(“You know if you are anti war, If your anti war it doesn’t mean you are pro one side or the other in a conflict. However it does make you pro many things.” Ed sees something in the audience he likes. “What have you got here, wow. All right you came to play. We are not alone after all. Take this CNN, That’s good, that’s nice, or whomever. Well, so anti war make you pro many things. Pro peace, pro human, pro evolution, Makes you pro communication, pro diplomacy, pro love, pro understanding, pro forgiveness. You know some people don’t understand how you can be pro soldier. If you are anti war your pro soldier because you don’t want the soldier to be put in harms way. To sacrifice himself or herself for some reason that’s not...for no good reason. I have many, many...We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces. We have an understanding and they listen our music and they get it so I’m not sure...You know sometimes if you speak out people are going to misunderstand and they take things a certain way or another. If you don’t speak out you don’t know..If someone doesn’t like it probably means it has some kind of meaning. It’s not just bullshit. It’s not just nothing. So this next song I always thought it was probably the most powerful song ever written. I think it is the most powerful song ever written. Which is why I have never played it. It seems like maybe there is a reason to play it. If you’d like join me or use your voices or hold a light there might be some people out there that need to know they are not alone.”)
Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)
PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.
These are all questions that I ask myself too. Isn't it crazy that as an outstander, you have to apologize before you actually utter these words? I have read up a little bit on things on German media mainly. And there is quite a discussion raging, like here too. Probably everywhere. People are being accused of coming off as anti-Semitic when they critisize Israel, people feeling the need to apologize before they criticize Palestine. people criticising the media for being one-sided, others saying the opposite. Honestly, I do not know what to believe anymore. The only thing that I know I would want for the people who are living amidst this nightmare situation is a break, peace, a normal life.
Please, Pearl Jam, consider a Benaroya Hall vinyl reissue!
(“You know if you are anti war, If your anti war it doesn’t mean you are pro one side or the other in a conflict. However it does make you pro many things.” Ed sees something in the audience he likes. “What have you got here, wow. All right you came to play. We are not alone after all. Take this CNN, That’s good, that’s nice, or whomever. Well, so anti war make you pro many things. Pro peace, pro human, pro evolution, Makes you pro communication, pro diplomacy, pro love, pro understanding, pro forgiveness. You know some people don’t understand how you can be pro soldier. If you are anti war your pro soldier because you don’t want the soldier to be put in harms way. To sacrifice himself or herself for some reason that’s not...for no good reason. I have many, many...We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces. We have an understanding and they listen our music and they get it so I’m not sure...You know sometimes if you speak out people are going to misunderstand and they take things a certain way or another. If you don’t speak out you don’t know..If someone doesn’t like it probably means it has some kind of meaning. It’s not just bullshit. It’s not just nothing. So this next song I always thought it was probably the most powerful song ever written. I think it is the most powerful song ever written. Which is why I have never played it. It seems like maybe there is a reason to play it. If you’d like join me or use your voices or hold a light there might be some people out there that need to know they are not alone.”)
"What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.
This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet." http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180808/sam-harris-why-dont-i-criticize-israel#undefined
Post edited by Leezestarr313 on
Please, Pearl Jam, consider a Benaroya Hall vinyl reissue!
I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".
I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:
Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.
I read it and didn't find anything particularly compelling about it. Sounded like propaganda to me, and the fact that it is an ad campaign should tell you a lot.
But I gave it a shot.
Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)
PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.
Both sides are to blame. That said, does it really matter anymore? This has been going on for over a half a century. It is time to cease-fire. Both sides. No one is winning, everyone is losing.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,845
I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was basically suggesting that palestine were using their dead as propaganda. That they were letting their children die as a propaganda weapon. I always liked him and most often agreed with him but "god who would want to be such an asshole".
I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:
Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.
I read it and didn't find anything particularly compelling about it. Sounded like propaganda to me, and the fact that it is an ad campaign should tell you a lot.
But I gave it a shot.
Yeah could be and all hyperbole aside ('cause I know no one hates me that much, LOL) we do hear similar statements like this often. I can't imagine Wiesel simply spouting propaganda. So I wonder, is this really is 100% Israel fucking up or is there at least a little to be said about the Palestinians fucking up too? If so, should they also be held accountable as part of the problem? And how does this affect the possibility of peace ever being attainable? (And yes, I'm still outraged by the atrocious killing the Israeli side is responsible for. All killing is atrocious in my book.)
PLEASE!, don't stone me (with rocks- green is OK). I just hope it is acceptable to ask these questions.
Both sides are to blame. That said, does it really matter anymore? This has been going on for over a half a century. It is time to cease-fire. Both sides. No one is winning, everyone is losing.
It sure seems that way to me as well (and I say that realizing there are others here who have studies this particular conflict more than I have so I make no claims to have the final word.) One of the difficulties that I've read about elsewhere is that these are people who think and see things quite differently than we do in the western world. Add to that the fact that many of those involved on both sides are heavily fundamentalist in their religions, then the possibility of peaceful settlement becomes even more difficult. If we knew how to convince people to keep their religious philosophies reined in we might have at least half the answer. Ultimately, peace is the answer that makes sense to me (not that everybody here care what I think, of course) but how that can be attained seems like a huge question.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Will the real Sam Harris please stand up, please stand up. Last year Glenn Greenwald wrote that Sam Harris is a military hawk. And Murtaza Hussain wrote that he is a bigot. If the latest buffoonery of Harris is any measure, they were being excessively generous. He’s got a podcast titled “Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?”on his website about the war on Gaza. It says what he’s been saying for the past ten years: Netanyahu has the moral high ground. The IDF is brutalised by the Palestinians. And sympathy for their cause is a “moral illusion”. Like his hero Alan Dershowitz whose arguments he retails, and who beat him to the atheist lecture circuit by four years, Harris is shrewd enough to oppose the concept of a religion-based Jewish state because theology is the one fraud that he can see through. But the crimes and predations of secular Israel commands his full support. “I’m a great supporter of Israel” he told us on the book tour for The End of Faith, and his faith in militarism is one without end.
In fact, as one reads the transcript that accompanies the podcast, one realises that in spite of appearances to the contrary, his comments are not so much about Gaza, the three murdered Israeli teens for whose recovery Israel said it went to war, and whether Hamas was responsible for the abduction, over which there is much controversy, so much as why Israel is in the front lines of a global war between Islam and the West. He brings in topics that have no bearing on the matter at all such as international terrorist movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS. It’s all part of the same fight against Islam.
He wheels out the same worn arguments. Hamas, and Muslims generally, we are given to understand, hide behind civilians, and that accounts for the high death toll. Proof? None. That’s just what crazy Arabs do. They love shooting rockets out of their baby’s pram. But don’t you worry, he says, in spite of the fact that Muslims take cover behind their children, Israel is deterred by their use of human shields. Presumably when it’s not using them itself.
He argues the Hamas’s charter calls for the extinction of Israel. You would think its charter is the only document Hamas has ever published. Maybe they ran out of printers. It is a widely reported fact that Hamas accepts a two state solution on the 1967 borders. By a delightful inversion of morality, words on a paper outrage him more than bombing schools and hospitals and civilian infrastructure, more than the massacre of eight hundred civilians at the time of writing. He caricatures Gazans as a bunch of crazed Islamists when in fact the Palestinian resistance was secular until Israel began supporting Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO precisely because it did not want to make peace.
And in true Dershowitz form, Harris argues that Israel has exercised more restraint in its wars than America or Europe have in any of theirs. Plainly he’s never heard of Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, or the dozens of other victims of US aggression who did not set off bombs in America.
He claims that Israel’s neighbours harbour genocidal intentions towards Jews. That will surprise the 20,000 Jews who live in Iran, the 17,000 in Turkey and the 15,000 in Azerbaijan. How Palestinians without an army, navy or air force can commit genocide against a nuclear power at all even if they wanted to is not explained. Harris plays on the idea of lonesome Israel encircled by a sea of enemies. As Murray Rothbard noted, in fact Israel is a modern European power that does battle with third world enemies. It is true that anti-semitism is rife in Muslim countries, as is anti-Americanism, and this evil should be denounced, but it would be confined to the lunatic fringe if not for the aggressive posture of the United States and Israel.
There is nothing in his commentary about the economic blockade of Gaza by air, land, and sea, and nothing about the land grabs in the West Bank, except to note that whilst he condemns Jewish extremists, by which, like Dershowitz, he means religious extremists, the only kind who exist in the world naturally, “Israel’s continued appropriation of land has more than a little to do with her security concerns”. So not about expansionism then. Only Muslims do that.
It’s all about the Islamic threat to the West: We must stand with Israel because they are the enemies of our enemies. “The truth is”, he says, “we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized that yet”.
Harris talks like it’s still 9/11. Back then he was indignant with the left for criticising the Bush administration’s war in Iraq because “there are millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney”, and now he’s angry that people should condemn mass murder. Here he is saying that the Iraq war was a reasonable position that intelligent people can support and that it should have been waged with multilateral backing–to defeat the Muslim threat:
“Intelligent people could disagree about whether it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq. But one thing is pretty clear, going in we should have gone in with everybody. We need a truly international effort. We need to convince civilised democracies everywhere that civilisation itself has genuine enemies. These totalitarian, theocratic, tribal eruptions on many parts of the globe on a hundred fronts. Many if not most of them are Muslims.”
He is most happy when he can frame the discussion of war in religious terms. Israel is post-religious and the Palestinians are not. Therefore secularists should side with Israel. America is post-religious and Muslims are not. Therefore secularists ought to side with America. And because Muslims often use religious language to discuss political matters, because they say “jihad” instead of “let’s fight back”, and because they call their dead “martyrs” instead of “fallen heroes”, their concerns are not territorial at all, they are irrational superstition about which there can be no prospects for dialogue.
This habit of always angling for the religious dimension of a conflict, or projecting religion into it where it does not exist, is a consistent pattern of his thought. Even when he has no tribal attachment to the warring sides, he does not ask “Who is the aggressor?”, but “Who is more religious?”. For instance, he mentions the Iran-Iraq war in this debate with Chris Hedges. To most people, that was a straightforward case of aggression by Saddam Hussein against Iran. But Harris does not see that. He is more outraged by the fact Iran used suicide volunteers to clear minefields. “The war between Iran and Iraq was characterised on the Iranian side by this massive campaign of suicide bombing where teenagers were just goaded out to clear minefields by their parents” he says. That is the real problem: Muslims and their martyrdom cult. Not the half a million dead, not Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, not the American support for his invasion in which Harris says “We weren’t involved”. No, the true problem is Iranians defending themselves by suicidal means.
Even when the “martyr” kills nobody but himself in order to clear mines, he is the object of horror and condemnation. When asked by Robert Scheer, the debate’s moderator, what is the difference fundamentally between a suicide bomber and a fighter bomber in Vietnam or the atomic bombers on Japan, he simply evades the question, saying that he doesn’t want to defend the Vietnam war.
Really? Can you please explain to me how the Palestinians are to blame for being illegally occupied for the past 47 years? Can you also explain to me how the Palestinians are to blame for having 80% of their original homeland stolen from them?
Please stand up please stand up...In fact, in The End of Faith, Harris argues that Vietnam illustrates the humanity of America because Americans were horrified by My Lai, a response that much of the world is incapable of. After describing the massacre in detail, he says:
This is about as bad as human beings are capable of behaving. But what distinguishes us from many of our enemies is that this indiscriminate violence appalls us. The massacre at My Lai is remembered as a signature moment of shame for the American military. Even at the time, US soldiers were dumbstruck with horror by the behaviour of their comrades. One helicopter pilot who arrived on the scene ordered his subordinates to use their machine guns against their own troops if they did not stop killing villagers. As a culture we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not.
(The End of Faith, Page 144)
What kind of charlatan holds up a war that slaughtered two million Vietnamese civilians as an example of America’s compassion? The only thing wrong with Vietnam was My Lai, you appreciate. The use of Agent Orange and depleted uranium, the widespread torture, Nixon’s readiness to deploy nuclear weapons, the 150,000 children born with birth defects– these had no effect on the conscience of America. But My Lai, well, that was a freak aberration.
Again, when he talks about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in this debate with Robert Wright he is alarmed not by the over one million Afghans killed by the invasion, and not by the fall of the socially-liberal if autocratic communists of the PDPA who upheld women’s rights to the Islamists, thanks to American support, but by what he claims is Afghan fighters setting up encampments in the field of fire so they could be bombed and thereby martyred. Ignore the fact that no fighting force could have defeated Russia if that was indeed their military strategy, what is striking here is that he considers suicidal actions more alarming than aggressive wars that destroy a nation. You can bomb whatever you like, just don’t kill yourself in the process: such is the cutting edge philosophy of our deep thinker.
And it is a popular philosophy. His post has garnered close to 140 thousand Facebook likes. There is a kind of atheist who is impressed by this grotesquery, who thinks religion is the only consideration that should inform morality. Ayn Rand, grand dame of another generation of atheists, declared the Palestinians savages. Now Harris declares them barbarians. Atheism used to be represented by high toned thinkers like Carl Sagan and A J Ayer. Today it’s been hijacked by cheap demagogues without sense or decency.
Ultimately, peace is the answer that makes sense to me (not that everybody here care what I think, of course) but how that can be attained seems like a huge question
It can be attained by forcing Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, including ending the illegal occupation and evacuating the illegal settlements. It can be achieved by implementing the international consensus, which calls for a two-state settlement of the conflict based on U.N Resolution 242. The whole World supports this, including Hamas. The only thing preventing it is the U.S government.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,845
Ultimately, peace is the answer that makes sense to me (not that everybody here care what I think, of course) but how that can be attained seems like a huge question
It can be attained by forcing Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, including ending the illegal occupation and evacuating the illegal settlements. It can be achieved by implementing the international consensus, which calls for a two-state settlement of the conict based on U.N Resolution 242. The whole World supports this, including Hamas. The only thing preventing it is the U.S government.
Thank you for a straight forward answer, Byrnzie. That is encouraging.
If that were to happen, I wonder if the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world would allow the 13.75 million Jews live in peace as well.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,845
Ultimately, peace is the answer that makes sense to me (not that everybody here care what I think, of course) but how that can be attained seems like a huge question
It can be attained by forcing Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, including ending the illegal occupation and evacuating the illegal settlements. It can be achieved by implementing the international consensus, which calls for a two-state settlement of the conict based on U.N Resolution 242. The whole World supports this, including Hamas. The only thing preventing it is the U.S government.
Thank you for a straight forward answer, Byrnzie. That is encouraging.
If that were to happen, I wonder if the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world would allow the 13.75 million Jews live in peace as well.
P.S. I'll check in here later- gotta sleeeeeep.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
I have to admit (and I know by posting these words I am setting myself up for a shit storm of every kind of verbal abuse) that this issue has me a bit confused. What I have read by those of you who are more informed and educated on this issue leads me to believe that the idea of the Palestinians "letting their children die as a propaganda weapon" or shield seems to be mis-information but then someone like Elie Wiesel who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and seems very well education says they are:
Please read the article before telling me to fuck off and die.
It really is despicable that such odious propaganda should be propagated by someone who survived the holocaust.
Elie Weisel also defended two known frauds written on the holocaust: 'The Painted Bird' by Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski, and 'Fragments by' Binjamin Wilkomirski. He defended these books even after they'd been exposed as frauds.
Review of Norman Finkelstein's 'The Holocaust Industry':
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Hoste-Finkelstein.html '...the author does a fantastic job of exposing the gang of charlatans and frauds that constitute The Holocaust Industry. For a fee of $25,000, survivor Elie Wiesel will tell you that the “secret” of Auschwitz’s “truth lies in silence” and that The Holocaust “leads into darkness,” “negates all answers,” “lies outside, if not beyond, history,” “defies both knowledge and description,” “cannot be explained nor visualized,” and is “never to be explained or transmitted.” To him, to compare Jewish suffering to that of others is a “total betrayal of Jewish history.” A parody of a New York tabloid once had the headline: “Michael Jackson, 60 Million Others, Die in Nuclear Holocaust.” The parody included a letter supposedly from Eli Wiesel in which he protested “How dare people refer to what happened yesterday as a Holocaust? There was only one Holocaust.”
Not only does Wiesel think that Jewish suffering is in a class of its own, but he and organized Jewry guard their unique status in a very creepy way. He withdrew from a conference on genocide because the slaughter of Armenians by the Turks would be mentioned. Jewish organizations have lobbied against a day of remembrance for the Armenians.
Predictably, when the victims of violence are the enemies of Jews, compassion goes out the window.” To Wiesel, Arabs hate Jews for their existence.
If that were to happen, I wonder if the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world would allow the 13.75 million Jews live in peace as well.
Why wouldn't they? Jews and Arabs lived perfectly well together in that part of the World before the European Zionists moved in with their ideas of racial supremacy and ethnic cleansing. There's no reason why it can't be a civilized area once again.
No offence dude, but it's pretty depressing that after all the information on this issue that's already been posted here in these threads, you'd agree with such an absurd comment.
"What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.
This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet." http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180808/sam-harris-why-dont-i-criticize-israel#undefined
What a ridiculous article. The fact that so many people (mostly Americans) actually take this shit seriously is one reason why the situation in the Middle East has been able to fester for so long.
Obama signs bill giving Israel $225 million for missile defense system
President Obama on Monday signed a bill that will give Israel $225 million to restock its Iron Dome missile defense system.
The House voted 395-8 to pass the bill Friday night.
The missile shield system was developed jointly by the United States and Israel and is said to have intercepted dozens of rockets fired from Gaza during the conflict that began July 17. The system uses advanced tracking technology to determine if a rocket is headed for a population center; if it is it destroys the rocket mid-flight.
Israel and Hamas agreed late Monday to an Egyptian-sponsored 72-hour cease fire.
At a news conference Friday, Obama underscored Israel's right to defend itself and noted American support for the Iron Dome.
"And so, not only have we been supportive of Israel in its right to defend itself, but in very concrete terms -- for example, in support for the Iron Dome program that has intercepted rockets that are firing down on Israeli cities -- we've been trying to cooperate as much as we can to make sure that Israel is able to protect its citizens," Obama said.
An Israeli airstrike Sunday killed 10 people outside a U.N. school in Gaza, prompting some of the harshest American criticism of Israel since the conflict began.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement that “the United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling” and urged Israel to do more to “avoid civilian casualties” and to protect U.N. facilities.
Before the cease-fire announcement Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the United States continues to push for a cease-fire and that it has expressed its concerns about the Israeli military living up "to their own standards" about protecting civilians.
"We do continue to believe that the violence in Gaza should end as soon as possible," Earnest said.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,845
Well fuck me. Couldn't sleep and then come back here and see more put-down, sarcastic posts. You're a real gem, dude. :-(
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Well fuck me. Couldn't sleep and then come back here and see more put-down, sarcastic posts. You're a real gem, dude. :-(
Quit exaggerating. There was no 'put down', or 'sarcastic post'. Seems to me that you're looking for an excuse to be offended.
Hundreds of posts have been made in these threads explaining the reality of the situation over there. Hundreds of posts that have documented the history, and the political situation. Nothing too complicated about any of it. And then backseatlover chimes in with a ridiculous, dismissive comment that 'Both sides are to blame' - thereby completely ignoring reality.
I just think it's pretty depressing that you'd then agree with her.
Well people, I still think there are many different ways to look at this conflict... All of you claim to just look at the facts, I'm sure you all did, but facts are interpreted in so many ways. Before putting me aside, as some off you will do... Just read the following article, and read it to understand it, not just to reject it...
If we will have any form of peace in the middle east, we will have to step over the blame issue and look for the things we share in common.
Let there be peace...
"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
That's not true. Only about two people posting in this thread have stated that they adhere to the facts, one of them being me. Nobody else has claimed anything of the sort. If you actually read through the thread you'll notice that most people just post beliefs and opinions, some of them with no relation to reality at all, such as backseatlovers assertion that 'Both sides are to blame'.
Well people, I still think there are many different ways to look at this conflict... All of you claim to just look at the facts, I'm sure you all did, but facts are interpreted in so many ways. Before putting me aside, as some off you will do... Just read the following article, and read it to understand it, not just to reject it...
If we will have any form of peace in the middle east, we will have to step over the blame issue and look for the things we share in common.
Let there be peace...
And what did you actually learn from reading that article? I just read it, and it's pretty innocuous. He points out the Israeli media is incredibly biased and neglects to mention atrocities committed by the IDF, such as the bombing of schools and hospitals.
He also makes the false claim that nobody knows who was responsible for the last bombing of a UNRWA school.
Well Byrnzie, in my humble opinion, you use exactly the same tactics as the Israeli media in the article.
"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
Well Byrnzie, in my humble opinion, you use exactly the same tactics as the Israeli media in the article.
The only 'tactic' I use is sticking to the facts. Although I understand why facts are troublesome for apologists of Israel. The only way they can attempt to excuse and justify their treatment of the Palestinians is by repeatedly lying through their fucking teeth.
Well Byrnzie, in my humble opinion, you use exactly the same tactics as the Israeli media in the article.
The only 'tactic' I use is sticking to the facts. Although I understand why facts are troublesome for apologists of Israel. The only way they can attempt to excuse and justify their treatment of the Palestinians is by repeatedly lying through their fucking teeth.
Yep. Everything you say and site is fact. Everything anyone that doesn't agree with your world view says or sites is propaganda.
Glad that's cleared up for everyone.
Sorry. The world doesn't work the way you tell it to.
Well Byrnzie, in my humble opinion, you use exactly the same tactics as the Israeli media in the article.
The only 'tactic' I use is sticking to the facts. Although I understand why facts are troublesome for apologists of Israel. The only way they can attempt to excuse and justify their treatment of the Palestinians is by repeatedly lying through their fucking teeth.
Yep. Everything you say and site is fact. Everything anyone that doesn't agree with your world view says or sites is propaganda.
Glad that's cleared up for everyone.
Hard to argue with the facts. If you have facts to counter you are more than welcome to. The pro-Israel camp seems to be clouded in speculation. Mostly to suit their narrative.
Well Byrnzie, in my humble opinion, you use exactly the same tactics as the Israeli media in the article.
The only 'tactic' I use is sticking to the facts. Although I understand why facts are troublesome for apologists of Israel. The only way they can attempt to excuse and justify their treatment of the Palestinians is by repeatedly lying through their fucking teeth.
Yep. Everything you say and site is fact. Everything anyone that doesn't agree with your world view says or sites is propaganda.
Glad that's cleared up for everyone.
You know what? If you're so offended by the things which Byrnzie says to you - and you are so certain that they are bullying or belittling remarks, then let his remarks be the last on a train of thought, refrain from posting historical facts without posting evidence, and refute the posts that you find to be untrue with facts with evidence of your own. Byrnzie may be curt in his demeanour, but he is mostly fair.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Well Byrnzie, in my humble opinion, you use exactly the same tactics as the Israeli media in the article.
The only 'tactic' I use is sticking to the facts. Although I understand why facts are troublesome for apologists of Israel. The only way they can attempt to excuse and justify their treatment of the Palestinians is by repeatedly lying through their fucking teeth.
Yep. Everything you say and site is fact. Everything anyone that doesn't agree with your world view says or sites is propaganda.
Glad that's cleared up for everyone.
You know what? If you're so offended by the things which Byrnzie says to you - and you are so certain that they are bullying or belittling remarks, then let his remarks be the last on a train of thought, refrain from posting historical facts without posting evidence, and refute the posts that you find to be untrue with facts with evidence of your own. Byrnzie may be curt in his demeanour, but he is mostly fair.
Why does it have to be so bloody black and white with you guys? It's your way or the propaganda, misinformation of the pro Israeli site. As I stated before, don't be so hasty to dismiss, people because they sing a slightly different song than you want to hear, because while doing so, your corner, will be very lonely pretty soon...
"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
Comments
Well, so anti war make you pro many things. Pro peace, pro human, pro evolution, Makes you pro communication, pro diplomacy, pro love, pro understanding, pro forgiveness. You know some people don’t understand how you can be pro soldier. If you are anti war your pro soldier because you don’t want the soldier to be put in harms way. To sacrifice himself or herself for some reason that’s not...for no good reason. I have many, many...We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces. We have an understanding and they listen our music and they get it so I’m not sure...You know sometimes if you speak out people are going to misunderstand and they take things a certain way or another. If you don’t speak out you don’t know..If someone doesn’t like it probably means it has some kind of meaning. It’s not just bullshit. It’s not just nothing.
So this next song I always thought it was probably the most powerful song ever written. I think it is the most powerful song ever written. Which is why I have never played it. It seems like maybe there is a reason to play it. If you’d like join me or use your voices or hold a light there might be some people out there that need to know they are not alone.”)
We have many, many friends of the group and through out our lives we’ve met incredible people and in the armed forces.
Yep, I get that. I have friends and family in (or were in) the armed forces for whom I care for greatly and I am very anti-war, pro-peace.
Good man, that Ed Vedder.
"What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.
This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet."
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180808/sam-harris-why-dont-i-criticize-israel#undefined
Last year Glenn Greenwald wrote that Sam Harris is a military hawk. And Murtaza Hussain wrote that he is a bigot. If the latest buffoonery of Harris is any measure, they were being excessively generous. He’s got a podcast titled “Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?”on his website about the war on Gaza. It says what he’s been saying for the past ten years: Netanyahu has the moral high ground. The IDF is brutalised by the Palestinians. And sympathy for their cause is a “moral illusion”. Like his hero Alan Dershowitz whose arguments he retails, and who beat him to the atheist lecture circuit by four years, Harris is shrewd enough to oppose the concept of a religion-based Jewish state because theology is the one fraud that he can see through. But the crimes and predations of secular Israel commands his full support. “I’m a great supporter of Israel” he told us on the book tour for The End of Faith, and his faith in militarism is one without end.
In fact, as one reads the transcript that accompanies the podcast, one realises that in spite of appearances to the contrary, his comments are not so much about Gaza, the three murdered Israeli teens for whose recovery Israel said it went to war, and whether Hamas was responsible for the abduction, over which there is much controversy, so much as why Israel is in the front lines of a global war between Islam and the West. He brings in topics that have no bearing on the matter at all such as international terrorist movements like al-Qaeda and ISIS. It’s all part of the same fight against Islam.
He wheels out the same worn arguments. Hamas, and Muslims generally, we are given to understand, hide behind civilians, and that accounts for the high death toll. Proof? None. That’s just what crazy Arabs do. They love shooting rockets out of their baby’s pram. But don’t you worry, he says, in spite of the fact that Muslims take cover behind their children, Israel is deterred by their use of human shields. Presumably when it’s not using them itself.
He argues the Hamas’s charter calls for the extinction of Israel. You would think its charter is the only document Hamas has ever published. Maybe they ran out of printers. It is a widely reported fact that Hamas accepts a two state solution on the 1967 borders. By a delightful inversion of morality, words on a paper outrage him more than bombing schools and hospitals and civilian infrastructure, more than the massacre of eight hundred civilians at the time of writing. He caricatures Gazans as a bunch of crazed Islamists when in fact the Palestinian resistance was secular until Israel began supporting Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO precisely because it did not want to make peace.
And in true Dershowitz form, Harris argues that Israel has exercised more restraint in its wars than America or Europe have in any of theirs. Plainly he’s never heard of Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, or the dozens of other victims of US aggression who did not set off bombs in America.
He claims that Israel’s neighbours harbour genocidal intentions towards Jews. That will surprise the 20,000 Jews who live in Iran, the 17,000 in Turkey and the 15,000 in Azerbaijan. How Palestinians without an army, navy or air force can commit genocide against a nuclear power at all even if they wanted to is not explained. Harris plays on the idea of lonesome Israel encircled by a sea of enemies. As Murray Rothbard noted, in fact Israel is a modern European power that does battle with third world enemies. It is true that anti-semitism is rife in Muslim countries, as is anti-Americanism, and this evil should be denounced, but it would be confined to the lunatic fringe if not for the aggressive posture of the United States and Israel.
There is nothing in his commentary about the economic blockade of Gaza by air, land, and sea, and nothing about the land grabs in the West Bank, except to note that whilst he condemns Jewish extremists, by which, like Dershowitz, he means religious extremists, the only kind who exist in the world naturally, “Israel’s continued appropriation of land has more than a little to do with her security concerns”. So not about expansionism then. Only Muslims do that.
It’s all about the Islamic threat to the West: We must stand with Israel because they are the enemies of our enemies. “The truth is”, he says, “we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized that yet”.
Harris talks like it’s still 9/11. Back then he was indignant with the left for criticising the Bush administration’s war in Iraq because “there are millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney”, and now he’s angry that people should condemn mass murder. Here he is saying that the Iraq war was a reasonable position that intelligent people can support and that it should have been waged with multilateral backing–to defeat the Muslim threat:
“Intelligent people could disagree about whether it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq. But one thing is pretty clear, going in we should have gone in with everybody. We need a truly international effort. We need to convince civilised democracies everywhere that civilisation itself has genuine enemies. These totalitarian, theocratic, tribal eruptions on many parts of the globe on a hundred fronts. Many if not most of them are Muslims.”
He is most happy when he can frame the discussion of war in religious terms. Israel is post-religious and the Palestinians are not. Therefore secularists should side with Israel. America is post-religious and Muslims are not. Therefore secularists ought to side with America. And because Muslims often use religious language to discuss political matters, because they say “jihad” instead of “let’s fight back”, and because they call their dead “martyrs” instead of “fallen heroes”, their concerns are not territorial at all, they are irrational superstition about which there can be no prospects for dialogue.
This habit of always angling for the religious dimension of a conflict, or projecting religion into it where it does not exist, is a consistent pattern of his thought. Even when he has no tribal attachment to the warring sides, he does not ask “Who is the aggressor?”, but “Who is more religious?”. For instance, he mentions the Iran-Iraq war in this debate with Chris Hedges. To most people, that was a straightforward case of aggression by Saddam Hussein against Iran. But Harris does not see that. He is more outraged by the fact Iran used suicide volunteers to clear minefields. “The war between Iran and Iraq was characterised on the Iranian side by this massive campaign of suicide bombing where teenagers were just goaded out to clear minefields by their parents” he says. That is the real problem: Muslims and their martyrdom cult. Not the half a million dead, not Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, not the American support for his invasion in which Harris says “We weren’t involved”. No, the true problem is Iranians defending themselves by suicidal means.
Even when the “martyr” kills nobody but himself in order to clear mines, he is the object of horror and condemnation. When asked by Robert Scheer, the debate’s moderator, what is the difference fundamentally between a suicide bomber and a fighter bomber in Vietnam or the atomic bombers on Japan, he simply evades the question, saying that he doesn’t want to defend the Vietnam war.
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/defends-silence-slaughter.html
Can you also explain to me how the Palestinians are to blame for having 80% of their original homeland stolen from them?
Thanks.
This is about as bad as human beings are capable of behaving. But what distinguishes us from many of our enemies is that this indiscriminate violence appalls us. The massacre at My Lai is remembered as a signature moment of shame for the American military. Even at the time, US soldiers were dumbstruck with horror by the behaviour of their comrades. One helicopter pilot who arrived on the scene ordered his subordinates to use their machine guns against their own troops if they did not stop killing villagers. As a culture we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not.
(The End of Faith, Page 144)
What kind of charlatan holds up a war that slaughtered two million Vietnamese civilians as an example of America’s compassion? The only thing wrong with Vietnam was My Lai, you appreciate. The use of Agent Orange and depleted uranium, the widespread torture, Nixon’s readiness to deploy nuclear weapons, the 150,000 children born with birth defects– these had no effect on the conscience of America. But My Lai, well, that was a freak aberration.
Again, when he talks about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in this debate with Robert Wright he is alarmed not by the over one million Afghans killed by the invasion, and not by the fall of the socially-liberal if autocratic communists of the PDPA who upheld women’s rights to the Islamists, thanks to American support, but by what he claims is Afghan fighters setting up encampments in the field of fire so they could be bombed and thereby martyred. Ignore the fact that no fighting force could have defeated Russia if that was indeed their military strategy, what is striking here is that he considers suicidal actions more alarming than aggressive wars that destroy a nation. You can bomb whatever you like, just don’t kill yourself in the process: such is the cutting edge philosophy of our deep thinker.
And it is a popular philosophy. His post has garnered close to 140 thousand Facebook likes. There is a kind of atheist who is impressed by this grotesquery, who thinks religion is the only consideration that should inform morality. Ayn Rand, grand dame of another generation of atheists, declared the Palestinians savages. Now Harris declares them barbarians. Atheism used to be represented by high toned thinkers like Carl Sagan and A J Ayer. Today it’s been hijacked by cheap demagogues without sense or decency.
It can be achieved by implementing the international consensus, which calls for a two-state settlement of the conflict based on U.N Resolution 242. The whole World supports this, including Hamas.
The only thing preventing it is the U.S government.
If that were to happen, I wonder if the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world would allow the 13.75 million Jews live in peace as well.
Elie Weisel also defended two known frauds written on the holocaust: 'The Painted Bird' by Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski, and 'Fragments by' Binjamin Wilkomirski. He defended these books even after they'd been exposed as frauds.
Review of Norman Finkelstein's 'The Holocaust Industry':
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Hoste-Finkelstein.html
'...the author does a fantastic job of exposing the gang of charlatans and frauds that constitute The Holocaust Industry. For a fee of $25,000, survivor Elie Wiesel will tell you that the “secret” of Auschwitz’s “truth lies in silence” and that The Holocaust “leads into darkness,” “negates all answers,” “lies outside, if not beyond, history,” “defies both knowledge and description,” “cannot be explained nor visualized,” and is “never to be explained or transmitted.” To him, to compare Jewish suffering to that of others is a “total betrayal of Jewish history.” A parody of a New York tabloid once had the headline: “Michael Jackson, 60 Million Others, Die in Nuclear Holocaust.” The parody included a letter supposedly from Eli Wiesel in which he protested “How dare people refer to what happened yesterday as a Holocaust? There was only one Holocaust.”
Not only does Wiesel think that Jewish suffering is in a class of its own, but he and organized Jewry guard their unique status in a very creepy way. He withdrew from a conference on genocide because the slaughter of Armenians by the Turks would be mentioned. Jewish organizations have lobbied against a day of remembrance for the Armenians.
Predictably, when the victims of violence are the enemies of Jews, compassion goes out the window.” To Wiesel, Arabs hate Jews for their existence.
Obama signs bill giving Israel $225 million for missile defense system
President Obama on Monday signed a bill that will give Israel $225 million to restock its Iron Dome missile defense system.
The House voted 395-8 to pass the bill Friday night.
The missile shield system was developed jointly by the United States and Israel and is said to have intercepted dozens of rockets fired from Gaza during the conflict that began July 17. The system uses advanced tracking technology to determine if a rocket is headed for a population center; if it is it destroys the rocket mid-flight.
Israel and Hamas agreed late Monday to an Egyptian-sponsored 72-hour cease fire.
At a news conference Friday, Obama underscored Israel's right to defend itself and noted American support for the Iron Dome.
"And so, not only have we been supportive of Israel in its right to defend itself, but in very concrete terms -- for example, in support for the Iron Dome program that has intercepted rockets that are firing down on Israeli cities -- we've been trying to cooperate as much as we can to make sure that Israel is able to protect its citizens," Obama said.
An Israeli airstrike Sunday killed 10 people outside a U.N. school in Gaza, prompting some of the harshest American criticism of Israel since the conflict began.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement that “the United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling” and urged Israel to do more to “avoid civilian casualties” and to protect U.N. facilities.
Before the cease-fire announcement Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the United States continues to push for a cease-fire and that it has expressed its concerns about the Israeli military living up "to their own standards" about protecting civilians.
"We do continue to believe that the violence in Gaza should end as soon as possible," Earnest said.
Hundreds of posts have been made in these threads explaining the reality of the situation over there. Hundreds of posts that have documented the history, and the political situation. Nothing too complicated about any of it. And then backseatlover chimes in with a ridiculous, dismissive comment that 'Both sides are to blame' - thereby completely ignoring reality.
I just think it's pretty depressing that you'd then agree with her.
https://medium.com/i-data/israel-gaza-war-data-a54969aeb23e?_ga=1.228407453.1696459479.1404973476
If we will have any form of peace in the middle east, we will have to step over the blame issue and look for the things we share in common.
Let there be peace...
"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
Nobody else has claimed anything of the sort.
If you actually read through the thread you'll notice that most people just post beliefs and opinions, some of them with no relation to reality at all, such as backseatlovers assertion that 'Both sides are to blame'.
He also makes the false claim that nobody knows who was responsible for the last bombing of a UNRWA school.
"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
Although I understand why facts are troublesome for apologists of Israel.
The only way they can attempt to excuse and justify their treatment of the Palestinians is by repeatedly lying through their fucking teeth.
Glad that's cleared up for everyone.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
"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