israel unlimited support and immediately start a war with China/Russia/Iran because it’s inevitable anyway. We have to do so because of “our values”.
People who don’t support Israel say that allowing a genocide by an oppressor is against “our values” even if we have no ties to them.
I’m a bit tired of “our values”. Our values always seem to mean starting wars with people halfway around the world that have done nothing to me.
Iran isn’t going to be different than any other Middle East shithole. And it won’t stop with Iran. The people who want to attack Iran want to attack Russia and China too.
"Instead, it should treat this conflict as the war that it is. That means relentless attacks that serve to weaken Iran’s regime."
I suspect a lot of Iranians will rally 'round the regime in the face of external attacks by Israel, unless maybe (maaaybe) those attacks are confined specifically to regime security assets. That'll be a difficult needle to thread, I would think. I suspect this would actually strengthen the regime, at least in the short run.
I also don't know how Israel gets regime change in Iran without the US taking the lead, either, and there is little appetite for that in US public opinion. If I were Israel, I think I would focus more on Hezbollah as the more immediate threat.
You can't win a war with air attacks. Not possible short of nuclear weapons. See Vietnam, WW2, UK blitz, Afghanistan, etc. Is Israel going to send ground troops to attack Iran to win the war like they have done with Gaza? No chance. Bad idea.
You can hurt a lot of people and infrastructure from the air - "exact a deeply painful price". This further entrenches the current regime and enables them to gain popular support and savagely attack any internal opposition. See Vietnam, WW2, Afghanistan, etc.
Direct air attacks create a tit-for-tat response that can wreck both countries for decades. Israel has more to lose from this since it is a highly successful country. Iran is already a wreck.
The big picture is that decades of low-level conflicts with Iran and others have not prevented Israel from becoming one of the most successful countries in the world. Escalating to a high-level conflict puts Israel's success at risk. Will any US company set up factories or research projects in Israel while there is a high-level conflict?
There are no good or easy options here....
The way for Israel to "win" is likely by continuing to do what has worked very well for decades.
Bennett reminds one of the political criticism President Bush received after halting major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003: the Democrats were lined up in Congress attacking the failure to achieve total victory. Then of course, a few years later these same politicians were attacking Bush again for supposedly going to war in the first place, never mind the fiasco of Clinton’s no-fly zone fiasco. One suspects Netanyahu knows his detractors and what can be expected from them and that is not principled, or strategic, long term thinking.
No, the important issue is what is best for Israel’s long term interests. Give the senior US administration officials credit for stating the obvious:
“ senior administration official said Israel's successful defence was already a victory over Iran, and that the country should ‘think carefully’ about what it does next.
The odds that Israel can achieve regime change in Iran through military means seem long at best given Israel has yet to achieve regime change in Gaza much less Lebanon and continues to endure missile attacks from both quarters. A massive strike on Iran, however, will guarantee, however, an Iranian counterattack that may or may not be successful. Does Israel even have the anti-missile weapon reserves to handle another attack like the one it just suffered?
Israel received support from both Jordan and Saudi Arabia in thwarting the Iranian attack on Israel. Preserving that partnership is of long term importance to Israel. Any attack on Iran ought not threaten those relationships. Iran has not attacked either Jordan or Saudi Arabia directly in response to their defensive aid. Maintaining these relationship can plausibly be considered of more strategic importance than the alleged message of strength that would be carried by a revenge attack.
Importantly, Iran framed its attack as a reprisal for the bombing of a facility in Damascus killing senior Iranian military. Iran claims that the facility was diplomatic, Israel claims it was a military facility. At least in the newspapers I’ve seen, Iran seems to have won that framing battle. Although the issue of whether an attack on diplomatic facilities conforms to international law is contentious, Israel did do something that many if not most people around the world would consider to have been a significant escalation in itself and that Iran was within its rights to respond as it did.
Israel’s economy is suffering at the moment (https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-794580 ) and its reliance on the US for weapons represents a dangerous ceding of autonomy. One would think that Israel would want to be in the strongest position possible before triggering another escalation. Arien Beery makes a case for not striking back today so that Israel can strike back stronger tomorrow that would seem to sum up these points: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/go-long-againstof -iran/ But even he is deluded by the notion of “swift resolution to the Gaza War.” Perhaps it will be enough in the short term to keep Hamas contained.
And the war council seems to be proceeding along these lines as they seek a Goldilocks solution, perhaps hitting proxies or launching a deniable cyberattack. (https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-794580 ). Launching a regime-change campaign on Iran doesn’t seem to pass a cost benefit analysis and is not likely feasible militarily anyway. I have faith that the war council will find a better long term approach.
Naftali Bennett's point that a successful defense is not a win is correct, never mind the US regime, Arnold wrote: "Unless Prime Minister Netanyahu is as dense as his detractors believe, he must be thinking along similar lines." I don't think anyone who follows Israeli affairs or who has read his recent autobiography would entertain even for second the idea that he is "dense." I suppose that his detractors (the Israeli Left) are possessed by the same obsessive malevolence toward him that our Left exhibits in regard to President Trump, which results in irrational denigration driven by emotional needs. All men have their faults, often grave, but the difference between a rational critical assessment and the expression of unqualified animosity is always obvious and says more about the source than about the object.
"It seems to me that the Obama-Biden approach was to try to work with the Iranian regime and to attempt to change Israel’s regime. Perhaps that is the opposite of what they should have been thinking."
I'll be more emphatic. You hear a lot about Trump supporters, and even Republicans in general, being 'isolationists' along the line of the 'America First' movement in the 1930s. It's pretty clear this is exactly backwards. The Obama-Biden 'America Last' vision is for an America economically fettered by dependence on China for critical industrial materials and infrastructure, and diplomatically fettered by independent regional powers in Europe and Southwest Asia, specifically the EU and Iran. Contrary to popular misconception we were never economically integrated in the globalized economy and our military power gave us freedom of action throughout the Cold War. A similarly economically free America, especially with secure energy supplies, allied with other independent democratic states, would be the force to face down Russian, Chinese, and Iranian aggression. It is clear that the Democrats can not form such a coalition since they are infected by a Fifth Column that expresses admiration for dictatorships like China and Iran, much like the statist admiration for Hitler and Mussolini that was present in the 1930s Democrat Party. 'American First' in the 1930s was wrong to not more forcefully oppose Hitler's Germany but they were wrong in recognizing there was no way to cut deals with him.
Another interesting essay topic could be titled "An American, Democrat-voting Jew's Choices."
For several decades I (and many other Cassandras) have been accurately warning such people that the status of (a) Jews in general (as a group that gets deemed "historically oppressed" and thus inside the intersectional allies "treaty organization" instead of ejected as "white adjacent pact" 'vrag' group) and of (b) Israel in particular (entitled to secure existence as a Jewish state and held to the same standard as any other ally, with America as a strong ally reliably defending such a state of affairs) in both American progressive / leftist ideology and in Democrat party public messaging and internal policy, was completely untenable.
That is, as Auster put it, these are "unprincipled exceptions" destined to be rectified away, like a Marxian contradiction that would inevitably become heightened and reconciled to the detriment of Jews and Israel.
The political logic driving the evolutionary mechanism of leftism treats such expedient exceptions as irritating thorns in the side that are at best managed, hand-waved, rationalized, and only temporarily tolerated until the very moment some group's support is either unnecessary for electoral victory or so suicidality secure for other reasons so as to make the group's members indifferent to, or even come to cultishly embrace, their being thrown under the bus in this manner. These kinds of shifts really highlight the absurdity of Bryan Caplan's political theory of an "anti-market" left and "anti-left" right.
This once merely predictable untenability has proven to be such, revealed by the elite academic and Biden administration's reactions to the massacre. Everyone knows the Clintonites would have behaved completely differently. An American Jew who supports Israel and votes for Democrats could have voted for Clinton without too much naivete or too many qualms as regards this matter, but is now clearly voting affirmatively against the interests of Jews and Israel.
And so, a choice must be made.
I fear many will go Full Converso and make the wrong one.
It has been frankly shamefully embarrassing to hear otherwise brilliantly persuasive people try desperately to avoid the ugly reality of this unfortunate predicament and come up with 'explanations' for why this isn't necessarily so while being unable to address even the most obvious objections. It's like watching a slow-motion, cognitive-dissonance-driven, nervous breakdown happen in real time right before your eyes.
This is the mental anguish and grief of a break-up of once-strong but now unrequited love the end of which one refuses to accept. "Listen carefully, I don't love you anymore, now I hate you" met with, "I can't quit you." Left-leaning American Jews have invested so much of their sense of themselves and the world in the idea that Republicans are the worst thing in the universe that they cannot even contemplate flipping to the other side, and so feel they politically have "no other place to go" (ahem, Israel was founded based on analogous considerations.) But if the American left gets Jewish support even without having to be pro-Jew or pro-Israel, then it will happily dump those inconsistent positions, just as happened with the left a long time ago in practically every other place in the world.
In addition to being more consistent with the tenets of progressive ideology, the demographic make-up of the electoral base of the Democratic Party has shifted to include a critical mass of rabidly anti-Israel voters in key battleground states.
Many leftist American Jews were - and continue to be - completely confused or in total denial about who their best friends and worst enemies are. An America with lots more Muslims who vote lots more for Democrats is going to have a Democratic Party turn against American support for Israel. Duh! Because it is considered impolite to say this obviously true fact, it has become impossible for progressive Jews to think it and face it in time to do anything about it, and now they are screwed. When people say, "Oh, come on, this PC / woke stuff is really just harmless civility right, what's the danger?" The danger is that people can't think straight about reality when certain ideas necessary for doing so are crimestopped because socially prohibited.
A tragically recurrent existential error throughout history has been the recruiting of external allies to help one defeat one's domestic opponents, only to discover too late and to one's horror that these same swords now swing at you too, the sword-wielders turn out to be less than permanently perfect servants and have their own ideas and interests, like, defeating you too.
As one example out of countless, in the several Macedonian wars (mostly in the first half of the second century BC), many Greek states repeatedly asked for rising-power Rome's help and intervention especially after Roman victories in the Second Punic War dramatically adjusted the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Soon enough, Rome took them all, and after the Battle of Corinth which broke the Achaean league, the whole city of about 100,000 people was destroyed so thoroughly - with even most building stones from the rubble removed to build those famous roads - that for the first time in six thousand years it went completely uninhabited for a century, something it seems that didn't occur even after the Bronze Age Collapse of the Mycenaean. The only reason people started to live there again was because after a hundred years the Romans decided to build a new city there in 44BC (just in time for sufficient growth that Paul would send epistles to the new Christians there, telling them women should be silent in church.)
Point is, one needs to be careful about who ones invites to help with one's fights. American Jews weren't. A related note is that """populism""" is apparently the worst thing in the world and only Republicans do it (despite mysteriously never delivering what their voters actually want) except when Democrats clearly do it even worse (and deliver!) by bowing to and servicing the prejudices of their many client identity groups, that is, by constantly agitating acrimony by following the script of their modern equivalent of a "passion play", and then conspicuously dumping in various ways on those opponent groups.
Sympathy for the devil is one thing, but voting for him is another. So yes, a choice must be made.
While it is true that "Iran has been at war with Israel for years,' I don't think it is a coincidence that Iran's proxy Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7th, after it had become clear that the US and its allies had squandered large quantities of munitions and military equipment on the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia. The timing was certainly convenient for Iran's friend Russia, since the Biden Administration's attention would now be diverted to another conflict. As I have said before, getting entangled in a land-based war of attrition in Russia's backyard was inherently stupid, but the stupidity was compounded by the failure to anticipate that the Ukraine-Russia conflict might have repercussions in the Middle East. These people suffer from the delusion that they are the world's puppet masters. Now the Administration is stuck between a rock and a hard place: they need to keep propping up Ukraine until the election, even though it is clear that Ukraine is a lost cause, and they also need to keep the Israel-Iran conflict contained at Israel's expense. Keep your expectations low.
It seems Israel should be leveraging the Iranian public's significant discontent with the current Iranian regime. I would be surprised if Mossad and CIA has not established relationships with internal groups which would love an opportunity to foment insurrection given the right amount of military support. It is hard to see any other realistic alternative for Israel that would have a lasting, beneficial security impact. Insofar as the U.S. has an interest in such regime change, it would make sense for it to work with the Israelis in bringing this about.
I'm curious what you expect Israel to achieve here.
Let's suppose that the US did manage to overthrow the Iranian regime. (Let's be honest -- this is not something Israel itself can really achieve). Maybe the new government would be slightly more pro-Israel, but perhaps not, or even the reverse. Look at the example of Iraq and ISIS.
Then what? Israel still won't be secure, at least not as secure as they would like to be, because they're a tiny nation with a tiny population and practically every state in the region is hostile to them. Is the US supposed to overthrow the government of every Arab country?
The problem is basically economic, demographic and logistic. Jews are a tiny minority in the region and control a tiny territory, and it's just basically impossible to be secure under those conditions. Although they've done quite well so far, the level of security they want requires more people and more territory, and while they've had some success in improving their birthrate, meaningfully expanding their territory is just impossible.
It's unfortunate, but at this point I think the best option for Jews would be to acknowledge that it's just impossible to have a homeland which is a) secure b) Jewish and c) in the Middle East. Compromising on the first means just permanently accepting a power differential relative to the hostile regimes which surround them and trying to survive as well as possible. Compromising on the second would mean integrating the Palestinians and becoming a mixed nation with a large Arab population, as countries like France and Sweden have in fact already done. Similarly to the populations of those countries, Jews would experience a worse standard of living and suffer discrimination and physical violence, but it would not be impossible to survive and everyday life would probably be bearable. The last option would be to give up and go somewhere else, perhaps to the United States, where Jews can still enjoy peace, a certain cultural influence and a high standard of living. Sad as it may be, I think this is probably the best option for the typical Israeli.
Tit for tat response makes no sense and regardless of the extent of the response Iran says they will strongly retaliate; i take them at their word. So, if Israel to respond it needs to be meaningful as Iran will respond.
US wants to avoid a wider conflict; sorry but that is not going to be avoidable once Israel respond and Iran then do something. So, escalation seems inevitable and US will be drawn in to again assist Israel in its defense; hard to see it any other way.
Only way US not to be brought in to fray will be if Israel does not respond and if it does Iran sits still. That seems improbable.
Israel's mind control over Westerners is nothing short of amazing, when the topic of discussion is anything involving Jewish people, people's cognitive abilities drop down to somewhere in the neighbourhood of a teenager who read a book above their reading level.
I think it is hilarious how childish and utterly incapable of logic Western culture is here in 2024.
This American doesn't believe that you can be tolerant with people who belief systems are barbaric middle age religious nonsense and clearly totally intolerant. True believers like Hamas and related Islamic believers are incompatible with a civilized society and will continue to attack civilization.
After killing millions for almost a 100 years, the Christian believers figured out that fighting over imaginary gods was a negative sum game. Only the surviving "leaders" could possibly win.
Killing the leadership of Iran may get the "negative sum game" concept through to the minds of the believers.
It seems your analysis is missing two key factors:
Iran's attack was in response to an attack on their embassy.
Iran's attack was telegraphed (I hear). It was largely symbolic.
Neither factor makes Iran the good guy but both seem critical in formulating further action.
Ive discussed this issue online with the following stance:
1) the United States should not “support” Israel with weapons or money. They have to defend themselves.
2) if they are truly defending themselves, the United States doesn’t need to have an opinion of how they do so. If they commit genocide is Gaza that is their own business.
People who support Israel hate this. They demand we give Israel unlimited support and immediately start a war with China/Russia/Iran because it’s inevitable anyway. We have to do so because of “our values”.
People who don’t support Israel say that allowing a genocide by an oppressor is against “our values” even if we have no ties to them.
I’m a bit tired of “our values”. Our values always seem to mean starting wars with people halfway around the world that have done nothing to me.
Iran isn’t going to be different than any other Middle East shithole. And it won’t stop with Iran. The people who want to attack Iran want to attack Russia and China too.
"Instead, it should treat this conflict as the war that it is. That means relentless attacks that serve to weaken Iran’s regime."
I suspect a lot of Iranians will rally 'round the regime in the face of external attacks by Israel, unless maybe (maaaybe) those attacks are confined specifically to regime security assets. That'll be a difficult needle to thread, I would think. I suspect this would actually strengthen the regime, at least in the short run.
I also don't know how Israel gets regime change in Iran without the US taking the lead, either, and there is little appetite for that in US public opinion. If I were Israel, I think I would focus more on Hezbollah as the more immediate threat.
You can't win a war with air attacks. Not possible short of nuclear weapons. See Vietnam, WW2, UK blitz, Afghanistan, etc. Is Israel going to send ground troops to attack Iran to win the war like they have done with Gaza? No chance. Bad idea.
You can hurt a lot of people and infrastructure from the air - "exact a deeply painful price". This further entrenches the current regime and enables them to gain popular support and savagely attack any internal opposition. See Vietnam, WW2, Afghanistan, etc.
Direct air attacks create a tit-for-tat response that can wreck both countries for decades. Israel has more to lose from this since it is a highly successful country. Iran is already a wreck.
The big picture is that decades of low-level conflicts with Iran and others have not prevented Israel from becoming one of the most successful countries in the world. Escalating to a high-level conflict puts Israel's success at risk. Will any US company set up factories or research projects in Israel while there is a high-level conflict?
There are no good or easy options here....
The way for Israel to "win" is likely by continuing to do what has worked very well for decades.
Bennett reminds one of the political criticism President Bush received after halting major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003: the Democrats were lined up in Congress attacking the failure to achieve total victory. Then of course, a few years later these same politicians were attacking Bush again for supposedly going to war in the first place, never mind the fiasco of Clinton’s no-fly zone fiasco. One suspects Netanyahu knows his detractors and what can be expected from them and that is not principled, or strategic, long term thinking.
No, the important issue is what is best for Israel’s long term interests. Give the senior US administration officials credit for stating the obvious:
“ senior administration official said Israel's successful defence was already a victory over Iran, and that the country should ‘think carefully’ about what it does next.
"’Big question is not only whether, but what the Israelis might choose to do, so this is a decision for them,’ the official said.” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68814391 )
The odds that Israel can achieve regime change in Iran through military means seem long at best given Israel has yet to achieve regime change in Gaza much less Lebanon and continues to endure missile attacks from both quarters. A massive strike on Iran, however, will guarantee, however, an Iranian counterattack that may or may not be successful. Does Israel even have the anti-missile weapon reserves to handle another attack like the one it just suffered?
Israel received support from both Jordan and Saudi Arabia in thwarting the Iranian attack on Israel. Preserving that partnership is of long term importance to Israel. Any attack on Iran ought not threaten those relationships. Iran has not attacked either Jordan or Saudi Arabia directly in response to their defensive aid. Maintaining these relationship can plausibly be considered of more strategic importance than the alleged message of strength that would be carried by a revenge attack.
Importantly, Iran framed its attack as a reprisal for the bombing of a facility in Damascus killing senior Iranian military. Iran claims that the facility was diplomatic, Israel claims it was a military facility. At least in the newspapers I’ve seen, Iran seems to have won that framing battle. Although the issue of whether an attack on diplomatic facilities conforms to international law is contentious, Israel did do something that many if not most people around the world would consider to have been a significant escalation in itself and that Iran was within its rights to respond as it did.
Israel’s economy is suffering at the moment (https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-794580 ) and its reliance on the US for weapons represents a dangerous ceding of autonomy. One would think that Israel would want to be in the strongest position possible before triggering another escalation. Arien Beery makes a case for not striking back today so that Israel can strike back stronger tomorrow that would seem to sum up these points: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/go-long-againstof -iran/ But even he is deluded by the notion of “swift resolution to the Gaza War.” Perhaps it will be enough in the short term to keep Hamas contained.
And the war council seems to be proceeding along these lines as they seek a Goldilocks solution, perhaps hitting proxies or launching a deniable cyberattack. (https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-794580 ). Launching a regime-change campaign on Iran doesn’t seem to pass a cost benefit analysis and is not likely feasible militarily anyway. I have faith that the war council will find a better long term approach.
Naftali Bennett's point that a successful defense is not a win is correct, never mind the US regime, Arnold wrote: "Unless Prime Minister Netanyahu is as dense as his detractors believe, he must be thinking along similar lines." I don't think anyone who follows Israeli affairs or who has read his recent autobiography would entertain even for second the idea that he is "dense." I suppose that his detractors (the Israeli Left) are possessed by the same obsessive malevolence toward him that our Left exhibits in regard to President Trump, which results in irrational denigration driven by emotional needs. All men have their faults, often grave, but the difference between a rational critical assessment and the expression of unqualified animosity is always obvious and says more about the source than about the object.
"It seems to me that the Obama-Biden approach was to try to work with the Iranian regime and to attempt to change Israel’s regime. Perhaps that is the opposite of what they should have been thinking."
I'll be more emphatic. You hear a lot about Trump supporters, and even Republicans in general, being 'isolationists' along the line of the 'America First' movement in the 1930s. It's pretty clear this is exactly backwards. The Obama-Biden 'America Last' vision is for an America economically fettered by dependence on China for critical industrial materials and infrastructure, and diplomatically fettered by independent regional powers in Europe and Southwest Asia, specifically the EU and Iran. Contrary to popular misconception we were never economically integrated in the globalized economy and our military power gave us freedom of action throughout the Cold War. A similarly economically free America, especially with secure energy supplies, allied with other independent democratic states, would be the force to face down Russian, Chinese, and Iranian aggression. It is clear that the Democrats can not form such a coalition since they are infected by a Fifth Column that expresses admiration for dictatorships like China and Iran, much like the statist admiration for Hitler and Mussolini that was present in the 1930s Democrat Party. 'American First' in the 1930s was wrong to not more forcefully oppose Hitler's Germany but they were wrong in recognizing there was no way to cut deals with him.
Another interesting essay topic could be titled "An American, Democrat-voting Jew's Choices."
For several decades I (and many other Cassandras) have been accurately warning such people that the status of (a) Jews in general (as a group that gets deemed "historically oppressed" and thus inside the intersectional allies "treaty organization" instead of ejected as "white adjacent pact" 'vrag' group) and of (b) Israel in particular (entitled to secure existence as a Jewish state and held to the same standard as any other ally, with America as a strong ally reliably defending such a state of affairs) in both American progressive / leftist ideology and in Democrat party public messaging and internal policy, was completely untenable.
That is, as Auster put it, these are "unprincipled exceptions" destined to be rectified away, like a Marxian contradiction that would inevitably become heightened and reconciled to the detriment of Jews and Israel.
The political logic driving the evolutionary mechanism of leftism treats such expedient exceptions as irritating thorns in the side that are at best managed, hand-waved, rationalized, and only temporarily tolerated until the very moment some group's support is either unnecessary for electoral victory or so suicidality secure for other reasons so as to make the group's members indifferent to, or even come to cultishly embrace, their being thrown under the bus in this manner. These kinds of shifts really highlight the absurdity of Bryan Caplan's political theory of an "anti-market" left and "anti-left" right.
This once merely predictable untenability has proven to be such, revealed by the elite academic and Biden administration's reactions to the massacre. Everyone knows the Clintonites would have behaved completely differently. An American Jew who supports Israel and votes for Democrats could have voted for Clinton without too much naivete or too many qualms as regards this matter, but is now clearly voting affirmatively against the interests of Jews and Israel.
And so, a choice must be made.
I fear many will go Full Converso and make the wrong one.
It has been frankly shamefully embarrassing to hear otherwise brilliantly persuasive people try desperately to avoid the ugly reality of this unfortunate predicament and come up with 'explanations' for why this isn't necessarily so while being unable to address even the most obvious objections. It's like watching a slow-motion, cognitive-dissonance-driven, nervous breakdown happen in real time right before your eyes.
This is the mental anguish and grief of a break-up of once-strong but now unrequited love the end of which one refuses to accept. "Listen carefully, I don't love you anymore, now I hate you" met with, "I can't quit you." Left-leaning American Jews have invested so much of their sense of themselves and the world in the idea that Republicans are the worst thing in the universe that they cannot even contemplate flipping to the other side, and so feel they politically have "no other place to go" (ahem, Israel was founded based on analogous considerations.) But if the American left gets Jewish support even without having to be pro-Jew or pro-Israel, then it will happily dump those inconsistent positions, just as happened with the left a long time ago in practically every other place in the world.
In addition to being more consistent with the tenets of progressive ideology, the demographic make-up of the electoral base of the Democratic Party has shifted to include a critical mass of rabidly anti-Israel voters in key battleground states.
Many leftist American Jews were - and continue to be - completely confused or in total denial about who their best friends and worst enemies are. An America with lots more Muslims who vote lots more for Democrats is going to have a Democratic Party turn against American support for Israel. Duh! Because it is considered impolite to say this obviously true fact, it has become impossible for progressive Jews to think it and face it in time to do anything about it, and now they are screwed. When people say, "Oh, come on, this PC / woke stuff is really just harmless civility right, what's the danger?" The danger is that people can't think straight about reality when certain ideas necessary for doing so are crimestopped because socially prohibited.
A tragically recurrent existential error throughout history has been the recruiting of external allies to help one defeat one's domestic opponents, only to discover too late and to one's horror that these same swords now swing at you too, the sword-wielders turn out to be less than permanently perfect servants and have their own ideas and interests, like, defeating you too.
As one example out of countless, in the several Macedonian wars (mostly in the first half of the second century BC), many Greek states repeatedly asked for rising-power Rome's help and intervention especially after Roman victories in the Second Punic War dramatically adjusted the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Soon enough, Rome took them all, and after the Battle of Corinth which broke the Achaean league, the whole city of about 100,000 people was destroyed so thoroughly - with even most building stones from the rubble removed to build those famous roads - that for the first time in six thousand years it went completely uninhabited for a century, something it seems that didn't occur even after the Bronze Age Collapse of the Mycenaean. The only reason people started to live there again was because after a hundred years the Romans decided to build a new city there in 44BC (just in time for sufficient growth that Paul would send epistles to the new Christians there, telling them women should be silent in church.)
Point is, one needs to be careful about who ones invites to help with one's fights. American Jews weren't. A related note is that """populism""" is apparently the worst thing in the world and only Republicans do it (despite mysteriously never delivering what their voters actually want) except when Democrats clearly do it even worse (and deliver!) by bowing to and servicing the prejudices of their many client identity groups, that is, by constantly agitating acrimony by following the script of their modern equivalent of a "passion play", and then conspicuously dumping in various ways on those opponent groups.
Sympathy for the devil is one thing, but voting for him is another. So yes, a choice must be made.
"Iran is paying no price at all."
Iran is one of the most sanctioned regimes in the world.
While it is true that "Iran has been at war with Israel for years,' I don't think it is a coincidence that Iran's proxy Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7th, after it had become clear that the US and its allies had squandered large quantities of munitions and military equipment on the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia. The timing was certainly convenient for Iran's friend Russia, since the Biden Administration's attention would now be diverted to another conflict. As I have said before, getting entangled in a land-based war of attrition in Russia's backyard was inherently stupid, but the stupidity was compounded by the failure to anticipate that the Ukraine-Russia conflict might have repercussions in the Middle East. These people suffer from the delusion that they are the world's puppet masters. Now the Administration is stuck between a rock and a hard place: they need to keep propping up Ukraine until the election, even though it is clear that Ukraine is a lost cause, and they also need to keep the Israel-Iran conflict contained at Israel's expense. Keep your expectations low.
It seems Israel should be leveraging the Iranian public's significant discontent with the current Iranian regime. I would be surprised if Mossad and CIA has not established relationships with internal groups which would love an opportunity to foment insurrection given the right amount of military support. It is hard to see any other realistic alternative for Israel that would have a lasting, beneficial security impact. Insofar as the U.S. has an interest in such regime change, it would make sense for it to work with the Israelis in bringing this about.
I'm curious what you expect Israel to achieve here.
Let's suppose that the US did manage to overthrow the Iranian regime. (Let's be honest -- this is not something Israel itself can really achieve). Maybe the new government would be slightly more pro-Israel, but perhaps not, or even the reverse. Look at the example of Iraq and ISIS.
Then what? Israel still won't be secure, at least not as secure as they would like to be, because they're a tiny nation with a tiny population and practically every state in the region is hostile to them. Is the US supposed to overthrow the government of every Arab country?
The problem is basically economic, demographic and logistic. Jews are a tiny minority in the region and control a tiny territory, and it's just basically impossible to be secure under those conditions. Although they've done quite well so far, the level of security they want requires more people and more territory, and while they've had some success in improving their birthrate, meaningfully expanding their territory is just impossible.
It's unfortunate, but at this point I think the best option for Jews would be to acknowledge that it's just impossible to have a homeland which is a) secure b) Jewish and c) in the Middle East. Compromising on the first means just permanently accepting a power differential relative to the hostile regimes which surround them and trying to survive as well as possible. Compromising on the second would mean integrating the Palestinians and becoming a mixed nation with a large Arab population, as countries like France and Sweden have in fact already done. Similarly to the populations of those countries, Jews would experience a worse standard of living and suffer discrimination and physical violence, but it would not be impossible to survive and everyday life would probably be bearable. The last option would be to give up and go somewhere else, perhaps to the United States, where Jews can still enjoy peace, a certain cultural influence and a high standard of living. Sad as it may be, I think this is probably the best option for the typical Israeli.
Suggesting in 2024 that the United States should enact regime change in an Islamic Middle Eastern country is really wild.
Tit for tat response makes no sense and regardless of the extent of the response Iran says they will strongly retaliate; i take them at their word. So, if Israel to respond it needs to be meaningful as Iran will respond.
US wants to avoid a wider conflict; sorry but that is not going to be avoidable once Israel respond and Iran then do something. So, escalation seems inevitable and US will be drawn in to again assist Israel in its defense; hard to see it any other way.
Only way US not to be brought in to fray will be if Israel does not respond and if it does Iran sits still. That seems improbable.
Sadly, war is on.
Israel's mind control over Westerners is nothing short of amazing, when the topic of discussion is anything involving Jewish people, people's cognitive abilities drop down to somewhere in the neighbourhood of a teenager who read a book above their reading level.
I think it is hilarious how childish and utterly incapable of logic Western culture is here in 2024.
This American doesn't believe that you can be tolerant with people who belief systems are barbaric middle age religious nonsense and clearly totally intolerant. True believers like Hamas and related Islamic believers are incompatible with a civilized society and will continue to attack civilization.
After killing millions for almost a 100 years, the Christian believers figured out that fighting over imaginary gods was a negative sum game. Only the surviving "leaders" could possibly win.
Killing the leadership of Iran may get the "negative sum game" concept through to the minds of the believers.