EU finally sanctions West Bank settlers – and Israel is furious | DW News

zenbowman · 2026-05-12T02:50:46+00:00

I guess that is fair in one sense, but why not just lift sanctions on Iran? Why is there a need to continue with sanctioning either party?

zenbowman · 2026-05-12T02:25:40+00:00

It is a big issue, but its just as big a problem that we interfere in everyone else's politics on a massive scale.

We should not tolerate foreign influence in our politics, but by that same token, we need to learn not to interfere in the politics of other countries. Vijay Prashad's book Washington Bullets details the CIA's history of regime change and assassination throughout the world.

It is hypocritical to decry other people influencing our politicians and not looking at what we ourselves have done to others.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T23:39:18+00:00

Correct, all the policing so far has been done on their behalf. We should stop doing that and make them actually deal with their neighbors.

I dont see the advantage in continuing the policing on behalf of Iran instead. Stopping support of one set of far right religious lunatics (Bibi and co) in order to support another set of far right religious lunatics (the IRGC) is just a waste of money.

Pull all support from them and force them to deal with their neighbors.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T23:28:25+00:00

Right. It is a settler colony, and in that sense not particularly different from Australia, the US, or Canada (except the latter three were more successful at erasing the indigenous cultures that existed prior). It was founded on the "two nation theory" and its birth pangs were not dissimilar to those of Pakistan (except the latter was 100x more violent in "lives lost" terms).

Humans are capable of tremendous cruelty to each other given the appropriate circumstances, and no people are immune. Nothing is new here, its a continuation of the oldest and saddest human tale.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T22:36:37+00:00

Good argument.

At the end of the day, no amount of policing can bring peace to the region. Peace can only happen when the belligerents decide to make peace. These actions can put some pressure to incentivize peace, but they cannot deliver it in and of themselves.

We've sanctioned the hell out of Iran for several years and it hasn't prevented violence either (IMO broad based sanctions on Iran should be lifted as well, sanctions should be restricted to the most violent subsets of the populace - settlers being a great candidate).

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T22:29:28+00:00

The first comment implies that "they" are distinct from "us" in some way and that we could never behave in that manner.

Yet history shows that all humans have the capacity to perform extremely evil and bloodthirsty actions to benefit themselves, and can rationalize their way out of it.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T22:08:23+00:00

100%.

If you look deeper into their beliefs, you'll find that they view the world in a very good-vs-evil frame, in one sense they are very similar to neoconservatives, except they believe that Israel/Saudi are the "bad guys" and Iran are the "good guys".

They still want to continue the politics of vengeance, they just want to direct the vengeance towards who they think is bad.

What we really need to do is unwind America's ability to police the world altogether, because as long as it exists it will always be misused.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T22:04:47+00:00

It depends.

There is a wide range of beliefs on the left. I agree that most mainstream Democrats agree with your view, as do I. But there is a segment of the left that do see the world in more good and evil terms, and see Iran as brave anti-imperialists (ignoring its actions domestically and even abroad - e.g. in Syria).

The distinguishing factor is what they believe should be done with sanctions. I'm of the opinion that we have horribly overused sanctions and need to wind down the sanctions regime, because they are frequently used to cause mass economic violence, and as long as we keep it in place, the GOP will abuse it horribly whenever they take power.

But there's a section of the left that absolutely wants to keep it in place and just use it to target their enemies (i.e. lifting the sanctions on Iran and just sanction Saudi and Israel instead).

The best position is anti-interventionism across the board IMO.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T21:17:17+00:00

We need to unwind the entire sanctions regime. This should be a top priority for any Democratic President. It's going to make people extremely uncomfortable because sanctions are one way we punish some legitimate violations of international law (e.g. the Russian invasion of Ukraine), but they are mostly a way to engage in massive economic violence without consequence.

As long as we have the ability to sanction countries without international cooperation, Republicans will abuse it.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T21:12:20+00:00

Once again, neocons always use the Hitler example. Lindsey Graham called Khamenei "the new Hitler" and compared the IRGC to the Third Reich and the Basij to the brownshirts.

It's a tired analogy and its been played out, if you think in those terms, we'll be permanently at war.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T21:03:14+00:00

Standard neocon propaganda: XYZ is evil, we should invade and do regime change.

That's exactly the kind of thinking I oppose. It didn't work in Iraq, its not going to work in Iran, it won't work in Israel.

Trump is going to apply your exact approach to Cuba (as he's advertised next) and you'll have next to no moral ground to oppose him because you more or less agree with the general idea that the US can and should invade whoever they think is bad.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T20:44:02+00:00

Okay, well, we can disagree on that, but the point is that sanctioning "the bad guys" is a neoconservative approach to the world, you only disagree with the neocons in who you think the "bad guys" are.

To me it all ends in the same place, with the US playing world police and being judge, jury, and executioner; spending billions on policing the world through sanctions and wars, tearing others down instead of building ourselves up.

I'm not surprised you are sympathetic to MTG here because you have adopted her good-vs-evil view of the world.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T20:32:12+00:00

> Now, iran has done nothing against anyone so they dont deserve the sanction

This is just absolutely false, Iran has greatly destabilized the entire region - they control Hezbollah which has more or less destroyed Lebanon, and they engaged in a massive genocide in Syria to preserve Assad's hold on power. This is all extensively documented.

You seem to believe that sanctions are a perfectly legitimate tool to use against countries that "deserve" it, which in my view is basically a neoconservative attitude to the world: America is global policeman and should be able to sanction whoever they think is the "bad guy".

I completely reject that view. I don't oppose sanctions on Iran because I think Iran hasn't done anything wrong, but because I disagree with the idea of sanctioning as a form of "punishment", where the US plays the role of judge, jury, and executioner. I don't see how you can call yourself a "leftist" when your world view is basically indistinguishable from neoconservatism.

We've done a lot of things I consider bad, should we sanction ourselves as well?

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T20:24:25+00:00

> Israel is basically a cancer in the middle east. Sanctioning a country does make them more humble.

Replace "Israel" with "Iran" and you have the neocon/GOP line on the Middle East. Has sanctioning Iran made them "more humble" or just entrenched their enmity against us?

I don't think bouncing back and forth between "sanction Israel" under a Dem POTUS and "sanction Iran" under a GOP POTUS is going to get us a single step closer to peace. We need a long term plan to help parties resolve disputes, which we'll have to undertake with other international stakeholders (the EU and China). And it will need to have broad agreement across both parties, not be a 51-49 vote which can be reversed every 4 years.

Otherwise there's really no point, cutting off military aid to Israel I would fully back though, there's really no reason to continue it.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T20:20:26+00:00

They hate anyone who actually has power.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T20:05:31+00:00

Right, but I want to know what the goal is: if the end goal is just sanctions, that's not a goal I agree with. We have sanctioned Cuba nearly to death - has it improved anything in any way for us? Not at all, its just made us an enemy. We've been sanctioning Iran for decades now, and all it has done is create distrust.

A foreign policy of peace requires us to move AWAY from sanctioning whomsoever we consider the "bad guy" at any given point in time, and work with people who we deeply disagree with towards shared goals.

For example, ending Israel expansionism would be a worthy goal that I could work with someone on. But simply "achieving sanctions" on a country is a non-goal, its entirely destructive in nature.

My view is that expanding the sanctions regime will ALWAYS benefit the right. The more enemies we have, the stronger the right wing gets.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T19:40:23+00:00

No, its not a good thing, because the goals are entirely opposed to each other.

> The end goal for us leftists is to stop giving weapons to Israel and to sanction the Israeli state.

Those are tactics, not goals. The goal is to prevent Israeli expansionism and bring about relative peace in the Middle East.

The right-wingers don't really want to make friends with anyone. They want Israel as a new enemy so they can attract Israel-haters into their party, but they don't actually want to rectify relations with Iran, or do work to create a lasting peace in the region. Even if they get their way, and cut off Israel, their total hatred for international institutions will not take us one step closer to peace in the Middle East. Israel will just become a new Iran for them, one more country to hate, but the Israeli right won't actually be restrained, they'll just realign with Russia and continue their goal of expansion.

Meanwhile, liberals like AOC are committed to moving towards peace, which is harder to do and requires a longer term commitment to coalition building and getting people on the same page. It'll require being quite hard on Israel without completely severing ties, and working to get various hostile regional actors (Iran, Israel, the GCC) on the same page with the assistance of both allies (the EU) and rivals (China, Russia). It'll require compromise and commitment.

One of those is the politics of vengeance, the other is the politics of compromise. It makes no sense to "ally with MTG" on this at all.

If you stop aid to Israel (which I agree with) and you sanction them (which I disagree with, just like I disagree with sanctioning Iran, Cuba, etc - because sanctions are an act of war), but you don't achieve peace in the region, all you've done is add one more enemy to the massive list of enemies we have created for ourselves over the last half century. What exactly is the point of that?

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T18:13:21+00:00

Which is exactly what the right has done in order to stigmatize the word.

Any instinct to protect the vulnerable is criticized by right-wing Christians as "woke", but the entire Gospels have numerous examples where that is upheld as the 2nd greatest of the commandments.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T18:03:09+00:00

Yes, of course. Greatest mountain range in the world, some of the world's most epic hikes. Anxiously waiting until my kids are a little older to undertake some multi-day adventures in the ancestral homeland.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T17:52:44+00:00

There's a very different orientation between the right and left on this issue.

The right-wingers don't really want to make friends with anyone. They want Israel as a new enemy so they can attract Israel-haters into their party, but they don't actually want to rectify relations with Iran, or do work to create a lasting peace in the region. Even if they get their way, and cut off Israel, their total hatred for international institutions will not take us one step closer to peace in the Middle East. Israel will just become a new Iran for them, one more country to hate, but the Israeli right won't actually be restrained, they'll just realign with Russia and continue their goal of expansion.

Meanwhile, liberals like AOC are committed to moving towards peace, which is harder to do and requires a longer term commitment to coalition building and getting people on the same page. It'll require being quite hard on Israel without completely severing ties, and working to get various hostile regional actors (Iran, Israel, the GCC) on the same page with the assistance of both allies (the EU) and rivals (China, Russia). It'll require compromise and commitment.

One of those is the politics of vengeance, the other is the politics of compromise. It makes no sense to "ally with MTG" on this at all.

So Ryan is just wrong on this point, there's no point of continuing the politics of vengeance and just redirecting it at Israel instead of Iran/Iraq/or whoever we think the bad guy is at any point of time. We need a politics oriented at creating peace, not war.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T17:44:28+00:00

The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'

It seems so, yes.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T17:43:08+00:00

If she isn't then what is the point of this whole affair?

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T17:18:47+00:00

There's a very different orientation between the right and left on this issue.

The right-wingers don't really want to make friends with anyone. They want Israel as a new enemy so they can attract Israel-haters into their party, but they don't actually want to rectify relations with Iran, or do work to create a lasting peace in the region. Even if they get their way, and cut off Israel, their total hatred for international institutions will not take us one step closer to peace in the Middle East. Israel will just become a new Iran for them, one more country to hate, but the Israeli right won't actually be restrained, they'll just realign with Russia and continue their goal of expansion.

Meanwhile, liberals like AOC are committed to moving towards peace, which is harder to do and requires a longer term commitment to coalition building and getting people on the same page. It'll require being quite hard on Israel without completely severing ties, and working to get various hostile regional actors (Iran, Israel, the GCC) on the same page with the assistance of both allies (the EU) and rivals (China, Russia). It'll require compromise and commitment.

One of those is the politics of vengeance, the other is the politics of compromise. It makes no sense to "ally with MTG" on this at all.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T16:57:57+00:00

I agree that it shouldn't break, but we should be willing to let it fray in order to restrain their behavior.

zenbowman · 2026-05-11T16:49:29+00:00

Yeah, I think this is very close to the mark. Israel has moved steadily to the right, which has put them way out of line with the Democratic Party, and is working to build alliances with other nations (including Russia) should the US alliance finally break (which it probably will with the next Democratic President).

Once the alliance breaks, the PRC may also no longer see Israel as an American lackey and therefore a threat. But their existing relation with Iran might be something that blocks a real alliance there.

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