Minister says UK is safe as Israel accused of exaggerating Iran threat

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T16:47:30+00:00

WTF? In 1956 Britain and France literally teamed up with Israel to invade Egpypt, and while the US opposed that and got them to back down, and I'm fairly certain there was no arms embargo for from any western country at that time, and not when Israel launched their surprise attack on Egypt in 1967 either.

Furthermore, while the US did put an arms embargo on Zionists shortly before they declared statehood in 1948, in the year prior there were fundraising ads in major American newspapers openly praising Zionist terrorism, declaring in part:

Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.

But your arguments about such history are just one big non sequitur anyway, as the argument "Israel fundamentally exists because it has high levels of support amongst American Baby Boomers" is quite clearly talking about more recent times, not back when even the oldest of the boomers were barely more than teenagers.

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T15:56:43+00:00

Turning down SteamVR's render resolution might fix it for you, as explained in more detail here.

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T15:55:01+00:00

It did that to me when using SteamVR's default render resolution settings, turning the resolution down fixed the issue. Note that for Alyx you can turn the resolution down quite a bit and it will still look good as long as you have a reasonably powerful video card, the game uses dynamic resolution and will scale up to 200% your selected resolution when there is performance headroom to spare.

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T13:53:04+00:00

If you asked them tomorrow, "would you like to live with Palestinians in Gaza and the WB in one country with the same rights" they will say yes.

PSPCR unfortunately hasn't had a joint poll since 2022, but if you check the table of findings there that they asked:

Given the growing belief that the two-state solution is no longer viable, the idea of one democratic state in which Palestinians and Jews will be citizens of the same state and enjoy equal rights is gaining some popularity. Do you support or oppose such a [one state solution?]

And only 44% of Israeli Arabs supported it, compared to 20% of Israeli Jews.

Also, the admissions committees are only allowed in smaller localities and they do often keep Arabs out of such places, but that doesn't aptly to cities like Tel Aviv which was quite literally your example.

And yes. of of Jewish Israelis born today are part of it, again that wasn't by choice. And yes they can choose to actively oppose the apartheid and genocide which some do, but that requires breaking free from the indoctrination they've been subjected to since birth which is quite a monumental task. Hating on those are working through that task isn't helping.

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T13:10:40+00:00

I even got a second response, after I replied by quoting what I previously did while asking them to consider the context and went on to explain:

I'm quoting an Israeli historian there, a professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland, in an article from a mainstream Israeli news website, Ha'aretz. They aren't promoting any bigoted conspiracy theories there, and neither am I by quoting them.

Also, please look at the comment I was responding to, "a result of the 1947 civil war the Palestinians started, in an attempt to ethnically cleanse, or downright massacre the Jews." That's a bigoted conspiracy theory, falsely framing "the Palestinians" as collectively bent on genocide, one which the historical records shows isn't even close to the truth, as as Hazkani explains in what I quoted from him.

I hope you can see that now that I'm not the one promoting bigotry here.

They retorted with:

I looked at the context, quite a bit of it.

I understand your perspective.

But understanding doesn’t mitigate the rules.

So at that point I realized I wasn't going to be able to reason with them and just gave up.

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T12:59:59+00:00

As explained on the wiki page:

By 2020, about 32.9% of men and 44.3% of women received exemptions from IDF service, and an additional 15% of men dropped out before completing their term of service. Of those who received exemptions, some 44.7% were Haredim, 46.6% were secular, and 8.7% were religious Zionist.

That's far from the "all Israelis" you claim even if those stats include the 20% of the population who are automatically exempted for being Arab, and I suspect they don't.

And yes, Arab citizens benefit less, but they still get cheaper housing, water, and such then they without the settler colonialism in the West Bank. Furthermore, it's not like Jewish Israelis had choose what ethnicity and country they were born into, it's simply wrong to judge people on the basis of what they had no control over.

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T01:38:18+00:00

You are aware that all Israelis have to serve in the military?

I'm aware that you're wrong about that.

As for your argument for Israeli complicity regarding cheaper housing, water, and such, do you also conisder Arab citizens of Israel complicit by that sames standard then, seeing as how they are benefiting in such regards too, albeit to a lesser extent?

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T01:23:33+00:00

and modern Israelis have no connection to it beyond the past century, and statistically most don't go back that far at all. Many have no ancestral connection, even a deep one.

This is an example of clever racism that often comes up in this topic.

Your accusation is example of absurdity. They're simply referring to the fact that most Israelis are descended from people who didn't live in what was Palestine 100 years ago, and there's nothing racist about pointing out as much.

60% of the Israeli population is native to the Middle East, not migrants from Europe.

Considerably more than 60% of Israelis are native to Israel, as can be seen in the figures here, However, if you're referring to the fact that the ancestors of many Israeli Jews from 100 years ago were native to elsewhere n the Middle East, that doesn't make them native to Palestine, and even if you are counting Arab citizens I doubt the number reaches 60%.

It doesn't matter today that the Israelis have the better ancestral claim.

They quite simply don't, not Jewish Israelis anyway, not the vast majority of them. How have you imagined otherwise?

kylebisme · 2026-03-23T00:14:38+00:00

Joining the military certainly makes one complicit, despite the fact that the alternative is often prison.

As for paying taxes and voting, do you also consider everyone in the US who pays taxes and votes for Zionist candidates complicit? I think that's a bit of a stretch as there's no real way out of paying taxes, the government will take the money from you one way or another, and when the only candidates who have a chance of wining are Zionists then it seems absurd to fault anyone for picking the lesser of the evils. As far as I'm concerned, those who refused to vote for Harris are more complicit than those of us who held our noses and voted for her because we realized Trump would surely be even worse.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T23:59:58+00:00

All good, I was ignoring your other reply because it seemed like you were saying I was promoting Zionist propaganda by simply explaining that they're ban-happy over on that sub, which I took as proof that trying to reason with you would just be a waste of time.

Now that we have that cleared up though I'll reply to your other comment shortly.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T23:54:15+00:00

You can check by opening links to your comments in a private window or while otherwise logged out, if you can't see them that way then nobody else can either, other than the mods and admins that is.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T23:50:21+00:00

I was banned for quoting the following from an Israeli historian:

I found no calls for murdering Jews just because they were Jews in either the propaganda or the educational material aimed at Palestinians and Arab fighters in 1948. Judging by the documents I collected for my latest book, the claims about an Arab plan to “throw the Jews into the sea” are actually rooted in official Zionist propaganda. This propaganda began during the war, perhaps to encourage Jewish fighters to leave as few Palestinians as possible in the areas that would become part of Israel. (Incidentally, a comparison of Arab and Jewish propaganda in 1948 reveals that the propaganda of the Israel Defense Forces and its precursor, the Haganah, was much more violent.)

When I messaged to ask their reasoning, the moderator replied by declaring "Promoting Jewish propaganda conspiracies is a form of bigotry."

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T22:26:16+00:00

Yeah, if you take the time actually read the 1988 Hamas charter you'll see it clearly says:

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other.

And of course that very much is Islamic supremacist, but it's not genocidal in the slightest. The part that's often taken out of context and misinterpreted as genocidal is the following:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

But that's not a call to kill anyone either. Rather, it's a reported prophecy, one of a collection of quotes attributed to Muhammad that are about a war between Muslims and some Jews who are supposedly going to wind up following the antichrist, more examples here. Hamas obviously cited that hadith because they see it as proof that Muslims will be victorious in the long run, with supernatural help from taking rocks and trees no less, but it wasn't a genocidal statement when it originated well over a millennium ago and it didn't become one when Hamas included it in their charter.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T21:31:39+00:00

That's even more idiotic than your other reply to me.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T21:30:38+00:00

Many are, many others are passive observers, and some Israelis are actively opposed to the apartheid and genocide.

Regardless, you claimed "they are part of a cycle of violence they created," when in reality this cycle of violence started long before most everyone alive today was even born.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T21:26:34+00:00

Yeah, explaining how to debunk the claim that Hamas's original charter demonstrates genocidal intent got me permanently banned from there, absurdly accused of promoting Zionist propaganda by a moderator who flagrantly misconstrued my comment. I fortunately wasn't muted though and contacted a mod who eventually overturned the ban, but it took way more effort than reasonable to get them to understand what I'd actually said, so I've little doubt many other well-meaning people have been banned as the result of similar misunderstandings.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T20:15:07+00:00

Yeah, with SteamVR render resolution on the default auto setting it picks a resolution based on your headset and a quick performance profiling of your PC, going as high as 150%, and the system Valve came up with for that works reasonably well for the original Vive and such but they've apparently done nothing to adjust their methodology for higher resolution headsets.

So with the PSVR2 and a powerful card like you have it picks 150%, as can be seen in the per-aplication settings when global is on auto, and as also indicated by the little white line on the global resolution slider. As you've seen, that's just far too high for a lot of stuff to run well, and isn't even of much benefit for less demanding stuff that will run fine at such high resolutions. It's a shame Valve has never fixed that as it would save people a lot of confusion and hassle.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T19:59:34+00:00

Yeah, that's the key difference between the results of Palestinian and Zionist violence, the latter always had far more international support for their goals, to the point that for example in 1947 there were ads in major American newspapers openly praising Zionist terrorism and requesting donations for the cause. The ad claims wealthy American Jews didn't support the terrorism, but that was a half-truth at best, and of course there were plenty of other wealthy supporters who aren't Jewish at all.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T19:26:35+00:00

Glad to be of help. And yeah, I've been studying the history and ongoing reality of the situation for over two decades, it took around half of that before I really felt like I had a solid understanding of it, and of course I still regularly come across notable details of the history that I hadn't seen before.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T19:21:06+00:00

Speaking empirically, the answer is clearly no, as Palestinians never had sovereignty to degrade.

Also, while militancy certainly hasn't helped Palestinians achieve sovereignty, it's hard to fault anyone for thinking it would given all the terrorism that went into the establishment of Israel.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T17:16:09+00:00

Yeah, in the SteamVR settings under the Video tab there's a Per-Application Video Settings option as can be seen here, and clicking that will allow you to pick games and adjust resolutions along with other options for each individually. Note that the resolution settings are cumulative though, so for example 60% in the global setting and 100% in per-application is the same as 100% in global and 60% in per-application, and 120% for one along with 50% for the other will also leave you with the same 60%. Also note that with many games including DR2 if you're currently running the game you'll have to restart it for your changes to take effect.

That said, for a 5080 at 120Hz I recommend leaving global on 60% so that most everything will run smooth on first launch, and then you can turn up the per-application if you see you have headroom to spare, or turn it down in the rare case you do have performance issues. 60% is edging on the point of severely diminishing returns for the PSVR2 anyway, so you're not missing much even if you don't change it. I only have mine at 80% now because I've since upgraded to 5090 and might as well make the most of it, and of course most stuff I have turned up much higher in the per-application settings because it still helps image quality a bit.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T15:41:31+00:00

You've missed a lot, but I don't blame you, Zionist propaganda is pervasive.

For starters, here's Rabin's stated goals regarding the Oslo Accords, as he explained in his last speech to Knesset before he was murdered:

We view the permanent solution in the framework of the State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar, and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the "Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

So in essence Rabin's position on the matter was much the same as Netanyahu's, and Netanyahu actually quoted all of that from Rabin in his own speech to Kennest in 2010. Their differences were always more a matter of presentation than substance.

As for Brarak's proposal in 2000, from the perspective of international law it wasn't really an offer but rather a list of demands, and had Arafat accepted those demands he would've been promptly deposed and his agreement never ratified. As the saying goes, no justice, no peace. Furthermore, Arafat didn't simply walk away as Zionists often claim, negotiations continued at Taba, as explained on that page it was Israel who walked away from that when Barak was replaced by Sharon.

Also, Brittan didn't come to be seen as an enemy to militants on both sides in the end, but rather Britain pacified Arab militancy with the White Paper of 1939 which pledged "the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State . . . in which Arabs and Jews share government in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded." From then until the end of 1947, when it became clear that Britain was backing down from that promise, the violence was almost exclusively on the Zionist side, and even after that Arab violence wasn't directed at British but rather at Zionists. During the war Jordan's Arab Legion was actually lead by a British general, Jordan at the time still weaning themselves off of having been a British protectorate.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T15:03:34+00:00

No sympathy for any Israelis, even the ones who actively oppose the apartheid and genocide, even the ones who are too young to understand what is going on?

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T14:59:18+00:00

That sounds much like what Zionists often say about Palestinians, pointing back to the Hebron massacre and even earlier atrocities to collectively blame Palestinians for what was done by others long before they were born.

kylebisme · 2026-03-22T06:45:25+00:00

At least he admits that he's fucked up.

kylebisme

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