Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

It is incredibly interesting how the US (and Germany) have put so much into Israel and associated groups they really don't want it to fail (despite the Israeli gov doing their damnest to facilitate just that). In my understanding Israel, in the eyes of the US, is a convenient "wedge" in the Arab space that allows for easier power projection in the area, plus they have a healthy amount of zionists close to money and power at home. I imagine the political calculus of if and how to support it is ridiculously difficult.

1) Israel serves as a lightning rod. Much of the Islamist violence is directed at them rather than at the rest of the world.

2) Israel is a nuclear power. You think they'll let themselves be exterminated (and that's what their opponents want) without using their bombs?

There is a lot to unpack in this.

Your #1 is encoding an unexamined assumption that there is a fixed or at least somewhat inflexible amount of violence to be directed anywhere. It also ignores the lightning generation engine, so to speak, that is the settler colonialism causing unrest across the region.

On #2 - Rational people see that they are willing to do everything short of nuclear war when they feel like their century of history is being re-evaluated, and are worried about that (appropriately so). Also, it is an error to assert that nations can be exterminated. That is something evil that happens to people. As organizations of people, institutions and states can fail or be dissolved, but do not disappear permanently so long as people remain to re-form them. I think rational people can argue that the things that are being done in Palestine are unconscionable and that a state that is built to systematically support those acts needs to renew its principles and recommit itself to the idea of "never again".

"Never again" - Was that ever an idea that Israel committed to? I thought this is only something that Germany and potentially other countries committed to, and Israel saw itself as the victim since forever, so they have no reason to commit to anything, but the victim card, which allowed them to have their own country in the first place.

Note though, that Germany's commitment to "never again" got somehow repurposed in exactly letting the thing happen again. Be it because politicians here are not actually educated enough to recognize the thing they should prevent, want to close their eyes to the fact that the once-victim now perpetrator, did it and they did nothing to stop it, they just don't care, the weapon exports are just too good of a business, or whatever. Germany has utterly failed to prevent the thing from happening ever again, and Israel has proven our collective "blind spot". The one entity, that no German politician is allowed to criticize. And still the political climate is such that, most likely, if you criticize Israel in any way, your political career is over and you get branded as an anti-Semite. Oh the irony of it.

While it should actually be a huge headline in every newspaper, that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians and is still committing it as we sit here, the newspapers are awfully quiet. It seems like it is not even worth a headline. Man, the truth hurts. Sucks when your reporting has been so biased all along. Hard to make a 165 degree turn now, I guess (I give them 15 degree, for the occasional reporting on the matter at all.).

> which allowed them to have their own country

That's a weird thing to say, I thought it was because they set up governance amid a collapsed empire and defended themselves in a war

There's a belief in the western left that Israel was set up by Western countries as colonialism. That way they can more easily call for the dissolving of the illegitimate country for a 1 state solution. If you acknowledge that the Jews were elbowing their way into the area of their own desire for a state, against the wishes of the Ottomans and then British, it makes it more difficult to paint them as evil invaders.