Look, it's bad to argue politics on the internet. Certainly the farms are not the most productive forum for discourse. But I will say that TOI as a whole, and this article in particular, are exemplary of the total detachment of the liberal-zionist, Anglo oriented community (think Baka residents) from the actual issues at hand:
What really bothers the writer? Not the dozens of cars burned in Lod. Not the Jewish man who was murdered there. Not the families that had to flee due to Arab mobs shooting at their apartments while the police do nothing. Not the events that every Hebrew Telegram channel and Whatsapp group were chronicling. That he obscures under the label of "mixed cities going up in flames". (I suppose that's at least better than explicity pushing the trash "both sides" narrative that the j*ournos at outlets like his have been doing .) What he does care enough to detail is what he thinks will play well for hasbara to other liberals - keyboard Zionists living in the US that got beat up because they decided they needed an Instagram pic of how brave they were confronting pro-Palestinians in Times Square.
For guys like this, Israel bombing empty highrises in Gaza while in the process killing hundreds is an absolute moral necessity, and if you criticize that, you're literally Hitler. But heaven forbid Jews be free to pray on the Temple Mount - that would provoke the Islamic world and light the Middle East on fire.
It's not even the hot take about Israel being the loser here that really bothers me. Most of the "retarded right" here, to borrow a phrase from Aryeh Deri's son, believes that too, and opportunists like Yair Lapid are happy to play to the retarded liberals and write long FB posts about how a left-wing government would really show Hamas who's boss. I agree that Israel "lost the war" in the sense that the political leadership has again failed to learn the lesson that constantly appeasing internal Arab violence shows weakness and just gives them, and Hamas, Hezbollah etc. the courage to escalate things externally. The author completely ignores this. It's as if Gaza exists in a vacuum and this wasn't the totally predictable result of domestic anti-escalation polices that he supports. I guess I'm just frustrated that the "pro-Israel" camp in the English language media is dominated by cucked Anglo Jews who achieve nothing but (unfortunately) confirming antisemitic stereotypes.
