Xander77 posted:

As I pointed out, every single person who has ~~~wrong opinions~~~ has been accused of being a shill and got a proper avatar to make sure everyone knows he's arguing for the wrong side. It's almost as though noting an overall trend is the exact opposite of cherry-picking.

Crane Fist posted:

The discussion which was turning into 'genocide is only a word and words are subjective and have whatever meaning you assign to them and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb'

Xander77 posted:

As I pointed out, every single person who has ~~~wrong opinions~~~ has been accused of being a shill and got a proper avatar to make sure everyone knows he's arguing for the wrong side. It's almost as though noting an overall trend is the exact opposite of cherry-picking.

Kaal posted:

Similarly, trying to paint the entirety of antisemitism as wrong or right, which could go back 2500 years in some people's minds, is a meaningless exercise in point-scoring. It's precisely the kind of terrible team-spirit rah-rahing that these threads have such a tendency toward. Even trying to narrow it down to specific events is problematic. Was the Roman persecution of Jews right or wrong? Was Middle Ages blood libel right or wrong? Was the Holocaust right or wrong? They clearly have elements of both. Trying to cast super broad concepts in yes and no terms is argumentative reductionism, and only leads to people adopting extremely narrow perspectives.

JeffersonClay posted:

illrepute posted:

People are getting avatars for excessively bad posting. It's entirely coincidental that the thing they're posting poorly about is Israel, unless you'd have us believe there's an antisemitic cabal stamping yellow stars on pro-Israel poster's avatars.

Crane Fist posted:

The '~~~wrong opinions~~~' you so cleverly refer to being support for apartheid and racial cleansing by attrition. This is obviously a tone argument worth making, you pedantic gently caress

quote:

Also your tildes don't make you seem clever or ironic, they're just stupid. Is this derail over yet? We're still waiting for Kaal to figure out if words have meaning.

Xander77 posted:

Hmm. It's almost as though these two posts are ironic when juxtaposed against each other.
They're my ~~~uguuu~ tildes, and I love them and I'm going to marry them when I grow up.

Or, to clarify things for the dense, either everyone who supports Israel, or an Israeli position, or an Israeli assertion is a genocide loving fascist shill, or... wait, there actually isn't an or. It's almost as if some "tone arguments" - as in, "what are the boundaries of this discussion, and is everyone who disagrees [see the first part of the sentence]" are worth having.

Xander77 posted:

Or, to clarify things for the dense, either everyone who supports Israel, or an Israeli position, or an Israeli assertion is a genocide loving fascist shill, or... wait, there actually isn't an or. It's almost as if some "tone arguments" - as in, "what are the boundaries of this discussion, and is everyone who disagrees [see the first part of the sentence]" are worth having.

Hellbeard posted:

We are not targeting the citizens of Gaza,

illrepute posted:

The excessively-bad posting is in defense of an apartheid regime, yes. Well-spotted. No one here has said that being pro-Israel automatically makes one a fascist, or a shill, but you can keep whipping that strawman if you feel like it.

Woozy posted:

It's almost as if genocide loving fascist shills don't actually realize that's what they are and a big part of the reason they're so useful.

quote:

Do you want to talk about Israel or Palestine, now?

Xander77 posted:

Hmm. It's almost as though these two posts are ironic when juxtaposed against each other.

(Congrats on the quick edit, by the way)
What is there to talk about, precisely?

Israel is bad, very bad. I'm glad we can all agree

Woozy posted:

God forbid you have to speculate on the moral character of Zionist settlers!

Jizz Festival posted:

Your theory would seem to come to the conclusion that the Palestinians are "less rational" than the Israelis due to the greater violence inflicted on them.

illrepute posted:

I edited it because, just below me, someone made that claim, and so I changed it.

Cool Bear posted:

Xander you just quoted two different people who probably disagree and

Xander77 posted:

Yes, exactly*.

*(Well, actually you could go "whoops, I thought X but it turned out that Y, so my bad" instead of trying to pretend you were always and forever correct, but whatever)

Thanks for the new avatar, whoever

Kaal posted:

That's a different question. It's specific and direct and leads to some kind of meaningful conversation. And even then, I don't think that you'd get much value out of reducing Hitler to a yes/no question. Asking if WWII as an entire concept is wrong is a different thing entirely - it's just too broad to reduce to wrong or right. It had elements of both. And you can see that in how the alternate questions people have tried to pose have been much more specific and pointed. FourLeaf didn't ask, "Was American expansionism wrong", he instead preferred, "Was the American quest to exterminate Native Americans wrong". Totally different question (though probably equally uninformative due to its simplicity).

Similarly, trying to paint the entire Israeli occupation as wrong or right, which could go back 100 years in some people's minds, is a meaningless exercise in point-scoring. It's precisely the kind of terrible team-spirit rah-rahing that these threads have such a tendency toward. Even trying to narrow it down to specific events is problematic. Was Cast Lead right or wrong? Was the Second Intifada right or wrong? They clearly have elements of both. Trying to cast super broad concepts in yes and no terms is argumentative reductionism, and only leads to people adopting extremely narrow perspectives.

Kaal posted:

Well, listen guys, I know it might not be RIGHT that I blackened my daughter's eyes and kicked her down the stairs after she fired a squirt gun at me, triggering the PTSD I had from the LAST time I beat the poo poo out of her, but she was born several years ago, so I don't think you can say in good faith that it's truly WRONG.

Cool Bear posted:

The IDF probably didn't shoot missiles at them during the cease fire from independent angry guys in ways that we should forgive the Palestinians for.

Jizz Festival posted:

Your theory would seem to come to the conclusion that the Palestinians are "less rational" than the Israelis due to the greater violence inflicted on them.

JeffersonClay posted:

I think it's undeniable that Israel's bombardment of Palestine increases the number of people there with mental illness. The result of this would be fewer rational people, yes. I'll absolutely concede that rational/mentally ill is not a binary but a continuum, is socially defined, and the word "rational" itself has a lot of connotations that I don't mean to reference.

illrepute posted:

Do you want to talk about the subject of the thread even a little?

Xander77 posted:

What is there to talk about, precisely?

Israel is bad, very bad. I'm glad we can all agree

...

Seriously though, I participate in less than one I/P thing per year because I don't have a good clear answer as to what should be done (unlike a whole bunch of subjects that I can post about smugly and with conviction). Also unlike most subjects, m opinions on the I/P thing are both ~~~wrong~~~ and non-productive (something along the lines of "there are reasons why Israel does what it does that are far more realpolitik and complex than 'racism'" which doesn't actually help things). Furthermore, I don't feel like the issue is going to be solved one way or another short of an absolutely catastrophic development.

What did interest me was racism against Israeli Arabs. They aren't quite considered ~~~the enemy~~~, and Jews work and occasionally live and study side by side with them. I vaguely hoped that dropping the racism level here could help everyone at once - better conditions for the Arabs, less terrorism and riots for the Jews, possibly a platform for a future understanding with the Palestinians... but it seems as though that's not going to happen. (Thanks Im Tirzu, Yad Le Ahim and a bunch of other assholes I've been fighting against to no avail. Hope you're the very next people to burn alive )

Nor are we discussing it here, apparently.

Kaal posted:

I'm sure that you understand that some concepts are simply too large to be simplified into two neat categories. I mean I'm sure that you can see that trying to pose the question, "Human civilization, right or wrong?" is absolutely absurd. If you're talking about a specific event or decision then you can start grappling with its specific morality or wisdom, but if you broaden the scope out to concepts involving millions of people over decades of history, then that sort of absolutism is simply misguided.

edit: Like your example conflicts - they're all pretty navigable and you can levy a single moral judgment on them. But what about the entire Arab Spring movement? I don't think that you can really take that and declare it to be right or wrong.

Jizz Festival posted:

The reason to "forgive" the Palestinians in that case isn't lack of rationality, it's lack of central control over all the groups able to fire rockets on their side.

illrepute posted:

Further, nobody- ahem, only idiots here believe that Israel's policy toward the Palestinians is directly wholly, or even mostly by racism. There are very clear, tangible benefits (like you said, realpolitik) for Israel's occupation and the violence it employs. The West Bank has a number of reservoirs that Israel uses to augment its scarce water supplies, same as the Golan Heights (a place that doesn't get discussed much in I/P threads, even though it should). There are also a few oil wells, and the land's use in agriculture is well-documented. There are elements of security, as well, though obviously I disagree that Israel is "safer" by pursuing a policy that alienates and kills Palestinians. They are also useful bargaining chips in disputes (Golan, again, though the degree to which Israel is willing to give these up is again up for discussion). All of these- and more- are reasons aside from "racism" why Israel has a vested interest in maintaining the occupation.

illrepute posted:

Yes, the state of the Israeli Arabs- who make up about twenty percent of the population of the Israeli state, is a very good basis for discussion. I've heard that Jewish dating of Arabs is heavily discouraged by the religious right in Israel, but I've yet to see that much information on the state of relationships between the two communities in Israel.

quote:

I know for a fact that there was a bill pushed forward attempting to ban Arab parties in the Knesset, but that it did not come to pass.

quote:

Do you have any suggestions for what methods would have to be taken to decrease racism against Arabs in Israel?

Cool Bear posted:

They shouldn't have people shooting rockets because a rational and objectively correct view will show that that won't help for at least a few decades or maybe they are accelerationists which is pretty hard to prove is objectively incorrect. I mean it's rude but it might work, i wouldnt do it.

Xander77 posted:

There's a legacy legal system from the Ottoman empire / British mandate wherein everyone has to marry through their proper religious authorities, with no civil union option. So convert, or fly abroad to get married so that your interfaith (or gay or breaking some obscure religious rule) union is recognized.

Xander77 posted:

"It takes two to tango" "the first step in a dialog" and other bullshit phrases. But seriously though, that has some point to it. Israeli Arab politicians / society focused on I/P first and on the needs of the common Arab a distant second, and are pushing for something like voluntary segregation (as a form of protest?). They don't participate in mixed-city municipal elections in places like Jerusalem, they don't sit on the same councils as Jews as union members / students / whatever. Publishing Arab newspapers with a Hebrew edition, at least on the net, would be a good first phase (and vise-versa for Hebrew newspapers, obviously). Publicizing Arab issues in Hebrew.

The Communist party (good people, you may want to google Dov Hanin and co) (which is occasionally counted among the Arab parties only because it:) has submitted more laws to the Knesset dealing improving the conditions of the Israeli-Arabs than the rest of the Arab parties combined. Just publicizing the poor conditions of Arab settlements, Arab schools etc may help. Particularly if there's a strong emphasis on "do you want these millions to be your comrades or your enemies? Either they're citizens or they aren't". I'm not saying "go join the army and earn your rights as a citizen" - just Am I Not a Man and a Brother, no more, no less.

On the Jewish side. First of all, though everyone are required to study Arabic, no one has to pass it to graduate. Change that on the spot - make it the equivalent of math or English, which you have to know on some level if you want your bagrut. Pretty sure that everyone speaking the same language would help a tad.

Xander77 posted:

The Branja - the evil gang that apparently controls the ~~~media~~~ is ostensibly a bunch of peaceniks. Prove it. Promote Arabs as a part of the regular media. Not "a special correspondent" that gets pulled out only when dealing with sectarian issues. Have an Arab commentator in the studio when talking about vaccinations. Include an Arab member in your band (even if only on the drums) even though you're not an explicitly political group. Don't make special reports about ethnic group x eating ethnic food y in ethnic location z - just give the recipe for said food and have an interview with the cook.

Xander77 posted:

Normalize Arab presence in mainstream Israeli society. That's what both sides should be pushing for. Just phrase the question as sharply as possible: "friend or foe". We're not yet at the point where the majority is going to answer "foe". Azmi Bishara (RIP) (except not really) had the right idea - just run for Prime Minister and ask "is that a problem? What? What?"

(Possibly) More importantly, call out and keep calling out bullshit like the first paragraph. I still bring up the first time I've seen the head of Im Tirzu (towering over a Palestinian student) half his size and screaming in her face) every time they are mentioned (then, if anyone is still interested, there's a big exposition on my time as a Civil Guard volunteer and my encounter with Yad Le Ahim). Narrow the overtone window and defenestrate them. It can get kinda tiresome (when I have the time, I'll write out my big "Conservative worldview vs liberal worldview" screed and point out why "how would you like to be in their place doesn't really work") but that's the day by day thing.

quote:

(2012)

[Turkey’s Prime Minister] Erdogan blasts Israel for treatment of ‘Palestinian brothers’ in Gaza

...

“When we raise our voices it is not because we aim to intervene in others countries’ internal affairs,” Erdogan said, but the Palestinian issue was very important to Turkey “because the Palestinians are our brothers.” The Israeli-Palestinian conflict also “threatens regional peace and stability and that’s why we believe we must attract attention to this issue.”

Without ever uttering the word Israel, Erdogan accused the Jewish state of “killing innocent people, children, babies, women and the elderly in masses” by bombardments and by keeping people “in the largest open-air prison in the world,” referring to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

quote:

And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world's largest open-air prison, where some 1.5 million people on a roughly 140-square-mile strip of land are subject to random terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade.

Such cruelty is to ensure that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed, and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement granting basic human rights will be nullified. The Israeli political leadership has dramatically illustrated this commitment in the past few days, warning that they will "go crazy" if Palestinian rights are given even limited recognition by the U.N.

quote:

(2014)

The African National Congress (ANC),condemns in the strongest terms, the barbaric attacks on the defenceless Palestinian people of Gaza. Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza strip have resulted in the deaths of over 27 Palestinians, at least 6 of them children. The Israeli attacks have further resulted in injuring over 200 Palestinians and traumatising thousands of others.

As we move towards the month of August and are reminded of he atrocities of Nazi Germany, surely we must ask the people of Israel has the term "lest we forget" lost it meaning. The state of Israel has turned the occupied territories of Palestine into permanent death camps. Of course the killing of any child irrespective of race color or creed must be condemned and the death of two Israeli young people is surely as senseless as any other death. But for the State of Israel, the notion of an eye for an eye has become perpetual massacre with merciless revenge which has lasted for more than 60 years. It is time to stop the killing now.

BattleMaster posted:

Stuff like this makes the claims that Israelis constantly live in terror kind of fall flat.

illrepute posted:

Woah, jeez, are you saying that interfaith marriages can't be performed in Israel? I didn't know that.

quote:

About how many Israelis do you think are fluent in Arabic right now, if you're willing to speculate? I think that would be a great way to reduce misunderstandings on the civil level.

quote:

I'm not familiar with the term "Branja". Could you expand on this?

quote:

I'd be interested to read about your encounter with Yad Le Ahim. Thank you for posting all this information. This thread is basically the apex of hostility in D&D, and you have good facts and experiences that are helpful to the discussion, even though I disagree with some points you've made.

quote:

e: I'm sorry I keep editing this post, there's just a lot of really useful information you've provided and I keep going over it again and finding new stuff to think about! You mentioned that the society isn't yet at the point where the majority believes Israeli Arabs are "foes". Do you see a trend going that direction? What would happen if the majority does answer this way? What can be done to avert this?

Hong XiuQuan posted:

Obama's letting' Israel know that they've had enough fun and it's time to put their toys away before America gets a little annoyed - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28258448

Hong XiuQuan posted:

Obama's letting' Israel know that they've had enough fun and it's time to put their toys away before America gets a little annoyed - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28258448

Main Paineframe posted:

Sure, some concepts are too large and abstract to be encapsulated in a single word like "right" or "wrong". Usually those concepts are also too large and abstract to usefully discuss, though, which is why I'm having a hard time seeing why you're bringing this up or how it's relevant. "World War II - right or wrong?" is impossible to meaningfully answer, but no one has ever tried to answer that question because it's a stupid loving question - instead, they ask about major aspects (such as the brutal oppression of minorities and foreigners by Germany and other nations) or events (the Holocaust) of World War II.

Kaal posted:

It's because applying that same kind of simplistic framework to "Israeli occupation - right or wrong" is equally problematic. Does the question apply to the entire Jewish presence since the beginning of the Mandate, or just a specific time period (and why)? Is the question focused on specific areas (i.e. Gaza/West Bank) or the entirety of the region? Are we talking about the specifically problematic elements of the occupation, or everything related to the state of Israel? Is the question asking whether it's the right response to the situation for the decision-makers, or in a larger moral scope on a global humanitarian level? Are competing hypotheticals or behaviors being applied here, or is the concept being examined in isolation? What is the role of right/wrong in the larger discursive construct? Where do exterior influences fit into all of this?

A simple response of "Yes" or "No" doesn't start to address any of these questions. The topic is simply too broad. And that's because the question isn't actually intended to be illuminating - it's simply trying to score a rhetorical lay-up. Normally the best response to this sort of debate tactic is simply to respond to the question that should have been asked, but I instead tried to reply in good faith and there's been whining about it ever since.

illrepute posted:

That's actually pretty interesting. Contrast it to 2006, when Washington specifically delayed United Nations proceedings in order to give Israel more time to attempt to pull a victory out of Lebanon. Or, hell, even 2008 or 2012, when the U.S. basically looked the other way and whistled.

illrepute posted:

Is the current bombing, that is happening right now, of Gaza, undertaken in response to the killing of three Israeli teenagers, which has been blamed on Hamas, for which no evidence has yet been revealed, that has killed 80+ people, about half of whom are civilians, wrong?

ReV VAdAUL posted:

And/or after Israel so blatantly threw his peace initiative and other general uncooperativeness Obama is tired of Netanyahu's poo poo. Campaign for Romney and you get to have less fun.