He touches on some obvious problems with the mainstream narratives. Palestinian = Hamas = Muslim etc, is mostly true and they have exactly the government and conflict they desire and deserve.
As is my nature since I really don’t care for videos, so I didn’t watch this one in its entirety, but one of his earlier comments stood out to me … he said the “vast majority” support Hamas. He later delineates this by saying 70% support Hamas.
I’m curious as to where he gets his information. And I also wonder if he’s referencing the common citizen or is he talking about the political segment of the population?
Yes, I use CC, but as an overall preference, I just don’t care for videos. I don’t like being “captured” by someone else’s thoughts and opinions. If they are in print, I can skim and pick out the relevant/high points. I do admit I have come across some that are totally absorbing and I will watch to the end, But they are rare.
IMO, university students often view political topics from a far different point of view than average citizens.
I would imagine that if a group of Palestinian students at a Palestinian varsity wanted to skew/ slant their results so as to gleam international sympathy it would be away from supporting Hamas and their terrorist activity, wouldn’t you?
As with any survey one would surely want to consider their motives?
I can only think of two options.
To try to establish facts/ truth.
Or
To present a picture that would favour one’s own personal agenda.
If not truth/fact what position do you consider a group of Palestinian students from a Palestinian varsity would likely lean toward?
The survey that he quoted was done by a university that is primarily Palestinian students. So my take on that is, when they are amongst themselves, they support Hamas. While talking points they may present to the public, probably have no real bearing on the support.
Absolutely.
Incidentally, he has said he does not support the current government.
Are you not taking sides because you consider Hamas have a valid point and their actions are in some way justified?
They key word here is “always.” That is the starting position: utter rejection to ever at any time negotiate resolutions and settlements.
I seriously don’t think many westerners have the first clue about what it’s like having no choice but to face every day knowing your neighbour really is out to kill you. That’s the reality that exists – never changing – prior to any other consideration. Every Israeli lives under this threat and it never takes a day off. EVER. So, understanding this reality, what would YOU do?
Kids? Or child soldiers? Speaking of children being ‘mistreated’, imagine trying to figure out which is which, knowing that every Palestinian who attends school is taught to hate Jews (funded in large part by the UN) and the highest social good you can achieve is to become a martyr while killing as many as possible. That’s the reality for these kids. Imagine having to face this as a soldier? You can choose correctly 90 or 95 or even 99% of time, but it’s that remainder that will kill you and those you are trying to protect. Imagine what that would be like? Is there ANY equivalency with Israeli children? No. Absolutely not.
**SIGH** Difficult as it is for you to accept, tildeb, there are ALWAYS two sides to everything that takes place. AND … each side can/will document/verify/prove that their side is correct.
While the carnage is truly appalling Hamas gained power through democratic election.
If their election platform was based on economic and social reform then they sold the voters way short, and the obscene amounts of money pumped into Gaza has found it’s way into Hamas’ war effort and to feed the equally obscene lifestyle of Hamas leaders who are billionaires and up to this point have been living in the lap of luxury far away from the suffering they are at the very least equally responsible for causing.
Therefore if economic and social reform was not their primary goal they obviously lied through their arses.
However, if Hamas were voted in on the strength of their charter – namely the eradication of Israel and the Jewish population, then the Palestinian electorate knew what they were getting.
And you don’t slaughter, rape and mutilate 1200 civilians and think no response will be forthcoming.
I suspect Hamas knew EXACTLY what they were doing and likely anticipated Israel’s response.
Although I don’t believe even Hamas reckoned Israel would respond in such an all or nothing manner.
We all have gripes about all kinds of stuff. But we don’t dismantle a water treatment plant for its pipes and then turn them into rockets and fire them by their tens of thousands into civilian settlements. Usually. I might be wrong, but that seems to me to be perhaps, maybe, possibly, not quite the best way to finding mutually acceptable resolutions to the gripes. I don’t know. I’m probably an outlier, but I don’t think dismembering people, raping them, mutilating live bodies, burning families alive, kidnapping, torturing, beheading, hiding beneath, in, and on hospitals and schools and playgrounds to fire those rockets – you know, the usual ways we express our displeasure – is an equivalent way of seeking resolutions to gripes. I don’t think writing a constitutional document that demands a global genocide against those with whom one has gripes is a good starting position. But what do I know? I’m probably being unreasonable. Nothing is worse than being evicted from a house someone else owns. So I get it. It’s all about equivalent gripes.
You seem to suffer from a lack of moral clarity when it comes to jihad and genocide against Jews. How can this be? You should have exactly none… ‘gripes’ notwithstanding. This issue is as morally and ethically clear as any issue can possibly be. Yet you introduce some measure of equivalency or sleight justification to mitigate this clarity in a public forum. Soo I’m calling you on it. Grow a pair, Neil. It’s not just me who thinks more people who share your sense of false equivalencies need to ask themselves the hard yet important question, “Why?” This IS the test of one’s moral character. You’re not doing well.
“This attack was aimed at human beings no matter what their religion or background. It violated all rules of humanity. We’re talking about chopping and burning and kidnapping. We’re talking about all ages, we’re talking about nationalities – dozens of different nationalities. We’re talking about a… test. The test is that each person has to look in the mirror and say, “Am I in any way saying that this is justified? And those who say, “I’ll justify it in some small way,” will be judged by history as people who are accomplices in thought to one of the worst crimes in humanity.” (Isaac Herzog interview with Douglas Murray, Dec 8, 2023)
Pretty anodyne. But it does highlight why the Jew-Muslim equivalency is beyond absurd and the Israel-Palestine equivalency does not come from reality but imposed on it. The raising of the inherent violence tolerated and excused and justified and promoted in so many Muslim communities should be obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that this is not an equivalent peaceful religion as those that do not. But it was somewhat satisfying, I have to admit, reading how headlines and media articles are carefully tailored to not implicate any connection whatsoever to Islam… even though so many atrocities from individual acts to state sponsored terror events is so often accompanied by allah ‘akbar!… not just from the perpetrators but to widespread ‘civilian’ support echoing the same. We’ve seen it how many times? It’s very determined thinking to pretend there is no connection and I think extraordinarily dishonest to angle a response about violence renamed ‘human rights violations’ to be about actual ‘human rights’ when the rights of humans who are Muslim is of little to no concern to those expressing such supposedly justified ‘outrage’ at Israel’s latest ‘crime against humanity’ but ignoring (or blaming the West, of course) for all the actually mass casualties caused by Muslims against other Muslims elsewhere in the world and to many factors greater. In no other subject is the blatant hypocrisy so eager and willing to condemns Jews/Israel so plain to see, so popular, and so easily activated, and so widely rationalized. I explain this obvious special pleading as anti-Semitism but for some strange reason those who practice this very specialized equivalency argument don’t seem to like the term being applied to them. And offending others – especially the self-appointed righteous ones – is of course the greater crime. Videos like this help expose the hypocrisy in action.
I found it telling ( and amusing in a sardonic way) how he highlighted media warnings of impending/ likely terrorist attacks and then had the chutzpah to ask if these attacks would be from Jews, Hindus or Christians?
Pointing to Muslim violence and human rights violations in other nations (both true) detracts from Israel’s own Zionist ambitions leading up to the current conflict. It takes two to tango.
The ambitions are fully expressed on page xli in “The History of Zionism “:
After the First Congress Dr. Gaster published the following letter in the Times of the 29th of August, 1897 : —
” The movement aims at the solution of one of the most complex modern social problems in Europe, and the means which are to be employed towards the solution are the realization of deep-seated religious hopes and ideals. For this very reason men from all the ranks of Jewish society and all shades of Jewish religion are here united in the common, noble, lofty and humanitarian purpose — the restoration of Israel, which is, moreover, the true fulfilment of the words of our Prophets.
No but I do see statements like this one scattered throughout the book: “The colonization of Palestine by Jews is useful and desirable from every point of view.”
Again, so what?
Time and again partition has been offered and every time rejected.
Based on history and current events do you think perhaps the Arabs/ Palestinians have no interest in sharing and want it all for themselves?
Clear something up for me. I’m definitely not well-read on world history, although I am fairly familiar with bible history since I was immersed in it to so many years. And this “well-discussed” conflict does relate to some of that history.
From things I’ve come across, the battleground, so to speak, was at one time pretty much the property of the Palestinian people. Then, based on a few things I’ve picked up here and there, there came a point when the Jews were granted some of this land.
Then, as time went by, it seems the Jewish folks decided they want more of the land than they were granted, so they decided to “expand their boundaries.” Of course the Palestinians weren’t too happy about that — and as time went by and the Jewish folk kept pushing out their boundaries, some of the Palestinians got together (with a bit of help from surrounding countries) and decided to “take back” their land.
How far off am I? And tildeb … please let Ark answer the question!!!
I want YOUR perspective … I know I could look elsewhere for the detailed facts … but that’s not what I want. I’m interested in knowing how YOU see this “battle.”
My question is how you, Nan, define the term ‘settler’, as in ‘Jewish settlers’. I’m pretty sure Americans don’t call the influx of Mexicans ‘settlers’, or the Germans call the influx of Turks ‘settlers’ or Canadians call the influx of Syrians and Afghanis and Iraqis ‘settlers’ so I’m curious how the difference is settled in people’s minds who call Jewish refugees ‘settlers’. Maybe you can help.
No, there is a misunderstanding here, Nan; I am not trying to dispute your use of the word because you never used it. Nor am I trying to dispute what you said. What I’m trying to figure out is from where this notion of ‘Palestine’ – as if somehow the region ‘belonged’ to non Jewish Palestinian ‘people’ – came from. I know the same story, the same framing, is commonly used in order to cast Jewish Palestinians as being ‘granted’ some of this land (and, again, as if this were somehow different from non Jewish Palestinians also being ‘granted’ land) only to then present the Jewish folks alone as if ‘they’ wanted more of the land than they were granted (and presumably different from the non Jewish Palestinians who also wanted more of the land than they were granted). I’m very curious because this narrative IS the settler narrative. It is used to present the Jews alone as expanding ‘their’ boundaries as if by theft from this separate group apparently known (or at least self known) as ‘Palestinians’, meaning non Jewish but definitely indigenous people to the area who, oh by the way, were not Jewish. All of this is what the settler colonial narrative is, painting the Jews of Palestine as colonial usurpers, which is then used to justify non Jewish Palestinians wanting to ‘take back’ that which by some fiat of indigeneity had been previously owned by non Jewish Palestinians but then stolen from them by the colonial usurpers. The whole narrative is a carefully crafted Just So colonizing story in order to fit the colonial framework used to vilify ‘colonizers’ in today’s group identity narrative of victims and victimizers that has very little if any connection to the overarching history of the area as it actually unfolded. This is why I was wondering how you defined ‘settler’ because at its core this definition can be quite revealing when it comes to recognizing a Just So story applied to a very specific demonized group.
Anyway, Nan, that was intention and I apologise for using so many words.
Perhaps the Palestinians lack of interest stems from the fact that they weren’t consulted when the French and British established their regional “mandates” and opened the area up for Jewish settlement.
How enthusiastic would you be to negotiate under similar circumstances?
Empires rise and fall.
I imagine the Jews weren’t too enamoured when the Babylonians moved in or the Assyrians or the Romans and kicked them out flattened Jerusalem and renamed the place and the region.
The British had the mandate to keep the peace.
By all accounts they didn’t do too well and weren’t liked much by the locals. Once the British realised what a shit storm they had on their hands and had had enough the UN were left holding the baby.
Partition was the decision.
Jews said Yes, Arabs said No and that was when the fun started …again.
“Well, boys and girls, that’s the deal. A two state solution. If you can’t agree to sort it out then you must accept the consequences.
Or…
In the immortal words of Francis of the People’s Front of Judea: “Tough titty for you, fish face”.”
wars between “other” nations, in which the rest of the world has no input, seems to bring out the ‘my side is the right side” in just about everyone. And the war, no matter how far away, turns into opinions/arguments of the endless and heated variety, back and forth, with some people hauling in their particular deity and others arguing out of both sides of their mouths about six different things, so that by the end of the theoretical day no one is quite sure who is saying what about which–and that, Virginia, is why I stay back here in the corner, sipping coffee and watching this insane game of pingpong that has no paddles and a table with no net.
Enjoy.
I love you all, but I can’t play a game I don’t even have a rule book for. =)
The circus will eventually leave town…
As a non-religious person living in a largely secular Western society it is difficult to wrap one’s head around the type of motivation that would drive someone to kill in the name of a god and when it happens we are are often wont to mumble, Say what?
Trying to consider the mindset that would send a suicide bomber into a crowded mall or similar place in the name of a god is just impossible for me and I suspect impossible for most rational people.
When the dust has settled and this war is somehow resolved, as it will be one way or another, such religious maniacs will still be among us. And knowing this fact is quite unsettling.
There’s the on-the-ground issues – which is one aspect people have differing opinions – and then there’s the problem much, much closer to home about the issues on the ground. The idea of sitting on the sidelines (because such conflicts are often seen as business-as-usual) bumps up against why there is no such ‘safe’ position and that it IS individually important.
Let me explain.
What I mean is that this conflict has revealed a significant issue – and a VERY revealing one – at home in the West. And it matters in order to understand what’s coming into being at home (anywhere in the West) and why it will aid the worst elements of extremism politically (namely, electing a self-declared dictator into the highest office regarding the US specifically but having tremendous global implications). We see the rise in populist leaders and more right wing governments, and this is all connected.
What we’re seeing unfold – and revealed in comment sections like this one – is a significant and I think fatal divide in the left. The left has undergone a split between narrative driven identity-believers who frame the world using Critical Theory (whether they know it or not) – that is to say, belief in identity groups as real ‘things’ with a desire to use laws and policies to advance equity corrections between different groups – and classical liberals – that is to say, people who align themselves not with authoritarian or populist leaders but with allegiance to laws and policies and nations that are liberal, that are geared towards laws and policies and practices that should respect and protect and advance equalitytreatment for all individuals (regardless of identified discriminatory inherited identities like race, colour, creed, sex, and so on).
The identity believers – sometimes called ‘woke’ for lack of a better name – in the following quote are labeled as Social Justice Liberals and they are the antithesis of Classical Liberals. So, in regards to the Israeli-Hamas conflict (notice how often and easily people confuse Hamas with ‘Palestinian’? This is not an accident when we try to impose reality into the group-identity narrative), this home based divide affects how ‘we’ understand the conflict and how ‘we’ respond to it, how ‘we’ demand this and that from our public institutions, media, and governments. In other words, our starting position as ‘the left’ very much matters and it’s in tatters because of this divide. None of us can sit it out! And we can see the effects at home today politically and even in comment sections! What fewer and fewer of us recognize is how so many are upholding in the name of ‘justice’ actual prohibited discriminations like race and religious belief, while thinking ourselves virtuous and good while we actively promote inherited characteristics having a determining effect – say in hiring – above equality rights!
“SJL (Social Justice Liberal) has an elaborate matrix of racial and identity categories, which Jewishness has always fit awkwardly into. Jewishness is both an ethnicity and a religion. Jews in the United States are quite successful despite the extremely high historic incidence of anti-Semitism, including of course the Holocaust. Meanwhile, there’s the distinction between the Jewish people and the Israeli state. And race and ethnicity within Israel are complicated; many Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, meaning they have ancestry from the Middle East rather than Europe. So Jewishness is an edge case that makes the entire identity politics architecture look kind of dubious, if we’re being honest.
So what was the reaction from SJLs after an anti-Semitic terrorist attack that killed (more than) a thousand Jews? Well, there certainly wasn’t much sympathy. Instead, we got Harvard students defending Hamas. We got people tearing down portraits of hostages, hanging Palestinian flags on menorahs and polls showing an alarming rise in Holocaust denial among young people.
Some SJLs will regard liberals as just as bad as conservatives — enough so that they might even be willing to deny a vote to Biden. All of this is quite bad for the progressive coalition between liberals and the left that’s won the popular vote for president four times in a row.”
So why is this personal and why does it matter?
“But both liberals and SJLs might find temptations: for instance, liberals will be tempted by MAGA pledges to dismantle DEI on campus, even if conservatives are also quite terrible about protecting academic freedom. Meanwhile, one of Hayek’s points was that socialists and conservatives shared a tolerance, if not even a reverence, for authoritarianism. SJL and MAGA could align there as well. SJL has already moved away from the liberal tradition of entrusting people to make their own decisions — think of the since-scuttled Disinformation Governance Board, or the draconian COVID restrictions on college campuses. If Trump wins next year, this tendency will get worse, and SJLs may more openly question whether democracy works at all.” (Source)
This is a good example of what the SJL v liberal divide has done to the universities generally and about the response to the Israeli-Hamas conflict on campuses specifically and why ‘elite’ university presidents were confounded and confused why anyone might question them to find out why some groups are coddled while others are targeted for harassment and from within the SJL ranks that’s all perfectly fine. This commentary by Fareed Zakaria on CNN explains it well. This is why it matters.
I laughed out loud at reading the “non-Western and non-Israel bias” assertion and then seeing both were Al Jazeera! Too funny.
(It operates under the ownership of the Al Jazeera Media Network, which, in turn, is funded by the government of Qatar, home to the rich leadership of Hamas!)
I had not known this until this morning when I Googled al Jazeera.
Back in ‘the day’, we had a paper down here called the Citizen which was funded ( part or whole, can’t remember which, by the Nationalist Government).
I hadn’t known this for years, but after I found out it clarified quite a number of things.
It’s actually not bad – the English version, anyway – and when compared and contrasted to much of western media, so its bias doesn’t seem over the top (until you isolate certain terms like you did and realize the presumptions that have to be present and accepted for the terms to be so easily inserted or the biases and prejudices in the readers to go along with them without recognizing the scope of the accepted bias).
There is a growing sentiment that because this conflict has history, our opinions don’t much matter one way or the other. Furthermore, there is a claim that it’s too binary, too much of I’m-right-you’re-wrong difference of opinion that is not productive and so it’s just wearying.
I think we’re not seeing the forest for the trees here and so are remaining ignorant about what’s really going on and, more importantly, why it maters so damned much to each and every one of us. so here’s the question:
““Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?”
Two out of three Americans between the ages of 18-24 answered Yes. For those over the age of 65, it was fewer than one in ten and each cohort in between answered No. This is why the conflict is so revealing: support for or against this framing indicates either believing in progressive identity-based ideology of victim/victimizer OR rejecting belief in the framing ideology. There is a stark difference, a division, between those who do and those who do not which then plays out in how one approaches the current conflict.
I’ve said it many times: HOW we think determines WHAT we think and so those who believe in the ideological framework end up supporting, excusing, or waving away barbarism as if a legitimate response. Let me say it again: believing in the progressive ideology excuses and even justifies utter barbarism to the extent of presenting it as a both-sides issue. It excuses rape. This is a war crime. It excuses mass murder. This is a war crime. It excuses the taking and public displaying of hostages. It excuses the execution of hostages. And on, and on and on. All of this is excused – usually accompanied by a mealy mouthed half hearted condemnation followed by a ‘but’ – not for inexcusable actions they are but because of excusing and/or justifying to some extent the group identity of being a ‘victim’ by those carrying them out.
The same ideological fracturing of the western population caused by belief in the group-based ideology is at the root of all kinds of issues at home and abroad. Not the actions of rioter and looters burning Milwaukee but the association with being a ‘victimized’ group and therefore excused in spite of many of their victims being from the same ‘victimized’ group! The ideology displaces personal responsibility for personal actions and personal moral character with the groups they supposedly represent. This is hugely dysfunctional and incredibly divisive.
But wait. There’s more.
When ideologues are able to find enough support to implement group-based rights, privileges, and discriminations, individuals who belong to the ‘Other’ category lose equality with those in the ‘Us’ category. Under the framework of equity, all of this is justified. This is what we saw the three university Presidents defend when it came to cancellations and deplatforming and the shuttering of free speech in the name of promoting safety for ‘victimized’ groups, the supporters were all for this laser focus on microaggressions and triggering as being equivalent to violence and therefore should be supported. But when the same tools were used against the supporters in the name of Jewish students, all of a sudden the reversal and authoritarian policies used to combat the ‘victimizer’ groups when turned back on those all too willing to implement them on behalf of the ‘victimized’ group was no longer quite so welcomed.
The forest here is all about equality rights and freedoms of the individual being undermined and attacked not just by individuals who support group-based identity group binary framing but by the institutions that teach the next generation being captured by this ideological insanity that cannot differentiate real violence, real genocide, real terrorism from its ideological group-based victim/victimizer projection. This is how real people who actually share a common set of liberal values are being separated and divided by a totalitarian ideology that simply doesn’t have any concern whatsoever with the real world conditions of real people but uses progressive language to fool people into supporting the unsupportable, justifying the unjustifiable, excusing the inexcusable. That’s the real battle being waged. And we’re losing. That’s why it matters. If we cannot see excusing calls for genocide as crossing a line, we have no longer have a line to cross. That’s how we know – two out of every three 18-24 years old – is a wakeup call all of us need to answer and decide which side we are on.
In this video, University of Jerusalem professor Peled-Elhanan, discusses how the Israeli education system:
– stereotypes and disenfranchises Palestinian residents,
– promotes Zionism and military recruitment,
-revises history to present a pro-Jewish perspective,
-censures and destroys books that present a more balanced viewpoint.
She concludes that Israel practices overt racism and is is headed towards fascism.
Having thought I keep coming up with a rather trite “Boys will be boys”. But don’t fret, all is working out exactly as the good compassionate ever-loving All-mighty planned it and wants it to. (Actually, it has no option, does it?)
For anyone just come in, let me re-re-reiterate that God’s omniscience blows YOUR “free will” right out of the water.
To kingdom come, in fact.
A Tale Unfolds 
The mindset is just so alien to my sensibilities. The Jewish ‘settlers’ are just as bad, if not worse.
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Mindset? Muslim/ Islam?
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Yeah — the total absence of empathy.
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Yep… Consider Islamic State.
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He touches on some obvious problems with the mainstream narratives. Palestinian = Hamas = Muslim etc, is mostly true and they have exactly the government and conflict they desire and deserve.
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As is my nature since I really don’t care for videos, so I didn’t watch this one in its entirety, but one of his earlier comments stood out to me … he said the “vast majority” support Hamas. He later delineates this by saying 70% support Hamas.
I’m curious as to where he gets his information. And I also wonder if he’s referencing the common citizen or is he talking about the political segment of the population?
And finally … who is this guy???
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He explains where the figure derives from: a survey conducted by a Palestinian university.
He also gives a breakdown with an illustration.
He is an Israeli.
Don’t YouTube supply a written transcript ?
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Yes, I use CC, but as an overall preference, I just don’t care for videos. I don’t like being “captured” by someone else’s thoughts and opinions. If they are in print, I can skim and pick out the relevant/high points. I do admit I have come across some that are totally absorbing and I will watch to the end, But they are rare.
IMO, university students often view political topics from a far different point of view than average citizens.
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I would imagine that if a group of Palestinian students at a Palestinian varsity wanted to skew/ slant their results so as to gleam international sympathy it would be away from supporting Hamas and their terrorist activity, wouldn’t you?
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Notice that my statement is generalized. 😊
If you and others wish to interpret the remarks of this group a certain way, that’s your prerogative.
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As with any survey one would surely want to consider their motives?
I can only think of two options.
To try to establish facts/ truth.
Or
To present a picture that would favour one’s own personal agenda.
If not truth/fact what position do you consider a group of Palestinian students from a Palestinian varsity would likely lean toward?
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The survey that he quoted was done by a university that is primarily Palestinian students. So my take on that is, when they are amongst themselves, they support Hamas. While talking points they may present to the public, probably have no real bearing on the support.
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Likewise, Israeli = Netanyahu = right wing extremism and they have exactly the government and wars that they desire and deserve.
I’m just pointing out that this argument works both ways. And that’s why I am not taking sides.
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Absolutely.
Incidentally, he has said he does not support the current government.
Are you not taking sides because you consider Hamas have a valid point and their actions are in some way justified?
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No, I am no fan of Hamas. I do think the Palestinian people have a valid gripe against the way Israel has treated them.
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Really? They have rejected every offer of partition and have always resorted to violence.
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They key word here is “always.” That is the starting position: utter rejection to ever at any time negotiate resolutions and settlements.
I seriously don’t think many westerners have the first clue about what it’s like having no choice but to face every day knowing your neighbour really is out to kill you. That’s the reality that exists – never changing – prior to any other consideration. Every Israeli lives under this threat and it never takes a day off. EVER. So, understanding this reality, what would YOU do?
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Scottie has posted some videos of kids (12-14) being captured and mistreated by Israeli troops.
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Kids? Or child soldiers? Speaking of children being ‘mistreated’, imagine trying to figure out which is which, knowing that every Palestinian who attends school is taught to hate Jews (funded in large part by the UN) and the highest social good you can achieve is to become a martyr while killing as many as possible. That’s the reality for these kids. Imagine having to face this as a soldier? You can choose correctly 90 or 95 or even 99% of time, but it’s that remainder that will kill you and those you are trying to protect. Imagine what that would be like? Is there ANY equivalency with Israeli children? No. Absolutely not.
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**SIGH** Difficult as it is for you to accept, tildeb, there are ALWAYS two sides to everything that takes place. AND … each side can/will document/verify/prove that their side is correct.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/13/israel-palestine-racism-antisemitism
One comment in the article that stood out to me: Fear and trauma generate many different responses.
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While the carnage is truly appalling Hamas gained power through democratic election.
If their election platform was based on economic and social reform then they sold the voters way short, and the obscene amounts of money pumped into Gaza has found it’s way into Hamas’ war effort and to feed the equally obscene lifestyle of Hamas leaders who are billionaires and up to this point have been living in the lap of luxury far away from the suffering they are at the very least equally responsible for causing.
Therefore if economic and social reform was not their primary goal they obviously lied through their arses.
However, if Hamas were voted in on the strength of their charter – namely the eradication of Israel and the Jewish population, then the Palestinian electorate knew what they were getting.
And you don’t slaughter, rape and mutilate 1200 civilians and think no response will be forthcoming.
I suspect Hamas knew EXACTLY what they were doing and likely anticipated Israel’s response.
Although I don’t believe even Hamas reckoned Israel would respond in such an all or nothing manner.
And remember, this is Islam.
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We all have gripes about all kinds of stuff. But we don’t dismantle a water treatment plant for its pipes and then turn them into rockets and fire them by their tens of thousands into civilian settlements. Usually. I might be wrong, but that seems to me to be perhaps, maybe, possibly, not quite the best way to finding mutually acceptable resolutions to the gripes. I don’t know. I’m probably an outlier, but I don’t think dismembering people, raping them, mutilating live bodies, burning families alive, kidnapping, torturing, beheading, hiding beneath, in, and on hospitals and schools and playgrounds to fire those rockets – you know, the usual ways we express our displeasure – is an equivalent way of seeking resolutions to gripes. I don’t think writing a constitutional document that demands a global genocide against those with whom one has gripes is a good starting position. But what do I know? I’m probably being unreasonable. Nothing is worse than being evicted from a house someone else owns. So I get it. It’s all about equivalent gripes.
Good grief.
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Oh, get off your high horse.
I left religion a long time ago. I’m not interested in your morality preaching.
I only said that the Palestinians had valid gripes. I did not say that their behavior was justified.
I tried to be clear that I am not taking sides.
Okay, that’s not quite right. I am on the anti-tildeb side. I resent your frequent preaching.
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You seem to suffer from a lack of moral clarity when it comes to jihad and genocide against Jews. How can this be? You should have exactly none… ‘gripes’ notwithstanding. This issue is as morally and ethically clear as any issue can possibly be. Yet you introduce some measure of equivalency or sleight justification to mitigate this clarity in a public forum. Soo I’m calling you on it. Grow a pair, Neil. It’s not just me who thinks more people who share your sense of false equivalencies need to ask themselves the hard yet important question, “Why?” This IS the test of one’s moral character. You’re not doing well.
“This attack was aimed at human beings no matter what their religion or background. It violated all rules of humanity. We’re talking about chopping and burning and kidnapping. We’re talking about all ages, we’re talking about nationalities – dozens of different nationalities. We’re talking about a… test. The test is that each person has to look in the mirror and say, “Am I in any way saying that this is justified? And those who say, “I’ll justify it in some small way,” will be judged by history as people who are accomplices in thought to one of the worst crimes in humanity.” (Isaac Herzog interview with Douglas Murray, Dec 8, 2023)
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I’ll take your accusation as a confession of your own lack of moral clarity.
I have never said that Hamas was justified in what they did. You are making false accusations.
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False equivalency… again.
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Pretty anodyne. But it does highlight why the Jew-Muslim equivalency is beyond absurd and the Israel-Palestine equivalency does not come from reality but imposed on it. The raising of the inherent violence tolerated and excused and justified and promoted in so many Muslim communities should be obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that this is not an equivalent peaceful religion as those that do not. But it was somewhat satisfying, I have to admit, reading how headlines and media articles are carefully tailored to not implicate any connection whatsoever to Islam… even though so many atrocities from individual acts to state sponsored terror events is so often accompanied by allah ‘akbar!… not just from the perpetrators but to widespread ‘civilian’ support echoing the same. We’ve seen it how many times? It’s very determined thinking to pretend there is no connection and I think extraordinarily dishonest to angle a response about violence renamed ‘human rights violations’ to be about actual ‘human rights’ when the rights of humans who are Muslim is of little to no concern to those expressing such supposedly justified ‘outrage’ at Israel’s latest ‘crime against humanity’ but ignoring (or blaming the West, of course) for all the actually mass casualties caused by Muslims against other Muslims elsewhere in the world and to many factors greater. In no other subject is the blatant hypocrisy so eager and willing to condemns Jews/Israel so plain to see, so popular, and so easily activated, and so widely rationalized. I explain this obvious special pleading as anti-Semitism but for some strange reason those who practice this very specialized equivalency argument don’t seem to like the term being applied to them. And offending others – especially the self-appointed righteous ones – is of course the greater crime. Videos like this help expose the hypocrisy in action.
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I found it telling ( and amusing in a sardonic way) how he highlighted media warnings of impending/ likely terrorist attacks and then had the chutzpah to ask if these attacks would be from Jews, Hindus or Christians?
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This video provides a different perspective of the conflict.
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That’s a long video, but I’ll give it a squizz a bit later.Liverpool.are playing at the moment.
Do you disagree with the video I posted?
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He speaks fairly so so you can watch it at 2x speed or convert it to mp3 audio and listen to it at 2x on your phone.
As for your video, polls rare unreliable indicators of public opinion. (The pollsters all agreed Hilary h would win in 2016)
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I wasn’t specifically referring to the poll, but the narrator’s take.
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I have no horse in this race, but it’s patently obvious that the narrator has a vested political and financial bias underpinning his position.
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I have no horse either
As the presenter points out; Don’t call me names refute my assertions.
Do you disagree with his assertions?
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I think they are red herrings.
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Really?
Can you give an example ?
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Pointing to Muslim violence and human rights violations in other nations (both true) detracts from Israel’s own Zionist ambitions leading up to the current conflict. It takes two to tango.
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What ambitions? How far back are you going?
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The ambitions are fully expressed on page xli in “The History of Zionism “:
https://archive.org/details/historyofzionism02sokouoft/page/n47/mode/2up?view=theater
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And ..?
I don’t see any mention of the eradication of Arabs/ Palestinians.
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No but I do see statements like this one scattered throughout the book: “The colonization of Palestine by Jews is useful and desirable from every point of view.”
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Again, so what?
Time and again partition has been offered and every time rejected.
Based on history and current events do you think perhaps the Arabs/ Palestinians have no interest in sharing and want it all for themselves?
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Clear something up for me. I’m definitely not well-read on world history, although I am fairly familiar with bible history since I was immersed in it to so many years. And this “well-discussed” conflict does relate to some of that history.
From things I’ve come across, the battleground, so to speak, was at one time pretty much the property of the Palestinian people. Then, based on a few things I’ve picked up here and there, there came a point when the Jews were granted some of this land.
Then, as time went by, it seems the Jewish folks decided they want more of the land than they were granted, so they decided to “expand their boundaries.” Of course the Palestinians weren’t too happy about that — and as time went by and the Jewish folk kept pushing out their boundaries, some of the Palestinians got together (with a bit of help from surrounding countries) and decided to “take back” their land.
How far off am I? And tildeb … please let Ark answer the question!!!
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I am pretty sure you will find more exact and in depth historical data on the Net than I could possibly provide in a blog comment.
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I want YOUR perspective … I know I could look elsewhere for the detailed facts … but that’s not what I want. I’m interested in knowing how YOU see this “battle.”
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Aah, you want an OPINION…
Fair enough.
See my response to Ron. That sums up my view.
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My question is how you, Nan, define the term ‘settler’, as in ‘Jewish settlers’. I’m pretty sure Americans don’t call the influx of Mexicans ‘settlers’, or the Germans call the influx of Turks ‘settlers’ or Canadians call the influx of Syrians and Afghanis and Iraqis ‘settlers’ so I’m curious how the difference is settled in people’s minds who call Jewish refugees ‘settlers’. Maybe you can help.
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Nowhere did I use the word “settler.” (Not did I use the word refugee.) Yet you used 65 words to respond to/dispute something I didn’t even write. SMH
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No, there is a misunderstanding here, Nan; I am not trying to dispute your use of the word because you never used it. Nor am I trying to dispute what you said. What I’m trying to figure out is from where this notion of ‘Palestine’ – as if somehow the region ‘belonged’ to non Jewish Palestinian ‘people’ – came from. I know the same story, the same framing, is commonly used in order to cast Jewish Palestinians as being ‘granted’ some of this land (and, again, as if this were somehow different from non Jewish Palestinians also being ‘granted’ land) only to then present the Jewish folks alone as if ‘they’ wanted more of the land than they were granted (and presumably different from the non Jewish Palestinians who also wanted more of the land than they were granted). I’m very curious because this narrative IS the settler narrative. It is used to present the Jews alone as expanding ‘their’ boundaries as if by theft from this separate group apparently known (or at least self known) as ‘Palestinians’, meaning non Jewish but definitely indigenous people to the area who, oh by the way, were not Jewish. All of this is what the settler colonial narrative is, painting the Jews of Palestine as colonial usurpers, which is then used to justify non Jewish Palestinians wanting to ‘take back’ that which by some fiat of indigeneity had been previously owned by non Jewish Palestinians but then stolen from them by the colonial usurpers. The whole narrative is a carefully crafted Just So colonizing story in order to fit the colonial framework used to vilify ‘colonizers’ in today’s group identity narrative of victims and victimizers that has very little if any connection to the overarching history of the area as it actually unfolded. This is why I was wondering how you defined ‘settler’ because at its core this definition can be quite revealing when it comes to recognizing a Just So story applied to a very specific demonized group.
Anyway, Nan, that was intention and I apologise for using so many words.
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Perhaps the Palestinians lack of interest stems from the fact that they weren’t consulted when the French and British established their regional “mandates” and opened the area up for Jewish settlement.
How enthusiastic would you be to negotiate under similar circumstances?
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Empires rise and fall.
I imagine the Jews weren’t too enamoured when the Babylonians moved in or the Assyrians or the Romans and kicked them out flattened Jerusalem and renamed the place and the region.
The British had the mandate to keep the peace.
By all accounts they didn’t do too well and weren’t liked much by the locals. Once the British realised what a shit storm they had on their hands and had had enough the UN were left holding the baby.
Partition was the decision.
Jews said Yes, Arabs said No and that was when the fun started …again.
“Well, boys and girls, that’s the deal. A two state solution. If you can’t agree to sort it out then you must accept the consequences.
Or…
In the immortal words of Francis of the People’s Front of Judea: “Tough titty for you, fish face”.”
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Remember that about 95% of the partition went to Arabs, the bulk being what we call ‘Jordan’.
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Forward!” he cried from the rear, and the front rank died
And the general sat, and the lines on the map, moved from side to side
~Pink Floyd. “Us and Them”
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This “poll” comes from an Israeli polling group. Enough said.
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The narrator stated it came from a Palestinian survey conducted from a Palestinian varsity?
What did I miss?
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The narrator says it at about the 42-43 second mark.
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wars between “other” nations, in which the rest of the world has no input, seems to bring out the ‘my side is the right side” in just about everyone. And the war, no matter how far away, turns into opinions/arguments of the endless and heated variety, back and forth, with some people hauling in their particular deity and others arguing out of both sides of their mouths about six different things, so that by the end of the theoretical day no one is quite sure who is saying what about which–and that, Virginia, is why I stay back here in the corner, sipping coffee and watching this insane game of pingpong that has no paddles and a table with no net.
Enjoy.
I love you all, but I can’t play a game I don’t even have a rule book for. =)
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The circus will eventually leave town…
As a non-religious person living in a largely secular Western society it is difficult to wrap one’s head around the type of motivation that would drive someone to kill in the name of a god and when it happens we are are often wont to mumble, Say what?
Trying to consider the mindset that would send a suicide bomber into a crowded mall or similar place in the name of a god is just impossible for me and I suspect impossible for most rational people.
When the dust has settled and this war is somehow resolved, as it will be one way or another, such religious maniacs will still be among us. And knowing this fact is quite unsettling.
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There’s the on-the-ground issues – which is one aspect people have differing opinions – and then there’s the problem much, much closer to home about the issues on the ground. The idea of sitting on the sidelines (because such conflicts are often seen as business-as-usual) bumps up against why there is no such ‘safe’ position and that it IS individually important.
Let me explain.
What I mean is that this conflict has revealed a significant issue – and a VERY revealing one – at home in the West. And it matters in order to understand what’s coming into being at home (anywhere in the West) and why it will aid the worst elements of extremism politically (namely, electing a self-declared dictator into the highest office regarding the US specifically but having tremendous global implications). We see the rise in populist leaders and more right wing governments, and this is all connected.
What we’re seeing unfold – and revealed in comment sections like this one – is a significant and I think fatal divide in the left. The left has undergone a split between narrative driven identity-believers who frame the world using Critical Theory (whether they know it or not) – that is to say, belief in identity groups as real ‘things’ with a desire to use laws and policies to advance equity corrections between different groups – and classical liberals – that is to say, people who align themselves not with authoritarian or populist leaders but with allegiance to laws and policies and nations that are liberal, that are geared towards laws and policies and practices that should respect and protect and advance equalitytreatment for all individuals (regardless of identified discriminatory inherited identities like race, colour, creed, sex, and so on).
The identity believers – sometimes called ‘woke’ for lack of a better name – in the following quote are labeled as Social Justice Liberals and they are the antithesis of Classical Liberals. So, in regards to the Israeli-Hamas conflict (notice how often and easily people confuse Hamas with ‘Palestinian’? This is not an accident when we try to impose reality into the group-identity narrative), this home based divide affects how ‘we’ understand the conflict and how ‘we’ respond to it, how ‘we’ demand this and that from our public institutions, media, and governments. In other words, our starting position as ‘the left’ very much matters and it’s in tatters because of this divide. None of us can sit it out! And we can see the effects at home today politically and even in comment sections! What fewer and fewer of us recognize is how so many are upholding in the name of ‘justice’ actual prohibited discriminations like race and religious belief, while thinking ourselves virtuous and good while we actively promote inherited characteristics having a determining effect – say in hiring – above equality rights!
“SJL (Social Justice Liberal) has an elaborate matrix of racial and identity categories, which Jewishness has always fit awkwardly into. Jewishness is both an ethnicity and a religion. Jews in the United States are quite successful despite the extremely high historic incidence of anti-Semitism, including of course the Holocaust. Meanwhile, there’s the distinction between the Jewish people and the Israeli state. And race and ethnicity within Israel are complicated; many Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, meaning they have ancestry from the Middle East rather than Europe. So Jewishness is an edge case that makes the entire identity politics architecture look kind of dubious, if we’re being honest.
So what was the reaction from SJLs after an anti-Semitic terrorist attack that killed (more than) a thousand Jews? Well, there certainly wasn’t much sympathy. Instead, we got Harvard students defending Hamas. We got people tearing down portraits of hostages, hanging Palestinian flags on menorahs and polls showing an alarming rise in Holocaust denial among young people.
Some SJLs will regard liberals as just as bad as conservatives — enough so that they might even be willing to deny a vote to Biden. All of this is quite bad for the progressive coalition between liberals and the left that’s won the popular vote for president four times in a row.”
So why is this personal and why does it matter?
“But both liberals and SJLs might find temptations: for instance, liberals will be tempted by MAGA pledges to dismantle DEI on campus, even if conservatives are also quite terrible about protecting academic freedom. Meanwhile, one of Hayek’s points was that socialists and conservatives shared a tolerance, if not even a reverence, for authoritarianism. SJL and MAGA could align there as well. SJL has already moved away from the liberal tradition of entrusting people to make their own decisions — think of the since-scuttled Disinformation Governance Board, or the draconian COVID restrictions on college campuses. If Trump wins next year, this tendency will get worse, and SJLs may more openly question whether democracy works at all.” (Source)
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This is a good example of what the SJL v liberal divide has done to the universities generally and about the response to the Israeli-Hamas conflict on campuses specifically and why ‘elite’ university presidents were confounded and confused why anyone might question them to find out why some groups are coddled while others are targeted for harassment and from within the SJL ranks that’s all perfectly fine. This commentary by Fareed Zakaria on CNN explains it well. This is why it matters.
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Two good news articles from a non-Western and non-Israel bias:
Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza Are By Design, Not Default
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/9/israels-war-crimes-in-gaza-are-by-design-not-default
Does the US Run the Risk of Complicity in War Crimes in Gaza?
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2023/12/9/does-the-us-run-the-risk-of-complicity-in-war-crimes-in-gaza
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Rather a Muslim , Palestinian bias then,yes?
From the first link
“For Israel, violence is not incidental, accidental or coincidental. It is part and parcel of its colonial DNA.”
“Colonial DNA”
Really? Smh
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I laughed out loud at reading the “non-Western and non-Israel bias” assertion and then seeing both were Al Jazeera! Too funny.
(It operates under the ownership of the Al Jazeera Media Network, which, in turn, is funded by the government of Qatar, home to the rich leadership of Hamas!)
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I had not known this until this morning when I Googled al Jazeera.
Back in ‘the day’, we had a paper down here called the Citizen which was funded ( part or whole, can’t remember which, by the Nationalist Government).
I hadn’t known this for years, but after I found out it clarified quite a number of things.
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It’s actually not bad – the English version, anyway – and when compared and contrasted to much of western media, so its bias doesn’t seem over the top (until you isolate certain terms like you did and realize the presumptions that have to be present and accepted for the terms to be so easily inserted or the biases and prejudices in the readers to go along with them without recognizing the scope of the accepted bias).
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There is a growing sentiment that because this conflict has history, our opinions don’t much matter one way or the other. Furthermore, there is a claim that it’s too binary, too much of I’m-right-you’re-wrong difference of opinion that is not productive and so it’s just wearying.
I think we’re not seeing the forest for the trees here and so are remaining ignorant about what’s really going on and, more importantly, why it maters so damned much to each and every one of us. so here’s the question:
““Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?”
Two out of three Americans between the ages of 18-24 answered Yes. For those over the age of 65, it was fewer than one in ten and each cohort in between answered No. This is why the conflict is so revealing: support for or against this framing indicates either believing in progressive identity-based ideology of victim/victimizer OR rejecting belief in the framing ideology. There is a stark difference, a division, between those who do and those who do not which then plays out in how one approaches the current conflict.
I’ve said it many times: HOW we think determines WHAT we think and so those who believe in the ideological framework end up supporting, excusing, or waving away barbarism as if a legitimate response. Let me say it again: believing in the progressive ideology excuses and even justifies utter barbarism to the extent of presenting it as a both-sides issue. It excuses rape. This is a war crime. It excuses mass murder. This is a war crime. It excuses the taking and public displaying of hostages. It excuses the execution of hostages. And on, and on and on. All of this is excused – usually accompanied by a mealy mouthed half hearted condemnation followed by a ‘but’ – not for inexcusable actions they are but because of excusing and/or justifying to some extent the group identity of being a ‘victim’ by those carrying them out.
The same ideological fracturing of the western population caused by belief in the group-based ideology is at the root of all kinds of issues at home and abroad. Not the actions of rioter and looters burning Milwaukee but the association with being a ‘victimized’ group and therefore excused in spite of many of their victims being from the same ‘victimized’ group! The ideology displaces personal responsibility for personal actions and personal moral character with the groups they supposedly represent. This is hugely dysfunctional and incredibly divisive.
But wait. There’s more.
When ideologues are able to find enough support to implement group-based rights, privileges, and discriminations, individuals who belong to the ‘Other’ category lose equality with those in the ‘Us’ category. Under the framework of equity, all of this is justified. This is what we saw the three university Presidents defend when it came to cancellations and deplatforming and the shuttering of free speech in the name of promoting safety for ‘victimized’ groups, the supporters were all for this laser focus on microaggressions and triggering as being equivalent to violence and therefore should be supported. But when the same tools were used against the supporters in the name of Jewish students, all of a sudden the reversal and authoritarian policies used to combat the ‘victimizer’ groups when turned back on those all too willing to implement them on behalf of the ‘victimized’ group was no longer quite so welcomed.
The forest here is all about equality rights and freedoms of the individual being undermined and attacked not just by individuals who support group-based identity group binary framing but by the institutions that teach the next generation being captured by this ideological insanity that cannot differentiate real violence, real genocide, real terrorism from its ideological group-based victim/victimizer projection. This is how real people who actually share a common set of liberal values are being separated and divided by a totalitarian ideology that simply doesn’t have any concern whatsoever with the real world conditions of real people but uses progressive language to fool people into supporting the unsupportable, justifying the unjustifiable, excusing the inexcusable. That’s the real battle being waged. And we’re losing. That’s why it matters. If we cannot see excusing calls for genocide as crossing a line, we have no longer have a line to cross. That’s how we know – two out of every three 18-24 years old – is a wakeup call all of us need to answer and decide which side we are on.
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In this video, University of Jerusalem professor Peled-Elhanan, discusses how the Israeli education system:
– stereotypes and disenfranchises Palestinian residents,
– promotes Zionism and military recruitment,
-revises history to present a pro-Jewish perspective,
-censures and destroys books that present a more balanced viewpoint.
She concludes that Israel practices overt racism and is is headed towards fascism.
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Having thought I keep coming up with a rather trite “Boys will be boys”. But don’t fret, all is working out exactly as the good compassionate ever-loving All-mighty planned it and wants it to. (Actually, it has no option, does it?)
For anyone just come in, let me re-re-reiterate that God’s omniscience blows YOUR “free will” right out of the water.
To kingdom come, in fact.
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