History in the making, Part 2, V.2 - Israel/Palestine - NO RELIGION

aircooled said:

Someone ask a ways up about how Hamas planned the attack.  There was a very revealing interview done by Russia Today, where a Hamas leader proudly talked about what they did.  I had the direct link previously (maybe in the original thread?), but this appears to be pretty complete:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/

The basic answer is they were pretending to be concentrating on helping the Palestinian people, which of course, if nothing else, I suspect will make Israel VERY reluctant to trust anything like that again, even if it is true.

Quoted from the article "a huge failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus in the south."  Understatement of the century...

First off, please everyone keep this civil. There's no need for this to be locked. It's a difficult topic, but descending into personal accusations and reductio ad absurdum is not necessary nor helpful.

Now, the fundamental problem as I see it is how to address what to many of us is an inscrutable ideology, one that results in actions that may seem unconscionable in any circumstance. This has been studied on both the micro and macro levels - just as an example, here are two books I just pulled off my shelf (I've got a whole shelf just devoted to terrorism):

Just because the means may be distasteful - and I don't think anyone here is suggesting that they aren't - doesn't mean that we have to become so fixated on them that we cannot look more thoughtfully at the broader situation.

In reply to Duke :

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

HAMAS didn't even form as an actual entity until the late '80s.  Twenty years after the 1967 push, and 10 years after the 1970s settlement expansions.

I never claimed that HAMAS doesn't want to extinguish Israel as a nation.  I never claimed that was justifiable.

I am claiming that HAMAS did not spontaneously appear in a vacuum.
 

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Every choice happens for a reason. A reasonable person- it's in the name reasonable- should be able to distinguish wether the reason justifies the action. You are just saying there are reasons. That doesn't tell us anything. Either you feel that the reason justifies the action or not. If you are saying it's a cause but not justification, then that is just victim blaming and serves no purpose. She should have had dinner ready. Had she had dinner ready, she wouldn't have a black eye. True. But should we be focusing on her dinner timing, or the guy that punched her in the face? 

If you are trying to show that this is a complex issue with lots of factors, you are not doing a good job of getting that point across. You appear to be pointing at Israel as the root cause of the attack, which looks a lot like victim blaming. 

Boost_Crazy said:

You appear to be pointing at Israel as the root cause of the attack, which looks a lot like victim blaming. 

I am not getting that impression from Duke. 

Duke said:

In reply to SV reX :

Except that's not really how this is.  We already own the US (leaving aside, for the moment, the US's own problematic history).

In your scenario, we're more like the Palestinians than the Israelis.

Your scenario is like the UN decided in 1947 that all Americans were going to be given free land in Canada; say, Ontario and Quebec.  All those existing Canadians would be forcibly relocated to the western provinces in order to make room for us.

Would that justify us deciding that we should own the Maritimes, too?

 

Except THAT'S not really how this is either. Israel has history in the region much older than 1947.

It was just an example. 

Sometimes it's just easier to acknowledge that some people are evil and in fact motivated by evil motives that most reasonable people will never understand.  Sadly these evil people like to blend in with other to ensure maximum suffering in situations like this.  
 

No amount of discussion will resolve this thousands year old conflict.  

If one is of the opinion that Israel has a historic right to be in Palestine because of ancestral claims then consider that China claims most of the South China Sea because of very similar claims.....

Not saying they should not be there but when the West turned a blind eye to the Holocaust and then created a State for the Jews out of guilt, we really upset the middle eastern apple cart. You could argue that Hamas butchered babies because Hitler butchered babies.

In reply to 02Pilot :

I guess a question for you then (you do have a whole shelf!) :

Are there some examples of, longer term, successful uses of terrorism?  I suspect there are, I am just don't have a perspective.

Of note of course is one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Would the US revolutionaries be considered terrorists, using modern definitions?

mtn said:

Boost_Crazy said:

You appear to be pointing at Israel as the root cause of the attack, which looks a lot like victim blaming. 

I am not getting that impression from Duke. 

Nor am I.

aircooled said:

Would the US revolutionaries be considered terrorists, using modern definitions?

Yes and some considered them that in their own time. History is written by the victor.

Boost_Crazy said:

If you are trying to show that this is a complex issue with lots of factors, you are not doing a good job of getting that point across. You appear to be pointing at Israel as the root cause of the attack, which looks a lot like victim blaming. 

A terribly inaccurate 'victim blaming' analogy, and conflating 'root cause' with 'direct cause', does an even worse job of it. Much like mixing-and-matching the definitions of the word 'understand', people need to at least take the most fundamental steps to differentiate which statements are being made in reference to the direct causes of the current events vs those made in reference to the root cause(s) from the larger history that led to the current events. Both parts of the discussion have value, but it does nobody any favors when people get all blood hounded by the (mis)application of something said from one context and transfers it into the other. Maybe if we stopped looking so hard for worst in the people around us, we'd stop finding it so easily.

No, Israel does not share in any of the direct causes of the (horrific and unjustified) attack by HAMAS on Israeli civilians. However, Israel certainly does have a share in the root causes of how the situation became what it is today.

There have been comments about ancestral claims on land(s) as though that is important in some way. Historically has that ever worked for a nation to defend it's borders? It seems to come down to force and power in most cases that I can think of. The claims that stand up are either backed by direct power or imposed by more powerful external entities that deem it in their own interest.

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

There have been comments about ancestral claims on land(s) as though that is important in some way. Historically has that ever worked for a nation to defend it's borders? It seems to come down to force and power in most cases that I can think of. The claims that stand up are either backed by direct power or imposed by more powerful external entities that deem it in their own interest.

This. If you can't enforce your claim, you have no valid claim.

aircooled said:

In reply to 02Pilot :

I guess a question for you then (you do have a whole shelf!) :

Are there some examples of, longer term, successful uses of terrorism?  I suspect there are, I am just don't have a perspective.

Of note of course is one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Would the US revolutionaries be considered terrorists, using modern definitions?

I think without question, American revolutionaries were considered terrorists and treated as such. The trouble was that they tended to be articulate and spoke the same language as their oppressors, which made suppressing them that much more difficult.

As to successful terrorist campaigns, well, define success. And terrorist, for that matter. Did the Viet Cong engage in terrorism? Most scholars would say yes. Were they on the winning side? Yes. Did they win because of terrorism? Well....

The problem with terrorism is that it's persistent. It doesn't have to win; it just has to not lose. Could Hamas defeat Israel on the battlefield? No. Could Hamas achieve its objectives politically over several generations? Sure. Could it also achieve them as the junior partner in an alliance with Iran? Yup.

In cases where terrorism can be seen as overtly successful, I think the clearest cases would likely be those involving a coup or assassination, rather than a protracted campaign against the general populace.

In reply to z31maniac :

This is what he said...

I respectfully submit that some blame for the current hostilities must be placed on 50 years or so of Israeli expansionism, as evidenced by the maps that 02Pilot and I posted.

I am also speaking in a larger context than the specifics of the alleged hospital attack and a smaller context than the last 3000 years.

Does that not look like assigning blame?

02Pilot said:

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

There have been comments about ancestral claims on land(s) as though that is important in some way. Historically has that ever worked for a nation to defend it's borders? It seems to come down to force and power in most cases that I can think of. The claims that stand up are either backed by direct power or imposed by more powerful external entities that deem it in their own interest.

This. If you can't enforce your claim, you have no valid claim.

That's absurd.

Someone comes into my home and steals my truck while I am away. If I can't go and get it back, I have no claim that it's mine.

In reply to tuna55 :

Not quite, because you can appeal to the police (the more powerful external entity in your example). If there were no policing force, you would indeed have to do it yourself.

People live in civilizations, but countries don't have that luxury. That is why there is no world police force kicking Russia out of Ukraine. The "world" is a pretty unfriendly neighborhood.

In reply to tuna55 :

All analogies are terrible. 

And in your particular terrible analogy, yes, you can enforce your claim. You report it to the Police, and they get your truck back.  

I think it depends on how you define "valid".  If there were no way to get your truck back, your claim may be "valid" in the sense that the truck is constitutionally protected property, but in practical terms, it's not valid, since there's no way to get it back. 

Yeah I have to disagree with everyone. The analogy was assuming no police, and it still shows how your point that I have no claim is absurd. I cannot express how much I disagree.

In reply to tuna55 :

If you're truck was taken, you can use all means you're able to conceve to recover it on your own... if you ask nicely that might work, if you choose to take the family of the thief hostage in exchange that might what you consider to be necessary to get your truck back. Where you stop is up to you. But the world doesn't really care if you get your truck back unless say you owe someone a ride to work tomorrow, hell they might call the thief as that's the guy who they know has a truck.

Interesting development regarding one of the recently released hostages. Yocheved Lifschitz, a long-time Israeli peace activist, gave an interview in which she stated (through her daughter as a translator) that "When she first arrived, they told them that they are Muslims that they do not want to hurt them, and that they ate the same food that the Hamas was eating" and that "they (Hamas) treat them kindly and provided for them". An Israeli army spokesman responded by stating that the interview was “a mortifying event, with no organization, no guiding hand. She must be tired. They might have waited a little. I don’t understand if she was pre-briefed or not.”

This is a good example of the nuances that all sides have to contend with in this sort of situation as it evolves. The longer it goes on, the more nuanced it will become. Hamas and Israel are both competing for sympathy in the global information space, and the results of this will significantly impact the medium-term outcome of the situation.

tuna55 said:

02Pilot said:

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

There have been comments about ancestral claims on land(s) as though that is important in some way. Historically has that ever worked for a nation to defend it's borders? It seems to come down to force and power in most cases that I can think of. The claims that stand up are either backed by direct power or imposed by more powerful external entities that deem it in their own interest.

This. If you can't enforce your claim, you have no valid claim.

That's absurd.

Someone comes into my home and steals my truck while I am away. If I can't go and get it back, I have no claim that it's mine.

Though I think analogies of this sort are overly reductionist and thus problematic, perhaps my phrasing was less than ideal. Instead of "valid," a more precise term might be "meaningful." In other words, you can claim it's yours all you want, but that won't do anything to make it so.

In reply to tuna55 :

Your claim on the truck is validated over that of somebody else by your being in possession of its title. If there was no paperwork for the truck, how would you prove your claim to it is more valid than that of the 'thief' who 'stole' it from you but claims that it was stolen from them first and they were just taking back that which is rightfully theirs?

In reply to Driven5 :

Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all that. 

In reply to Driven5 :

Boost_Crazy said:

If you are trying to show that this is a complex issue with lots of factors, you are not doing a good job of getting that point across. You appear to be pointing at Israel as the root cause of the attack, which looks a lot like victim blaming. 

A terribly inaccurate 'victim blaming' analogy, and conflating 'root cause' with 'direct cause', does an even worse job of it. Much like mixing-and-matching the definitions of the word 'understand', people need to at least take the most fundamental steps to differentiate which statements are being made in reference to the direct causes of the current events vs those made in reference to the root cause(s) from the larger history that led to the current events. Both parts of the discussion have value, but it does nobody any favors when people get all blood hounded by the (mis)application of something said from one context and transfers it into the other. Maybe if we stopped looking so hard for worst in the people around us, we'd stop finding it so easily.

Why is it a bad example? I did not conflate root cause with direct cause.
Root cause-

The root cause is the core issue—the highest-level cause—that sets in motion the entire cause-and-effect reaction that ultimately leads to the problem(s).

I took his words (quoted in a post above) that Israeli expansionism led to the terror attack. Blaming the victim of violence by saying that their actions led to the violence  is victim blaming.

No, Israel does not share in any of the direct causes of the (horrific and unjustified) attack by HAMAS on Israeli civilians. However, Israel certainly does have a share in the root causes of how the situation became what it is today.

This is exactly the context that I used the words "root cause." What exactly are you trying to correct? The situation today is that they had a horrific terror attack. Your statement above is also victim blaming. No different than "She should have known better than to dress like that." That doesn't mean your assessment is without merit, but in my opinion it is horribly insensitive and ill timed. Is it worthy of discussion? Sure. But I'd prefer to tread carefully and not give it any equality to the direct cause.