Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[DrZoidberg]

Fun fact, if you want to find something actually true to accuse Israel of, perhaps read up on how Israels policity on water management unfairly impacts the Palestinian farmers living in the West Bank. Which is not cool and which Israel should be ashamed about.

But I think that might be a bit too advanced for the antisemites. That would require doing some acual research. That's not their style.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

At no point did these settlements take land from Palestinians who lived their. They're farming previously unused land.

This concept of terra nullius has historically been used for US expansion westward onto indigenous lands. It was used for some areas and for others, violence was used. This idea of terra nullius disregarded the presence and sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples and their lands.

 

[laughing dog]

I like how taking farm land and destroying people’s livelihood is not considered displacing anyone by ethnic cleansing apologists.

 

[DrZoidberg]

At no point did these settlements take land from Palestinians who lived their. They're farming previously unused land.

This concept of terra nullius has historically been used for US expansion westward onto indigenous lands. It was used for some areas and for others, violence was used. This idea of terra nullius disregarded the presence and sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples and their lands.

So the Jews are just like Hitler.

Try again.

You are comparing things that shouldn't be compared.

There's a lot of empty land in the West Bank because Jordan murdered or expelled the Jews who lived there in 1948.

But of course, more complicated. The entire region is full of valleys and hills. The valleys are good for farming. The Hills are not. The valleys are largely isolated. And water is a scarce resource, all over the region. It makes it hard to have interconnected societies in the region. The infrastructure is shit. Because it's the most expensive type of terrain to build roads and railways on. The geography leads to little isolated settlements with limited physical contact with the settlements around it. It makes it hard to police for Israels central govornment.

It gives a massive unfair advantage to the side that has functioning democratic institutions, who know how to work the system. Muslims/Palestinians just suck at these sorts of things. They're also overwhelmingly radicalised by Islamists. So not only are they not politically organised as a single unit. They belong to a variety of loony extremist Islamic sects who are competing with eachother on who hates Jews the most.

The Israeli settlers are working the democratic system to get better access to water. The Palestinians think that peaceful interaction with Jews is haram, and refuse to get involved in the democratic process (as well as attack Palestinians who try). Israel is a democracy. They can't just suspend the democratic process, for the benefit of Islamist Palestinians. So the Jewish settlers win on walk over, making the Palestinians increasingly bitter.

Israeli right wing extremist settlers have gamed the system so that they continualy provoke the Palestinians. Since the Palestinians are overwhelmingly Islamist extremists, when they retaliate, the army has to get involved. And it's not like the right wing Israeli extremists are completely bizarre. These lands used be mostly Jewish. The only reason they're not is because Jordan ethnically cleansed it in 1948. But even before this, in spite of being a minority, the Arabs had all the best land. Why? Because they were ruled by an Islamic Caliphate unfairly benefitting Muslims. So they have a fair gripe about how it's all unfair. You can really make any case here, and it'll sound reasonable. The history of this place is so complicated.

This conflict has nothing to do with the US expansion westward onto indigenous lands. The fact that you tried to crowbar this because it has some extremely superficial similarities tells me that you don't really care.

 

[ZiprHead]

The Palestinians think that peaceful interaction with Jews is haram, and refuse to get involved in the democratic process (as well as attack Palestinians who try).

Didn't you previously say there were Palestinians in Israeli government???

 

[DrZoidberg]

The Palestinians think that peaceful interaction with Jews is haram, and refuse to get involved in the democratic process (as well as attack Palestinians who try).

Didn't you previously say there were Palestinians in Israeli government???

You need to separate Palestinians in the West bank and the Palestinians living in Israel.

The Palestinians who live in Israel proper are pretty well westernised. They say they identify with other Palestinians, but they don't. They look down on other Palestinians and think they're backward peasants.

The problem with the Palestinian identity is that its not an ethnic group. They're just Arabs. Arabs are diverse and have zero unity or social cohesion. The Palestinians also don't. Arabs are loyal to their family or clan. Arab nationalism, (baathism) never went anywhere. Every baathist govornment ended up a kleptocracy dominated by a single family.

The current Palestinian identity was created as a weapon against Israel. Ie, the Arabs that are the rightful owners of the land Israel is on. Before Israel was founded the Jews in Palestine was also Palestinians.

So the terminology is incredibly confusing. Add to that that other Arabs use the Palestinian identity as a way to segregate and opress Palestinians.

It is funny that Israel has never opressed Palestinians. But other Arabs have. A lot. But its only Israel who gets called out on it, even though they aren't opressing them. The western media coverage of the situation is bizarre.

 

[laughing dog]

It is funny that Israel has never opressed Palestinians.

It is sad you think anyone will believe such nonsense.

 

[Emily Lake]

At this point Israel had been behaving so well for so long and there's been so much oportunity to prove they've been misbehaving that the only reason I can see for continuing to blame Israel is antisemitism.

To be fair, I don't think that's the only reason. It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's also entirely possible that some people have the philosophical belief that islamophobia is more widespread and more harmful than antisemitism, and so they will side with the islamic cohort that they view as being oppressed.

I don't think that view makes sense, but there are a lot of views that people hold that don't make sense to me. Not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

And don't underestimate the impact of social media propaganda, especially when it pulls on heartstrings. The narrative of israel committing 'genocide' in gaza didn't really evolve naturally.

 

[DrZoidberg]

At this point Israel had been behaving so well for so long and there's been so much oportunity to prove they've been misbehaving that the only reason I can see for continuing to blame Israel is antisemitism.

To be fair, I don't think that's the only reason. It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's also entirely possible that some people have the philosophical belief that islamophobia is more widespread and more harmful than antisemitism, and so they will side with the islamic cohort that they view as being oppressed.

I don't think that view makes sense, but there are a lot of views that people hold that don't make sense to me. Not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

And don't underestimate the impact of social media propaganda, especially when it pulls on heartstrings. The narrative of israel committing 'genocide' in gaza didn't really evolve naturally.

I think its much simpler. And absolutely horrific. Its to do with intersectionalism and woke ideology. The entire theory rests upon creating a hierarchy of human worth. Whoever the wokes think is a lesser worth human they will try to act to elevate. Thry also reject human agency. Everyone is where they are because of "systematic opression". Ie, nobody needs to be held accountable for their actions. No matter what those at the bottom of the hierarchy does, its the fault of those at the top of the hierarchy.

I hate that these people have been allowed to pervert the contemporary left in this way. Its one of the worst ideologies we ever devised, imho.

And how a religion with a billion followers has been designated a minority is so strange.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Warning, long post.

There's another thing leftists often get confused about. Islam has always been an imperialistic ideology hellbent on world domination. Both spiritual domination as well as political domination. So was Christianity. It pretended to only be about spiritual domination, but wasn’t true.

Anyway, the Renaissance came and somehow transformed western Christian thought enough to nudge it along a trajectory that led it to industrialisation and the Enlightenment. A culture characterised by openess, a willingness to experiment and incentives to do so.

From the age of the first farmers all the way to 1700 the Middle East was the wealthiest region on Earth. Europe was an impoverished backwater.

Industrialisation and the Enlightenment transformed it to an unprecedented growth and human flourishing. The likes of which has never before been seen in human history. And not only for the elites. For all levels in the social hierarchy. The most egalitarian society ever. And also wealthiest. With such an explosive growth that allowed it to dominate the rest of the world.

Europe didn't take over the planet and create empires because they were mean. They did it because they could. At the peak of European power, Europe itself started to reflect on their excesses to reign themselves in.

The British empire gets a lot of shit. And it was a horrific empire with extreme amounts of suffering as a result. But ALL other empires in human history were worse, by orders of magnitude. Certainly the Ottoman Caliphate and the other Islamic empires.

My point is that western culture and western civilisation is objectively superior no matter what metric we use.

1950 - 1990 with Marxist analysis we used to downplay the importance of culture. And thought the industrial revolution was primarily the result of luck, (guns, germs and steel). Modern historians tend to be more nuanced, and put the main important factor of western dominance as the culture. Its not just "protestant work ethic". Its a whole host of factors creating synergy.

Western dominance was so traumatic for Asia that they explicitly tried to copy it (Meiji restauration, Guomindang, Chinese Communist party, etc).

The Islamic world, (ie Turkey) tried it under Atatürk. The Baathists tried nationalism/fascism. Nasser tried socialism. All western imports. Didn't work out.

We can speculate all day as to why Islamic cultures struggle with adoption western values (necessary in a global world where access to global markets is a necessity for economic growth). But the fact is that they do.

The tolerance and respect for basic human rights is tied to western innovation and western economic growth (Richard Florida for example). That's not white supremacy.

Islamic supremacy is the basic ideology of the Islamic world. Its an intolerant zero sum ideology that seems to care about little else but social cohesion. Islamic culture puts an extreme emphasis on shared values, shared norms and shared narratives. While westerners put a premium on tolerance and openness and financial growth. When these rub up against each other it gets weird. Because these cultures play different games and have different goals.

Israel is a western culture. While Arab culture, in general, is Islamic.

The Arabs don't seem to value to live in peace with Israel and peacefully coexist. Because that's not an Islamic value.

I am convinced that eventually the Arabs will become westernised. Western culture is so extremely efficient at generating wealth and power I can't see how it can lose the meme war. But its going to take a while. Until then, let's not keep making excuses for the Arabs and their atrocities.

We have western values in the west. Lets judge Arabs from the same metric we would judge ourselves. Rape, murder and genocide are not acceptable behaviours.

Bending backwards to massage the facts in order to make the Palestinians into victims is not helping anyone. Certainly not the Palestinians.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

At this point Israel had been behaving so well for so long and there's been so much oportunity to prove they've been misbehaving that the only reason I can see for continuing to blame Israel is antisemitism.

To be fair, I don't think that's the only reason. It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's also entirely possible that some people have the philosophical belief that islamophobia is more widespread and more harmful than antisemitism, and so they will side with the islamic cohort that they view as being oppressed.

I don't think that view makes sense, but there are a lot of views that people hold that don't make sense to me. Not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

And don't underestimate the impact of social media propaganda, especially when it pulls on heartstrings. The narrative of israel committing 'genocide' in gaza didn't really evolve naturally.

Translation: "People who disagree with me might not be completely anti-Semitic, they might just be stoopid."

Nowhere in your worldview is it that people who disagree with you have a respect for human life and equality and derive their conclusions rationally with those values in mind.

 

[laughing dog]

Warning, long post.

There's another thing leftists often get confused about. Islam has always been an imperialistic ideology hellbent on world domination. Both spiritual domination as well as political domination. So was Christianity. It pretended to only be about spiritual domination, but wasn’t true.

Anyway, the Renaissance came and somehow transformed western Christian thought enough to nudge it along a trajectory that led it to industrialisation and the Enlightenment. A culture characterised by openess, a willingness to experiment and incentives to do so.

From the age of the first farmers all the way to 1700 the Middle East was the wealthiest region on Earth. Europe was an impoverished backwater.

Industrialisation and the Enlightenment transformed it to an unprecedented growth and human flourishing. The likes of which has never before been seen in human history. And not only for the elites. For all levels in the social hierarchy. The most egalitarian society ever. And also wealthiest. With such an explosive growth that allowed it to dominate the rest of the world.

Europe didn't take over the planet and create empires because they were mean. They did it because they could. At the peak of European power, Europe itself started to reflect on their excesses to reign themselves in.

The British empire gets a lot of shit. And it was a horrific empire with extreme amounts of suffering as a result. But ALL other empires in human history were worse, by orders of magnitude. Certainly the Ottoman Caliphate and the other Islamic empires.

My point is that western culture and western civilisation is objectively superior no matter what metric we use.

1950 - 1990 with Marxist analysis we used to downplay the importance of culture. And thought the industrial revolution was primarily the result of luck, (guns, germs and steel). Modern historians tend to be more nuanced, and put the main important factor of western dominance as the culture. Its not just "protestant work ethic". Its a whole host of factors creating synergy.

Western dominance was so traumatic for Asia that they explicitly tried to copy it (Meiji restauration, Guomindang, Chinese Communist party, etc).

The Islamic world, (ie Turkey) tried it under Atatürk. The Baathists tried nationalism/fascism. Nasser tried socialism. All western imports. Didn't work out.

We can speculate all day as to why Islamic cultures struggle with adoption western values (necessary in a global world where access to global markets is a necessity for economic growth). But the fact is that they do.

The tolerance and respect for basic human rights is tied to western innovation and western economic growth (Richard Florida for example). That's not white supremacy.

Islamic supremacy is the basic ideology of the Islamic world. Its an intolerant zero sum ideology that seems to care about little else but social cohesion. Islamic culture puts an extreme emphasis on shared values, shared norms and shared narratives. While westerners put a premium on tolerance and openness and financial growth. When these rub up against each other it gets weird. Because these cultures play different games and have different goals.

Israel is a western culture. While Arab culture, in general, is Islamic.

The Arabs don't seem to value to live in peace with Israel and peacefully coexist. Because that's not an Islamic value.

I am convinced that eventually the Arabs will become westernised. Western culture is so extremely efficient at generating wealth and power I can't see how it can lose the meme war. But its going to take a while. Until then, let's not keep making excuses for the Arabs and their atrocities.

We have western values in the west. Lets judge Arabs from the same metric we would judge ourselves. Rape, murder and genocide are not acceptable behaviours.

Bending backwards to massage the facts in order to make the Palestinians into victims is not helping anyone. Certainly not the Palestinians.

No one here is making excuses or defending Arab atrocities in this thread Ironically, there people in this thread who use western values to excuse and promote Israel’s atrocities.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Warning, long post.

There's another thing leftists often get confused about. Islam has always been an imperialistic ideology hellbent on world domination. Both spiritual domination as well as political domination. So was Christianity. It pretended to only be about spiritual domination, but wasn’t true.

Anyway, the Renaissance came and somehow transformed western Christian thought enough to nudge it along a trajectory that led it to industrialisation and the Enlightenment. A culture characterised by openess, a willingness to experiment and incentives to do so.

From the age of the first farmers all the way to 1700 the Middle East was the wealthiest region on Earth. Europe was an impoverished backwater.

Industrialisation and the Enlightenment transformed it to an unprecedented growth and human flourishing. The likes of which has never before been seen in human history. And not only for the elites. For all levels in the social hierarchy. The most egalitarian society ever. And also wealthiest. With such an explosive growth that allowed it to dominate the rest of the world.

Europe didn't take over the planet and create empires because they were mean. They did it because they could. At the peak of European power, Europe itself started to reflect on their excesses to reign themselves in.

The British empire gets a lot of shit. And it was a horrific empire with extreme amounts of suffering as a result. But ALL other empires in human history were worse, by orders of magnitude. Certainly the Ottoman Caliphate and the other Islamic empires.

My point is that western culture and western civilisation is objectively superior no matter what metric we use.

1950 - 1990 with Marxist analysis we used to downplay the importance of culture. And thought the industrial revolution was primarily the result of luck, (guns, germs and steel). Modern historians tend to be more nuanced, and put the main important factor of western dominance as the culture. Its not just "protestant work ethic". Its a whole host of factors creating synergy.

Western dominance was so traumatic for Asia that they explicitly tried to copy it (Meiji restauration, Guomindang, Chinese Communist party, etc).

The Islamic world, (ie Turkey) tried it under Atatürk. The Baathists tried nationalism/fascism. Nasser tried socialism. All western imports. Didn't work out.

We can speculate all day as to why Islamic cultures struggle with adoption western values (necessary in a global world where access to global markets is a necessity for economic growth). But the fact is that they do.

The tolerance and respect for basic human rights is tied to western innovation and western economic growth (Richard Florida for example). That's not white supremacy.

Islamic supremacy is the basic ideology of the Islamic world. Its an intolerant zero sum ideology that seems to care about little else but social cohesion. Islamic culture puts an extreme emphasis on shared values, shared norms and shared narratives. While westerners put a premium on tolerance and openness and financial growth. When these rub up against each other it gets weird. Because these cultures play different games and have different goals.

Israel is a western culture. While Arab culture, in general, is Islamic.

The Arabs don't seem to value to live in peace with Israel and peacefully coexist. Because that's not an Islamic value.

I am convinced that eventually the Arabs will become westernised. Western culture is so extremely efficient at generating wealth and power I can't see how it can lose the meme war. But its going to take a while. Until then, let's not keep making excuses for the Arabs and their atrocities.

We have western values in the west. Lets judge Arabs from the same metric we would judge ourselves. Rape, murder and genocide are not acceptable behaviours.

Bending backwards to massage the facts in order to make the Palestinians into victims is not helping anyone. Certainly not the Palestinians.

No one here is making excuses or defending Arab atrocities in this thread Ironically, there people in this thread who use western values to excuse and promote Israel’s atrocities.

Bullshit. Your attempt to squirm out of responsibility for your reprehensible values is rejected

 

[laughing dog]

[No one here is making excuses or defending Arab atrocities in this thread Ironically, there people in this thread who use western values to excuse and promote Israel’s atrocities.

Bullshit. Your attempt to squirm out of responsibility for your reprehensible values is rejected

What values of mine are “reprehensible “? Being against ethnic cleansing or the withholding of food and medical supplies for civilians for months? Objecting to bombing food aid?

You can deny reality, as your posts amply demonstrate, but they cannot change it.

 

[Emily Lake]

At this point Israel had been behaving so well for so long and there's been so much oportunity to prove they've been misbehaving that the only reason I can see for continuing to blame Israel is antisemitism.

To be fair, I don't think that's the only reason. It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's also entirely possible that some people have the philosophical belief that islamophobia is more widespread and more harmful than antisemitism, and so they will side with the islamic cohort that they view as being oppressed.

I don't think that view makes sense, but there are a lot of views that people hold that don't make sense to me. Not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

And don't underestimate the impact of social media propaganda, especially when it pulls on heartstrings. The narrative of israel committing 'genocide' in gaza didn't really evolve naturally.

Translation: "People who disagree with me might not be completely anti-Semitic, they might just be stoopid."

Nowhere in your worldview is it that people who disagree with you have a respect for human life and equality and derive their conclusions rationally with those values in mind.

At no point did I say that the opposing view was stupid, nor that those holding that view were stupid. Acknowledging that a view doesn't make sense to me isn't a condemnation of that view, it's a recognition that multiple views exist even if I don't understand them.

I'm not so arrogant as to implicitly assume that my views are the only right views.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

At this point Israel had been behaving so well for so long and there's been so much oportunity to prove they've been misbehaving that the only reason I can see for continuing to blame Israel is antisemitism.

To be fair, I don't think that's the only reason. It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's also entirely possible that some people have the philosophical belief that islamophobia is more widespread and more harmful than antisemitism, and so they will side with the islamic cohort that they view as being oppressed.

I don't think that view makes sense, but there are a lot of views that people hold that don't make sense to me. Not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

And don't underestimate the impact of social media propaganda, especially when it pulls on heartstrings. The narrative of israel committing 'genocide' in gaza didn't really evolve naturally.

Translation: "People who disagree with me might not be completely anti-Semitic, they might just be stoopid."

Nowhere in your worldview is it that people who disagree with you have a respect for human life and equality and derive their conclusions rationally with those values in mind.

At no point did I say that the opposing view was stupid,

You did not __explicitly__ state the opposing view was stupid. You painted people having the opposing view as duped by social media propaganda.

nor that those holding that view were stupid. Acknowledging that a view doesn't make sense to me isn't a condemnation of that view, it's a recognition that multiple views exist even if I don't understand them.

I'm not so arrogant as to implicitly assume that my views are the only right views.

Saying that something doesn't make sense is not equivalent to saying in humility that it is beyond you because of limited capacity or ignorance of the issues by __you__, Adding things about social media is very one-sided. Zoidberg posts social media all the time in this thread, for example. Some others post historical, educational material, such as Arctish. I think oversimplifying and largely mischaracterizing people's views in the thread and their sources of information, while making them out to be social media dupes is an attack that lacks merit and does not contribute much to the educational content of the thread, merely an increase in divisiveness.

 

[Emily Lake]

At this point Israel had been behaving so well for so long and there's been so much oportunity to prove they've been misbehaving that the only reason I can see for continuing to blame Israel is antisemitism.

To be fair, I don't think that's the only reason. It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's also entirely possible that some people have the philosophical belief that islamophobia is more widespread and more harmful than antisemitism, and so they will side with the islamic cohort that they view as being oppressed.

I don't think that view makes sense, but there are a lot of views that people hold that don't make sense to me. Not making sense to me doesn't mean it isn't a thing.

And don't underestimate the impact of social media propaganda, especially when it pulls on heartstrings. The narrative of israel committing 'genocide' in gaza didn't really evolve naturally.

Translation: "People who disagree with me might not be completely anti-Semitic, they might just be stoopid."

Nowhere in your worldview is it that people who disagree with you have a respect for human life and equality and derive their conclusions rationally with those values in mind.

At no point did I say that the opposing view was stupid,

You did not __explicitly__ state the opposing view was stupid. You painted people having the opposing view as duped by social media propaganda.

nor that those holding that view were stupid. Acknowledging that a view doesn't make sense to me isn't a condemnation of that view, it's a recognition that multiple views exist even if I don't understand them.

I'm not so arrogant as to implicitly assume that my views are the only right views.

Saying that something doesn't make sense is not equivalent to saying in humility that it is beyond you because of limited capacity or ignorance of the issues by __you__, Adding things about social media is very one-sided. Zoidberg posts social media all the time in this thread, for example. Some others post historical, educational material, such as Arctish. I think oversimplifying and largely mischaracterizing people's views in the thread and their sources of information, while making them out to be social media dupes is an attack that lacks merit and does not contribute much to the educational content of the thread, merely an increase in divisiveness.

I'm also not so lacking in self esteem that I think all views I disagree with are beyond my capacity to understand.

I swear, sometimes you people are so fucking determined to create a bad guy to fight against that you completely lose touch with reality.
Some people are influenced by social media, much of which is manipulated in order to drive adoption of a narrative.
Some people are influenced by their own pre-existing bias as it relates to any given religion.
Some people see the plight of civilians in Gaza as paramount, and feel that such suffering - regardless of who is causing it - justifies the narrative framing of such suffering as "genocide".
Some think that people they view as oppressed in one way or another need to be protected from those they view as oppressors.
Some people probably genuinely believe that Israel is intentionally trying to literally kill every single palestinian.
Some people just can't prevent themselves from using egregiously hyperbolic language.
Some people hate Netanyahu.

At the end of the day, some people believe what they're saying, some have come to that conclusion based on reason, but a whole lot of them have simply swallowed what they're told, and they regurgitate it without engaging their brain.

The entire point here is to acknowledge that there are multiple views, many of which make sense, many of which do not make sense, and that it's idiotic beyond belief to pretend that this is a clear black-and-white situation where one side is all good and the other side is all bad. With a closely following point that propaganda is a real thing.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

At no point did I say that the opposing view was stupid, nor that those holding that view were stupid. Acknowledging that a view doesn't make sense to me isn't a condemnation of that view, it's a recognition that multiple views exist even if I don't understand them.

I'm not so arrogant as to implicitly assume that my views are the only right views.

*cough*

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Which people are the _some_ people around here? Please point out the people you mean so we can see what you are talking about from all the various _some people_ you talked about. Don't be shy.

 

[TV and credit cards]

How 81% of Gaza are ligitimate targets.
If you can't get Reader View, scroll past the childish graphics to "Anatomy of Destruction".


*Yes the title is drowning in sarcasm.