[rambojohnson]

You’re mistaking the packaging for the product. Religion is the language leaders use. Power, territory, oil corridors, regional dominance, and domestic political survival are what they’re actually fighting over.

Tehran isn’t calculating missile ranges based on sutras. Washington doesn’t position carrier groups because of metaphysics. Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.

Spiritual narratives make clean moral theater for the public. They mobilize bodies. They sanctify retaliation. But the machinery underneath runs on leverage and deterrence, not theology.

Wake up to the real world.

Calling it primarily religious violence feels tidy and tragic in a philosophical way. It’s harder, and more uncomfortable, to admit that it’s strategic violence dressed in symbols people recognize.

Shunyata is a beautiful lens for seeing through ego. It doesn’t dissolve geopolitics.

[pphysch]

> Israel’s security doctrine isn’t a meditation retreat.

"Security doctrine" is quite a euphemism for aggressive territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing, which is tightly wrapped in religious rhetoric.

[rayiner]

Territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing boils down to "more resources for me and those most closely related to me genetically." It's difficult to think of a course of action that is more materialist and less abstract.

[pphysch]

Do you think this materialist agenda would be successful if not for the religious brainwashing of the "Judeochristian" masses?

[rayiner]

Obviously: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132230-200-story-of...

[rambojohnson]

religious rhetoric is for the fools they've indoctrinated to their cause. it does not drive policy. I was being sardonic with "security doctrine".

[thisislife2]

Israel today is run by a group of religious fundamentalists who do believe it is their "promised" land. And then we have an American ambassador publicly supporting this because he thinks that as a Christian he needs to support Israel's "Biblical rights" over the all of middle-east!

[dlubarov]

"a group of religious fundamentalists" led by... Netanyahu, who is completely secular if not an atheist. How does this narrative make sense?

(Of course some Israel politicians are religious; that's true of any country.)

[thisislife2]

You don't judge a person by what they say, but what they ultimately do - Netanyahu is a right-wing religious fundamentalist as is evident by the kind of right-wing identity politics he practice, his support for the assassination of Israeli (and Palestinian) leaders who didn't support his political ideology and sought peace (Israel PM Netanyahu denies incitement before murder of Rabin - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-pm-netanyahu-denie... , Will Israel ever have another leader who truly wants peace? - https://forward.com/opinion/780946/yitzhak-rabin-assassinati... ), his attempts to usurp democracy in Israel and become a dictator (If Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition have their way, my country could deteriorate into a dictatorship. - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/israel-ben... ), his calls for the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, and the military sanction for the actual ongoing genocide in Gaza (and now in West Bank). The Likud party he leads emerged from a terrorist organisation that conducted Hamas like massacres of the Palestinains. ( The Terrorist Forefathers of Israel: The Irgun and Lehi - https://dissidentvoice.org/2023/03/the-terrorist-forefathers... ).

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and does what a duck does, it is a duck.

[YZF]

Netanyahu is not religious. He is, as the parent says, secular. If my cat quacked he's still not a duck.

There is "religion" in the broader sense which can be any set of beliefs but Netanyahu is as secular and logical as can be. He may be overly logical in the sense of advancing his personal agenda (avoiding standing trial) over the interests of his country but he's still very different than the religious crazies in Tehran where logic plays no role and g-d is everything.

[2snakes]

I do this too. I think it is basically simulation out of fear. (modeling because of uncomfortableness with thinking with System 1 fast emotional / System 2 slow rational)

[andrepd]

On the contrary, you're mistaking the means with the ends. Yes the regimes and their leaders think about oil corridors and regional proxies. Yes probably a chunk of the apparatchiks don't believe in the spiel and just care about enriching themselves off of corruption and so forth.

But religion, and not pure materialism, is absolutely at the center of the motivation of these people, the leaders and the population alike. It's not just, as you say, a sham that the leaders use to control and mobilise the masses. Religious fanaticism is at the source of the actions and the very existence of the Islamic Republic. Just as religious fanaticism is at the heart of the worst excesses of Zionism and the at-worst-genocidal, at-best-apartheid policies of Israel. It's not just materialism! It's not just prosaic greed! These people are moved by a holy fervour.

Like, this is the central mistake of Marxism, for all its merits in analysing the "capitalist mode of production", it is absolutely false that material conditions and class struggle are the engine of history.

[asdfe3r343]

> Religion is the language leaders use.

Yeah. Because people believe in in and leaders take advantage. DUH. Its not so peaceful religion all the way.

[frogperson]

That was very well said. Thank you.

[Rapzid]

IMHO you're still making it too complicated; knives out GOT, titans of industry..

Sure, but it's even simpler.. The Ayatollah Regime funds regional terrorism. It destabilizes the region, gets people killed, and holds back progress.

Also, they are always seemingly always almost done building a nuke.. Which frankly nobody wants(not even them because they know they'd be obliterated the instant the world thought they actually had one or were about to for-reals have one).

They are BAD FOR BUSINESS both private AND PUBLIC.

As long as the rest of the region was developing eventually their number would be up. The recent uprising and massacre was the signal their number is up. Time to go, honestly signed all their neighbors.