Senate Israel/Palestine

It wasn't "to" him; I was just using his statement to preface my own argument. In any case, why does it matter?

 

It doesn't really matter. It's just weird.

 

I would think the better point is that maybe, just maybe, the reason the Jews are not terribly popular in Palestine is tied more to how they keep 1.6 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and can isolate them from the outside world whenever they feel like it, while bombing densely populated areas trying to murder individuals and not caring about the collateral civilian damage? And this is done by a government that therefore is easily seen as representative of Israelis as a whole, in contrast to the attacks from Palestinians which are the actions of individuals since they've been prevented from forming a fully functioning and fully independent government that would be answerable to, and representative of, the Palestinian people? I would suspect that all doesn't resonate terribly well with the Palestinian people and is far more damaging the propaganda discussion.

The relevant point on Israeli propaganda isn't what they talk about domestically, it's the narrative that they've been able to sell in the US to help maintain support.

 

Of course that's a part of it. In terms of tactics, I don't really think the Israelis have any claim to the moral high ground. But that's only half the story. Tactics are deployed to facilitate an end. What's a more admirable end; to preserve the security of an pluralist, albeit imperfect Jewish state or to help fell an imagined phantasmagorical Zionist regime bent on global domination? To get more at the crux of the matter, I get the idea that folks like Hoth imagine that the Palestinians want desperately to establish a pluralist democratic government but are constantly prevented from doing so by the imperialist Israelis. That's a gross distortion of the dynamics at play.

 

I really don't think you should be making such a dishonest comparison and then talk about 'gross distortion' by other people.

 

Question: If you were dropped from a plane into the region and wanted to live as an open homosexual, to which country would you hightail it?

Hint: It starts with an "I", and rhymes with "full".

 

Well, that isn't entirely due to the government. The Gaza Strip isn't really capable of something like an independent judiciary.

 

Guy, why are you being so obtuse? This sort of thing crystallizes my entire problem with how people view this conflict. People tend to view American values as the "true" values that history is inevitably marching toward, as Jefferson mistakenly did, and desperately try to graft them on to every resistant movement that emerges. That is appallingly ethnocentric. American values emerged because of the temporal, contingent geopolitical realities of the time. They aren't some metaphysical reality that all populations are inevitably marching toward were they only not impeded by the lack of whatever entity, in this case an "independent judiciary".

 

Erm, Israel's court system has been instrumental in advancing LGBT rights in the country. I wasn't really applying American values.

 

I'm genuinely confused as to who you were deploying your argument at and why. Please elaborate. (I am not at all saying this in a standoffish way. I am genuinely confused and don't want to say anything impulsive until I calibrate myself)

 

The Gaza Strip is not a functioning state. It cannot set up a court system in the way Israel can, and have a judicial body that can act independently of the government (think Brown v. Board). It's 4 a.m. and maybe I'm not articulating my point sufficiently. I just don't think it's unsurprising thatt, as Rogue_Ten put it, "the world's largest concentration camp" isn't exactly a hub of progressive thought regarding homosexuality, something traditionally regarded as sinful by the Abrahamic religions.

 

Like I always tell people about abortion vs. gay marriage as civil rights issues - generally I think it's preferable to stop people from being killed unfairly to making sure that they treat homosexuals fairly.

Once you get people to stop getting killed, then you can work out the relatively minor issues.

Just because Israel may have better treatment of sexual minorities doesn't mean that it's doing more right in the course of this conflict than the Palestinians.

 

Right, and look how long it took for Brown v. Board to happen, and even then, it was partly a reflection of national sentiment. You can see this sort of thing even very recently. Roberts upheld the ACA to preserve his legacy. My point is that people tend to have this idea that pluralism is "objectively" the correct perspective and that all learned minds will eventually lean that way. But it's not, both metaphysically and empirically. Freedom of individual conscience is tied to the Protestant Revolution. Islam hasn't had such a revolution, and it's ethnocentric to imagine it "should" or will. There is no "Render unto Caesar..." equivalent in Islam.

 

I was responding to this rhetorical question:

I was not making any ethnocentric or deterministic point or whatever.

 

Implicit in your response to that was that if only Gaza had an "independent judiciary", Gaza would be friendly to homosexuals. From where do you draw such an inference besides your own contingent, western upbringing?

 

Condition, it seems the main thrust of your argument is that if (no matter under what circumstances) a people collectively disregard certain human rights, all their own rights are forfeit.
If this is not the case - if this doesn't accurately describe your stance - then how are the muslim traditions you cite relevant to the discussion?

 

Maybe there would not be so many people in the Gaza strip if they did not had the bright idea to increase by four times their population within 50 years to ''destroy the Zionist ennemy with their numbers'' ?

And, no, it's not racist to say this. In French Canada, our ''leaders'' in the 19th century had the bright idea to try to dominate the whole (canadian) Confederation by promoting an extremely high birthrate, so we would have more political power than the Anglo-canadians. The obvious reasult was a lot of poor French Canadians without much education. I don't see why this stupid idea would work better against Israel.

 

If the Arab populations of the West Bank and Gaza would not outnumber the Jews within Israel, I am fairly certain those territories would have been annexed by now. Their current dilemma is that the settlers want the land, but they don't know what to do with the people on it. So, based on that, I'd say their strategy has paid off.

 

It's just that the Palestinians (and their very naive supporters) apparently don't make the link between ''having 10 kids to smash the Zionist ennemy'' and ''being poor''.

 

pakistan recently became the first nation to recognize and explicitely affirm the voting rights of a third sex, even though "two-spirit" and other such middle-sex traditions (somewhat analogous to transgendered individuals in the anglosphere, but very differently culturally-loaded) exist in many more western (and stable) countries. just one example why suggesting that judiciary in islamic countries is inherently more inured to progress is exactly the racist claptrap it appears to be at first glance

meanwhile, the hard-hitting journalism on the conflict we've all been waiting for has arrived. no, the Economist didnt come in the mail, im talking about THIS:

 

Rogue, is there an inherent satisfaction taken in being disingenuous?

Seriously. It adds nothing to the discussion and has the (unintended) outcome of making your contributions almost wholly skippable.

If you had any interest in participating you could have achieved the same effect without looking like a smug cad by simply going to the Jerusalem Post homepage and highlighting the coverage they have given the situation. A fluff piece on pets, which you almost certainly were alerted to via other media (as per your posts earlier), was never purporting to be a serious analysis of the conflict.

But, I counted at least 3 alarming stories (emphasis on the volume of rockets and IDF personnel/Israeli civilians wounded; championing the strikes at "terror cells", etc) which are purporting to seriously cover the conflict. There's no attempt to illuminate readers on the futile nature of this conflict, and to argue peace is the best outcome. It's basically an IDF mouthpiece...

 

if you dont see the astounding banal evil and poisoned culture embodied in the article, im not going to explain it to you. is there inherent satisfaction in feigned (?) mind-blindness?

maybe try reading something that doesnt conform to a style guide?

 

It's almost exhausting trying to talk reasonably and rationally with you and Vivec.

Read this: http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=292731

Notice how despite confirming ~120 Palestinian deaths it is presented as a side note to the bigger story?

For a paper that went left wing to right wing to more non-partisan and central, JPost is doing an alarming job in undermining the Palestinian casualties here.

How that's not significant I don't know.

 

agreed.