Every now and then I wonder if Iran and crew made a mistake by having their trolls back Trump's campaign, but then he and his stooges do shit like this.
You're arguing past my point and not really addressing anything I actually said?
Are you really comparing sitting next to a woman would be akin to sexual assault, in a society where men and women are treated as equals?
No? I'm comparing it to something like hugs, which are acceptable cross-gender greetings in some places but limited to the same gender in others. That doesn't make places where the latter holds anti-democratic. I thought I was clear enough on that, but I'm not justifying what the man in the OP did; I'm just saying jumping from that to "disrespect for democratic values" is reading more into the story than there is to it. Plain entitlement is sufficient to explain everything we see here, and there'd have been no problem had the man been more respectful about what he was trying to do (for example by looking for someone to switch seats with). This is ultimately a problem of how he went about it, not of what he was trying to do.
Physically attacking the female flight attendant shows this isn't something about "beliefs about cross-gender contact", its about seeing women as inferior.
Or he could just be an entitled asshole. There's no point in making judgements without enough information, and it's not like being entitled justifies punching a flight attendant in the face.
This is an extreme level of sexist discrimination, that goes against fundamental values of a modern democracy.
Well that escalated quickly. More seriously, while the man in the OP is definitely entitled, what he wanted was not inherently sexist. Having strict beliefs about cross-gender contact can lead to sexism, but isn't that in and of itself. Most cultures out there put some limit on what unrelated men and women can do or where they can be together, and those limits can be fairly benign as long as they don't lead people to do things like assault flight attendants.
Yes, because America has America has had strategic interests (read: reasons to do imperialism) in the Middle East for ages.
The lobby and Moussad are powerful.
Yes, because they're allowed to be powerful. There's a reason no other country gets to manipulate American domestic politics this openly, not even longtime American allies in NATO. If money and a good intelligence agency were all you needed to control the strongest military power in the world everybody would be doing it. The fact of the matter American elites need a reliable thug in the region to do their dirty work for them and Israel does that job well enough that American elites feel the need to protect it from popular backlash. Compare how mainstream media talked/talks about Trump getting bribes from the Gulf States to how Israel's antics get reported on and you'll see what I mean; if Israel wasn't valuable to the people running the show they'd have tossed it overboard a long time ago.
Noted.