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Israel has some unique, high tech, lethal, asymmetrical defense/offence capability if Taiwan can get their hands on more of it.
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Lai has been banging on about Israel as a positive model.
It appears his training (allegedly focused on medicine and care) seems to have missed some lessons on ethics. The broken separation of Taiwan’s education system during Lai’s time (with a technical / engineering / science stream on one side, versus arts / humanities / social science stream on the other side) had produced what could politely be called some seriously comparmentalized thinking. WTF!
Guy
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Not sure if the man feels like he has a choice… 
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There’s no better way to ingratiate oneself with the U.S. than to pay homage to its sacred cow.
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Israel is a model for some things. And don’t worry, we don’t have a captive population like Gaza to test weapons on before selling.
The “model,” such as it is, is an older CCK / CCK alignment with terrible right wing governments as brothers-in-arms. The DPP of late seems to have grabbed onto this model with enthusiasm.
Guy
They’re a model of how their tech industry can help with defense and vice versa.
A model of how developed countries can keep making babies.
And a model of retaining ancient symbols.
Lai is simply speaking to Israel’s ability to maintain public awareness and leverage the tech industry for national defense. Calling Lai aligning with Israel is an exaggeration, especially when Israel was pretty friendly with Russia and still pretty friendly with China. It’s not like they’ve pledged or will ever pledge to come to Taiwan’s aid.
Israel in 2025 is a genociding state. I don’t think we should white-wash this fact.
The DPP in Taiwan used to play up the human rights story. Lai’s focus has shifted away from this story to a story of security. He may be partially correct, but the optics are in this case not good.
I am much more impressed by this alignment and movement which honestly looks much smarter politically:
Guy
Yes, Netanyahu’s government committed genocide, and turned a response to terrorism, which was something that could rally most of the Western countries behind Israel, into a PR disaster. I have criticized how Netanyahu chose to respond to the terrorist attack multiple times before, and think Netanyahu made a terrible mistake even if he does not think twice about committing genocide, he put Israel in more danger and a weaker position down the road.
However, that has nothing to do with Israel maintaining its readiness prior to the Hamas terrorist attack, which is what Lai was talking about.
A more concrete point to criticize Lai’s Israel policy would be Lai’s government choosing to fund Israel’s “settlement”. That is wrong, and I don’t see what Taiwan could get out of that. It’s not like Israel will sell weapons to Taiwan or anything.
Lai would make a good poster boy for the banality of evil:
The “banality of evil” is the idea that *evil does not have the Satan-like, villainous appearance we might typically associate it with. Rather, evil is perpetuated when immoral principles become normalized over time by people who do not think about things from the standpoint of others.
The government’s response to the accusation is that the funding isn’t for a medical facility in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. It is a part of an ongoing medical cooperation signed in 2006, which is aimed to provide medical assistance to all people regardless of ethnicity. Taiwan also dedicated 500k USD to humanitarian aid in Gaza.
That title is obviously taking Lai out of context.
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Getting very interesting
I was wondering how Lai could speak at AIPAC when he can’t go to the United States. Turns out, AIPAC came to Taiwan.
retaking the “big road” soon?
Might be true but
Does pres Lai speak english?