So far 1500 Palestinians killed - approx 80-90% of them civilians, and 66 Israelis have been killed - 3 of them civilians.
One side has been engaged in a 47 year old illegal occupation and encroaching land-grab, possesses one of the Worlds most advanced military machines, and is supported by the Worlds only Superpower, which supplies it with billions of dollars of military aid and a rubber stamp at the U.N with which to perpetuate its crimes, including multiple war crimes, such as the deliberate targeting of civilians and medical personnel, the bombing of schools, hospitals, children's playgrounds, and U.N safe houses.
The other side has no army, no navy, and no air-force. It consists mostly of a defenseless civilian population.
But you say hat both sides are equally to blame?
And you say "Let's fight together for peace!!"
It's not possible to fight for peace without some basic understanding of the fundamental realities of the conflict.
In the midst of a lot of noise at this thread, this looks like one useful, informative wrap-up of the situation, undeniably based on gathered facts, IMO.
Thank you for this. I really hope there will be found a way to stop this unjust reality, taking place right in front of the world.
What's your part, who you are?
2012: Arras, Berlin 1-2
2013: Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires
2014: Milano, Trieste, Vienna, Berlin
2016: NY MSG 1
In German we say the sound makes the music. What I notice in here is that there is no real discussion because everytime somebody says something that is not supported by a portion of the posters, they get shut down by belittling comments. I see the motivation, I see the anger, I am angry too about this whole thing. But in my opinion it won't help the cause at all if people communicate like this. Somebody said earlier all the pro-Israel people went away from the thread. That is probably true, but can you blame them? This in here is a very one-sided discussion. This is not how to debate properly. If you want to have a mature discussion, you don't shove your own opinion which you think is superior to everybody else's down other people's throats. You are all smart adults.
Peace.
Smarts like This is why you guys win in soccer.good post
I'm really curious as to how someone here keeps getting away with saying that the comments of other is here are "bullshit". Personally, at this point I would actually prefer to read anyone's "bullshit" rather than see yet another endless cut and past internet article, or twitter or photograph specifically posted to target one's gut emotion. At least bullshit comes out of a living mouth or anus (depending on the meaning of the word) rather than from a few pushed keyboard buttons.
And I wonder: Is it possible to be angry, heated, upset yet at the same time civil? I think so. Let's give that a shot, eh?
Wow, didn't expect that Brian. So I shouldn't post pics anymore? I'm assuming that was directed at me about posting pics because I have been posting a shitload of pics in amt, and some In here. And honestly, I've only really gotten into it with RR and BS but RR and I are cool no matter what we may have said in the back and forth. At least I think we are. And if my pics are offensive or you're getting bored with them, maybe don't click on the thread? Not trying to sound like a dick. Just wasn't expecting that.
Still cool pal.I don't agree with every position you have or see eye to eyeing everything but we will still drink and rock out together.Shit you were buying,remember.
This is like a good hockey game.Beat the shit out of each other,bloody our faces,throw some blows,each of us gets a shot in here or there,but when all is done a hand shake,ass smack maybe a little hug and a lot of respect.
This is like a good hockey game.Beat the shit out of each other,bloody our faces,throw some blows,each of us gets a shot in here or there,but when all is done a hand shake,ass smack maybe a little hug and a lot of respect.
I don't agree with you on everything rr.....but I like the cut of your jib.
So far 1500 Palestinians killed - approx 80-90% of them civilians, and 66 Israelis have been killed - 3 of them civilians.
One side has been engaged in a 47 year old illegal occupation and encroaching land-grab, possesses one of the Worlds most advanced military machines, and is supported by the Worlds only Superpower, which supplies it with billions of dollars of military aid and a rubber stamp at the U.N with which to perpetuate its crimes, including multiple war crimes, such as the deliberate targeting of civilians and medical personnel, the bombing of schools, hospitals, children's playgrounds, and U.N safe houses.
The other side has no army, no navy, and no air-force. It consists mostly of a defenseless civilian population.
But you say hat both sides are equally to blame?
And you say "Let's fight together for peace!!"
It's not possible to fight for peace without some basic understanding of the fundamental realities of the conflict.
Clear and to the point. Not much to argue about here.
Note to Byrnzie, You may want to get back to getting into with us "less educated folks" on here.I think you may have your hands full w/These forms version of Charlie's angels(Hedonist,PJSoul,Leezestarr). Some great back and forth.Very entertaining(Yes I realize the subject matter is not)
Looking for the differences...If I'm not with you, so I must be against you... Lack of communication, just replying, without reading my statements.. On all my points Byrnzie ... On every argument you give me, I have a valet answer, but that doesn't mean, I disagree at all with you over the subject... You amuse I don't know enough about the conflict... big assumptions... I know more than you know, just don't agree with you blindly, also a thing both sides have in common.... I won't give more arguments because many have given them before, and the opposite site just doesn't want to listen, to any argument that doesn't fit there case, both sides don't want peace.. they just want to be right...How one earth is it possible to end this war? ... I rest my case...
Post edited by Aafke on
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed".- Carl Jung.
"Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."- Paul Klee
'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.'
“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” - Harry G. Frankfurt
"Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be"- Harry G. Frankfurt
by Brian Eno in Guest Posts | July 28, 2014 Ed note: I received this email last Friday morning from my friend, Brian Eno. I shared it with my office and we all felt a great responsibility to publish Brian's heavy, worthy note. In response, Brian's friend, Peter Schwartz, replied with an eye-opening historical explanation of how we got here. What's clear is that no one has the moral high ground.
Dear All of You:
I sense I'm breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can't keep quiet any more.
Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He'd been shredded (the hospital's word) by an Israeli missile attack - apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are - hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.
I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.
Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won't sign up to it.
What is going on in America? I know from my own experience how slanted your news is, and how little you get to hear about the other side of this story. But - for Christ's sake! - it's not that hard to find out. Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing? WHY? I just don't get it. I really hate to think its just the power of AIPAC… for if that's the case, then your government really is fundamentally corrupt. No, I don't think that's the reason… but I have no idea what it could be.
The America I know and like is compassionate, broadminded, creative, eclectic, tolerant and generous. You, my close American friends, symbolise those things for me. But which America is backing this horrible one-sided colonialist war? I can't work it out: I know you're not the only people like you, so how come all those voices aren't heard or registered? How come it isn't your spirit that most of the world now thinks of when it hears the word 'America'? How bad does it look when the one country which more than any other grounds its identity in notions of Liberty and Democracy then goes and puts its money exactly where its mouth isn't and supports a ragingly racist theocracy?
I was in Israel last year with Mary. Her sister works for UNWRA in Jerusalem. Showing us round were a Palestinian - Shadi, who is her sister's husband and a professional guide - and Oren Jacobovitch, an Israeli Jew, an ex-major from the IDF who left the service under a cloud for refusing to beat up Palestinians. Between the two of them we got to see some harrowing things - Palestinian houses hemmed in by wire mesh and boards to prevent settlers throwing shit and piss and used sanitary towels at the inhabitants; Palestinian kids on their way to school being beaten by Israeli kids with baseball bats to parental applause and laughter; a whole village evicted and living in caves while three settler families moved onto their land; an Israeli settlement on top of a hill diverting its sewage directly down onto Palestinian farmland below; The Wall; the checkpoints… and all the endless daily humiliations. I kept thinking, "Do Americans really condone this? Do they really think this is OK? Or do they just not know about it?".
As for the Peace Process: Israel wants the Process but not the Peace. While 'the process' is going on the settlers continue grabbing land and building their settlements… and then when the Palestinians finally erupt with their pathetic fireworks they get hammered and shredded with state-of-the-art missiles and depleted uranium shells because Israel 'has a right to defend itself' ( whereas Palestine clearly doesn't). And the settler militias are always happy to lend a fist or rip up someone's olive grove while the army looks the other way. By the way, most of them are not ethnic Israelis - they're 'right of return' Jews from Russia and Ukraine and Moravia and South Africa and Brooklyn who came to Israel recently with the notion that they had an inviolable (God-given!) right to the land, and that 'Arab' equates with 'vermin' - straightforward old-school racism delivered with the same arrogant, shameless swagger that the good ole boys of Louisiana used to affect. That is the culture our taxes are defending. It's like sending money to the Klan.
But beyond this, what really troubles me is the bigger picture. Like it or not, in the eyes of most of the world, America represents 'The West'. So it is The West that is seen as supporting this war, despite all our high-handed talk about morality and democracy. I fear that all the civilisational achievements of The Enlightenment and Western Culture are being discredited - to the great glee of the mad Mullahs - by this flagrant hypocrisy. The war has no moral justification that I can see - but it doesn't even have any pragmatic value either. It doesn't make Kissingerian 'Realpolitik' sense; it just makes us look bad.
I'm sorry to burden you all with this. I know you're busy and in varying degrees allergic to politics, but this is beyond politics. It's us squandering the civilisational capital that we've built over generations. None of the questions in this letter are rhetorical: I really don't get it and I wish that I did.
I am writing to respond to your note about Gaza and how America is responding. It deserves a response. My feelings and the actual realities are complex on several levels; the realities of the Arab-Israeli history and conflicts, global politics and modern American history/demographics. All three levels interact to create the current situation. And to understand the US posture you have to consider the history. Let me say, that, as you know I am an immigrant and child of Holocaust survivors. I am culturally Jewish, but with no religious or spiritual inclinations, an atheist. And I believe that creating the Jewish state of Israel was a historic mistake that is likely to destroy the religion behind it. The actions nation states take to assure their survival are usually in contradiction to any moral values that a religion might espouse. And that contradiction is now very evident in Israel’s behavior. Israel will destroy Judaism.
First, the history has two important intersecting threads, Zionism and the end of the Ottoman Empire. Zionism began near the end of the nineteenth century as a response to a millennium of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. An end to the diaspora and a return to the biblical homeland were seen as the only hope of escaping the persistent repression of places like Hungary, the Ukraine, Russia, etc. The British government with its Balfour declaration (1917) and the League of Nations Palestine Mandate (1922) gave impetus to that hope. And of course WWII and the Holocaust sealed the deal. The murder of 6 million Jews was seen as sufficient reason to pursue a Jewish state and the UN granted that wish with the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States in 1947. The seven Arab states declared war and urged the Palestinians to flee. After defeating the Arab armies Israel made it very hard for them return. Hence we ended up with a large Palestinian refugee population.
Those Arab states themselves were the result of a combination of British/French artistry in drawing the maps of the post Ottoman world as well as the subsequent tribal military campaigns that left the Saudis in charge of the Arabian peninsula (vast oil wealth soon to be found) and the Hashemites driven up into Trans Jordan. Other than the war with Israel, the conflicts and rivalries among the various Arab and Persian factions have shaped Middle Eastern and North African politics ever since then.
Over the subsequent decades following the 1948 war there was a persistent Arab bombing campaign and two more large scale Arab attacks on Israel, 1967 and 1973. Until the mid seventies Israel was seen as having the moral high ground based on the holocaust and Arab behavior. But beginning with the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in the early 80s that moral position began to erode. Israel’s behavior in Lebanon was the first major example of aggressive action and attacks against vulnerable populations. Israel began to develop a more right wing and aggressive political faction of which Netanyahu is the worst current example. The settlements in Arab territory in the West Bank are the direct result of that evolution. (And of course the mass migration of the 1990s mainly from Russia) Suicide bombings and missile attacks were the Arab response. Walling themselves in was yet another ironic Israeli response. Today’s horrors are a continuing extension of those conflicts following a cease-fire of a few years.
Once Israel declared itself a Jewish state in 1948 the Palestinians had only three options; accept a division of the land into two states, accept being second-class citizens in the Israeli state or perpetual conflict because they could not win. The Arab states chose the third option because it is in their interest to maintain unity against their common enemy, Israel. They could even share a common enemy with the hated Persian Shiites in Iran. So rather than helping the Palestinians develop by investing in education, health care, jobs, infrastructure etc. the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia help keep them poor but well armed. Palestinian refugees would remain a festering sore in the Middle East to remind the world of Israel’s perfidy. And of course any aid that did come ended up in corrupt pockets not in helping development. The obvious counter example was Jordan, which developed itself, with little help from their Arab brethren and eventually made grudging peace with Israel. The difference in Jordan was good Arab leadership that recognized that Israel was not going way and war forever was not a good development policy.
At the geopolitical level several threads played out. The UN became a place where the Israel and Arab conflicts became a symbolic pawn in the Cold War, especially in the Security Council with the US on the Israeli side and the USSR on the Arab side (with exceptions i.e. the Saudis). That hardened the US position and associated in American minds Israel with our side and the Arabs with the other guys.
Even though I have no support for the Israeli position I find the opposition to Israel questionable in its failure to be similarly outraged by a vast number of other moral horrors in the recent past and currently active. Just to name a few; Cambodia, Tibet, Sudan, Somalia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, Liberia, Central African Republic, Uganda, North Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and especially right now Nigeria. The Arab Spring ,which has become a dark winter for most Arabs and the large scale slaughter now underway along the borders of Iraq and Syria are good examples of what they do to themselves. And our nations, the US, the Brits, the Dutch, the Russians and the French have all played their parts in these other moral outrages. The gruesome body count and social destruction left behind dwarfs anything that the Israelis have done. The only difference with the Israeli’s is their claim to a moral high ground, which they long ago left behind in the refugee camps of Lebanon. They are now just a nation, like any other, trying to survive in a hostile sea of hate.
We should be clear, that given the opportunity, the Arabs would drive the Jews into the sea and that was true from day one. There was no way back from war once a religious state was declared. So Israel, once committed to a nation state in that location and granted that right by other nations have had no choice but to fight. In my view therefore, neither side has any shred of moral standing left, nor have the nations that supported both sides.
So now let’s at look at why the US behaves as it does with a nearly uncritical support of Israel. You are right to criticize our media in so many ways, but that only makes things worse it does not really explain why. They are simply doing what they think their audiences want to hear. And they are mostly right.
Part of it has to do with post war American evolution and perceptions of Israel and the Arabs. When I was a boy in the fifties, through my teenage years anti-Semitism was still common in America. If you were Jewish you did not go to work for IBM or GE. You did not join the Navy. You did not go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale. I could not play tennis at my local country club. I regularly heard derisive, anti-Semitic comments from some of my classmates. But by the mid sixties along with the civil rights movement, toleration in general increased and anti-Semitism declined, almost vanishing. Support of Israel was part of that tolerance and was seen as a noble response to the Holocaust. The Arabs were seen as the oppressors and enemies of the US. That perception was given particular impetus by the oil embargo of 1973 and of course the Iranian revolution, even though it was Persians not Arabs, because Americans don’t see that distinction. (We should never forget that we have a Republican dominated Congress, half of whom do not own a Passport and see ignorance as a virtue.)The Israelis were seen as innovative and benign, people who made the desert bloom. To this was added the growing and ironic support from the US religious right who saw the route to salvation as the Israeli defeat of the Arabs leading to a second coming of Christ. (Of course, we Jews would have to convert to Christianity to survive the second coming.) 9-11 amplified the American antipathy to the Arab world. Seeing the delight throughout the Arab world at the fall of the twin towers did not endear the Arabs to the American people. We can add Saddam, Khaddafi and Osama Bin Laden to the pantheon of iconic American villains. The UN is no longer seen as legitimate and almost always acting against US interests.
So my generation and most of today’s American leadership grew up with the Israeli’s as heroic good guys and Arabs/Persians as greedy bad guys. The younger generation, my son Ben’s age (24) have a much more balanced view. Israel’s behavior in their youth, the last two decades, has destroyed whatever moral standing the Israeli’s had with them. In addition the pro Israeli lobby in America has been very effective in the political arena and their Arab counterparts have been counter productive. So our leaders who group up with noble Israel and evil Arabs and supported by Jewish political contributions are unequivocally pro Israeli while young people are more divided as is at least some of the Jewish community. Eventually demography will win out as a new more skeptical generation comes to power, a generation for whom Israel will not carry the same moral weight as it did for their parents.
I don’t think there is any honor to go around here. Israel has lost its way and commits horrors in the interest of their own survival. And the Arabs and Persians perpetuate a conflict ridden neighborhood with almost no exceptions, fighting against each other and with hate of Israel the only thing that they share.
It is also worth noting that the largest Muslim populations are not Arab and the largest, Indonesia is fairly peaceful. So it is not about religion. The Arabs have been engaged in tribal conflicts for centuries that have been from time to time quelled by Imperial powers like the Ottomans and strong men like Saddam and Ibn Saud. And in those wars they have committed horrors on their own people. Observe the genocidal destruction of Homs by Hafez Assad just to point to a recent example. The Zionists brought another tribe to the war. It is of course a tribe that is also divided, like the Arabs, in to factions, some of which are fanatical and war like and others more moderate. The comments about the racism of the Zionists are fair, but the Arab world does not lack for similar attitudes. One need only see how the vast number of South Asian, Philippine and African near slaves are treated even in the more benign countries like the UAE.
So given that history and current reality and even though I believe the creation of Israel was a historic disaster, I am a member of the tribe, (perhaps its more pacifist, atheist wing) I find objectionable the unique singling out of Israel for condemnation. So if we are prepared to boycott, condemn, shame, etc, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Iranians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Russians, the Nigerians, the Taliban, the Venezuelans, the Zimbabweans, the Sudanese, the south Sudanese, the Central African Republicans, and lets not forget the Americans and the British, all of whom are as guilty as Israel, then I will join the demonstration. (Two small things that might help would be if the rich Arab states provided some funding and development assistance for the Palestinians and if the Palestinian government didn’t steal all the aid.)
We find ourselves at a historic impasse. There is no way back. Israel will do whatever it takes to survive. They will not leave. And the Arab identity has become opposition to Israel. It will be centuries, if ever, before they accept the existence of Israel. So both sides will always rightly feel threatened. There will be no other state there but perpetual tribal war with an occasional truce. And in that perpetual state of tribal war there be ample opportunity for horrors on both sides. We can only hope to lower the level of violence, but true peace will remain illusive.
by Brian Eno in Guest Posts | July 28, 2014 Ed note: I received this email last Friday morning from my friend, Brian Eno. I shared it with my office and we all felt a great responsibility to publish Brian's heavy, worthy note. In response, Brian's friend, Peter Schwartz, replied with an eye-opening historical explanation of how we got here. What's clear is that no one has the moral high ground.
Dear All of You:
I sense I'm breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can't keep quiet any more.
Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He'd been shredded (the hospital's word) by an Israeli missile attack - apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are - hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.
I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.
Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won't sign up to it.
What is going on in America? I know from my own experience how slanted your news is, and how little you get to hear about the other side of this story. But - for Christ's sake! - it's not that hard to find out. Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing? WHY? I just don't get it. I really hate to think its just the power of AIPAC… for if that's the case, then your government really is fundamentally corrupt. No, I don't think that's the reason… but I have no idea what it could be.
The America I know and like is compassionate, broadminded, creative, eclectic, tolerant and generous. You, my close American friends, symbolise those things for me. But which America is backing this horrible one-sided colonialist war? I can't work it out: I know you're not the only people like you, so how come all those voices aren't heard or registered? How come it isn't your spirit that most of the world now thinks of when it hears the word 'America'? How bad does it look when the one country which more than any other grounds its identity in notions of Liberty and Democracy then goes and puts its money exactly where its mouth isn't and supports a ragingly racist theocracy?
I was in Israel last year with Mary. Her sister works for UNWRA in Jerusalem. Showing us round were a Palestinian - Shadi, who is her sister's husband and a professional guide - and Oren Jacobovitch, an Israeli Jew, an ex-major from the IDF who left the service under a cloud for refusing to beat up Palestinians. Between the two of them we got to see some harrowing things - Palestinian houses hemmed in by wire mesh and boards to prevent settlers throwing shit and piss and used sanitary towels at the inhabitants; Palestinian kids on their way to school being beaten by Israeli kids with baseball bats to parental applause and laughter; a whole village evicted and living in caves while three settler families moved onto their land; an Israeli settlement on top of a hill diverting its sewage directly down onto Palestinian farmland below; The Wall; the checkpoints… and all the endless daily humiliations. I kept thinking, "Do Americans really condone this? Do they really think this is OK? Or do they just not know about it?".
As for the Peace Process: Israel wants the Process but not the Peace. While 'the process' is going on the settlers continue grabbing land and building their settlements… and then when the Palestinians finally erupt with their pathetic fireworks they get hammered and shredded with state-of-the-art missiles and depleted uranium shells because Israel 'has a right to defend itself' ( whereas Palestine clearly doesn't). And the settler militias are always happy to lend a fist or rip up someone's olive grove while the army looks the other way. By the way, most of them are not ethnic Israelis - they're 'right of return' Jews from Russia and Ukraine and Moravia and South Africa and Brooklyn who came to Israel recently with the notion that they had an inviolable (God-given!) right to the land, and that 'Arab' equates with 'vermin' - straightforward old-school racism delivered with the same arrogant, shameless swagger that the good ole boys of Louisiana used to affect. That is the culture our taxes are defending. It's like sending money to the Klan.
But beyond this, what really troubles me is the bigger picture. Like it or not, in the eyes of most of the world, America represents 'The West'. So it is The West that is seen as supporting this war, despite all our high-handed talk about morality and democracy. I fear that all the civilisational achievements of The Enlightenment and Western Culture are being discredited - to the great glee of the mad Mullahs - by this flagrant hypocrisy. The war has no moral justification that I can see - but it doesn't even have any pragmatic value either. It doesn't make Kissingerian 'Realpolitik' sense; it just makes us look bad.
I'm sorry to burden you all with this. I know you're busy and in varying degrees allergic to politics, but this is beyond politics. It's us squandering the civilisational capital that we've built over generations. None of the questions in this letter are rhetorical: I really don't get it and I wish that I did.
XXB
Interesting response to this piece by Peter Schwartz. http://davidbyrne.com/gaza-and-the-loss-of-civilization It's almost incredible that he can manage to say so much and yet make no mention whatsoever of the illegal 47 year old occupation and encroaching land-grab - the root cause of the conflict.
In fact, his argument really is kind of pathetic. Here's a couple of examples:
"I find the opposition to Israel questionable in its failure to be similarly outraged by a vast number of other moral horrors in the recent past and currently active. Just to name a few; Cambodia, Tibet, Sudan, Somalia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, Liberia, Central African Republic, Uganda, North Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and especially right now Nigeria."
"Israel’s behavior in Lebanon was the first major example of aggressive action and attacks against vulnerable populations."
Really? So the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1947-1948 in which 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in the wake of a number of massacres of entire villages, such as at Dier Yassin and al-Dawazyma http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/05/13/the-deir-yassin-massacre/, was not an example of 'aggressive action and attacks against vulnerable populations'?
[The] army, under Moshe Dayan, took the unarmed and undefended village of al-Dawazyma, located in the Hebron hills, massacred 80 to 100 of its residents, and threw their bodies into pits. "The children were killed by breaking their heads with sticks … The remaining Arabs were then sealed in houses, as the village was systematically razed …" (Nur Masalha, The Historical Roots of the Palestinian Refugee Question).
by Brian Eno in Guest Posts | July 28, 2014 Ed note: I received this email last Friday morning from my friend, Brian Eno. I shared it with my office and we all felt a great responsibility to publish Brian's heavy, worthy note. In response, Brian's friend, Peter Schwartz, replied with an eye-opening historical explanation of how we got here. What's clear is that no one has the moral high ground.
Dear All of You:
I sense I'm breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can't keep quiet any more.
Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He'd been shredded (the hospital's word) by an Israeli missile attack - apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are - hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.
I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.
Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won't sign up to it.
What is going on in America? I know from my own experience how slanted your news is, and how little you get to hear about the other side of this story. But - for Christ's sake! - it's not that hard to find out. Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing? WHY? I just don't get it. I really hate to think its just the power of AIPAC… for if that's the case, then your government really is fundamentally corrupt. No, I don't think that's the reason… but I have no idea what it could be.
The America I know and like is compassionate, broadminded, creative, eclectic, tolerant and generous. You, my close American friends, symbolise those things for me. But which America is backing this horrible one-sided colonialist war? I can't work it out: I know you're not the only people like you, so how come all those voices aren't heard or registered? How come it isn't your spirit that most of the world now thinks of when it hears the word 'America'? How bad does it look when the one country which more than any other grounds its identity in notions of Liberty and Democracy then goes and puts its money exactly where its mouth isn't and supports a ragingly racist theocracy?
I was in Israel last year with Mary. Her sister works for UNWRA in Jerusalem. Showing us round were a Palestinian - Shadi, who is her sister's husband and a professional guide - and Oren Jacobovitch, an Israeli Jew, an ex-major from the IDF who left the service under a cloud for refusing to beat up Palestinians. Between the two of them we got to see some harrowing things - Palestinian houses hemmed in by wire mesh and boards to prevent settlers throwing shit and piss and used sanitary towels at the inhabitants; Palestinian kids on their way to school being beaten by Israeli kids with baseball bats to parental applause and laughter; a whole village evicted and living in caves while three settler families moved onto their land; an Israeli settlement on top of a hill diverting its sewage directly down onto Palestinian farmland below; The Wall; the checkpoints… and all the endless daily humiliations. I kept thinking, "Do Americans really condone this? Do they really think this is OK? Or do they just not know about it?".
As for the Peace Process: Israel wants the Process but not the Peace. While 'the process' is going on the settlers continue grabbing land and building their settlements… and then when the Palestinians finally erupt with their pathetic fireworks they get hammered and shredded with state-of-the-art missiles and depleted uranium shells because Israel 'has a right to defend itself' ( whereas Palestine clearly doesn't). And the settler militias are always happy to lend a fist or rip up someone's olive grove while the army looks the other way. By the way, most of them are not ethnic Israelis - they're 'right of return' Jews from Russia and Ukraine and Moravia and South Africa and Brooklyn who came to Israel recently with the notion that they had an inviolable (God-given!) right to the land, and that 'Arab' equates with 'vermin' - straightforward old-school racism delivered with the same arrogant, shameless swagger that the good ole boys of Louisiana used to affect. That is the culture our taxes are defending. It's like sending money to the Klan.
But beyond this, what really troubles me is the bigger picture. Like it or not, in the eyes of most of the world, America represents 'The West'. So it is The West that is seen as supporting this war, despite all our high-handed talk about morality and democracy. I fear that all the civilisational achievements of The Enlightenment and Western Culture are being discredited - to the great glee of the mad Mullahs - by this flagrant hypocrisy. The war has no moral justification that I can see - but it doesn't even have any pragmatic value either. It doesn't make Kissingerian 'Realpolitik' sense; it just makes us look bad.
I'm sorry to burden you all with this. I know you're busy and in varying degrees allergic to politics, but this is beyond politics. It's us squandering the civilisational capital that we've built over generations. None of the questions in this letter are rhetorical: I really don't get it and I wish that I did.
XXB
Interesting response to this piece by Peter Schwartz. http://davidbyrne.com/gaza-and-the-loss-of-civilization It's almost incredible that he can manage to say so much and yet make no mention whatsoever of the illegal 47 year old occupation and encroaching land-grab - the root cause of the conflict.
In fact, his argument really is kind of pathetic. Here's one example:
"I find the opposition to Israel questionable in its failure to be similarly outraged by a vast number of other moral horrors in the recent past and currently active. Just to name a few; Cambodia, Tibet, Sudan, Somalia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, Liberia, Central African Republic, Uganda, North Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and especially right now Nigeria."
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Posted it here for everyone to come to their own conclusions.
imagine this... take a photo or collage of photos of dead Palestinian children at the hands of Israel with US support/weapons, try to track down your Representative, you can call their office or go online to their website for their itinerary. IF you can find them, bring a sharpie, make small talk and then ask for their autograph with the picture turned upside down, hand them the sharpie and flip it around to reveal the carnage..... describe the photo and ask why they wont sign it?? ask why they will sign resolution condemning hamas but not sign the photo?
Well lookie here. The Gaza thread on AMT has reopened.
All of you interested in your bullshit finger pointing and all-knowing egos are welcome to go back there and get this thread back on track. If you can't discuss without belittling and disrespecting others, you're not wanted here. And I believe I speak for the majority when I say that.
Currently, I’m full of hope. That hope springs from the multitudes of people that our band has been fortunate enough to play for night after night here in Europe. To see flags of so many different nations, and to have these huge crowds gathered peacefully and joyfully is the exact inspiration behind the words I felt the need to emphatically relay. When attempting to make a plea for more peace in the world at a rock concert, we are reflecting the feelings of all those we have come in contact with so we may all have a better understanding of each other.
That’s not something I’m going to stop anytime soon. Call me naïve. I’d rather be naïve, heartfelt and hopeful than resigned to say nothing for fear of misinterpretation and retribution.
The majority of humans on this planet are more consumed by the pursuit of love, health, family, food and shelter than any kind of war.
War hurts. It hurts no matter which sides the bombs are falling on.
With all the global achievements in modern technology, enhanced communication and information devices, cracking the human genome, land rovers on Mars etc., do we really have to resign ourselves to the devastating reality that conflict will be resolved with bombs, murder and acts of barbarism?
We are such a remarkable species. Capable of creating beauty. Capable of awe-inspiring advancements. We must be capable of resolving conflicts without bloodshed.
I don’t know how to reconcile the peaceful rainbow of flags we see each night at our concerts with the daily news of a dozen global conflicts and their horrific consequences. I don’t know how to process the feeling of guilt and complicity when I hear about the deaths of a civilian family from a U.S. drone strike. But I know that we can’t let the sadness turn into apathy. And I do know we are better off when we reach out to each other.
Well lookie here. The Gaza thread on AMT has reopened.
All of you interested in your bullshit finger pointing and all-knowing egos are welcome to go back there and get this thread back on track. If you can't discuss without belittling and respecting others, you're not wanted here.
Well lookie here. The Gaza thread on AMT has reopened.
All of you interested in your bullshit finger pointing and all-knowing egos are welcome to go back there and get this thread back on track. If you can't discuss without belittling and respecting others, you're not wanted here.
You sound so angry and bitter.
I won't stoop to your level, Byrnzie, as much as you'd like, good luck with your anger issues and your health. You have a nice day.
I won't stoop to your level, Byrnzie, as much as you'd like, good luck with your anger issues and your health. You have a nice day.
That doesn't sound very loving and respectful. I'd watch that If I were you. Anger can consume and destroy a person. You saw what it did to Darth Vader.
Also, because I'm prone to get angry at people trying to excuse and defend the mass murder of civilians, it doesn't mean that I have anger issues. it just means that I get angry at people who try and excuse and justify the mass murder of civilians. I don't think there's anything unreasonable about that.
"I know that we can’t let the sadness turn into apathy."
Right, apathy is no solution. And what's the opposite of apathy? Action. You want to fight for peace? Then the first step is to educate yourselves on the issues that trouble/concern you.
Educate yourself. Cut through the bullshit. (And if the Israel-Palestine conflict is your thing, then be warned that this issue arguably contains more bullshit than any other conflict in human history). And when you've stored enough ammunition/knowledge in your arsenal then you can begin fighting for peace.
but what has he done about it? what have any of us done about it?
so we are all pro peace. what happens now?
it is not like there is any consensus there.
peace is not just something that exists and occurs naturally.
peace is hard, just like a marriage is hard. you have to work at it.
people like me want to go on and live our lives and not be bothered, and not get sucked into things like this, but we do because of other people's actions. other people's greed, other people's hatred. i am sick of it. i started following this conflict back in early 2009. i have read a lot about it and posted a lot about it. it is easy. it is black and white to me who is right and who is wrong. it gets frustrating when you can present people with indisputable facts and dubunk the media talking points with facts, and they look for a reason to not believe it or they dismiss it as you trying to manipulate them and manipulate their emotions.
i am on the train almost every day duking it out and trying to process the thousands of words posted over there. all of us could be doing that, but in the end what does it get us? a few hundred people with slightly better knowledge than the rest of our internet reading counterparts?
people make this israel/palestine conflict out to be so complicated and nuanced. in fact, it is very simple. it is a simple solution. stop building and expanding settlements. once that happens, there will be no reason for any more warring. there will be no more need for hamas firing missiles. the missiles are a symptom and an effect of the 50 year occupation. the rockets are not the cause of the occupation. stop expanding and building settlements. once that happens, the palestinians will have gotten what is theirs under international law, and the israelis would have stopped breaking international law.
the pro war people are winning.
all of us who are pro peace, what are we doing about it????
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
to me Ed's comments without naming names and then sorta of backtracking is worse then "tweet and delete". Ed has been outspoken as long as i can remember, from womens rights to corporate greed to illegal wars of choice and etc.....why not now? I remember the storytellers where someone asks "what about people that dont agree with your/the bands ideology" his response "fu(k'em" anyone with half a brain and some common sense can see what is and has been going on with Israel for the past 20 years, so why not call a spade a spade? where did the courage go? maybe he is afraid for his own children because he knows eactly who he is talking about/dealing with!
if this were iran doing what israel is doing to one of it's neighbors you can guarantee this would have been stopped shortly after the 1967 war. but since it is israel, the convenient thing to do is to look the other way until events like the last 3 weeks force you to unenthusiastically look at it and examine what is really happening, and then self examine if you think your ally is doing the right thing.
ed did walk back some.
at least he did not issue a fake apology.
fake apologies and retractions are worse than tweet and delete. if someone does not actually mean something, why would they take the time to articulately express it and post it for the world to see?
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.'
“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” - Harry G. Frankfurt
"Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be"- Harry G. Frankfurt
I own this book. Great little read. On that we can agree on.
Comments
One side has been engaged in a 47 year old illegal occupation and encroaching land-grab, possesses one of the Worlds most advanced military machines, and is supported by the Worlds only Superpower, which supplies it with billions of dollars of military aid and a rubber stamp at the U.N with which to perpetuate its crimes, including multiple war crimes, such as the deliberate targeting of civilians and medical personnel, the bombing of schools, hospitals, children's playgrounds, and U.N safe houses.
The other side has no army, no navy, and no air-force. It consists mostly of a defenseless civilian population.
But you say hat both sides are equally to blame?
And you say "Let's fight together for peace!!"
It's not possible to fight for peace without some basic understanding of the fundamental realities of the conflict.
In the midst of a lot of noise at this thread, this looks like one useful, informative wrap-up of the situation, undeniably based on gathered facts, IMO.
Thank you for this. I really hope there will be found a way to stop this unjust reality, taking place right in front of the world.
2012: Arras, Berlin 1-2
2013: Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires
2014: Milano, Trieste, Vienna, Berlin
2016: NY MSG 1
One side has been engaged in a 47 year old illegal occupation and encroaching land-grab, possesses one of the Worlds most advanced military machines, and is supported by the Worlds only Superpower, which supplies it with billions of dollars of military aid and a rubber stamp at the U.N with which to perpetuate its crimes, including multiple war crimes, such as the deliberate targeting of civilians and medical personnel, the bombing of schools, hospitals, children's playgrounds, and U.N safe houses.
The other side has no army, no navy, and no air-force. It consists mostly of a defenseless civilian population.
But you say hat both sides are equally to blame?
And you say "Let's fight together for peace!!"
It's not possible to fight for peace without some basic understanding of the fundamental realities of the conflict.
Clear and to the point. Not much to argue about here.
You may want to get back to getting into with us "less educated folks" on here.I think you may have your hands full w/These forms version of Charlie's angels(Hedonist,PJSoul,Leezestarr).
Some great back and forth.Very entertaining(Yes I realize the subject matter is not)
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed".- Carl Jung.
"Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."- Paul Klee
Have you actually read anything that I've posted?
PDF: http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf
'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."
Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.'
“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.” - Harry G. Frankfurt
"Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be" - Harry G. Frankfurt
GAZA AND THE LOSS OF CIVILIZATION
by Brian Eno in Guest Posts | July 28, 2014
Ed note: I received this email last Friday morning from my friend, Brian Eno. I shared it with my office and we all felt a great responsibility to publish Brian's heavy, worthy note. In response, Brian's friend, Peter Schwartz, replied with an eye-opening historical explanation of how we got here. What's clear is that no one has the moral high ground.
Dear All of You:
I sense I'm breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can't keep quiet any more.
Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He'd been shredded (the hospital's word) by an Israeli missile attack - apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are - hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.
I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.
Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won't sign up to it.
What is going on in America? I know from my own experience how slanted your news is, and how little you get to hear about the other side of this story. But - for Christ's sake! - it's not that hard to find out. Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing? WHY? I just don't get it. I really hate to think its just the power of AIPAC… for if that's the case, then your government really is fundamentally corrupt. No, I don't think that's the reason… but I have no idea what it could be.
The America I know and like is compassionate, broadminded, creative, eclectic, tolerant and generous. You, my close American friends, symbolise those things for me. But which America is backing this horrible one-sided colonialist war? I can't work it out: I know you're not the only people like you, so how come all those voices aren't heard or registered? How come it isn't your spirit that most of the world now thinks of when it hears the word 'America'? How bad does it look when the one country which more than any other grounds its identity in notions of Liberty and Democracy then goes and puts its money exactly where its mouth isn't and supports a ragingly racist theocracy?
I was in Israel last year with Mary. Her sister works for UNWRA in Jerusalem. Showing us round were a Palestinian - Shadi, who is her sister's husband and a professional guide - and Oren Jacobovitch, an Israeli Jew, an ex-major from the IDF who left the service under a cloud for refusing to beat up Palestinians. Between the two of them we got to see some harrowing things - Palestinian houses hemmed in by wire mesh and boards to prevent settlers throwing shit and piss and used sanitary towels at the inhabitants; Palestinian kids on their way to school being beaten by Israeli kids with baseball bats to parental applause and laughter; a whole village evicted and living in caves while three settler families moved onto their land; an Israeli settlement on top of a hill diverting its sewage directly down onto Palestinian farmland below; The Wall; the checkpoints… and all the endless daily humiliations. I kept thinking, "Do Americans really condone this? Do they really think this is OK? Or do they just not know about it?".
As for the Peace Process: Israel wants the Process but not the Peace. While 'the process' is going on the settlers continue grabbing land and building their settlements… and then when the Palestinians finally erupt with their pathetic fireworks they get hammered and shredded with state-of-the-art missiles and depleted uranium shells because Israel 'has a right to defend itself' ( whereas Palestine clearly doesn't). And the settler militias are always happy to lend a fist or rip up someone's olive grove while the army looks the other way. By the way, most of them are not ethnic Israelis - they're 'right of return' Jews from Russia and Ukraine and Moravia and South Africa and Brooklyn who came to Israel recently with the notion that they had an inviolable (God-given!) right to the land, and that 'Arab' equates with 'vermin' - straightforward old-school racism delivered with the same arrogant, shameless swagger that the good ole boys of Louisiana used to affect. That is the culture our taxes are defending. It's like sending money to the Klan.
But beyond this, what really troubles me is the bigger picture. Like it or not, in the eyes of most of the world, America represents 'The West'. So it is The West that is seen as supporting this war, despite all our high-handed talk about morality and democracy. I fear that all the civilisational achievements of The Enlightenment and Western Culture are being discredited - to the great glee of the mad Mullahs - by this flagrant hypocrisy. The war has no moral justification that I can see - but it doesn't even have any pragmatic value either. It doesn't make Kissingerian 'Realpolitik' sense; it just makes us look bad.
I'm sorry to burden you all with this. I know you're busy and in varying degrees allergic to politics, but this is beyond politics. It's us squandering the civilisational capital that we've built over generations. None of the questions in this letter are rhetorical: I really don't get it and I wish that I did.
XXB
Dear Brian and friends,
I am writing to respond to your note about Gaza and how America is responding. It deserves a response. My feelings and the actual realities are complex on several levels; the realities of the Arab-Israeli history and conflicts, global politics and modern American history/demographics. All three levels interact to create the current situation. And to understand the US posture you have to consider the history. Let me say, that, as you know I am an immigrant and child of Holocaust survivors. I am culturally Jewish, but with no religious or spiritual inclinations, an atheist. And I believe that creating the Jewish state of Israel was a historic mistake that is likely to destroy the religion behind it. The actions nation states take to assure their survival are usually in contradiction to any moral values that a religion might espouse. And that contradiction is now very evident in Israel’s behavior. Israel will destroy Judaism.
First, the history has two important intersecting threads, Zionism and the end of the Ottoman Empire. Zionism began near the end of the nineteenth century as a response to a millennium of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. An end to the diaspora and a return to the biblical homeland were seen as the only hope of escaping the persistent repression of places like Hungary, the Ukraine, Russia, etc. The British government with its Balfour declaration (1917) and the League of Nations Palestine Mandate (1922) gave impetus to that hope. And of course WWII and the Holocaust sealed the deal. The murder of 6 million Jews was seen as sufficient reason to pursue a Jewish state and the UN granted that wish with the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab States in 1947. The seven Arab states declared war and urged the Palestinians to flee. After defeating the Arab armies Israel made it very hard for them return. Hence we ended up with a large Palestinian refugee population.
Those Arab states themselves were the result of a combination of British/French artistry in drawing the maps of the post Ottoman world as well as the subsequent tribal military campaigns that left the Saudis in charge of the Arabian peninsula (vast oil wealth soon to be found) and the Hashemites driven up into Trans Jordan. Other than the war with Israel, the conflicts and rivalries among the various Arab and Persian factions have shaped Middle Eastern and North African politics ever since then.
Over the subsequent decades following the 1948 war there was a persistent Arab bombing campaign and two more large scale Arab attacks on Israel, 1967 and 1973. Until the mid seventies Israel was seen as having the moral high ground based on the holocaust and Arab behavior. But beginning with the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in the early 80s that moral position began to erode. Israel’s behavior in Lebanon was the first major example of aggressive action and attacks against vulnerable populations. Israel began to develop a more right wing and aggressive political faction of which Netanyahu is the worst current example. The settlements in Arab territory in the West Bank are the direct result of that evolution. (And of course the mass migration of the 1990s mainly from Russia) Suicide bombings and missile attacks were the Arab response. Walling themselves in was yet another ironic Israeli response. Today’s horrors are a continuing extension of those conflicts following a cease-fire of a few years.
Once Israel declared itself a Jewish state in 1948 the Palestinians had only three options; accept a division of the land into two states, accept being second-class citizens in the Israeli state or perpetual conflict because they could not win. The Arab states chose the third option because it is in their interest to maintain unity against their common enemy, Israel. They could even share a common enemy with the hated Persian Shiites in Iran. So rather than helping the Palestinians develop by investing in education, health care, jobs, infrastructure etc. the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia help keep them poor but well armed. Palestinian refugees would remain a festering sore in the Middle East to remind the world of Israel’s perfidy. And of course any aid that did come ended up in corrupt pockets not in helping development. The obvious counter example was Jordan, which developed itself, with little help from their Arab brethren and eventually made grudging peace with Israel. The difference in Jordan was good Arab leadership that recognized that Israel was not going way and war forever was not a good development policy.
At the geopolitical level several threads played out. The UN became a place where the Israel and Arab conflicts became a symbolic pawn in the Cold War, especially in the Security Council with the US on the Israeli side and the USSR on the Arab side (with exceptions i.e. the Saudis). That hardened the US position and associated in American minds Israel with our side and the Arabs with the other guys.
Even though I have no support for the Israeli position I find the opposition to Israel questionable in its failure to be similarly outraged by a vast number of other moral horrors in the recent past and currently active. Just to name a few; Cambodia, Tibet, Sudan, Somalia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, Liberia, Central African Republic, Uganda, North Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and especially right now Nigeria. The Arab Spring ,which has become a dark winter for most Arabs and the large scale slaughter now underway along the borders of Iraq and Syria are good examples of what they do to themselves. And our nations, the US, the Brits, the Dutch, the Russians and the French have all played their parts in these other moral outrages. The gruesome body count and social destruction left behind dwarfs anything that the Israelis have done. The only difference with the Israeli’s is their claim to a moral high ground, which they long ago left behind in the refugee camps of Lebanon. They are now just a nation, like any other, trying to survive in a hostile sea of hate.
We should be clear, that given the opportunity, the Arabs would drive the Jews into the sea and that was true from day one. There was no way back from war once a religious state was declared. So Israel, once committed to a nation state in that location and granted that right by other nations have had no choice but to fight. In my view therefore, neither side has any shred of moral standing left, nor have the nations that supported both sides.
So now let’s at look at why the US behaves as it does with a nearly uncritical support of Israel. You are right to criticize our media in so many ways, but that only makes things worse it does not really explain why. They are simply doing what they think their audiences want to hear. And they are mostly right.
Part of it has to do with post war American evolution and perceptions of Israel and the Arabs. When I was a boy in the fifties, through my teenage years anti-Semitism was still common in America. If you were Jewish you did not go to work for IBM or GE. You did not join the Navy. You did not go to Harvard, Princeton or Yale. I could not play tennis at my local country club. I regularly heard derisive, anti-Semitic comments from some of my classmates. But by the mid sixties along with the civil rights movement, toleration in general increased and anti-Semitism declined, almost vanishing. Support of Israel was part of that tolerance and was seen as a noble response to the Holocaust. The Arabs were seen as the oppressors and enemies of the US. That perception was given particular impetus by the oil embargo of 1973 and of course the Iranian revolution, even though it was Persians not Arabs, because Americans don’t see that distinction. (We should never forget that we have a Republican dominated Congress, half of whom do not own a Passport and see ignorance as a virtue.)The Israelis were seen as innovative and benign, people who made the desert bloom. To this was added the growing and ironic support from the US religious right who saw the route to salvation as the Israeli defeat of the Arabs leading to a second coming of Christ. (Of course, we Jews would have to convert to Christianity to survive the second coming.) 9-11 amplified the American antipathy to the Arab world. Seeing the delight throughout the Arab world at the fall of the twin towers did not endear the Arabs to the American people. We can add Saddam, Khaddafi and Osama Bin Laden to the pantheon of iconic American villains. The UN is no longer seen as legitimate and almost always acting against US interests.
So my generation and most of today’s American leadership grew up with the Israeli’s as heroic good guys and Arabs/Persians as greedy bad guys. The younger generation, my son Ben’s age (24) have a much more balanced view. Israel’s behavior in their youth, the last two decades, has destroyed whatever moral standing the Israeli’s had with them. In addition the pro Israeli lobby in America has been very effective in the political arena and their Arab counterparts have been counter productive. So our leaders who group up with noble Israel and evil Arabs and supported by Jewish political contributions are unequivocally pro Israeli while young people are more divided as is at least some of the Jewish community. Eventually demography will win out as a new more skeptical generation comes to power, a generation for whom Israel will not carry the same moral weight as it did for their parents.
I don’t think there is any honor to go around here. Israel has lost its way and commits horrors in the interest of their own survival. And the Arabs and Persians perpetuate a conflict ridden neighborhood with almost no exceptions, fighting against each other and with hate of Israel the only thing that they share.
It is also worth noting that the largest Muslim populations are not Arab and the largest, Indonesia is fairly peaceful. So it is not about religion. The Arabs have been engaged in tribal conflicts for centuries that have been from time to time quelled by Imperial powers like the Ottomans and strong men like Saddam and Ibn Saud. And in those wars they have committed horrors on their own people. Observe the genocidal destruction of Homs by Hafez Assad just to point to a recent example. The Zionists brought another tribe to the war. It is of course a tribe that is also divided, like the Arabs, in to factions, some of which are fanatical and war like and others more moderate. The comments about the racism of the Zionists are fair, but the Arab world does not lack for similar attitudes. One need only see how the vast number of South Asian, Philippine and African near slaves are treated even in the more benign countries like the UAE.
So given that history and current reality and even though I believe the creation of Israel was a historic disaster, I am a member of the tribe, (perhaps its more pacifist, atheist wing) I find objectionable the unique singling out of Israel for condemnation. So if we are prepared to boycott, condemn, shame, etc, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Iranians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Russians, the Nigerians, the Taliban, the Venezuelans, the Zimbabweans, the Sudanese, the south Sudanese, the Central African Republicans, and lets not forget the Americans and the British, all of whom are as guilty as Israel, then I will join the demonstration. (Two small things that might help would be if the rich Arab states provided some funding and development assistance for the Palestinians and if the Palestinian government didn’t steal all the aid.)
We find ourselves at a historic impasse. There is no way back. Israel will do whatever it takes to survive. They will not leave. And the Arab identity has become opposition to Israel. It will be centuries, if ever, before they accept the existence of Israel. So both sides will always rightly feel threatened. There will be no other state there but perpetual tribal war with an occasional truce. And in that perpetual state of tribal war there be ample opportunity for horrors on both sides. We can only hope to lower the level of violence, but true peace will remain illusive.
Peter Schwartz
In fact, his argument really is kind of pathetic. Here's a couple of examples:
"I find the opposition to Israel questionable in its failure to be similarly outraged by a vast number of other moral horrors in the recent past and currently active. Just to name a few; Cambodia, Tibet, Sudan, Somalia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Argentina, Liberia, Central African Republic, Uganda, North Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and especially right now Nigeria."
"Israel’s behavior in Lebanon was the first major example of aggressive action and attacks against vulnerable populations."
Really? So the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1947-1948 in which 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in the wake of a number of massacres of entire villages, such as at Dier Yassin and al-Dawazyma http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/05/13/the-deir-yassin-massacre/, was not an example of 'aggressive action and attacks against vulnerable populations'?
[The] army, under Moshe Dayan, took the unarmed and undefended village of al-Dawazyma, located in the Hebron hills, massacred 80 to 100 of its residents, and threw their bodies into pits. "The children were killed by breaking their heads with sticks … The remaining Arabs were then sealed in houses, as the village was systematically razed …" (Nur Masalha, The Historical Roots of the Palestinian Refugee Question).
All of you interested in your bullshit finger pointing and all-knowing egos are welcome to go back there and get this thread back on track. If you can't discuss without belittling and disrespecting others, you're not wanted here. And I believe I speak for the majority when I say that.
(and while I think most of us recognize bullshit and those who are full of it, thanks for the book recommendation!)
backstreet, yeah. Thanks for bringing it back.
Also, because I'm prone to get angry at people trying to excuse and defend the mass murder of civilians, it doesn't mean that I have anger issues. it just means that I get angry at people who try and excuse and justify the mass murder of civilians. I don't think there's anything unreasonable about that.
Ok. Yeah, you try and have a nice day, then.
You want to fight for peace? Then the first step is to educate yourselves on the issues that trouble/concern you.
Educate yourself. Cut through the bullshit. (And if the Israel-Palestine conflict is your thing, then be warned that this issue arguably contains more bullshit than any other conflict in human history). And when you've stored enough ammunition/knowledge in your arsenal then you can begin fighting for peace.
it's great that ed is coming out pro peace.
but what has he done about it? what have any of us done about it?
so we are all pro peace. what happens now?
it is not like there is any consensus there.
peace is not just something that exists and occurs naturally.
peace is hard, just like a marriage is hard. you have to work at it.
people like me want to go on and live our lives and not be bothered, and not get sucked into things like this, but we do because of other people's actions. other people's greed, other people's hatred. i am sick of it. i started following this conflict back in early 2009. i have read a lot about it and posted a lot about it. it is easy. it is black and white to me who is right and who is wrong. it gets frustrating when you can present people with indisputable facts and dubunk the media talking points with facts, and they look for a reason to not believe it or they dismiss it as you trying to manipulate them and manipulate their emotions.
i am on the train almost every day duking it out and trying to process the thousands of words posted over there. all of us could be doing that, but in the end what does it get us? a few hundred people with slightly better knowledge than the rest of our internet reading counterparts?
people make this israel/palestine conflict out to be so complicated and nuanced. in fact, it is very simple. it is a simple solution. stop building and expanding settlements. once that happens, there will be no reason for any more warring. there will be no more need for hamas firing missiles. the missiles are a symptom and an effect of the 50 year occupation. the rockets are not the cause of the occupation. stop expanding and building settlements. once that happens, the palestinians will have gotten what is theirs under international law, and the israelis would have stopped breaking international law.
the pro war people are winning.
all of us who are pro peace, what are we doing about it????
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I remember the storytellers where someone asks "what about people that dont agree with your/the bands ideology" his response "fu(k'em"
anyone with half a brain and some common sense can see what is and has been going on with Israel for the past 20 years, so why not call a spade a spade?
where did the courage go? maybe he is afraid for his own children because he knows eactly who he is talking about/dealing with!
ed did walk back some.
at least he did not issue a fake apology.
fake apologies and retractions are worse than tweet and delete. if someone does not actually mean something, why would they take the time to articulately express it and post it for the world to see?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."