For example, the Saudis have long relied on their alliance with the US for defense, allowing them to plow their prodigious oil wealth into vanity projects like ski resorts in the desert and 100-km-lomg skyscrapers. But if they feel they can't rely on the US anymore (and after the past month, can they?), they could easily invest in building their own nuclear weapons instead. Israel would obviously not tolerate this, but even they would likely hesitate to pick a fight with the one country in the region that can (and does) outspend them 2x on defence.
What they can and have started to do is to make deals with partners like Ukraine to diversify their defense systems so they are independent from the USA.
5D chess, man, 5D chess...
It's too bad, because the unity that we had before Trump was great for peace, but now the rule of the strong is plunging the world back into wars and uncertainty.
And we're just in Q1 of 2026... I can hardly imagine the long years of 2027 and 2028.
In other words, the real cause of this shift is that Oct 7 showed that it is possible to beat America, and destroy Israel. The reaction in the entire Arab world? Immediately pile on!
In other words: this was a great PR win for (and by) hamas, showing that US/Israel, and the entire west CAN be beaten. And it was very much a PR win, in other words: it's false information. They didn't convince many Syrians, who had to directly deal with Iranian islamist actions directly. And in Lebanon, it's about equal, which I'm going to guess is not the opinion of all Lebanese. There's 2 groups of Lebanese: hezbollah (who number in the millions) that get paid by Iran's regime and everyone else, that get killed by hezbollah, and aren't very exited, to put it mildly, that hezbollah goes out to kill Syrians in Syria and Iraq and even Iranians in Iran.
The arab world is exited for this to happen. Arabs on top again! So ... this is not a failure by the (Biden or Trump 1) administration, and not a reaction to the deaths in this conflict. Also: not a chance in hell that this actually happens.
Also ... how dumb are these people? "Who is committed to upholding international law?" with China consistently scoring the highest? Really? The problems with US/EU/Israel in international law is that they don't uphold international law against other actors, only against themselves (e.g. they don't defend Sudan, except Israel, and then only a little bit). But China is actively committing warcrimes by the dozens.
The IDF took a day to stop and repel Hamas' attack on October 7. The attack lasted painfully long, but after control was regained, the Israeli government could have chosen all kinds of long-term strategies to end the conflict with the Palestinians. Instead, they chose the most inhumane strategy possible.
As for the US and the West, a certain amount of ethical double-standards regarding the Palestinians and Israeli impunity was known to everyone, I think. But I imagine most people thought that the western support for Israeli treatment of Palestinians would have some kind of limit. The tolerance of bombardment and starvation until western citizens threatened general strikes showed everyone that there weren't any.
I think that was the big change that was caused by October 7.
Hard to "end the conflict" when the other side has made your destruction its founding mission. Read the Hamas covenant. It doesn't distinguish between Zionists and Jews. It wants Jews gone. There's no negotiating with that. Name one country that would sit still after the mass rape, murder, and abduction of its citizens. It is perfectly expected for Israel to go out of its way to eliminate the Hamas threat once and for all.
As for the civilian toll, every death is a tragedy. But it's a tragedy engineered by Hamas's own military strategy. If Hamas were to disarm, the war would stop and everyone could go on with their lives. When you turn schools and homes into weapons depots, you've made the decision about what happens to them, not Israel.
I know it sounds brutal. But October 7th didn't leave room for gentle options.
"Why does the rest of the world hate us?"
I find it fascinating that so many people trot out the threat of genocide by a power utterly incapable of carrying it out as if it's worse than Israel actively committing genocide or if it somehow makes it justified.
I have no love for Hamas, but let's be real: most of what Hamas puts out is meaningless chest-thumping by an irrelevant power that wants to feel powerful within an apartheid state. It has been allowed to fester and has even been cultivated by the Israeli government at times so Hamas can act as the boogeyman which justifies all the evil shit the IDF and Israeli settlers do.
Ideally, Hamas should absolutely be removed, but the conditions in which the Israeli government puts Palestinians in guarantees another Hamas-like group would immediately spring up in its place. Israel should not get the free pass it does.
>Under Article II, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group"
If Israel wanted to conduct a genocide in gaza, i.e. had an "intent" - do you think it would have been a problem for it? Would it issue warnings before bombings? no.
The only intent here, is to destroy hamas. the rest - a direct consequence of how they fight from within hospitals and civilian population.
Second, "apartheid" - Israel has arab supreme judges and muslim parliament members, very very far from apartheid. Is it a perfect system? no. but no system is perfect, especially compared to the rest of the countries of the middle east.
> Second, "apartheid" - Israel has arab supreme judges and muslim parliament members, very very far from apartheid
That term is in relation to Palestinians in the occupied territories, not in relation to Arab Israelis, and you know that.
> The only intent here, is to destroy hamas. the rest - a direct consequence of how they fight from within hospitals and civilian population.
That's why they're not letting in any shelter material more durable than a tent...
Second, the occupied territories were Jordanian and Egyptian territories. Currently most of the territory is governed by the Palestinian Authority with Israeli security control. Palestinians have demonstrated very well that they are unable to prevent suicide bombings, stabbing, mass shootings, so Israel had no choice but to take care of the security itself. The purpose of the Oslo accords was to hand the control in the entire west bank to the Palestinians and establish a state in those territories. Right now, we are in a limbo state. This is not an apartheid, apartheid is a systemic racial separation in all levels of society.
And finally, again, everything that went into Gaza was used for one purpose - fight and destroy Israel. Where did they get all this concrete to build tunnels? Where did they get all the chemicals and metals to build rocket and rocket fuel?