The reason criticism of israel is so often characterized as anti-semitic is because it often is. If you reserve all your condemnation for israel and have none to offer for any of it's neighbor's, you might be anti-semitic. Israel is by far the most open and liberally minded society in the middle east.

I feel bad for the palestinians more because of their own government (hamas and the plo) than anything israel does, which is essentially always defensive in nature. Meanwhile if you're openly gay, good luck living anywhere in the middle east other than israel.

Once again libs get so rabidly confused on this issue because of their boneheaded marxist worldview where power differentials are the only thing that matters. Because israel is powerful, they're supposed to just accept rockets being fired at random into their civilian areas? It doesn't matter that all of their neighbors commit horrible human rights abuses against their *own people* routinely, because they're less powerful? It's morally incoherent like so many leftist ideas.

Good post almost.

First two paragraphs stared down two nasty pitches that just missed, as you let that kind of cheese-debate be not worth your time. Not this time Satan! Geopolitics is complicated, exactly. There are no angels in the Middle East, no? Indeed, as Omar would say.

And, as you say in your second paragraph, there is no reason one still can't have especial sympathy for the "biggest losers" in this viper's pit region, and holy shit, really, just look at this situation, plz. It's an ugly tale. Starts with any semblance of property rights thrown to the fire in now-Israel land. There is no way to look at the pst 100 years and not say the Palestinians, that tiny people, have been living the HARD LIFE. But you also do note, well, Israel is by far the only western-style democracy and that is actually a big deal. Again: Indeed!

But then came your third paragraph.

Why don't you just open the door, as Paul MacCartney sang, and say, "And history works this way sometimes, and eternal problem is how we react to it, and we each have to ask ourselves this question."

Theoretically the idea of gun ownership would be a lot safer if there were more responsible gun owners

Responsible meaning not leaving their guns around for their kids to find and either accidentally shoot themselves or some kids that were mean to them at school

And responsible in that gun ownership does not embolden the owner to go seek out trouble and escalate situations needlessly

There is an idea of a responsible gun owner, who keeps it out of reach of kids, doesn’t let it embolden him (or her) to aggression, and when having to use it pays attention to backstops and where the bullet might go

But that concept of a responsible gun owner is more rare than most people are happy to admit

Okay, I'm still gonna send MSF money and be critical of Israel

Concealed carry permit holders are more law abiding than actual police, statistically. Of course people should be responsible with their guns, but you're not going to hear a news story about responsible gun owners being responsible. "John Doe continued to have his gun safely secured today" isn't a news story, you're only made aware of the times where shit goes sideways which skews the perception of safety.

Botten thinks guns are uniquely capable of killing people, which just isn't true. A car can take out far more people far more quickly than any semi-automatic gun. The Nice, France truck attack for instance. Dude killed 86 people by just running them over, which is a higher body count than any mass shooting that has ever occurred in the US. And that guy was stopped by.... a gun.

Wanting to ban guns is mostly just an emotional, irrational response to tragedies that get plastered all over TV for months.

I disagree

It's just made to look that way on TV. In reality, they are just crocodile tears because the end game is a disarmed population that will be much easier to control which is the ultimate objective

The problems in Israel can be traced back to the same problem in Africa that has constant civil wars between rival tribes, and that is the fact that the British are really fucking lazy when it comes to drawing borders

For sure and I'm not saying israel is blameless or totally innocent or anything like that. But neither is literally any other country or state in the history of the world. Every single one was founded on displacing some other people, which is why the special scrutiny placed on israel (the only jewish state) is often indicative of latent anti-semitism.

If you claim to have concerns over human rights abuses in the middle east, and you focus your scorn on israel of all countries, you're deeply mixed up.

My problems with Israel is less about the human rights argument and more the fact that they have not been the most reliable of allies for us. There have been multiple times in the past where they failed to uphold their ends of agreements with the US, but they are too valuable of a strategic asset for us to be able to really say anything about it so we just ask nicely to please not keep shafting us on these treaties.

At a certain point in that kind of discussion you also have to ask, "borders for what?" Borders are pressing in 2023.

What about 1823? Even 1923?

Global pop today is 8 billion. Population in the early 1800's was a bit over 1 billion. Even 100 years later, it still was not 2 billion. 2 billion is around 1930. Then 3 billion in 1960. 1974, 4 billion; 1987, 5 billion; 1999 was the glorious 6 billion mark; 2011 was 7, and 8 was just recently.

The meaning of a border, or how much one even thinks it matters, is relative to what the borders contain. And until relatively recent, borders always have had hot spots but this notion of lines on a globe, per se?

Not much lol. Unless you dig the maps, no?