Here is what you are doing. WITHOUT even discussing this conflict, I see the same "blanket" black and white thinking on the issue of immigration in the states.

I get accused of being a socialist left wing loony when I simply understand, without condoning, the REASON why people come here illegally. Understanding is not the same as condoning.

I try to explain BOTH SIDES.

On the one hand, you are in a life boat, if to many people climb aboard the boat tips over. So it is understandable that you don't want an overflow of unmanaged people tipping over the boat.

But, at the same time, if you cant feed your family you are going to go where the resources are.

UNDERSTANDING both sides doesn't mean you are choosing sides.

Life IS NOT black and white, and you are allowing your NORMAL empathy for human suffering as a bad reason to put a blanket solution to a complex problem.

I doubt you could face a 5 year old Jew and tell them daddy/mommy deserved to die because Muslims have the right to defend themselves. BUT IT CUTS BOTH WAYS. I also think it would be heartless and gutless for a Jew to tell a 5 year old Muslim that mommy/daddy deserved to die because Israel has the right to protect itself.

Fuck your black and white solutions. They are no more a solution than Bush's "you're either for us, or against us".

ADULT(insert both labels here) "Sorry about your friend/parent/child but they had to die because I was merely protecting myself".

When either side says crap like this AFTER CENTURIES OF FINGER POINTING I hear BOTH sounding like Charley Brown's teacher.

"Wha wha wha wha wha Isreal"

"Wha wha wha wha wha Palestine"

And to what end? The cycle of abuse never stops. I am not against you, believe me. But I will not be blackmailed by either side into choosing sides. It didn't work when Bush tried it, and it wont work if you try it.

If you don't want me taking what you said the wrong way, then don't imply that sides should be taken. I think the world is far too full of people drawing lines in the sand. This is the fault of humanity, not them, not us. It is our failure to see ourselves as part of the same species. Once you set someone else up as the "outsider" it is easier to kill them.

Elements on both sides, by either definition, are committing stupid and wrongful acts, which are ultimately counter-productive for any peaceful resolution of the situation.

The situation is nowhere near as black-and-white as some would like to paint it, from either perspective.

Another words, B37 is a left-winger pretending to be a centrist.

LOL, I know you are not "poking me" in any real provocation. Having said that, "you got me pegged".

I am hardly "centrist". My advice to Palestine is to scrap violence. I do see them as the immature of the two. But I also see Israel giving the brats what they want by using overkill. Neither side is going to stop until they see the other as human. The labels and borders are the focus which is what the problem is. If they BOTH would fuck the labels and see the death around them and stop pointing fingers, they would get somewhere.

I BET in theory all this would stop (STRICTLY AS AN EXAMPLE) If you took a Palestinian kid and a Jewish kid, say 4 years old and shot them both in public side by side, many, not all, but many on both sides would see the absurdity of what they are doing.

No sane person will kill a child by themselves. Even prisoners revile the harm to kids. But when it comes to the context of war and politics people cant see beyond their own neighbor which allows "collateral damage". But in the context of ones own neighborhood we don't kill our own.

We are no different in our evolution than a lion who won't kill it's own cubs but looks for rivals to kill. We are simply unaware of our own evolutionary instincts at play here.

AGAIN we don't kill our own because it is close to us and we are familiar with it. But with enough distance and differences and disconnect it becomes increasingly easy to kill. That is our evolution at play here and it is our unawareness of ourselves as a species that is allowing both sides to ignore that they are both the same species.

I can see the same behavior in my cat and dog. My dog if it wasn't raised with my cat would most certainly be rough with it or even kill it, even if it didn't intend to. Certainly not all dogs will behave this way, but mine would, if it weren't for my intervention and it's desire to compete for my love. It behaves itself because she knows that I don't put up with it. But if it were on it's own with no oversight it would do what what animals do, it would go after anything it sees as a threat.

As long as both sides see the other as a threat instead of human and they put labels and boarders above humanity this wont stop. I wish humanity could get beyond labels and leave it at words. We really could do some good as a species if we got our priorities in order.

It is an inane observation and given that both sides are bad. Of course both sides are bad. If you are sitting on the pot waiting for one side to become "good" to release your righteous indignation, I assure you that your asshole will remain in the clenched position.

But both sides being bad has nothing to do with who will accept what terms of a peaceful resolution and who will not and why. If Brian37 and Brian37's Mexican neighbor have a dispute and everyone in the neighborhood formulates a resolution, and Mexican neighbor37 accepts but Brian37 does not, then I blame Brian37 even though both Brian37 and Mexicanneighbor37 are bad.

To use the "both sides are bad" reasoning would make one complicit in Brian37's bad behavior. Perhaps Mexicanneighbor37 should accept Brian37's abuse for an indeterminate period of time without retaliation, and when such time has expired and Mexicanneighbor37 has shown that he can kowtow to Brian37, only then will Brian37 consider easing up on his abuse of Mexicanneighbor37.



 
 

I think however because of the global reach of media and our younger generations it is becoming harder for either side to claim absolute morality. I am now currently hearing the media show Muslim protests around the world. BUT at the same time I am also hearing western non Muslims not give a blanket pass to Israel. I would hope that this sends a Message to some Muslims that they don't have to assume that the west is blind to this.

MUSLIMS READING THIS, if you want our help in the west do yourself a favor and stop demanding violence. We know that there are two sides to this issue. But we have something you seem to fail to take note of, the west has learned to live with words and compete politically non-violently. Until you get with the 21rst century the west won't be willing to side with people living in the past.

It is one thing to say "don't starve us". If Jews are "dissing you" then treat them better than you think you are being treated. The world is far to small now for any religion or nation or political party to demand the submission of others. If you don't like violence being used against you then stop using it yourself. Be the bigger man and take the step you say the other isn't taking.

I don't see Muslims being the "bigger man". I see them living in a theocratic past clinging to the selfish idea that Allah is the dictator of the world. If Allah is compassionate then your god should give up on this notion of forcing others to submit to your god.

As I've suggested twice in different threads:

Break up the shitty Anglo-American alliance with Israel and everything else will come into place.

*bows*

THANK YOU,

The stench is coming from both sides. Neither wants to take the first step and demand that the other give the other all the poker chips and just submit. Neither side seems to want to grow the fuck up and it is frustrating because deep down we are dealing with humans in all this.

So to both sides I would say, other than more of the same, other than more violence, other than "my way or the highway" what does either side have to offer? As far as I can see, nothing, nothing but the mundane reality that neither side wants to do anything but fight and piss on each other.

Peace shouldn't be that hard if both sides really want it. I think both sides want peace by force, not by advise and consent. Until they see each other as humans and not Muslims vs Jews, I don't think this will stop anytime soon.

... legality has no meaning in war, especially between enemies

so any answer given is... Not Applicable

I thought i was supposed to be the crazy warmonger!?

I can agree with that... as would Palestinians... and even Isrealites! But all for different reasons

So, the military blockade of Gaza by Israel is illegal. 

By the way, I remember Georgia sponsored by the US was trying to impose a military blockade of Abahazia ... but Abkhazia in turn had a mighty northern supporter ... pity, no more Georgian ships around...

Palestine is just unlucky to have no mighty partner in the region... maybe Turkey at last?  A little nucular head in Palestine's possession may quickly bring peace and friendship to the region.  

    ....agreed. 

No, the deed is done. Jews are not leaving. Not that they should have gone there in the first place.

BUT of the two Israel is not a theocracy nor does it want to establish a Jewish theocracy and impose it on the middle east. However, if Palestine were given equal or more weapons than Israel most certainly under the zeitgeist of Palestine, to them a scorched earth policy where all others submit to the will of Allah most certainly would lead to a global conflict. Palestine shoots off nukes, or Israel gets paranoid and shoots them off first, Iran shots it's nukes off and WHAM the world is in it.

BUT where I do agree is that our support of their claimed secularism should put the conditions that our support will only continue if they take their gang symbol off of their flag and incorporate the Arabs and Muslims within their boarders into a pluralistic government. I think including Arabs and Muslims in their government would take the wind out  of the Allah nuts case. I think the two state solution is opposite of what either side should want and plays into the hands of people on both sides who don't want peace, unless it is through submission.

BUT, on the other hand, there are just as many right wing Jews in Israel that would not put up with  pluralism because that would mean to some, bowing to zealots.

It miffs me that we cant come up with a global impartial watchdog group to impose peace and non-violence on both sides. I think if you gave both sides enough years without death the younger generations would be separated from the older divisions and lose their paranoia of each other.

Utopian, and most unlikely. But yea, what we have now is two spouses who beat the shit out of each other and then when the cops show up(media) they point fingers. They deserve each other. That region has to represent the worst in humanity.

They are deluded, but that doesn't mean they don't have the same instincts you do. You just talked about the fear of having your children killed. THAT SAME fear exists in the Palestinian population. Would you give a shit what they claimed if your child was killed? SO what makes you think they would give a shit if you said, "It's not my fault, I wouldn't have done it if they hadn't fired first".

"We wouldn't be shooting rockets at you if you'd stop taking our land and stop carpet bombing our population"

WHAT do I hear?

WA WA WA WA WA "YOU/THEY STARTED IT"

"YOU PUT YOUR GUN DOWN FIRST"

"NO, YOU PUT YOUR GUN DOWN FIRST"

How long do THEY/ YOU want this stalemate to continue? How many Jews and Muslims have to die before both of you realize how fruitless this is?

Your post embraces a defeatist attitude, but the latter part of it is correct: stop aiding Israel. Period.

Sorry B37, a single state solution is not the answer!

Israelis will not want it, Palestinians will not want it.

There can be several answers to that. Without any research an obvious reason is establishing a precedent for action in international waters. They thought to do it with paint-ball guns and expand slowly to 40mm canons and ultimately nuclear submarines, but it went awry - no biggy, they can repeat the exercise next time with a more fool-proof approach, like maybe ramming a boat instead of boarding it from air.

That is exactly right and it is almost openly stated and definitely gestured. But there is still an amount of posturing going on and many alliances are still strong, so I don't see US coming out and declaring ownership of the world just yet.

Regarding our discussion, if your argument is that this is ok because might-is-right , then there is no reason for us to talk any further. You have abandoned all legal stands and even posturing, so there is nothing left to talk to you about in this respect.

Since I know how cynical you are from your comments above, I will not even attempt to call for sober analysis of what it means for a population to be occupied by a violent powerful military for over 60 years.

Palestinian "victimhood" is amply documented by the humanitarian organizations on the ground. You are very welcome to look through the documentation and point out to me which part of the Amnesty International reports is incorrect. The argument that the reports of humanitarian organizations are irelevant, because the situation on the ground is "Palestinian fault" is complete bullshit, because you are not responsible for Palestinian actions, but are responsible for US actions - your question should be what do we do to make the situation better/worse - and on that account the reports are clear.

In your mind I can see how this can be the case. The 6400 killings you cited are indeed all assassinations of enemy - the civilian population. It seems that in your mind civilian targets are justified by the might-is-right argument - no law, moral judgement or anything of the sort can be applied, and therefore any and all killings cannot by definition be arbitrary.

Again, you point out that human race is not to live by creed, but by deed - this is your position I pointed out earlier and you reiterate the main aspects of it here. It is a valid reason for us to stop discussing the issue altogether. In your mind there is no law that applies, killing is justified by the right of dominion and no one should be surprised by that. I understand this position perfectly.

This is an interesting topic. Let me try to shift it a bit, so that you don't think I am suggesting conspiracy. Let's NOT talk about Finkelstein right off the bat, but instead look at the intellectual community as a social construct and take a few samples going back up to 2400 years or so. I suggest the following:

1) brief discussion of what it means to be a part of the intellectual community in the NOW, as opposed to RETROSPECT, so that we can distance ourselves from the white noise of today and get some perspective

2) relate our conclusion from 1) to the situation we are discussing here.

Off we go.

There is a large discrepancy between what we consider to be the intellectual society today and the intellectual society of the past. When we think of the intellectual society of the past, we rarely think in terms of a social anthropologist, but instead take to heart and mind the definition taught to us by the elementary school: the intellectual community of the past is a sum of individuals that thought great thoughts, invented great things and changed the world as we know it - we think of Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno, Edison, Tesla, Einstein, Newton, Bohr, Darwin, Socrates/Plato, Nietzsche, Skinner, Piaget and yes - Buddha and Jesus too, amongst many others. But this is not an intellectual community as a social anthropologist sees it - most of these guys never met. Indeed, most of these people initiated what we call a paradigm shift - their research and thoughts ran contrary to the established and commonly accepted line supported by the intellectual community of their time - some of them ultimately paying for it with their lives.

Let's take an instant to appreciate what we just discovered: the intellectual community as a whole does NOT consist of the great minds of our time, but is instead a collection of people who got an education, published and are recognized by their peers - regardless of whether they are right or not.

Well, this sounds kind of vague, you might say. We can see that there actually might be some tendency here, but how can we get a better sense of what is going on? When testing for properties of matter, natural scientists expose the matter to extreme conditions. We can't do this in a controlled environment when it comes to huge social constructs like intellectual community, but we can employ historical experiments with focus on extreme periods and events. So let's look at some extremes:
The people that burned Bruno on the stake, for example, were the most prominent intellectuals in the intellectual community of the day, complete with explanations and justifications and publications on why Bruno was a menace to society. People that made Socrates swallow poison likewise. The intellectual community of Germany during the most extreme period of the past century advocated euthanasia of racially impure - eugenics, social Darwinism and euthanasia of parts of population and at the same time the largest mass murder operation in history - all of it sanctioned and facilitated by the most prominent intellectuals of the day, right in line with the party politics of the leadership of the Nazi Germany.

So, apparently, the intellectual community is a collection of educated publishers accredited by their peers, which has, at least in part, a tendency to align itself with power. I think this is interesting.

Now you can say that this doesn't say anything about Finkelstein, and you are right. But it does say something about Dershowitz and the rest of the apologists for governmental violence - you will have to do your own digging to get to the truth, since you don't know who history will pick or who will be writing it for that matter. As for Finkelstein, you will have to take on his research, footnote by footnote, reference by reference - exactly the way he did take Dershowitz' work in his book Beyond Chutzpah. And it provoked prompt response from Dershowitz. He first attempted to stop the publishing of the book by threats of legal action; censure of the type I am sure you can find parallels to throughout history. When that failed, he wrote to the corporate leadership of the university, demanding consequences for Finkelstein, threatening to go directly to the investors if they ignored him. Rest is history - in more than one way I hope I demonstrated.

Please note that none of this has anything to do with any conspiracy theory, but rather simple societal mechanics. Churchly prominents and intellectuals that made the case for burning Bruno weren't enganing in any claok and dagger conspiracy - they were simply protecting their positions, maintaining status quo and appeasing power.

There is a difference - US is directly responsible for the 6400 dead Palestinian civilians by the virtue of military support for Israel, while we are not responsible for the decisions of the Palestinian leadership. We can influence them, but for their actions we are not responsible.

The problem with your reasoning is that you are talking about Palestinian responsibility - why? You can do nothing about it. You can do something about the support for Israel, because you are a US citizen. You are not responsible for the foreseeable consequences of someone else's actions, but are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of YOUR actions. US supports Israel, which is why we have to look at what Israel does with our support and the foreseable consequences of our support for those actions, in order to decide our position. One of the foreseable consequences of occupation of ANY terrirory for a longer period of time is killing of civilians and suffering of the population. Modus operandi of Israeli government and military is clear: continued occupation of Palestinian territory and continued bloodshed. On top of that, Israel uses US material assistance to bomb the industrial centres of it's neighbors simply for financial gain and political leverage. These are the facts for which the US has direct responsibility by virtue of continued military support for Israel.

And what about the reverse? What if we stopped supplying Israel with weapons? Israel is the most powerful military force in the region - they can take care of themselves. Any bad foreseeable consequences? Well, yes - US can no longer count on Israel promptly answering "how high?" every time they are called to jump - that is a minus for the US.

Now that we have established responsibility for the foreseeable consequences, you can go ahead and explain why you think it is alright for US to continue to provide weapons for Israel. Now you can say - I think it's acceptable to finance murder of Palestinian civilians and continue occupation, because it is in our material interest. Or you can say - I am aware we are responsible, but I am not bothered with breaking a few eggs.

Of course, once this position is on the table there is nothing more to talk about. You have already distanced yourself from law in general and taken up the position of might-is-right, so I suppose you are very likely to distance yourself from fundamental moral principles as well, in which case any discussion regarding responsibility would at the very best be dishonest and quite likely completely irelevant. All that is left for me to do is beat you in the political arena, simply because I refuse to live in a world run by murderers and thieves with no respect for law or moral principles - that is my responsibility.

      Deja Vu ?

A simple test of who has the moral high ground should be conducted by assessing the way each treat the wounded.

Anyone who thinks this flotilla was anything other than a provocation needs to donate the brain they're not using.

The Islamic world has historically been a safe-haven for Jews as they fled the brutal savagery of European Christians. The Muslims were too stupid to know that if you take a rouge from the gallows he'll put you up there.

You can't save people from the idiocy of their own mistakes.

-Social Darwinist 4 Life Robert "Kapkao" Hester

Well, you know what they say about trading a one-eyed horse for a blind one... don't.

oh, there are plenty of increasingly powerful israeli lobbies who would like to do just that.  the ultra-orthodox are a minority but very powerful.  because of them, jerusalem is basically locked down during the sabbath, when the majority of israelis couldn't give two shits if someone observes the sabbath or not.  also, from their ranks come the third temple movements--you know, the people who want to seize the dome of the rock and rebuild the jewish temple, reestablish the davidic monarchy (which may never have actually existed in the first place), etc., etc.  back in college, we religion majors used to laugh at these nuts.  i'm not laughing anymore.

the jewish state was originally conceived as a secular, social (or perhaps even socialist) state by theodor herzl, who was imo a fine a human being.  this is one of the reasons stalin agreed to underwrite israel.  the crazies always fuck everything up eventually.

Would you tell Nazi guards at Auschwitz 1943 too "clense" people bringing food to the prisoners in the concntration camp as well? What would your justification for that be? They should have known Nazis had guns? Shit, I am glad there aren't many people like you around.

The activists knew what they were up against - remember that IDF sank several ships before. The activists just have a few kg heavier balls than you and more than a trace of moral principle. Even getting killed gets their message accross and dieing for a good cause obviously isn't a thing of the past - I applaud their resolve.