The current Saudi Arabian and UAE despots do not. But it’s not necessarily true of the others. They are still religiously and ideologically inclined against Zionism, but they have no unity with one another, exist in a state of relatively precarity and are terrified of defying the US. Take Qatar for example, which could quite easily be annexed by Saudi Arabia were it not for over a century of collaboration with the Ottomans/British and then the US. No matter how quiet and safe these nations may seem from afar, in reality they run on backwards tribal powersharing systems, and have not been able to move past them. Thus they remain incredibly vulnerable to internal coups and threats from one another, which makes their relations with the West and the legitimacy therein guaranteed to be of pivotal importance.

Qatar in particular is exceptionally far-sighted in some regards, which is why it recognized and fueled the Arab Spring, incurring the wrath of its neighbors. It’s leadership are committed to the Palestinian issue. I know people who work in Al Jazeera for example - the newsrooms and site are full of Palestinians.

Recently I cynically assumed that they were helping the US and Israel by keeping the sham ceasefire talks going, trying to jockey for position as indispensable broker. But it was explained to me by a Palestinian involved that they were only doing it at Hamas’ request, and were trying to use the opportunity to alleviate conditions in Gaza as best they could. Neither Turkey and Egypt were trusted to do it at such a level.

I’ve gotten the feeling over the years that of all the statss in the Gulf, only Qatar (and to lesser extents, Kuwait and Oman) understand that change will come regardless, and that it’s better to help guide it than to sabotage it, degrading the region’s politics and laying groundwork for even more instability and eruptions. The outlook is very, very bleak and things will not evolve towards abolition of monarchies and some form popular rule until Saudi explodes internally.

That’s a very fair point. Unfortunately, one party in your two-party system worships Israel and the other one adores it. It’s hard to claim infiltration and interference when it is encouraged and even enshrined in law, culture, media etc. The only political movements - social democracy abd libertarianism - that are opposed to these developments are essentially barred from political power.

It’s not the wars. Vietnam involved a draft and Americans fighting and dying. As far as Americans are concerned, Gaza is just an issue of conscience. They have no skin in the game.

Yes, money sent to Israel and Ukraine reflect badly on the administration when Americans are facing economic hardship. But that’s because if the economic hardship.

MFer trying to make us miss Rex Tillerson.

Alternative headline: Why It Will Definitely Happen

As someone intimately familiar with the Gulf - the “reality check” is just that it’s going to be more expensive to buy Saudi Arabia off for Israel. That’s literally it. As for Qatar, they can either tank relations with it or surrender to the fact that they can’t simply buy and subjugate eveyone to create a Potemkin peace where no Arabs can even speak to, speak in favor of or ise their influence to support other Arabs who are threatened by Israel.

Ukraine is by no means tiny. And the numbers you state are unrealistic to the point of absurdity. Things may in fact end well for Putin. He will be despised forever in the West, he’s old and cannot hold power much longer and Russia will spend at least the next decade distracted with a wide front. But there is a possibility he will consolidate territories taken, keep Ukraine out of NATO through pokiticking and pass on his power to a successor that would convince Western leaders to partially restore relations with Russia out of convenience.

As a true centrisy, for every “Six Days in Fallujah” I want one “Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque”. Fuck the ADL.

LMAO

Honestly I think it’s just a make-work job Trump gave them in his transactional sort of way. I think he dislikes Musk on a personal level (I have no evidence, I just presume that they have clashing egos and personalities.) I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a public falling out in which Musk gets mad that he isn’t important enough in the admin and badmouths Trump.

People have been saying that since the first weeks of the war. Don’t count on it. People expected Ukraine to flop over, and it didn’t. But now it seems they’ve greatly overestimated Ukraine. It is in a state of real disaster due to attrition. It was never equipped to fight a war of this scale - Russia has been, going back to the Soviet days.

What Russia lacked in intel, planning, competence or willpower at the start of the war, it has made up for with learning, superior manpower and ammunition and a rather ingenious domestic balance.

Yes, it’s a large economic distortion and the bill will come due, but the weight of evidence points away from the idea that Russia is nearing a 1917 collapse moment.

It’s still a basketcase nation (remember Prigozhin, lol) but so are most nations in the world.

Putin says a lot of things. I don’t know why we bother listening to most of them. He isn’t talking to us.

He is a conformist and a party creature through-and-through. He’s fine if you had no real objecgion to the way Biden governed except for his age. If you found Biden to be disastrous on a moral and political level, and you view the current Democratic Party as unfit or unwilling to chart a better course, then Buttigieg is liostick on a pig.

Bloodshed in the Middle East

Dang, I hate how various parties in the Middle East are killing aid workers. I hate all the many varied parties who keep doing that.

Pete can help unmesmerise us by promising not to run in the next primaries and endorsing a working class, rule-of-law candidate.

LOL earlier he said he disagreed wjth it but it was deserved. Two-faced old bastard.

Hamas leaders face ICC charges, but that does not justify sanctions against Palestine.

The EU does not recognize Hamas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian Territories. It defines it as a non-state actor and a terror group, so what you said is also a terrible analogy. I don’t know why you keep using the word “justify”. Do you mean legally or morally? Sanctions would be targetted at specific individuals, firms and military/government components, not the state of Israel as such.

Sanctions against Russia couldn’t cite the ICC charges, because they began long before Putin was charged by the ICC.

Packages 11-14 were all issued after the ICC judgement. European Commission’s statements on the ICC warrant speak quite clearly about Russian culpability, not just Putin’s culpability.

I couldn’t think of a more absurd analogy. If Osama Bin Laden was Saudi Arabia’s head of state, and 9/11 was carried out by the Saudi military, and Saudi was party to the Rome Statute, then maybe you make such an analogy. As it actually stands, Netanyahu’s crimes were carried out by the state of Israel and that certainly has legal bearing inside the EU’s courts, with very recent precedent - sanctions on Russia citing the ICC arrest warrant for Putin. And Russia is not even party to the Rome Statute - the state of Israel is, and would be violating by not giving Netanyahu up.

The saddest thing is that if they do take action, it will be the lowest bar possible of accountability. They’ll for example ban products from illegal settlements and then let Israel redurect them anyways.

The name of the game is sanctions. Russian can sustain itself under “nuclear” sanctions. Sanction Israel, and the comfortable lifestyle of illegal Lebensraum settlers will start to look rather unattractive.

These warrants absolutely matter in terms of being a trumo card in several legal issues relating to EU-Israel relations.