Oddbean new post about | logout
 I don't know how to stop Israel in the short term. I'm sorry your family is affected.

Most people in the West hear that Hezbollah keeps firing rockets into Israel, and so when Israel started yet-another-war with Lebanon on Sep 17 (with the pager attacks) some people think that Lebanon "had it coming".  Most people are simply unfamiliar with the day-to-day reality of the situation and only hear one-sided narratives.  This bloomberg article:  https://archive.is/e2IuM  shows that Israel's attacks on Lebanon over time (since after al-Aqsa flood) have been about 3x as OFTEN as the reverse... something I was suprised by, and far more deadly.  From that data one could argue that Lebanon was defending itself the whole time... although I'm not sure what they claim.

In the long run at least I think this situation will be resolved.  I think Israel has made itself the most hated nation on earth.  And I think the US and Israel are declining powers and my hope is that BRICS, once militarily dominant, will treat this area quite differently.  People are worried that Russia/China/Iran/N.Korea are "autocracies" and "dictatorships" and don't have liberal values, and rightly so.  But Western countries don't honor liberal values as much as they once did, these rising powers have become more liberal over time (China is practically a free market), and in the theory of great power politics liberalism is a luxury nations can only afford after they achieve military dominance. Point being that there is hope.