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AOC vows to block future US military aid to Israel, its Iron Dome and defense
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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meanwhile tankies are calling her (and me) a Zionist for saying the Iron Dome is not just used for protecting military assets and has protected civilians before 🙄
that's right folks, you're a Zionist if your anti-Zionism doesn't ignore facts enough, I guess 🤷♀️
The problem is protection in this case also means protection from the consequences of their actions. As shit as it may sound there's an active incentive to not causing problems when getting a city block leveled is a potential risk, the same thing can be said for the US which is protected by its relative remoteness from its foes.
So the Iron Dome isn't just a defensive measure, it's an emboldening one since it protects Israel from its consequences.
yes, I agree with this point - maybe not to the point of saying we should dismantle the Iron Dome from protecting civilians, but you are right that the Iron Dome acts as a kind of enabler - providing psychological safety to Israelis that undermines political will to end and avoid conflict.
But I'm not sure the civilians are necessarily the best targets in the first place - there have been massive protests against the current government, and I'm not sure we should really consider Israel a particularly democratic state.
Also, Israel has been genocidal for many decades now, including through decades under which many Israelis had to take cover under bomb shelters, so the Iron Dome is probably not the most relevant factor in whether Israel continues on its path.
I feel that the distinction between then and now is that the first generation of Israelis generally did have a reason to grit it out, a lot of them went through far worse than some bombing raids. But now only the youngest of them remain and even then they're ancient, the majority of modern Israelis would most likely not like having to stick it out in a bunker due to their government being assholes.
But I'll also admit my bias that I don't think Israel should exist, the Arabs should've been allowed to level it decades ago. So my overall prevailing opinion on Israel is a vague sense of fuck it who cares blockade them and let em rot. So my opinion on any interaction with them is pretty much tainted by that constantly, meaning I'd only approve of the Iron Dome if they completely dearmed in totality and even then I may not care.
Point is I don't think the Israelis should be traded with let alone given aid.
I agree the current state of Israel is illegal and shouldn't exist, but political positions like this are separate from my view that most civilians are just normal folks and shouldn't bear the primary burden - generally wars should be fought targeting military targets, not targeting civilians. I understand that's a bit complicated when the conflict is asymmetric and one side is not a military as much as a guerilla resistance, their tactics do rely more on using terror to pressure political solutions in their favor.
But yeah, I agree with not funding Israel ✅ The US doesn't have a special obligation to fund Israel, even if they have been a useful "attack dog" in the Middle East for us, I don't think US intervention in pretty much most cases is helpful - the US is a big part of why Israel gets away with their crimes and is an unchecked genocidal, racist state.
The thing is that the Israelis don't give a fuck about civilians and I am a firm believer in the golden rule even when it does bite me in the ass. So if they don't give a fuck then neither should we, they want to do terroristic bombing campaigns then fine their civilians are valid now as well. You reap what you sow and all that.
But yeah we seem to agree at like 90 percent or so, it's just where we draw the line and what we consider to be morally acceptable. You value civilians and I refuse to due to Israel not valuing them, though I would exterminate every settler community with the vigor of the US army in Vietnam but that's more of a fuck them in particular thing.
You mean the massive protests supporting the right to rape Palestinians?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_hostage_deal_protests
I was talking about the massive protests against the gov't handling of the post-October "war" in favor of a ceasefire and accepting a hostage deal
There are no more hostages being held at this point.
right, these protests happened in the past:
Demonstrating to get hostages back is not the same as demonstrating to stop the genocide.
I don't know what to tell you, being furious with the government and calling for a ceasefire and opening humanitarian corridors doesn't strike me as a citizenry that deserves to be bombed to death. I'm not even sure I feel fully comfortable with the Dresden Fire Bombs, not because I'm sympathetic to Nazism, but because I think civilian targets are not morally defensible targets.
Civilians don't have to be prefect for me to think they shouldn't be military targets.
I'm certainly not advocating that every civilian be bombed to death. But one shouldn't ignore that the overall sentiment in Israel is that they want IDF soldiers to rape Palestinians to death, that they feel entitled to take over Gaza, and that their only care is for their own citizens while they bomb others.
yeah, I do tend to think overall probably a majority of Israeli citizens have problematic views (racism, defending their colonialism, supportive of Israel's war crimes and genocide, etc.) - I just also tend to think civilians are not morally defensible targets and I'm not too keen on defending targeting civilians (even when they're Nazis, as I mentioned earlier).
Osama bin Laden used this kind of logic - that the US is a democracy, and thus civilians are valid targets because unlike in countries where people don't have a choice, the idea is that the government does what the people choose for it to do. And you could make similar claims about US citizens being racist, defending genocide, etc. (after all, we fund, encourage, and enable Israel) ... yet this reasoning still seems wrong to me, esp. when it's a small minority of the US population that ultimately chose the representatives who run the government (and when satisfaction by voters with their representatives is so low, even hitting historic lows).
So, I don't know - this reasoning just doesn't feel entirely right to me, and it's concerning when it's being used to justify indiscriminate bombing of children, women, the elderly, etc.
By definition, a Zionist is anyone who supports the development and protection of a Jewish nation in Occupied Palestine at the expense of Palestinian lives, land, and sovereignty. Any degree of that is Zionism. You are not an anti-Zionist if you support the development and protection of a Jewish nation on stolen, Palestinian land. Anti-Zionism isn't a big tent kind of club. AOC, Mamdani, Bernie, and anyone else who supports the continued colonization of Occupied Palestine are Zionists.
"my people are safe from your bombs while your people die from my bombs"
Lay off defending this bullshit right now bro.
I'm an anti-Zionist, I'm going to continue defending not funding Israel, mostly because they are an illegal occupation with decades of history violating international laws and because they are genocidal and actively promoting racist and illegal settler-colonialism.
So no, I'm not going to stop defending my anti-Zionism, thank you.
You are talking up the iron dome which is what we are talking about and you fucking know it.
in what sense am I "talking up" the Iron Dome? the closest thing to this is that I don't agree with the tankie dogma that the Iron Dome only protects military assets ... the Iron Dome clearly protects Israeli citizens as well, and that fact doesn't necessarily change much - in fact, I also criticized the Iron Dome's role in protecting citizens as a kind of "enabler", the safety it provides undermines political will to end and avoid conflicts (not that I want civilians to be treated as valid targets, but the Iron Dome does have problematic consequences this way).
If you don't want to be thoughtful or read my comments in good faith, and you're primed to conclude I'm defending Israel regardless, I don't really care - you don't have to read my comments, I'm not here to convince anyone of anything and I don't need to convince you of my anti-Zionism; I'm happy to block you and move on with my life.
To be fair, this is your parent comment and there's not much to be thoughtful about until your later comments.
that's fair enough based on just that one comment (maybe I'm just angry from previous interactions in which I have been accused of being a Zionist, banned, and then having what I felt was a reasonable examination of the facts deleted - not been the comfiest day for me)
maybe I just need to step away, it's been a bad mental health day for me anyway
Hey that's fair. I've had days where I needed to step away from the keyboard because I was getting too lost in going back and forth as well.
You and your mental health are more important than an internet debate :)
Thoughtful, ha ha. I have plenty of thoughts I can assure you, and Israel being protected from retribution from their abuses of the others is one of them. Israel is the Devil. Their population is fucked in the head, and as such, is the devil incarnate, metaphorically speaking. Literally they are Nazis.
last time i posted statistical facts about Israel from wikipedia my comments got removed from being pro-Zionist and antisemitic.
i love it.
Like what?
Seems you'll be waiting a long time for those facts to show up. :/
Shaming him into silence works just as well for me :)
If asking Zionists to clarify their positions is enough to get them to shut up, then so be it and I'll keep doing it.
Good for you. :)
"facts"